He is not Spartacus, actually

[ivyfic]

I have started watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Everyone told me it was bad. And it is. Really, really bad. It's like a porn director got hold of a pulp gladiator script and a big visual effects budget. Or it's like Rob Tappert finally got a show on a channel where he could show naked, oiled, writhing women to his heart's content. (And naked, oiled, writhing men, too.)

I mean what can you really say about a show that, every time it shows a crowd, there's a woman baring her breasts? Where the Vis FX guys use CGI spurts of blood the way the sound designers on Xena used whooshes? Where it has an episode titled "Whore"? And by the way, so amused that Michael Hurst directed that episode (if you don't know who that is, see icon).

I know, I know, I shouldn't nitpick this show because that way lies madness, but no way would anyone mistake Spartacus for Crixus, even with a mask.
1 - Crixus is enormously bigger than Spartacus. He has that I-can't-lower-my-arms-to-my-sides type of build.
2 - Crixus has large, noticeable, recently healed (plot point) scars on his chest and back. Spartacus does not.
3 - Crixus has a scar on the back of his head that is very visible through his hair.

In conclusion, I recognize it would be a bit awkward, when you are presented with a naked, gilded man who is there to service you, to ask the proprietress if this is really the man you asked for, because you thought he'd be bigger. But really.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh oh oh, you got to that episode. Eeeeexxxxxcellllllent.

Spartacus is so full of WTF, and you nitpick the "how could mistake Dougray Scott for Tom Cruise" aspect of one episode. Oh, oh mercy.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Yes, I realize I am complaining about plot holes in my porn. But it was so obvious where they were going with the masks (aside from someone clearly really liked Eyes Wide Shut), and I was just like--wait. Crixus and Spartacus look nothing alike! Nothing!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It was still pretty goddamned awesome. I feel like the show exists so that Lucy Lawless and John Hannah can trade the "I'm the biggest bastard in the world" stick back and forth between them. In any given episode, one of them does something unbelievably underhanded, while the other one, upon discovering this treachery, goes the full-on O.O face. Then the next episode, they swap places. That episode was Lucy Lawless being awesomely evil, and it didn't matter that Spartacus was as like Crixus as he was that crippled guy.

I also loved that as soon as Spartacus and the chick recognized each other, he tried to strangle her. Because, holy God, I would.

[yourlibrarian]

I never got past watching the pilot, but I had a similar reaction to it. I was told it got better but it sounds like it really didn't.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

It does get better than the pilot. Which is not to say good. But the pilot really is just appalling.

[slothshaman.livejournal.com]

If you wish to see the actor who portrays Crixus (no I'm not looking up his worthless name) acting even worse, please by all means see Sinbad and the Minotaur. I wanted to hurl, but I couldn't look away. It was soooooo bad.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

There is a man who was cast for his muscles and nothing else.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You could say that about all the gladiators, methinks. Maybe not Schemeicus, the cripple. Maybe.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

It really does find its legs toward the back half of the season. It's never not chock full of boobies and blood spatters, but I was very pleasantly surprised by how it managed to make me care about most of the characters after such a cartoonish/cliche start.