Gabrielle's Hope

Thus the Rift begins in earnest. Yikes. One of the things frequently praised about X:WP is that it features two strong, intelligent, independent women. Now we get one of the problems in that: what happens when those two strong wills end up at direct loggerheads with each other? Time for irresistible forces to meet immovable objects.

Gabrielle deceives Xena in a big, big way. She even plots a diversion to allow for her inability to convince Xena, putting Hope in the river and then taking off up the hill to draw Xena away before she tries lying to her. Darned devious. Gab refuses to consider that Hope could be evil, and she doesn't have much chance of convincing Xena otherwise, so she picks the worst possible solution: set that kid loose, unsupervised, unwatched, and uncared for, into the world. And then flat-out lie to Xena about it. NOT Gabrielle's finest moment.

But lest anyone think I'm going to let Xena off unscathed, she's got a few problems of her own in this. She was preparing to slaughter that little tyke, right next to mommy, without so much as a by-your-leave. Now that's COLD. Once Xena made her decision that Hope was an evil critter, she reverted to commander mode and wasn't concerned with convincing anyone else - most importantly, Gabrielle - about it. She finally gave it a shot, much later, as Gabrielle climbed the cliffside and Hope was already down the river. A day late and a dinar short, Xena.

Gabrielle rides a horse. Voluntarily. For a few hours at a stretch. After being given it by a banshee. After siccing said banshees on Xena. Well, there's a whole STRING of things I never expected to see.

Gabrielle's (very spooky! - I loved it) dream had a telling moment in it: Meridian, the priestess, is sweet, loving, and innocent in the dream. Gab has completely forgotten the wee fact that Meridian deliberately set herself up to be killed in order to summon the evil god she worshipped. Gab's tendency to see the best in people is adding loads to her grief over her first kill.

Gabrielle gives the sackcloth look a try, presumably to cover the effects of the fire on her clothes, and, perhaps, to hide her swelling stomach. It also conveniently prevents any necessity for tricky prosthetics to try to make those killer abs look pregnant. Smart thinking, XenaStaff! Bad fashion choice, but smart thinking.

Up until the point when Xena and Gabrielle discuss Hope in those two chairs (did anyone else see the image of two rulers in their thrones discussing the kingdom toddling about their feet?), Xena was in as major a supportive mode as we've ever seen her. Her usual reserve was on complete standby over her concern for Gab. Through the woods, the banshee attacks, the tavern, and the birth, Xena gave every ounce of attentive support that she could. (My personal favorite was two seconds after the birth, when Gabrielle asks Xena not to let them take her baby, and quick as you can say 'break out the siege towers,' Xena is an impenetrable wall that NO one is getting past.) But the debate over Hope's nature ends the requests for Xena's support, and by the time Xena finds Hope's first kill, the warrior mode has slammed back into place full time.

Through all that support work, though, BOY is Xena spoiling for a fight. I thought she was going to turn backflips when those banshees showed up, and she goes after the knights with gusto. Best friend is in pain? Nothing like getting a chance to pummel something senseless to blow off some steam.

Blooper alert #1: Listen to the dialog when Xena and the ship captain dicker for passage to Greece. Sounds like they still needed to do some discussing:

Xena: "50 Mycenean dinars, paid when we've arrived in Athens."
Captain: "Agreed. Your hand on it. Payment due before we set sail tomorrow."

The humor moments were sparse in this episode, but they were deft: Gabrielle's cravings in the tavern (yyeeeeeuck! WHO is Renee cheesing off in the production staff that they keep making her eat all this nasty stuff?) and Xena drawing Excalibur, to the priceless reactions of the knights (turns out Uther Pendragon was a Johnny-Come-Lately. Once again, there is no mythos that Xena can't mess with!). My personal favorite moment was Xena's line "I'm gonna slap these bitches silly." I couldn't believe that I could laugh in the middle of all that nastiness going on, but that one made me roar.

Nice pole-vault, Gabrielle! The Warrior Princess is rubbing off on you. I liked how Gab's leap was THIIIIIIS close to what you'd expect from Xena - it had the height (with a little pole help) and the aim - but with a panicked scream and no control whatsoever. You're getting closer, Bard, keep at it. You'll be doing 30-foot vertical jumps within another couple of years.

Just in case we missed all the Christ symbologies in Hope's birth, the knights tell us that both the child of darkness and the child of light will "come in a similar way." We have an unseen god as father, and a young, innocent woman as mother. We have two travelers far from home. We have spirit beings announcing the upcoming birth. We have birth in a stable. I think we got the comparison. Except that in the case of Christ, his birth was full of normalcy and mundaneness that belied his divinity. In the case of Hope, her birth was full of innocence and sweetness that belied her evil. Appropriately Halloween-y creepy.

At the end, Gabrielle seems to finally be worrying just a bit about Hope. She asks Hope who she is before she sets her loose on the river, and in the end begs her to be good. Of course, that begging is done in a kneeled prayer to "my love, my Hope." Woo, somebody bestow a clue on this lady. If she starts offering to sing the song of Hope, the baby she knew, the kid she loved, I'm gonna throw the remote at the screen.

Xena doesn't once call the baby Hope. In fact, Gabrielle's the only one who uses her name. The rest refer to the baby as "the baby" or "her" when they're happy about it - or "it" when they're not.

Gabrielle has a real problem with going to extremes (ahhh, youth). She talks about her dreams of being a peacemaker, of ending hatred, but thinks that all of that can be destroyed by one act, one killing. She gives up on being a peacemaker, on seeking solutions and finding the good. Instead of proposing that the knights care for Hope as the perfect guardians and watchers of her progress, she retreats into her new role as mother and doesn't let her concern push one inch beyond caring for Hope. Greater good? What greater good?

The Birth Scene. One word: ow. Emotional ow, physical ow. Childbirth scenes are tough, tough, tough for actresses. They are SO easy to overact and tumble right into the ridiculous. But Renee did a heck of a job, and Lucy's reactions are excellent, too. The writer and director pulled out all the emotional stops for this scene. Every single one - I don't think there was a trick left in the book. The sun turns black, a storm whips out of nowhere, the music, the noise, and the voices get deafening. All the animals are panicky - except the goat, which is sometimes used as a demonic symbol, who is calm and watchful. Nice touch. The heart-rending moment to me was when Gabrielle cried to Xena that she was afraid. Ow, again. The scene was well-done, and I hope never to see that kind of thing inflicted again on a character I like so much. Kind of like how I expect to feel about the whole Rift.

One moment in particular I loved in that scene: Xena's shock at being able to simply say "It's a girl." It's a normal, regular-looking baby girl. After all that weirdness, all that panic, all that nastiness, no monster here. (Har.)

Blooper #2: Xena's sword once again pulls the disappearing/reappearing act. She loses the sword in the fight in the castle with the banshees; a banshee kicks it and it flies across the room. Xena leaves the room without picking it up. But when she leaps outside the walls of the castle, it's back in its scabbard. "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a sword out of my hat!" "Not AGAIN!"

In the end of it all, Xena is in tears, apologetic, and emotional. Gabrielle is dry-eyed and reserved. How's THAT for a switch?

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