Spartacus: Gods of the Arena Episode 2

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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena Episode 2
By Tao Mori
February 23, 2011 - 17:58

Studios: Starz
Writer(s): Steven D. Knight
Starring: Lucy Lawless, John Hannah, Dustin Clare, Marisa Ramirez, Nick Tarabay, Manu Bennett, Peter Mansah, and Jaime Murray
Directed by: Rick Jacobson
Produced by: Paul Grinder, Rick Jacobson, and Charles Knight
Running Time: 60 min
Release Date: Feb 4th 2011
Distributors: Starz

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena is a Prequel to the Series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which can be a little confusing as there is no Spartacus characters in this series. The events in this show take place prior to the introduction of Spartacus’ character in Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Spartacus: Gods of the Arena focus on the life of the Batiatus and his wife Lucretia and their lives within the Roman city of Capua. Batiatus is an ambitious man driven to achieve power and wealth, and tries to achieve this with gladiator battles. Many of the characters from the original series are also in the prequel, such as Crixus, Onemaus, Barca, Solonius, Naevia, and Ashur to name a few. The show portrays the relationships between the characters, and where they started from before Spartacus shows up. One does not have to see Spartacus prior to watching this series, since it is a prequel.

At the end of the last episode things look quite dire for Battiatus as he had the snot beaten out of him. I felt bad for him too, but that scene explains how Battiatus becomes the hardliner that he becomes later on or earlier on depending on your perspective. If you have not seen the first season of Spartacus Blood and Sand, don’t watch it until after this season is done, its only 6 episodes. I think 8 at the most. So with Battiatus, I had wondered how Battiatus become the man that he is and this scene showed it. He gets his revenge later on and uses the Syrians to do it. I am surprised that he branded the Syrians as part of his house without them going through the trial, that doesn’t seem like something Battiatus would do. Granted he also made them kill one of his men that got recognized, but it still felt out of place for his character.
Watching Crixus get built up to be the man he’s going to be is interesting, he’s clearly a fast learner with ambition, but then that’s not much of a surprise. He came awfully close to beating Gannicus but in the end Gannicus won. Partly I had thought that Gannicus would get sold to Tullius who had beat up Battiatus and then Gannicus would face Crixus in the arena, but it didn’t play out that way at all. Gaia seems to be very interested in Crixus, almost the same way will be later on. Perhaps its Gaia who gives Lucrecia the idea to sleep with the gladiators or at least sleep with Crixus. I’m not really giving anything away here as this happens in the 2nd episode.

The guy getting the job of domo wasn’t much of a surprise and the last episode had good foreshadowing towards him getting the position. It’s funny how much emotional range he displays when he’s not the domo, I wonder if now he’s going to be much more serious than he has been. There was a bit of foreshadowing for Gannicus and Oenomaus’s wife Melitta over having to have sex with one another. She had asked him what he would do if he was in a position that he couldn’t laugh himself out of its , but it’s clear that he would do as he was told, but then having sex with his buddy’s wife was a better opinion then having sex with some Roman guy as you could see from his expression that he found that to be more upsetting than having sex with Melitta. Lucrecia’s hesitancy towards offering her female slave up for the sex was also surprising but somehow she’s always guarded the sexuality of her slaves, coveting Naevia for instance as a virgin. What also struck me was that Gannicus appeared to rather enjoy his love making session with his Oenomaus’s wife and then his lingering look afterwards, more foreshadowing. I said in my last review that things were going to end badly.
The end of the episode with the threesome between Lucrecia, Battiatus and Gaia was rather spectacular and again this is why I refer to this show as soft core porn, but with better context. Why do staged threesomes look better than real ones? Cinematography was pretty good, the effects look more realistic than the over done style that they tended to use for the last season.

Rating: 8.5/10

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