‘The Young Pope’ Recap: Cardinal Sins

Last week, Lenny Belardo seized the highlight. Well, technically, he ordered it to be strategically switched off … however it amounted to the identical factor, as his shadowy presence was undoubtedly the star of the present. Tonight, nonetheless, The Young Pope relegated Pope Pius XIII to the again seat and let his rebellious elders-cum-underlings take the wheel. This is the place we study what kind of males the newly topped pontiff is up towards.

Granted, it is a bit odd to say that Lenny performed second fiddle in an episode stuffed this filled with greatest-hit gif-able moments; it will be arduous for any viewer to overlook the unholy trinity of Pius-centric scenes that helped kick off the proceedings. First, throughout one among his rooftop heart-to-hearts along with his mild-mannered informant Don Tommasso, the Pope confessed that he spent the papal conclave praying “so arduous I practically shit my pants” for the downfall of his chief rivals:, his mentor Cardinal Spencer and his childhood pal Cardinal Dussolier. “God, not him, me,” he repeated time and again, “like a mantra. And now I am the pope. Not them. Me.”

When his egocentric prayer turned out to achieve success, nonetheless, his best pleasure wasn’t in feeling that God had favored him. On the opposite, he thinks the Big Man Upstairs principally blew the entire thing. “I imagine solely in myself. I’m the Lord Omnipotent. Lenny, you’ve gotten illumined your self!” No, Belardo took pleasure in freaking his fellow cardinals out with the throwback title he picked. “They all went white after they heard the title I would chosen, and I reveled of their concern. They have been starting to understand who I’m. Because that’s the huge error they dedicated: They selected a pope they did not know. And as we speak, they start to grasp.” Co-writer/director Paolo Sorrentino movies the entire scene in stately closeups, gorgeously “illumined” by the streetlights beneath, finally zooming in on Jude Law’s luscious lips for a ultimate f-bomb.

Next up is the opening credit score sequence that launched a thousand fan tumblrs. As an instrumental model of “All Along the Watchtower” performs, Pius walks in gradual movement previous a collection of well-known spiritual work as a comet soars by way of the sky in every of them, tracing his progress. (This is a logo relationship again to one of many Medici popes, Clement VII, and is claimed to point both nice good or nice misfortune.) With a shit-eating grin on his face and the credit emblazoned in flickering neon blue on the wall behind him, he finally turns on to the viewer … and winks. Nothing is sacred right here, not even the fourth wall. At the tip of his stroll, he passes a life-sized statue of beloved Pope John Paul II, which is then promptly shocked by the now-extinguished comet. (This is itself a sculpture referred to as “La Nona Ora (The Night Hour)” by artist Maurizio Cattelan.) Eat meteor, JPII!

True, the following time we see Pius XIII, he is screaming a prayer for forgiveness on the heavens, begging mercy and even punishment for his vanity and deceit. But he is additionally acquired a lit cigarette in his hand the entire time, a not-so-subtle reminder that he metaphorically smoked his predecessor just some minutes earlier.

In between, nonetheless, we get the primary of a number of revelatory scenes involving Belardo’s best rivals. Cardinal Spencer, who appears to get drunker every time he sees him, is chewing out Cardinal Voiello from the highest ground of his condo, in full-fledged “We had a deal!” power-broker mode. Voiello protests that whereas he allowed it to look as if he’d engineered the younger pope’s rise with a purpose to preserve the looks of energy, it was the Holy Spirit who really put him on the papal throne. “Don’t fuck with me, Angelo,” comes Spencer’s response. He often is the extra theologically conservative of the pair, however he can odor bullshit regardless of how a lot incense you employ to masks it.

Indeed, Voiello spends a lot of the episode taking part in protection. When he gathers his braintrust, their huge plan is for him to resign his place. “It’s a real miracle that this meeting generated an concept,” he scoffs at his septuagenarian-at-best inside circle. The subsequent time he meets with Pius, the pope rubs his nostril in having his speech rejected, blows off the essential child-molestation case and PR disaster the Secretary of State is begging him to cope with. Finally, extravagantly exiles a member of his insurgent circle, Cardinal Ozolins, to Alaska. “Why do I get the impression that you simply’re out to decrease me even additional?” asks the hapless prelate. “Because it is true,” Belardo solutions with evident glee.

The downward spiral continues from there. The schemer is handed over in favor of Sister Mary for the press convention – or because the Cardinal places it, “the depressed convention” – reconfirming every thing Pius stated in his lunatic homily, this time accompanied by a Game of Thrones–model recitation of all his holy titles and rankings. He’s threatened with outright demotion when he curses out the pope for failing to be the bridge between liberal and conservative factions he’d supposed when he engineered the election. Even when he and the traditional Cardinal Caltanissetta persuade Spencer to beg Belardo’s forgiveness – in one of many episode’s most genuinely transferring and respectful depictions of non secular religion – the gambit is rejected, leaving the American cardinal crying on his knees.

But there are different methods to pores and skin a pope. Pius could really feel that the kangaroo he let free within the Vatican grounds, glimpsed within the episode’s eeriest scene, represents divine windfall. But it is not sufficient to guard him from the foibles of his inside circle. His assistant, Father Valente, is having an affair with Ester, his most religious disciple; his confidante, Monsignor Gutierrez, is an alcoholic, a secret Voiello intends to make use of to extract data. But it might not work: “Voiello is a politician,” says the kindly drunk when Belardo signifies his potential willingness to let the Cardinal run the present. “You are the pope.” The query this comparatively quiet episode asks is whether or not you could be the latter with out additionally being the previous.

Previously: No Church in the Wild