Amphipolis Under Siege

When this episode finished, I leaped off my couch and performed the Dance of the Overjoyed Fan. Really. Scared my cats to death. What a cool episode! Awesome characters, great Xena-Gabrielle banter, good plans, good bad guys, good story... I'm a happy puppy.

Xena's leathers are BACK, baby! Her warcry-flippin'-growlin'- breastplated entrance was the most welcome thing I've seen in a long time.

I have mixed feelings about Athena's main squeeze/champion. Her outfit rivals Joxer's in ridiculousness - a tin foil costume straight off a 50s sci fi flick. But she did strike a good pose fighting. Her sparrow whistle cracked me up - that would have been a really cool move if she actually COULD whistle. I loved her parallelism with Xena. She was to Athena everything that Ares would like Xena to be to him. I could see the "Worried about yours?" retort to "Worried about your girlfriend?" coming a mile away, but it was still fun and used a sledgehammer in case anyone had missed the hint so far about Xena and Elena's kinship.

Athena is a VERY spiffy god. She seemed worthy of the respect Xena - Xena, of all people - gave her. She didn't want to kill a baby, but was willing to do what she saw as grim necessity (any memories of Hope YET, Xena?). She managed to see right through (literally) Xena's plan and outmaneuver her in battle. She was powerful and ruthless, but not cruel. She was unflappable and two thoughts ahead of everyone. Big thumbs up on Athena - here's hoping she doesn't get killed off too soon.

I nominate this episode as Ares's best yet. He had great lines like "But where's the fun in that?" and "I'm about to start catapulting dead cows into the village." "And a classic it is." While he got duped in the end in the heat of... ahem... battle, he had the smarts to not trust what Xena was offering, until Gabrielle sealed the deal by shedding a few "No, don't do it!" crocodile tears. But the moment that sold me was when he appeared in his temple and nearly took the altar apart with his frustration. YEAH, Ares!

I have been a sucker for song-for-solidarity scenes ever since the first time I saw Casablanca. The minute Cyrene began singing Glede Ma Glede, the song we first heard waaaayyyyy back in Sins of the Past as Xena's sign that she was home, I nearly stood up and cheered. Excellent scene! What a change five years has brought. The village that almost stoned Xena is now ready to fight with her.

OK, it was just a chase scene, but I liked Xena's dash through the tunnels and very smart collapse of the supports as she went by.

I laughed out loud when Gabrielle descended on the wussy Amphipolitan who started talking about backing out. "Ohhhh, you're up the creek now, pal!" Actually, Gabrielle let him off easier than I thought she might - but she did a great job of quickly and clearly showing everybody, not just him, how important it was to keep fighting. Way to go, bard!

Speaking of the bard, Gabrielle wipes up some serious army butt in this episode. She uses, by turns, a staff with a knife on it, a sword, and a big ol' hammer to lay waste to a whole lotta bad guys. She even does a one-armed flip of a bad guy! Xena and Ares get the quality fights, but Gabrielle gets the quantity.

Ares, of all people, is the one to talk sense to Athena about self-fulfilling prophecies. This whole business with Eve has struck me as such from the beginning. Say that something will be the death of a person, and that person will run themselves to death to prevent it. Too bad Athena wasn't having any of Ares' logic.

There's a number of different ways to read Xena's "Did you hear something?" lines when she and Ares were moshing on the couch. She could have really heard something that wasn't audible on the show. She could have been stalling for time until the wall blew. My personal favorite: there was no sound, but she was asking because she was SUPPOSED to be hearing something by that time and wasn't hearing it yet. I think it's funniest that way.

As for the moshing/seduction scene in general, I think I'll boil my comments down to two words: nipple biting. Good heavens. I would pay money to know if a) that was in the script, and b) Kevin and Lucy had worked that out beforehand, or if it was a surprise.

Apparently, Cyrene wasn't in on the plan, so her reaction to finding Xena and Ares was for real. How did Gabrielle manage to set THAT up? Whatever, the horrified discovery of the clinch was pretty funny, especially how miffed Ares gets at the suggestion of Hermes as a better match.

It's a sign of how the past half-season has gone that I was worried whether Gabrielle was in on what Xena was doing or not. Come to think of it, this episode may have worked BETTER because of that. If the last eight episodes had solid Xena-Gabrielle interaction all the way, I never would have questioned whether Gabrielle was begging Ares not to take up Xena's offer out of true concern or as part of a mega-plan. As it is, I was worried enough to be majorly relieved to see that yes, Xena and Gabrielle had hatched the whole thing together. Thank you, writers.

"Put an arrow in the young bard." Athena has Xena's number. She counts on Xena giving up everything, even Eve, if Gabrielle is killed/about to die. I wonder if she's right?

Athena did have one flaw in her brilliance - she never ONCE checked trickyXena's little bundle to make sure it really was Eve? Granted, maybe her plan was that if it wasn't Eve, her chop would reveal that soon enough, and checking the baby pre-chop might add insult to injury. But it was an obvious trick to ME, seems like it should have occurred to Athena. I did like, though, how the woman could bring an entire battle to a halt with a command. THAT'S a god in action.

Is it just my ears, or did somebody whisper a four-letter word when Xena laid Eve down on the ground?

GREAT final fight. Xena and Elena kick some serious ass (and I loved Xena's disparaging "not bad" evaluation). Ares and Athena go at it like gangbusters, and Gabrielle does some serious cleaning up house. Looks like everybody, from the writers to the director to the stunties to the actors, decided to make up for a little lost time while everybody had to be a little careful around the pregnant star.

Gabrielle is going to be able to take out a patent on her smirks at Ares as Xena keeps throwing him over. Someday your face is going to freeze like that, Gab.

I liked Xena and Gabrielle's final banter about whether Xena "felt something" or not in the temple. The woman's getting hot and heavy with a god who oozes hormones - who WOULDN'T feel something, never mind the past those two have had? But Xena and Gabrielle have a rousing good game of cat and mouse with the confession.

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