"Rome": Don't Forget Ray

One of the nice things about being on vacation, but not traveling, is playing TV catch up. I hung around last week and finally got to catch up with the last 5 episodes of "Rome," and I was really blown away. (I also got to watch the first 2 new episodes of "The Sopranos," but that's a different story, which will appear in this Friday's Globe...)

Everything about the way "Rome" ended was perfect. The series didn't go out with a major mind-bend, like "Six Feet Under," whose finale still rates as the best series finale ever as far as I'm concerned. But all the pieces were accounted for, the production values -- particularly in the Egyptian sequences -- were extraordinary, and all the characters met fates that sat well both in literary and in historical terms. I loved the way the writers has Caesarion die in the official record, but live in the fictional side of the story, with Titus Pullo as his father. Very clever.

I also loved the way the series actually managed to draw out our sympathy for Atia. I mean, she was living out the hell that Servilia bestowed upon her, and she deserved it, and yet, and yet... She was a victim of her son's acute political machinations. She saw the love of her life, Marc Antony, forced upon her daughter, driven to exile, and so weakened that he refused her entry to his home. Who wasn't rooting for her when she gave her daughter-in-law a big dis?

But I write here mostly to urge Emmy voters to take note of the great performers on this series, particularly Ray Stevenson. Because "Rome" is over, I imagine it will be a little too easy to ignore its actors at the end of the season. Stevenson was a revelation as Titus Pullo. He anchored the entire series, and he managed to stand out amid all the extravagent pageantry wearing only rags. And he was able to make such a giant brute into a such a loyal pussy cat with a very sweet smile. I was so glad that he had the final words of the series, and that they were comic.