Rome - New HBO show

i've said upthread that i liked how the show places religion. it's all very pagan and nasty and corrupt but at the same time very serious and real (to vorenus especially) but how much of it will turn out to be actual? the entrail reader promised niobe her husband would be rich, and sevilia (sp?) cursed gaius and atia (scary scratching on lead sheets, very cool)...how much of this will the plot actualize? other than the 'e tu' obv.

much repsec to indira varma's stunt-boob, whoever she was.

The last episode seemed week and poorly directed. With the omnipresence of sex in Rome, it hardly seems like Octavian would have been as afraid and ignorant of the act as they made him.

Still, someone gets to pad out his resume with "Appeared in HBO's Rome as 'Slave with Very Large (Onscreen) Penis'". That's worth something.

[special voice]he did actually go by the name Octavius for at least some of his life.[/special voice]

And YES Niobe is bad!!! In a good way. She was bad in Kama Sutra and still is.

and how badass is Marc Antony? having whores fight for his pleasure, what a monster. how cool.

Atia and her family/soap opera (aside from Octavian) remains a weak point of the show, even more boring now that they're irrelevant to the episodes themselves. There's something wrong with Brutus's mouth, I think, or maybe he just talks funny.

I'm not too keen on where the show is headed based on next week's preview - seems like they're compressing the civil war/Caesar meets Cleopatra (getting Lucius Vorenus's sloppy seconds by the look of it) more than is necessary. I wonder if maybe they'll actually finish this season with Caesar's assassination and begin the next season with Octavian becoming Augustus?

It was my thought also, that they'd end this season with Caesar being killed, what with how fast things are moving. I'm not sure how well Max Pirkis would fit the role of the older Octavian so soon though, if this is the case.

I guess what I'm saying here is I'm worried it peaked about two weeks ago and we're on a downward slide now.

I suspect what we're going to see next season is Pullo/Vorenus being split apart by loyalties. Vorenus swore fealty to Marc Antony in order to return to the XIII, Pullo has his in with the future Emperor.

The torrent took forever, and I had to find another one. Still, despite the battle scene, despite the lameness of the new Octavia story, and despite the ridiculous effect at the end -- let us say, despite being directed by TIMOTHY VAN PATTEN! -- it was a good episode. Dude with the fake nose was great, at least historically/visually. Casting the shows creators as gods within the actual show, kinda hokey, but I suppose it explains a few things.

i did think something was off about that conversation. the scene where pompey senses that he can play on vorenus' old school pieties to save himself i thought was well orchestrated, but then v's subsequent explanation to caesar didn't ring right; wouldn't he have expressed the same romey honor ("i could not enslave or kill such a man, sah" etc) which caesar would undoubtedly agree (he did kind of say this but eh). considering the historical record shows caesar weeping at the death of pompey and deposing ptolemy b/c of it (have not seen tonights ep yet, it's in the pipe) + his concern to bring cicero & brutus back into the fold... it seemed caes' anger was inserted just to have that gag answer it.

god, i LOVE this show. im so sad i don't get a new one next week.

Hated the way they handled the siege and victory again - "blah blah blah IT'S BEEN A YEAR blah blah blah CAESAR IS VICTORIOUS." I know there are major budget constraints, but there's gotta be a better way to do that.

otherwise, exxxcellent ep!! wanton cleopatra ok by me, no use re-historicizing that, added junkie indie frisson just icing on the cake.

speaking of shakespeare, i was waiting to see the stoic brutus emerge, since they started him as a toff. reunion with mama very well done. it's a cold world!

There were gratuitous lesbian interpolations! Ah well.

There will be no episode next week? Why?

That was perhaps the best directed episode so far, though. Even Atia was pleasant enough.

What did you expect, the entire cast is British after all

I'm actually surprised they don't do more co-productions in this vein.