There’s a kangaroo in the Vatican now. I feel like you could take any one plot point from The Young Pope and use it to illustrate how crazy the show is. Here’s another one: a nun wears a t-shirt reading “I’m A Virgin But This Is An Old Shirt.” So, yes, The Young Pope is a crazy show, but this isn’t water-cooler crazy. This is, at times, very unsettling. While still beautiful, “Second Episode” is a dark, at times foreboding installment. It has a few more wrinkles than the stellar “First Episode,” but it’s still captivating, and unlike anything else on television right now.
I like TV premieres because they give us a glimpse into the world of the show; second episodes are always a bit less fun because they have to show you what it’s like to live in that world. By which I mean, there’s more shown of the nitty-gritty and day-to-day. Here Lenny has to deal with the idea of papal merchandise, and as soon as he tells Sofia (Cecile de France) what a good idea commemorative plates are, you know he’s just toying with her. (“Second Episode” is a great chance for Jude Law to show off his monologue chops, which we’ll get into more later.) His combative, condescending dressing-down of Sofia is uncomfortable and riveting, and tells us a lot about him. Here is a man so intensely private that while a bishop or cardinal in New York, he never let any pictures be taken or produced of him (this being The Young Pope, he illustrates his point by citing Banksy, Daft Punk, and Stanley Kubrick as exemplars) – yet he sought, and accepted, one of the most public positions in the world. As he said previously, he is a contradiction.
“I do not have an ‘image,’ my good lady,” he tells her, “because I am no one. Only Christ exists.” It’s striking stuff, and the closest we get to hearing Law raise his voice. As an orator, both Law and Lenny Belardo are commanding and imposing, making Law incredibly well-suited to the role.
He has less personal skills, though. “Second Episode” shows us just how few allies Lenny has in the Vatican. Voiello and Federico are still conducting their investigation, although unable to come up with any dirt. Intriguingly, when asked to guess Lenny’s sexuality, Federico responds: “None.” Mary resents being told to address him as “Your Holiness,” but she still believes in him enough to give him a snap-out-of-it slap across the face. It’s a little tougher going with Lenny’s former mentor, Cardinal Michael Spencer (James Cromwell), who accuses Lenny of ruining his life and robbing him of his destiny. He refuses Lenny’s offer of a job and orders him – the Pope – out of his house. Through subterfuge, familiarity, and disrespect, there seems to be precious little reverence for the papacy on display, which might explain Lenny’s fiery homily at the episode’s end.
His address to St. Peter’s Square has been a bone of contention for two episodes now, so The Young Pope really had to deliver, especially after that audacious fake-out homily from the premiere. Lenny delivers not so much a barn-burner as a warning; cloaked in shadow, invisible but for his silhouette, he looks spectral and haunting. He discard Voiello’s proposed homily, which had even got Mary’s stamp of approval, in favor of a self-written admonishment. “You must know I will never be close to you,” he tells the gathered crowd, and there is no rapturous applause, only stunned silence, broken when someone points a laser light at Lenny, who storms off the stage, muttering “I don’t know if you deserve me.” It’s a bold, jaw-dropping moment, staged with director Paolo Sorrentino’s usual flair for staging. The address, and Lenny’s closing, off-the-cuff remarks, speak volumes about him as a man and a pontiff.
But so does the kangaroo. And so does Lenny’s desire to respond personally to every child who wrote him a letter (he even affixes one of them to the lectern while delivering his address). The contradictions are what make The Young Pope so dizzying and enthralling; “Second Episode” traffics in cognitive dissonance, like a kangaroo in the Vatican garden, or nuns playing soccer to the strains of “Ave Maria.” These are the kinds of shots, and the kind of show, that stick in your head.
4/5
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