Now we’re talking. This was one of the best episodes in some time. Twisted, sure. But at least it had some action and things are finally picking up, for the first time in a while. I mean it’s like we’ve been watching The Sopranos, things are so dull of late.
So now that Octavian knows about the bribe from Herod, it’s just a matter of getting it safely to Rome. Vorenus gets the job, and who better to oversee the transfer of funds than the best character on the show, Pullo? Well, no one, obviously.
Unfortunately, Gaia has managed to kill not only the baby, but Eirene as well (remember, Gaia bought those herbs back in Death Mask, and I told you it wasn’t for her). Well, since Pullo is all torn up, Vorenus sends Mascius, who is really just a whiner.
And it’s a good thing that Pullo didn’t go, because if he was killed, there would be little reason to watch the show. But he didn’t, and everyone but Mascius gets killed in an ambush. Yet nobody seems to know how they knew that they would be there, so everyone blames everyone else.
To save himself, Mascius turns over the goods on Antony and Atia, as well as Octavia and Agrippa, because Octavian seems to have had no idea that they were still all going at it with one another like wild beasts. It’s like the kid has no clue what is happening around him. So in order to save face, he locks the women up in their house, sends Antony to exile in Egypt and, well, does nothing to Agrippa.
Meanwhile, over on the Aventine, Vorenus finds one of those little dolls lying around the house, and suddenly he knows that it was his own daughter that did the dirty deed! He exiles himself to Egypt with Antony, leaving things in the capable hands of Pullo, who takes things out on Memmio by chewing out his tongue. That was a gruesome scene.
Octavian, always the leader, marries a tramp named Livia, who seems on the surface to be quite innocent, but behind closed doors, she seems to be even more twisted than Octavian himself.
