To Helicon and Back

X:WP has always done really well with the "War is hell" theme. Some of their best episodes come from that base. This one will stand proud among 'em - all kinds of vicious battle scenes, a ruthless and sharp bad guy with an understandable axe to grind, amazons being amazon-ly, Gabrielle being queenly, and Xena leaping off tall parapets in a single bound.

Glad to see that Varia finally got around to that little apologizing bit for her fight with Gabrielle last week! Cute "sprained it on my face" pish-posh it gets from Gab. (Gab was "saving face" - har de har har.) But the fact that Gab so easily blew off their earlier fight - and Varia taking her time at making amends for it - shows how much more serious their tiff later in this episode is.

Has no one in this episode heard of basic eclipse safety? Xena and every amazon in the tribe is staring up at a full eclipse! There's going to be a run on seeing eye dogs in the XenaVerse next week.

Superfluous masks alert! The bad guys wear masks in the opening fight, but leave their calling cards, openly declare their intention to destroy the amazons, and never use the masks again. Was it just an eclipse fashion statement?

All the battles got that herky-jerky combat effect, when it looks like the action was filmed at half speed (and missed every other frame) and then played back at normal speed. I have mixed feelings about that effect. On the one hand, it's very cool for getting across the speed and confusion feeling of a battle. But on the other, it's rotten for really seeing what's happening.

A note for all bad guys: if you'd like to avoid the Warrior Princess's attention, don't knock down the bard!

Whoops, a camera slip during the funeral pyre scene. Xena squeezes Gabrielle's shoulder, then walks straight behind Gab to Argo, with one of the queens on Gab's right. When we switch to the long shot from above, the row of queens stand to Gabrielle's left, and Xena is way over on the other side of them.

Xena and Gabrielle have connections to a pretty impressive rent-a-barge service! I can't believe that the forest-y amazons had one of those just lying around.

The nordic amazon queen gets the Line of the Episode crown (which apparently gives her the power to make it through the episode in one piece) with "Knowing my luck, if I owe you money I'll survive. I'm serious."

"Worse than Joxer facing the dryads." Lord help us all, Joxer has passed into legend.

Bellerophon got an awfully nifty introduction. He comes across as a cocky, just-this-side-of-crazy warlord hotshot... until he knocks Xena across the room and rains fire down on the sneaky amazons. Now that's the way to demand a little respect! Pretty cool way to introduce the "and by the way, you killed my mother" routine, too.

I'll give Bellerophon points for his peeve with Xena. I'm sure that to him, Eve doesn't mean beans next to Mom. But he's got some serious blinders on when it comes to the amazons. It makes perfect sense character-wise, I'm not quibbling with the writing. But that boy needed some serious time on Aphrodite's psychiatrist couch to wake him up to the fact that the amazons were getting their butts kicked for five seasons, including Artemis's own temple getting torched by a blasphemous former-amazon, and we never saw boo from Artemis until she showed up for thirty seconds to shoot at Xena. How were some more fervently-worshipping amazons supposed to stop that from happening? He even calls Artemis the "greatest of all the Olympians." That boy needs some serious Oedipal counseling.

Bellerophon needs to hire a better stunt double in his castle; the one he has looks nothing like him.

Amazon D-day! Except this was kind of D-Day if the Nazis had managed to crack Allied codes. They get blown out of the water, have to paddle to shore, then get decimated as they charge the beach. No wonder the casualties were so staggering. It was a crucible of a battle, but these amazons didn't seem very well-trained for a large-scale battle like this. We got so many shots of the so-called best amazon warriors weeping over comrades, tugging the wounded, and generally standing in the middle of carnage in disbelief that the point about the nastiness of the fight was made, but at the expense of making these poor amazons look like babes in the woods (no pun intended).

For all its good points, this episode has some serious, major problems with catapult physics. Catapults are not precision weapons, even in the best-trained hands. They can NOT be used to pick off individual people. And they take a few minutes to reload. Judging by the number of fireballs raining down on our amazon heroes, there were quite a few catapults in that castle, but then why do the rest all take a break after one shoots at a kamikaze runner (see first physics problem) or Xena's chakram takes one out?

Xena has awesome spidey sense. Varia's setup of Gabrielle ("Sure, just run that way across an open field") was pretty cheesy. But it was so worth it for the cool shots of Xena standing over Varia with the arrow stopped in its tracks, and then of Gabrielle running hell for leather across the field with fireballs exploding behind her. (But see previous catapult physics problems.)

Awesome scene when Gabrielle squares off against Varia, extremely well-played all around. But I kind of snickered during:

"You tried to kill me!"
"Let me handle this."
I completely expected the next three seconds to be:
"You tried to kill Gabrielle! *SMACK!*"

These rules for amazon queenship just get weirder and weirder. Now royalty can be taken away by ripping off a necklace? Maybe that was a challenge that Varia just didn't want to dispute. But weren't all the other members of the tribal council queens of their groups? Why is Gabrielle suddenly the only one with a claim to the throne? At least one other queen - the funny nordic one - was standing right next to them.

The shark scene was reeeaaallly nasty - it gave me serious chills to see Gabrielle decide on the spot that their near- dead (I took it that she wasn't dead yet, or they wouldn't bother hauling her along) Celtic Kick-butt pal was going to have to bite the dust to save the rest of them. It gave me chills in spite of the raging problems that scene had with actual shark behavior. Xena was right that movement attracts sharks... so a motionless floater would not be the first choice of targets among a bunch of people treading water. And sharks are not precision snipers. They get hungry, they attack whatever moves, and with the first bit of blood and meat they catch scent of, it's open season on everything in their reach, frequently including each other. Celtic Kick- butt would have been the appetizer.

I had really liked Bellerophon - he showed smarts and nastiness. Right up until Xena shows up at his door. And the previously smart guy decides there's no way that Varia didn't take away the amazons (even though Xena doesn't say boo about anything happening to Gabrielle) and merrily leads his men into an ambush. Man, those last-five-minute losses of 20 IQ points are painful!

Superfluous sword alert! Gabrielle carries a sword on her back that seems to serve no purpose at all. Her sais are still her weapon of choice. In the final battle, at one point she's only carrying one sai and the sword... then she has both sais again... then it's back to the sai and sword. Pick a weapon and stick with it, woman!

Bellerophon's awfully cocky about being half god. Granted, I wasn't a faithful watcher of the show, but didn't Hercules spend an awfully lot of time worrying about that "half mortal" part? Bellerophon should have spent a little more time on that, too. And the biggest irony of the episode is that Xena is doing her darnedest to talk Bellerophon down at the same time that Gabrielle is getting more and more lost in bloodthirst.

This was an impressive "look how far she's come, for better or worse" episode for Gabrielle. Gabrielle sends wounded to die and a volunteer to a suicide run. She leads the tribe into certain decimation with the knowledge that it's the only way to prevent them all from being exterminated. It's an extreme example of following the Greater Good, of sacrificing in the name of finding the lesser evil. Gab spends most of the episode with her horribly determined face on, and pretty darned heartsick at the end of it all. Nobility has always sat well on Gabrielle. Who would have thought the little village girl would be such a natural-born leader?

Poor Xena is the only kid not invited to prom. She tries her best to be understanding while she sits in the forest muttering at her campfire while all the amazons party it up. And she REALLY tried at the end to give Gabrielle some room when queenly duties come a-calling. But this has now officially reached a crisis point. The amazons - and Xena and Gabrielle - seem to think there's no one else who can lead them. Is that true? And if so, how do you solve a problem like Xena? Isn't there any way besides rights of caste to proclaim a person an amazon? How the heck do all these gals join the tribes?

Return to the Wool-Gatherings.

	Web www.bethgriese.com