Maternal Instincts

Well, I'm depressed. Not because the episode was bad, mind you: the episode was outstanding. But I hate seeing bad things happen to characters I like, and there isn't much worse than burying a child. This is pain that'll linger.

We seem to have found a vocation that with an even higher mortality rate than love interest for Xena or Gabrielle: offspring of Xena or Gabrielle. At this rate, I'm wondering how anybody survived long enough to produce The Xena Scroll's Janice and Mel. Combine that with Ming T'ien's luck with Lao Ma as his mom, and if I were Xenan, I'd start heading for the hills.

The scene at the funeral pyres is a masterpiece of blocking and set design; every inch is put together to separate Xena and Gabrielle. We've seen our share of pyres in this series, and every time before, Xena and Gab were shoulder to shoulder, if not closer. This time, they're standing apart. The pyres are lined up in front of each woman and form a canyon between them. The mourners stand behind and between them to emphasize the gulf. A small stream of water even separates them. There's a chasm that seems insurmountable between these two women from the very first shot in this scene. And at the end, they walk away in opposite directions. This is going to take a mending job worthy of a blacksmith's forge.

Ephiny's sword pommel has the symbol for woman on it: the circle with the line drawn down from it. (I'm sure there's an actual name for that symbol; I just have no idea what it is.)

Xena was as friendly and relaxed with Solan as we've ever seen her. That's been stomped on pretty badly now, so who knows how long it will be before we see it again. But what a contrast to how she acted around Solan a year ago. Character development, ahoy!

It took me a little time to work out exactly what happened at the lava pit. As Hope said, she deliberately released Callisto. The effort from it knocked her weak, just like she had been after killing Kaleipus. (Small nit: why didn't killing Solan weaken her?) Did Hope release Callisto because she knew that Callisto would do a good job of tormenting Xena? Hope offered Callisto a place in Dahak's kingdom, but what was Callisto offering to Hope? The knowledge about Solan? And is it just me, or was Hope maneuvering to see to it that Xena and Gabrielle took out Callisto while Callisto was taking out them? That kid had a lot of nasty little plans wiggling in her head. She plotted the perfect way to get alone with Solan. Maybe that was the only reason why she released Callisto and set her loose on the village.

Gabrielle usually relies on Xena to solve problems; she protects her sidekick status. In this horrible instance, though, she's left to her own devices to solve her problem. Xena has banished her from her presence, and Gabrielle is left to deal with Hope on her own. And she does - decisively, cleanly, and finally. And painfully. It's a little reminiscent of the depths she found in herself in Destiny and The Quest, but now for carrying out horrid necessities instead of assuming nobility.

The killing of Meridian was debatable about how it affected Gabrielle's blood innocence - it was in self-defense, she was set up, it was a spur of the moment reaction. Not so now; every shred of that blood innocence is gone, and Gabrielle gave it up willingly. She planned the cold murder of her daughter, because she was left with the unthinkable choice between it and letting Hope kill more innocent people.

Perfect title for this episode: we get to see the maternal side of Xena, Gabrielle, AND Ephiny. Xena was reunited with Solan at last, and was willing to make it permanent, even if she still didn't tell him the true nature of their relationship. Gabrielle had found her lost daughter, after every sight of children and mention of the word "hope" had hit her like a physical blow. Ephiny's experience with motherhood was mostly used in this ep to allow her to reach out to and sympathize with first Gabrielle, then Xena, and try to be a friend to both. She doesn't succeed very much, and then gets relegated to child-hugger for the rest of the show, but we still got to see a different side to all three of the women: their responses around their children.

That kid who played Hope was pretty good; she did the wide-eyed innocent act without being TOO grating, and got some nasty evil looks in there, too. She should have let Callisto get some more time in with that hairbrush, though, even if Callisto was being pretty rough about it.

Xena wants very much to lay this all down at Gabrielle's feet, and she has a point, and Gabrielle is letting her do so. But there are very good arguments that Xena has some responsibility to claim here, too. The situation would probably never have come around if Xena hadn't been so blinded to revenge as to turn her back on Gabrielle in Britannia, and if she hadn't been so unwilling to discuss Hope's fate, maybe she and Gabrielle could have found a place for Hope to grow up that would have taught her differently, or at least taken care of her early if she had proved irredeemable. There's plenty of guilt here to go around, and right now Gabrielle is drowning in it, and Xena isn't going anywhere near it. I wonder if that little imbalance is going to be able to hold up.

This seems like stating the obvious, but I have to say it anyway: top-notch acting work by both Lucy and Renee. Gabrielle's quiet horror beside Hope's body and both their reactions to Solan's death left bruises on my gut. Watch Xena as Solan asks to live with her; it was something she wanted desperately to hear, but didn't dare ask for. Without words, an actor loses part of the tools she can use for conveying emotions and thoughts. Xena and Gabrielle spend a lot of time in this episode without words, but the emotions don't fail to come across.

I really loved the effect when Callisto was shot up like a pincushion, then her whole face fired up and the arrows shot back out of her like... well, like arrows. One small problem, though: shouldn't those arrows have struck the archers haft-first instead of head-first? Would have been lethal either way, but I was really expecting the feathers to bury in the guys and the blades to be left sticking out of them - would have added to the coolness factor.

Has killing Hope ended her predictions about Dahak's kingdom? She never specifically says that she's the one who's going to carry out his plans. Is Dahak gone now, or will he be coming back another way to try to git Xena? And what's his beef with Xena, anyway? I had thought he was mad because Xena had tried to kill Hope, but maybe it was because of killing the Deliverer? And what's this about the world's fate pinning on her?

Callisto's threats were things of beauty. "I know your little secret, and I'll take it to the grave" and "Flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, blood of your blood... I can't wait to see all that." Give the writers a doggie biscuit!

Waaaayyy back in the famous campfire scene in Callisto, Xena worried about whether she would be able to stay under control if something happened to the ones she loves the most. In Ties That Bind, we saw her totally lose it when she thought her father had been murdered. This time, we see the cruelest cut of all: the murder of her son. But she stays in control. Xena's rage is tangible. She shoots an arrow from a compound bow right through Callisto. (Yee-ow! Do you know how much force that would take?) She inconsolably rejects the counsel and comfort of anyone who offers it. She pummels the stuffing out of Callisto with her bare hands. But she's in control. She makes and executes a plan to take care of Callisto. She's not in warlord mode: everyone else is allowed to keep their heads intact. In the midst of all the nastiness that's happened, Xena (and Gabrielle) can be proud that she didn't fall back into Warrior Princess mode. At least, not right away: her next test is to see whether she can keep that up under the pain and loneliness she's going to be dealing with and without the support of Gabrielle. But for now, at least, she's planning to "live with (her) pain" instead of burying or being buried by it.

When Callisto and Velasca went into the lava pit, they both had those all-white eyes as an apparent side-effect of the ambrosia. But when Callisto emerges, her eyes are back to normal. Maybe once you've been a god for a while, you can pick your eye color again? I'm glad they did that, continuity be damned: Callisto looks so much more threatening with those dark, cold eyes than she did with the strange monster whites.

The scene when Xena discovers Solan's body can be watched about a half-dozen times and still be freshly painful, but fantastic drama. Gabrielle's horrified reaction and Xena's refusal to let her near. Xena's heart-breaking line "Your mom's here... just like you always wanted," followed by those horrible screams. Callisto's reaction when she hears the sound she's been desiring for years (remember "I long to see you wailing over the body of your friend"?), then the way her face falls when she realizes that her soul isn't magically restored. That's a LOT of emotions packed into 30 seconds.

Gabrielle is, at heart, an optimist, and still an idealist. Her daughter's dead by her own hand, her relationship with the person closest to her in the world is in ruins, the death of at least two, maybe more, innocent people lies partially on her head. It's no wonder she considered drinking what was left of the poison. But the only thing that would keep her from it is the conviction - the hope, pardon the word - that the situation will improve, that somewhere must be a way to put the pieces of her life together again. Thank goodness, Gab still has hope, much as she might protest it at the time.

The Rift starts brewing from the beginning of the episode. Xena and Gabrielle spend almost the entire show separated from each other. Xena involves herself in Solan and Kaleipus, and Gabrielle turns to Ephiny, then Hope. But other than Ephiny, all of these people are dead by the end of the show, and both Xena and Gab have lost their primary source of comfort and companionship, each other. They're in the midst of the greatest crises of their lives without a soul to depend on. At the very end of the episode, when things are at their worst, Gabrielle gives her last-ditch effort to remind them both that she still loves Xena, and the knowledge of it hits Xena like a brick, but it's not enough to bridge the pain between them right now. Presumably it will later, because the XenaStaff has PROMISED this is gonna work out. Right, XenaStaff? RIGHT, GUYS?

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