TV Review -- Spartacus: Blood and Sand (Season One)

Spartacus: Blood and Sand
Season One
Starz

This is probably going to be a very short review - though, knowing how I tend to get carried away on this blog, it may end up being longer than anticipated. Insert "that's what she said" joke here.

Anyway, a couple months ago I sped through the first season of Starz's bodily fluid-filled take on the tale of Spartacus, the Thracian gladiator who led a slave revolt in ancient Rome, probably most famous for his striking resemblance to Kirk Douglas. Starz has recently been making a noticeable push in the original programming department, and the network's business model seems to be essentially: Violence + Nudity = Profit. Much like peanut butter and chocolate and Simon and Garfunkel, violence and nudity is a pretty potent combination, and it's in full effect in Spartacus: Blood and Sand. The first episode is particularly rife with TV-MA goodness; it seems that not a minute goes by without someone receiving a gory neck wound or a nice roll in the hay. Despite a somewhat rocky start, however, Spartacus soon reveals itself to be a bit more than meets the eye.

Random Topics: What's a 'Ginia Bellafante?' - A Review of a Review

It seems like The New York Times gets a lot of shit these days. First, you've got the rather unpleasant neo-conservative, Fox News-watching crowd that take every opportunity to deride the paper as a "liberal rag" and scoff at the mere mention of the paper's name. Then you've got the people that love to discuss the imminent death of the newspaper industry - guess which money-hemorrhaging national paper is their go-to representation of the growing obsolescence of old media?

Normally, I'm a pretty staunch defender of the good ol' NY Times. I couldn't really tell you why, except possibly residual fondness from having it delivered throughout my childhood. The crossword puzzles are still consistently par excellence, so there's that. In any case, it was therefore somewhat of a surprise for me to find myself, along with many others, shaking my metaphorical fist at the paper this past week.

The source of my considerable nerd rage was a TV review, published by the Times, of the (then upcoming) new HBO series, Game of Thrones, which you can read here. Many, many people have already commented on how oblivious and unhelpful Ginia Bellafante's review was (including George R.R. Martin, the man behind the novels the HBO show is based on), but I figured I would join in the fun as well.