A crowd of cherries

I feel a bit Zen at the moment. As if the world has been balanced. Can you blame me after an embarrassment of riches via the Season 3 premiere of Justified, Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad? But first things first.

Downloaded and watched the full Spartacus series and wept and wailed as the final episode aired. What must it feel like to be Steven DeKnight? To have created something that people will remember forever? I've never seen a cast like this, unknowns for the most part who gave us a piece of themselves and gained immortality because they are so damn good at what they do. After Andy Whitfield I thought Liam McIntyre would “fall from fucking sight”, haha, but one episode in you could tell he had the intensity, not to mention the most sweetly vulnerable mouth, that would see him fly to Olympus. When Manu Bennett's Crixus died, the show almost stuttered to its end right then and there because his persona was always so aggressive that he ruled every frame he was in from the beginning of the series. Gannicus, by the time he was a “martyr on the cross”, had become a hero not just because he had that John Woo thing going on albeit with two swords instead of guns, but because he is so good-looking it hurts. And what a bit of directing his end was: Crucified, there he was reliving his time as a God of the Arena with the crowds going wild.

But the villains in Spartacus, aye, there was a crowd of cherries on top of the cake. Craig Parker as Glaber, Nick E Tarabay as Ashur, Todd Lasance as Caesar, Simon Merrells as Crassus, these are Gods of the Acting Arena. While my heart belongs to Nagron, I will go see anything with these guys in it in the future.

I have had to switch allegiances now that Spartacus is over, and there's nothing better in betrayal than Breaking Bad. Which other show can have an entire episode on a fly (that's not a euphemism) and keep us riveted? Watching Walter White turning from mild-mannered Chemistry teacher to a villain of Heath Ledger's Joker proportions is an exercise in how brilliant television writers can be. Imagine, in the first place, selling this storyline to studios. It is absolutely addictive, ha; such fun to watch a story evolving in an unexpected way: Junkie losers have moral cores, gentle husbands turn into wolves, drug dealers live by gentlemen's codes. I live my days spouting Jesse Pinkmanisms, bitch, and gasping at how easily Walter and his wife cross over to their Bonnie&Clyde avatars. If they can do that, what hope do the rest of us have really.