The Series Wasn't Built in a Day (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "The Stolen Eagle"
Original Air Date: August 25, 2005
Grade: C

There is perhaps no hoarier cliche when talking about television than, "Pilots are hard." It's accurate, of course, but that doesn't make the sentiment any less obvious or any more insightful.

So, forgive me then: pilots are hard. And Rome is a truly outstanding example of that particular sentiment.

Things start off poorly, with a voiceover providing what must have seemed like crucial exposition. "Rome rules a lot of nations! But it can't rule itself! Nobles don't like poor people and poor people don't like nobles! Here are Caesar and Pompey!" It's all terribly dull, and in that respect sets a perfect tone for what follows.

We start this series, as we should start every series, with a battle scene, and while it's obviously handicapped by budgetary concerns (we see about seven Romans and maybe a dozen Gauls), it's a nice way of providing insight into our main characters, Titus Pollo (Ray Stevenson) and Lucius Vorenus (the well-traveled Kevin McKidd). The discipline and skill of the Romans is well-displayed here, and Pollo breaking formation is treated with the appropriate seriousness.

After this, however, the episode degenerates. There's a lot that goes wrong here, but the chief sin is that it's dull.

Oh, things happen, and it's easy enough to see how they will become more interesting in the future. Caesar (Ciaran Hinds) accepts the surrender of the Celt chieftain Vercingetorix, then finds out that his daughter Julia, who is married to his ally and co-consul Pompey (Kenneth Cranham), has died in child birth. Caesar's first reaction to this news is to try and find another member of the Julii clan to marry Pompey and keep the consular alliance strong.

Meanwhile, his relative Atia (Polly Walker), who, in traditional HBO fashion, we are introduced to in the middle of a sex scene, conscripts her son Octavian (played with admirable sullenness by Max Pirkis) to take a beautiful horse to Caesar in Gaul and good lord we're 10 minutes in and I'm already bored.

There are elements of this episode that work. When Caesar's eagle standard is stolen by a couple of "Spaniards" who are painted blue, the legion reacts with appropriate ferocity. Vorenus is given the task of retrieving the standard, and starts by crucifying a member of every tribe in the area. It's an effective scene, and McKidd plays it just right: efficient, mechanical, ruthless without being ostentatiously cruel.

Vorenus and Pollo (who was thrown in prison and sentenced to death for breaking formation, only to be sprung by Vorenus in order to help search for the standard) search fruitlessly for a while. During one of the breaks, Pollo has is made to explicitly lay out his entire character motivation, saying, "Kill my enemy, steal his gold, take his women. What else is there?"

The two find the standard...when they find Octavian, who was captured during his trip by what we assumed were Gauls. What follows is probably the worst scene in the episode. Octavian immediately spells out, in tedious detail, exactly what is happening. See, Caesar doesn't care about the standard. Caesar knows Pompey cares and will consider the theft a sign of weakness. This will tempt Pompey to strike first, which gives Caesar the moral high ground to fight back.

Oh, and it turns out Pompey sent some of his slaves to steal the standard. Caesar discovers this and is overjoyed, as it plays right into his hands.

We are supposed to be impressed by Octavian's intelligence and insight, but this comes off far less as the explanation of a politically shrewd observer and more as a writer's device for spelling out the plot.

There are some other elements to this episode, which I'll briefly discuss in the notes. However, "The Stolen Eagle" illustrates exactly why pilots are so difficult. You have to introduce your audience to your characters, your stories and your world, and you have one episode in which to do it. Corners are cut on character development, and so you're left with Pollo baldly explaining his mentality and Octavian getting an unrealistic, unearned moment of brilliance in place of actual, demonstrated intelligence.

The pilot episode of Rome falls short on just about every front. It was, perhaps, a necessity for a show set in as large and complicated a world as ancient Rome. But it simply is not an entertaining hour of television.

Notes

• The other significant storyline here is Atia convincing her daughter Octavia to divorce her husband and marry Pompey. Octavia is adamantly opposed, and is then convinced with 20 seconds of persuasion.
• The scene where Atia introduces Octavia and Pompey is utterly creepy in all the right ways. Octavia's makeup and hair look utterly clownish, and Atia explicitly whores out her daughter ("You can take your groom's right immediately. Right now, if you wish.").
• Of course, it's all meaningless, as Pompey ends up marrying another noblewoman. Turns out he decided to turn on Caesar the moment Julia died. Octavia shouts for Pompey's head, which is an amusingly severe and quick shift in personality.
• An imprisoned Pollo calls his jailers "Piss-drinking sons of circus whores," which should probably make its way into Obama's next press conference.
• There's a scene in the Senate where Pompey defends Caesar. The show does a great job catching the stilted, mannered gestures of the Roman Senators. 
• Cato, on the other hand, is not nearly as interesting as the severe, fanatical ascetic he was in the real world. 
• I suspect that's not the only unnecessary scene of Atila having sex we're going to be presented with, is it?