For as much fun as Da Vinci’s Demons is sometimes capable of being, there hasn’t really been a moment in its early run that’s been moving–a scene that has executed a payoff after building emotional attachment either to a character or situation.
The conceit of “The Prisoner” is that the episode is structured to parallel a game of Go played by Riario and the eponymous, mysterious prisoner. This conceit, along with the comparisons of a caged bird to Lucrezia, plays out rather heavy-handed and isn’t really necessary for us to understand what’s going on in Da Vinci’s Demons at this point. It’s a freshman mistake made by a freshman series, but the over-the-top nature of it lends itself well to how these first few episodes have been executed. Da Vinci’s Demons is still finding itself as a show in these first three scripts, much like how it took Spartacus: Blood and Sand a little while to get going on the same channel, and it’s up to us to trust the writers to pick up on where their ideas are strongest.