Spartacus 3.8 Review, "Separate Paths"
rating: 5
I did not sign up for this when I started watching Spartacus. Like no other episode this series, this weeks felt very much like a movie. Separate Paths was a spectacle that few shows and not even Spartacus itself could hope to match. It was an episodeS so testosterone fuelled that I developed a six pack just watching it but it was also an episode so sad that I cried myself into dehydration. There seems to be an unspecified time lapse between last episode and this one as it is no longer winter in Rome. The rebels and the Romans pursuing them have traveled far through Rome, presumably stopping every few days to fight each other. Unhappy with the tactic of constantly running away, Crixus disbands from Spartacus and takes like-minded individuals with him in an all out attack on Rome while Spartacus takes the other rebels who cannot or do not want to fight to a place where they will hopefully be safe from the Roman threat. I was very pleased that Crixus and Spartacus parted on friendly terms. Their dynamic this episode was brilliant and their scenes together were absolutely fabulous without fault. The split between Crixus and Spartacus was also an absolutely amazing plot device for other truly emotional scenes and heavy decisions such as Gannicus choosing to follow Spartacus and thus, not fight against Rome and Agron parting ways with Nasir. On the subject of Agron and Nasir, that was the only criticism I have with rebel storyline. Both the Agron, Nasir and Castus love triangle and the Gannicus, Saxa and Sibyl love triangle are boring and only feel half-hearted. The rest of the writing is so brilliant but these pedestrian love plots feel out of place and a bit boring compared to the rest of the show. In the Roman camp, Crassus is under great pressure to stop the rebellion and Tiberius and Caesar are at each others throats even more than usual. This animosity culminating in a shocking scene in which Tiberius rapes Caesar proving that Tiberius can be an even more vile, dislikable character than he already was. This episode is not about the Romans. They have little presence this week beyond being that of a threat to the rebels and that is good. The small amount of time that was dedicated to the Roman story line was used brilliantly and while the rebel story line was clearly more exciting, the Roman story kept up with the intensity of the rebel plot making for a small but worthy distraction from the major Crixus-centric story.
The strength in this episode came from the very basic nature of the plot, leaving the series to be brilliantly carried by the emotional performances of the actors and the action sequences. I was pleasantly surprised by the former as I find that often the characters and their emotions are lost beneath the style of the show but this episode every actor upped their game and rose high above the stylistic elements and made me feel more emotions in this episode alone than I have for the rest of the series. Every actor gave a spot on, emotional and believable performance though Manu Bennett as Crixus was the clear scene stealer this week. The action sequences as I have already stated are a spectacle. This episode felt very much like 300 to me, with its incredibly large armies and numerous fight scenes. My one complaint is that there was too much use of slow motion occasionally making the fights look more comic than intense and exciting. For an hour long show, Spartacus somehow managed to fit as much plot and as much fighting from a movie into a television show. I have never been a huge fan of montages but the war montages this week are brilliant and manage to condense whole fight scenes into very intense two-minute scenes. The greatest thing about this episode was that it held nothing back. Everything was bigger, everything was more intense, everything was just more. From the numerous, brilliant one on one character interactions, to the brilliant fight scenes to the not one, but two incredibly sad major character deaths that mark the end of this episode, it pulled no punches, delivering far past expectations. My one fear is that Spartacus peaked slightly too soon. I cannot see how they can possible follow this episode with their final two and keep up this standard. If they do manage to however, or if they even manage to approach this level of brilliance in the last two episodes, Spartacus could have one of the greatest and certainly boldest final acts in television history.