Season 3 (Reprise)

Tonight begins season 3 of The Borgias – another in the long line of period pieces featuring a villain who sets my hormones to howling.

I’ve had it bad for Cesare Borgia since my teens. He was such a compelling historic character that it escaped me how his greatness was not translated to film more often (or more successfully). There was a BBC series in the style of “I, Claudius” (i.e., more dialogue than action) produced some years ago that was okaaaaaaaay … but over the past two years, Neil Jordan and Francois Arnaud have done something I never imagined could be done: they’ve made Cesare a sympathetic character. Sympathetic—and sexy as hell.

Bearing in mind that this series is GoT’s competition for gore, glamour and political machination, it actually holds up pretty well in comparison. The finale of season two was wrenching, so I am in as deep a dither over season 3’s premiere tonight as I was two weeks ago over GoT.  I’m still mad for Jaime Lannister, of course, but now I’ve got Cesare to lust over too.

Oh, those bad boys make me feel so good!

Caw-Cawphony

Walking home from the store one morning, I heard a raucous racket overhead and glanced up to see a tree laden with crows. At springtime in my neighbourhood, it’s a given that you scan the sky before choosing the safest path, so I stayed out of range by keeping to the opposite sidewalk while these birds occupied the topmost branches and continued their morning coffee clatch. 

There were dozens of them, so many that I couldn’t see why the tree wasn’t folding beneath their collective weight. Then I noticed something. They’d caw in a chorus for a bit, then fall silent. During the silence, a crow on the outside of the group would emit an encouraging “caw caw caw” and the rest of the gang would start up again. It was like a choir practice where none of the members could sing. 

Then I was reminded of my poor father trying to head up the church choir – a group of good-hearted souls who could not carry a tune in a collective bucket!

 

Tonight is episode 3.2 of GOT. I'm nervous because I didn't see my absolute favourite character in the opener - whch was fab, by the way, though it turned out to be more cerebral than I expected. Catching us up on what had gone before, I guess ... and setting up the board for Cersei and Margaery Tyrell to duke it out. Anyway, Jaime was glimpsed in the teaser for tonight, so I know a swordfight is coming ...