For me personally I hate when writer's employ plot devices like this. In the first episode they prove to us repeatedly that Spartacus is a veteran warrior. Skilled with a myriad of weapons and shield and extremely proficient in one on one combat or fighting large groups where the odds are greatly against him yet always prevailing. He is masterfully skilled in all forms of combat and proves it not only on the battlefield, but also in a siege on his village where he rescues his wife and finally in the arena where equipped only with a sword against four opponents who are fully armed and armoured and he prevails every time. Suddenly in this episode we're expected to believe that this veteran warrior is suddenly unskilled because fighting in the arena requires specialized training. Now I could see this making sense if in the arena they used some specialized form of combat or weapon. They do not. In the arena they use all the tools that they spent all that time showing us in the first episode how proficient Spartacus is with them. Primarily a sword and shield. Weapons that Spartacus time and again showed his expertise with in the first episode. In this episode we're suddenly expected to believe that the man who prevailed against multiple opponents repeatedly in the first episode suddenly is defeated by everyone he battles including a much less skilled opponent. Even when they finally give him a victory it's one he barely achieves. All this seems to me to have been done to create dramatic effect and to break Spartacus' character down so he finally submits to Batiatus. They wasted an entire episode on this. For me I just couldn't suspend disbelief enough to believe that the man they went out of their way to show as an unparallelled warrior in the first episode was suddenly almost an unskilled buffoon on the battlefield on this episode. They already had all the motivation they needed for Spartacus to submit to becoming a gladiator all along and it's what they ultimately ended up using, his love for his wife and the promise of eventual freedom so he could rescue her. The fact that they used this motivation any way, just made the choice to make Spartacus such an inept warrior for most of the episode seem even more ludicrous to me. I often feel like writer's are insulting our intelligence when they go out of their way to make us believe one thing in one episode and then shortly thereafter in subsequent episodes want us to believe something completely contrary. I'm all for suspending disbelief in entertainment, but I'm also about logic and there's no logical reason for Spartacus' sudden ineptitude. It overshadowed everything else in the episode for me. I loved, loved, loved the first episode, but this follow up was a let down for me.
Review of Sacramentum Gladiatorum
