Dangerous Prey

This was a hot and cold episode for me - some very nifty things, some annoying things. Nifty were the battle of the minds, the fact that this was a return to some of the simpler story lines of old, that the bad guy really did have some brains and won a couple of points along the way, and some of the rock-em sock-em fights. Annoying were a few plot broad jumps this episode took.

Chakrams seem to be quite the fashion statement for really bad-ass warlords. That Agathon guy from Dirty Half-Dozen had one. Callisto seemed to live for snagging Xena's. And now this fellow turns up with his own version of a sharp flying boomerang thing. His is even part of his symbol that he uses all over the place - including on Marga's back.

Since there have been no new children introduced lately (and Eve survived childhood), being an amazon is now the occupation with the highest death rate on the show. Marga gets a particularly nasty end - that hand in the bear trap made me especially wince. Yeow!

Gabrielle's status among the amazons is still a pretty questionable thing. When they arrive on amazon land, there's no recognition of her status as a former Queen. Varia ignores her completely and lights right into Xena. Varia even tries to tell Xena and Gabrielle to back off because "this is an amazon problem" - apparently that girl hasn't studied her history. The other amazon, though, greets Gabrielle first. And Gab apparently has enough pull to succeed in keeping the rest of the amazons at their camp, even when the whole forest is burning down around their ears.

Speaking of Gabrielle, a moment's mourning for the fact that she only gets about four lines this episode. But it's made up for by that spiffy "Directed by Renee O'Connor" credit that goes by. Woo-hoo!

Xena takes the baddies who are trying to haul off Varia so easily that she can spare a long, hard look at Lieutenant Raczar even while she's beating the flunkies up. VERY cool.

Morloch's battle in the tent looked strange with that sped- up film effect, but I kind of liked it. It didn't distract from the fighting moves and the flickering torchlight in the tent provided a near-believable look for it.

Varia managed to get a punch in on Xena! She should have been thanking her lucky stars for that one, but she blew her moment of glory with the childish "I HATE YOU!" yell. She should have quit while she was ahead.

Varia is practically schizophrenic with her sudden 180-degree change of outlook on life. One little manacle on the wrist as she falls down a well, and suddenly Xena is her mentor and buddy and she's not nearly all that she thought she was. It's amazing the revelations that come from one little piece of iron around the wrist - or a really big reach from the script.

Morloch must have x-ray vision. When he's spying on Xena spying on his men, he realizes something's fishy because he can't see the chakram. Of course, the chakram would have been behind bushes AND on Xena's far hip, but we'll just assume he's an ancestor of Sherlock Holmes.

Loved Xena's crowing in the cave as she tried to get Morloch's goat and make him slip up a bit: "Warrior Mom"? "Who conquers Prince Chesty Forelock of Upper Whateverstan" - HA! Not surprisingly, Xena walks away with ALL the lines of the episode:

   "Couldn't hunt butterflies."
   "But you're so tall." "It's the boots."

I'm not sure when this happened, but I just noticed this episode - Xena's grip on the new chakram has changed. At first, she always held it by the inner handle. This episode, she was grabbing it by the edge, like the old chakram.

Maybe it was just my television set, but in the last shot of Xena's face in the cave before the commercial break, Xena's eyes were so pale and nearly pupil-less looking that she looked highly stoned.

Morloch not only has x-ray vision and is the ancestor of Sherlock Holmes, he and Raczar have the lives of cats. All but four of the flunkies standing right around them get crisped, and they both walk out feeling fine and dandy.

Morloch managed to singly cut his forces in half, since they had only four men left and then he barbecued two of 'em. That was a pretty nasty scene - blech!

Stock footage... stock footage... stock footage in the forest fire scenes! Which was especially jarring because a lot of that footage around the soldiers and Xena WASN'T stock footage. So the running wildlife shots looked even more fakey.

Good music choices in this episode: the tree-bending had the "Xena has a plan" music from Abyss, the lincoln logs of death battle had the "Xena in a big fight" music from Callisto, and Marga's pyre scene was accompanied by the "dead amazon" theme from Endgame.

I kind of liked Varia - she had a bit too much mouth and not enough brain, but she was all right. She puts up a heck of a fight while hanging upside-down. She had a near-noble (and well-acted) moment when she told Xena to leave the burning forest without her. But I never figured out WHAT was supposed to be the big deal about her. Marga said that the amazons are lost if Varia dies?? Xena said she was starting to see what Marga saw in her? *I* never did. The kid has potential to be a cool amazon, but I never saw anything that made her All That.

Morloch not only has x-ray vision and is the ancestor of Sherlock Holmes and possesses the lives of a cat, somebody should sign him up for the think tank that's working on creating a national missile defense system! That guy not only knew that Xena would send Varia OVER the fire, he knew exactly where, in that entire forest, that Varia would be sailing, and managed to hit a flying person with a floppy net. The military-industrial complex wishes it were that lucky.

This episode had a very first-couple-of-seasons feel to it, right down to the fact that Xena had a new sidekick whose sole purpose was to get captured a lot. Long gone are the days when Gab could fulfill that role!

For all her brains, Xena's plan of running around a burning forest screaming Varia's name over and over while a mad hunter was on the loose didn't seem like a good one.

The spinning fight on the shifting lincoln logs of death was another tip of the Xenahat to Hong Kong flicks. I've seen that setup before. And like many Hong Kong flicks, the idea was cool but the physics were highly questionable.

Subtle touch: I liked that we just got a glimpse of Morloch behind Xena's back without any overplayed "GASP! THERE HE IS!" camera shot or music blast. Very cool.

The log skewer was a REALLY nasty end for ol' Morloch. The guy seemed to have slipped out of character at the end: why was he suddenly screaming at Xena to fight him? I thought he wanted hunts, not fights. I figured he would have been perfectly happy to track Xena through the forest until he got to pick her off in an ambush she wasn't expecting.

I was left at the end of this episode really wondering what happened to Morloch's lieutenant. We spent a lot of time on the guy in this episode; his command of his men, his disgust with killing his own soldiers, his hesitation at following Morloch in the end. What happened to him at the end of all this?

So, the final score in this knock-down-drag-out fight was Morloch: 2, Xena: 3. I gave Morloch a point for getting the drop on Xena when she tried to out-spy him, and for the forest fire trap and mid-air Varia snag. Xena gets points for breaking his sword when he tried to skewer Varia, for blowing up his men, and oh yeah, for killing him. Set and Match to Xena, but not by much.

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