The final battle between Caesar & Pompey was weak :: Egypt not done well in Episode 8 :: Other ROME stuff
Just finished watching Episodes 6 - 8 of HBO's mostly excellent series Rome. I say mostly excellent because in Episode 6 & 8 they glossed over 2 huge battles. The final battle between Caesar & Pompey (where Caesar was outnumbered 5 to 1 by Pompey's forces) was depicted in like 1 or 2 minutes using fuzzy, slow-mo soldiers fighting medium shots. Where is the attention to detail HBO? A gigantic battle that was the last obstacle in Caesar's path to turning the Roman republic into an empire depicted in fuzzy, slow-mo medium shots?????!!!!??? That battle alone should have been 1 whole episode, depicted in an epic manner. Also, in Episode 8 we get to see Cleopatra's Egypt. The relatively awesome production design that showed up on Episodes 1 - 3 are sadly absent when it comes to bringing Egypt to life. The main city (Alexandria?) where the Egyptian action takes place looks horribly underpopulated & it does not look like the rulers of Egypt had an army. The battle between Caesar's troops and their Egyptian enemies is not shown at all (we learn about the battle by seeing the young king Ptolemy's corpse). But the continuing focus on at times Forrest Gump like adventures of the very lucky legionnaires Vorenus (a nobel centurion; a commander of 100 legionnaires) & Pullo (a less accomplished soldier who makes questionable but amusing & entertaining choices) is still very good. I am going to watch Episodes 9 & 10 soon, hopefully they will be better. For anyone interested, here is a breakdown of Season 1's episodes at the show's site. In early '07 Season 2 will begin.
