2.9 The Enemies Of Man Da Vinci has proven that he’s a clever character many times over. In certain fights, he gets the advantage over his opponents with his ambidexterity. When he’s facing a fellow ambidextrous fighter, he turns to other means to get an advantage. When he faces the villainous Duke of Urbino, who is a significantly better fighter than he is despite having one eye, Da Vinci uses his superior brain power to best his opponent using cleverness. It’s a really brilliant bit of fight-craft: Da Vinci taps his opponent’s sword before engagements to set a depth, then he switches to a slightly shorter sword. Urbino thinks he’s got the range to take Da Vinci’s head, but he’s a few inches short, allowing Leonardo to disarm his opponent. Claire shows up just in time to ram a sword through Urbino’s remaining eye, but it isn’t Claire’s blade that ends Urbino, it’s Leonardo’s deception and a crippling lack of depth perception. Of course, the fact that Urbino and Leonardo have a climactic conflict suggests that, well, something’s changed, and indeed, Florence is not a very happy place when Leonardo, Nico, Zo, and Amerigo return from their trip to the new world. The streets are deserted, the people are in hiding, there’s lots of gratuitous rape, and Lorenzo’s magnificent palace is a shambles because Urbino and his men have taken over the town. Just back, and Leo’s already got to save Florence again, because Lorenzo is still indisposed with Pope Sixtus and King Ferrante of Naples. And like Leonardo, he’s trying some creative solutions to his problems, but it won’t be paying off as well for Lorenzo Medici. The first season of Da Vinci’s Demons typically held pretty close to the true history of the tale, just exaggerated to some degree. It included real inventions from Da Vinci, real historical events, and so on. However, the second season seems bound and determined to stray from history whenever possible. I mean, Da Vinci did end up in the New World for several months, which I don’t think actually happened at any point in Da Vinci’s life. Lorenzo did surrender himself to Ferrante in an attempt to break the alliance with the Papal States, and Ferrante did make enemies of everyone he ever knew while keeping a corpse museum, but I don’t think Pope Sixtus and Alphonso killed Ferrante and turned him into one of his own stuffed corpses. It’s clear that the show is heading more into the fantasy and less into the historical, but despite this, the script from Allison Moore and Marco Ramirez is still pretty good. It stays fairly grounded, and when it unveils its big revelations, they feel natural. I didn’t expect Carlo to turn on Leonardo, nor did I expect Riario to nearly come to Leonardo’s side (before making terrible choices and ending up on the wrong side of the Sons of Mithras/Labyrinth divide. It’s clear that the show’s conspiracy-centric plots are going to take up more space than its Italian political plots in the just-announced third season, and this is a first step in that direction. The cleverness continues, and the turns are handled pretty well. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, The Fall From Heaven, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan is distressed to see that Carlo Medici has turned bad and that Riario hasn’t turned good as was hinted at. Perhaps next season the bromance will return with a vengeance? 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.
