The Borgias ep. 8, The Art of War - Review

Holliday Grainger has got ALL of our noses.

Last season ended with Lucrezia being PREGGERS, Y'ALL. So, by the law of historical dramas, Lucrezia will either give birth one episode later OR during something that historically happened two years later. And, since there was no panicked belly-clutching to be seen this episode, it's gotta be the latter.

AND IT'S CESARE'S BABY.

(Not.)

(But I wish.)

No, it's not Cesare's baby because the man is still forcing us to suffer through hella inane angsty Ursula scenes that are not so much awful as they are f'ing POINTLESS. You know, I could almost forgive awful? Because at least that would mean they tried. But why waste your time, your actors' time, your crew's time, and most importantly MY OWN PERSONAL TIME shooting and editing a scene that goes NOWHERE and does NOTHING? Nobody had sex. Nobody died. Waste of time.


Another thing that sucks and kind of hurts: Jeremy Irons' underuse, or laziness. Clearly a man's downfall is less interesting to the SHOw's creative team than a man's rise to power. Which is fine, to each his own, but when your main character reaches the downfall, if you can't hold your shit together writing-wise, then you know what happens? You start to waste the amazing character you've created. And you start wasting Jeremy Irons. In the first two episodes, I stared at the screen in wonder - go back through the reviews, you can see my wonder bare-faced on the page. Now? There is no wonder. Look at this sentence. Wonderless. Sad, isn't it?

But this doesn't matter very much. Which is strange, because to make up for the wasting of Jeremy "Who's Your Daddy" Irons, you have to pull something pretty effing spectacular out of your ass. And its name is Lucrezia Borgia.

THIS is what I was waiting for this whole time. Lucrezia's and Giulia's mid-flight capture by the French army is the singular best plot twist on this show so far. It's surprising but realistic, it's game-changing and character-testing. This is where the writers had to prove their shit. All season they've been toiling away at Lucrezia's transformation, with Holliday Grainger saving their asses at every turn. They mandated themselves to take this girl from childhood to adulthood in less than nine episodes; and not only adulthood, but calculating, shit-running adulthood. By putting their Lucrezia in such a situation, they were basically saying, "All right, this is it. This is where we see whether our Lucrezia can run this shit without it feeling incredibly stupid and contrived. If she can't, the audience will cringe, laugh a bit, take pity on us, write Lucrezia off for this season, and go back to touching themselves while François Arnaud is on screen, and we'll try again next season.

But if she can, we have done it. We have fictionalized and portrayed the rise of the single most intriguing female figure of the Renaissance, and we have done it to perfection. We have created a character that, given one more season, can rise up to take her place next to Atia of the Julii and Elaine Benes at the Grand Table of the Goddesses of Television. And we can all die."

They did it. But please, writers, if you're reading this, don't die.