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^ Yep. That's where next week starts.
Reminder re-cap thingie of last Blood and Sand episode in case this helps some getting ready this season. I'll maybe move it from this thread and put in into the first episode of Vengeance (this season's sub-title) when that opens. So where we left them:
1. Spartacus, Crixus, Agron and Oenomaus are all safely alive and well after the ludus revolt. But Agron's kid brother, Duro, was killed in the fight early on.
2. Not so safe and alive is Batiatus who was shown dead, killed by Spartacus. And Lucretia is severely wounded (she was barely moving her fingers across her husband's dead hand when last we saw her) and lying in a pool of blood.
3. Ilithyia has made her happy departure from the ludus escaping the massacre by seconds and helping the massacre along as well as she locks the door behind her trapping the others inside. This was done cause she was rather pissed off that Lucretia and Batiatus were blackmailing her over killing the rich and powerful senator Crassus' niece. Her husband, Glaber, was away from Capua at the time and so is very much alive as well.
4. Earlier in the episode, Crixus' love, Naevia was first given to Ashur then taken away to be re-sold or something which was what finally got Crixus off his endless "I wanna be champion again " mantra and onto the "Hey I'm pissed at what they did to Naevia" one pushing him over to Spartacus' pov regards the revolt itself. Naevia's fate is unknown.
5. Oenomaus was personally conflicted but in the end too loyal to his gladiator brothers to try and stop the revolt especially when he finally found a clue or two that the house wasn't as "honorable" as he thought it was. (Barca's real fate at the hands of Batiatus and Ashur's crap).
6. Speaking of which, Ashur is still alive and skulking around in hiding after he escaped the Doctore's wrath by trickery then hiding under a dead body.
But despite the prequel in the middle of all this it is still better to see it before this season as the producers intended then when I downloaded all these episodes this summer and watched Gods of the Arena last cause I got the mistaken impression it was just going to be about how the gladiators got to the ludus years before and not set in the ludus or having any real tie in with moving forward with the revolt or even having Batiatus and all in it. I was totally wrong.
So I saw Vengeance right after Blood and Sand. It will be so much better for first time viewers to see it this way instead. The way it was meant to be viewed. Looking forward to seeing it in it's proper sequence now so I get the full effect better.
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Unspoiled and ready to watch. Way gone are the days of the far better old school TAR Classic with FF on every leg and awesome locations and 24 hour bus trips away from their fly in or fly out points. And the era with no artificial stupid stuff to slow down other teams like U-Turns etc which lead to silly soap opera garbage. More the feel of grand adventure back then.
And I miss the bonding in pitstops and helping one another at times. It truly was the A-M-A-Z-I-N-G race back then. (I hate, despise and detest the "racccceeee" crap that reduces it to just that, just another -- yawn -- race).
But despite it having moved years ago into it's dumbed-down, more like every other reality TV show, it still does at least remain a step ahead of them. Just wish TAR producers would watch the current Face Off to see and remember how cooler old school was with people cooperating while still competing. It can be done and it can be competitive and at the same time heart warming.
Well unspoiled like I say. Except when I saw above the first destination of the Virgin Islands. That sounds boring actually. Some nice scenery and physical challenges no doubt but not too interesting or exotic in culture etc. Yeah I know they have visited almost every world icon that is in a safe location and all but the Caribbean just seems like a ho hum start to this season. Hopefully the cast will make up for the easy first location.
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Gan-ni-cus! Gan-ni-cus! Gan-ni-cus! Love the dude. My favorite character of the series. Loved how he both saved Crixus' life from the last Team Solonius gladiator and pushed him outside the ring of fire to save Crixus from him in the end. Double live-saver for Crixus cause no way was Gannicus gonna lose that day of days.
And he wanted so bad to confess to Oenomaus several times including the very end especially but realized by lifting a burden from himself he would give a greater burden to his best friend. Also the self-sacrifice he made losing to Crixus earlier in the last episode so he could be sent far away for Doctore's sake. Dude is totally on a guilt trip now yet he showed himself a truly honorable man. In the end it was Melitta who made the ultimate move on him. And she had tried hard to resist too. All three people were decent folk caught up in an impossible situation.
On to fun stuff. Enjoyed seeing Tullius getting his comeuppance with more stab wounds at the end then Julius Caesar would ever get a few decades down the road. And especially how he became part of his precious arena. Edgar Allen Poe would be proud of Batiatus.
Batiatus' rah-rah speech to his gladiators before the final event complete with rising music in the background was both awesome and hilarious at once. "Win one for the Gipper ... err ... House Batiatus!"
Loved all the Batiatus and Lucretia stuff in the VIP box in the arena scenes. John Hannah and Lucy Lawless worked so well together through these two seasons and this was the icing on the cake.
Enjoyed that they kept Solonius as an ally while taking out Tullius but Mr B pushed Mr S just a tad too far finally thus explaining how the two BFF had become enemies in Season 1.
I still prefer Crixus with the long hair and beard. It just suits his personality better than some weird close-to-modern-day look. And speaking of him we finally see why he cut Ashur's leg up pretty good in the arena. Though it was pretty funny when Ashur decided to backstab Dagon literally. (Well not funny for Dagon). And Solonius is laughing about Baitiatus' men killing each other followed by Crixus crippling Ashur and Batiatus' reation shots to all that.
Not only did the Ashur as half-crippled creature get resolved but the sad prequeal shoutout foreshadowing when in the last scene Barca says someday he will gain his freedom too and Gannicus says he is sure of it.
Next week back to the main storyline and the new actor, Liam, taking on the daunting task of replacing Andy.
Also yes the point of the series was to re-tell the story of Spartacus and the slave revolt. But honestly the series cannot be but a bit of a letdown without John Hannah's Batiatus in the middle of things. He was totally awesome on this show.
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^ Being sent to the mines meant to work in the mines the rest of your life as a slave hauling rock and dirt in the dark and the dust. Backbreaking work in a hellish place with no chance of ever earning your freedom.
Yeah I liked that Batiatus and Lucretia were given that one touching moment where they were real human beings who loved one another and he was willing to give up everything he struggled and connived for for his wife. Always great when villains aren't two dimensional. Batiatus telling his father no took some courage from the little bugger. His finest moment of the show.
And it was a thing that kept the audience off balance as did the fact that he didn't play whack-a-head with the timber he picked up. And Lucretia's hots for Crixus didn't exactly start out as lust at first sight which was another minor surprise.
I have no problem with the Gannaicus/Melitta storyline other than obviously the tragic nature of it. It just shows how hard things were if you were slaves on top of the other complications of life. And it always struck me that both of them kept trying to fight against their desires for Doctore's sake. Very human situation in a very inhuman time.
Oh Ashur did you know your best buddy Dagon is sort of pissed at you after you offered him up as fresh meat to the kinky Roman? Won't let you win fair and square at the ludus in house challenge. Well. just win fair and unsquare. I'm sure Dagon doesn't mind losing his eye to help you out ... not.
Farewell, Titus. You overstayed your welcome in House Batiatus: The Next Generation.
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Sorry to see Nadiya gone. Enjoyed her and her sister on TAR. And she wasn't hateful to Josh. Just clueless. And he realized that and let it pass so no reason to be upset if he isn't upset. She will learn from all of this so no harm, no foul. Especially since she obviously liked him. No hate = no bigotry. End of story.
Don't like "Islands" of any type in Survivor. And didn't like blood/water crap last season. Doesn't look like a good season coming up. Too bad cause the Boston couple are cool and so is the father at least from Louisiana. Some of the usual mactor crap - the brothers and Michigan co-ed couple look the type too. And Rocker is obviously a fame whore with the poster child for a cheap looking trophy wife. Also he was the one with the real prejudices, not Nadiya.
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Utopia Tuesday night ratings are down compared to last Tuesday, continuing to hemorrhage viewers against new content on ABC/CBS/NBC -- ratings dropped 20% from 1.0 to 0.8, share remained at 3, total viewers dropped around 24% from 2.5 million to 1.9 million.
I can't wait until they are the first show ever to draw an audience in the negative numbers. Die, show, die!
Wish the fanboys and fangirls would stop visiting this zoo and feeding the animals (aka alleged humans) just so that they get their 5 seconds on national TV. I know way more than half of them are there with hopes to get "discovered" for this show or some other reality TV show. That's just sad.
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Man was that terrible. Won't watch it again. So over the top "hurray for New Orleans it is so special" that I never want to set foot in that city ever. Way NOT to sell a city. Their board of tourism should sue this show.
The younger, action-type dude and the doc were fine. The midwesterner, who seems to be there only to learn the ways of her betters from New Orleans, had nothing to do but look impressed by all she beheld. The lead and the token geek were both horrible, over the top characters badly played. Man this show makes NCIS LA look good by comparison cause at least they have Linda Hunt.
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BTW, as kennyab also noticed, why didn't Benjamin Franklin have a British accent? Remember, "we were all British then".
History nerd here. The modern day British accent that we think of didn't exist back then. The English then sounded closer to modern day American accents particular those from the Chesapeake Bay area and the NC Piedmont regions. (Think nasal mixed in with a long "o" sound). Linguists often use the elderly evangelist Billy Graham as the poster boy for the closest we have in this century to what King George III would have sounded like. The modern English accent we know had not appeared yet. It was slowly getting there since the great vowel shift in England was in it's finally phase. But it had not been polished off as yet to what we think of an English accent these days.
Language is a very fluid thing and apparently it seems to change far more in the homeland of origin of a language then in "language colonies" like America where it tends to freeze more in place. For instance, if you listen to English actors in movies from the 30's and 40's compared to today's the difference is far greater than in their American counterparts. Though in both cases it changes obviously, just to different degrees.
Liked the premiere. As a history nerd I got to let the Ichabod timeline of impossibilities regards the Revolutionary War and his appearance in it (and before it - Franklin's kite, Boston tea party) etc go. I just take it is an "inside joke" on the show now. And Franklin certainly was a bit full of himself as well as America's number one party animal of the era chasing the women (and landing them often) way into his 80's.
I tune in for the quirky humor mixed with the improbable history and mangled-up meta end of days silliness. And the wit and clever stuff between Crane and the Mills' sisters. Love the memory error thing. Can't get enough of Headless going around blowing things up. And now he has his own little lair where he chills like the phantom of the opera or something. Too funny. Also funny he has more personality headless than with a head. Loved Jenny taking care of business. Great clever dialog even in the hallucination about the birthday cupcake.
Just got to get rid of boring, useless and what a drag witch lady and bring back the head law dudes (both - the living one and the dead one) and keep Andy the Reluctant Demon around and show would be perfect.
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Since Utopia is a lead-in show twice a week it certainly could be cancelled sooner than later if it remains the drek of humanity show that it currently is with very little humanity even watching it. It effects the ratings for the whole Fox schedule those nights. And networks always have a reserve of standby material cause shows get cancelled all the time.
Also this show is becoming the laughing stock of the early fall season which means Fox has already lost face. Add in the fact that sponsors will bail on advertising on a show that no one watches thus no revenue for Fox which is their whole point in broadcasting anything from their pov. Writing is on the wall.
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Seems to me if you sign up to be on a show where you have to be away from family for a year, then you understand what you signed up for.
As to food rationing, grown men doing physical labor require more calories than smaller women.
Except that Aaron serves himself the most and he isn't exactly doing any really heavy heavy work. Kristen also is fed by Aaron and she does nothing but flatter him. The people that are short changed the most are the ones on Aaron's s**tlist.
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Speaking of the cussing: I hear them saying "fricking" a lot and I'm assuming that that's their favorite cuss word. Is "fricking" a substitute for "fucking" in the SyFy series? Did they have that word in their vocabulary way back then?
Yeah I downloaded the original broadcast and "fricking" overlaid all the "fucking" from the starz broadcast. I think the f-bomb comes from maybe medieval or Renaissance England or slightly later. But I'm sure the Romans had several versions of it's equivalent in Latin. But the series isn't in Latin so English F words of various degrees are used instead.
The Romans tended to be pretty earthy folks and not just in speech. If you have seen some of what has been preserved of their wall graffiti, it is full of some rather raw stuff too.
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I wouldn't call it rape since that implies Gannicus had a choice in the manner which he didn't. Both were victims. And both seemingly had some feelings for each other before this but have tried their best to do right by Oenomaus. It was hard before and now the kinky Varis (guess you could call him the "remote rapist") makes things much much worse for them all.
This whole episode was hard to watch. At least SyFy cut out about 9/10 of the disgusting stuff that happened to the poor young girl friend of Naevdia (sp?, too tired to look it up right now). That was heart-breaking.
I didn't foresee Tullius going crazed killer because his former flame from this youth was trying to help House Batiatus out. Gaia wasn't the mostly saintly person ever but she certainly was a big step above Ilythia and certainly didn't deserve that fate. And, Tullius, you just don't have to deal with Baitiatus. Lucretia is now very very deeply all in on Batiiatus' desire to see you brought low too.
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The paterfamilias under Roman law, not just tradition alone, was the absolute ruler of the extended family. Period. So hey, Batiatus. Who'd your daddy now?
ElleryAnne, great point about Batiatus looking like a teenager before his father (Titus I think his name is maybe). Batiatus is so grounded. Except we all know he just can't stay grounded for long.
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FYI, utopia has a channel on youtube. search for utopia tv usa
lots of videos, and two live camera streams from utopia. somewhere I saw that the 2 live feeds would be available until 30 September.
might be interesting to see some live stuff from the open house saturday
Thanks for the info. I bet these will be a highly edited feeds selection. Probably live editing to cameras showing something they think remotely follows their script. Maybe the "live" bit will be on 10 t o15 second delays for quick cutaways too. Yes, I am that cynical about the show. But going to this free stuff shows how desperate they are to try to get anyone to watch their failing show. And I bet a lot of the people who paid to see live feeds want their money back at this moment.
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I can't help but feel soryr for some of them, too. Part of me wonders what would happen if they threw in a rational, normal human being as the next replacement. But, as we saw with Rhonda, they will not vote in a rational, normal human being.
Forgive me, but what is this "Jokers" thing people keep talking about?
They would never ever cast a "normal" human being. These producer idiots forget you need, as another poster pointed out, an "everyman" or two to identify with on these shows. Everyone is looking to find someone, anyone to remotely "like" on this show. Thus Josh gets forgiven quickly as he seems to be the only real hard worker. Then Hex is forgiven too cause she seems nice and caring. Then they do something and they go down again in the eyes of viewers like Hex insisting on drinking when she know she shouldn't or Josh passing off Aaron's crap.
All of a sudden Amanda is no longer stirring the pot but going after the truth so she suddenly is okay right now. Until she is found stirring the pot in the future. Red has suddenly seemed nice compared to what people thought of him early on. Until he doesn't something whacko again in the future.
All these people are so badly flawed that I refuse to invest in liking any of them. In the end they will all disappoint.
As for Jokers other people will it explain it better. I remember hearing about it years ago at the birth of the whole new at the time live feeds with the first season of Big Brother. Think it is a message board where live feed watchers share their observations and people not watching them and want to read their re-caps gather. Guess they added a forum for this show.
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Another fantasyland version of what the producers want viewers to believe is going on in the compound. Reality is so unreal in the TV version. Anyone can see or read about what is really happening in this media age so why lie so much. "Pioneers" my a**hole. Romance? More like sex addicts humping 24/7.
Funny how the two "guests" that have paid to come into the compound are people who watch the live feeds and know for real what is going on there. Because most of the people in the compound are being manipulated by Aaron up to the point we saw on tonight's TV show and they are clueless. (I think the rule here is live feeds aren't spoilers once the TV timeline catches up to those feeds. Correct me if I'm wrong). But they don't even know it. Mike is mailing it in at this point. Bella can't confront a fruit fly. And Bri is too busy embarrassing her family with her animal abuse through massive neglect and incompetence (which they glossed over totally on the TV version) and endless copulating for all to see on the national live feeds.
Funny how obvious they made it Red didn't kill the deer. They didn't show any of it on live feeds so you only have the TV camera work outside the compound as they term it. He comes up on it within a few feet dramatically wearing cameo (which came from where???) and since the deer are so tame in that area I'm surprised he didn't pet it first. Then close-up of bow being pulled. Then black. Then Red at the gate with a dead deer on his back. Yeah sure.
Next Friday The Amazing Race saves me from this producer-scripted drek.
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^ Excellent summary re-cap in the spoiler area. Thanks, ottoDbusdriver. (One of my most favorites characters on The Simpsons).
You would think the more they lie about non-interference the more they dig a deeper and deeper hole for themselves. Yeah this guy probably signed a contract that said he had to lie for him or else but still pretty silly in the age of social media with them promoting live feed viewing besides. Live feed viewing comments go into social media cauldron and come out in all sorts of traditional media afterwards besides. Just makes them look like fools.
Interesting, I never thought of him as Pringles guy. I think of him as looking like a kinky, online predator who is into steam punk on the side. Kinky Predator Steam Punk Guy for short. But at least I'm glad he didn't throw in an evil clown look on top of it all. He has that going for him anyway.
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Not to mention, Thomas More would be the most likely to last all twelves months in the televised "Utopia" show. You know why? Because he was a man for all seasons.
Thank you, I'll be here all week! Be sure to tip your veal, and remember to try your waitress! :)
LOL, good one!!
Afraid I'll have to tip you with some hemp bracelets and/or hip bracers instead. See Red, he will fix you up.
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Since the US version is mirroring the Netherlands one I predict the next production intervention will be the accountant intervention. What idiots they cast in both countries.
I do like the look of the fireplace above. I can't see them building one here and so look forward to frozen bodies in the US. Not that southern California gets that cold by comparison.
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^ Cool, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference two posts up.
I like how future DA Mike likes to let everything slip. "Vote for me and there will be a meth lab in every home."
Amanda is asking what they would do if given $5000 more dollars in start-up funds?!?! Does she think the producers will be doing that. If they do let them off the hook like that can we spray Raid inside their master control room?
Kristen wants to go on another reality show. Why does this not surprise me.
And Hex and Taylor want to go on a non-garbage reality show, aka The Amazing Race? Just no. Fortunately this show is on Fox so CBS won't force the Race producers to cast anyone from here like they do their fellow CBS show contestants from Survivor and Big Brother. Sorry, wanna be fame whores, you chose a loser show on the competition's network. No way you will "grace" Namibia with your presence in the near future.
Wonder why Bella is moved up ahead of Bri as the next three-day dictator. Better TV? The feeling that she is melting down so fast that they better max their use of her before they come and slap a straight jacket on her and/or aliens abduct her or she accidentally blows herself up when she tries to blow up one cloud too many with her cloud-bursting eyes?
Thanks again for the excellent re-cap, Zahdii.
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An interesting tidbit extracted from the Wired article:
Utopia, like utopias, was never meant to work. (first line of the article)
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Kroll’s contribution to the show is manifold. The veteran reality and documentary producer has worked on both sci-fi and social reality projects, but he also is the only showrunner to have some experience in utopia-making. From age eight to 18, Kroll and his family lived on a commune (turned tourist farm) in northern California called Oz, an insular environment in which he witnessed firsthand why paradises like Thomas More’s are nowhere near as feasible as, say, Aldous Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World.
I wish these online writers would be more clear in what they write. Thomas More's wasn't some real experiment. It was an early version of a social reform style novel with Utopia serving as a fictional contrast to point out the failings and hypocrisy in the real society of his day. He knew such a society could never really exist thus the title "Utopia" in the first place which literally means "nowhere." To have that term applied to failed social experiments down the years grates on me. One of many pet peeves I have.
But the main thing here is that his fictional Utopia had plenty of laws and a ruling king and standing army etc and wasn't some "do your own thing" commune like country. It did hold material goods of little value and somewhat in common as a result but the idea was that the Utopians thought the accumulation of material "stuff" was a silly concept for human beings to have. Thus the poke at his own society's greed. But you can't have even a fictional Utopia without laws and rulers and such. Much less a real one.
Sorry for the rant but Thomas More is one of the people I admire most in history and I hate when junky stuff like this show steals the name of his most famous book as well as how the term has been twisted into something it was never intended to be by modern society in general. (Rant, grumble, mumble. grrr).
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Thanks for the posts, Marco. Much appreciated.
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electric stoves often use 220/240
Yes and the line feed in from the street is tapped in the center using it as ground (stuff I edited out above cause of the techno-babble ... sorry, guess I should have kept it in) so it is only 120 volts. But the feed itself is 240 volts. Again there is only one single electric line into any house.
All appliances run off of this voltage in. How a junction box is wired as well as a step up (or step down) transformer and it's supporting circuitry on the power board inside an appliance takes the one feed and changes it as needed. Otherwise 120 volts would fry this computer that runs on 15 volts to the mother board like most workstation computers do.
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I know, right? Cause you've already gone through the trouble of getting electricity up to the human barn, now let's run gas lines? My knowledge is limited in this area, but the amps/voltage needed for a stove is probably different than what you would need for Mike's hair dryer so maybe it does make some sense.
The line voltage from the power company is the same for everything in your home.
Goggling an explanation is easier and I'm lazy.
"In North America ... (cutting formulae and center tapping explanations) ... The actual measured voltage in your house receptacle circuits will normally be 110 to 120 volts. All appliances are rated for the minimum operating voltage (110-115). "
I do wonder if it was production that made them run the gas line though. Maybe the intent was they would use gas heat in the winter eventually? Haha, like they would last until winter.
Utopia in the Media
in Utopia (US) [V]
Hope The Amazing Race is the final nail in the coffin of this crap show. I'm totally out of ever watching it on TV again. I will NOT help enable this Craptopia to last with viewing the TV version live, taped or in my nightmares. Maybe read some live feed stuff now and again for the snark but even what happens in those seems both more dull and disgusting then anything else at this point.
BTW ProfCrash, the premiere of The Amazing Race usually runs commercial free for the first 20 minutes or so just like they do with Survivor. It's the CBS way to "hook" the first time viewer in long enough to land them