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Feb. 28th, 2017 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionYoung Pope 1.8
Or that.
Theme of the episode is how we're haunted by the other paths we might have taken. Lenny's present one has gotten two people killed, he feels, without having provided any clear payoff. He goes on a vacation to try to be a different person for a while - and in fact becomes both of the "suppressed" sorts of pope: the one who believes in his own supposed magical role as intercessor between human and universe, the one from the series' first scene who believes God is just peace, love, and understanding (i.e. that while there is no God per se those things, and we, since we can share and embody them, are supreme). Can't quite tell yet if the series is trying to say that those roles are somehow the same, or if he just still believes that people aren't adult enough for that kind of speech to work (the one awake reporter = the sort of person who is, but also shows that this one gesture has almost been fatal to his plan, which will require that in general Earth's journalists all assume he's the pope he's been playing rather than a grown up earth mother-worshipping hippy).
He's genuinely moved by Cromwell's speech because he personally needs to think he can be himself - and not alone - someday. Dusollier's death both causes and symbolizes his crisis - the person he'd actually like to be seemed to have been lost sight of forever.
Becoming more convinced this is a Grand Inquisitor revision. Lenny is both risen Jesus and Inquisitor in some respects.
Or that.
Theme of the episode is how we're haunted by the other paths we might have taken. Lenny's present one has gotten two people killed, he feels, without having provided any clear payoff. He goes on a vacation to try to be a different person for a while - and in fact becomes both of the "suppressed" sorts of pope: the one who believes in his own supposed magical role as intercessor between human and universe, the one from the series' first scene who believes God is just peace, love, and understanding (i.e. that while there is no God per se those things, and we, since we can share and embody them, are supreme). Can't quite tell yet if the series is trying to say that those roles are somehow the same, or if he just still believes that people aren't adult enough for that kind of speech to work (the one awake reporter = the sort of person who is, but also shows that this one gesture has almost been fatal to his plan, which will require that in general Earth's journalists all assume he's the pope he's been playing rather than a grown up earth mother-worshipping hippy).
He's genuinely moved by Cromwell's speech because he personally needs to think he can be himself - and not alone - someday. Dusollier's death both causes and symbolizes his crisis - the person he'd actually like to be seemed to have been lost sight of forever.
Becoming more convinced this is a Grand Inquisitor revision. Lenny is both risen Jesus and Inquisitor in some respects.
