The Borgias – The family falls apart

Juan’s downward spiral has come to an end this week on The Borgias, as Cesare kills him. This is what the tension between the two has been leading to all along, but with Juan’s final disintegration, it almost feels as if Cesare is not just killing a hated rival but also putting down a diseased dog.

The episode depicts Juan feeling betrayed by his genitals and increasingly turning to opium. His addiction makes him think (or say) that Cesare and Lucrezia are getting it on, so he must see the chemistry between Holliday Grainger and François Arnaud. With young Gioffre not counting, Juan really is  the odd man out in the family. He rapes a young girl, making her say “ten more sons.” This shows what an emasculating moment Caterina’s defiance was for him, coming as it did right before his syphilis diagnosis. David Oakes did an excellent job of showing Juan’s disintegration. The moment when he acknowledges that he and Cesare have both been in pain would have been heart-breaking if he hadn’t tried to rape someone not five minutes before. Cesare is more proactive about ending his pain than Juan is, and so it’s into the Tiber with Juan. This week in Borgias historical accuracy, Juan did in fact wash up in Tiber, and many suspected Cesare had done it.

Little Giovanni needs to be baptized, and this reminder from Giulia provides Alexander with a way of forgiving Lucrezia for driving her suitor away. He really has a soft spot for that baby. It’s a nice family moment before all hell breaks loose, thanks to Juan. Alexander worries about Lucrezia’s future being the future of his family, but doesn’t worry about his sons’ enmity enough. He asks Cesare to forgive Juan when that is scarcely possible.  We have been seeing a softer side of Alexander at times this season, and now his willful ignorance of this problem is going to come back to haunt him.

One thing this show does really well is intercutting its darkest moments with papal pageantry in order to show us the dark underbelly of the Borgias and Alexander’s papacy. The baptism underlining Juan’s going off the deep end (heh) is one of these great sequences. The scene of Savonarola performing the trial by fire intercut with Alexander’s ex-communication of him is another. Cesare’s confrontation of Savonarola with the challenge of the trial by fire is thrilling; doing it publicly was necessary so that Savonarola has no choice but to agree. Even though he burned, he will not break under torture, says Micheletto, and he should know. Though Savonarola lives on for a bit, the threat to Alexander’s papacy he represents now seems to be largely contained.

The Della Rovere threat is gaining ground, however.  Antonello gets hired as the new taster, and for this role, he pretty much just needs to play himself, the “young martyr” as Alexander calls him. Though he fails in his first attempt when Alexander calls for wine rather than water, I am assuming that next week he will make a more successful attempt. Since this is a historical show, and since Alexander is the center of it, we know he won’t die just yet, but it will be interesting to  see how he overcomes this threat in the midst of his grief over Juan. Perhaps the softer, more pious Alexander of this season will be no more.

Notes and Quotes:

• That panther keeps turning up like a bad penny.
• When Alexander wants to burn Savonarola, he wants to be sure relics remain. The reason, of course, is to sell them. His death would thus be a win-win for Alexander. Nice note: Alexander rejects a Dominican taster applicant outright because Savonarola is one.
• Hey, Giulia, it’s been a while! Alexander has been sexually abstinent, too, which I hadn’t realized before.
• Lucrezia actually indirectly mentions younger brother Gioffre. That may be the first mention of him of any kind all season.
• Alexander to Calvino: “We are the Pope of Rome, and  you tell us you cannot marry our daughter. Why?” Such a ridiculous line out of context.
• Juan to his penis: “Do you remember the old days? We were friends. We did everything together.”
• Juan on his suspicious of Cesare-Lucrezia incest: “The issue of such a union would produce a demon to devour the world.” My dissertation is related to this idea, and monsters weren’t just metaphorical for people, but a real way of God showing his judgment of sinners.
• Cesare to Juan: “Only God forgives. We Borgias, we never forgive.”
• Micheletto to Cesare, on Juan’s murder: “I stand in awe, Your Eminence.” Cesare: “You killed your father.” Micheletto: “Still I stand in awe.”

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Clacked by Christina Furtado
on Jun 11, 2012 @ 17:10 EST5EDT