Sonja

Well, he did wake up right before that and swallowing is pretty much a reflex, but I guess I'm willing to believe that because if I didn't it would actually occur to me that just seconds before there was something going the other way, so that scene should have been a lot more disgusting than it was. ;-)

I didn't care about those scenes too much either, we already knew that Ferrante and his equally unhinged offspring have a stange sense of both entitlement and entertainment. I had to laugh though when Lorenzo shot the horse because this ep was co-written by Matt Fraction who is one of the writers of the new Hawkeye comics. Kudos on Cowan shooting left-handed when his left eye is apparently the dominant one. Most shows would probably have had a right-handed actor shooting right too. Sorry, I'm an acher and there has been some rather creative archery in TV and movies in the last years. The difference between ruthless Riario killing off the 'guardians' and him with Zita was very nicely done. Of course her death was needed so Riario and Leonardo remained bitter rivals even when having to depend on one another to survive, but I had actually hoped she would stay around for a bit. She brought out another side in him and I like multi-dimensional characters. I liked this ep a lot. I'm glad they are categorising the show as fantasy though because Leonardo being poisoned by a snake, barely holding on to conciousness but at the same time having no performance issues whatsover is actually less believable than him talking to the dead.

Did they sedate her before the show? She actually let Dr. Phil talk for 1min 40sec in the first clip before butting in, that must have been a record for her.

Same here. The show had initially lost me when they thought they had to bring Dracula into the mix. If they had just stuck with the historical Vlad Tepes without the insinuation of the supernatural I would have been fine with it (the supposed year of death would even have matched, so brownie points for that). I read the Total Film article about season 2 on a flight before the new season started and Tom Riley's rather eloquent pitch (and admission of certain shortcomings of S1) convinced me to try again and I'm glad I did. Good choice there with the casting showrunners, your lead is cleaning up your mess. The new setting is interesting. While the historical facts about the Italian states of that period are known, they can go more or less crazy with what happens in Vespuccia. This ep was also good for my health. It aired on Easter Sunday over here and I suddenly lost the urge to eat more chocolate bunnies...