3.5 The Wolf and the Lamb Cesare is off west to France and guess who’s there? Machiavelli. Oh, I missed you, boo. Never leave me again, okay? Stay forever. Stay and sass Cesare about what colour his shirt should be, all the conquest ambitions of the French king, and also which shoes go with that belt. The Borgias use his lone scene as a chance to play him with wonderful fun as a mix of Tim Gunn and Sun Tzu. Confession: I want him to be my spirit guide. Cesare utilizes his sage advice and it gives his snarky, sexy French escapade a very high success rate. Cesare gets an army and a hot wife with a good sense of humor and a realistic out look on life. His new wife has a rich husband who doesn’t abuse her, treats her like a human being, and doesn’t try to B.S. her too much. The king of France gets an annulment with a bonus gift of Milan. The French archbishop is going to be a cardinal and everybody goes home happy – except for the Queen who has been screwed, well, royally. I barely made it through the hour alive, I really didn’t, because they kept finding their way back to each other over the course of the episode, even as Lucrezia manifested further into the legend the rumours of history have turned her into. Poison has been swirling around the characters of this show since the pilot but now, Lucrezia stumbles over poison of her own for the first time. With the king of Naples dragging her out like a prize pig at a county fair but not letting her have her baby, she’s tempted to use it. She seethes and Micheletto is there for her, at her shoulder as he always is for Cesare, answering honestly even when he surprises. She asks him if he has children and since he doesn’t, what he would do if he did. The response -from the cold hearted man who in the first season claimed to have alliegence to no one and feelings for nothing, who has murdered men, women and children alike without prejudice – is that if he had a child, he “would bind them to me with hoops of steel. I would love them to death and beyond. I would make all tremble who would come between us.” Through Cesare, he has found a sight – a mother and child separated – that actually makes him feel something, through his sociopathic shell, for someone else. I’m not saying that I would watch a show just about Micheletto and Lucrezia being bros, scheming and murdering people, okay? But I would totally watch a show about Micheletto and Lucrezia being bros, scheming and murdering people. Cesare and his lovely new wife can come too just as soon as he gets back from France with that army. With this show who knows how things might end up? Read Rachael’s review of the previous episode, The Banquet of Chestnuts, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
