From the category archives:

TV: Spartacus

Spartacus: Vengeance #2: “A Place in This World”

February 5, 2012
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus. The second episode of Spartacus: Vengeance plays to one of the show’s greatest strengths. Besides fascinating character drama, sex, violence, manipulation, and political maneuvers (which this episode also has in spades), the show is also often at its best when it is subverting [...]

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Spartacus: Vengeance #1: “Fugitivus”

February 3, 2012
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus. The scene: A Roman brothel. The camera pans from a female prostitute taking a man from behind with a large dildo to a male whore going down on a male client to four men violently fucking a female whore. The overweight male head [...]

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Why You Should Watch Spartacus: Blood and Sand

April 5, 2011
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Today, I had the honor and pleasure to write a guest blog post for one of my favorite websites, Pornokitsch, which is devoted to the best in geekery. This week, they are running a V Days of Rome celebration about all things Ancient Rome, so if you are at all interested in the topic, you [...]

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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena #6: “The Bitter End”

March 1, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena. The final episode of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena is a brilliant mixture of hope and doom. At first, I was expecting a gorgeously bleak bloodbath akin to that which ended the first season of [...]

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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena #5: “Reckoning”

February 20, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena, including the most recent, “Reckoning.” I’m going to have to try my very hardest to not make this entire review a fawning, babbling ode to the brilliance that is Lucy Lawless, because wow, after the end [...]

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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena #4: “Beneath the Mask”

February 13, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena, including the most recent, “Beneath the Mask.” In last week’s episode of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, a female audience member, overzealous in her cheering, fell into the pit, and had to be swiftly pulled back [...]

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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena #3: “Paterfamilias”

February 5, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena, including the most recent, “Paterfamilias.” “Paterfamilias” is an interesting title for the third episode of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, because the Latin phrase itself has a number of different, albeit related, implications. It can mean “father [...]

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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena #2: “Missio”

February 2, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena, including the most recent, “Missio.” A second week of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena brings us more of the sex, violence, decadence, and emotional manipulation we’ve come to expect from Blood and Sand and the first episode [...]

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Spartacus: Gods of the Arena #1: “Past Transgressions”

January 26, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena, including the most recent, “Past Transgressions.” Spartacus: Blood and Sand was one of the biggest surprises of the past television year. Starting out as an ultraviolent, ultrasexualized graphic novel brought to life, it soon evolved [...]

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Spartacus: Blood and Sand #13: “Kill Them All”

April 18, 2010
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for the entire first season of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. The final episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand‘s first season, fittingly entitled “Kill Them All,” is an opera of blood, a symphony of gore, a crescendo of carnage.  For a good half hour after watching this grisly magnum opus, I [...]

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