THis series has moved on apace with the very heart wrenching strongly written and strongly acted Joy Stella storyline. It was a shock when Joy revealed that her very convincing officially recorded account of Joy being raped turned out to be a 'one night stand' and dashed to pieces, Stella's idealising of her mother. This is a concealment within a concealment and appearance set against reality was further threaded in with lou becoming seriously convinced that there was a relationship between the two of them. Again, the 'model prisoner' turns out to have stolen possessions belonging to other prisoners. For the first time, we see Lou countermanding Joy's order to 'ghost out' Stella with disastrous consequences.
I get the feeling that even with the later Lou Dr Dunlop scene Lou is keeping people guessing and turns out to give Helen Stewart a good run for her money in being inscrutable.
In turn, Phyl returns in full blackmailing mode and Julie Saunder's David becoming an expectant father revisits Julie worryting for him being tied down too early in life. By contrast, Natalie makles sickening use of the little girl in smuggling in drugs - Shed make good use of arty photography in revisiting this scene in delayed memory. Pat turns to the Julies who have been round longest to take Natalie for a ride.
At last, Sheena's absence is explained / revealed and if Shed take their time to make connections and don't move developments along at breakneck speed, that can be all to the good.
The Donny Janine relationmship looks a touch like Dominic Zandra but taken with a different twist.
Finally an overdosing Vicky collapsing on Lou's doorstep neatly shows Lou's concern for her being overt behind the underlying exasperation. We also see signs of Pat's long standing mutual animosity towards Natalie simmer over the top.

Hmmm, well the "Guess their orientations" mystery continues! Oh dear, now we have the revelation that Joy wasn't in fact raped, but in fact willingly consorted with a man! Aah well, she was drunk - maybe she was just curious! But it seems that we are gradually being given a look at her softer side. But what's up with Stella, I would have thought she'd have welcomed Joy's honesty. Poor old Joy, just when she's showing some signs of having a heart she gets it stomped on. And the parade of temporary personnel continues as we wave goodbye to Stella - we really aren't getting a chance to build up any new relationships here are we!

At least we did get to hear something about that old relationship between Pat and Sheena, so we know that the poor woman didn't just disappear down some Larkhall rabbit hole, even if it's not looking very positive for her and Pat at the moment. But it does seem a bit odd that the woman who was arranging for the two of them to get married, and for Pat to adopt Dylan in the Christmas episode, has now missed 3 or 4 visits!

Blimey, how young David - he of the Chateau Larkhall recipe, and the drawn-on-moustached Macbeth, has grown! Now he's going to be a Dad! :eek Shows you how long we've been watching this show! The Chateau Larkhall incident was after all 7 years ago in real time, goodness knows how long in Larkhall flexi-time; and the two Julies, harmless old tarts that they are, are still stuck there! (Well, officially harmless!) It would appear that they can't have more than one lot of original cast members appearing at the same time though, as there was no sign of Body bag this week!

Lou, that other mystery sexual orientation looked like coming down fairly heavily on the side of men this week, but they continue to tease us, with Lou being saved by the (door)bell. But why was Vicki, who Lou has been battling to track down all this time, suddenly following her - just to attempt suicide on her doorstep? If that was a cry for help, why did she need to bother, Lou has shown herself more than willing to help her.

I was glad to see that Lou didn't spill the beans about Joy to Dunlop though! Because his particular interest makes me feel even more uneasy about him, he was clearly looking for some hold to have on Joy, should he need it, if his dictaphone makes an unwelcome appearance!

Oh no, and Pat's hat is still with us! Her wardrobe is clearly rather limited, because that Bowie shirt made yet another appearance this week too! If Sheena doesn't come and visit, she could at least send her in a few clothes, and a new bloody hat! Although, perhaps she needed it to smuggle in that garden fork - but with the size of that hat, she could have brought in the entire contents of her shed!

Uh oh, Richard, it would appear that you and I were starting a new thread at the same time, so I've doubled up on the topic! But I don't know how to get rid of mine!

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed at this turn of events with Lou and Dr. Dunlop. The whole fall for/go for Freudian slip was particularly disappointing, because it suggested that Lou likes the Dr more than she wants to. It seems even less ambiguous than Helen's "Maybe too much" line which has generated so much discussion.

I hope you're right Richard, I hope you're right.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed this episode. The scenes between Stella and Joy were quite powerful to me. Both were suffering so much, there was so much pain and betrayal on Stella's side, and so much pain and regret on Joy's side. It was like Joy was really seeing the ramifications of her rigid decisions, for the first time. She put herself first, stayed with her principles and goals, didn't think about her daughter's needs, and her daughter suffered unimaginably in care. The revelation about Stella being raped was particularly cutting I thought--the idea that these two might have been bound by such a horrible experience. I mean, they were bound, emotionally-speaking, by the pain they were both in, but Stella couldn't see that, and we could totally understand why.

I think the moment with the young girl in the bathroom was perhaps the most disturbing moment ever on the show, after Yvonne's murder. The fact that this kind of wretchedness and abuse can occur is really mind-blowing. Wonderful reaction shots from Pat, which made the black & white flashback even more affecting.

Something else struck me as I was watching--the thing that Pat and Lou have in common is that neither one of them can look the other way. When they see something going on, they can't just let it go, they have to force the issue, to uncover whatever is happening. Lou wouldn't let Joy ship Stella out. Pat won't let Natalie get away with child abuse and drug smuggling--she even paid someone to grass Natalie up, which is something Pat would NEVER do. And of course she knew that Lou would follow up, because that's the kind of person Lou is. In contrast, Joy did everything she could to not have to deal with things with Stella. It took Lou and Stella's actions to force Joy to deal with it, and now it appears Joy can't cope (the drinking has begun!).

Oh, and despite the fact that so many characters have disappeared without a mention, I do have to give Shed props for incorporating Sheena the way they did in this episode. While Sheena wasn't such a significant character, Pat is, and it wouldn't have been right to just have her girlfriend disappear. But to see Pat so excited about seeing Sheena, and then to realize that she is being disappointed yet again by someone who is supposed to love her--it's clear why Pat is so emotionally closed off. And why she might take such drastic action against Natalie--what has she got to lose anyway, without a girlfriend waiting for her on the outside....

Oh, and Pat can wear that green shirt any day, as far as I am concerned. :)

Great observation Richard. These layers and purposeful misleads/concealments are all over the place this season. For the audience as well as the characters. They are doing a really brilliant job with all the layers. The Julie S scene with Natalie plays into this as well--all the scenes with Pat and the Julies were essentially performances to make Natalie suspicious, and they were convincingly done!

My thought here is that suddenly Stella couldn't understand why she wasn't wanted. She could understand her mother not wanting the child of a rapist around, but instead her mother didn't want HER around, and that's much more personal and painful. When you've come up with a story about someone, a rationale for why they've done the things they've done, and then you discover you were wrong about one key fact, everything else can come tumbling down. Compound that with the fact that Stella WAS raped, and can blame her mother for leaving her to such a lousy and vulnerable life--I can see why she felt very angry.

I thought we were supposed to think that she only decided to top herself once she saw Lou and Dr. Dunlop going at it. Before that I thought she was perhaps working up the courage to see Lou, ask her for help, something along those lines.

Sorted. ;)

(ps: The Bowie shirt is timeless & rather fetching, unlike that bloody hat.)

The matter of Vicky's overdose has posed a real puzzle and my thanks to all other posters for pointing this out. My attempt at this is as follows and is provisional.
All the time that Lou chases after Vicky, Lou (understandably) exhibits a total exasperation at Vicky's self destructive behaviour. What Vicky doesn't see is that Lou must care for her to be around at all hours in the day, possibly because she sees Lou as a success and her as a failure. When Lou sees Vicky, she sees Vicky in 'smacked out of her head' mode of behaviour and not as having overdosed. Exactly why Vicky overdoses at seeing Lou through the curtain windows I don't exactly get. 'Attention seeking' sounds both possible and glib at the same time and the term doesn't explain exactly why.
Lou's concern for Vicky has the effect of layering over what Lou is about and causing a right puzzle, added to which, you get the feeling that Lou has made her own mistakes in life and being as unfathomable as she is makes any relationship tricky.
I am perfectly ready to consider other interpretations and to junk anything written depending on what more Shed throws at us.

WOW! I thought this was a fab ep. From Joy admitting her one night stand, to Julie S lying to Natalie about Pat's "escape", to Lou's sister practically dropping dead.

I can't add to what others have said to be honest, because everything I thought about the ep has basically already been said.

This is a really helpful insight. Vicky has that sort of adolescent "just leave me alone! but why don't you care about me?" attitude going on in relation to Lou. Seeing Lou with Dr. Dunlop probably gives her such a feeling of isolation and failure, as you say.

Had another thought about the Joy-Stella business in this episode (the more I think about this plotline, the more I think it was incredibly well done, both thematically and in terms of character development). So, at the start, Joy is Stella's jailer, and Stella desperately wants to make Joy care about her. Joy is very rejecting of Stella, most likely because she doesn't want to grapple with the burgeoning maternal feelings she is having (the regret which inherently accompanies them is too painful). However, a shift occurs for Joy when sees Stella getting beat up, and this is when Joy opens up, confessing that she wasn't raped.

At which point their roles immediately are reversed. Now its Joy who is trying to pursue an emotional relationship, and Stella who rejects it. And Stella does so with a very symbolic action: they are in Stella's cell, and Stella shouts "Get out! Get out!"--it's like a mirror image of Joy's role as Stella's jailer, a con forcing a screw out of her cell (vs a screw locking a con in to her cell--much more typical isn't it?). This is then followed by Stella taking Joy captive, essentially imprisoning her in the bathroom (what's with that new set, btw?), while Joy is still trying to pursue Stella on an emotional level. So in the end each sort of winds up in the other's shoes, which is also what is happening a tiny bit on an emotional level, at least for Joy. For Stella it will probably take more time....

Agreed! I also thought the pants she was wearing this ep were pretty hot too. It seems like she wears the hat when she is going to be working outside, but while I can accept that with Nikki's hat in S3 (ie it's a work hat), Pat's hat is just ridiculously trendy and VERY distracting.

I agree with the role reversal between Joy and Stella. I loved watching that particular storyline develop in last night's episode. When Joy showed Stella her tattoo, I was thinking "My God, this woman does have a heart after all". But I can see why Stella reacted the way she did after finding out she was a mistake. I mean, imagine finding out that your mother didn't want you to be born.

I think this is why a lot of kids who are adopted really struggle--it's a very painful thing to be given up by your mother, for whatever reason.

I've been thinking more about my disappointment about Lou with the Dr, and about the lack of romance for Pat this season. Obviously a number of us have contemplated the possibility that Pat and Lou would have something going, which is looking less and less likely. And since there's no other noticeable candidate for Pat to be with, it's looking to me like there won't be any lesbian romances this season. Which was making me a little depressed, frankly.

But I realized that in another way, this is an exciting, uncommon, and rather feminist way to have written this season. Most female characters in film and television are primarily part of romantic plotlines. They don't get to have adventures, quests if you will. Their only quest is to fall in love. In some ways, Bad Girls has fallen into this trap as well, although its been in an effort to promote the visibility of lesbian love and relationships. But now, this season, they've given Pat a plotline which is much more traditionally given to male characters: she's a crusader, a warrior against evil. If she were a guy, we wouldn't be sitting here waiting for her to find a chick to fall in love with. We'd be rooting for her to triumph over Natalie once and for all, and if she gets a little bit on the side, well that's all good then. So in a way they are finally giving us the lesbian hero who doesn't compromise herself for love (a la Nikki and Helen, according to some), but instead never lets herself be distracted from her single-minded goal of triumphing over evil and protecting the women of Larkhall.

I thought you may perhaps be covetous of the Bowie shirt ekny! ;) (And thanks for sorting out the "double thread" situation!)
But that hat is just too dire even for the garden abzug! I think that that hat even surpasses SL's flatcap in MOTG, in rendering its wearer worthy of a visit from the Hat Police!

abzug you mentioned the black and white flashbacks of Pat recalling the scene with the little girl in the visitors room, obviously the new camera tricks are the way that they are going, as this ep was directed by Laurence Moody, who is one of the original directors from S1, so it's not only the new directors that are making use of them!

That scene with the little girl was indeed a ghastly one, and so the black and white shot with the lurid red of the blood on her dress was particularly effective. It would appear Natalie's evil knows no bounds, although I supoose in the light of what she is in prison for, I suppose it is hardly surprising, as she has clearly in the past sunk even lower than this!

I had wondered why Pat was so blatant in letting Natalie see that she was getting the other woman to grass on her about the drugs, but clearly even from this point she was setting her up to follow the trail. The whole setting up of Natalie in an escape attempt, is I think designed to suggest that that Pat is so anti everything that Natalie represents, that she is prepared to put up with having her around for an even longer sentence, in order to make sure that she gets her just deserts.

And abzug, that is a good point about the distinction between Stella accepting the fact that Joy might have rejected a child that was the product of a rape, but not otherwise. Especially as having been raped herself, she may have considered doing the same thing herself, if she had become pregnant as a result.

Richard's point about Lou probably having made mistakes in her own life is a good one, and I wonder if there isn't something else in this regard that we don't know about yet. There was Vikki's comment last week that Lou might perhaps like to join in with her and her punter, I wonder if there is something in her past, that perhaps makes it a lot easier for her to empathise with and relate to the other women. And abzug, maybe your point about the blurring of the lines between "us and them" goes even further than Lou having a sister who could potentially be a "them" - she may at some stage in her life have had the potential for being a "them" herself! She unlike Vikki, may have turned her life around. She does make the point to Stella as she leaves, that she shouldn't allow what has happened to her, to affect how she conducts the rest of her life.

I very much like abzug's very interesting notion of Pat's role in purely being involved as protector / avenger of her fellow prisoners at Larkhall.
I freely didn't spot the significance of the blood on the girl's dress (which I think the Julies alluded to) and I very much like the idea of the memory flashbacks.
The episode at the end of setting Natalie up is the 'plot within the plot' which the viewer is invited to see from Natalie's perspective before Pat and the Julies give you a glimpse behind this. It does remind viewers how the Julies are sharper than they appear to be in being able to play this game so very well- this a gutroot feeling but it harks right back through the history of BG and works in overall continuity.

Board's been kinda slow, I think people are on vacation both sides of the pond, so even though I'm a bit late to this discussion, I figured I'd post to goose things along a bit, least til tomorrow. Um. Maybe. Also I'm very short of sleep (computer virus = me <<-- stressed ) so if I drop any stitches here, apologies in advance, can't proofread as usual, pls just let me know.


Most of my responses seem to be off from the madding crowd so it's been interesting just listening. For example, I felt they risked completely alienating the audience from Joy with the revelation that the rape had been a lie. Who could then have sympathy for such a character? (Apparently lots of people. Isn't it an unforgivable offense to 'real' rape victims [in this fictional world], much less Stella? And I kept thinking: whose career has she ended to do this? if she cried rape, wouldn't she have had to blame someone? but realized if she said it happened off-station & she was drunk/couldn't remember, probably not.) Seems beyond cold, but I suppose the idea is meant to be she was both so mortified she'd let things get so out of hand, & was so career-minded, she just wanted to bury it. And things were a huge amount harder for women in the services back then, so there's that to take into consideration as well. I think the US Army & Israeli armies are still the only ones to offer maternity uniforms. Anyway, people's reactions to lots of things in this ep were surprising to me, but I guess this most of all.

Shed took a good step away from charicature in ep5, but... well. We'll see. The pending transition to mini-alcoholic feels like an overly-swift way to sideline Joy for at least a few episodes, perhaps to bring Lou to the fore as Acting Gov (--a job I'd bet money Lou doesn't want).


Re Stella having been raped: huh? Where was I? What was the line that incontrovertibly gave us that backstory?? Help.


Lou. Sigh, I don't know, I don't want to comment on this whole "You're the kind of guy I dot dot dot" business. I felt AD delivered that line clumsily, on top of everything. It really needed another take. Their chemistry is... ahm, let's just say not evident to me. Maybe it's a lesbian-thing & I just can't feel the heat emanating off them. Whatever: bored now.


Also puzzled: people seem to be assuming Pat's going to 'kidnap' Buxton & spirit her out of the place in the van. ? We've had enough misdirection already I don't know that I'm buying that: Pat's handling a really dangerous-looking garden implement near ep's end. The suggestion is she's contemplating killing NB, far as I can tell. Which would alter Pat's status/character/history from manslaughter-girl to premeditated-murder-girl (if she doesn't lose her nerve).

Are we supposed to find this endless face-to-face standoff with Buxton sexy in some bizarre sublimated way? I just can't fathom why they're dragging it out so long. May just be bec I feel about Buxton, to a lesser extent, the way I did about Fenner:

On the one hand... good. Buxton's simply a tool for plot-machinations so who cares if she's dead, she'd have just as much personality either way: unpleasant & malodorous. There's no backstory for her bec that would humanize her, so there's nothing to learn by watching her, just that she's a nasty piece of work. Not much acting to do either, in that way. (Arguably you can say we learn how other people react to & around her but I think that's stretching the point. The only other thing in her favor might be: better the devil you know; we could get a female Spiers as a replacement, someone humorless, hostile, & horrible to look at. Or another Di.)

On the other-other hand... the Pat thing. Is this the only real challenge Pat's going to have to face? It is a worthy challenge for Pat? Is it the one that's going to kill her off or end her time on the show? Personally, I'd feel sort of like... pffft, if that were the case. Well, no, actually, I'd be pissed.

I wish they'd let her character stretch a bit, somehow... dunno, her role as The Enforcer has very real limits, imo. If Pat kills B, this would make it pretty hard to redeem her much less get her out into society again (outside of in-a-coffin, I mean). Maybe redeem is the wrong word: maybe getting rid of a pest like Buxton means she's automatically off the moral hook. But Pat's whole noble saving-others gig makes her ripe for sacrifice. She has no hope of getting out, no interest in it, so none of her actions are motivated by that idea. Depressing. The only way 'round this (and the Lou-being-straight imbroglio) is if the thing with Buxton goes tits up (as happens so often in the BG universe) & Pat has to talk to the acting-Number-One (Lou) because Joy's spending the next episode in recovery (with Janine, no doubt. ;p ). But that's the most logical way I can see those two characters' paths crossing again.


And, yet again, I found the most interesting aspects of the episode structural. The flashback device (I sure hope they use it lightly if they're going to continue with it) is justified bec it's giving us slightly different (new) visual information than the actual scene did.

The other piece of serious weirdness--whether it's intentional or not I can't say--is that the seductive tones Stella uses with Joy (yes I know it's supposed to be a mislead but that's not my point) "didn't you feel it?" etc., as well as Lou's sister asking her to "join in" means Vikki's overtones, too, are or become incestuous by default. (This is also the case w/some lines in previous S8 episodes.) So again, I have to ask where they're going with the lesbian-subtext-misleads. Cause incest as a substitute/alternate-subtext for lesbianism-as-subtext (not primary text) is giving me worries. We've been there, it's the same territory every time: Sister, My Sister; Fun [spare yourselves, trust me on this]; Heavenly Creatures; Les Blessures assassines (Murderous Maids)... I'm sure I'm missing another half a dozen but the point is: you could now in fact do at least an entire chapter in a film anthology on the incestuous/murderous-lesbian motif. If you could stomach it.


Abzug, re your Aug 11 post, I think you're onto something re Pat but I have places I find myself at variance with the idea, too. (See above for more general reflections in Pat-para.)

So see, one of my problems is, Pat's self-destructive. Her crusade is likely to get her killed or martyred. So... how is that not traditional for feminist or proto-feminist heroes?

Of course, practically speaking it's too soon to judge... maybe she kills Buxton, keeps the moral high ground, and lives to tell the tale--outside of prison, no less. That would be sweet.

"Uncommon" is hard to define. We none of us see half as much of what we want to see as what we do see, on screen. (This is particularly true of lesbians. So we have to be careful not to make stuff up.) Jodie Foster's on a quest in Contact, Gina Davis is on a quest in Long Kiss Goodbye. And I suppose you could argue that the movies about women trying to find different ways of making a living and having a life, although not of interest to me, are something men don't get to have, so perhaps they're different types of quest stories too, only we don't tend to see them that way bec they feel programmatic to us (happy romantic resolutions) so we dismiss them. But saying Pat's story is nobler or should be inherently admirable because--in a way--it's more like a guy's story doesn't work for me, if that is in part what you're suggesting. I might have misunderstood the direction of your argument, however, in which case I'm sure you'll clarify. ;) Is Gilgamesh more a guy-story than a girl-story? Well, yeah, but except in certain circumstances, I'm not sure making that distinction works for me either, or at least, not in a way that's telling me something new. It might tell me something about narrative structures, historically, but not about this particular story. Anyway... having life's cushy bits stripped off so we can see it in its 'true' harsh claylike form or whatever is one way of looking at things but just that, one type of storytelling that as you are describing it in your ep5 paragraph, has by & large belonged to men. It has its own aesthetics, rules, etc, its own idea about how to represent reality. So yeah, right now Pat doesn't seem that different from Achilles brooding in his tent or something.

But even Achilles got laid.

Ah ekny, but maybe that might have given him an Achilles' heel! ;)

Stella makes reference to having been raped when she is holding Joy at toothbrush-and-broken-spectacles-point in the bathroom. She says to her:
"You have no idea what I've been through since you dumped me in care. I've been shipped from one set of nutters to the next."
Joy responds: "I thought I was doing the best thing"
Stella carries right on with: "I even got raped once. I thought that gave us something in common. Funny that eh? Course I didn't tell no-one, 'cos no-one would have believed me. Because of sick women like you who make sure!"
So her protest actually ties in with your thought that it is an unforgiveable offence to 'real' rape victims for someone to cry rape. So thanks, you've clarified for me why Stella is so angry with Joy, it's not because she rejected her and would have had an abortion if she could have, so much as this point of crying rape.

I think she's angry for both reasons, but thx back for the mutual clarification; I had a fuzzy feeling Stella'd said something but I have this computer virus, see, and it's doing bad things to me head. We're very close, my computer & I, when This is All Behind Us we're thinking of a small ceremony, just friends & family, nothing flashy, maybe a tasteful little implant somewhere discreet; behind the ear, p'rhaps....

You're a nutter! :D And yes, I believe you can get very discreet hearing aids these days! ;)

True, but this has always been a strategy of the show, to reveal everyone's worst behavior and actions, and to show how some people are punished for it (either by being sent to prison, or by suffering emotionally in their lives, or some combination). And yet to still manage to convince the audience that there is some reason to still sympathize with a character who has done such awful things. To me, the fact that Joy was trying to start afresh, to begin honestly, to move beyond the deception/betrayal is a very positive thing, and it's something the show always tries to hold up as the ideal. It's kind of analogous to when Shaz meets the widow of her murder victim face to face--there is something in owning up to your crime, facing the person who suffered because of it, which the show finds very redemptive.

I am hoping boredom is the point with the two of them. I mean, they haven't tried to build it up into anything interesting, and that one slip of Lou's is not enough to convince me that she's particularly excited by this guy. In every other way she has signaled an ability to take him or leave him. They haven't written in any tension from her side whatsoever. So it's either terrible writing (I hope not!) or something else is going to happen with Lou which will make this doctor fling very unimportant.

Oh, I thought she was planning to attack, definitely. That weapon, the setting up Natalie to think she's getting out--she wouldn't have done that to ACTUALLY help Natalie escape, just to distract her from the real attack. I don't know if she has the intention to KILL her, per se, but I think she intends to inflict physical harm on her.

Well, this is where I start to see these two as gladiators, warriors in the coliseum which is Larkhall. The battle is about to reach its climax. It's like an extended duel or something. Very archetypical. But I agree it's getting a little boring by this point, so hopefully it will resolve tomorrow evening.

Oh god, me too. I hope this is not the be all and end all of Pat this season. But the fact that theoretically Nat could get killed tomorrow night would leave a whole bunch of episodes for Pat to have all kinds of things happen to her, including some of the things you speculate about, all of which have nothing to do with the ongoing gladiator war.

Ugh, I can't even go there. They have to be leading somewhere else with this, because they MUST be aware of the connotations as you've described them.

Good point. The self-sacrifice idea (if it goes in that direction) is definitely not that appealing for Pat. Not very empowered, not getting away from traditional female roles at all.

Yes, but, don't you think it's significant that you can actually LIST most of the major examples? You could never do that with male characters in films or television--you'd have to list the ones who DON'T have quests (such as the father in Sugar Rush).

It's only admirable because it's not something we see often, and since I think we women, in our lives, have a wide range of possibilities, I like to see the same things in fictional narrative. So I am glad when they take a different tactic, and try to show a female character who is invested in something other than falling in love. Just for the sake of variety, and to show that not all women think that falling in love and settling down and having a family is the Ultimate Goal in Life.

True! Let's hope Pat does too. :)

Hearing aids! Wtf?! Nevah.

Excellent points, & thanks for reminding me. I'll keep it in the front of my head from now on.

The gladiator image is very nice, I think I'll go with that, too. I haven't much to add oa because I basically agree with everything in your post. ;)

Well, there I was just trying to be brief. I do think there are lots of films that could fill this category, once we examined & redefined the category.

And there I'd imagine most everyone feels the same. :D