Them Bones, Them Bones

I'm not a particularly superstitious person, but I gotta say this right off the bat: If I were pregnant, playing a problem with a pregnancy would spook the bejeebers out of me. I'm very glad this episode didn't air until after Lucy's baby was born safe and sound. If the pregnancy hadn't been clean as a whistle, those first few minutes of the episode would have made me throw up.

Xena sends Gab searching for "just a plain ol' mushroom"?? Even if the line had been something like "look for a yellow one with a brown center," I would have bought it. But anyone who's even heard of the 60s or learned not to eat everything that grows would know what a bad idea "a plain ol' mushroom" is. No wonder Xena trips out. That wasn't a vision, that was healer penance for such a screwup.

The banter at the beginning of the episodes was pretty danged cute. I liked Lucy's delivery of "Ugh. I feel like a slug" (letting a little personal inflection in there?), and nice lightening of a corny moment with "I'm not eating mushrooms."

Gabrielle's horse is still around! Gab's looking pretty at home on him, too. And she's not even walking funny after riding across half of eastern Europe.

Granted, people change and move pretty quick in the XenaVerse. But geez, the last time we saw Yakut, she was a shell-shocked kid wearing a bullwinkle hat two sizes too big. ("Look, mom! I'm the new head of the elk lodge!") A year later, she's a mondo prophetess, with no sign or mention of the Otere chick we spent so much time with in Sin Trade that was... what was it again?... oh, yeah, the queen!

On the flip side, it was nice to see that the Thunderdome Amazons seem to be settling and growing in numbers. That seemed like a believable change for the past year. There still ain't a one of 'em over 20 years old, though. When Chia showed up, we finally found out what these amazons do with women past the quarter-century mark: they ship them off as hermit mystics.

Yakut puts her hand on Xena's stomach and draws a picture: the first sonogram!

"I love your baby like it were my own." Given everything Gabrielle went through on Hope's behalf, that's a powerful statement. And it's either a) screaming foreshadowing for the discovery that Gabrielle did have something to do with the baby, or b) killer irony when they find out that someone like Callisto is responsible.

In support of a), there's an interesting note about that dove story that Yakut and Xena go through, that when a mother accepts what she is going to become, a dove appears from the baby to say thanks. Not surprisingly, Xena sees a dove at the end of the episode after she's fought to retrieve her baby. But when Gabrielle manages to cross to the dream world for the baby's sake, I could swear that bird that Gabrielle sees is a dove.

Sharon has been sneaking out pictures of Gab'in Hood from this episode for a while now. And she did look amazing as a huntress. But I gotta say, the set photographer realized how great ROC looked in that outfit better than the show's director did. Blink and you'll miss it in the episode.

Interesting Sin Trade consistency: the boojum effect of the blood and the rituals and dancing looked the same, and were explained better this time around. The camera work was even similar. But what was up with all the goofy montages? A spider? An alligator eating a fish?

Small consistency blooper: when Xena smears blood on Gabrielle's forehead, a few drops spill on her cheek. Those drops are gone in the next shot.

During the whole first ritual, every time they showed the amazons dancing, Amarice was in the middle of them all with an amazed look as if she thinks they're all insane. By the third or fourth shot of this, I was laughing myself sick.

Nifty freeze-frame effect a la The Matrix when Gabrielle wakes up in the dream world.

Poor Gabrielle: she goes through all that "Shamaness in a Day" training, only to find herself thrown into the deep end of the pool without a life jacket while Alti speeds around on a Jet-Ski. I liked this scene a lot. The bewildering shots of dual Gabrielles, of Alti's total control of the realm, showed how unprepared Gabrielle was for that fight. Alti: 2, Gabrielle: 0. Alti's due for a MAJOR buttkicking from the Amazon Queen next time they meet.

Alti got a new look! A little more aerodynamic now, although she still keeps Mary Kay Cosmetics in business with all that mascara.

Chalk up another death for Gabrielle. And to cure a same-ol', same-ol' death, they used a same-ol', same-ol' CPR resurrection method from Doctor in the House. What the heck was the use of the blood-sister pact Xena and Gabrielle made before Gab went under? It didn't seem to do a lick of good.

Why is Alti's body in a burned village? Shouldn't she be on a tree with the slaughtered amazon leaders?

Xena puts Yakut in her place pretty neatly for bringing Alti down on them and not saying anything until she had no choice. I think it was the latter part that peeved Xena the most, since she immediately reminds Yakut that Gabrielle almost died while Yakut sat on her hands. No cutesy feel-better lines, no platitudes to make it all right, just a "you idiot" attitude and "let's do our job." Given all that, I'm surprised that Xena didn't use the Borias method of trance interruption and smack the crap out of Yakut. (Of course, she DID give her a heck of a punch when she found her in the dream world, so maybe she just waited.)

Right up there with "any ol' mushroom" in the swiftie pregnancy moves is Xena's chug-a-lug of trippy blood. Getting the baby soul-napped was Xena's comeuppance for fooling around with blood rites while in a family way. Hello, warrior princess! Maybe the dove at the end was the baby's way of saying "Thank you, now will you PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH ME!" (Then again, Warlord Xena DID do the same thing when she was carrying Solan.)

And in the "subtlety is not my strong suit" category for the week, we have Alti's "I've always wanted to be inside of you, Xena" line. She was talking about slipping a dagger between Xena's ribs, right? That must have been it. Feel free to use that if you have any pre-teens watching the show who ask uncomfortable questions.

Xena's threat about being Alti's eternal damnation has some serious bite to it, given her recent stint leading the forces of hell. Take this woman seriously, Alti!

Alti's deal makes major sense. If she was born as Xena's baby, Xena'd just do another Hope-i-cide and off the kid before it drew two breaths. (Been there, done that.) This way, Alti gets to come back as fully herself.

I expected Guardian Chia to tell Gabrielle "You may pass... but first you met get past my pet." [mmph snicker]

Gee, the chick full of "In MY tribe, we spun tops on our heads" stories isn't really an amazon? Knock me over with a feather. Gabrielle's addition of Amarice to her tribe was predictable, but nicely done. And then Amarice decides to stay with the Northern tribe? That's gratitude for ya. COOL line from Gabrielle: "For many years I walked in Xena's shadow... she taught me something. It's warmer standing in the sun." It was good to see Gab get to show off some of those people skills of hers. She was warm, perceptive, and wise in this episode.

The world-creating business was telegraphed from the moment Alti said the amazons can do anything if they put their minds to it. Yakut serves as Amazon Narrator for both trance scenes, this time by providing subtitles for the scheme with the line "Our minds, creator of worlds."

The next entry in the creative methods of avoiding fight scenes with a pregnant star: a special-effected fight. I'm as up for a Ray Harryhausen tribute as the next gal, but the fight bored the pants off me. (Note to self: wear a belt next time.) It looked too much like Doom on my computer screen.

In that final fight, it made sense to me that Alti had the baby's soul in her chest, since she was trying to munch it for her own life. But when Xena took the baby back, shouldn't it have been hanging out around her hips?

What was up with the setting of the final ritual? It began in a cave with lots of candles and Alti on a stone slab. The dream world was the same, just minus all the amazons, which made sense. But then when we returned to the group, they were outside, in daytime, with Alti and Xena on wooden cots. Was that on purpose, or a major consistency blunder?

Return to the Wool-Gatherings.

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