The Concrete Tomb of Hradzka

And that's the season.

Episode thirteen of SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND is called "Kill Them All," and what you see is absolutely what you get. The twelve hours of mayhem that went before culminate in a whale of a bloodbath, with lots of strong moments and gore aplenty. It's not quite as strong in conceptual WTFery than some of the other episodes this season (I think "Whore" and "Thing in the Pit" still reign as the champions of "OH GOD DID THEY REALLY JUST DO THAT?!"), but "Kill Them All" has some good WTF moments and catharsis aplenty, with a number of intriguing character hooks for next year.

( Disclaimer: SPARTACUS contains blood, boobs, dicks, and creative swearing. This review contains spoilers. )

hey, remember back in the NSFW SPARTACUS primer, when I said that my bet was on Crixus to become the fan-favorite character on the show?

I WIN. On the official SPARTACUS forum, fan 4thHorseman complains:

He treats all around him like they are dirt excluding Naevia. He's basically a foul mouthed bully to anyone he can possibly be. He's loyal to the Gladiator code only the most primitive of ways (Death in the Arena). He demeans anyone elses feelings/thoughts when given a chance. He purposely injured a fellow gladiator on the arena because his need for glory overcame any brotherhood. Yet, all of this is totally irrelevant to him as a person because of how he cares for Naevia?

This isn't an attack on Crixus, I personally love his character but I don't understand the distorted outlook I see from his fanbase. Why is critism of him so blindly dismissed? Why isn't it possible for him to be a bad person yet care for someone? I am honestly and truly confused.

...man, it reminds me of Usenet flamewars I was in about Spike, back in my BTVS days. Not entirely, because the guy likes watching Crixus; it's Crixus's fans who drive him nuts. ( Wait until TPTB actually start listening to them and building up Crixus like he's the Second Coming, dude. (Sorry. Still bitter.) )

"Party Favors," SPARTACUS's tenth episode, is perhaps the most predictable episode yet. It's not terrible -- not any more than the series is in general, anyway -- but as a follow-up to the glorious WTFery of "Whore" it's a little disappointing. I called some of the climactic events of "Whore" relatively early in the episode, but I had this episode called… er, several episodes ago. It's pretty clear at this point that Spartacus is a show that has horrible things happen to likeable characters, so it shouldn't be too surprising when they do happen; the approach the show has taken is to have so many horrible things happen to so many likeable characters that you don't know when you're being paranoid and when the show is actually going to pull the trigger. This episode, Spartacus gives an enthusiastic fifteen-year-old fan of gladiators a tour of the ludus, and there were a couple of people on the #Spartacus hashtag who were expecting something terrible to happen to the kid. It's a pretty clever way to go, when you think about it, and helps make the series more surprising, but as this episode shows, sometimes it just means you can't guess the exact way in which something terrible is going to happen, even if you know that somebody has a huge target on his back.

( Gory details here. )

Tonight, I will beta test the SPARTACUS drinking game. I thought about this *very hard,* people. For *more than five minutes.*

What's the problem with most drinking games? Too many rules to remember. So I tried to create as few rules and make them as memorable as possible. Feel free to beta-test with me, if you like. I am thinking that the rule should be that each item can only be checked off once per person per scene. Example: "Bare Ass" is one drink. If Spartacus has a long scene where you see his Bare Ass about twenty times, you only drink once. However, if Spartacus and Crixus and three other gladiators are all bare-assed, you would drink once for each of them.

Yes, this game will probably kill you. That's why it's in beta.

It is probably wisest played with beer. Tonight, however, I will be playing with Maker's Mark on the rocks. What's the Latin for "We who are about to get shitfaced salute you!"?

THE RULES

One Drink: Slow-motion, Bare Ass, "Jupiter's Cock!"
Two Drinks: Somebody Dies, Boobies, Baby Oil Wrestling
Three Drinks: Somebody's Fuckin', Oh Look a Penis
Chug: Gladiator Training Sequence, Actual Spartacus Dialogue, OMGWTF

I trust these rules are pretty self-explanatory. Actual Spartacus Dialogue is a little subjective, but you'll probably know it when you hear it.

If you play, let me know how it goes.

Episode 9 of SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND is called "Whore."

It's like SNAKES ON A PLANE, folks; as Samuel L. Jackson famously observed, either you want to see it, or you don't. You could be pardoned for wondering if Frank Miller had something to do with this one, from the title; he didn't, probably because this series is getting too batshit for him. In this episode, for example, the title refers to the hero, who is advised that he's getting pimped out as a male prostitute. ( He takes it well. Spoilers: )

Well, that was a relatively toned-down episode of SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND. Okay, yeah, it opened and closed with scenes involving men being gruesomely castrated, but look, whaddya want? Oiled-up gladiators playing patty-cake?

( (SPOILER: they do not play patty-cake. NOT SAFE FOR WORK.) )

Hey, remember when I said that this show featured male-male sex "as part of a devoted relationship?"

AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

The thing is, I don't really feel like laughing.

This is an odd place for me to be in, because the kind of activist so many of you guys are, I'm not. Politically, if we're not on the opposite side of the fence one of us is at least halfway over it, and a lot of the stuff that you (and a lot of fandom) take as a given, I disagree with, sometimes deeply. I am a straight white cisgendered guy whose politics are fairly conservative, which makes me a little unusual in a female-dominated, pretty heavily leftist, pretty heavily queer section of modern fandom.

( Which means, of course, that I have to write a review of SPARTACUS that talks about the show's gay guys getting fridged one-two-three. Spoilers for 'Great and Unfortunate Things.' )

Hey, remember what I said about how Barca was the gladiator Batiatus unquestionably trusted?

…yeah, SCRATCH THAT.

( Spoilers for 'Delicate Things.' )

Apparently I cheered myself up this evening by making Spartacus lols. Your lol may vary, of course. I took great care to make them as juvenile, lowbrow, and 4channy as possible, so consider this your content warning.

( God help us all. )