Did you know that
Leonardo DaVinci killed Dracula with his own hands? To think that I, a lifelong student of
history, missed out on such an amazing fact blows my mind. Fortunately for me, a cable TV series called
“DaVinci’s Demons” filled that gap in my knowledge. Of course everything on the show has to be
true because it’s a cable series. I’m a
big fan of DaVinci, the artist/inventor/Renaissance man, so I figured that
watching “DaVinci’s Demons” would be an entertaining and informative way to
spend my scarce free time. This show is remarkably similar to “The Borgias” and
“The Tudors.” Like the other two shows,
this one tells a version of history using gratuitous sex scenes (gay and
straight), plus a very generous amount of graphic violence and torture. Most of
the characters in these shows are depraved and the one or two good people get
trampled on, thrown in the dungeon, and most likely executed in a horrific
way. The implicit message to the viewer
is to not even try to be a good person, because if you do you will be crushed.
In this show,
DaVinci wears tight leather outfits with an open shirt and looks more like a
hipster from Asheville, NC than a man of the Renaissance. His hair obviously has gel in it and sticks
straight up in the middle, a popular look among millennials and Starbucks
baristas. He has weird mannerisms, like Captain Jack Sparrow from “Pirates of
the Caribbean.” I’m guessing they couldn’t
afford to have Johnny Depp play DaVinci. But I digress. What’s really important to
discuss here is DaVinci’s killing of Dracula.
It is well into
Season One that DaVinci and his sidekicks decide to stop by Dracula’s castle. The
two historical figures actually did live at the same time. In the show, DaVinci
rides by horseback to the castle of Vlad Dracul, also known as Dracula, or Vlad
the Impaler. At the time, DaVinci was
living in Florence, Italy. Out of
curiosity, I did a Mapquest to find out how far it is from Florence to central
Romania, where Vlad Dracul lived. It is
over 1,000 miles, roughly the equivalent of riding from Charleston, SC to
Dallas, TX or from Los Angeles to Seattle, WA. So according to the show, DaVinci and his
assistants rode on horseback across Europe on trails and across mountains. Renaissance
Europe was an extremely dangerous place to travel. The system of roads was lacking and there
were plenty of murderous thieves to be encountered along the way. He supposedly
made this trek to rescue some guy from Abyssinia, who was held captive at the
castle. The Abysinnian was supposed to
have knowledge about a magical key or book or something. The very unpleasant
visit to the castle ends with DaVinci killing Dracula. I won’t say how, because I don’t want to ruin
it for anyone who watches. It was around that point that the show lost all
credibility with me. The stuff in
Florence was somewhat believable, but DaVinci fighting Vlad Dracul? Are you
freaking kidding me?
The show also devotes
almost no time to DaVinci as an artist, but depicts him to be more like a mix
of MacGyver and Sherlock Holmes. You rarely see him actually creating art, you
just see him tinkering with new gadgets, solving mysteries, and engaging in
sword fights. It’s a shame that the
producers of the show decided to go this route.
The special effects, sets, and the costumes are, overall, top
notch. I can tell that they spent a lot
of money making this. However, the
producers missed out on a golden opportunity by bastardizing the story of
DaVinci and throwing in porno scenes. When
I was growing up, I remember watching movies and TV shows that took place in
the past. My dad would explain the
history behind the shows we were watching.
That’s how history is passed down.
But shows like “DaVinci’s Demons,” “The Borgias,” and “The Tudors” are
filled with so much depravity that no child should ever watch them. What a
waste! These shows could have made history more fascinating for the next
generation, but, because of their content, cannot be shown in any classroom.
In fact, these shows are too depraved even for a lot of adults.
