How To Romance A Roman Woman: Titus Pullo's Lecture On Harmony Between The Sexes

~ The ancient Roman version of a buddy cop duo. Ray Stevenson on the left as Titus Pullo and Kevin McKidd on the right as Lucius Vorenus on HBO's Rome.

HBO's movie-quality series Rome was a favorite of mine. I was fascinated by the everything about it, including the amazing amount of Britishness...that was weird. Rome's storyline took two names briefly mentioned in a historical account of Rome's war in Gaul by Julius Caesar and developed large, influential biographies during the plot of the show that allowed for great dramatic licence as well as a good sense of the actual political turmoil at the time. The two figures were Titus Pullo (perfectly played by Ray Stevenson) and Lucius Vorenus (played by the immensely talented Scotsman, Kevin McKidd). Rome was the kind of soap opera that a real man such as myself would watch and its humor was certainly not lacking, so blended with the deep drama you'd swear Joss Whedon wrote the damn thing (He didn't, it was Bruno Heller, mostly). Either way, my quotes today are from one of my favorite scenes of the short-lived series.

Roman solider, Lucius Vorenus, comes back from a long military campaign to find he isn't suited for domestic life and is completely incapable of getting along with his now more mature wife and the young children that barely remember their father. Trying to please his wife, he asks Titus Pullo, a fierce but flaky soldier and unabashed ladies man for the best in ancient romantic advice. Taking a walk together, Lucius takes in a brilliant lecture from his subordinate as follows:

JD'S Quotes: Warning: This conversation is just a bit graphic...But informative.

Titus Pullo: Of course, your best method for pleasing a woman is the warm beating heart of an enemy. I mean, women will say they don't like it but they do. It makes them wet as October.

Vorenus: Well, that doesn't answer.

Pullo: Well, failing that, talk to her.

Vorenus: Talk? But of what?

Pullo: It doesn't matter. It's all about the tone of the voice. Pretend you're putting a saddle on a skittish horse. 'There, Honey. Shh, come now.'. You know, that sort of thing.

Vorenus: And that's all?

Pullo: What else?...Oh, tell her she's beautiful-all the time. Tell her she's beautiful every time you see her, even when she's not.

Vorenus: And what else?

Pullo: Oh, aye. Also, very important: When you couple with her, there's this spot just above her cunny. It's like a little button. Now, attend to that button and she will open up like a flower.

Vorenus, stopping angrily: How do you know this of her?

Pullo, defensively: All women have them! Ask anyone.

Now, when I said this was informative earlier, I pretty much had a handle on everything, personally, save for the warm beating heart of an enemy part. And, with today's current laws...it's just not worth a shortcut to October weather. You know what I mean?

Yes, please do save Journeyman

~The main cast of NBC gem Journeyman

This isn't a regular post and something we've never done on Say what?. We'll keep it short and simple. A really wonderful show is being cancelled and it's called Journeyman. It's a great cast although the most recognizable actor is Kevin McKidd from HBO's epic drama Rome. Journeyman is the story of a journalist named Dan getting sucked into a time-traveling phenomenon. We won't go through the whole plotline but suffice it to say that there was an unfortunate dismissal by TV fans to assume it was basically the new Quantum Leap. If they didn't like Quantum Leap, there'd be no reason to give it a chance and if they did like it, they couldn't see watching a remake of it. So, Journeyman suffered unfairly from the start . We both gave it a chance and as far as we're concerned, Journeyman is easily one of the best series out there and never got the promotional attention that it deserved and certainly hasn't received the time it deserves to grow an audience and attract those that either dismissed it wrongly with the aforementioned assumptions or never heard of it. NBC has given us a show you can sink your teeth into and then snatched it away because it wasn't an immediate ratings smash.

We understand that you need good ratings to keep a show on but the idea that something must be an immediate top ranking show is quite unfair. Neither of us know anyone who has watched the show and not enjoyed it. It is not a Quantum Leap knock-off like some suspect-making the assumption without watching it. Journeyman is no more a copy of Quantum Leap because it shares the fantasy topic of time travel than Sex And The City is a copy of The Mary Tyler Moore Show because they both share the topic of single women living alone in the city. Aside from the idea of time travel, we find it bares no similarity at all. At any rate, we thought we would add to the support by giving some links to the Save Journeyman effort. We registered with Hey! Nielsen and rated the show and will put in for the Rice-a-Roni campaign too and we hope you fellow fans of the show will do the same if you haven't already. We'd have done this post sooner but we assumed the show was on hiatus do to the writers' strike until we saw the Save Journeyman campaign on Digg. Good luck to us all on ensuring quality TV by not letting this show slip through the cracks.

~Lucy and JD



To Help, Please Visit:

Save Journeyman! or http://savejourneyman.net/



Save Journeyman or http://save-journeyman.blogspot.com/


Journeyman Opinions, Ratings, News And Reviews at Hey! Nielsen or http://www.heynielsen.com/view/journeyman/

Petition to get a second season of Journeyman: Journeyman Second Season Petition Petition

or http://www.petitiononline.com/jmf/petition.html