The Tragedy of Sofia Falcone by Cristin Milioti.

It starts with a “clang”. A vibrating crystal trumpet announcing the moment. It was built to perfection- in episode, and in season. There were many times that though I had a clue as to possibilities, I wondered out loud why in particular Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) bared her proverbial teeth to Oswald Cobb seemingly in perpetuity. Clues were dropped, a big one being the mention and discussion of a past betrayal of Sofia by Oswald in last week's episode “Bliss”, but it would be this week's episode “Cent' Anni” that revealed the source of Sofia's constant agitation and underlying anger as it pertains to Oswald and her family. A flashback episode that brings us directly to the present in which a reckoning will be had and as a result one of this year's finest performances in television via Cristin Milioti. In just about 4 mins Milioti would capture the physical and mental exhaustion of a traumatic past and the gasoline drenched fury that lit up her calculated revenge. A revenge brought on by a tragedy.

It started with a clang, a vibrating, crystal clear statement of intent to disrupt, that followed more subtle announcements when she sat down and loudly scraped her chair against the floor to move it towards the table, or showed the food in her mouth to her niece as her Uncle Luca (the head of the Falcone family) is giving a speech. Milioti who had dealt in understatement and elusiveness much of the season, is now beginning to purposely shake the bottled up radiating suds of her ferocity without uncorking it, though she does loosen it just enough for some palpable seepage. Shaking: “Wow look at everyone, I believe the last time that we were all together was my “father's birthday 10 years ago”. Seepage: I'm sure you will remember that night (beat) I know I do”. Structuring this so that prior to this speech we are explicitly shown the horrifying Cliff notes of a harrowing chapter in Sofia's life that underscore the betrayal that leads us into the now of her pain is a brilliant choice. Though 15 to 20 minutes is simply an abbreviated version of her 10 years at Arkham (for nothing other than remotely hearing what her father had done and to what extent it mattered believing) the extent to which we do see what she endured is enough to allow our imaginations to run wild about what the rest of it might have looked like. The abrupt and sudden nature of Sofia's commitment in conjunction with Milioti’s physical depiction of the shock of it is enough to flip anyone's gut. It is followed by a brief depiction of just how torturous, distressing, and wounding it was to endure just those first six months with a thought that you would get a trial in which your innocence would be proven a only to find out that those who claimed to love you made sure that you wouldn't even receive that tiny bit of a reprieve. All this from Family…Family?? The initial interruption of Sofia's hope in Milioti's eyes (so rich with text and crest-fallen trauma) is deepened in its resonance by the blank canvas of acceptance that becomes her face once it registers fully that she has no one to help her, and worse still (besides her brother ) no one that will. From this point on an evolution begins, and that evolution is built on the foundation of what was set up by the writers and by Milioti’s transformation. Young Sofia seems ripe with hope and belief, or rather trust. It's not just in the hair and makeup, it's in her movements, which are so much more smoother, and less stunted, but also less assured. The intelligence is always there, but to this point Sofia leans in and into her family and especially to her father. Whether a dinner table scene (a recurring theme) with her father, or benched in a limo talking to her brother - the reticence in her body, mouth, and eyes to assert herself or question is clear. So that when we come back to the Falcone dinner meet in present day Milioti in spirit, in energy could be said to appear unrecognizable.

The “I Know I do” in the recollection is made that much stronger by the fact that when Milioti says the words you can feel her voice tremble with traumatic recall. It's a slight rumble, a bit stilted, powered though by will. Air trapped in her throat for so long it atrophied and stumbled on its way out to freedom. In an interview for Cosmopolitan magazine Milioti says “She's either in Arkham or she's with Oz, who she can't fully trust, so she's always on guard. Her one ally was her brother. And it's not really until the end of that episode that she can take a breath and relax. I definitely tried to track how that would affect the way someone would hold their body”- the work comes though loud and clear. Her audience though remains still, save for one member “Carla” whose tries to leave the table because the truth might get in the way of her comfort, which is par the course for the entire table of fiends who either played an explicit role or were complicit in Sofia’s committal to Arkham. “As you all know, I was stuffed in Arkham State Hospital for a decade”- you can see the words move from her gut to her throat like bile, her eyes flutter and well. Gestures act as exclamation points and underline emotional text. Her hand moves away from her body as she she says “I was stuffed”, her thumb and index come together and her hand slams down on air, gavel-like. The way she says “decade” exclaims the viciousness of the act and the depth of its effect. The accent becomes even more pronounced as it does in anger. Once again this does not seem to be unintentional, -after all in that very same interview for Cosmopolitan Milioti says they thought enough to have her accent be lost a little from her 10 years in Arkham where she spends so much time in isolation and away from her people - it stands to reason it would come back involuntarily in moments that reach back to that time before. The viscosity of “Stuffed” and “Decade” carries the bitterness, the rage, the words in front of and behind carry the hurt in a way only such an up close and personal betrayal would as they foreshadow what's to come.

“Convicted of murdering SEVEN women” The seven is enunciated in Milioti's mouth even before she says it, most indicatively by the way her tongue presses into right side of her cheek - choices that emphasize how important these women were to her, as well as her connection to them. “Summer Gleeson, “Taylor Montgomery, Yolanda Jones, Nancy Hoffman Susanna Weekly, Devri Blake, and Tricia Becker, their names are worth saying”. It's a great bit of writing that conveys a surprisingly profound bit of understanding from writer John McCutcheon about the nature of being silenced. The crime is not merely family betrayal, nor the murders, or the sacrifice of an “innocent”, it is also the forgetting, the covering, the silence that covered these voices, is the same that now covers the room. “Victims are so quickly forgotten” our stories are rarely told”. The camera pans to the right to two Falcone women who have an air of recognition to the statement. It could be said that it is most likely each of these women has been victimized in some way. The mob is no less a misogynistic enterprise than the America it was born in, and a key element in Sofia’s story is that though she suspected and knew what her father had done she was in fact willing to be a good soldier and join in the silencing, but there's no protection from someone who hates the idea of your very existence is the lesson she gleaned from her experience. Johnny Viti (the always brilliant Michael Kelly) the family underboss/general has had enough, and tries to interrupt and end it, Milioti shoots him a look that in and of itself could secure her an Emmy, followed by the word “Yes and Hmm?”. It is not only meant to remind him that she's talking, but of what she has on him. She then returns to her speech. “I've had a lot of time to reflect, and I have to say I was genuinely surprised by how many of you wrote letters telling the judge that I was mentally ill..like my mother”. There is a “how dare you?” element to the cadence of “Like my mother” that speaks to the connection to her mother, which then reiterates the sickness of the act. This is fantastic writing consistently meeting fantastic performance. The flashback acts in concert with Milioti as the bucket in her well of emotion, ever so slightly rises. She chokes up as she says the very words, and in combination what we've seen prior, to how she found her mother, one death, and finding out her own father is responsible another death, and then her being punished and punished and punished for it a third it exhausts the audience connection to this family in a similar fashion to the way it exhausts hers. The moment pulled the bucket in my well as well, after all (and of course in varying degrees) who doesn't understand familial betrayal and what it does to ones heart?

“I trusted you..I loved you”. The well bucket rises higher still. It is in this section that Sofia comes the closest to full-on crying as Milioti allows it to wash over her now dewey orb shaped eyes. Recalling her brother's fierce loyalty and their cruel apathy she continues; “And you know the REAL thorn in my side is that unlike the rest of you, I was innocent”. Again the accent comes in as thick as peanut butter, and again the emphasis placed in words betrays the specificity of her pain- which is the shock of finding out just how disposable you are even to people whose entire schtick is supposed to be “family”. That disposability, exposed by the cruelty that lies in the fact that the idea of family in this environment is all but a joke could be argued to be the point of this episode. The tragedy of Sofia, even as she lives in a class that allows her privileges over Oswald is not too far from the tragedy of Oswald who lives in a gender that allows him privileges over Sofia, and that tragedy is the tragedy of the discarded. The unwanted, the unloved, the disposable, and how they can find no solace even next to each other, whether Oswald to Victor, or Sofia to her family, or Oswald and Sofia to each other, or extending our further Batman to Gotham. It's a bitter existence that leads to bitter people, broken people, with wants desires and ambitions that are meant to fill the holes in their hearts. The power they seek is meant to be a protection from this, but ultimately it cannot and never will, and all it leads to is a hunger that ultimately swallows and spits out others who will do the same. Milioti’s work conveys her new found hunger, not just in this scene, but in the one prior when she in-part flirts with, admonishes, and scares her therapist Julian Rush (Theo Rossi) she almost seems as if she is ready to take a bite of him. Sofia's turn is not that of a pure innocent to a world destroyer, but it is that of a person who found out in the worst way their class, their status, was not a protection from the built-in expendability of their personhood. That their seat at the table in no way meant that they werent food and it is Milioti's performance that works in concert with the script to show exactly what that looks like, and furthermore what the transformation from one who is on the plate - to one who holds the fork looks like. Fitting then that this scene took place at the dinner table in a story of those swallowed and those eating, and in a scene where the actor Cristin Milioti clearly had her fill.