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