Our next round of Xena Warrior Princess episodes cover some familiar ground in more ways than one: we get a rare example of a clip-show that justifies its own existence by providing new perspectives to old material, another wacky hijinks comedy, and another riff on a pre-existing story (in this case, a disaster at sea). Still, we're in the midst of season three, and the writers are firing on all cylinders. Even the less-than-impressive offerings are still a lot of fun to watch.
Forget Me Not
Plot: While Xena is travelling elsewhere, Gabrielle continues to have nightmares of their recent estrangement and violent fall-out. As such, she takes the opportunity to visit the Temple of Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memories, and learns that she can have all her pain removed if she undergoes a cleansing ritual.
All her thoughts are emptied into a pottery bowl, and she's told she must journey through three rivers of memory, after which she will be able to chose whether or not she wants to forget her past. If the water in the bowl is emptied, her memories will be gone forever. At the first river, she meets a being that looks like Ares, but who informs her he's actually the personification of a memory she wants to suppress.
The River of Wailing inundates Gabrielle with visions of grief and loss, and when she emerges, she finds herself covered in blood. The River of Woe is covered in ice that soon cracks beneath Gabrielle, forcing her to relive images of her betrayal of Xena. Though she tries to turn back, Ares urges her to go on, and a memory is triggered as she leaps into the River of Fire: that the real Ares appeared to her as Xena left for Chin and offered to transport her there quickly (plugging that particular plot hole in a very neat way).
The memory that she's been suppressing is that she didn't take Ares up on his offer in order to prevent Xena from killing Ming T'ien. She did it because she was resentful Xena would prioritize murdering someone over their friendship, and as a result nearly got her killed.
Meanwhile, Joxer has followed Gabrielle to the temple. Concerned about her wellbeing, he carries her away only to discover that she's just an empty shell... which provides him the opportunity to build up a relationship between them. Just as she's convinced that he's a mighty warrior and she's in love with him, Gabrielle reclaims her body and is reconciled with Xena, who knew all along that she was holding back on something.
This is a surprisingly good episode, especially on the heels of When in Rome, and especially considering it’s technically a clip show.
It finally delves into some of the emotional fallout of Hope and the other tribulations of the season, leaving me to wonder why it didn’t take place directly after The Bitter Suite, when all this was still fresh in our minds (and you have to wonder why Gabrielle is getting bad dreams now instead of earlier).
I suppose the presence of so many clips made them push it back a bit, though if you're ever going to do a clip show, then this is the way to do it – not as a lazy way of filling in some time, but to actually explore the characters and fill in a plot-hole. I probably could have done without another rendition of Xena and Gabrielle singing in Illusia, but revealing that Ares was the one to transport Gabrielle to Chin was a stroke of minor genius.
The Temple of Mnemosyne was a nice set-piece and the design of the priestesses was suitably floaty and mysterious (though the acting was a bit off – I got the feeling the Head Priestess was concentrating so hard on her American accent that she came across as really monotonous) and the whole water-jug/three rivers motif was elegantly done.
A good twist was the fact that the Ares which appeared to Gabrielle wasn't the real God of War at all, but rather an extension of her subconscious: the guilt that had been hiding away the memory of how she agreed to Ares's deal to get her to Chin ahead of Xena. This was nicely played, first by how she rationalized his presence by recalling the Aphrodite/scroll business, and secondly in the way she figured out who he really was. It reminded me of a similar trick in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though in that case, it was an ally to the protagonist who was filling in for a person's subconscious voice.
Another good idea was to add some levity between Joxer (who was veering between manipulative leech and genuinely sweet guy – luckily his good side won out before anything happened) and "empty vessel" Gabrielle who had no idea who she was. A comedic subplot running alongside the more serious A-storyline helped keep things light and added fresh material to the episode so it wasn't just all flashbacks.
The original flashback to Gabrielle's meeting with Ares as Xena left for Chin was really beautifully played by Kevin and Renee. You could see how Ares was manipulating her by bringing up what had happened in Britannia and throwing doubt on Xena's motives, while Gabrielle was clearly already lying to herself when she said she would go "for friendship". It was only in this episode she was able admit to herself that she wanted Xena to suffer for what she'd done.
To be honest, I've spent this entire Rift arc sympathizing mostly with Gabrielle, thinking that regardless of what else she did, her intentions at least were pure, but this put an interesting little spin on things. Despite Solan's death, I still think Xena has gotten off relatively easy for all the morally dubious things she's been up to lately, whereas poor Gabrielle has really been put through the wringer!
Speaking of episode order, perhaps it would have been a nice idea to have Forgiven taking place directly after this episode, as that little coda of Gabrielle seeking forgiveness with the urn would have been a nice little capper to her arc. But hopefully this is the end of the imbalance between Xena and Gabrielle – with that final secret out of the way, they're back to being besties, right?
Although I was left wondering about the life-story of the amnesiac girl who left the temple right before Gabrielle entered. I wonder what her deal was.
Good little episode, which was so much better than it technically deserved to be given that it was a clip-show!
Finns, Femmes and Gems
Plot: Aphrodite has stolen a diamond in order to honour her own beauty, not knowing (or caring) that if it's not returned to the temple from whence it came, the North Star will be extinguished. In order to slow down Xena, Gabrielle and Joxer (who are hot on the heels of the thief) Aphrodite blows a magical potion on them, which leads to them becoming obsessed with whatever they were thinking about at that precise moment.
As such, Joxer believes he's an ape-man, Gabrielle becomes totally self-absorbed, and Xena becomes obsessed with fishing. Hijinks ensue, and the spell is finally broken when Xena realizes the spell is forcing them to confront unresolved issues. Hers was the need to do something to honour her brother, while Gabrielle's was that she often feels like an unappreciated sidekick. As for Joxer, he'll have to wait until tomorrow for his cure...
Well, this was another fairly light and inconsequential episode brought about by Aphrodite-related mischief. It's pretty much the same as The Quill is Mightier in regards to the fact that Aphrodite gets annoyed over some minor infraction concerning her vanity and decides to go about fixing it in the most convoluted way possible. This time it had something to do with a diamond, though I don't think we were supposed to care about the plot.
So Xena becomes obsessed with fishing, Gabrielle becomes utterly self-absorbed, and Joxer turns into an ape-man. All three actors were certainly very funny (and having a lot of fun) with this, and there were plenty of good laughs. The sheer audacity of splicing images obviously taken from the Nature Channel and trying to pass them off as animals hearing Joxer's cries was my favourite gag, but for the most part it was the little glimpses of characterization that made it stand out. I liked the brief scene of Xena as a little girl, and the fact that she was spurred into fishing by her need to honour Lyceus.
That said, the "trigger" that pulled Gabrielle out of the spell was a little more out of left field. She's been feeling ignored and unappreciated all this time? Really? Because I’ve never noticed that. And I'm not entirely sure how Xena is going to ensure people take more notice of Gabrielle when she's the one that ultimately kills all the monsters.
And I noticed that the episode ended before they could cure Joxer from his Atis the Ape Man fixation. Presumably the trigger is his love for Gabrielle, so it would have been nice to see Xena quietly trying to snap him out of it without embarrassing him in front of Gabrielle (but the next time we see him, he's fine, so – whatever).
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| They'll deal with it tomorrow. |
Tsunami
Plot: Xena, Gabrielle, Autolycus, and a host of other characters are trapped in submerged ship after they're struck by a (wait for it...) tsunami. In what is essentially a survival story, Xena and her allies have to find a way to get off the ship and back to shore, with obstacles such as depleted oxygen, unhelpful strangers, and a pregnant woman to take into consideration.
This was obviously a take on The Poseidon Adventure in the same way that King Con was a take on The Sting, and though Autolycus is unaccountably here instead of in that previous episode where his personality and skill-set would clearly have been better suited, I didn't mind this episode. It was filler, but of the kind that took itself reasonably seriously, and I found myself getting quite involved in the situation and invested in the characters.
Perhaps it helped that I've never actually seen The Poseidon Adventure, because that and the fact that I'm claustrophobic gave the watching experience a certain amount of tension that I may not have otherwise had. Plenty of the usual boxes found in this sort of disaster story were ticked: injured passenger that they're not sure will make it, agitated passenger that might turn on anyone at any given moment, terrified passenger that looks like he's going to flip out – but it all... not worked exactly since this is hardly great cinema, but didn't really fall flat either.
Everyone came out of it having learnt a valuable lesson: Thaddeus that you can't control everything, Soraya that she has to stand up to him, Petrocles that he has to get over his fear of water, Makon that not everyone is as cruel and selfish as him. Oh, and Autolycus was in there too. It's not like I don't like the guy (I do, and he's another of the male quasi-love interests to Xena that I love watching her flirt with, even though neither one is ever going to do anything about it) but I'm not entirely sure what he was doing in this particular episode.
And there were a few little surprises here and there: I didn't see it coming that Gabrielle wasn't the injured one (Xena sees her covered in blood, but then says "it's not hers" because there's a dead person beside her) or that Petrocles was so terrified because he couldn't swim, or that Makon would make it out alive.
And that led to the best part: when Xena goes back to rescue him despite him trying to steal her water-skin, and thereby leaving him utterly baffled on the shoreline. Like Gabrielle said, he doesn't get it, and he'll probably go back to his thuggish ways by the following day. But it's not about him – it's about why Xena's the hero. That moment was actually pretty awesome. A classic example of What You Are in the Dark.
The opening was neat too, in which Gabrielle visits a fortune teller and is given a dire warning – only for her to point out that the woman has just described every day of her life.
There were a few daft bits in regards to what the boat was doing and how they were planning to get out and how water just doesn't work that way, but... I dunno, I ended up liking this more than I necessarily should have done. The characters weren't compelling, but they were interesting. The disaster scenario didn't make much sense, but the atmosphere of the submerged set was nicely designed and shot (at least to this claustrophobic person). And Autolycus was in it.
So all that lifted it up to "good", even though I suspect most people consider it a bit average.
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