DEN ANDEN VERDEN: Afsnit 6

Season 1, Episode 6
Date of airing: December 6, 2016 (DR1)

Written by: Klaus Rasmussen
Directed by: Lars Kaalund

 

”Not too much cream, it makes you fat.”

The dwarves are using Sara as their own housemaid, which does not make them friends to her in this fairytale world. But they will probably still be allies to her, because when it comes to keeping her to do chores around the house, and selling her out to the Evil Queen, the dwarves most likely want to keep her. They are a lazy bunch after all, and as long as they have someone working to keep their house clean, everything is peachy with them. And Sara really wants to return to that world over and over? After being used as a maid like that, I would want to think twice before going back there. The power of the boner, I guess, because Sara just wants to go back because of the Prince and how good-looking he is.

Meanwhile, the Evil Queen is essentially a cannibal. She thought she was eating her daughter's liver and kidney, after the Huntsman said that he removed the organs from her lifeless body. This is a young adult drama that deals with cannibalism – consider me surprised and a little bit confused, as I was not expecting what kind of dark storytelling the show was coming up with. A show like DEN ANDEN VERDEN could be remade for an English-language audience, and it doesn't even have to be changed that much to be considered a serious HBO Max show, instead of one that targets the teenage demographic.

In the real world, Camilla gets fired again after having taken on the role of Sleeping Beauty after Sara's accident, because she couldn't have been more annoying in the role. The real world can be harsh for some of the kids. Considering how dark the show has been in these first six episodes, I wonder if Camilla is planning on taking necessary steps to ensure that she will get the role of Sleeping Beauty back. Whatever it costs... 

Sara is so close to a real meaningful fairytale kiss!

STRANGER THINGS 2: MADMAX

Season 2, Episode 1
Date of release: October 27, 2017 (Netflix)

Written by: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
Directed by: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer

 

”Do you wanna be normal? Do you wanna be just like everyone else? Being a freak is the best.”

I love the fact that the previous season did not end with such a major cliffhanger that necessitated this episode having to go straight into the action. No, it was a calm affair, a teasing one at that, where the characters were repositioned on the chessboard of life in Hawkins, Indiana, with a new threat trying to establish itself behind the horizon. I loved that this episode was slow and almost uneventful enough, so I could ease my way back into the show and its premise without feeling overstimulated. Netflix already does not care about “Previously on” segments at the beginning of each episode, or a simple recap episode, similar to how ABC cut an hour of LOST together to catch up viewers and waste an hour in their primetime program without having to spend millions of dollars to do so. Why Netflix never figured to do something similar is beyond me – a 15-minute recap of a season of television should be doable, it's cheap, and it is audience-friendly. Or, do it like STRANGER THINGS and actually begin with what seems to be a new storyline, with a couple of new characters.

But because barely anything happened, and this hour was just for teasing the thrill of upcoming dangers, it was not much of a memorable episode. Max got introduced, and the boys fell in love with her – fine, but not really much to write home about. The Hawkins lab seems to be open to talk about the events that transpired last year, with Will giving a full account of what has been happening to him (and I thought he would keep his impromptu trips to the Upside Down a secret) – fine, but that doesn't mean the Hawkins scientists are allies now. Eleven is still alive and hiding at Hopper's place in the woods – fine, but meaningless, because El was otherwise unimportant to this hour, and the episode could have worked just as well without her appearance at the end. Joyce is dating someone – I hope she is going to be happy, and he is going to be a good guy to her (not me thinking that he might be a plant to constantly check on Will for the government). Steve is working on his college application – fine for him, but should I care?

Will turned out to be the biggest and most interesting character of the bunch at this stage – the one who has the least amount of screentime because he was stuck in the Upside Down, but the one who suffers most from what happened, and is now carrying that pain in his head for the rest of his life. It's a different way to depict post-traumatic stress, and it's the best drama plot the show currently has. 

The party sees a pretty girl and is immediately distracted.

SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND: The Thing in the Pit

Season 1, Episode 4
Date of airing: February 12, 2010 (Starz)
Nielsen ratings information: 0.662 million viewers, 0.3 rating/1 share with Adults 18-49

Written by: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing
Directed by: Jesse Warn

 

”THAT'S how you send a dog to the afterlife!”

The pits are where the truly abhorrent stuff happens that you never heard about during Roman Republic/Empire history lessons. That makes me wonder if the pits were an invention just for the show, an embellishment of gladiatorial games mixed with even more violence (some of the more nasty, serialkilling slaves-turned-gladiators had to fight somewhere where honor was of no importance), or if there is historical evidence that they really existed, but not as the “belly of the underworld” as described in this episode, but much darker and much more dangerous. After all, I don't think that disgraced gladiators were the only element of the pits – that place can't just exist, just so the depraved can fight and kill one another, and gambling addicts can win and lose coins. Not to mention that it seemed much easier down there to just murder someone.

This was the episode that defined the show for me back in 2010. I prefer my TV shows without gratuitous violence, but for a show looking like a comic book at times, and not caring much about how realistic it looks and sounds, the level of bloody action this episode establishes seems appropriate. It was fun to watch the teeth fly out of one of the fighters, and the blood spray on the faces of some of the ecstatic spectators. It was fun (yet disgusting) to watch one of the fighters cut off the face of another, to wear it for future fights against other opponents (screaming “You wanna face me?” to the crowd, too). It was fun to watch a fight with no rules – just two gladiators, destined to die in the pits, fighting to reach that exact goal as late as possible. It's when the show knew how to display the violence of the show, and how far it was able to get (I'm pretty sure cutting off the face and carrying it around like a prized possession means the writers were able to bend the rules of TV violence to their liking). It was also the episode in which Andy Whitfield showed how much range he had as an actor – between life and afterlife in the pits, hallucinating Sura, bearing the pain, and experiencing the madness that is the pits, he delivered a striking performance of a character growing disturbed and desperate to reach the end.

Meanwhile, in the ludus, there is a love story brewing between a gladiator and a body slave. Crixus misunderstanding Naevia returning his gift for her showed how much intelligence and logic assessment slaves had back in those times. Crixus couldn't even compute that Naevia couldn't wear the necklace without Lucretia noticing, so he grew angry instead that a pretty woman like Naevia returned the gift. Gladiators... not the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to smarts, but damn, can they rip your head off when they are hungry for violence, fame, and coin. 

The rains are coming, and it's going to be a blood fest.

DEN ANDEN VERDEN: Afsnit 5

Season 1, Episode 5
Date of airing: December 5, 2016 (DR1)

Written by: Klaus Rasmussen
Directed by: Lars Kaalund

 

”Anna, it sounds crazy, but it makes sense. The brothers Grimm experienced the stories in other worlds, and wrote them down.”

“Sara, they traveled through Germany and collected those fairytales.”

That's an interesting little fantasy premise I'm sure someone else had brought up before, either in Hollywood, or in some low-budget film studio in Europe that makes films for the video market which are never seen or heard of again. What if famous writers of successful fantasy novels actually experienced those stories for real and then decided to make a book out of them to cash in, keeping their life experiences a secret? What if George R.R. Martin got sucked through a literary black hole, experienced the nightmare that is Westeros for real, and then made a best-selling novel series out of it and shoveled millions of dollars into his bank account?

Between that and Sara just experiencing hallucinations, or simply just dreaming what she previously experienced, the show could easily explain what is happening to her, and continue the story from there without ever quitting the show's main premise. DEN ANDEN VERDEN could continue going down the fantasy route and have Sara drop herself into the fairytale world via hyperventilation (the fact that it worked at the end of this episode kind of supports her theory, eh?), or the writers could continue having her drop into mini comas every once in a while where her mind and brain continues work on fixing themselves after the accident, by letting her experience the one medicine that could heal her: her love for fairytales.

Meanwhile, Camille sucks as the new Sleeping Beauty, and Sara drops into a bathtub filled with ice water. Was the latter considered a stunt? How much extra money did actress Caroline Vedel Larsen get for submerging almost her entire body in freezing water, while still wearing clothes? Besides that, I would love to know what the characters in the fairytale world have to say about Sara's braces, next time she sticks around for a little longer... 

The pain a girl in love goes through, wanting to go back to the good-looking Prince...

SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND: Legends

Season 1, Episode 3
Date of airing: February 5, 2010 (Starz)
Nielsen ratings information: 0.858 million viewers, 0.4 rating/1 share with Adults 18-49

Written by: Brent Fletcher
Directed by: Grady Hall

 

”Can he do it again? Make him do it again!”

The survival of Spartacus still hinges on political and financial motivations. Batiatus just cannot afford to see him slaughtered in the arena because he continues to hope for coins from the Thracian's success in the fights, even though Spartacus definitely deserved to die here and there, with his brutish and animalistic behavior derailing everything Batiatus has been working toward. And after his showing in the arena against Crixus, he lost all the good standing he had with the crowd when he dispatched four of Solonius's men in the premiere episode. Why would Batiatus want to put his eggs in Spartacus's basket after this episode? Why would he want to keep this specific slave, who has caused nothing but trouble for him, alive and breathing in the ludus downstairs?

Spartacus losing the fight against Crixus also reminds me of a very specific rule in television writing: Have your hero lose their first fight against the villain, so that the second fight during the climactic episodes will come with a bigger and more earned victory. I learned that lesson while watching BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and that lesson could be applied here, with Crixus being Spartacus's biggest foil. However, that is not true, and Spartacus does not know it yet. It is not Crixus whom Spartacus should defeat in the end, because the two are in the same boat: They are slaves abused by the system the Roman Republic created to keep power and punish those who dare to strike them. In the way the narrative is currently spun, Crixus is the one person Spartacus needs to overcome to get to his goal (reunite with his kidnapped and enslaved wife Sura), which, according to the rules of TV writing, means that Spartacus had to lose the fight, so that he could win the next one. Only to come to the conclusion that Crixus is not the one person for him to overcome to get to his goal.

This episode also introduced the more intimate aspects of a gladiatorial school: Muscle-packed slaves have sex for the pleasure of a watching audience who have enough coin to pay for such a show. Ilythia seemed especially pleased by Varro's performance, although her above-quoted line suggests that she has no idea about the male stamina during intercourse. Then again, the rich folks do not care about what slaves can and cannot do (and if they cannot, they usually get killed and replaced by a slave who can). By the way, I would love to know what Ilythia is still doing in Capua (or why she returned). She should be in Rome with her husband Glaber, but for the sake of the narrative, she is involved in the schemes of the House of Batiatus, without the writers explaining why.

 

Varro is delighted that he doesn't have to fight against Spartacus any longer.

 

DEN ANDEN VERDEN: Afsnit 4

Season 1, Episode 4
Date of airing: December 4, 2016 (DR1)

Written by: Klaus Rasmussen
Directed by: Lars Kaalund

 

”Snow White, I welcome you! We have been looking for quite some time for someone to clean up this place and do the dishes.”

This episode managed to do with a low budget what Disney couldn't do with more than $200 million: cast little people to play the seven dwarves. And judging by the names of the actors who play the dwarves, three of them are women (Ann Smith, who plays Karl; Tina Quist Nernegård, who plays Ekhard; Sigrid Houseland, who plays Heinz), making it extra spicy to watch, and possibly even pushing this show more towards a theatrical experience. On stage, it's quite normal for actors to play characters of the opposite gender. DEN ANDEN VERDEN deals with a theater play, so it would only be logical that it would employ the same casting process when dealing with a narrative that could be construed as a theater play. And in a way, Sara's trip into the fairytale world could be set up as a version of her real-life, dreamy stage play in which she has the starring role – but unlike THE WIZARD OF OZ, where Dorothy dreamt up a fairytale world, the roles in it are not played by people she knows in real life.

That is why I was surprised to see that the Prince was not played by Janus in Sara's fairytale world, something I was expecting, since it would add to the story of Sarah's unrequited love for Janus, using her fairytale world as a way to cope with the real-life rejection. No, the characters over there are played by different actors, all of them strangers to Sara, continuing to suggest (together with the tree needle she found in her hair at the end) that her fairytale world might not be a dream after all, and may in fact be a real occurrence of something fantastical, supernatural going on.

I was also not expecting Sara to wake up from her post-accident slumber before the episode ended. She didn't even spend an entire episode's worth of time in that world. Not enough to fully establish it, but seemingly enough to immediately impress her and make her wish that she didn't have to go. Which is weird, considering the Evil Queen's Huntsman was hunting her down in the woods and almost stabbed her to death – I would think that's a situation terrifying enough for Sara to convince her to get out of this world and wake up again. But no, she was digging all of it. Including half a day's worth of “slavery” for the dwarves by cleaning up all their crap. Sara is not a normal girl... 

Sara is either sleeping or living in a fairytale adventure.

SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND: Sacramentum Gladiatorum

Season 1, Episode 2
Date of airing: January 29, 2010 (Starz)
Nielsen ratings information: 0.773 million viewers, 0.4 rating/1 share with Adults 18-49

Written by: Steven S. DeKnight
Directed by: Rick Jacobson

 

“Not every venture ends in climax.”

“A fact known well to every woman.”

Lucretia is in luck that she and Batiatus have a functioning, working marriage, in which both parties love each other. Otherwise, a comment like that would have convinced the patriarch to go after his woman more violently. But Batiatus either didn't get the burn or he found it amusing enough to let it slide. Or he didn't even hear her because he was too busy hoping that Spartacus would pass the test and not end up with Crixus's sword inside him. Because that would have meant a substantial loss of coin for Batiatus, who paid too much to purchase Spartacus, and with it, Glaber's patronage.

It's interesting how the involvement of Spartacus in Batuatus's affairs is of a more political nature. Batiatus wants love and attention from the Roman Senate, and he can only get it if he has friends within and outside of the Senate – Glaber being the biggest name who actually entered his ludus, and who has reason to have conversations with Batiatus. In any other ludus, Spartacus would have been dead already, but with Batiatus as his master, he has become a plaything in a political game. In any other ludus, Spartacus would have had no chance to dream of revenge against Glaber, or even the hope to fight his way to freedom and buy back his kidnapped and enslaved wife. All episode long, Spartacus hoped to just die – a character destined for a quick death at the hands of another, as he did not want to live the life of a slave, let alone a gladiator. Quite an interesting path for a titular character's plot two episodes into his series.

Meanwhile, this episode showcased for real what the entire show is about: political intrigue (Rome is far away for the characters, but close enough to be in their aspirational eyesight), gladiatorial action, the lives of a slave inside a ludus, Batiatus being a shrewd maneuverer who thinks with his bag of coins instead of his head, and sex. Even if the latter was preambled with moments of slaves “warming up” both Batiatus and Lucretia independently before they went at it together in front of their slaves. It's a friendly reminder of how the Roman Empire never even considered its slaves as people. 

Lucretia is winning a new love interest.

DEN ANDEN VERDEN: Afsnit 3

Season 1, Episode 3
Date of airing: December 3, 2016 (DR1)

Written by: Klaus Rasmussen
Directed by: Lars Kaalund

 

”Is this a dream or is this real?”

With Sara's accident and drop into the water, the show has reached the inciting incident, and the main premise of the story can finally begin. Sara wakes up in what is either a dream or another reality, and the drama of the narrative about a comatose girl and her desperate family can commence. It's why I decided to watch the show in the first place (and because it's December). The first two episodes made this show look like a soft young-adult drama, but now we are getting to the point, and a fantasy plot is added. Sara will now have to survive in the real world and a fairytale adventure in the other reality, after her real-life fairytale was just stomped on repeatedly.

As expected, Janus was not interested in Sara, and she got her heart broken in return. That does make me wonder how much Janus will still be part of the story, and if he and Sara may eventually become the “endgame” of the story, with Sara finally getting her prince at the ed, or if she gets to realize that her previous choices in boys have been a waste of time, and she would rather live life on her own. Not to mention that the entire premise of the show can be shortened to “girl is in a coma, dreams up a fantasy world in her mind to fight to stay alive.” A certain British cop drama set in the 1970s, which aired for two seasons, had the same premise, and I'm assuming this show is playing the same tune.

Meanwhile, I could not help but notice how the color grading was differentiating between both worlds. Real life is dark, moody, almost bleak with its blue hues. The fairytale world became bright and with a hint of yellow, but not without darkness either (there seem to be some lighting issues turning shadows completely black – I'm not sure if this was an intended style for the show). It makes it easier to distinguish both storylines in the future, but that doesn't mean I don't like how the show is color-graded in general. I'm not sure that a young-adult drama is supposed to look gritty and moody, almost like an HBO show.

Oh, and the German dubbing of this show dropped another F-bomb when Sara was declaring with a loud voice that she wanted her prince now and that she is “fucking 15.” Still, I'm surprised the children's channel of Germany's public broadcaster would accept such language on their airwaves. And it is confirmation that I didn't mishear the F-bomb in the previous episode. 

Only a twin can mend a sister's broken heart.

SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND: The Red Serpent

Season 1, Episode 1
Date of airing: Januay 22, 2010 (Starz)
Nielsen ratings information: 0.659 million viewers, 0.3 rating/1 share with Adults 18-49 (simulcast on Encore: 0.58 million viewers, 0.2 rating/1 share with Adults 18-49)

Written by: Steven S. DeKnight
Directed by: Rick Jacobson

 

”That man has fingers in all the proper assholes. He wiggles them and everyone shits gold.”

This episode only works when you already know the entire season. Watching it for the first time, and you will feel and think what everyone else felt and thought when they watched this series premiere for the first time: 'WTF was that?' The visual style and the choice of dialogue needs some serious getting used to; some of the acting abilities may be questionable (the reason for that may be the difficult dialogue and the fact that they were acting wearing cloths for clothes); and the fact that this is supposed to be a show about Spartacus and the slave rebellion, but doesn't even go into any of it, may have confused viewers who were expecting a history lesson with sword-and-sandals scenes, but got VFX blood, tits, asses, and sex scenes inching close to porn instead. Maybe we were all just shocked back then, as we didn't know what kind of show this was about to become. SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND is the perfect example of a show you have to get past the first couple of episodes of to get to the really juicy stuff. Because the beginning of it is like anything else you've probably ever seen before.

The story is also hard to get into, because why would you want to spend time with a guy whose name you don't know, fighting a war for a Roman asshole whose political ambitions immediately make him a villain, with other Thracians who are equally nameless and were quickly becoming lifeless as well? The one thing that made the unnamed Thracian, who was called Spartacus after he managed to kill all four of his executors in the arena, a sympathetic character was when the love of his life got kidnapped and enslaved by the Romans, giving him a purpose spiced with revenge. You saw it in both men's faces at the end: Spartacus wants Glaber dead for what he has done, and Glaber wants Spartacus dead for the humiliation he just received. These two dudes will stand in the arena presently, to fight it out for the sake of a bloody, violent storyline.

Plus, this episode managed to showcase only half of the stuff that made the show so intriguing to watch in 2010: The fights in the arena, some of the dialogue choices and lines delivered by John Hannah as Batiatus (who essentially only had two scenes here, when it is he who is basically the lead character of Blood and Sand), and the purpose of Spartacus as a character in this new world of blood, death, and slavery. Everything else that made the show fun to watch would be introduced in the next episode, giving one more example of why this hour was critically maligned when the show premiered (simply because the audience hadn't seen what the show was about yet). The thing is, I have no idea how I would have started the narrative of Spartacus – this prologue episode was needed to get to the end of it, because you couldn't have brought it in the beginning and made the viewers care for him when the entire backstory was missing. 

The Thracian makes sure that he will live another day to see revenge.

DEN ANDEN VERDEN: Afsnit 2

Season 1, Episode 2
Date of airing: December 2, 2016 (DR1)

Written by: Klaus Rasmussen
Directed by: Lars Kaalund

 

”Is Sara in love?”

“Yes.”

“In a person?”

“Definitely not in a dress.”

“I'm sorry for her.”

The main premise of the show still hasn't hit, but parts of the fairytale story that will enrich the majority of the season have been introduced here, with the Queen from <i>Snow White</i> already asking her mirror who is the fairest of them all. All I know about this show is that it is going through several different fairytales, and it seems like <i>Snow White</i> is going to be the first of the tales, with Sara assuming the role of Snow White when she and the story are ready to do so. In the meantime, Sara is already living in her own fairytale, seeing herself as the lady who is going to be kissed by the prince (Janus), and who is jealous of Emma (Janus's girlfriend) because she gets to have what Sara can't (a boy who is in love with her). This fits quite well with what Sara will go through when she inhabits the fairytales later, where she can live out her dreams of being the girl who is destined to become the princess. And now I understand why the prologue of the show's premise is already two episodes long, and the main premise hasn't begun yet, as it does take some time for Sara's own world to be established, for her real-life fairytale to get built up before she is thrown into the fictional fairytales.

While the show takes its sweet time to begin its main plot, it gets busy with another story that I found more interesting here than in the first episode: putting together a stage play. This episode had a bit of local theater politics going on, with Rikke having to ask Søren, the rich guy of the town, for some money, so that the set design can look its best. And in return, Søren just wants his daughter to play more than just a toad in the play. There is a bit of quid pro quo going on behind the scenes, which I hope gets more attention in later episodes.

One more thing of note: I'm watching the German dubbing of the show, and when Anna slipped and fell while ice skating, she actually dropped the F-bomb. The thing is, this show aired on the children's channel of the public broadcasting service in Germany, and I'm surprised they would allow F-bombs to be dropped on their channel. 

The town's millionaire and only producer of the play wants certain scenes and actors to be included.