2.1 The Blood Of Man Of course, we can’t jump right into finishing off the Pazzi rebellion. This is the season of the show-opening flash-forward, so like Hannibal, Da Vinci’s Demons kicks the episode off with a tantalizing glimpse of the show’s future in South America, then we jump right back into the mad craziness of Florence, which is in the throes of a pretty fierce uprising. On one side, you have the Medicis and their loyalists, and on the other hand, you have the Pazzi Conspiracy, the waiting troops of Duke Frederico of Urbino just outside the gates, and the power of the Papacy itself. It seems lopsided, but only one of these sides has the services of the great Leonardo Da Vinci. One of the positive aspects of Da Vinci’s Demons is its attention to style. It’s a very stylish-looking show, and it takes great pains to be as inventive with its shooting style as it can be within the constraints of its budget and its reliance on CGI. Some of it, like the dizzying crane shot of Lucrezia Donati and Zoroaster, work really well. Other shots, like the opening Google Earth drop into medieval Florence work less effectively, due to the constraints of the digital effects. Still, the thing that works best about the show, the steampunk visualizations courtesy of Da Vinci’s imagination, really look good. The show makes great use of these elements, particularly in this episode, and having a renowned autodidact as a central character really makes the conceit work better than it has any right to do; fictional Da Vinci has taken a lot of cues from actual Da Vinci in that respect. However, it’s kind of reaching quite a bit. Rather than giving folks a chance to re-immerse themselves in the Da Vinci universe, screenwriters David S. Goyer and Corey Reed just start throwing characters at us left and right, in the hopes that the cast will have been familiar enough for you to remember just who is who. Outside of the major characters, like Leonardo, Lorenzo, Lucrezia, and Riario, I have to admit that I had difficulty remembering specific names, though I did remember descriptions, like “the girl who used to be a nun who got knocked up by Lorenzo’s brother” and “evil Pope” and “Leonardo’s friends beard guy and Lommy Greenhands.” That doesn’t make the show any less entertaining. The episode is pretty evenly divided among characters, though they’re all focused on the central events at hand, except for Riario, Nico, and Zoroaster. It’s a pretty significant event, after all; I like the take on Claire Orsini the show has offered up, and Lara Pulver is especially appealing in this week’s episode as the take-no-prisoners matriarch determined to save her family’s bacon and by extension Florence itself. Da Vinci’s Demons starts in the UK on Friday the 4th of April on Fox. Come back next week for set visit interviews with David S. Goyer and more. US Correspondent Ron Hogan is back and ready for another dose of Da Vinci and Friends. Here’s hoping the show is ready and willing to keep the pace high and the weirdness violent and frequent. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
