Three and a Half Torches (Out of Five)
Warning: The following review contains spoilers for the “Mark of the Brotherhood” episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand.
So, the past couple of episodes have been real downers. Therefore, it’s refreshing that with “Mark of the Brotherhood,” Spartacus: Blood and Sand starts to return to form.
At this point, though it’s been shy of two months for us, time has marched along a tad quicker in the ludus, and Batiatus is ready for some new blood to bolster the ranks of his academy. He heads out to the market to bid on new gladiators, and after a brief bidding war with his rival Solonius, he ends up overpaying for a slew of fresh blood. He doesn’t mind, however, since he now has coin to spare, and he rather gets a kick out of showing up Solonius in public.
The new recruits arrive, and in an echo of the second episode, Doctore indoctrinates them into the ludus with his speech, only this time it’s Spartacus who provides the grace notes rather than Crixus. It seems old Sparty is really taking to his new identity as the Champion of Capua.
Ilithyia watches the goings on from the balcony with Lucretia and Batiatus, and by now her fetishistic enjoyment of the gladiators is so obvious that Lucretia suggests she becomes a patron to one of them. To further goad her, Batiatus orders all of the new recruits to disrobe, and we get a gander at what I imagine has to be one of the show’s notorious prosthetic penises. If I’m wrong, the actor playing the new Gaul slave has a lot to be proud of. A lot.
The major sub-plot running throughout is Crixus’ attempts to win back the favor of both Lucretia and Batiatus (though he uses very different methods for each, natch), and after seeing him bully around Spartacus and Varro for so long, it was gratifying to see him become the underdog.
In the scene where he challenges Spartacus to a fight, I was suddenly reminded how the show use to focus on heavy-metal-driven slow-motion fight scenes, and, in fact, that they were integral to its identity. But, as will happen, the show has evolved to focus more on the characters and less on the spectacle, so it was fun to see a bit of the old Spartacus return as Crixus and our champion threw down.
The show has also done a good job exploring the role of women in this society, and the bitchapalooza that ensued when Ilithyia brought her friends to the ludus was a fun, snarky diversion, while also setting up what will be an important plot point in the episodes to come.
I have to say, when the show began, I never imagined that Ilithyia would grow to be such a villain while her husband Glaber is largely absent, so the writers deserve credit for the ingenuity. The only character who is truly pure of heart is Spartacus, as many others, even Varro, have succumbed to ignoble desires, while Crixus, who began as a one-dimensional bully, is evolving into a sympathetic character.
The show deserves praise for taking chances, as much for its willingness to show the dark side of every character as its daring displays of violence and nudity. As I’ve stated before, it treads where other shows dare not. While it saddened me that Barca and Pietros are seemingly forgotten by every single person in the ludus, I guess I have to move on and realize that for those living in this world, an untimely death is as common as the sun rising in the morning.
Spartacus remains a kick-ass show. And wait until you see the next episode …
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Okay, so last week’s episode was a bummer. We know that.
I didn’t realize how emotionally attached I had become to Pietros. Seeing him wandering around the ludus, a lost soul who believes he was abandoned by his one true love, was bad enough, but then on top of this he becomes the favorite victim of another gladiator, one who routinely beats and rapes him. When he started appearing with swollen black eyes and cuts, it set off every protective instinct in my body.
To be fair, it does set up nicely what I imagine might be a future storyline, in which Doctore discovers the truth behind Barca’s “departure,” but I’ve seen the next two episodes and that doesn’t factor into either of them. But I will say this — the next two episodes are pretty awesome.
Yeah … so …
When Sura’s cart arrives, Spartacus is distraught to find his wife has been attacked on the road, and she dies in his arms. Even more disturbing is the fact that Batiatus arranged her death.
The hook of this episode is that the Magistrate is interested in using one of Batiatus’ men in the main event, or Primus, of his latest games. One fighter has already been chosen, belonging to Batiatus’ rival, Solonius.
This ep had an incredible character moment for Illyithia, a character who had so far been shown to be little more than a flighty airhead. She is the wife of Glaber, the main villain, and we caught a glimpse of the power she wields when she and Lucretia summon Spartacus and Crixus to their chamber for a private viewing.
The power play between the genders is fascinating. We have a notion that in the ancient world, women were automatically subservient to men, but the scene in which Lucretia and Illyithia are ogling Crixus is interesting because even though he could kill them both with his bare hands in seconds, he has to do everything they say.
Depending on your point of view, the latest episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand will either be your favorite episode so far, or you will want to take a nail to your corneas in an attempt to scratch the images out of your body.
To put it another way, if the gladiator arena is Wrestlemania, the pits are barbed-wire-laden backyard wrestling at its most disgusting.
ground-breaking thing is that the show treats it as a non-issue, in that it’s just another part of Roman life to the characters. Just one more example of how this show pushes boundaries in all the right directions.
That having been said, it’s still getting four stars, because this show takes serious chances, and goes places other shows don’t even dream of daring to go.
In the show that continues to kick ass and take names, we begin with Spartacus (Andy Whitfield) slowly, meditatively strapping on pieces of armor (although it seems kind of negligible, considering his most vulnerable body part is protected by what barely qualifies as a handkerchief), before busting some dude’s face open in the ludus.
Crixus, who up till now has been a fairly standard bully, gets fleshed out (no pun intended). We see he’s the object of lust for Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), who as the domina, or lady of the house, can command the slaves to her will, and even blatantly cheat on her husband, firm in the knowledge that the slave will never speak of it.
The show is coming along nicely, and is much smarter than many people (and critics) realize. It’s exactly what it claims to be — a firmly genre-rooted, graphic-novel show — while at the same time offering us genuinely interesting and sympathetic characters.
After the television premiere equivalent of a drop-kick that sends you over the top rope, Spartacus: Blood and Sand is back for another heavy dose of ass-kicking peppered with a generous seasoning of nudity.
There’s a lot of buzz around the school about Spartacus, seeing as how he defeated four trained gladiators alone in his first match in the arena, but his popularity doesn’t get him anywhere — he’s still a new recruit, and most of the other gladiators couldn’t care less if he took a sword through the eye.
The episode climaxes with fights testing the new recruits, and Spartacus fights Crixus. He almost loses, until he realizes that Crixus is standing on the piece of cloth that belonged to his wife. Spartacus yanks on the cloth, tripping Crixus, and is about to kill him until Batiatus orders him to spare Crixus’ life. Spartacus is then branded with a “B,” to show his rank as one of Batiatus’ gladiators.
Warning: This review contains spoilers for the “Red Serpent” (premiere) episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand.
The Thracians are only working with Romans to help defeat a common enemy, but it turns out Glaber really only wants to use the Thracians as muscle to fight off another enemy contingent of Greeks. When the plan becomes obvious, Spartacus (who is actually not named Spartacus, but we’re never told his real name) and his men give the Romans a sick beat-down, and head home to protect their villages.
Spartacus is taken to Capua, a city in the Roman Empire, where he is forced to become a gladiator. He fights off four armed and armored gladiators with just a sword, wearing only a loincloth. But this is Spartacus, the champion of men! So hearing his wife’s voice in his head, he obliterates his would-be killers, the crowd goes wild, and a star is born.
The bad:
So does it? In two words, hell yeah.
The character of Spartacus, played by excellent newcomer Andy Whitfield, is a ruthless, ass-kicking gladiator, but not by choice. All he wants is to be reunited with his wife, Sura, who was abducted by Roman soldiers. He has actual character, depth, and purpose, unlike the ab-flexing simpleton Leonidas of 300.
Tapert and Raimi also created another ground-breaking show, Xena: Warrior Princess, and as we’ve all heard by now, Xena star Lucy Lawless makes her grand return to television in the role of Lucretia, the cunning wife of the proprietor of a gladiator school. (See our interview 
The first episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a new series starring Lucy Lawless that tells the story of the legendary rebel Roman slave, finished shooting this week in New Zealand, and those involved say it includes graphic sex and violence unlike anything ever seen on television.
Spartacus is played by Australian Andy Whitfield. Lawless, Tapert’s real-life wife, plays Lucretia, the owner of the gladiator school where Spartacus is imprisoned.