Path of Vengeance

Special bulletin: Ares is back in a BIG way. He's powerful, he's nasty, he's lying with a glib tongue and getting his kicks by seeing how close Xena will let him come before yelling in his face. Nice to have you back, war god.

I give extra points to any episode in which everyone acts intelligently. The players are all at odds with each other, and almost everybody's wrong at some point, but they all have good logic and good reasons for what they're arguing. Varia scored big time by defending her actions to Eve, while getting ready to slaughter prisoners of all things, with the line "I'm defending amazon lands and uniting our people. You were raiding our village for slaves." I like it when everybody's thinking.

Excellent amazon episode. It's about time the amazons got smart and banded together to keep themselves from being picked off little piece by little piece. Gangs, bands, hordes of amazons running all over the place! Their battle cries echoing all around the Romans would have been enough to impress Genghis Khan: part Xena cry, part bird calls. I loved the council and the different style of dress of each of the queens. You could even tell who some of the amazons running around the village belonged to by their dress. With one startling exception: the chick who tells Xena and Eve that a verdict has been reached (and we see her later in the boxing ring circle). That one is wearing beads, shells, and linen in a sea of brown leather. Who the heck was that?

The first shot of the Amazon-Roman battle has a neat touch to it: we see a long, wide shot of all the amazons and Romans fighting it out in a flurry. Except for Eve, who stands still and quiet in the middle of the anthill. I almost wished we had gotten to see more from that shot.

Who's this new emperor who apparently feels he's good buddies with Xena and Eve? He never gets named. I guess now that Ares is back, we don't need the Romans to be such bad guys. The one Roman escapee is told to go back to the village and report to an officer what has happened. Is it significant that he immediately reported to Xena, or is the kid just a blabbermouth?

Did one of the Roman casualties that Xena and Gabrielle find die of an arrow to the butt?

The amazons still suffer from the most schizophrenic memory in the whole series. Gabrielle's a queen again! She's not a queen! She is a queen! This episode, they remember that Gabrielle's royalty. But come to think of it, Eve's her heir, and nobody seems to remember that. Granted, soon after giving her the right of caste, Gab and Xena went into the deep freeze and Eve was smuggled off to a name-changing Roman orphanage, so no one may know about it. But it might have been a good thing for Gabrielle to bring up in all that defense stuff. ("Did I mention she's an amazon princess?") And apparently, in 26+ years the rules for challenging the queen have seriously changed: there's now no weapons, Gabrielle can't pick a champion, and it's no longer to the death. Not necessarily bad changes, but a far cry from first season's fight with Melosa.

As long as we're talking continuity, this WAS very cool: the move that Eve/Livia used to vault over Varia in the flashback seems to be the same one that tipped off Varia to Eve's identity back in Coming Home. I haven't compared the video, but it sure looked like that same "I'm so clever, I've managed to put you behind me" move. And then in the final fight, Varia uses it on Xena. What goes around comes around!

During the first council meeting, Xena agrees to abide by amazon law, but she lies like a dog. She spends the whole episode not giving a whit about amazon law when it comes to her daughter. But, when Gab wrangles a promise to not get involved in her challenge, Xena does keep that promise. Eve trumps amazons, Gabrielle trumps... well, just about everything else.

My most niggling gripe with this episode's plot: the amazons are taking their cues from a male war god?? Chyah, right.

At last, we get the explanation for the bug that's been up Varia's butt all season. Her sister got slaughtered by Eve right in front of her. That lends some sense to her someone- permanently-peed-in-her-Cheerios character. But it leaves a huge honking question unanswered: how the heck did Varia stay with the amazons? Shouldn't Eve have killed her or hauled her off to the slave line to take her sister's place?

Cool shot of the whole season may go to Livia's reflection in Varia's eyes as her sister is killed. That was one darned nifty shot, and it was perfect for getting across the point - how deeply that's ingrained in Varia.

That hour that the amazons give Xena to prepare a defense only turns out to be five minutes, even by TV editing standards. Xena follows Varia to the back cave, they exchange some fisticuffs and about a dozen lines... and it's time to go back. That was the shortest hour on record!

Xena gets Zinger of the Episode with "Like the time they painted you blue and made you howl at the moon to consecrate your queenliness?" Ha!

Interesting question here: Ares tells Varia that Eve threw the amazon slaves overboard to rile her. Eve never confirms that little part; it might be true, but it might not be. Is it possible that Xena and Gab really did rescue some of the amazons when they cleared out Gurkhan's harem?

Ares' story is just slightly changed from an actual fable. The fable is usually a scorpion and frog instead of a swan (I guess Xena and amazons might better enjoy being compared to swans than frogs) and the scorpion's line is usually "It's in my nature" instead of "It's what I do," although I guess those are pretty close to the same thing. Great verbal play between Ares and Xena when Ares uses the scorpion to justify his nastiness, until Xena skewers him with the point that the scorpion drowns for it.

Ares' involvement in the amazon slaving raids was a good warning for the amazons and enough to give them pause... but they were absolutely right (and Gabrielle knew it) that it had nothing to do with Eve's guilt.

Great reaction from Xena after the guilty verdict was given - she throws her hands into the air, she's so shocked that Gabrielle would vote against Eve. Xena loses a bit or perspective at this point - she lashes out at Gabrielle (and drives Gab to being a little bullheaded about getting her own butt kicked) and at Ares, but Ares hits her right on the mark when he reminds her that Eve is the one who volunteered for all that. Poor Xena doesn't have anyone to blame... but she makes up for it with that drowning scorpion stab.

I understand that the reason Varia was supposed to do so well against both Gabrielle and Xena is because of the training she's gotten from Ares. But I guess it's a sign of the seasons that after all we've seen Gabrielle do, it was awfully hard to buy that Varia could beat Gab. It was a pretty cool fight, though, even if it did have a little bit of a "Saturday night at the boxing ring" feel to it.

The amazons have an interesting method of capital punishment: death by banana pudding! (I know, I know, it's acidic sulfur. But it looked like it would make a tasty dessert with just a few vanilla wafers.)

AWESOME fight over the banana pudding pits of death! Sticks, swords, spins, and swinging fists! Pretty funny board-cam, too, when Xena's floorboard breaks and almost takes her for a ride into the pudding pit.

Small cutting glitch at the end of the big pudding pit fight: Varia lands with her sword practically under her right hand. Then the overhead long shot shows the swords scattered a good three feet away from her, then when Xena arrives, the sword is back under her hand again.

Varia's had so many changes of heart by now that she's getting frequent flier miles at the donor ward. We've seen petulant; accepting; petulant and angry; warm and understanding; petulant, angry, and violent; near-noble and forgiving. Maybe she should consider a 12-step program.

In the "nice touch" department: when Eve is released, she immediately offers comfort (and, I would hope, some serious apologies) to Varia. That was a neat comment on Eve. I liked Varia's reaction in that scene, gently ignoring her, much more than the hand-holding grinniness of the amazon council scene. After all that, I was willing to believe that Varia could move on and forgive Eve... but smiling at her without a care in the world was a bit much for me. And what was up with ignoring Gabrielle at the end without so much as a "Oh, and sorry about the pummeling"?

Varia has some interesting parallels with Xena. Driven to fighting by the death of her family, taken under Ares' wing to exploit her talents in the worst way possible, committing some pretty rank acts like slaughtering prisoners... good thing she got turned back from that path much earlier than Xena did. Maybe that's part of how Xena knew how to trigger the right thing to snap Varia out of it. Although if Xena did, do you think she could have whispered a clue to Gabrielle before she got the tar kicked out of her?

Eve is going to Chin and Indes to spread Eli's word?? She's going to show up in the series finale carrying a little red book and chanting Maoist slogans. Was this a final goodbye to Eve? The music and scene sure seemed to imply that it was. Buh-bye, Eve. Nice girl, fun when she got riled up, but most of the time way too boring to hang around. She gets a sweet, warm farewell scene (and some awfully beautiful words to Gabrielle and Xena) and a motherly "stay out of trouble" from Xena for the road.

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