But the beauty of Spartacus is in eloquently and effectively laying out the motivations for those acts in intimate, dialogue-driven scenes that I’d put against anything on television in the past decade. Varro’s death only works after a half-season of his bond with Spartacus. Lucretia’s swan dive only works if we understand why she thinks doing so is the ultimate romantic act. Naevia’s defeat of Ashur only works after the show delivers two years of near-misses that makes the moment of triumph itself so cathartic. This is the impossible thing that Spartacus did over and over and over again. But it shouldn’t be impossible, since making the audience care about the fate of its characters is Television 101. Yet so many shows fail to achieve this basic goal that it seems all the more revelatory when a show most write off as softcore porn does it on a nearly weekly basis.