In its previous 12 hours, Spartacus: Blood and Sand featured disembowelments, dismemberments, statutory rape, crucifixion, castration, full frontal nudity from both genders, and every sexual act imaginable. Only this show could end its first season with a massacre and be somewhat low-key. All games of one-upmanship must come to an end.
And yet, how could one be disappointed? Spartacus knows what its viewers want and it delivers. The last words spoken in the season's penultimate episode are "kill them all." The title of the finale is "Kill Them All." In the finale, Spartacus and his fellow enslaved gladiators trap dozens of upper class Capuans and proceed to kill them all. Lost piled question upon question in its first five seasons and is just getting around to answering most of them in its final one. Not only did the characters on Heroes have inexplicably changing motivations from episode to episode, they also never stayed dead. On Spartacus, the evil characters are Evil and when their throats are slit they will most certainly not appear in the second season.
How about that death toll? Everybody got a piece of the action, even the ladies. Mira kills a guard, Aurelia kills Numerius - only Lost features a more homicidal cast, and while the characters on Caprica inhabit several moral shades of grey, few of them personally kill anyone. Revenge dirties everyone's soul, it seems. Either that or damn these be some badass/crazy chicks! Spartacus probably leans more towards the latter. Meanwhile, the episode's most satisfying callback sees Spartacus and Crixus recreate the shield-jumping maneuver that took down Theokoles. Only this time, Spartacus plunges his sword through the head of some aristocrat in order to begin the rebellion. Crixus' eventual partnership with Spartacus was never in doubt, so why not kick it off in the most badass way possible. The episode ends with the promise of more badassery to come, as Spartacus denounces slavery and vows to fight so that all men may be free, or something like that. He's only cared about himself in the past so his new zeal to end servitude is more of a convenient rallying cry than anything else, but I'll look past it as long as it gives him (and Crixus and Doctore) reason to slaughter more Romans.
RIP Batiatus. You're in a better place now, one where the Gods no longer spread cheeks but to ram cock in ass. Your death is disappointing - who will chew the scenery now? - but it was inevitable and necessary. John Hannah won't get any Emmy consideration for his work, but goddamn he was fun to watch. Lucretia won't be around any longer either, robbing the show of its two most interesting villains. We'll still have two-faced Ashur though, and hopefully Ilithyia will find new ways to be the biggest bitch in all of Rome, get naked, and explore her pseudo-lesbian tendencies.
Speaking of which: let's talk about Spartacus as pulp. Show creator Steven DeKnight lamented on his Twitter page that critics didn't understand "the difference between 'camp' and 'pulp.'" Spartacus is most certainly pulp, a genre that deserves to make a comeback if only because it offers something for everybody. There's nothing wrong with camp but it's often effeminate and swishy, or too self-parodic to be truly fun or funny. Pulp is purely pleasure-driven so it caters to every whim.
Your future is in limbo, Spartacus, but worry not for you'll be near to my heart. You offered gratuitous violence, abundant nudity, and absolutely no moral. Quite often you were terrible, but you were never boring. Truly, this is the new Golden Age of Television.
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