Rome 2x07:Death Mask
First of all, I feel the need to ask -- does everyone else shout "Yay for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Judaea!" whenever Timon and his brother come onscreen now? No? You're all shouting for the Judaean People's Liberation Front, aren't you? Scum - you'll be first up against the wall when the revolution comes!
Just me, then.
I would have thought Herod would be more Greek, but whatever. And I was more shocked by Levi's death for Timon's sake than for itself. I mean, I never really cared about Levi, at all, although Timon is kind of interesting.
I LOVED the way Servilia's storyline worked out -- I thought it captured something of the aggressively public nature of Roman life, the way she wasn't shaming herself by kneeling on the ground with ashes poured over her head -- that it was Atia she was shaming. And then the curse, sealed with her own death, and then her freedwoman's. Wow. And Atia's expression, because she knows that this is for real. (The contrast to the first curse Servilia makes -- the curse tablet -- was really striking, at least to me.) It was just beautiful, the way Servilia wears her down and destroys her. And so well shot, because the point isn't just what Servilia does, but that everyone sees her doing it.
That is exactly the kind of thing Romans did to each other, by the way.
And the marriage to Octavia... well, I guess we knew it was coming, although it was handled rather oddly. They kind of wrote themselves into a corner, I guess, with the affair, and then had to come up with some kind of crazy world where Roman women don't control their own marriages, or their daughters'. Ha! I don't know why they didn't just kill Atia off before the wedding, frankly, except that this was Octavian seems even more cold-blooded. And you know they've gone over the top when I think they're making Octavian too much of a monster!
Moving on from the history... I find that I cannot care about Vorenus' domestic troubles any more. Although now I kind of want Vorena to realize that she's being played and reconcile with him, rather than being Memmio's pawn. Or possibly use Memmio against Vorenus. Will we have in her a small-scale version of the ruin Atia and Servilia brought to the republic? If so, I might get interested in that plotline again. And I am sadly, sadly disappointed in Pullo. And worried for Eirene!
Of course, Pullo hasn't really done anything wrong by Roman standards, but Eirene will see it as an insult. There's a sense in which Gaia has to get rid of Eirene, before Eirene demands that she be sold, disfigured or even killed. I'm disappointed in Vorenus, frankly, too, but it's just typical of him not to realize that yes, he should have administered the beating, just to avoid trouble with Maschius.
I really want to see Posca's domestic life with Jocasta, by the way. (I do wish they'd stop giving freeborn Roman women Greek names, though. It's so confusing: I never know who's a slave and who isn't.) That amused and pleased me so much -- and this time they actually looked up something about Roman marriage ceremonies, rather than whatever they were thinking with Pullo and Eirene and the dirt-smudging thing. At least, it pleased me on a dramatic level -- for Jocasta it really is horrible to end up married to a freedman, but I suspect that Posca is just what you want in a husband, in some ways.
So it was all marriage and death, or sex and death -- Servilia and Levi, one death meaningful and one death not. And then Octavia and Antony and Jocasta and Posca, two marriages more about necessity than affection, and Vorena and her lover, where she doesn't even know it's a sham. Possibly the two sets don't have much to do with each other, now that I look at it.
Anyway, it's all a big soapy mess now.