The Borgias 1.05 "The Borgias In Love"
Apr. 30th, 2011 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardAm finally caught up on The Borgias 1.05, "The Borgias In Love." The least spoilery thing I can say is that if there were any doubt the Borgia children were Borgias, IT AIN'T HERE ANYMORE.
Also, the Renaissance. Who doesn't love the Renaissance? (You know, so far, compared to the Sforzas and the d'Aragonas (Naples), the Borgias look positively functional and healthy.)
Mmm, I'm not really sure how I felt about Alexander's nightmare -- it seemed a bit gratuitous? Though it's nice to see him worrying about whether he made the right choice or not. (Historically, he married Lucrezia off at age 13 -- they aged her up a year in the show -- and order Giovanni Sforza not to consummate the marriage for six months, possibly because of her age, possibly because he wanted to have an out in case the politics didn't work out. Which they didn't, by the way. See again: really humiliating annulment, Cesare chasing Sforza around Italy and taking over Pesaro, followed by an excommunication just for the hell of it.)
Oh, Lucrezia, honey. We do get a sense of just how young she is here, which they've been pushing in a reasonably understated sort of way. And the end! BECAUSE SHE'S A BORGIA, DAMN IT. It's not poison or killing him with fire or even Cesare coming over to visit and cutting his heart out, but it's Lucrezia taking an active hand in the family business. (Also not historically accurate, but hell if I care.) That Borgia smile! You go, girl. Have that affair.
Cesare chasing Ursula around -- perfectly in character for the historical Cesare Borgia (let me tell you about the time he kidnapped a woman for the hell of it and kept her for several years and also really pissed off Venice), not entirely sure how I feel about the way they played it here. Which might be deliberate; I doubt Cesare's really in love with Ursula and am more inclined to believe that he just likes the chase. I can't tell if it's just me, or if she looks enough like a slightly older Lucrezia, that he might be projecting his feelings and worry for Lucrezia onto her.
I do love Cesare sparring with Michelotto, though. AND THEN KILLING THE FUCK OUT OF URSULA'S HUSBAND. And it's nice to see him out of a cardinal's robes, of course.
SPEAKING OF CARDINALS. Della Rovere continues his grand tour of Italy, we get a glimpse of the great civilization of the Renaissance in Milan (Dear Renaissance: you are so fucked up, I kind of love you), Ascanio Sforza gets a taste of politics, Machiavelli commences his early onset fanboying of Cesare Borgia. I think the timing may be off on the Florentine politics, but I don't know as much about the Medici as I do about the Borgias. (Also, didn't Savonarola originally support Alexander VI? Until he changed his mind and started preaching against him and then the Pope came down on him with the wrath of God, possibly literally?)
JUAN BORGIA. I KIND OF LOVE YOU. I mean, I know, he's going to die fairly soon and he's a terrible general and not that great a person and all that, but David Oakes has a very expressive face! And he's so much fun. I love that silent exchange that he and Jeremy Irons share in -- eh, I'll just embed the scene, why don't I?
The scene that follows that is JUST AS GOOD. Juan Borgia does not approve of second-rate princesses, no he does not. Baby brother can have them, though. (Boy takes after his father. Actually what the historians say too; Juan took after Rodrigo and Cesare took after Vannozza, in some ways.)
I assume we'll see some more of Joffre (or Gioffre, I can't remember how Showtime's spelling it) in the next episode, where I think Sancia of Naples shows up?
I do wish we'd get a little more Juan and Cesare interaction. (I really wish we'd had some more interaction between all the siblings in the earlier eps, but, alas, you can only fit so much into fifty minutes a week. The only bit I have in my head for Borgia alternate history novel is Juan and Cesare, though, I think interrupted by Rodrigo.)
Bring on the French invasion! (Also, please please please give us the scene where Cesare is supposed to be captive to the French king, but escapes and is back in Rome by the next evening. It will be lovely.)
And I'm sure we've all heard that Showtime ordered a second season. Coincidentally, did y'all know that there's another series in the works about the Borgias? It is titled Borgia and is filming in Prague -- my friend New York, who's studying film there this semester, told me.
Also, the Renaissance. Who doesn't love the Renaissance? (You know, so far, compared to the Sforzas and the d'Aragonas (Naples), the Borgias look positively functional and healthy.)
Mmm, I'm not really sure how I felt about Alexander's nightmare -- it seemed a bit gratuitous? Though it's nice to see him worrying about whether he made the right choice or not. (Historically, he married Lucrezia off at age 13 -- they aged her up a year in the show -- and order Giovanni Sforza not to consummate the marriage for six months, possibly because of her age, possibly because he wanted to have an out in case the politics didn't work out. Which they didn't, by the way. See again: really humiliating annulment, Cesare chasing Sforza around Italy and taking over Pesaro, followed by an excommunication just for the hell of it.)
Oh, Lucrezia, honey. We do get a sense of just how young she is here, which they've been pushing in a reasonably understated sort of way. And the end! BECAUSE SHE'S A BORGIA, DAMN IT. It's not poison or killing him with fire or even Cesare coming over to visit and cutting his heart out, but it's Lucrezia taking an active hand in the family business. (Also not historically accurate, but hell if I care.) That Borgia smile! You go, girl. Have that affair.
Cesare chasing Ursula around -- perfectly in character for the historical Cesare Borgia (let me tell you about the time he kidnapped a woman for the hell of it and kept her for several years and also really pissed off Venice), not entirely sure how I feel about the way they played it here. Which might be deliberate; I doubt Cesare's really in love with Ursula and am more inclined to believe that he just likes the chase. I can't tell if it's just me, or if she looks enough like a slightly older Lucrezia, that he might be projecting his feelings and worry for Lucrezia onto her.
I do love Cesare sparring with Michelotto, though. AND THEN KILLING THE FUCK OUT OF URSULA'S HUSBAND. And it's nice to see him out of a cardinal's robes, of course.
SPEAKING OF CARDINALS. Della Rovere continues his grand tour of Italy, we get a glimpse of the great civilization of the Renaissance in Milan (Dear Renaissance: you are so fucked up, I kind of love you), Ascanio Sforza gets a taste of politics, Machiavelli commences his early onset fanboying of Cesare Borgia. I think the timing may be off on the Florentine politics, but I don't know as much about the Medici as I do about the Borgias. (Also, didn't Savonarola originally support Alexander VI? Until he changed his mind and started preaching against him and then the Pope came down on him with the wrath of God, possibly literally?)
JUAN BORGIA. I KIND OF LOVE YOU. I mean, I know, he's going to die fairly soon and he's a terrible general and not that great a person and all that, but David Oakes has a very expressive face! And he's so much fun. I love that silent exchange that he and Jeremy Irons share in -- eh, I'll just embed the scene, why don't I?
The scene that follows that is JUST AS GOOD. Juan Borgia does not approve of second-rate princesses, no he does not. Baby brother can have them, though. (Boy takes after his father. Actually what the historians say too; Juan took after Rodrigo and Cesare took after Vannozza, in some ways.)
I assume we'll see some more of Joffre (or Gioffre, I can't remember how Showtime's spelling it) in the next episode, where I think Sancia of Naples shows up?
I do wish we'd get a little more Juan and Cesare interaction. (I really wish we'd had some more interaction between all the siblings in the earlier eps, but, alas, you can only fit so much into fifty minutes a week. The only bit I have in my head for Borgia alternate history novel is Juan and Cesare, though, I think interrupted by Rodrigo.)
Bring on the French invasion! (Also, please please please give us the scene where Cesare is supposed to be captive to the French king, but escapes and is back in Rome by the next evening. It will be lovely.)
And I'm sure we've all heard that Showtime ordered a second season. Coincidentally, did y'all know that there's another series in the works about the Borgias? It is titled Borgia and is filming in Prague -- my friend New York, who's studying film there this semester, told me.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 03:21 am (UTC)Lucrezia's face at "3" was possibly the best moment of the entire show.
Do you know how accurate Sforza's treatment of Lucrezia is? While I haven't exactly done an in depth study of the Borgias (yet) but I haven't found a lot of details about their marriage save for the 6 months and living in the country and then the annulment, but niothing about their actual relationship. But every fictionalization I've encountered has him being awful to her. Given that Cesare and Rodrigo jettison his behind out of her life the second he's no longer politically useful and Cesare basically makes trying to obliterate him a hobby after that, it does seem to be a reasonable conclusion. (Though Cesare was probably just a teeny bit miffed about those silly incest rumors, too.)
With Ursula, I suspect that it's a combination of Cesare's attachment to the women in his own family + worried they didn't do the right thing with Lucrezia (I agree with the vague resemblance) + plus him apparently having a bit of a "tarnished white knight" complex at times, it seems + plus her situation coming up almost in the same breath as Ursula's husband trying to publicly humiliate his mother. (Dude was basically dead just for that, I think.) I did like how Ursula realized that she had the interest and sympathy of a powerful man and just leaped in and took the gamble that he'd be willing to help her, and thought it made since that she later worried that she may have asked him to endanger himself.
I'm surprised by how much I like (or at least enjoy) Juan. He's just such...a frat boy. A spoiled one with an overly indulgent, powerful daddy.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-02 04:15 am (UTC)I'm not as well read on the Borgias as I'd like; the vibe I got from Sarah Bradford's biography was that it was mostly cordial and distant, though there are some comments of Giovanni Sforza's that are a little...odd, I guess. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it was abusive because there's not enough evidence (that I've seen in the secondary sources, and if I feel that if it was in the primary sources it would have come up in the secondary works), but there are some weird vibes that come through. (Also, the crack he throws out about having known Lucrezia an intimate number of times. I mean, obviously they were married for two years and the Pope is going around claiming he's impotent, so I don't know if it's just my modern eyes or what.)
I have a feeling that Ursula initially thought, "Oh, he's a cardinal, I can have a romantic but not a sexual affair with him," and didn't realize that he was freaking Cesare Borgia. (Although, you know, he's young, his reputation hasn't developed yet.) But yeah, I basically agree with you -- man, this ep makes the Borgias look so functional as a family unit, compared to the rest of Renaissance Italy.
I did not expect to love Juan as much as I do. Sure, he's an ass sometimes, but he's so normal; he tries so hard and he's living life and enjoying it and, you know, he's just very human. (Which is not to say that the other characters are not; I just kind of love Juan for being...Juan. If that makes sense. I shall be very sad at his murder.)