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llywelaBought a pair of new shoes yesterday and then completely forgot to take them home with me. Madness! They're sandals, Wranglers, ready for the summer. The Wranglers sandals I've currently got have been my favourites for years now, the only shoes I can ever remember having that have never given me even a single blister. But I've worn them to death, quite literally - they are falling to bits and really, really won't last another summer. Wranglers no longer make the same style, but the ones I bought yesterday are the closest they've come in a while, so hopefully they will do.
Brother Mine has got a new job - or, rather, an internal promotion/transfer. He works for Fujitsu, IT support on the telephones. So if anyone phoned a helpline for any number of internet providers because of technical troubles, my brother was one of the people on the other end of the line. And that's always worked well, because although he can't talk to people face to face, he's really good at providing IT support on the telephone. But recently he's had to do other stuff as well, like billing, and hates it. So not he's got this internal transfer to a more specialist department and won't be doing telephone work at all. No clue what the technical title is, but what he will be doing is diagnosing more complex computer problems that come in, that the ordinary telephone people can't resolve, and then issuing work orders to engineers to go out and repair. To my ignorant ears it sounds kinda like House - differential diagnosis for computers!
I don't want to say too much about this week's Supernatural until I get the recap done and posted. Everything I want to say about it will be in there. Overall, an amazing episode – for the longest time it felt a bit like an old-school, monster-of-the-week, season one episode. There was snark and brotherly banter. Dean was happy to be hunting. Sam was all awkward and adorable around the girl he liked. There was lots of nekkid Sam. What's not to love?
And then it got depressing as hell and went from amazingly fun to emotionally powerful, and the ending seems to have broken most of the fandom into lots of tiny pieces.
The timeline of the episode does weird things to my head, though. It goes from morning to night to morning without the intervening hours seeming to exist at all. But I suppose the weirdness there only becomes really apparent when you sit down to recap it and actually put serious thought into details like...like how it's early morning when Dean tells Sam that Madison is the werewolf; Dean then arrives at Madison's place and there's a lot of angsty conversation...and then Dean says it will be dark soon, which - where did the day go? I mean, sure, San Francisco, being a modern city, must have it's share of congestion problems, but no way did it take Dean eight hours to get from Kurt's apartment to Madison's!
Minor bugs like those aside, it's a great episode. Recap will be up in a couple of days, all things being equal.
Rome 2.10: The One Where It All Ends
Damn.
That's all I have to say about the last ever Rome. Well. Actually, no, it isn't. But that sums everything up quite nicely. Damn. One episode and it made me so very happy, so very sad, and so very angry, often all at the same time.
I knew I loved this show for a reason.
I knew going into this episode that there would be blood and tragedy. Hell, I knew going into this whole season – into this whole show – that there would be blood and tragedy. Fall of the Roman Republic, hello. With a show packed full of historical characters, that most of them would meet a bloody end was, right from the start, not just a probability but, let's face it, a fact of historical record and pretty well documented. And even so it hurt to lose Mark Antony so early in this episode. It felt early, anyway.
But throughout the show, I've had one stipulation: Do not kill Lucius Vorenus or Titus Pullo! They're non-historical characters, wildcards, their fate in the hands of the gods – or scriptwriters. They had a chance of making it out alive.
Damn!
People reading who won't watch this till it hits the Beeb later this year – and I know there's at least one – look away now if you don't want to be seriously spoiled for the finale.
I hardly even know where to begin. How about the beginning? For a show documenting the fall of the Roman Republic, they sure didn't show us that many of the momentous battles. This would be because a) epic battles are kind of expensive to film, and b) the focus of the show is on the people both great and small, and the impact those momentous battles and decisions and events have on their lives. Why waste ten or fifteen minutes of an episode showing your viewers a CGI enhanced battlefield full of random legionaries slugging it out when you can put those ten or fifteen minutes to much better use showing us the fallout in the lives of key figures involved, whether great or small.
And so this episode begins in the wake of the battle of Actium, and Antony is a broken man. Has been, really, since he was forced out of Rome, although he may not have truly realised it until now.
ANTONY: "All my life I've been fearful of defeat. But now that it has come it's not near as terrible as I'd expected. The sun still shines, water still tastes good…glory is all well and good but life is enough, nay?"
For all his faults and flaws and occasional eating of scenery, I have always loved Antony. And Vorenus is still at this side, faithful as ever, and equally broken. I've always loved Vorenus, too.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alexandral put it quite nicely over at the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rome_hbo community: 'Vorenus remained faithful to Mark Antony 'til the end because Antony was a man of ideals and feelings, even though he had all his shortcomings.' Antony surely did have many, many shortcomings, but he was a wonderfully passionate, charismatic, larger-than-life character, and there aren't enough of those on TV.
We didn't get to see that much of Antony's legendary love affair with Cleopatra, really speaking, coming in last week pretty much near the end of it, but what we have seen gave us everything we needed to know. Hopped up on opiates and drunk on despair, Antony was a shadow of his former self, drawing many a Vorenus eyeroll in his direction, but still that charisma kept shining through. Easy to see how and why he and Cleopatra were together and apparently so happy, despite their relationship being tempestuous. Antony's always liked that kind of passion and storminess in a woman – just look at Atia!
I adored the scene of Antony and Vorenus drinking and swapping war stories all night. It's easy to forget, with the commander-lieutenant relationship being emphasised so strongly, that as much as Vorenus and Pullo have been through years of war together, so too have Vorenus and Antony. Old soldiers, old war veterans, always share a bond that nothing else ever comes close to
The end was so blatantly nigh, they all knew it, and then, in true Shakespearean style, Cleopatra betrayed Antony in hopes of saving her own and her children's lives, tricking him into believing she had killed herself, and Antony, already broken and despairing, quickly followed suit. With a little help from his ever-loyal lieutenant, so quick to offer a proper Roman blade for the deed, almost as if he'd been waiting for Antony to ask, probably since they got back from the battle, if not earlier.
ANTONY: "I died Roman."
Did I say how much I love Antony? Magnificent death, although he kind of got a look on his face at one point as if he was wondering why it was taking so long for him to die already.
Did I mention also how much I love Vorenus? Damn, that scene where Vorenus so gently washes Antony's body, dresses him in his proper Roman uniform, and then sits him on his throne is just so powerful and beautiful.
Cleopatra walking barefoot through Antony's blood to get to his body, sitting there on his throne where Vorenus had put him, then later crawling into his cold dead lap. That killed me, both that Vorenus did that for him, and that Cleopatra really did love him, and yet still chose to sacrifice him, because she was the queen and had to think beyond herself, and yet it still wasn't enough. And Vorenus' outrage when he realised her deceit was just marvellous – even when he isn't in focus you can see his eyes blazing – and surely only Vorenus, who has absolutely nothing left to lose, would have the hide to shout at the autocratic queen like that, and take her to task over her actions.
Actions which were for naught, because Octavian according to this show was a manipulative bastard, and Cleopatra soon realised that – another stunning scene, the verbal fencing between the two of them, every word dripping with poison – and killed herself rather than be humiliated by him. Antony and Cleopatra forever, eh.
And I still haven't talked properly about Vorenus and Pullo! I've said how much I love Antony and Vorenus. I haven't said yet how much I love Pullo, so I'll say it now. I love Pullo.
Yes, I have many loves. One of them is the sight of burly men wearing Roman legionary uniform, which is a fetish I have to thank this show for. Who'd have ever thought strapping blokes like that could make skirts look so manly!
Going into this episode, Pullo and Vorenus hadn't seen or heard from one another in years, and yet that incredible bond between them remained as strong as ever. Passing secret coded messages to one another via Octavian's messenger, messages with double-meaning – one for Octavian, and one for Pullo and Vorenus themselves. Pullo's secret love child, Caesarion, was at stake.
Loyalty and faithfulness were the bedrock of Vorenus's character, and so he remained loyal to Mark Antony right to the bitter end. But with Antony gone, there was no one left in the world for Vorenus to take orders from, leaving him free to be his own man and do what he believed to be right. Which meant getting little Caesarion away from the palace and out of danger, because no matter what promises Octavian made he was not going to let that child live. And that child was the son of Vorenus's friend, even if only he, Pullo and Cleopatra knew that. So Vorenus saved him.
And took him out into the desert and waited, because he knew where to go so that Pullo would find him, and Pullo knew to look for him there, and they hadn't seen each other in years, but they still knew one another that well. And so while Vorenus remained loyal to Antony, Pullo broke his loyalty to Octavian for the sake of his secret child. Not that Octavian ever found out about that, which makes me happy because Octavian likes to think he knows everything and everyone. And we got to see Pullo and Vorenus camping out one last time, reminiscing and talking about the children, and it was fabulous, and I wanted so very badly for the show to just end, right there. I should have just turned it off.
It didn't end there. The inevitable happened. They ran into a patrol, the boy gave the game away, and fighting ensued, and one thing I love about this show is that Vorenus and Pullo's fighting skills have never, ever been dumbed down. They are a truly formidable duo. But against fellow Romans, equally well trained, outnumbered…it was always a tough one, and I spent the entire skirmish hollering at the screen not to kill them, and then when Vorenus got stabbed started jumping up and down in anguish. "DO NOT KILL LUCIUS VORENUS! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, SHOW? DO NOT KILL LUCIUS VORENUS!"
Damn. Lots and lots of damn. I suppose, really, it was fitting that Vorenus should die. It seems like Vorenus always ends up suffering because of the indiscretions of others. The whole tragedy of his life this season came about because of two indiscretions – the first being Niobe's, of course, and the second Octavian's. Vorenus has never got over Niobe, and was never going to get over her. The most happy ever after that could be expected for him was reconciliation with his children, and I guess the writers felt it would take his imminent demise to achieve that.
We saw at the start of the show that when the town crier announced Antony's defeat, Vorena the Elder looked troubled – as much as she has clung to her hatred for her father for so long, it was clear that somewhere deep down she still loved him and was afraid to think of what might be happening to him, out there at war.
Pullo managed to get Vorenus back to Rome alive, and the fact that he did so at Vorenus's request spoke volumes about their love for one another because really, Rome was the last place in the world Pullo should be taking young Caesarion! But he did it for Vorenus, because his old and faithful friend wanted to see his children one last time before he died, even knowing that they still hated him and would probably never forgive him.
So then when Vorena's heart softened and she let go of her hate to go sit at her father's deathbed, hold his hand and kiss him, with the other children taking their cues from her and coming to stand in the doorway – that was beautiful.
Also the third episode in a row that Pullo has had to sit at the deathbed of a loved one. Where personal tragedy hardened Vorenus, it has mellowed Pullo.
Pullo, at least, got a happy ending, lying to Octavian about having carried out his duty and executed young Caesarion, being given a handsome reward for it – and then going out to meet young Caesarion himself, waiting outside, and the two of them walking off into the crowd together, father and son.
Other stuff: I liked that Octavian went straight to Atia's house on his return from Egypt, to tell her in person of Antony's death. He seemed like he still had a crumb of compassion for his mother, despite everything that he's done. Octavian does have his human moments – and those moments make his sharp-edge all the more acute. So Atia had to grieve quietly for Antony without letting anyone but Octavia see it. And now Octavia and Atia will raise Antony and Cleopatra's children alongside Octavia's daughter, who may or may not be their half-sister. Complicated stuff! The mother-daughter relationship between Atia and Octavia really has blossomed in the second half of this season, as they have become more closely tied together than ever, so very co-dependent. But in a new feud with Octavian's wife, Livia, Atia seems to have found a new reason to go on.
Just a shame we won't get to see it.
I'm still not sure what the point of the Timon sub-plot was, though, since it just kind of petered out rather than ending. Maybe that was something that would have been picked up in a third season, if there had been one.
I'd still love a third season, but not without Vorenus. But maybe I can fool myself that since we never actually saw him die, a miracle might have happened. I mean, he survived all the way from Egypt to Rome with a mortal wound, so having been finally reconciled with his family it would be a shame to waste all that staying power, wouldn't it? Why not just rally and recover, after all?
What? With the show over and done with, a girl can dream…
Brother Mine has got a new job - or, rather, an internal promotion/transfer. He works for Fujitsu, IT support on the telephones. So if anyone phoned a helpline for any number of internet providers because of technical troubles, my brother was one of the people on the other end of the line. And that's always worked well, because although he can't talk to people face to face, he's really good at providing IT support on the telephone. But recently he's had to do other stuff as well, like billing, and hates it. So not he's got this internal transfer to a more specialist department and won't be doing telephone work at all. No clue what the technical title is, but what he will be doing is diagnosing more complex computer problems that come in, that the ordinary telephone people can't resolve, and then issuing work orders to engineers to go out and repair. To my ignorant ears it sounds kinda like House - differential diagnosis for computers!
I don't want to say too much about this week's Supernatural until I get the recap done and posted. Everything I want to say about it will be in there. Overall, an amazing episode – for the longest time it felt a bit like an old-school, monster-of-the-week, season one episode. There was snark and brotherly banter. Dean was happy to be hunting. Sam was all awkward and adorable around the girl he liked. There was lots of nekkid Sam. What's not to love?
And then it got depressing as hell and went from amazingly fun to emotionally powerful, and the ending seems to have broken most of the fandom into lots of tiny pieces.
The timeline of the episode does weird things to my head, though. It goes from morning to night to morning without the intervening hours seeming to exist at all. But I suppose the weirdness there only becomes really apparent when you sit down to recap it and actually put serious thought into details like...like how it's early morning when Dean tells Sam that Madison is the werewolf; Dean then arrives at Madison's place and there's a lot of angsty conversation...and then Dean says it will be dark soon, which - where did the day go? I mean, sure, San Francisco, being a modern city, must have it's share of congestion problems, but no way did it take Dean eight hours to get from Kurt's apartment to Madison's!
Minor bugs like those aside, it's a great episode. Recap will be up in a couple of days, all things being equal.
Rome 2.10: The One Where It All Ends
Damn.
That's all I have to say about the last ever Rome. Well. Actually, no, it isn't. But that sums everything up quite nicely. Damn. One episode and it made me so very happy, so very sad, and so very angry, often all at the same time.
I knew I loved this show for a reason.
I knew going into this episode that there would be blood and tragedy. Hell, I knew going into this whole season – into this whole show – that there would be blood and tragedy. Fall of the Roman Republic, hello. With a show packed full of historical characters, that most of them would meet a bloody end was, right from the start, not just a probability but, let's face it, a fact of historical record and pretty well documented. And even so it hurt to lose Mark Antony so early in this episode. It felt early, anyway.
But throughout the show, I've had one stipulation: Do not kill Lucius Vorenus or Titus Pullo! They're non-historical characters, wildcards, their fate in the hands of the gods – or scriptwriters. They had a chance of making it out alive.
Damn!
People reading who won't watch this till it hits the Beeb later this year – and I know there's at least one – look away now if you don't want to be seriously spoiled for the finale.
I hardly even know where to begin. How about the beginning? For a show documenting the fall of the Roman Republic, they sure didn't show us that many of the momentous battles. This would be because a) epic battles are kind of expensive to film, and b) the focus of the show is on the people both great and small, and the impact those momentous battles and decisions and events have on their lives. Why waste ten or fifteen minutes of an episode showing your viewers a CGI enhanced battlefield full of random legionaries slugging it out when you can put those ten or fifteen minutes to much better use showing us the fallout in the lives of key figures involved, whether great or small.
And so this episode begins in the wake of the battle of Actium, and Antony is a broken man. Has been, really, since he was forced out of Rome, although he may not have truly realised it until now.
ANTONY: "All my life I've been fearful of defeat. But now that it has come it's not near as terrible as I'd expected. The sun still shines, water still tastes good…glory is all well and good but life is enough, nay?"
For all his faults and flaws and occasional eating of scenery, I have always loved Antony. And Vorenus is still at this side, faithful as ever, and equally broken. I've always loved Vorenus, too.
alexandral put it quite nicely over at the rome_hbo community: 'Vorenus remained faithful to Mark Antony 'til the end because Antony was a man of ideals and feelings, even though he had all his shortcomings.' Antony surely did have many, many shortcomings, but he was a wonderfully passionate, charismatic, larger-than-life character, and there aren't enough of those on TV.We didn't get to see that much of Antony's legendary love affair with Cleopatra, really speaking, coming in last week pretty much near the end of it, but what we have seen gave us everything we needed to know. Hopped up on opiates and drunk on despair, Antony was a shadow of his former self, drawing many a Vorenus eyeroll in his direction, but still that charisma kept shining through. Easy to see how and why he and Cleopatra were together and apparently so happy, despite their relationship being tempestuous. Antony's always liked that kind of passion and storminess in a woman – just look at Atia!
I adored the scene of Antony and Vorenus drinking and swapping war stories all night. It's easy to forget, with the commander-lieutenant relationship being emphasised so strongly, that as much as Vorenus and Pullo have been through years of war together, so too have Vorenus and Antony. Old soldiers, old war veterans, always share a bond that nothing else ever comes close to
The end was so blatantly nigh, they all knew it, and then, in true Shakespearean style, Cleopatra betrayed Antony in hopes of saving her own and her children's lives, tricking him into believing she had killed herself, and Antony, already broken and despairing, quickly followed suit. With a little help from his ever-loyal lieutenant, so quick to offer a proper Roman blade for the deed, almost as if he'd been waiting for Antony to ask, probably since they got back from the battle, if not earlier.
ANTONY: "I died Roman."
Did I say how much I love Antony? Magnificent death, although he kind of got a look on his face at one point as if he was wondering why it was taking so long for him to die already.
Did I mention also how much I love Vorenus? Damn, that scene where Vorenus so gently washes Antony's body, dresses him in his proper Roman uniform, and then sits him on his throne is just so powerful and beautiful.
Cleopatra walking barefoot through Antony's blood to get to his body, sitting there on his throne where Vorenus had put him, then later crawling into his cold dead lap. That killed me, both that Vorenus did that for him, and that Cleopatra really did love him, and yet still chose to sacrifice him, because she was the queen and had to think beyond herself, and yet it still wasn't enough. And Vorenus' outrage when he realised her deceit was just marvellous – even when he isn't in focus you can see his eyes blazing – and surely only Vorenus, who has absolutely nothing left to lose, would have the hide to shout at the autocratic queen like that, and take her to task over her actions.
Actions which were for naught, because Octavian according to this show was a manipulative bastard, and Cleopatra soon realised that – another stunning scene, the verbal fencing between the two of them, every word dripping with poison – and killed herself rather than be humiliated by him. Antony and Cleopatra forever, eh.
And I still haven't talked properly about Vorenus and Pullo! I've said how much I love Antony and Vorenus. I haven't said yet how much I love Pullo, so I'll say it now. I love Pullo.
Yes, I have many loves. One of them is the sight of burly men wearing Roman legionary uniform, which is a fetish I have to thank this show for. Who'd have ever thought strapping blokes like that could make skirts look so manly!
Going into this episode, Pullo and Vorenus hadn't seen or heard from one another in years, and yet that incredible bond between them remained as strong as ever. Passing secret coded messages to one another via Octavian's messenger, messages with double-meaning – one for Octavian, and one for Pullo and Vorenus themselves. Pullo's secret love child, Caesarion, was at stake.
Loyalty and faithfulness were the bedrock of Vorenus's character, and so he remained loyal to Mark Antony right to the bitter end. But with Antony gone, there was no one left in the world for Vorenus to take orders from, leaving him free to be his own man and do what he believed to be right. Which meant getting little Caesarion away from the palace and out of danger, because no matter what promises Octavian made he was not going to let that child live. And that child was the son of Vorenus's friend, even if only he, Pullo and Cleopatra knew that. So Vorenus saved him.
And took him out into the desert and waited, because he knew where to go so that Pullo would find him, and Pullo knew to look for him there, and they hadn't seen each other in years, but they still knew one another that well. And so while Vorenus remained loyal to Antony, Pullo broke his loyalty to Octavian for the sake of his secret child. Not that Octavian ever found out about that, which makes me happy because Octavian likes to think he knows everything and everyone. And we got to see Pullo and Vorenus camping out one last time, reminiscing and talking about the children, and it was fabulous, and I wanted so very badly for the show to just end, right there. I should have just turned it off.
It didn't end there. The inevitable happened. They ran into a patrol, the boy gave the game away, and fighting ensued, and one thing I love about this show is that Vorenus and Pullo's fighting skills have never, ever been dumbed down. They are a truly formidable duo. But against fellow Romans, equally well trained, outnumbered…it was always a tough one, and I spent the entire skirmish hollering at the screen not to kill them, and then when Vorenus got stabbed started jumping up and down in anguish. "DO NOT KILL LUCIUS VORENUS! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, SHOW? DO NOT KILL LUCIUS VORENUS!"
Damn. Lots and lots of damn. I suppose, really, it was fitting that Vorenus should die. It seems like Vorenus always ends up suffering because of the indiscretions of others. The whole tragedy of his life this season came about because of two indiscretions – the first being Niobe's, of course, and the second Octavian's. Vorenus has never got over Niobe, and was never going to get over her. The most happy ever after that could be expected for him was reconciliation with his children, and I guess the writers felt it would take his imminent demise to achieve that.
We saw at the start of the show that when the town crier announced Antony's defeat, Vorena the Elder looked troubled – as much as she has clung to her hatred for her father for so long, it was clear that somewhere deep down she still loved him and was afraid to think of what might be happening to him, out there at war.
Pullo managed to get Vorenus back to Rome alive, and the fact that he did so at Vorenus's request spoke volumes about their love for one another because really, Rome was the last place in the world Pullo should be taking young Caesarion! But he did it for Vorenus, because his old and faithful friend wanted to see his children one last time before he died, even knowing that they still hated him and would probably never forgive him.
So then when Vorena's heart softened and she let go of her hate to go sit at her father's deathbed, hold his hand and kiss him, with the other children taking their cues from her and coming to stand in the doorway – that was beautiful.
Also the third episode in a row that Pullo has had to sit at the deathbed of a loved one. Where personal tragedy hardened Vorenus, it has mellowed Pullo.
Pullo, at least, got a happy ending, lying to Octavian about having carried out his duty and executed young Caesarion, being given a handsome reward for it – and then going out to meet young Caesarion himself, waiting outside, and the two of them walking off into the crowd together, father and son.
Other stuff: I liked that Octavian went straight to Atia's house on his return from Egypt, to tell her in person of Antony's death. He seemed like he still had a crumb of compassion for his mother, despite everything that he's done. Octavian does have his human moments – and those moments make his sharp-edge all the more acute. So Atia had to grieve quietly for Antony without letting anyone but Octavia see it. And now Octavia and Atia will raise Antony and Cleopatra's children alongside Octavia's daughter, who may or may not be their half-sister. Complicated stuff! The mother-daughter relationship between Atia and Octavia really has blossomed in the second half of this season, as they have become more closely tied together than ever, so very co-dependent. But in a new feud with Octavian's wife, Livia, Atia seems to have found a new reason to go on.
Just a shame we won't get to see it.
I'm still not sure what the point of the Timon sub-plot was, though, since it just kind of petered out rather than ending. Maybe that was something that would have been picked up in a third season, if there had been one.
I'd still love a third season, but not without Vorenus. But maybe I can fool myself that since we never actually saw him die, a miracle might have happened. I mean, he survived all the way from Egypt to Rome with a mortal wound, so having been finally reconciled with his family it would be a shame to waste all that staying power, wouldn't it? Why not just rally and recover, after all?
What? With the show over and done with, a girl can dream…
