Fiddle Fiddle Fiddle
Nov. 30th, 2007 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktooloose***SPOILERS FOR ROME SEASON 2 AND SOPRANOS SEASON 6***
We just finished watching our way through Rome Season 2 which ended the series rather abruptly. What a fucking mess.
The show was beautifully designed and acted and much of the direction was good, but the writing was often fucked up. The writers didn't really understand Roman society or that the values were far different than Anglo-Saxon values.
The basic gimmick of the show was to follow both the famous historical figures (and their less famous friends and relatives) while simultaneously showing us scenes from the "lower orders". The historical stuff ultimately worked much better. This divide became wider and wider in Season 2 as the historical stuff rose a notch (even without the brilliant presence of Ciarán Hinds as Julius Caesar) while the plebian stories descended into historically inaccurate claptrap and melodrama.
The creators, as I understand it, were told about the show's imminent cancellation quite late in production. The last two episodes, in which they attempted to cram a lot of shit in too quickly, were ridiculous and often hilarious.
Lucius Vorenus has run away from Alexandria with Cleopatra and Anthony's son Cesarion because Octavian wants him dead. Octavian sends Titus Pullo out to find him, not knowing that Pullo is actually Cesarion's father and will attempt to aid the escape.
First night in the desert, Vorenus and Cesarion are bonding around a campfire when suddenly Pullo shows up and there's a big "Hey, friend, how you doing?" Pullo goes on to say that 10 legions are looking for the boy. Wow, and yet Pullo found them in like 12 hours in the middle of the desert. Impressive. Even more astonishing that Vorenus wasn't, like, hiding at all and allowed a man on horseback to get within 10 meters of them before he noticed. Let's not even talk about the open campfire.
The other big problem in the season was the casting of Cleopatra. The actress had no chemistry at all with James Purefoy who played Anthony in the season's best performance. This lack of chemistry sunk the whole ending.
In the long run, this show needed a sense of otherness that was mostly absent. To really be drawn in as viewers, we needed to see how differently Romans thought and felt about issues than we in the 21st Century do. It is by doing the work of seeing through this otherness that the viewer becomes involved and empathizes at a deeper and more disturbing level.
As I watched the utterly predictable death of Gaia, I found myself comparing it to the death of Christopher on the Sopranos. The latter death was horrifying. It was unexpected and yet inevitable. It threw a wall between us and Tony and, disturbingly, made us culpable as we wondered if he'd get away with it. It was impulsive, brutal and so, so simple and underplayed.
It was "otherness" personified. Our time in the Sopranos' New Jersey gave us a sense of travelling farther from our centre than Rome's world ever did. Rome was a tragic waste of talent and resources.
We just finished watching our way through Rome Season 2 which ended the series rather abruptly. What a fucking mess.
The show was beautifully designed and acted and much of the direction was good, but the writing was often fucked up. The writers didn't really understand Roman society or that the values were far different than Anglo-Saxon values.
The basic gimmick of the show was to follow both the famous historical figures (and their less famous friends and relatives) while simultaneously showing us scenes from the "lower orders". The historical stuff ultimately worked much better. This divide became wider and wider in Season 2 as the historical stuff rose a notch (even without the brilliant presence of Ciarán Hinds as Julius Caesar) while the plebian stories descended into historically inaccurate claptrap and melodrama.
The creators, as I understand it, were told about the show's imminent cancellation quite late in production. The last two episodes, in which they attempted to cram a lot of shit in too quickly, were ridiculous and often hilarious.
Lucius Vorenus has run away from Alexandria with Cleopatra and Anthony's son Cesarion because Octavian wants him dead. Octavian sends Titus Pullo out to find him, not knowing that Pullo is actually Cesarion's father and will attempt to aid the escape.
First night in the desert, Vorenus and Cesarion are bonding around a campfire when suddenly Pullo shows up and there's a big "Hey, friend, how you doing?" Pullo goes on to say that 10 legions are looking for the boy. Wow, and yet Pullo found them in like 12 hours in the middle of the desert. Impressive. Even more astonishing that Vorenus wasn't, like, hiding at all and allowed a man on horseback to get within 10 meters of them before he noticed. Let's not even talk about the open campfire.
The other big problem in the season was the casting of Cleopatra. The actress had no chemistry at all with James Purefoy who played Anthony in the season's best performance. This lack of chemistry sunk the whole ending.
In the long run, this show needed a sense of otherness that was mostly absent. To really be drawn in as viewers, we needed to see how differently Romans thought and felt about issues than we in the 21st Century do. It is by doing the work of seeing through this otherness that the viewer becomes involved and empathizes at a deeper and more disturbing level.
As I watched the utterly predictable death of Gaia, I found myself comparing it to the death of Christopher on the Sopranos. The latter death was horrifying. It was unexpected and yet inevitable. It threw a wall between us and Tony and, disturbingly, made us culpable as we wondered if he'd get away with it. It was impulsive, brutal and so, so simple and underplayed.
It was "otherness" personified. Our time in the Sopranos' New Jersey gave us a sense of travelling farther from our centre than Rome's world ever did. Rome was a tragic waste of talent and resources.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-01 03:37 am (UTC)http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/11/30/4697921-cp.html