(CNN) — Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble

Ancient footprints are everywhere.

You can almost think that you're seeing double,

On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.

Gotta hurry on back to my hotel room,

Where I got me a date with a pretty little girl from Greece,

She promised she'd be there with me,

When I paint my masterpiece -- Bob Dylan

You should know right now, if you didn't know already, that what drives the team behind "Parts Unknown" is not to do what we did last week or last month -- or ever.

We are delighted when our viewers like an episode and even more delighted when they love one. But we are compelled, just the same, to avoid repeating what we've done before. If we fail -- we want to fail outrageously, foolishly, gloriously -- giving it everything we've got in the cause of making something new and strange and hopefully, awesome.

Our latest Rome episode is, perhaps, the most ambitious example of that compulsion.

My longtime team has for years discussed the possibility of shooting an episode entirely in wide screen, letterbox anamorphic format -- like so many of the movies we admire. And for this episode, we finally got our way.

Destination: Italy

Anthony Bourdain explores a side of Rome that you've never seen on "Parts Unknown" Sunday, December 4, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

This was necessarily a mammoth undertaking. Networks don't like it -- as it makes distribution to countries where they might still have square TV sets difficult. To do it right requires additional equipment, lighting, expense -- and, in this case, the addition of a sizable Italian film crew. Working within the Italian filmmaking system presents ... challenges of its own.

The kinds of images we anticipated capturing required music adequate to the scale and subject. Which meant we needed an actual score -- in this case, a beautiful collection of related pieces on a theme by our longtime music director Michael Ruffino. And I was adamant about acquiring rights to an existing piece of music -- the song "Spiral Waltz" from the wonderful 60's sci-fi satire, "The 10th Victim."

Not your typical Rome

And though we intended from the beginning to make the most beautiful looking show we had ever done, there was one important thematic constraint: We would shoot NO classical Rome.

The entire episode would feature ONLY the architecture of Mussolini and post-Mussolini era Rome: brutalist, futurist and rationalist structures, mid-century housing blocks, suburbs, the decidedly downscale and not particularly romantic seaside community of Ostia.

Rome may be the most romantic city in the world, and one of the most filmed, but the films we chose to reference were films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dario Argento and Abel Ferrara. Pasolini's wonderful, heartbreaking "Mamma Roma" is kind of a continuing reference point. And visually, Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Conformist," of course -- a film I've been besotted with for years.

What's it about? Well ... it's complicated. A lot of stuff. It's about everyday Rome, the joys and the frustrations. It's about fascism -- and how it might have happened in this most beautiful of cities. It's about movies. It's about love -- for films, for places, for the little things that make our lives bearable and for people.

'A little fascist inside you?'

If you're looking for classic Rome, this isn't the show for you. "Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown" airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Near the end, the brilliant and always honest Asia Argento says, "So you're saying there's a little fascist inside you?" Yes. Thinking about it now, I am saying that.

And to some extent, that's what this episode is about: the urge, the impulse, for ordinary people, even ones surrounded by beauty, to want a leader, a man on a horse, to come down from on high and make everything better. Someone/anyone who will say with a firm voice, "Listen to me! I know what I'm doing!"

That things have historically seldom if ever worked out in the wake of such promises is almost beside the point.

The episode would not have been possible -- or be anything like it is without the truly magnificent Asia Argento. She's spent a lifetime in films -- mostly in front of the cameras, but also -- and quite notably -- behind, directing most recently the remarkable and beautiful "Incompresa (Misunderstood)."

She told us about "stornaro," the bawdy, profane Roman folk songs we feature at various times during the episode. She introduced us to the batshit crazy boxing club where we ate pasta ringside as gladiators pounded one another and the crowd hooted and roared.

She allowed us to shoot at her favorite little restaurants, where she takes her kids on the weekends for homemade fettuccine and polpetti. Introduced us to the lovely and outrageous trans ladies who live in her neighborhood -- and arranged for them to wander, choreographed, like exotic birds, through her local Quicky Mart while we shopped for dinner.

She arranged for her sister Fiore to cook for me at her home -- with her delightful children, daughter Ana and son Nicola (who pretty much steals the show as he struggles with his tripe). She convinced the notorious Abel Ferrara to appear in the episode -- and explain how the maddest and baddest of American film directors could find himself living an ordinary life as a husband and father in Rome.

But most importantly, she was herself. Always honest, completely unsparing.

If you ask Asia a question, you are going to get an answer -- and she doesn't care if it reflects badly on you -- or on herself. She's going to give it to you straight. Actors and film people are generally a frightened bunch. They fear saying or doing the wrong thing -- of somehow finding themselves no longer able to work in film.

Though she was born into a film dynasty and has been acting since she was 9 years old, Asia has never given a fuck. Her admission that she never votes is both terrible and true -- and about as close to home as it gets.

The last word, appropriately, is hers.

It's a very beautiful show. The most beautiful we've ever made, I think. And I'm very proud of the work that cinematographers Zach Zamboni and Todd Liebler put into it. Director Tom Vitale put heart and soul into the effort -- enduring many agonies during the process. Producer Jeff Allen somehow managed logistical and diplomatic challenges that would have killed a lesser man. And editor Hunter Gross just gets better and better.