The Young Pope Popedown is a list of the five craziest and/or most notable things that happened in each episode of HBO’s The Young Pope, ranked from least to most crazy and/or notable. Like a countdown, but with popes.
5. A non-marsupial death in the Vatican
I am sad to report that death has struck The Young Pope yet again. Two episodes ago, it was the Pope’s childhood best friend and noted narco cucker Andrew. Last episode, it was his beloved kangaroo, who was murdered in the garden, possibly by protestors, and NO I AM NOT OVER IT WHY WASN’T THIS WHOLE EPISODE ABOUT THE INVESTIGATION?
This week, death came for his mentor, Cardinal Spencer, at the end of an episode that opened with a six-minute single shot in which the two of them debated abortion. Their relationship was strange and testy and occasionally adversarial, like a teen and parent, but they clearly cared about each other, and losing him too is bound to send Lenny spiraling a bit. Also, at the rate he’s losing people, I mean, someone get Sister Mary in for a check-up. I’m sure she’s fine. I’m sure of it. She’s got that active, hoops-playing lifestyle. Still, let’s be safe.
The biggest development from Spencer’s death, for us, for now, is that we finally got to see the miracle Lenny performed as a child. The short version is that he apparently prayed a friend’s dying mom back to life. Which is cool. But coupled with his truck stop prayer from last week, the one that appeared to kill water kleptocrat Sister Antonia, and… man.
He’s is kind of a Marvel character, right?
4. The Ballad of the Window Lady
Tucked inside Gutierrez’s New York adventure (more on this in a moment), we met the proprietor of the building he was staying in, a sick, bed-bound woman who kept tabs on everyone in the building via surveillance cameras like a less evil, more infirm version of Billy Baldwin’s character in the 1993 thriller Sliver (12%, Rotten Tomatoes). We also found out that she was going for a medical procedure, and in order to get her to it, she would need to be taken out through a hole in the wall, many stories up, bed and all, and lowered to the ground in a crane.
This had very little to do with anything, and I should again stress that NONE OF THE EPISODE WAS SPENT INVESTIGATING THE KANGAROO MURDER, but it was a very Young Pope moment.
“Hey, why do you have this part about a sick lady getting hauled out of her apartment via crane?”
“Why not?”
“Fair enough.”
3. Reservoir Dogs: Vatican Edition
Felt like this had to be noted.
2. Bernie Gutierrez, Private Eye
We spent very little time in Italy this week, and very little time with Lenny, because the star of this week’s episode was Bernardo Gutierrez, New York Private Eye, who took down Kurtwell and his decades long molestation ring. I loved this, in part because it was nice to see Gutierrez catch a win, but mostly because his arc in the episode hit the beats of like every private investigator story ever. We had:
- An alcoholic, down-on-his-luck protagonist
- Living in a crappy apartment
- With a conspiracy wall covered with newspaper clippings and clues
- Investigating a case that appeared to be too big for him to take on alone
- Involving a powerful well-connected figure
- Who taunted him during a meeting at a seedy bar
- And the whole thing turned when he caught a big break
- Which featured a conversation in an empty ice skating rink
- And he closed the case using photo evidence obtained with the help of an undercover young associate
The whole thing was basically an episode of The Rockford Files. I mean, except for the part where it was about a long-time child abusing monster. And the thing with the secret, wig-wearing, emotionally-damaged son. And the thing where the “undercover young associate” was actually pressured by Gutierrez into performing sex acts on the suspected abuser, which was weird and a little disquieting and kind of glossed over by the show as it celebrated Gutierrez’s big win. But anyway. I vote we get him a spinoff where he investigates crimes all over the world, complete with a funky 1970s theme song.
Hopefully, the first case of this new career will be FINDING OUT WHO KILLED THE KANGAROO GEEZ NO I WILL NOT LET THIS GO UNTIL I GET JUSTICE OR REVENGE.
1. Weirdest thing that happened to a lady the Pope knows in the montage at the end of the episode, ranked
2. His California crush found out the the man she met on the beach one day years and years ago, the handsome one who juggled oranges and blushed at her offer to touch her leg, went on to become the highly divisive and conservative Pope who gave his first homily backlit like friggin’ Prince so no one could see his face, and he had been secretly writing love letters to her for decades and then shoving them in a drawer, and now those letters have been published in The New Yorker, but she’s the only one who knows they’re about her. She took this surprisingly well, all things considered.
1. Esther was playing with her kid on the beach when she found the picture of Lenny with their family resting on their pile of stuff, and then she looked up and saw the helicopter fly off. See, you think the other item on this list is weirder, at first. There’s a lot to unpack in there. But let’s really think this one through. Esther and her family fled the Vatican to escape Lenny and his increasingly needy behavior, leaving the picture of him behind on purpose. He responded by commandeering the Catholic church’s helicopter, flying to her new house, sneaking up to her spot on the beach, placing the aforementioned picture in her pile of things, then getting back in the helicopter and flying away.
That is creepy, right? Like, imagine her telling this story to a tabloid. It would look so, so bad. Way worse than those unsent love letters. He’s more or less a stalker. It’s not okay, even if you are the Pope.
