Tim's TV Talk Podcast, Episode 2: Spartacus Finale Commentary

Here's the second episode of my podcast and the first recorded with a higher-quality mic, so hopefully this one will lead to more enjoyment and less bleeding from your earholes. It's a full hour-long audio commentary for the series finale of Spartacus, "Victory." I let the listener know at the beginning of the podcast when I'm hitting play and when the episode title appears, so syncing up the audio with the episode should be no problem. Full spoilers for the entire series of Spartacus should be assumed, of course, and may our cocks rage on!

Tim's TV Talk Podcast, Episode 2: Spartacus Finale Commentary

Spartacus delivers one of the greatest series finales of all time

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 10 - "Victory"


From day one, Spartacus defied the rules.

We all know the rules of television, even if we don't know we know them. For example, we know that arcs move slowly, with maybe one major change of status quo per season (having two means people will call you "fast-paced"). Spartacus said "That's okay, we'd like our show to move with ferocity and purpose and cataclysmically shatter the status quo about every two or three episodes," and did just that.

We know an "epic" battle by TV standards means about twenty guys on each side (or maybe fifty in the case of Game of Thrones' $12 million extravaganza "Blackwater"). Spartacus decided that wasn't good enough and that they'd like battles that rival those in Lord of the Rings or Braveheart and that, defying finances, logic and maybe even simple physics, they'd like to do them on a shoestring budget with more than one a season, and so it was.

We all know there's supposed to be a couple major character deaths in a TV season at most. Spartacus decided it would like to slaughter over half the cast every season, and slaughter they did.

We all know that a successful show – much less the highest-rated on an entire network, which Spartacus was – is supposed to run on and on until it's squeezed bone-dry and the fire in its belly is but embers. Spartacus decided three main seasons was just right (plus the prequel miniseries Gods of the Arena), because they'd like every season to be completely different from the others and for each to tell a whole and satisfying story with a thunderous climax that leaves you wanting more.

Spartacus excelled above where it was expected and frankly where it was allowed to from day one. Stuck on a third-tier premium cable channel, it said "Fuck it, this is an opportunity!" and became that channel's highest-rated show and flagship property. It attempted and powerfully pulled off a grand, sweeping war epic on a small budget with little star power. It never got 1% the respect it demanded, its passion and energy and sheer, intense visceral pleasure baffling TV critics used to thinking of cable dramas as being something dry and grim and antiheroic.

Where other shows added to or, in the ballsiest cases, bent the unwritten but unmistakably felt and omnipresent TV Drama Rulebook, Spartacus took that damn rulebook and fed it into a shredder.

Where other shows were content to tell stories, Spartacus seared a legend across our TV screens.

So perhaps the only course left for a show that lived to break the rules – a show that lived to shatter expectations and deliver one crazy "HOLY SHIT!" twist after another after another – to break the rules one final time was by breaking its own rules and choosing to more or less align with history in its final hour. For a show that constantly went directions I couldn't have predicted, it's interesting that Spartacus pretty much ends how I figured it would since the beginning of War of the Damned, if not since the beginning of the series.

And this predictable – even predestined – hour was one of the most stirring, marvelous, thrilling, emotional, heart-pounding and heartrending episodes of television I've ever witnessed and easily one of the two or three best series finales in television history.

In this sense it reminds me of Friday Night Lights' "Always," the best series finale ever (and perhaps the only one I've seen that trumps "Victory"), which put an abrupt halt to the plot-heavy nature of the episodes leading into it and let pure, stirring emotion carry it home. Twists are awesome, and Spartacus had dozens, but "Victory" cements the idea that a truly great series finale doesn't need a mind-bending twist and perhaps even actively shouldn't have one. When you reach the end of a terrific story, what counts isn't exploding expectations, but taking it home. And Spartacus took it home masterfully, bloodily and beautifully.

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 10

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 10 - "Victory"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 9

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 9 - "The Dead and the Dying"

Tim's TV Talk Podcast, Episode 1: Talkin' Spartacus

Hey all. As everyone who writes about stuff on the internet is required by law to do at some point, I've decided to take a stab at podcasting. That's right, Tim's TV Talk can now be enjoyed with your ears. Give them eyeballs a rest, baby!

This is my first real attempt at this, so please pardon, one, the relatively low sound quality (the podcast was recorded right into the mic on my laptop), two, my habits of "uh," "well," "you know," and other idiotic stammering, and, three, the fact that it's not up on iTunes' podcast directory or anything yet. You can right click the link below to download and bring it into your iTunes/iPhone if you'd like, of course. If I decide to do more of these in the future, I'll try to get a real mic, get it on iTunes' podcast page, and learn how to speak. So without further ado:

Tim's TV Talk Podcast, Episode 1: Talkin' Spartacus (spoilers from the beginning of Spartacus through season 3 episode 8, "Separate Paths")

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 8

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 8 - "Separate Paths"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 7

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 7 - "Mors Indecepta"

Spartacus goes meta

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 6 - "Spoils of War"

I've reached a point where I feel comfortable calling Spartacus one of my favorite series of all time. But while I've repeatedly explained the many facets of the show's greatness – its pacing, its structure, its depth, its character development, its sheer visceral awesomeness – one thing I've never really called it is clever. Smart, yes, even verging on brilliant in the way it's throwing out all the rules governing TV pacing with a devilish grin on its face. But not clever in the way of a brilliant Harmon-era Community or golden-era Simpsons episode, or some of the more ambitious hours of Buffy or Fringe. Spartacus is for the most part content to be straightforward meat-and-potatoes action-adventure TV storytelling honed to perfection.

But in "Spoils of War," the sixth episode of War of the Damned and fifth-to-last of the series, Spartacus has finally put out a fiendishly clever episode worthy of Steven DeKnight's Buffy roots. Though it never comes right out and announces its meta-ness (there's no Jeff Winger declaring "We're doing a bottle episode!"), make no mistake, this is Spartacus's meta episode, in the way it takes us on a whirlwind backwards tour through the entire series, right back to the beginning.

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 6

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 6 - "Spoils of War"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 5

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 5 - "Blood Brothers"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 4

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 4 - "Decimation"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 3

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 3 - "Men of Honor"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 2

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 2 - "Wolves at the Gate"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 1

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 1 - "Enemies of Rome"

(As a means to share my thoughts on each installment of Spartacus: War of the Damned without having to write full reviews, I've decided to do weekly Spartacus Power Rankings, wherein I outline who blew it, who kicked ass, and whose cock rages on. Spoilers abound, of course.)

Spartacus Returns Big, Bold & Bloody, With a Great New Villain

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 1 - "Enemies of Rome"

If there's one thing I feel a great certainty about, it's that Spartacus – now in its final season, subtitled War of the Damned – is the most underrated show on television.

I could go on and on about how this fucking mind-blowingly kick-ass show has continually refined and bettered itself since its January 2010 debut, making the vast swaths of TV critics who wrote it off after its very first, table-setting episode look increasingly stupid. I could go on and on about its surprising thematic depth in its exploration of freedom and choice and power, or about the fascinating moral questions it raises on a regular basis, or the way it marries an epic scope to intimate concerns in a way that should make damn near all other sweeping genre sagas envious, or its rich, multi-dimensional character development, or about how it can deliver a moment to make you bolt upright and go "HOLY SHIT!" like few other films or TV shows I've damn near ever seen.

I could also appeal to TV fans' love of Joss Whedon and point out that Spartacus boss Steven S. DeKnight honed his writing, producing and directing in various combinations on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Dollhouse over nine years (including writing Buffy's "Seeing Red," by far the most controversial hour of the Buffyverse), and it shows. Spartacus is unmistakably familiar in its season-spanning story arcs, building long-term villains to eventually be satisfyingly defeated, always maintaining tension and conflict among the heroes' makeshift family and never shying away from killing off a character (at a rate that would make famously kill-happy Whedon tremble in fear, I might add).

I could even take the basest road and go on and on about the pure, unadulterated visceral pleasure of its ultraviolence and ultragore and ultranudity, though, recalling much of the criticism I've read of the comparatively gentle, PG-rated Game of Thrones, the milquetoast fucking buzzkill whining about this aspect of Spartacus would probably make me wish I could hit undo and make critics unaware of its existence again.

But for the purposes of not making this introduction to my review of Spartacus' final season premiere, "Enemies of Rome," into a 5,000-word dissertation, I'll whittle the show's greatness down to one core guiding principle: It's the pacing, stupid.

Put simply, this sucker moves. I mean, it really, really moves. It had to hone itself in the first half of its first season, but what emerged was a show as lean, fat-free, and ready for action as its well-oiled cast. There isn't a speck of filler on it. The status quo changes so quickly, storylines are squared away (generally with massive bloodshed) hours before they can even begin to grow stale, climactic arc-ending episodes that any other serialized drama would have saved for their finale are tossed casually into the middle of seasons. This is aggressive, thrilling storytelling.

Let me put it this way: If Game of Thrones was run by Steven DeKnight and his Spartacus writers, everything from the pilot to Blackwater Bay all would have gone down in one season. If The Vampire Diaries was run by DeKnight and company, Klaus would have been dead a year and a half ago. If The Walking Dead was run by DeKnight and company, the season 2 farm arc would have spanned about ten minutes.

I cannot overstate how incredible it is to me that "Enemies of Rome" is only the 30th episode of Spartacus (and, were it not for the prequel, would only be its 24th episode!). Going by the usual standards that govern TV pacing, it feels like 150-200 episodes worth of incident has gone down. This show has established new status quos, burned them to the ground while slaughtering half the cast, rebuilt with brand new settings and status quos, and it's done so again and again. It's fucking dizzying, and breaks all the rules of television in the most spectacular way.

And then, about six months ago, Steven DeKnight made the most ballsy and badass creative decision yet: That War of the Damned, the show's third main season following Blood and Sand, Vengeance, and the prequel miniseries Gods of the Arena, would wrap up the story and conclude the series. I'd be lying if I said the decision didn't upset me, but doesn't burning bright, hot, and quickly reflect the spirit of the Third Serville War itself? Spartacus is the highest-rated show on Starz by orders of magnitude, and DeKnight could have kept this cash cow going ad infinitum, but he's a man with a fucking vision, and that's so rare and so awesome on television.

And that brings us to "Enemies of Rome."

SPARTACUS: WAR OF THE DAMNED News is Upsetting, Also Badass

It's called the "beautiful corpse" theory of television – the idea that the best thing a show can do for its legacy is to burn bright and die young, never facing the fading glory of old age.

It's not a bullshit theory, either. I can tell you right now that I will never as long as I live utter the words "You need to watch the U.S. version of The Office from beginning to end," because absolutely no one needs Nellie Bertram or Robert California in their lives. And this is coming from someone who, as recently as 2007, considered that show to be among the five best on television.

The Office may be the most recent and harrowing example, but the list of shows that could have stamped a stronger mark into history by bowing out a bit sooner is one that goes on and on, from The Simpsons to 24 to Gilmore Girls. Dexter, House, Supernatural, Scrubs, lots of sitcoms. I'm not saying these shows all went full-on necrotic before the end as The Office has, but greatness eventually slipped beyond all their reaches, some of them very, very far beyond.


On the flip side, it's the easiest thing in the world to recommend Arrested Development or Freaks and Geeks or Firefly or Sports Night or Party Down or Terriers to someone looking for good TV to watch, partially because all those series can be blown through in under twenty hours, but more importantly because they all maintained unbroken runs of very high quality from beginning to end.

I of course wailed and gnashed my teeth when Arrested Development was cut down in early 2006, but at the same time, here's a worthwhile thought experiment: If that show had continued on through, say, season eight, to declining comedic results each year, eventually becoming the equivalent of Mitch Hurwitz's 2010 followup series Running Wilde, would its legacy loom quite so deified over the sitcom medium?

Maybe, but, looking at how little I see people talk about The Simpsons these days, maybe not. (And here's where we cross our fingers and pray that Arrested Development's ludicrously-hyped ten-episode fourth season coming to Netflix in a couple years doesn't break our hearts.)

Now mind you, that The Simpsons eventually faded does not undo its peak years being among the very best television ever created, but it does mean that, as with The Office and all those other shows, a recommendation of the show to some bizarre person who's never seen it does need to come with a giant verbal asterisk attached.

I'm not advocating that shows with stuff left in the tank be snatched from showrunners and killed just to make sure that corpse looks as sexy as possible, but I am absolutely saying that sometimes fat-free is the way to go, which brings us to Steven S. DeKnight's Spartacus franchise, recently and rather suddenly announced to be going into its final season, ominously subtitled War of the Damned.


I'll be first to admit that I was 100% taken aback by this news – my best prediction had been that the show was going to go two or even three more years before the final clash between Spartacus and Crassus, but the show's architect not only felt that one season was best, but having that one season be just ten episodes instead of thirteen was the artistic ideal.

My first instincts at having TV's sweatiest, pulpiest, bloodiest pleasure snatched from us so soon of course ran through a slightly bastardized version of the five stages – a flash of anger, a touch of grief – and some of that still lingers. But the more I think on it, the more ballsy and badass it is, and the bigger kudos I give to Starz for letting go their one ratings success exactly when the author deems it right for the story.

The list of things that make Spartacus a magnificent entertainment goes on and on and deserves its own post, which I will indeed be providing before its return, but near the pinnacle of that list, in bright neon letters, is pacing. If you've ever in your life complained while watching a serialized drama that it's moving too slowly or, worse, the dreaded "nothing happens," and you're not watching Spartacus, you're a hypocrite. This sucker moves, forcefully and aggressively. Arcs climax quickly and satisfyingly, heroes and villains clash, characters die, battles are fought, new settings and status quos are established and then torn down in the blink of an eye. The historical event I figured might cap off season four turned out to cap off season two, and it was deliriously fucking awesome.

So it seems fitting that such a breathlessly-paced work should have but three "official" seasons – Blood and Sand, Vengeance, and War of the Damned – and the six-episode prequel season Gods of the Arena constituting the entirety of its bloody, satisfying whole. They have a shitload of history left to get through, and I imagine that the idea for War of the Damned is to one-up Vengeance's having every two or three episodes be a massive, climactic game-changer to having every episode be a massive, climactic game-changer. If I'm even close to right, the collective whole of Spartacus is going to be something I'll be recommending to pretty much everyone with a tolerance for gore who likes awesome and entertaining things, forever.

AMC claims that "Story Matters Here," but we've all seen the way they scrape what should be three-episode arcs on The Walking Dead across entire glacially-paced seasons. Hey, AMC? Starz just fucking schooled you.