The New Pope (1×04) Episode 4 Review

For our review of the last episode of The New Pope, click here.

Synopsis: Following an audience with Marilyn Manson, Brannox decides to pay a visit to Pius XIII and is confronted with the intensity of his predecessor’s followers. Later, Brannox appoints Cardinal Spalletta, with whom he shares a past, to a new role. Voiello prepares for a long war with the defiant Sister Lisette after the nuns go on strike. The Church faces the prospect of bankruptcy as the Italian government looks to make changes. Gutierrez (Javier Cámara) has a clandestine meeting, which he later confesses to the pontiff. An angry Fabiano questions Ester’s commitment to her faith. (HBO)

The assumption could have been that as soon as John Brennan became John Paul III – or the titular New Pope – Jude Law’s Pius XIII would wake up and oppose him, the two butting heads to push forward the series’ narrative. But instead of pushing forward with what would have been perhaps the more interesting storyline, episode four slows down. Its pace becomes something more laborious and instead just touches on a few things that Pope John Paul III is up against including the historical structures within the church and its relationship with the outside world.

The trouble is that it doesn’t actually do anything about it. The episode opens with the Pope meeting Marilyn Manson who doesn’t even know there’s been a new Pope since Jude Law’s Pius XIII and John Paul III declares that something must be done to make sure everyone in the world knows more about the goings on inside the church. But then nothing actually happens.

A big part of the opposing forces to Malkovich’s Pope is Cardinal Voiello’s role inside the Vatican, a figure that has done back door deals and played a good political game as his role
of Secretary of State. He has quickly become the most interesting character in this series and the most entertaining scenes in this episode are the ones that involve him. Going
forward, it’s be great to see him being given more to do whether as the anti-hero that represents a back-handed reality of the modern church or as an increasingly opposing
antagonistic figure for John Malkovich.

What continues to be a pleasant surprise is that this second series doesn’t seem to particularly suffer from Jude Law’s absence. With Pius XIII still in a coma, he appears only
as a figment of people’s imagination or in dreams. There’s been a number of references to the fact that he's now seen as something even more important than the Pope, a figure at the head of a cult but this storyline hasn’t actually intersected

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Guest Writer