I friggin love this show. Rome on HBO. It follows the story of two centurions, Lucias Vorenas and Titus Pullo set against some of the most historical changes to take place in the Roman Empire. Season One ended in catastrophe, of course, and for a while it looked like the show wouldn’t be picked up again, the sets and costumes are so amazing it can’t be cheap to produce. In season one Vorenas and Pullo make their way back to Rome, Pullo doesn’t have much to come back to, so he mostly clings to Vorenus who is a little on the uptight side of idealism. Vorenas is afraid to come back to his wife and family because he’s been away at war so long. He sees his wife holding a child, and in rage accuses her of being a whore, but she corrects him that this is his grand-daughter she is holding. He feels like and idiot and has an awkward reconcilliation. Despite the setback the love between Vorenas and his wife comes back into full bloom. All the while Julius Ceasar is taking over Rome with all the cunning, betrayal and intrique that that entails. Pullo spends most his days longing for a slave girl, being drunk and watching Vorenas’s back, but still manages to get himself into trouble and towards the end of the season is sentenced to execution. While at his execution he, being a first class centurion, slaughters most of the men who are supposed to execute him, but he finds himself running low on energy and reasons to fight, the sight of which actually stirs Vorenus to jump into the pit with his friend and fight off the last of the executioners, despite a commandment from the emporor to do no such thing. All Rome hails them as hero’s and symbols of brotherly love and they become so famous that even Ceasar cannot have them punished, so Ceasar, not wanting to appear weak, rewards them by making Vorenas a senator. The meteoric rise comes to a painful crash however as it comes to light that Vorenas’s wife lied to him that first day, that she thought her husband was dead, and had a child with another man, and that Titus Pullo found out about the affair and murdered the other man out of love and respect for Vorenas and his wife. Vorenas is confronted with this information, runs to confront his wife not sure if he will kill her or forgive her, Julius Ceasar gets ambushed, possibly leaving mark antony in charge of Rome, and Vorenas doesn’t get a chance to decide what he was going to do because the season closes with his wife throwing herself off a balcony in shame. good stuff.