Don’t you just hate it when an interaction suddenly veers into extreme awkwardness because of some self-imposed brain-fart? Like when you accidentally called your third teacher “Mom” twice in a row back in elementary school, or when you swapped your romantic partner’s name with an ex’s during a particularly heated argument (complete hypotheticals this article’s author has only heard about, but never experienced personally). Well, as the cold open for this week’s episode of The New Pope showed us, it’s important to remember that this kind of faux pas happens to everyone…even Marilyn Manson during a one-on-one meeting with the Holy Father.
LaVeyan Satanists—they’re just like us! Paolo Sorrentino’s series is not one to shy away from such ridiculously odd, hilarious, and poignant situations as Manson dispensing some helpful social advice after mixing up his popes (which, to be fair, there’s technically been a lot of papal changeovers over the course of these two seasons). Even so, it’s an especially odd, great scene, which is saying something for Sorrentino’s shared Catholic universe.
Actually, come to think of it, the Antichrist Superstar meeting Pope Malkovich is probably one of the least surreal moments in the series so far. This is, after all, a story that at one point involved Jude Law’s Pope Pius VIII attempting to communicate with a kangaroo roaming the Vatican gardens. And wait, was that before or after the fabulous papal runway montage set to LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It?”