Domina Review: Happiness (Season 1 Episode 8)

Tycho’s weak body removal skills come back to haunt everyone in Domina Season 1 Episode 8, a finale that wraps up a lot of storylines, but certainly leaves things wide open for a potential second season.

In fact, there’s so much happening in this episode that it’s a little infuriating we had to sit through…whatever last week’s installment was when we could have done more with virtually any of the stories herein. (And could have frankly done without Gaius and Agrippa hunting down Corvinus entirely.) 

 Appio’s body is discovered at last, sloppily buried in the forest at Baiae. Octavia, pleased that the man who killed her son is dead, nevertheless rapidly starts putting the pieces together that the slave was likely murdered and didn’t work alone to poison Marcellus. When Scribonia tells her of Marcellus’ plans to kill Livia’s sons, well. The whole family instantly suspects her. 

The confrontation, in which Livia’ holds firm to the lie of her innocence as Octavia becomes increasingly hysterical is certainly good television, and surprisingly tense, too, even though we all already knew that the former would likely skate for her crimes.

I was genuinely concerned that Antigone or Tycho would somehow be sacrificed to spare Livia and I’m glad that didn’t happen, even though I still think Domina could have done more with both of them. 

Elsewhere Livia, having actually now spent more than five minutes with Drusus, realizes that her handsome favorite son is not at all up to the task of helping her execute her grand plan to return control of Rome to the Senate after Gauis’ death.

To be fair: Domina has not spent nearly enough time dissecting how this plan was ever supposed to work, given all the many pieces that would have to go just right for it to do so. Like why in the world does Livia think either of her sons would care about anything Piso had to say — or care about her reasons for marrying Gaius?

But, her sudden decision that it’s all fine, she can just use Tiberius in Drusus’ place leads Livia to take both her children to her father’s mausoleum to try and sell them on the justness of making Rome a republic again. This is dumb for multiple reasons — it’s further proof Livia doesn’t know anything about either of her children, especially her eldest, and her entire plan appears to yell at them until they agree. Which is…ineffective. 

Perhaps if Domina showed us a Livia as dedicated to manipulating her family the same way she manipulates random allies of her husband this would have worked better. But instead, all season we’ve seen her just blithely assuming this dumb plan of hers had any chance of succeeding, and she’s done zero of the work necessary with her own children over the years to pull it off. 

The most interesting part of this episode is almost certainly the sequence between Livia’s two sons, where we learn that Tiberius has clocked his mother for years — he’s already guessed she’s guilty of Marcellus’s death and probably his father’s as well.

He sees her addiction to power when she herself does not and knows that she will attempt to keep right on wielding it through both of them, the same way she does with Gaius. 

Yet Domina hasn’t flinched from portraying Tiberius as a character who definitely carries the dual streaks of cruelty and madness that run through many of the men in his line: He’s a direct ancestor of Nero and Caligula, after all. But even I have to admit I was shocked by his murdering a prostitute after asking her to pretend to be Livia. 

By the end of the hour, Tiberius has agreed to help Drusus with Livia’s plan. But at this point, even if we didn’t know that the boy was destined to follow in Gaius’ footsteps, does anyone believe that’s a promise that he’d ever keep?

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• I wish this show had done more with Antigone’s character this season — and then Tycho’s entirely correct rant about how she’s a free woman who still sees herself as attached to Livia would have landed better.
• Related: There really should have been more focus on the fact that Antigone is the one who defied Livia’s orders and murdered Appio anyway. 
• What on earth was the point of forcing us to watch Corvinus’ body mutilated? I know what Agrippa meant when he said “unrecognizable” show. 
• Scribonia and Octavia’s friendship is actually really…nice? Other than Livia herself, there just aren’t a lot of fleshed-out women on this show (even Antigone is second-tier for the most part), and I wish we’d gotten to see more of what their unique experiences were like. Scribonia was occasionally a really good example of how Roman women often simultaneously had everything and nothing, and I wish the show had delved into that a bit more.

What did you think of this episode of Domina? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Domina Season 1 is now streaming on Epix.com.

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