We’re back from India and into an uneven mix of two comedy episodes and single a dramatic one that features Najara’s return and Joxer coping with killing someone for the first time. It kind of reminds me of his introductory episode, which was also about Callisto’s big debut – remember how crazy that was? In this case, it’s Najara who gets the short end of the stick, making her the biggest case of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character of the show in its entirety.
In the season of diminishing returns, the treatment of her character is a huge disappointment. It will not be the last.
The Play’s The Thing
Gabrielle is approached by two theatre producers who want to adapt her scroll into a play called “The Way of Peace.” She’s enthusiastic about the prospect, little knowing that the pair are actually con-artists who are arranging for a number of warlords to invest in the play, only for them to take off with the money when it becomes apparent the play itself is a disaster.
After the India arc, “The Play’s The Thing” puts the show back into more familiar territory, though the inherent weirdness of the preceding episodes certainly insinuates itself into this one. It’s a homage/parody/rip-off of The Producers, but contains the strange choice to poke fun at Gabrielle’s important, life-altering decision to become a pacifist a mere episode after she’s made it.
I mean, sure, I actually agree that this whole pacifist angle isn’t going to work because a. this is an action-adventure show, and b. as the episode points out, people are more interested in seeing violence, gore and sex, but way to undermine your deuteragonist and your own creative decisions! Here the show flat-out states that pursuing peace is not only boring, but annoying as well, given how sanctimonious Gabrielle came across in this episode.
It doesn’t bode well for wherever they plan to take her arc.
And I was annoyed that apparently Gabrielle is a terrible writer. I always assumed that her scrolls (and by extension, her ongoing project to record Xena’s adventures) were actually good. It wasn’t particularly fun to hear that her life’s work is actually terrible.
Still, there were a few funny bits, like the warlord being introduced as a man whose “background and other social problems are beyond his control” and the crowd’s “ooh, a centaur!” when the actor’s horse-body was revealed. And we get to see Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Mark Hadlow hamming it up in the roles of Max and Leo from The Producers, two national treasures who looked like they were having some fun with this. (We’ve actually seen Ward-Lealand before; she played Boudicca in season two).
The Convert
At the tail end of a battle, Joxer accidentally kills a violent warlord called Kryton when the man runs onto his sword. Feeling guilt-ridden despite the celebrating and gratefulness of the warlord’s victims, Joxer takes it upon himself to find the dead man’s son Arman and explain what happened.
Meanwhile, Xena and Gabrielle free some of the warlord’s hostages, only to discover that the masked and cloaked woman who was trying to defend them is Najara. She confesses that she escaped from the prison she was left in, and although Xena wants to return her to captivity as soon as possible, Gabrielle is struck by her former mentor’s story about following the Way of Peace. Najara offers Gabrielle the chance to give up following Xena and help her open a hospice for those in need.
The gang reach Arman, and since Joxer is still too nervous to confess his role in his father’s death (especially since Arman is under the impression that Kryton was a brave and noble man) Najara takes the opportunity to tell the boy herself. Arman leaves in fury, only to return with Kryton’s men on his heels, informing the gang they’ve come to get revenge for their leader.
Najara prevents Gabrielle going to Xena’s aid when the fight begins, and seems to suffer some sort of mental collapse when the voices in her head demand she kill the Warrior Princess. Having dealt with Kryton’s men, Xena turns her attention to Najara, and the women fight in out in the treetops before the latter is finally subdued.
With Najara in a coma that she may never wake from, Xena and Gabrielle leave her in a mental asylum.
I know I should work my way up to the climax of this episode, but it was so disappointing that it pretty much obscures everything else. In short, the show brings back Najara, one of their most interesting villains (or anti-heroes) and not only squanders her, but completely undermines her as well. There’s a million ways they could have handled this character that would have made for a compelling story with an ambiguous send-off (assuming it was necessary to permanently write her out) but instead they go for a lame cop-out.
And it’s not like the show has been afraid to leave things open-ended in the past, so what gives? Since when did a vengeful psycho become more interesting than a charismatic fanatic who could effectively argue her point?
There are two major plotlines going on in this episode, the first being that Joxer has to deal with the aftermath of killing someone for the first time, and the second that Najara has escaped from prison but claimed to have changed her ways. Let’s try and untangle this...
The reason Najara made for such an excellent character in her debut episode is because ninety percent of her arguments made perfect sense – and even the ten percent that didn’t still seemed justifiable if you looked at it from the right angle. Her bonding with Gabrielle over their shared interests felt sincere, her verbal sparring with Xena had bite, and she was backed up by her conversations with “the jinn,” which appeared to endow her with legitimate insight (she knew about Xena’s visions, for a start).
But according to the show’s moral compass, she veered onto the side of “villain” because she took it upon herself to play judge, jury and executioner. She was a dark variation on Joan of Arc, or a light variation on Callisto, but effectively shook up the rapport between Xena and Gabrielle, as well as the ethical underpinnings of the show itself. That’s a great premise to play around with. And yet...
First of all, it came as a surprise to learn that Xena and Gabrielle actually had Najara imprisoned at the end of her last appearance. The episode itself suggested that they simply left her tied up so she couldn’t follow them, and I have trouble figuring out on what charges she was incarcerated with. On shows like this, we always come up against anachronistic issues of the time period – in this case, it’s clear to modern audiences that Najara doesn’t have the right to execute people without trial, but is the average joe living in Ancient Greece (even one this skewered) really going to care if a warrior woman is dispatching violent warlords without due process?
Heck, isn’t that what Xena does on a regular basis?
But having ascertained that Najara has escaped from incarceration, she vows she’s chosen the path of a pacifist. That she’s run into Eli gives her street cred, as does the fact she was willing to be beaten by a warlord instead of fighting back. According to her, even her jinn temporarily abandoned her as punishment. Gabrielle finds no reason not to believe her.
Meanwhile, Joxer kills the aforementioned warlord – even if it was almost accidentally – and is treated by a hero by the townsfolk. Though he vacillates on the unpleasant task of telling the man’s son that his father is dead, Najara ends up doing the job for him (I’m not sure why though – what’s her play here?) and after the predicable “I’ll kill you to avenge my father!” scene, Arman comes around and accepts that his dad wasn’t the hero he always imagined him to be.
When the rest of the warlord’s men turn up to seek their own vengeance, Najara prevents Gabrielle from going to Xena’s aid before attacking Xena herself in one of the strangest fight scenes this show has ever had, involving Tarzan-like swinging through the vines and balancing on them like tightrope walkers. In any case, Xena beats her into a coma from which she’ll probably never awake.
So, just to get things straight: Xena kills people all the time in the heat of battle. Gabrielle has decided to forego killing people and so just blows powder in their face before stepping aside and letting Xena finish them off (which apparently, doesn’t count as killing). Joxer kills a guy and is eventually forgiven by the man’s son.
And yet Najara (who doesn’t actually kill anyone in this episode) is wrong because...? The other three feel vaguely guilty about killing murderous warlords and she doesn’t? That’s the only difference I can discern.
It was clear that even the writers didn’t fully understand why Najara was being held to a different standard than the three regulars, or why Xena was so staunchly against the possibility that she had reformed, which is why they took the easy way out and simply made her go crazy-bananas. And she doesn’t even go crazy-bananas in a way that made sense! One second she’s fine, and the next she’s livid that Gabrielle can’t hear her jinn.
But why would Gabrielle suddenly be able to hear Najara’s jinn? No one ever could before.
Why not have her legitimately turn her life around? And for Gabrielle to have the choice (encouraged by Xena who is still haunted by her visions) to stay with her and build a hospice, especially since her new pacifist stance has made her a complete liability in combat situations? Blowing powder in people’s faces is silly, and I was never under the impression that Gabrielle was actually killing people with her staff; just knocking them out. Why not keep doing that in self-defense?
Because the alternative seems to be that Xena is doing DOUBLE the maiming and killing just so Gabrielle can keep her hands clean. With that system in place, it probably would have been kinder for Gabrielle to stop travelling with Xena and settle down in a nice hospice with Najara.
After all, Najara made some pretty good points when she says Xena got to have a second chance at redemption. And poor Gabrielle is probably close to mental/spiritual collapse at this point since every single person she decides to trust ends up being a secret bad guy. Seriously, why does Xena’s cynicism always get to be right? You’d think her own history would make her more amenable to other people’s attempts to turn their lives around, yet the only thing she had to say about Najara were repeated assertions that she was a “fanatic.”
Aside from all this, I'm pleased that Joxer was given some serious material for a change, though I was a bit surprised that this was his very first kill. Just like when Gabrielle killed Meridian, it came across more as an accident than anything else (in both cases, the dead person actually runs onto the weapon that our protagonist has raised in self-defense) though it was nice to see Joxer take responsibility for it and go to tell the warlord’s son his father was dead.
Unfortunately, the storyline treads a very predicable path here: the kid initially looks up to Joxer, eventually finds out he killed his dad, gets extremely angry over the deception, and then gets over it just as quickly (and offscreen, at that). It felt as though this could have been the basis for a whole other episode, thus giving us more time to spend with Najara, the more interesting character.
I wasn’t sure what the deal was when Joxer started seeing the warlord taunting him about his death – for a second there I thought it was Najara’s jinn about to show their true colours (because we still don’t know a thing about them) but had to roll my eyes when Joxer was told he was now going to “go bad” because he’d killed someone. Yeah, no.
I also felt like the message of the episode kept changing. At first it was concerned with putting Najara back in jail (with Gabrielle arguing that this would be a waste, just as she did for Xena in “Locked Up and Tied Down”) then it was the debate over whether to let Armand hold onto the lie about his father or tell him the bitter truth, then it Xena using reverse psychology to convince him into letting Joxer live since he was so guilt-ridden, only for the kid himself to declare that his father was an awful man who is probably better off dead.
There was just too much going on, which is what led to the lacklustre conclusion. It was a great start with a compelling question (has Najara reformed?) only for everything to unravel by the end. Because apparently Xena is violent so Gabrielle doesn’t have to be, and Najara is duly pummelled into a coma even though the show itself demonstrates that (in lieu of her actually reforming) she has a pretty serious mental illness.
Both plots are both lazy and nonsensical. The obvious conclusion would have been for Najara to have legitimately reformed, and for Gabrielle to have the choice between opening a hospice with a woman she has a lot in common with, being to Najara what she was to Xena in the early years, or to continue with Xena into danger, and so risk compromising her newfound beliefs. Instead they took the easy way out, and ended up with a subpar episode as a result.
Miscellaneous Observations:
I found it an interesting visual that both Gabrielle and Najara both have cropped blonde hair, creating a stark comparison between them. Likewise, Kathryn Morris still played the character with wide-eyed sincerity – there was no long con here, no descend into cackling evil. Even when she finally loses her mind, she’s still consistent in her belief that she’s right about everything, which is another reason to mourn the misuse of her in this episode.
She’s very good at manipulation though, as when she gets the chance to have a one-on-one with Xena and not only tells her that she’s being selfish for leading Gabrielle into danger (as per her visions of the joint crucifixion) and also the banger of a line: “I changed my whole life for Gabrielle, you just changed sides.” Again, I’ve no idea why the writers decided to just toss all this material away in favour of “she’s cray-cray.”
For all its flaws, it’s not an episode you can easily skip given how entrenched it is in the show’s continuity: not just the return of Najara, but mentions of Eli and Xena’s vision, a continuation of the argument of whether or not to incarcerate an asset in “Locked Up and Tied Down,” and a mention of the first time Gabrielle killed someone. It’s very ingrained in the overarching plot of the show.
But it still contains three of my most disliked elements: this weird deification of Gabrielle (Najara’s obsession with her was probably meant to be creepy, but remember when Gabby was just a normal young woman who acted as Xena’s conscience, and not this idealized figure of love and peace?) Xena always being right about how shit other people are (Hope, Aidan, Najara, countless others) and perfectly good guest stars being disposed of in highly unsatisfying ways.
Though it did feature the funny scene of Gabrielle diligently tying Najara’s hands and feet... only for Najara to simply sit up and untie herself effortlessly. Did no one stop to consider she was capable of taking this very simple escape measure?
Takes One to Know One
Xena reaches her mother’s inn, anticipating Gabrielle’s birthday celebrations the following day. Gathered there are Lila, Cyrene, Minya, Joxer and Autolycus, as well as a bounty-hunter known as Ravenica – who is found in her locked room later that night, a knife in her chest.
Discord, the newly appointed Goddess of Retribution, informs Xena that if she can’t find the culprit before the next morning, she’ll kill everyone in the building – including Gabrielle, who has just joined them. So, it’s up to Xena to solve the murder mystery in which the pool of suspects is comprised of her closest circle of friends and allies.
Spoiler alert: it turns out Argo killed Ravenica, by defending himself against her attempt to slash his tendons to prevent Xena from leaving. He kicked her back into the room, after which the knife she was holding flew into her chest, and she was finished off by the swinging chandelier.
For some reason, I was under the impression that perhaps the great comedy episodes had come to an end, and it would all just be meta-teasing and fan-waving from here on out. But “Takes One to Know One” was pretty good, with a lot of fun jokes delivered throughout.
And it was a neat plot as well: a dead body is discovered and Xena must put on her detective cap and find the culprit before Discord claims all her friends and family as the guilty party. A Cluedo whodunit parody is always a rock-solid premise and I was impressed by the sheer amount of guest-stars they managed to gather for this: Autolycus, Joxer, Lila, Cyrene, Minya – have we ever had this many familiar characters in a single episode before? And will we ever again?
Plus, Discord makes her first grand appearance. I know she was a regular feature over on Hercules, but obviously Xena/Gabrielle have never dealt with her before.
With an interesting mystery and some genuine stakes (because by now, we know and love all these characters) they managed to spin quite a nice tale. There was even something of a spooky atmosphere when it came to Xena trying to track down where all the characters were at any given point, accentuated by the thunderstorm going on outside.
And the denouement was especially fun: not only was nobody guilty, but all of their suspicious behaviour was down to the fact they were protecting Xena (and of course, were only there in the first place because of Gabrielle’s surprise birthday party).
I have to admit that I was suspicious of Cyrene for quite a while as the actress played her as WAY too blasé about everything that was going on, almost to the point of looniness. I think I considered the possibility she was a god in disguise or something, there to watch all the mortals chase their tails in a panic.
Gabrielle’s not the only one who’s had a haircut, as it appears Bruce Campbell has had a chop as well.
I don’t ship Autolycus/Xena by any means, but I love their flirty rapport, and Bruce and Lucy have very cute chemistry. Xena was actually playing with her hair when she found out Autolycus was trying to get Ravenica off her case, and I thought it was interesting that he was trusted enough to join Xena and Gabrielle in their investigation – even though he was technically a suspect at that point.
And of course, he tries to cover his protective instincts by pretending he confronted Ravenica for entirely different reasons.
Discord is now the goddess of Retribution? What about the Furies? I thought that was their job.
Some nice continuity between Xena reminding Cyrene that she’s killed for Xena in the past, and that Joxer keeps being mistaken for his brother Jett. And just lots of amusing bits and pieces everywhere: Autolycus looking to the women for support only for all of them to stand back with their arms crossed, Discord appearing with more and more Chip-&-Dale dancers each time, Minya’s gibberish when she was pretending to be a man in Ravenica’s room, and Discord’s “do I look like an idiot?” right before she’s conked on the back of the head with the chandelier. Good stuff.
And like I said, the best part was that everyone was motivated by protecting Xena, and there were some nice Minya/Lila and Autolycus/Cyrene moments at the end. It feels like a deliberate attempt to give the audience some heart-warming moments before we head into the darker episodes that close the season.
Best of all, everyone seems to have had a lot of fun with this one. So many characters together made for some great dynamics, and everyone had something amusing and/or interesting to do.
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