Rome II ep 9

Dec-A-dent

In dealing with Antony & Cleopatra, I was willing to cut HBO's Rome some slack as ancient accounts about the famous pair tend towards the sensational as it is.

So do my favorite writers find themselves up to the task?

Nope.

In the one place where they could have, where they should have gone over the top, what do they give us? Eye makeup. Dark sixties eye makeup.

Dec-A-Dent. But..but..it's on the men! Shocking!

Cleopatra is back to her dope smoking punked out ways, and she taking Antony along kids!

But are we given pearl drinking feasts, oared barges suggestively thrusting their way down the Nile?

Nope, just the happy couple, fucking in front of the help...again....shocking.

I get that the writers are trying to make the events of this time understandable by showing it through the eyes of only a handful of characters.

To their credit, their interpretations of historical figures is adequate, sometimes even better than that.

I'm not sure Maecenas was quite such the worm though.

Where the writers fail is their attempts to interweave historical events with their fictionalized characters.

Doing so, it seems the fate of the Empire will rest with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb (again), which is turning out to be the real love story in Rome.

"Have him kiss my children for me..."

When the writers are creating events solely for their fictionalized characters, they are less than able, giving us Melodrama™ of the highest order.

Example: the last few minutes of this episode. A flawed ending to a otherwise noble attempt.

"Why don't you shut your fucking mouth?"

Fine. Some nice panoramas of Rome and Alexandria btw.