Episode Title: "The Spoils"
Original Air Date: November 13, 2005
Episode Grade: B+
That Rome was a rather honor-obsessed society is no great insight. That men are often torn between their sense of honor and the reality of the world in which they live is not an original observation. And that politics can trample all of our principles and lead us to places we never thought we'd step is nothing more than a cliche.
But it's said that there are really only seven stories to tell, and the quality of a story is probably not best measured by its originality. "The Spoils" is about all of the well-worn tropes listed in the opening paragraph, and it doesn't offer any real penetrating insights into any of them.
What it does is effectively exploit some of its stronger performances and weave together themes of honor and self-doubt across a number of characters in disparate circumstances. It's a solid episode of television, and helps Rome to what is really its first true winning streak of this initial season.
The motivating dynamic in "The Spoils" is the yawning abyss between Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo; the former, now an honored magistrate, the latter, a murderer-for-hire who opens the episode tracking and killing some anonymous victim through a deserted street.
Pullo's problems are many, and go beyond his utter lack of honor. He's not actually a good assassin; his targets die well enough, but Pullo never really got the hang of subtlety, and that's a problem for a crime boss with certain pretensions of respectability. And, ultimately, Pullo doesn't have the make-up of a hired killer: he botches another job when he's unwilling to kill the lone witness to his murder, and he ends up in jail as a result.
Vorenus' problems are somewhat different. He's now Caesar's man, which is an uncomfortable position, and when Mascius, a former comrade from the 13th Legion, comes by to demand Italian land for Caesar's veterans, Vorenus is forced to put him off.
I feel like I spend a lot of time in these reviews starting sentences by saying "Kevin McKidd does a good job...," so forgive me a little more of that praise here. What's fascinating about McKidd's performance in the early portions of this episode is that his conflict is conveyed without any dialogue; he is, at all points, Caesar's loyal magistrate. He doesn't express any overt sympathy with Mascius, and he doesn't berate Caesar behind closed doors.
There's not even a scene where Vorenus pours his heart out to Niobe. Instead, McKidd manages through his tone and facial expressions to make clear that he is riven by the memories of his service with the 13th and his loyalty to Caesar. And when he "persuades" Mascius into supporting Caesar's offer of land in Pannonia with a bribe of some 12,000 denarii, there's no tearing of hair or gnashing of teeth, no flashing neon sign that says "COMPROMISED PRINCIPLES." Instead, there's just the simple reality of what he has done, and where he is as a man.
"The Spoils" plays this note out a little bit further when it brings Pullo and Vorenus together by the latter's attendance at the former's "trial." Caesar has made clear that he can't help Pullo; the man Titus killed was an important member of the "Nailmakers' Association" and an enemy of Caesar. He cannot have it look as if he is killing his enemies and protecting the murderers.
Vorenus again serves as Caesar's champion when he makes that exact point to Mascius, who has brought together some former members of the 13th Legion to rescue Pullo after the trial (his conviction is never in doubt, despite the best efforts of his youthful, desperate lawyer). Lucius has to take another step down the political chasm by threatening Mascius with the revelation of his bribe and then watches as Pullo is sentenced to death in the arena.
It is in the arena that "The Spoils" moves from workmanlike to genuinely excellent. Rome has often struggled with the large-scale battles that shaped its world, but the fight in the arena is at a scale it can truly master. It's a spectacular, brutal piece of work, one that finally makes clear what a genuine bad-ass Pullo is.
Watching Pullo, roused from his apathy by his gladiatorial executioners' ill-considered taunts of the 13th Legion, brutally slice up all comers is a hell of an experience. The scene is cruel and unsparing, and it's handled skillfully.
Is it a little much to have the scene inspire Vorenus to jump into the arena and save Pullo as he's about to be killed by the final gladiator? Maybe. But the strength and brutality of the scene does a lot of the work here, and McKidd, as usual, manages to sell the emotions of watching his brother fight for nothing but the honor of their former legion.
Rome has long been at its best when exploring the limitations of Vorenus' honor and traditionalism. This little arc, which sees him succumb through a series of reasonable, understandable decisions to the temptations of a political career, while Pullo falls to new lows as a result of disenchantment with his life and decisions, has been triumphant.
Brutus has his own problems with honor. He was Caesar's friend, then Caesar's enemy, and now he's in a torturously awkward position. Connected to Caesar through the bonds of genuine friendship, he's also disgusted by Caesar's apparent tyranny and by his own cowardice and indecisiveness.
Tobias Menzies does his best with the couple of scenes he's given here, and it's easy enough to understand his conflict. It's less easy to understand how he can go from telling Cassius to fuck off when the latter approaches him with a plot to kill Caesar in the opening scenes to ending the episode by telling his mother he's finally willing to take that step.
The crucial moment, supposedly, is his scene with Caesar, where the newly minted dictator-for-life asks his old friend to govern Macedonia for a year or so. Brutus sees this as the ploy to get him out of Rome that it is, and is, apparently, offended to learn that he hadn't even bought Caesar's trust by selling his honor.
Again, it's easy to see how that could be troublesome. It's not so easy to get from there to, "Well, gotta kill him now."
Still, "The Spoils" manages to do right by its characters in exploring their conflicts and doubts. Heading into the season finale next week, there's reason to be optimistic about the direction Rome has taken.
Notes
- It's Octavian who broaches the idea of helping Pullo. Still hard to understand why he cares at all.
- Atia and Antony are back to having sex! Always nice to see those crazy kids making it work.
- "Men with swords never starve." "But they do die, captains first."
- Pullo should have known that you don't mess with Big Nail.
- Turns out that Caesar actually did pay the crime boss to assassinate the nailmaker.
- There's a painful gut punch of a scene where Pullo asks his boss for work, gets paid some small pittance in advance, goes to the bar to buy a drink and is ordered out by the boss, as the place is "respectable" and only caters to law-abiding citizens.
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