Trout Nation Posts

CW: Rape (although honestly, CW: rape for the whole show from here out)

Quick rundown of the episode: So, remember when Atia was about to get served some poisoned soup? The kitchen girl helps herself to a little taste as she’s carrying it in, and all that saves Atia is her love of music and her inability to multi-task. Atia is so entranced by the girl’s singing that the spoon doesn’t make it all the way to her mouth before she drops dead. Servilia’s assassin sees that he’s fucked things up, but he doesn’t get away. Octavia and her new friend Jocasta come home to find Timon torturing a confession out of the assassin. Because a confession wasn’t considered legal under Roman law unless torture was involved. He gives up the info quick, and Atia has what she needs to murder Servilia.

Timon is having a rough time at home. His brother is acting like he’s man of the house and laying down edicts like, “don’t come home bathed in blood” and shit. Fuck that guy. But the longer he’s around, the more Timon’s conscience is acting up.

Pullo travels north to get Vorenus, who’s part of Antony’s floundering military campaign against Octavian. He even checks some dead bodies to make sure they’re not Vorenus, because there are dead bodies all over the place. Who should happen to come along but Octavian, played by an entirely different actor who looks absolutely nothing like the old one at all. Either that, or the war was so hard it turned him ginger. He tells Pullo where he can find Antony’s camp, and that they’ll comb through the dead bodies again and see if Vorenus isn’t in there somewhere.

Octavian is doing good, and he wants a party in Rome to welcome him home. He sends Agrippa back to take a letter to Octavia–and not to Atia, a noted mail thief–, and Agrippa is all about going there because he’s got a crush on Octavia. Octavian gives a rousing speech to his men, too, which is surprising given his utter lack of charisma.

Pullo finds Vorenus marching with the losers. Mark Antony is getting some battle embroidery and deciding on the best way to run away. Posca is like, you should probably just surrender, and Antony is like, nah, let’s winter in the Alpines. When Vorenus is like, hey, my dead kids aren’t dead, Antony lets him leave. Probably because he’ll be one less person to feed in the mountains in the winter.

So, Servilia is at some kind of shrine, looking like the Virgin Mary, when Atia’s men kidnap her. Atia is done playing games. She throws that “slow, painful death” thing from season one right back into Servilia’s face. Atia has Servilia gang raped, scourged, and tortured, but Timon balks when he’s commanded to cut off Servilia’s face. He lets her go, then attacks Atia, choking her and telling her he isn’t an animal. Servilia stumbles into the street, her face all bloody, and Atia just sits there like, man, what did I do wrong? Because Bond movies haven’t been invented yet and she didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do the prolonged death scene.

Vorenus and Pullo hit the road to find the children, and Pullo has to be the sense of the operation, planning for things like rest and food and not riding their horses to death. Pullo warns Vorenus that the slave camp the kids are in is going to be rough. Pullo knows, because he’s been to a slave camp; he doesn’t specifically say why, but you get the feeling from the way he almost bursts into tears that it wasn’t for any good reason. He also asks Vorenus to reconsider killing Niobe’s son.

Agrippa arrives in Rome and tells Octavia and Atia that Octavian has actually won, but it’s bittersweet for Atia, because that means Mark Antony lost. Agrippa also goes to Cicero to ask for that triumph thing, and Cicero tells him exactly what he thinks of Octavian. Because Cicero is finished with this whole Rome thing.

As it turns out, the camp is just as bad as Pullo says it’s going to be, with people getting worked to death and crucified and shit. They find Vorena the Younger and the little boy working in a kitchen. Vorenus breaks down and hugs the little boy, so it’s like, okay, he’s not going to murder him anymore. They find that Vorena the Elder is a sex slave. Vorenus puts his knife through the back of the main slave manager dude’s head and he and Pullo take the children out of there.

My favorite part of the episode: This episode is so dark, my favorite moment is the only light-hearted one in it, when Agrippa tries out a line on Octavia and she shoots him down immediately by asking if her brother is eating well.

My least favorite part of the episode: The clumsy way they introduced the new actor playing Octavian by making him act like he and Pullo were BFFs back in Rome.

Favorite costume: Not the best picture, but I loved Atia’s torture dress. It’s so slinky and it has such great flow. 

Team Atia or Team Servilia: This one is tough, because I don’t really want to be like, “Yay, it’s totally cool to have your enemies gang raped,” but I do very much admire the fact that Atia was more hands-on than Servilia was in terms of her attempted murder. Servilia hired someone to poison her, probably so she wouldn’t get found out. Atia, on the other hand, planned what she was going to say at her inevitable murder trial.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

“My soul has burned-“
“Is my brother eating properly?” Good job with that brush off, Octavia. #LegionXIII

— Bronwyn Green (@Bronwyn_Green) March 29, 2016

 What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? I guarantee she loved Octavia’s watercolor/tie dye dress:

Guess Jess’s head canon. The boys are back together, and Jess was definitely thrilled when Pullo’s advice led to a change of heart for Vorenus regarding Niobe’s son.

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us Monday at 9 PM EST for season two, episode four, “Testudo et Lepus”. Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!

CW: Rape (although honestly, CW: rape for the whole show from here out)

Quick rundown of the episode: Vorenus is still tormented by the fact that he killed his wife and children. Fair enough. The mental strain is making him a bad ass ruler, though. One of his gang captains comes to him for permission to kill a guy who got his dick sucked by twelve-year-old. it’s a thing about family honor, but Vorenus denies his request on the basis that the twelve-year-old was paid, and therefore wasn’t defiled, but working as a prostitute. Pullo puts in his two cents, which Vorenus does not want. he tells Pullo never to question him in front of the other gang members. Pullo doesn’t appreciate this, but he is who he is, and he goes along with it.

Continuing on her journey of self discovery in the realm of not giving a shit, Octavia has brought home her new stoner friend, Jocasta. They are bogging out the house “inhaling hemp”, and Atia isn’t impressed. I mean, she doesn’t seem to have a problem with the hemp, because she takes the pipe and hits it like a champ, but she’s really not happy that Octavia is hanging out with a merchant’s daughter. She tells Octavia that her slumming better not go any lower.

Meanwhile, Timon is still pining for Atia, while his brother is usurping his place with his children.  The brother (Abraham? Avram? I don’t remember the guy’s name.) Is also doing this whole shadowy meeting thing in alleys, which Timon definitely notices. Again, due to the show’s cancellation, the storyline will go nowhere.

Atia has soured on the idea of going to Macedonia. She tries to convince Antony to stay in Rome and keep playing the politics game, and from his frowny concentration face when he rides his horse away, it seems like he might be considering it.

Vorenus and Pullo are having  a perfectly lovely lunch when in comes that asshole who paid a twelve-year-old to have sex with him. Also, he’s missing his penis. Turns out the dudes ignored Vorenus’s ruling and went ahead and got their revenge anyway. Vorenus blames Pullo for this; if Pullo hadn’t questioned his authority, they never would have been bold enough to go against his word. This leads to a huge fight, in which Pullo accidentally slip that he knew about Niobe’s cheating all along and killed Evander for it. This is new information to Vorenus, and as is the theme of this season, Vorenus doesn’t take this well.

Meanwhile, Cicero and Mark Antony are chilling together, the way enemies do, and Cicero heaps praise on Octavian, bragging on the huge army Octavian is raising. Antony expresses his opinion on this by whizzing into a potted plant. He also tells Cicero that he doesn’t plan to go to Macedonia. He’d rather be governor of Gaul. Cicero is like, yeah, that’s not going to work, some other guy is running Gaul right now. Antony tries to intimidate Cicero into making it happen, and that’s exactly why Cicero won’t do it.

Agrippa, a.k.a. Tom Branson, comes to Atia with a message from Octavian, but he meets Octavia first and is “entranced” by her harp playing, which is also accompanied by frustrated swearing. Octavian sends his best wishes to Octavia, and Agrippa informs her that Octavian is a pretty important and powerful guy.

What nobody is worried about, though, is this new asshole, Duro, who works in the kitchen at Atia’s house, because he’s working for Servilia. His job is to poison Atia, but it’s taking a long time; Octavia almost always eats with Atia, and Servilia doesn’t want to kill Octavia. Duro is crude and nasty, and he demands Servilia kiss him before he’ll carry out his job. She wants Atia dead so much, she does it. So like, she’s committed.

Meanwhile, in some other place, Brutus is trying to raise money to crush Antony, but apparently the people he’s trying to win over think Brutus is cowardly for killing Caesar only after everyone else stabbed him about a billion times. They also want to watch some pretty specific bestiality. Things aren’t going great for Brutus, who later has a weird John The Baptist type scene in a pond.

Meanwhile, back at the hellmouth, Vorenus accuses Pullo of sleeping with Niobe, and he’s so out of control, Pullo is like, yeah, you know what, I totally had sex with your wife. Fine. They end up getting into a brawl so big that it breaks furniture and pieces of the building, and Pullo is like, fuck this, let’s go. He and Eirene leave the city.

Antony shows up to the senate to find that Cicero hasn’t bothered to show up at the senate, where he was supposed to propose that Antony’s governorship be transferred to Gaul. Instead, he basically sent a long speech about how much he hates Antony and basically telling him to fuck off. Meanwhile, Cicero has left the city and is going to align himself with Octavian.

Three months later, Octavian is a real threat to the city, and shit isn’t going well. Pullo and Eirene have returned to the city, after traveling like, forever. They find the Aventine all burned up and wrecked, and barricades have been erected to protect the mob house. Vorenus went to Gaul with Mark Antony. All of the nonsense in the Aventine stems from the gelding dispute, and a retaliatory rape. While Pullo and Eirene try to decide what to do next, Lyde stumbles up. At first they don’t recognize her, probably because they expected her to be dead. But she’s escaped from slavery, and come back to tell them that the children are still alive.

We cut back to Atia’s house, where she’s just about to tuck into some delicious poison, because Octavia isn’t home. Just as the servant brings her the food, the episode ends. CLIFF HANGER!

My favorite part of the episode: When Atia acts all outraged by her kid smoking pot, then hits with nary a flinch.

My least favorite part of the episode: In the first season (and I believe early on in this season), passage of time was marked by showing a person climbing a ladder and changing a big public calendar. Out of nowhere, “Three Months Later” is slapped on the screen. It’s so jarring and unnecessary. They trusted the audience to understand the passage of time in the first season, and yeah, people did complain about it being difficult to follow, but a few episodes into the second season is not the time to start introducing title screens.

Favorite costume: Octavia’s casual wear for pot smoking:

I wish we would have seen the whole outfit.

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Atia, all the way. I want to admire Servilia’s dedication, but she’s so desperate at this point that it’s kind of hard.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

Vorenus: *updates Facebook status to Single* #LegionXIII

— Gabe (@gfortin_05) March 22, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? Bronwyn is a sucker for drapey, ethereal bullshit:

Guess Jess’s head canon. Jess’s headcanon was dealt a blow in this episode when Pullo and Vorenus fell out, but the fact that Pullo returned to Rome to set things straight only further validates her ship.

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us Monday at 9 PM EST for season two, episode four, “Testudo et Lepus”. Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!