YMMV / Medici

• Awesome Music: Paolo Buonvino's score is a joy for the ears, immediately memorable, and complements the scenes perfectly. Some highlights include:
  • Both versions of the opening title song, Renaissance and Revolution Bones, sung by Skin.
  • Love for Duty, which plays whenever one of the main couples' relationship is on the rocks and held together just by their previous arrangements (which is often). For instance the final confrontation between Clarice and Lorenzo.
  • The Truth, which plays during Lorenzo's death scene at the end of the last episode. The combination of the music's crescendo, Lorenzo's heartfelt speech, and the montage of Renaissance works framed as his legacy make for a powerful Tear Jerker.
• Jerkass Woobie: Francesco de Pazzi, who is manipulated by Jacopo, and in turn loses his wife, his friendship with Lorenzo, and ultimately his life.
• Memetic Mutation: Cosimo's love for the Dome has reached this level on Italian twitter, to the point that the show's official Italian twitter account even released a printable christmas tree ornament of it.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: For what is essentially a historical soap opera, the entire series seems to hinge on the premise that even if Florentine politics are a massive Grey-and-Gray Morality quagmire, the Medicis being A Lighter Shade of Grey (not to mention more beautiful and smarter) makes them far more palatable than any other family—give or take Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent's personal flaws. This despite historical consensus (and contemporary political values) rightfully pointing out that the Medicis have been subverting and holding hostage the republican institutions of Florence. Of course, Applicability does invite debate on this.
• Retroactive Recognition: Viewers will recognize Charlie Vickers, who plays the relatively minor part of Guglielmo Pazzi, as Halbrand/Sauron from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
• Satellite Character: Giuliano. His affair with Simonetta exists seperate from all the other plotlines, and mostly serves as a reason to have Giuliano sidelined for Francesco. Given the fanlove for Francesco and Lorenzo. It's to the degree that it seems almost irrelevant that he get's killed. Lorenzo seems far more broken by his guard dying than Giuliano.
  • Making Simonetta a Satellite Love Interest with so few interactions with other characters, it seems surprising that her maid knows to tip off Francesco about the affair.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Since this is a historical drama set in Florence during the Italian Renaissance and shares many historical characters, it's not hard to imagine House Auditore from Assassin's Creed II to be mentioned by name.

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