Xena Warrior Princess: The Execution, Blind Faith, Ulysses

It's been a while, but I'm continuing to transfer my Xena Warrior Princess reviews (three at a time) from their original pages to this blog. The three episodes that follow are pretty good indicators that this show worked SO much better when it focused on the relationship between the two leads and NOT the array of male guest stars that so often had very little to offer the show or its key dynamic.

The Execution

Plot: Xena and Gabrielle try to help their friend Meleager, who has been falsely imprisoned on a charge of murder. 

In order to describe this episode, I have to share an anecdote about when my friend and I went to see Shrek the Third. We came out of the theatre, I said: "well?" and he answered: "I just don't think it was a story that needed to be told." That pretty much sums up my feelings about this episode.

I mean, even with bad episodes there's a level of fun to be had in snarking about them, or in wondering just how something so terrible could have been greenlit, but this... just felt altogether mediocre. Not good, not bad - just sort of there.

Of all the one-shot characters they introduced last season, I'm not sure why Meleager warranted a return. I mean, I certainly don't dislike the guy, but what is it that sets him above the likes of (say for example) Flora or Pandora or Toris? He wasn't hugely memorable the first time around, so I greeted his reappearance with a sense of: "oh, hey - that guy."

Oddly, Gabrielle seemed to revert back to her season one persona, in which she naively puts people on impossibly high pedestals, defends them to a bizarrely intent degree (up to and including going against Xena in their defense) and then acting all heartbroken when they inevitably disappoint her. It was a bit jarring to see her like this, especially for the sake of a guy that she should have known was a bit dodgy.

There were some nice Xena/Gabrielle moments, as when Xena warns Gabrielle about her tendency to hero-worship people (with the clear subtext that she's worried about what'll happen when she falls off the proverbial pedestal) but the rather intense fight/stand-off that they got into didn't really go anywhere.

It would have been nice to get a follow-up conversation about what had just occurred: the fact that Gabrielle was right about Meleager but could just as easily have been wrong, the fact that Xena completely disregards her opinion and uses her physical prowess to get around her, etc. There was a power imbalance between the two of them in this episode that promised some interesting development, but didn't really get any in-depth exploration.

Storywise, I'm not entirely sure what the writers were going for. They've already done a courtroom drama episode (and done it much better) and the half-hearted attempt at a Rashomon Plot sort of petered out mid-way through the episode. Plus some of the twists fell flat: the judge is actually evil! Gasp! It was Xena who killed the man! Shock! I guess for a second there I was fooled by Meleager's death (perhaps they should have actually gone through with it in order to make this episode remotely memorable) but by the end of it all, I was just left thinking..."this is a story that didn't really need to be told."

Blind Faith

Plot: An aspiring warrior called Palemon kidnaps Gabrielle in order to goad Xena into fighting him, hoping to gain a reputation by defeating her. Complicating matters is that Xena is temporarily blinded after her eyes are splashed with sumac oil, while Gabrielle is forced to marry a dead king.

This episode was based on another tried-and-true genre television trope: temporary blindness. It always happens to the hero, requiring him/her to rely on their other four senses and/or their allies, and it never results in any lasting damage of the retinas. In this case, it wasn't used particularly imaginatively. Xena never seemed to be at a huge disadvantage when it came to fighting, and often she was leaping and running around without any concern whatsoever as to obstacles that may or may not be in front of her. 

Surely the whole point of putting your hero at a disadvantage is to actually have them try and cope with that disadvantage, right? Not to treat it as a minor inconvenience that barely slows her down?

Being handcuffed to a quasi-enemy that she wasn't particularly sure she could trust was a nice touch, and they tried to raise the stakes by putting a time limit on it, but honestly, I wasn't in much (or any) suspense over anything that happened to Xena in this blinded state. What can I say? They just weren't very creative with this concept.

Palemon was a hit-and-miss guest star for me. On the one hand, I initially found him unbearably obnoxious and up himself - though on the other hand, this was clearly the point of his character. One of my favourite tropes is spoiled brats that grow and mature into more well-rounded people, and this was a definite variation on that, what with Palemon wanting to kill Xena in order to elevate his own reputation, but demonstrating right from the start that he had a level of integrity that he wasn't prepared to sacrifice.

By the end I had warmed to him, and his rather embarrassed reaction to Xena/Gabrielle's reunion was actually rather charming. I'm not sure the actor quite had the charisma to pull off this character to best effect, and like Meleager, I could take or leave seeing him again. (Though I wouldn't say no to a spin-off of his adventures with Vidalus. THAT would have been fun).

Gabrielle's plot was utterly ridiculous on so many levels, whether it be yet another one of her love interests dying (though in this case, he was actually dead to start with), her being an exact double of the former queen, the inexplicable rules that stipulate that if the king is married at the time of his death the kingdom passes to his ministry (um - why?) or...well... that dress. But her interactions with Vidalus were pretty fun: "remember....baby steps."

All in all, not bad, not good - just mostly unimaginative, I guess.

Ulysses

Plot: Xena and Gabrielle meets up with Ulysses, on his way home after the Trojan War. Feeling a mutual attraction, Xena offers to help Ulysses reclaim his kingdom, even after the god Poseidon warns her not to. 

So... Ulysses.

In many ways this was a quasi-sequel to Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts. Whereas that episode dealt with the Trojan War, this is Xena's take on The Odyssey.

It wasn't as bad as that previous episode, which suffered from the extremely ill-advised attempt to take one of the most famous sieges of all time and squeeze all its nuance into forty-five minutes (with about ten extras to represent two armies and a polystyrene mound to represent the glory of Troy), and in terms of the storyline, I thought Ulysses was quite good in taking some of the most famous elements of the saga (Poseidon's vengeance, the sirens, Penelope's challenge to her suitors) and reshaping them for a single episode. Some of the conceits they included were actually surprisingly good. I liked:

All the scenes of the ship at sea. I'm not sure whether they were using a green screen or whatever (were they even around back then?) but at all times it really felt like they were on a real boat and in real danger from the sea around them.

Poseidon. Okay, he looked quite glumpy and bulky, but it was still pretty good for the nineties and the voice-over made up for the sight of him.

The sirens. The sight of the three women in their sea-cave singing and swaying was a simple yet effective scene; and Xena out-singing them may look absurd on paper, but somehow actually really worked on-screen. The difference between the sirens' high and sultry voices versus Xena's (or Lucy's) low and intense singing sounded great.

The twist on the challenge that Penelope sets her suitors, with Xena giving Ulysseus a little help from beneath the table. Girl power at its subversive best.

The running gag of poor Gabrielle's sea sickness.

So storywise, Ulysses wasn't bad. It's just a pity about Ulysses himself.

I was actually familiar with John D'Aquino from back in the days of Sea Quest DSV (wow, I was a kid!) and I vaguely remember having a bit of a crush on him at the time - though watching this, I'm not entirely sure why. That they actually tried to establish a love connection between himself and Xena in the space of one episode Just. Didn't. Work. There was no chemistry. None whatsoever. Lucy looked entirely unenthusiastic about this guy; the only time she really seemed to warm to him was when she was telling him to bugger off.

Just compare this to her interactions with Ares or Draco (and if memory serves, later episodes with Borias), or even the fun warmth she has with Autolycus and Marcus, and everything about Ulysses falls flat.

And I would give the guy a break if I thought he was a decent guy, but honestly, by the end of the story in which he was willing to abandon his faithful wife and his entire kingdom just to chase after Xena, I had no sympathy for him at all. By that point, Xena looked downright disgusted with him, and I felt desperately sorry for Penelope who (presumably) had to watch him get on board in the hopes of hooking up with Xena, only to see him come back with his tail between his legs for her; his second choice.

They could have salvaged this character if they'd had him acknowledge that Xena was just being cruel to be kind earlier, and concede that she was right in regards to his duty to wife and country, or at least gone with their own set-up and had Xena "dump" him for real, citing that she's not interested in a man willing to abandon his wife/subjects. But they tried to have their cake and eat it too, by having him sympathetic despite his fairly awful behaviour.

And the real problem is that this could have been a rather nice little story if there had been a rapport between Ulysseus/Xena that hinted at a mutual attraction (nothing involving those silly declarations of love), resulting in Ulysseus offering her a home and place of honour in Ithaca, only for the two of them to realize -- after discovering that Penelope was alive -- that it wasn't going to work out. It could have been Xena longing for a stable home and a fresh start instead of a cute guy, only for it to be whisked away before she really gets a chance to enjoy it.

And I'm pretty sure the fandom didn't take kindly to this guy, all things considered. When it comes to Xena/Gabrielle, I'm not totally fussed about subtext or canon or trying to determine the exact nature of their relationship with each other. For me, it comes down to this: I'm not hugely invested in whether or not they become a couple, but I don't really want them to be paired up with any other (male) characters either. I like that the central relationship of this show is a female/female friendship with Sapphic undertones, and most of the time the inclusion of one-shot male love interests upsets that balance.