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I don't know titles like you guys so my memories are more about segments within shows. Thanks to you guys I know I like "Homer the Great" cause I take it that was the one where the conservatives were at their lodge singing "We do, we do." (Patrick Stewart voiced a character in it didn't he?). Also love all the musical parodies. "Monorail!" Also agree with the poster about Lisa becoming a vegetarian. And more to the point, remaining one. As a vegetarian myself it really really gets old all the anti-veggie jokes on every other show on TV so thanks, Simpsons, for being above that stuff. In the same vain I like the way they handle religion on the show. Most shows avoid the topic like the plague. But here it isn't reduced to a fundamentalists vs atheists thing but shows the there are tons more points of view then just those two. I liked Lisa becoming a Buddhist. I like that Ned tries to live up to his faith. And as for the funny, I liked Organ Lady's rendition of In-A-Gada-Da-Vida (thanks, Bart). And shout-out for reminder of the Catholic/Protestant heavens above. I love baseball so I'm a pushover for anything regards my beloved Springfield Isotopes. And when Lisa became the manager of Bart's Little League team and was reading Moneyball and all the sabermetrics manuals. I agree above with people who are all in on the Sideshow Bob episodes. Masterpieces. I like the Mr Burns-centric episodes a lot. The ultimate evil businessman manifested best in a cartoon show. Great stuff. I tend to like episodes that features secondary or tertiary characters I like alot like Mr Burns. Anything with Sideshow Bob, Otto the Bus Driver, Big Tony and Lenny and Carl especially. Weirdly one of my favorite segments wasn't humorous but really touching. Up until this episode Barney was just the town drunk who burped and farted and fell face down and was made fun of. But in this one I believe Lisa enters some independent film contest maybe and a surprise entry that wins (I think, again don't know the episodes like you guys) comes from Barny. Suddenly he's as fleshed out as any real life character. A sensitive soul who, you realize, probably became a drunk because he couldn't handle a world as cruel as ours. It made me view people differently ever since. Where can a show. let alone a cartoon show, have that kind of effect. They did something similar over time with Nelson who goes from one dimensional bully to a kid living a hard scrabble life and hiding his fears and sadness through being a bully. Slowly be becomes more human and more sympathetic. Brilliant. Gee sounds like my favorites aren't as funny as some. But not true. I guess I just ended up mentioning those episodes that tend to challenge the viewer's stereotypes of everything from religion to drunks and bullies. But doing this with humor makes that challenge easier to get through to people with I believe. So shout-out to all of that coupled with the laughs. These writers are both brilliant and funny. Kudos to them and their work over the years and to the regulars who voice 99% of the characters.

That was a really helpful link what with clear pictures of the characters and good but not really spoilerish descriptions in a nutshell. Again, I could have used this at the beginning of the series. Can't tell your players without a roster especially since they do a pretty poor job of introducing them to the audience as others have said. Also thanks HalconDays for the info that Caleb was a real historical person too. I find shows based on real people like this and Vikings (especially Vikings) so much more interesting cause there just seems more weight to them then pure fictional characters. The fact that real people actually lived and did this stuff -- minus the need for "dramatic license" at times obviously -- just hits harder for me I guess.

Excellent post above by ZoqFotPik. Wish I had had a nice roster like that when I was watching the first time. Very handy and helpful. I'll just add Ben stands out as in easy to spot and remember cause he has the only blue regular army uniform among the major revolutionaries you've seen so far. Conn. regular with the spiffy plumed metal helmet. He, Caleb (rebel with beard) and our "main character" Abe are all from the same town of Setauket, Long Island a fairly short row boating away from the Conn. coastline. They appear to have grown up together and are all about the same age. Also should add British Captain Simcoe is worth following. The actor is having a field day with this guy and I love the actor for it. One of the reasons I kept watching the whole season. And Robert Rodgers was quite famous throughout the colonies at the time of the revolution because he had gained a lot of fame as the leader of Rodgers' Rangers in the French and Indian War (first American special ops unit you might call them) more then a decade before. The fact that he chose the British side deprived the rebels of a past "hero" but by this time he already had a serious drinking problem, giant ego and was more into the war for money and personal glory then any cause. All these people I mentioned above except maybe Caleb (don't know about him) were for real human beings and not fictional characters. Though it is historical fiction and can take some liberties -- apparently Abe's father in real history wasn't a tory but writers can't get away form their terrible and boring obsession for father-son conflicts alas -- it does bring a LOT of the real history as well. Also a real historical character ZoqFotPik mentioned above that I didn't mention here is British Major Andre in NY. He is easy to spot cause his digs in NY are far superior to the more rustic ones in Setauket where the British soldiers are quartered in far more modest homes.

Judges got it right. Loved Tinman the best myself but Monkey had the extra pop and good story line so I think it deserved the win contest-wise. I like Sasha and feel sorry she can't say no to the aggressive types she ends up with. The stubborn dude with her this time just wasn't going to listen even to an alpha male which is probably the only type he will listen to in real life so I don't blame her being unable to stop his insanity. Stubborn dude probably has never worked a day in his life or he would know that if the boss says "we want A" and you ignore them and give them "B" instead you are not gonna get pats on the back. Just kicks on the backside out the door. Way not to showcase his talents on this show. Cause this type of profession is servant to the needs and visions of directors, writers and producers and not the other way around. You have to work as creatively as you can within their parameters or just go home and play alone with your personal little "hobby" which is all it will be with that attitude.

This was the punched in the gut episode with Varro's demise. Wish he had survived cause his character was more rounded then most and having a Roman slave, his wife and kid on the run would have been a good, diverse presence in the future slave army. But, alas, he was only created as the plot point to get Spartacus back on track from wanting to be the greatest star of the arena to his original "slavery really sucks" mode. Before that it was funny to see Batianus and Spartacus becoming all best gaming buddies and Asher all pissed off that he got pushed aside. So hard to get respect when you are the evil betrayer guy on a series. Ilithyia -- I call her "ill" for short. Numerius calls her "hot." I think I'm the one that is right.

The Mutiny gang run into trouble with the business end of things and conspire to "hack" a few things to spring Boz loose on probation sooner then later. He joins Mutiny instilling just enough discipline into their operations to actually produce and sell just enough to remain solvent. In return he rediscovers his inner child amonst the geeks and freaks and is happier then any time ever in his life. He remains a mentor/father figure for Cameron and eventually marries the now divorced Donna in the last episode of season 2. Meanwhile Gordon, having clearly sold out with his symbolic beard-shaving last season, now stews in his own juices. He has outlasted them all. He is tops at Cardiff. He has become the establishment he used to hate. He has become more IBM than IBM. He divorces Donna and joins the Rotary and a swank, snooty country club and his children soon can't stand him. He becomes a tragic Shakespearean figure. Joe is never ever heard of again. Or spoken of. Or even remotely remembered. Except by the bear that ate him.

Top three were well-deserved. Thought that Sasha person could have won. Face she did was incredible. Too bad she didn't have time for anything but tights for the legs. If she could take her time she would be totally awesome every week. And I appreciate the lack of overgrown ego with her. The winner was well-deserved but the one thing I still remember days later is the head sculpting Sasha did.

Ditto. As to starship tech being defeated by locals with slingshots? George Lucas had it right originally with the Ewoks which he even said were based on the Vietnam locals defeating the Americans back in the day. Which was a page out of guerrilla warfare period from Mao back to George Washington and Francis Marion. You make the cost effectiveness of the bigger guy too great and sting them enough once they are forced to get down in the bushes for their last "stage" of total conquest with you that they give up eventually. It's easy to roll tanks into a city, much harder to hold it down the years in the back alleys when you as a soldier don't even want to be in that alien place and would rather be at home yourself. The willpower of the people who actually live in a land and have nowhere else to go and no other option but to fight and win or die trying always outlasts the "visiting empires" of history. Whether it is the same generation of generations later, they will still be there and the "conquerors" will be long gone. There will always be a resistance to an alien invader no matter from another country and culture or another planet. Doesn't matter whether the rule is bad or good either by these Goliath states/empires/planets. To semi-quote Gandhi (from poor memory): "People will always prefer the bad rule on their own people over the rule of an alien party."

Hopefully they will have him eaten by a bear and be done with this totally silly, 100% failed character. I'd only watch the show again if they cut him and Mr Whiny Sad Sack and made it about the two women and the cool and funny rogue, buccaneer geeks at Mutiny. Reboot the series totally with that and I'll give it a view. Otherwise the show should be re-entitled Crash and Burn as far as I'm concerned.

Is it wrong to wish for an alternate universe comedy spin-off of Batiatus and Lucretia and their mixed up / messed up attempts at social climbing and hob-nobbling with the snooty upper crust? Kind of Lucy and Ethel and Basil Fawlty along with brothers Frazier and Niles meet ancient Rome. You know. Beds get swapped, people get killed, hilarity ensues. Mira's intro is a little like Varinia's (Jean Simmons) in the 1960 movie. And it kind of parallel's hers a bit briefly.

Good point. I had thought there was no foreshadowing and everything just came out of nowhere on first view. Good pick-up. Having just watched the series downloading the Starz version I could also add that you notice the "little details" like "suggested" endowment on Syfy as opposed to the "literally seen" endowment shown on Starz. I actually like the Syfy editing so far. Enough to get the point across is better then lazy writing porn scenes. And there is more then enough porn-style stuff to edit out without losing the good scenes to the tighter time constraints. So the stuff edited is just porn-style fluff and you don't lose anything remotely important from the episodes this way. This episode and the next really has Spartacus all ego tripping over a weakened Crixus showing the road Spartacus has started down and where he could have ended up if not awakened to what he was becoming in time.

I'd like to be so bold as to offer a suggestion in this thread to the mods here. Since there is so little traffic here on the Spartacus re-watch threads maybe we could condense it into two threads? 1. Unspolied, re-watch thread where people post up through the latest episode broadcast on sci-fi but just make it one thread instead of one of two posts per multiple threads maybe? 2. Also maybe a complete (spolied?) thread for people who have seen the whole series where they can discuss same? Since I've downloaded and watched all but three remaining episodes I so could get into a thread like this. Anyway food for thought. I'd like to discuss some about the whole series but don't see an appropriate thread to post in and don't want to spoil anyone. So option #2 is of interest to me especially. Also in case anyone checks this thread before tomorrow (8/14/14) night and didn't notice? There are two episodes being broadcast -- at 9 PM and 10 PM in a row. Don't know if they are going to do it every week but I think that show that ran before it finished it's run or something.

Yeah. Soon the new phrase won't be "jumping the shark" but "watching Masons" or something like that. Also since I haven't been much into this season or last on a regular basis, someone please tell me where they are suppose to be. Chinatown looked a little like Boston's version so are they finally away from Charleston now? Not that I ever bought they were in Charleston because the geography surrounding the city didn't look anything remotely like South Carolina. I assume they probably film in Canada like a lot of shows these days but they couldn't even be bothered to put in some fake palmettos and film on some flatter land? When were mountains a stone's throw outside of Charleston? Or are these aliens busy terraforming like on that other sci-fi show I quit watching where there were mountains outside of St Louis.

OT: I think its plural as in Arts & Entertainment. As in the fine arts. When they first came on they showed tons of taped Broadway plays, opera, symphonies and the like the first year or so. But, like the History Channel (aside from Vikings there which is great and well written historical fiction coupled with outstanding acting), their names mean nothing these days. Reduced to ducks and ancient aliens for the most part. Hey maybe the "ancient aliens" were the ancestors of modern day ducks. I see a great network crossover in the works. Gotta run and "take" a power lunch with some cable execs before someone steals my idea here.

Loved the birch. They totally owned it. Should have won.

Well I missed this episode. Except I guess i didn't miss anything reading these posts. Glad you all filled me in here so I avoided some of this stuff mentioned that would have annoyed me no end. When I saw that title I thought I accidentally clicked on the Longmire last episode thread instead. So what were the feathers in this episode? Was one stuck inside a skull perchance in a series crossover shout-out? Though I like the idea of alien turkeys better myself. And why not. It would both be more creative and make more logical sense then half the stuff on this show. So this fast grown half-Mason chick is wearing a red dress now? Didn't someone say one of the BSG dudes took over as showrunner. Hmmm ... we got Hera Agathon meets Six now? I knew Six and you are not her, missy. She was cool, actually interesting and sometimes funny especially with Baltar. I add my vote for kulling the herd of Masons running around loose and annoying me no end.

What ketose said in part. But it was kind of an after the fact thing that sealed the deal for there was a reason before that. The reason that led the porn industry to release their videos on VHS to start with. Sony created the Beta format and refused to license the hardware to run it to other manufacturers much like Apple did the same with their hardware. Meanwhile JVC, who created the VHS format, immediately licensed the hardware to play their "format" to their competitors as well as producing their own hardware sharing those hardware profits and making the real profits in the licensing that allowed non-JVC machines to play their "format" itself. The result was tons more hitting the shelf with very competitive prices that were way way lower than a Betamax machine from Sony. Just like PC clones were way cheaper then the Apple line. And just like Microsoft, JVC profited from the explosion of sales numbers of machines that could play their "format" and so cornered the market. In both cases -- Apple and Sony -- their greed to control it and hoard all the profits for themselves did them in. The porn industry simply followed the numbers and since almost everyone was buying the cheaper VHS format over the Betamax that had priced itself into oblivion that is the format they released their "product" on as did Hollywood with more main stream movies as Betamax machine sales collapsed. It took a couple of years for all this to play out and VHS to "win" the format war but it was pretty rapid historically speaking. Beta was technically somewhat better quality but you had to be almost the video equivalent of an audiophile to really see it or even care at their high prices. Probably why your rich Texas relative bought it. It was kind of a brief status thing by people in the videophile world as they turned up their noses at VHS only to end up with an expensive machine that they couldn't play anything on since all the sellable and rentable tapes eventually became 99.9% VHS format over the next few years. Ironically JVC made the "Sony mistake" in their audio cassette department when they didn't license other hardware makers of cassette players to use their technically superior noise reduction system called some alphabet soup name starting with an "H" as I recall. The Dolby people took advantage of that and licensed theirs to everyone and became millionaires. Always found that a bit funny. Hope this wasn't too OT but this could be the last thread for a show that stands in need of cancellation so I thought why not. On topic? Go, Mutiny!

Yeah I've watched this series on and off as it jumps shark after shark after shark. Was fine when it was a small group of guerrillas (2nd Mass) fighting in their own backyard against alien invaders. But it is so over the top at this point with demi-gods, multiple aliens, cross-species and crap like that. Which is bad enough. But pour on the "only the Masons" count and "we got to save our little quickly grown-up semi-anti-messiah-demonic-angelic-weirdo girl who goes around killing in the name of love cause she is family and screw what she just did to a trusting human being just now." Stuff was over the top before they added Bozo the Quick Grow Daughter to the mix. Now it's a homage to the "universal" (cough) theme that it all all about "family" ... only if it is THE family. Cause only they count so it's okay to excuse baby sis for killing Lourdes was it. Wish pony-tail second-in-command and the rogue bad ass guy would just lead everyone off and leave the Masons to their "special" destinies.

Joe's mother is dead. That is why he had the hissy fit with his father. He only learned of her real death after he believed in her false death or whatever it was for years.

Dude shaves his beard and becomes the new (old) IBM symbolically. Also looks silly without his beard. More like some boring guy who works in a cubicle pushing papers all day. Oh wait, that is basically what he is doing now. Just a bigger cubicle. Tall dude ... hope he walks off the cliff. One of the most boring characters I've seen on TV in a long time. Sick of his silly angst like he has the only pain felt in all the wide world. Mommy let me slip on the roof. Boo hoo. Like that the two women are where it is at. Now Mutiny is a company I would love to work at. It might fail in weeks or months but for one golden moment you get treated like a human being and told to go for quality and take pride in what you do. Ever worker's dream but 99% of us are always chained to the capitalistic template of greed is God overseen by people seeking fulfillment in money and "stuff' instead of passion and ideals and visions. Hope the series is cancelled so it ends with the visionaries getting to live their dream, the whining, no risk guy in an empty boardroom with no idea what to do next and the fake hustler off to get eaten by a bear. Now that's what I call a happy ending.

They made it helpful this time but subtitling the series "Washington's Spies" so there is that, hah. Guess Turn is a pretty dumb title when you think about it. Imagine someone scrolling through their live TV channel guide and seeing simply Turn listed. Not a title that makes one want to quickly click over to check out. Of course at this point any title wouldn't make me click over and re-watch the "Abe is a wimpy whiner all season long" snooze fest. They missed totally on what could have been an interesting series by focusing on him and ignoring their interesting characters. Plus I don't much care for the actor playing the lead either. Leads need to have presence. Sorry but this guy puts me to sleep. So good luck to those re-watching the series. You guys have way more patience then me with this series. And stronger eyelids to stay awake through the endless Abe scenes of artificial angst.

I have to admit I've downloaded part of the series and am 3/4 the way through Season 2 (the Spartacus one - not the prequel which I'll look at last probably). But I am watching it too on TV and the contrast between the version on the download and on TV was -- how should be put it delicately -- the difference between R rated and soft porn maybe. I might be the only one online not into porn so I don't really know it's grades all that well. So it was interesting to see how edited the "gladiators gone wild" scene was. I mean really REALLY edited. And the Batiatus has a conversation with Lucretia in the bath while "multi-tasking" shall we call it? In that case it looked like they somehow cropped and magnified the action above the waist whilst deleting the action below it. I guess all these scenes are Hollyoodizing to get ratings (yeah okay, New Zealandizing then). The late Roman republic wasn't full of prudes but it wasn't at this level either. Leave that for a little under a hundred years later when some of the Caesars prove pretty kinky. Also I got to say it was strange to switch back to the original Spartacus actor after watching the second one over the last week. Got to agree the original has more camera presence. Second one is okay but first one is better to me. He is slightly older, more muscled and seems more of a leader on screen. Can't fault the second guy. He is doing the best he can in a difficult situation but my vote is for actor number one. Loved how Batiatus (really got to look up the spelling of this guy's name sometime. I always misspell it no doubt). Anyway, loved how the actor playing Mr B delivered on the scene where he finds out Barca actually was loyal and he got tricked into killing him. Some sort of "well that was a bit unfortunate" line and general annoyance about being tricked and delivery to match. Like when you accidentally spill a drink on your couch cause someone tripped you or something. Nothing more important then he got outfoxed and lost a valuable asset. No regret for killing him, no feeling towards his loyal guy. That actor (looked him up - John Hannah) remains my favorite. He really delivers in his performance. There are villains then there are multilayer, interesting villains. He is one of them thanks in large part to Hannah. And I'm not the type that gets into villains. Glad they got the Surya (sp?) storyline over as far as the endless hope of a real reunion. The way she has been written she is more an obvious plot point and motivating force then a fleshed out character unfortunately. They could have done better with this character but she ended up something out of freshman Writing 101 alas. Got to say one thing here for the whole series so far. Am I the only one that every time someone gets punched in the mouth and a gallon of blood comes flying out in slo-mo -- who knew the people back then carried that much blood in their mouths -- that I'm really disappointed not to see teeth flying too? And a quick cut to the next scene where all the surviving gladiators are sitting around back at Mr B's gumming their gruel? Heh, just asking.

Maybe if it was put back in the active viewing forum since it is currently being broadcast for the first time on a non-premium channel that would help? Cause there are a few of us non-premium channels first time viewers around. It was in the active section the other week which was how I found it. I never ever think to look in the non-active "all listings" sub-forum myself.

Thanks for the trailer. And nice to see John Kavanagh -- the dean of Irish character actors -- is back as the Seer again. Saw him as the inn keeper Thenardier in Les Mis in Dublin some years back. Cool guy.

A public thank you to David T. Cole here returning Vikings to the main forum. I messaged him tonight and he was gracious enough to get the show back onto the main forum listing within minutes.