Twitter

Where to Stream:

The Young Pope

The first thing you have to know about The Young Pope is that the Young Pope isn’t that young. The eponymous young Pope Pius XIII (Jude Law) is 47. Which is young for a Pope, but it is not young young. He is not like a literal baby, which you might be forgiven for thinking if you watch the opening scene in which a white baby emerges from a literal sea of black babies.

The white baby represents the Pope – maybe? Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the white smoke that is emerges from the chimney of the Sistine chapel when a new pope is chosen? It’s unclear. But no matter! It’s a beautifully shot dream sequence, regardless of its eventual meaning.

After this sequence, the Pope rises, and walks through a gorgeously shot Apostolic Palace. He then proceeds to stand on the balcony and tell his thousands of devotees that, “they have forgotten to masturbate! To use contraceptives! To get abortions!” To this you might respond “oh boy!” or “oh… boy” depending on how excited you are about a show about someone “shaking things up.”

But halt those sentiments, for that is simply another dream sequence. (Nicely played, Paolo Sorrentino.)

Immediately after, Pope Pius XIII is shown awaking once more. Shortly after revealing that his real name is Lenny Belardo (he’s American) he goes to a sumptuous buffet table set with any food he might enjoy. There, he announces, “all I have in the morning is a Cherry Coke Zero.” So, he’s kind of revolutionary after all, if living in the modern world and enjoying some of it’s comforts is all it takes to qualify as a revolutionary. He then tells his Major domo “you belong to me.” When his personal cook offers to make him anything he likes and kisses him on the cheek, he announces, “let me explain something that you…. Friendly relationships are dangerous. They lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstanding and conflicts. They always end badly.”

A single tear rolls down her cheek. Yes, he makes the nun cry.

So he is a powerful, seemingly intelligent man who is pointedly anti-social. Well, that’s something we’ve never seen on television before. I am always perplexed that these characters on television do not get punched a lot more, since this seems like something that would certainly happen to them nearly constantly in life.

Seemingly he’s not that far away from it on the show, either. A group of cardinals soon gather to discuss whether or not he’s “the devil incarnate.” The fact that we cut away to Lenny’s former mentor attempting to slit his wrists upon hearing that Lenny has become Pope doesn’t certainly doesn’t seem like it speaks especially well of Lenny. The cardinals decide that he’s merely “a telegenic puppet” who will be masterfully manipulated by his mentor Cardinal Voilello (Silvio Orlando). Cardinal Voilello is revealed to be a soccer-watching, joke-cracking, embezzling, Venus of Willendorf lusting fellow, who seems like he’d be a thoroughly entertaining shadow-ruler, so this isn’t an entirely unwelcome plan.

However, it seems pretty evident this is not likely to be the case when Lenny treats Cardinal Voiello as though he is a particularly disagreeable intern during their meeting, demanding that he bring him coffee. Instead, Sister Mary (Diane Keaton) the nun who raised him is helicoptered in to serve as his advisor.

Voiello remarks that “power is knowledge,” and that what he wants to know is who is the Young Pope, “or, rather, who was Lenny Belardo?”

Given his unpredictability, it’s something the audience would like answered as well. Lenny promptly begins his own campaign to acquire knowledge, and offers a cardinalship to the Priest the cardinals confess to. One assumes he does not want this knowledge to help them. When the Priest says he worries that God will hear them, Lenny assures him that God lives in the sky in “half of a duplex, with a private swimming pool.” The notion, compared to the truly gloriously shot scenes of the papal palace, seems terribly bleak.

He then tells the Priest that he does not believe in God. He immediately dismisses the statement by claiming this was a joke. This, we come to understand is how Lenny jokes. In a past scene he told Cardinal Voiello that the Cardinal should be in charge of politics and finances, while as Pope he will tend to worldly matters, like adulation of the masses. He then explains that he was just kidding. “What a telling joke,” Cardinal Voiello remarks to Lenny at one point during their discussion. “Jokes are never telling,” replied Lenny. “They’re jokes.”

But what are jokes, to Lenny, then? If the rule of comedy is that jokes generally work best when one punches up. Lenny seems to believe that jokes are exclusively devices used to drain the blood out of the faces of those you are manipulating.

In this Lenny seems to be different than the run-of-the-mill anti-social Dr. House/Sherlock Holmes/Don Drapers. Those anti-heroes at least seem to have the other character’s best interests at heart under their unlikeable exteriors. It becomes clear that Lenny does not. This may be the first time in his versatile screen career that Jude Law has been utterly terrifying. By the end of the episode it’s clear that the Cardinals who thought that he might be the devil may have had a good point.