‘The Young Pope’ Mix Tape
‘The Young Pope’ is ‘Scarface’ to the next generation of hopeful television auteurs for better or worse.
This clip is the best representation of my journey to the debut of HBO’s new limited series, The Young Pope.
Instead of serendipitously freeing Captain America from an icy tomb, I destroy an ice mountain by shouting, “YOUNG POPE” as loud as I can.
Television watching culture has developed a cadence to bantering about Peak TV. Memes, GIFs, and shareable clips used to punctuate situations in everyday life. The way we watch TV now is the way SNL has operated for years; getting mentioned at all is it’s own form of compliment. Just to be acknowledged is a nod to cultural importance making being meme’d or spoofed is the GIFt of everlasting life. As detailed by The Ringer’s Alison Herman, the outer ring of Young Pope fan engagement thus far has been inspired by but somehow not related to the show itself. The title alone is enough to get the jokes flowing. The meme-ing was fun, but we were all wrong. The Young Pope is not to be meme’d.
The Young Pope is looking down on television from on high, not because it is otherworldly good, but because it is entirely otherworldly. I’ve been anticipating the debut of this show for eight months and had many ideas of what it was going to be. My interest piqued when I saw the Jude Law played the pope, a young one in fact. A pope with relative youth on his side is the least interesting thing about this show.
The closest thing on television to The Young Pope is Netflix’s series, Chef’s Table. The premise of both creations is the same: the process in which a person amasses a mountain of power. Chef’s Table is about food in the way that The Young Pope is about Catholicism. Chef’s Table is about the passion, failure, self-doubt, and life altering turns a chef experiences on the way to putting ultra bougie food on plates. The Young Pope is about the oldest patriarchy in human existence giving a narcissist a clear path to dominion over the belief structure of a billion people. There is a level of expertise in either show that elevates both beyond their respective genre. Chef’s Table is not a cooking show despite a lot of cooking, and The Young Pope is not a religious show despite religious ceremony. It’s not TV. It’s not even HBO. It’s The Young Pope. And this pope isn’t fuckin’ around.
The Young Pope is a decadent show. If after a single taste it isn’t resting comfortably on your palette, I wouldn’t blame you, but would urge you to stick with it through the final course. The Young Pope is different. In an era where every block of television is dissected, that alone makes it good. The Young Pope is to television as to Scarface and The Godfather are to mid-90’s rap icons. Its influence will radiate through culture creators for years to come.
Paolo Sorrentino, the latest filmmaker to soar from film to TV on wings of the title auteur and limitless premium cable budget, is the creator and director of The Young Pope. While not the first of its kind and certainly not the last, The Young Pope is the current reigning and defending best example of what auteur-driven cable drama can be. Even if The Young Pope fails to draw an audience, auteurs of the future will see what the medium is capable of. They will be the people who come storming into a party, smash a stereo to the ground and scream that they’ve got Pac in the next room.
The first hour is light on plot and heavy on world-building, which is fine because I’m still not entirely sure that this is a television show. We are introduced to this world through a dream sequence in which a baby Jude Law climbs a mountain of sleeping children and emerges in full papal garb onto an empty St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City. We’re ten seconds in and this is already the most ambitious TV show of 2017.
The dream sequence continues with Pius XIII’s emergence ending a rainstorm and concludes with three Cardinals fainting in unison and a herd of priests run through the halls of the Vatican screaming for help. Surprisingly, this montage was not underscored by Yakety Sax, but I guess that would have been too much frosting on this celebratory cupcake.
The remaining 50 minutes establishes the Catholic game of thrones that surrounds Pope Pius XIII, the battle to slow his rise to power, and valiant attempt to tether this show to earth. This show is not about Catholicism or even a Young Pope; this show is about the struggle for power between the frying pan and the fire.
The leaders of the Catholic church depicted here are petty; they trade religious traditions like shares on e-Trade moving them from one pile to another in an attempt to gain more power and influence. The new leader they have appointed — whom they assume is a puppet — is actually Michael Corleone from Godfather II as portrayed by Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. In their own blind attempt to keep their power as strong as possible, they’ve nominated and confirmed a wolf in full Papal dress. In a stroke of either genius casting, the only person with a prayer of reaching Pius XIII is Sister Mary, played by Diane Keaton, whose role in this story is to try to save the soul of a man rapidly descending into darkness despite being elevated into the light; a spiritual nod to the same role her portrayal of Kay Adams-Corleone played in The Godfather films.
The first episode concludes with the future pope confessing he doesn’t believe in God and is supremely proud of his lack of believing in anything but his own supremacy. If this were any other show, the season would focus on his ascent, but as he is literally as high as he can get in the world we’ve established, where on earth is this show going?
Merely asking that question is all the proof needed to keep watching.
Most ‘Golden Age of Television’ shows are about the corrosive effects of power. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc., are all about male characters struggling with the desire to wield supreme power and those close to them being left in the wake of that pursuit. That element that we humans can relate to, the collective consciousness that we understand and watch the main character struggle with, is completely removed from this show.
Walter White officially broke bad when he watched Krysten Ritter’s Jane choke to death on her own vomit rather than save her at the end of Breaking Bad season two. We knew he was turning evil as it happened because we saw Walt wrestle with the choice and consciously make it; we understood that he understood that he did a bad, bad thing.
That moment of realization, of self-doubt, of wrestling with fate, is nowhere near the face of Pope Pius XIII and undoubtedly never comes. That is what makes this such an exciting series. Watching The Young Pope isn’t going to be about the comeuppance of Lenny Belardo touching down at the center of the Catholic universe. It’s going to be looking to the heavens and wondering why that realization from on high has skipped us all together.
