Spartacus: War of the Damned was extremely frustrating to watch at times, especially the first half of this
Final Season. There were a couple of episodes that I found myself bored to tears. It was so bad that I was very close to quitting the marathon and calling it a day. Why? The f*cking dialogue....that's why. In my review of
Blood and Sand, Mac mentioned that the speech patterns were a concern of his, but I on the other hand was use to it. Okay, in general I'm use to it. But in this season it was beyond ridiculous. What they were saying and more to the point, how they were saying it was laughable and the writing was very bad. Horrible at times. So, the first half of the season was a big fail for me. But the second half is where the series starts to come alive. You still have to deal with the hokey dialogue, but the story starts to pick up steam to make sitting through said dialogue more bearable.
It's the
Series Finale that finally gets everything right. Gone is the lame homage of
300 (camera tricks and all that crap) that the bulk of Season 3 is built on. The episode, even though pretty much the entire battle sequence is shot against a greenscreen, feels like it's the most practical shoot they ever dead. It looked and felt like an old school movie by comparison to how the rest of the series was shot and edited together. The final episode more than saves a very uneven season and is definitely THE best episode for the entire series. I'd definitely watch the last episode again for sure. Be sure to stick around through the end credits. It's pretty damn cool to see pretty much every major and minor character that played a role in the entire series. The best (and most welcomed surprise) was the final shot of the credits in which we see
Andy Whitfield uttering the characters most famous line: I Am
Spartacus! Definitely worth a
Rent.
One last thing. Normally I'm okay with copious amounts of T&A. Who doesn't enjoy looking at hot, naked chicks? The entire series has been built on this. But what started out as a means of tease, slowly involved into nothing more than S o f t c o r e p o r n. I felt that the sex scenes during this season really didn't lend itself to the story other than trying to meet an episode quota. They were usually ridiculous in their timing. Take for example when
Gannicus and
Sibyl are trapped in a blizzard and find a makeshift shelter that they take refuge in. There is a massive snowstorm all around them, they are hardly wearing anything to begin with, they are laying on ice/snow. You guess it, time for some nookie. Yeah, unrealistic and does make one laugh at the absurdity of it all.