Xena: Warrior Princess Normal Size Recaps

by Zelempa

**** 1x1 Sins of the Past Xena returns home to start her new life of good, but finds herself unwelcome. Meanwhile, plucky rescuee Gabrielle follows her around, vying for the vacant sidekick gig.
*** 1x2 Chariots of War Xena heals from a wound in a mistrustful peacenik village; Gabby converts a wavering warlord's son.
*** 1x3 Dreamworker Gabby wants to learn to fight until she's kidnapped by a cult with designs on her blood innocence. The rescue operation requires Xena to go into a magical dream state and face her guilt.
** 1x4 Cradle of Hope Xena and Gabby find a baby in the bullrushes and also, Pandora is hanging around, whining about her box. Oh, woe is me, the box grows heavy, Sam.
*** 1x5 The Path Not Taken Xena goes undercover amongst baddies and reconnects with Marcus, an old boyfriend, who seems just ripe for conversion.
**** 1x6 The Reckoning When Xena framed for murder, Ares offers her a chance to evade the executioner's axe--for a price.
** 1x7 The Titans Gabby awakens some titans.
*** 1x8 Prometheus Prometheus is in about eight seconds of this crossover episode, which is mainly an excuse for Xena, Gabrielle, Hercules, and Iolaus to get gooey-eyed at each other.
** 1x9 Death in Chains Xena has to rescue Death; Gabby likes a boy.
*** 1x10 Hooves and Harlots Xena works to avert an Amazon/Centaur war; Gabby stumbles into an Amazon princessship.
** 1x11 The Black Wolf Xena gets herself imprisoned in order to help save the mysterious people's hero, The Black Wolf.
** 1x12 Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts Trojan War. Perdicas is there.
** 1x13 Athens Academy for the Performing Bards Gabby competes for a spot at bard school.
** 1x14 A Firstful of Dinars Treasure hunt.
** 1x15 Warrior...Princess Xena switches places with her coincidental identical double.
** 1x16 Mortal Beloved Xena helps Marcus fix chaos in the underworld.
*** 1x18 The Prodigal Gabby goes home.
** 1x19 Altared States The Biblical story of Abraham episode.
** 1x20 Ties That Bind Xena questions her paternity.
**** 1x21 The Greater Good Poisoned and determined to complete a mission at the expense of her own health, Xena dresses Gabrielle in her own armor.
***** 1x22 Callisto Xena faces a woman who turned psycho-evil-warlord after Xena's army destroyed her village.
* 1x23 Death Mask In a surprisingly inconsequential episode, Xena helps her brother bring down the warlord who sacked Amphipolis.
*** 1x24 Is There A Doctor In The House? Xena and Gabrielle M*A*S*H it up in a temporary war hospital; Ephiny delivers her baby; Xena saves Gabrielle's life by inventing CPR.

1x1 Sins of the Past

Xena is riding around through the burned-out shell of a village she torched, remembering her evil past (mostly Hercules clips), and being depressed. She has just buried her sword and chakram when some thugs come by with some frightened young women they are trying to enslave. One girl, Gabrielle (how did someone with a French name end up in ancient Greece?), asks the slavers to take her and let the others go, but they don't. Xena recovers her weapons and kicks ass; for a brief moment, she's having fun, grinning and laughing as she fights.

After the fight, the villagers let her restock in their town, but they're frightened to have her there and tell her to move on quickly. Gabrielle sticks up for her, saying she helped them and they should be nice, but Xena assures them she plans on leaving for her hometown of Amphipolis directly. After snapping at her fiance to leave her alone with Xena, Gabrielle begs to be taken along on adventures. Xena refuses.

Xena and Gabrielle separately make their way to Amphipolis. Along the way, Xena pisses off the warlord Draco by refusing to join him, and finds out he is sending his army after her to sack her village. When she arrives, she tries to warn the Amphipolisians (?), saying she can help them raise a defense, but they assume she is trying to build an army again. Even Xena's mother no longer wants anything to do with her. Xena is so depressed she just lets them start stoning her. Gabrielle arrives in the nick of time to vouch for Xena. She manages to fast-talk their way into a free pass out of town.

Xena makes a brief stop to talk to the tomb of her brother Lyceus, then returns to town once Draco arrives to challenge him to a climactic fight to the death on some poles. She wins but spares Draco's life if he promises to leave and never return. Xena refuses a cash reward from the villagers and wins her mother's forgiveness. Realizing, perhaps, that she shouldn't push her luck, Xena moves on. Gabrielle comes to her campfire, complaining that she's too cold to wait for Xena to get in another jam, and this time Xena lets her stay.

XENA: You know where I'm headed there'll be trouble.
GABRIELLE: I know.
XENA: Then why do you want to go so bad?
GABRIELLE: That's what friends do. They stand by each other when there's trouble.
XENA: All right. Friend.

Of Note: Lucy Lawless's early-season-1 Xena voice is significantly less cool and gritty than it later gets. Less John McClane and more schoolmarm with a cold. Either way? Sexy.

Highlights: Several choice moments for Gabrielle on her own. She's successfully set up as spirited, quick-thinking, and surprisingly non-helpless. At one point on the road she is caged by a cyclops whom Xena had blinded. This is the classic hero-saves-would-be-sidekick situation and given Xena's later track record of saving Gabby out of cages, you would expect just that, but interestingly, Gabrielle talks her way out of the mess. Later, she convinces a cart driver to give her a ride (one of her selling points: "I know several poems which I recite with great passion!")

I was surprised by the extent to which I liked Draco. They actually spend a fair amount of time setting him up as an intelligent, badass, fairly complicated villain; too bad they didn't, to the best of my recollection, end up doing that much with him. I guess the show later got all its bad-boy-who-has-sexual-tension-with-Xena-who-walks-behind-her-mouthbreathing-and-saying-"Don't-run-away-from-your-dark-side-embrace-it" needs filled with Ares.

Finally, the music of this episode--full of that female choral stuff--does a really good job of making you feel the emotional impact. Xena is quite possibly the best-scored action show I know.

Slash Watch:

Chariots of War

Xena saves a single dad and his kids from some pillagers, and gets shot in the gut with an arrow for her trouble. Sensitive Ex-military Pacifist Dad Guy nurses her back to health, much to the consternation of his neighbors, who fear the reputedly violent warrior will spoil the peace talks they've arranged with the local warlord. At the meeting, Xena discovers waiting ambushers, and the resulting brawl seems to validate the villagers' mistrust. It's We Must End the Cycle of Hate vs. Sometimes You Have to Stand and Fight!

Meanwhile Gabrielle's waiting for Xena at an inn and ends up chatting up that very local warlord's son (he's the one who shot Xena and he thinks she's dead, leading to a nice little guilt moment when Gabrielle describes her friend). He expresses discomfort at the things his father makes him do and Gabrielle gives him some general advice about choosing your own path in life.

Xena and Gabrielle meet up and go after the warlord on behalf of the unfighting village. There's a showdown involving a chariot race and a vengeance score to settle because the warlord thinks Xena murdered his older son. Xena says he was killed by his own men after advocating for peace. Living Son throws down his sword and refuses to fight anymore. Xena mortally wounds the warlord (score one for war), and his son takes over and declares negotiations open for real (score one for peace).

Slash Watch: We open with Gabrielle telling Xena a story about some lovers who were turned into trees with their branches entwined for eternity (hint, hint!) As Xena rides away to do some recon, Gabby calls, "Don't forget about me!" "I won't," says Xena with inexplicable emphasis.

On the other hand, Gabrielle is quite flirty with Son Guy (luckily he turns out to be a shy, head-ducking, sweetheart of an armor-clad warrior) and then later laments to Xena that she has no way of finding him again and she's going to end up a "lonely, pathetic woman like... (glances at Xena) Never mind." And Xena misses several opportunities to talk about Gabrielle when she's telling Single Dad Guy's kids about her life; "Do you travel with your family?" is met with a short "I don't have a family," and later she says, "I don't often share a meal with such good company." What!

On the other other hand, Xena seems more creeped out than charmed by Sensitive Peaceable Single Dad Guy, especially when he wants her to wear his dead wife's dress, and she takes the first opportunity to rip it into itty bits for greater ease of ass-kicking.

Xena, Medicine Woman: If there's one thing Xena has taught me it's how to properly extract an arrow from your own flesh. While I believe a number of episodes contain the information that you can't pull out to arrow the way it came in but need instead to push it through and break off the head, this one has an extended wound-treating scene which includes cauterizing with a hot poker. Not to be missed!

Lowlights: Ugh, near the end the Child Who Won't Talk Since Her Mother Died speaks for the first time, imploring Xena to "Stay." It does make it kind of funny and great that she chooses to go, though. And, I hardly know whether to count this as a lowlight or a highlight, I just know it has to be mentioned: the cheesy 80s-music-video Labyrinth-synthesizer-scored wind-blown Xena-puts-on-a-dress scene. Awesome.

Vehicles Jumped Onto: Gabrielle jumps--awkwardly, and with Xena's help--from a running horse to a moving chariot.

1x3 Dreamworker

Gabrielle is kidnapped by some order of Morpheus with designs on her "blood innocence" (they get their ya-yas by tricking an innocent girl into killing for the first time and then sacrificing her). Xena goes to an ex-mystic who tells her Gabrielle has been taken to a place you can only get to through dreams, and he helps her go into a dream state. Gabrielle survives the first few ritual challenges without killing using Xena's advice on no-kill survival from earlier in the episode (handy!), her own ingenuity, a makeshift staff (first appearance!), and dumb luck.

Meanwhile a pretty kimono-clad Xena struggles her way through a guilt-ridden dreamscape full of haunting images of her early kills. Though they block her way, she avoids killing them again (I sense a theme), but she's ready to draw blood when she finally faces down herself--or rather, her old evil self, who for some reason has those creepy totally-black contact lenses, and who, at this point in the series, interestingly, is pretty much a spot-on anticipatory impression of Callisto. Bad Xena beats up on Good Xena (strangely sexy), and Good Xena realizes she can't kill Bad Xena but instead needs to accept that Bad Xena is a part of herself or something. Anyway, she makes it through the dream passage and transports to where Gabrielle is, just as a bad guy is about to kill her sleeping body, and just as Gabrielle is nearing the point of a kill-or-be-killed type situation. Mighty war cry, chorals and drums, Gabby throws Xena a sword, Hong Kong action moves, Xena kills a guy with the boob knife. Then the grand poobah gets mouthy, so Gabby punches him in the face.

Xena and Gabrielle return having saved the village from the bad cult and have a little moment by the lake with a metaphor which actually struck me as pretty clever (but it's entirely possible my brain is melting):

XENA: See how calm the water is? That was me once. And then... (throws in a rock) See how the water ripples and churns.
GABRIELLE: But if we sit here long enough, the water will go back to being calm.
XENA: But the rock's still under there. The lake may look as it did, but it's forever changed.

Highlights: We open with some comedy of Gabrielle playing with the sword followed by an excellent heart-of-the-show-getting-at scene of Xena explaining, with wisdom and emotion, why she shouldn't learn to use one. "The moment you pick up a sword you become a target. And the moment you kill..." "What? The moment you kill...?" "Everything changes."

Slash Watch:

1x4 Cradle of Hope

A title like that would portend a truly excruciating episode later in the show's run, but for now, it's fine, if a little dull. Xena and Gabrielle find a baby in the bulrushes, and shortly thereafter, run into Pandora and her box. Eventually Xena convinces the king (best known as the guy they show in the credits when the narrator says "Kings") to embrace the this-baby-will-kill-you prophecy and adopt the baby, and for some reason, Pandora stays behind to be the baby's mother. But not before there is a ridiculous fight with lots of throwing the baby up in the air for about ten minutes at a time! In the tag Gabrielle accidentally knocks over Pandora's box and there is nothing in it.

Highlights: My favorite part about season 1 is that you can sometimes see flashes of evil-Xena's mannerisms in things present-day-Xena is doing, even inherently good things. When she goes to negotiate with the king, her tone of voice is smug and sneaky, like she's laying out a threat, even though she clearly has the moral upper hand.

Other highlights: Xena has a tomboyish, vaguely Rizzoish reaction to the kid--kinda like, baby? what'm'i s'pos't'do wit'a baby? (It's contradicted by later canon, sort of, but it's kind of fun); Xena tells Gabrielle, "Good work"; Xena does a harem girl dance.

Slash Watch: Pretty much nothing until the last ten seconds or so when the king asks Xena if there's anything he can do to repay her and she says, "Name the baby Gabriel."

1x5 The Path Not Taken

When a princess is kidnapped, threatening to send two countries into war, Xena sets out to find the girl and in so doing goes undercover as her old self to a den of mercenary cutthroats. There she runs into Marcus, an old boyfriend, still working various schemes for profit. He's smart enough to realize there's something different about Xena almost immediately, and after some dallying and flirting he figures out her true plan. Xena confesses her goodness and tries to recruit him to her side, but Marcus isn't having it. He captures the princess for himself and is on the point of killing her when Xena talks him down, and when the big boss enters and shoots at the princess, Marcus actually steps in front of the arrow to save her. Xena holds him while he dies.

Question: Why the hell isn't Marcus running the show? His boss is a complete doof.

Rants: The bad guys in this episode are all about profit and the aspect of the rumors about the "new Xena" that threatens to undermine their respect for her is that she has been lending her services for no pay. I don't buy it. Ancient warlords should be Klingons, not Ferengi.

My other nitpick about this episode is that Gabrielle's "comedic" subplot wherein she causes herself and the princess's betrothed to be captured in a poorly-thought-out scheme to get the king to listen to the boyfriend's love story is both contrived and unnecessary. Even if it had been required for the plot that they get captured (it's not), they could easily have been doing something that didn't make Gabrielle look like a fool. She makes up for it by being tender and wise at Marcus's funeral, but still. There's a fine line between the kind of comedy that arises from Gabby's plucky naivite and mild hubris, and that which ridicules her as a born-yesterday buffoon.

Highlights: Marcus is a pleasantly complex character, similar to Draco as presented in episode 1, but lacking the edge of buffoonishness that threatened Draco's character (by which I mean he is not wearing a goofy headdress). Marcus is so gentle in his mannerisms, while coming off as clever and competent as a bad guy, that you can't help but like him.

I like that, though he comes off at first as someone ripe for Xena to win over to the side of good, it turns out not to be that easy. His doubts about evil are tempered by cynicism about good (when he tells Xena about an unsuccessful attempt to start fresh, he makes clear that the point of the story is that such attempts are useless and doomed to fail). I like that, even having danced far enough arount the edges of the confession that he should just take Xena's goodness as fact, he's still so wilfully in denial about it that he beats up a guy for giving him hard evidence. I like that, directly from the side of the man he beat, he goes to Xena and smoothly tricks her into a confession by pretending he wants to demo a particularly deadly arrow on the flimsy box Xena is hovering around protectively. While Xena sputters like an amateur, Marcus asks easily, "You afraid I'm going to hit the princess?" I like that the moment which follows, in which Xena tenderly urges Marcus to join her, and Marcus wibbles "I'm not that strong," could so easily have led to a simple conversion--but it doesn't: Marcus hardens and calls the guards. I don't really like that when Marcus has a knife to the princess's throat and Xena points out that she's innocent, Marcus just agreeably lowers the knife with a "You're right," but the general pattern of actions--to go almost immediately from threatening the girl to sacrificing himself to save her--is pretty cool and fits with the delightfully contradictory nature of his character. And I love that when Xena comes to his side and says he didn't have to do it--"I could have saved her!"--Marcus says, "I know."

Music Update: Badass chorals kick in as Xena is giving her You Too Could Turn Good! speech ("You do one thing, just one thing, for no other reason than that you know it's right"), making it seem that much more significant; and at Marcus's pyre we get the first rendition of that "Aweii, aweiiii" funeral song which I once embarrassed myself by singing into a tape recorder which my friend then discovered. It's been ten years and I still can't hear it without wincing, although it is a lovely song.

1x6 The Reckoning

Xena is arrested after she is caught red-handed at a murder scene (actually, she was trying to give the victims medical help, but trying telling that to the angry mob). While Gabrielle tries to put together a defense, Ares appears to Xena in a series of visions, promising to ensure her survival--nay, leadership--if she will only come back to his fold. (Which is pleasantly allegorical since, if she wanted to return to her warlike ways, she could just start massacring innocents and she would make it out of this fine.) Xena finally seems to snap and strikes a deal with Ares, the terms of which are not made entirely clear, but which involves Ares promising to bring heroic fighters of ages past back from the dead to be in her army. Xena is declared guilty, calls upon Ares, and demands to have the men she allegedly killed brought back to life. I am pretty sure Ares is justifying in violating the terms of the deal especially since she is--wasn't turning back to evil part of it, somewhere?--but he is so impressed by her moxie that he complies.

Question: It's made clear that this is the first time Xena is seeing Ares (though he's been keeping track of her accomplishments as Evil Xena); is this later contradicted?

Xena, Medicine Woman: Xena uses a sword as a splint.

Highlights: Jail! Chains! The threat of gory public execution only just averted by a fast-talking Gabrielle (again)! Beatings! We all know how I like prison beatings. A classic whipping turns into a stylish, poignant scene which gets at the heart of the episode when Ares appears privately to Xena while she is being helplessly beaten, speechifying, over footage of Evil Xena fighting and pillaging, about how free and powerful she once was and could be again. Xena finally screams, breaks her chains, and goes on a rampage, knocking out all the guards. Gabrielle comes in and Xena totally slams her across the face before stopping short. "Gabrielle?" Awesome (though a little of this goes a long way; interesting how in this context I think Xena hitting Gabrielle is shocking and [narratively] great but we get wayyyy too much of it later on).

Further Question: When, after this scene, Xena almost immediately starts tending to the guards' wounds, wouldn't that hurt her "I wasn't hurting them, I was just healing them" case? I mean she's just proved she can easily do both in the same ten-minute span.

Slash Watch: This ep's not really overtly lesbian, more like coincidentally friendshippy and sexy at the same time. (Aren't a lot of lesbian pornos set in jail?) Early in the episode, Xena rides up and finds Gabrielle sitting by a spring in her underdress, encouraging Xena to come and bathe with her. Xena, who is in a bit of a hurry what with all the running from the mob, pulls Gabby onto the horse with her and they ride off double. Later, Gabrielle returns the underwear-seeing favor by making several visits to a chained-up armorless Xena. Then at the end, Xena tells Gabrielle that her coming back after Xena hit her "really meant a lot". Gabrielle says, "I trust you." Okay, so the abusive relationship undertones are slight unnerving.

Famous Firsts: I think at one point Gabrielle refers to the horse as "Argo," although most of the time they still call it "the horse."

Further further question: For the ending, why did they feel the need to go the "Ares sounding exactly like Dr. Claw voice-overing 'Until next time, Xena--until next time'" route?

1x7 The Titans

After Xena snaps at Gabrielle for screwing up, Gabby wanders off and finds herself the midst of some people reading a chant in a cave. Ever the nerd, she points out they're reading it wrong shows off the correct way without questioning why they are doing it. When she has read it with the proper emphasis, some titans awake! They call her their virgin goddess and pledge to do her bidding. She has fun ordering them to help out the villagers, until the surliest titan proves she's not a goddess. The titans have some boring interpersonal drama of their own for awhile. Meanwhile, Xena tells Gabby to back off and let her handle this, so Gabby sneaks off to try to show Xena she can fix things on her own, whereupon she is of course captured. In the end Xena arrives and the two of them team up--Xena's fighting and acrobatics, and Gabrielle's scroll-chanting skills--to re-imprison the titans.

Slash Watch: Well, the entire emotional arc is about Gabrielle seeking Xena's good opinion. Also, a plot point hinges on Gabrielle's virginity, and whether she may or may not have lost it with a weedy chant-enthused Boy of the Week (she didn't), a subject in which Xena takes a slightly too pointed non-interest.

1x8 Prometheus

Prometheus has been chained, which means humans are no longer able to heal themselves, and also, eventually, fire stops working. Clearly this is unacceptable. Xena goes to an oracle and, after she proves her willingness to sacrifice through flagrant disregard for her own well-being, she is told she needs to get the Sword of Hephaestus to break the chains. One brief and relatively unproblematic dungeon later she obtains it and when she comes out, Hercules is there! That was unexpected. They scuffle.

Herc's pal Iolaus doesn't understand why he is competing with Xena to be the one to break the chains instead of working with her, until it becomes clear that the swordbearer dies when he strikes something: "It's a suicide mission," as Gabrielle notes. Ahh, the battle of the honorable death-welcomers.

The four heroes do join forces, though, for the time being, until midway through the next dungeon, when it comes out that Iolaus has been bravely hiding an unhealing injury. Gabrielle stays behind to tend to him while Xena and Hercules go on to a green screen to have some CGI adventures straight out of the Xena & Hercules Animated Adventure Hour. Bouncing the sword off a rock with ridiculous physics gets the job done without killing anyone, hoorah.

Highlights: In the last quarter, an episode which started out as a meandering, rushed-feeling crossover event suddenly turns into one touching little relationship moment after another. After each sidekick (b)romantically bids farewell to his or her hero (see below), Xena goes up to Iolaus and clasps hands with him briefly. It's such a little thing, but so nice, especially since they apparently have a tempestuous history. (I don't remember what actually happened on Hercules--it's been awhile--but my understanding from this episode's verbal recaps is that Iolaus fell in love with Xena, was betrayed by her, hated her, and semi-got over it when Hercules turned her.) Then Xena and Hercules share a nice moment where Xena thanks Hercules: "You showed me how to live." (And how to suit up?) Meanwhile Gabrielle holds sweat-sheened dying Iolaus in her lap and strokes his hair while he tells her how pure of heart she is and she tells him the story, the origin of love, hey, the origin of love. It's like a big crossover foursome love song. With hurt/comfort!

Question: If everyone loves each other so damn much, why do they part ways at the end? It isn't even addressed by so much as one line of blah blah I have to seek redemption on my own lipservice.

Xena, Medicine Woman: Xena performs an emergency tracheotomy.

Lowlights: Introduction of Felafel, the irritating salesman. Xena carried off by pterodactyl.

Slash Watch: On the one hand, you have a Gabby/Iolaus kiss (which for me sort of ruins the beautiful tenderness of their h/c scene) and no less than three Xena/Hercules kisses (although one is a distraction so Xena can make a play for the sword and another is somewhat tempered by the fact that Hercules is unconscious because Xena has knocked him out). On the other, gayer hand, there is:

Iolaus! I'd forgotten how much I love Iolaus. He's sweet, capable, witty, loyal, and thankfully lacks the kind of one-word hook that allows characters to become one-dimensionalized; and Michael Hurst, who plays him, is handsomely dimpled in his strange oldness.

Famous Firsts: I'm pretty sure Iolaus is the first to call Gabrielle "Gabby."

1x9 Death in Chains

Sysiphus tries to escape death by imprisoning Celeste, Hades' sister, who apparently functions as the Grim Reaper, so Hades hires Xena to rescue her. Xena and Gabrielle see the need for death when they come upon some sick and injured people on the road, lingering in suffering. A nice boy is tending to them and telling stories, which impresses Gabrielle. Since he grew up in Sysiphus's castle, he gives Xena some tips for getting in, and Xena sends him and Gabrielle to a hospital to tend to more sick.

While there, the Nice Boy winces in pain--second episode in a row someone's had to hide an injury that's supernaturally not progressing as normal because someone's in chains who shouldn't be!--and Gabrielle learns from a not-dying old woman that if Xena touches Celeste, she will die instantly, so she decides to stike out and warn Xena. Nice Boy insists on going with her, anvilling that he's not afraid of death.

At the castle, Xena's all, the hell? You came all the way here to tell me that? I know that! Xena and Nice Boy tag-team speechify at Sysiphus until he agrees to let Celeste go, and she rounds up the should-be-dead, including Nice Boy. Gabrielle tries to argue for his life, but he's in pain and wants to go. That takes care of that Boy of the Week!

Gabrielle's Amazing Shrinking Dream Coat: Gabby has abandoned her starting shirt, a 3/4 sleeve peasant top, in favor of a midriff-bearing cap sleeve wraparound. She's also wearing a necklace she gets from the Amazons next week, so I guess these were aired out of order. (Next week she'll be back to her old outfit, at least to begin with.)

Slash Watch: Gabrielle needs somebody to love this week, and her boy romance plot is preceded by some heavy hint-dropping to Xena.

1x10 Hooves and Harlots

Xena and Gabrielle are walking in the forest when they are accosted by Amazons. They beg permission to travel through the Amazons' territory. The Amazons take them to see their queen; on the way, one Amazon, Terreis, tells Gabrielle some feminist theories which Gabrielle really gets into. They are ambushed! Terreis is arrowed and Gabrielle throws herself over her body to prevent further damage. But it's too late. With her dying breath, Terreis says, "What you did? Only an Amazon would do for another Amazon." And yet none of them did. She urges Gabrielle to accept her right of caste. Gabrielle agrees to appease her without knowing what it is.

When they get to the Amazon encampment, a Centaur is quickly captured and held for Terreis's murder. He is to be executed the next day. Xena doesn't think he did it and she goes to investigate. Meanwhile, Queen Melosa explains that Terreis conferred all her possessions and status to Gabrielle, and that in fact Terreis was Melosa's sister, so now Gabrielle is an Amazon princess! (I always wondered why that was...) Terreis's friend--her name is Eponin according to this episode's credits but it later gets amended to "Ephiny" so I'll go with that--grudgingly instructs Gabrielle in princess matters, that is to say, fighting, with Gabrielle's chosen weapon, a fighting staff.

Ephiny sneaks out to do her own investigation of the murder and, though she initially distrusted Xena, they join forces when they both suspect a local warlord of engineering an Amazon/Centaur war for his own profit. While they gather evidence, Melosa awards Gabrielle the sword of Terreis, and tells her she must avenge Terreis's death by executing the Centaur. Gabrielle doesn't want to, and she holds the point of the sword at his neck for a long while, but interestingly, she doesn't refuse; what stops the execution is the return of Ephiny and a very dismayed Xena.

Melosa still wants to kill the Centaur, so Xena issues Melosa "the challenge." Melosa laughs and says only a royal Amazon can challenge; Gabrielle's all, what? Okay, uh, I demand the challenge. It turns out it is a fight to the death for queenship, but the good news is that Gabrielle can choose a champion; she chooses Xena, of course. Xena and Melosa fight, and Xena does the hero thing of winning but not killing her opponent. So now she is the Amazon queen... except shouldn't Gabrielle... I don't know. Xena forms an alliance with the Centaurs and together, the Centaurs and Amazons triumph over the warmakers. Xena stands Jiminy Cricket over Melosa's shoulder and prevents her from killing the warlord without a trial. Xena and Gabrielle leave, and I guess Melosa is back in charge, although it's never really clear how that worked out.

Famous Firsts: Gabrielle participates in battle with her new fighting staff.

Xena, Medicine Woman: Xena uses pressure points as anaesthetic and roots around in someone's open wound.

Slash Watch:

1x11 The Black Wolf

A town ruled by an iron-fisted lord has a team of secret heroes led by the mysterious Black Wolf. After an "I am Spartacus!" situation, all of the Black Wolf's followers are imprisoned, but the identity of the BW is still unknown. One of the followers, Flora, is an old playmate of Xena's, and Xena promises her mother she will get her out. Xena poses as a mercenary and arranges to have herself captured, promising to bring the warlord the real Black Wolf. Once she gets into the jail, Flora doesn't want to leave without the rest of her team. There's various escape attempts and schemes, and Xena eventually discovers and hands over the real Black Wolf--Flora--only to help rescue her at the last moment. I am not sure why it had to be that complicated.

Highlights: Xena does her war-cry underwater. Salmoneus, the comic relief merchant from Hercules is in the episode, which itself is not a highlight, but I do like it when Xena says of Gabrielle, "She's my friend," and Salmoneus--who apparently met Xena in an episode of Hercules--says, "YOU have a FRIEND?"

Slash Watch:

Famous Firsts: Xena's catchphrase.

FLORA: Xena taught me how to swing a sword, and embroider linen for my wedding chest.
GUY: You... embroider?
XENA (staring at Flora flirtily): I have many skills.

Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

Helen of Troy, who apparently knows Xena of old (doesn't everyone), sends for her to come and help her end the Trojan War by just going to Menelaus as Paris doesn't seem to appreciate her anyway and she can't stand so many people dying for her supposed happiness. Which is an interesting set of motivations, but why it took ten years to get to this point, I'm not too clear on. Xena dissuades her from going, saying people who want to make war will regardless of the excuse. She tries in vain to bolster Trojan defenses and to convince them not to trust the horse. Meanwhile, Gabrielle is amazed to find that Perdicas, the wishy-washy pushover she was supposed to marry in Potedeia, has, since she was gone, become a respected Trojan warrior (for some reason). She gains new respect for him, and they kiss, but when at the end of the episode he offers her an out ("...and that's something neither of us wants! Right?"), she takes it ("Right!")

Highlights: The Gabrielle/Perdicas plot is pretty good. I like Perdicas's very telling line when Gabrielle tries to mother hen him away from taking too many battle risks: "You can't tell me what to do anymore!"

Lowlights: Xena: "Beware Greeks bearing gifts, Paris."

1x13 Athens Academy for the Performing Bards

Gabrielle competes for acceptance into the Athens Academy of the Performing Bards. (The writers must have had fun with this one; it seems to me this must be what a TV scriptwriting fellowship is like.) It's a clip show, sort of, in that all the stories Gabby tells are the plots of previous episodes (and, handily, those pesky Hercules episodes with all the Xena backstory), but most of the footage is new, and there is a cohesive plot. Gabrielle makes a friend whose father is a micromanaging stage dad, but she convinces him to be himself. And that man grows up to be Homer. It's so telegraphed that I'm saying it right now and I'm writing this fifteen minutes from the end of the episode. It's still going to be disappointing when it's confirmed, though. I will also say this: Gabrielle gains entry, but over the course of telling stories about Xena she realizes that she misses her friend and that living the adventures will make her a better bard than study.

Rants: I know we're supposed to assume that the voiceover narration we hear Gabrielle give is not the entirety of what she told the audience and that she's describing the action from previous episodes so vividly that they can see it in their minds as clearly as we see it on the screen, but I don't see how any of the narration they give us could possibly even be worked into a decent story. "But in the end, good won out"? C'mon now.

Also I think it's slightly sloppy that the stage dad refers to his son as "Orion" even though that's just a private name Gabrielle made up for him.

Highlights: Gabrielle's classmates are amusing. Euripedes is charmingly pretentious and pronounces his own name with a rolled "r" and a smug sense of satisfaction. "Stallone-us"'s stories are accompanied by old B-movie footage, some Clash of the Titans type film, as he narrates manically, "And he ripped his chain from the rock! And then he, and then he like ran through and knocked over a door! And out there there were all these guys fighting!" (I just wish he was also an actual ancient Greek. Surely they could have found a playwright or poet who glories in excessive action and violence. I love broad jokes about the narrative excesses of ancient Greek storytellers!) When Orion tells the story of Spartacus, scenes from the movie Spartacus are given the same loving treatment as past Xena episodes. (Including the "I'm Spartacus" scene, and only two episodes after they stole that device for the Black Wolf.)

Slash Watch: When Gabrielle contemplates leaving Xena to study barding, Xena's first question is how long she will be gone; when Gabrielle admits it's a five-year course of study, Xena tells her she's "family" (yay!) and "like a sister" (boo). (My reasoning here is that Xena is familializing her for romantic distance!...Yeah!) Gabrielle's final story for the competition is "the story of two friends. They met each other in the hardest of times. [Xena rescues Gabrielle from bandits.] They learned how to care for each other. [Gabrielle comforts Xena at her brother's tomb.] They became a great team. They had adventures! [Chariot race.] Some adventures ended better than others. [Xena and Gabrielle tumble out of the overturned chariot.] And together they learned life's mysteries. [Xena's lake metaphor.]" Aw. That's like, the worst told rendition of the best story in the world.

1x14 A Fistful of Dinars

Without any pesky character development we launch right into a quest for hidden treasure right out of Indiana Jones. Xena comes into possession of part of a treasure map and teams up with the other two map-owners--her suavely manipulative ex-fiance Petrocles and a homocidal maniac named Thucides--to prevent them from getting the prize they don't know is hidden among the treasure: ambrosia. While Gabrielle is creeped out by Thucides, Xena is more worried about Petrocles, who appears nice but screws you in the end, and who is warming up to Gabrielle. But when Thucides finds out about the ambrosia and forces a confrontation in the treasure grotto, threatening Gabrielle's life, Petrocles sacrficies himself to save her. Xena feels guilty about doubting him, and she and Gabrielle burn the ambrosia.

Slash Watch: Gabrielle and Petrocles bond over Xena:

GABRIELLE: I'm the wrong target. [BECAUSE I AM GAY.]
PETROCLES: I don't know. Some people consider me the king of sweet-talk.
GABRIELLE: Well, hand over your crown, because you have met your match. When I was five, I talked my parents into giving me a pony.
PETROCLES: When I was fifteen, I talked a warlord into giving me his army.
GABRIELLE: I once talked a cyclops out of his dinner. And I was the dinner.
PETROCLES: I talked Xena into marrying me.
GABRIELLE: (blinks and shrugs in the universal gesture of "Haven't quite managed that one yet...")

1x15 Warrior... Princess

Xena is summoned by a king to help save his daughter, Diana, from assassination attempts. She resists at first, but learns that helping the royal wedding come off will create an alliance that will end slavery in the kingdom. Oh, and Princess Diana is coincidentally identical to Xena. Season one and we're already mining the dramatic possibilities of coincidental identical doubles.

Xena poses as Princess Di to uncover the would-be assassin, while Diana goes to Gabrielle to get Xena lessons. Outside the castle walls, Diana luckily meets with nothing more menacing than a family of beggars, who inspire her to imrpove her kingdom's aid for the poor. Meanwhile Xena figures out (a) the identity of the traitor and (b) that Diana and the brother of her fiancee are in love, and she resolves both situations in a double fakeout that involves, annoyingly, temporarily pulling one over on the audience. I'm sort of over "it was all part of the plan" plots.

I am not sure what was up with Xena helping Diana to marry someone else. It's all very romantic, but doesn't slavery still prevail?

Slash Watch: Uhhh... I don't know. They have this conversation:

GABRIELLE (watching the wedding festivities): So romantic.
XENA: Very.
GABRIELLE: I hope someday I find someone who makes me smile like that.
XENA: I'm sure you will. Just don't be afraid to speak up when it happens.

Yeah, Gabby. Oh, and Gabrielle tells Xena she likes the way she looks dressed as Diana. That's it.

1x16 Mortal Beloved

This is the episode I always think of when I think of season 1, for some reason. I don't know why; it's not that good.

Marcus, the warrior ex whom Xena briefly converted to good before he died in 1x5 The Path Not Taken, appears to Xena to tell her there is chaos in the underworld. Some bad guys have stolen Hades's Helmet of Invisibility, without which he is a sad-sack quitter and feels he has no power. Bad guys are overrunning the Elysian Fields. Xena swims beneath the Alcyonian Lake to the Underworld to meet up with Marcus and check things out. The main baddie has taken the helmet and headed to the land of the living to wreak havoc, so Xena strikes a deal with Hades whereby Marcus gets 48 hours of life in order to help her get it back. After some heartfelt conversations which would be much more convincing and affecting if we had any reason to believe Xena had given Marcus another thought since his death, they succeed, and Xena convinces Hades to pass a new judgment on Marcus upon his second death, so that he can go to the Elysian Fields.

Highlights: This is either a highlight or a lowlight. I'm not sure how to feel about it. Michael Hurst in heavy makeup plays a wisecracking Charon.

Lowlights: Awful CGI harpies.

Slash Watch: It's a pretty heterosexual episode, salvaged somewhat by the fact that the heterosexuality is totally unbelievable (Xena pays a lot more lip service to her love for Marcus than any of her deeds or actions in any other episode, including the other one with him in it, support).

1x17 A Royal Couple of Thieves

Xena recruits Autolycus, the "King of Thieves" introduced on Hercules, to help her steal back a magic box which has great cultural significance to a village which helped her once when she was wounded. It also happens to contain a great weapon, so the current possessor of the box is inviting all these warlords to come and bid on it. Xena gets Autolycus to pose as a famous assassin, Sintares, and goes with him as his assistant, which Autolycus amends to "concubine." Together they enjoy adventuresome hijinks and sexual tension (almost 100% on Autolycus's side) until the real Sintares arrives with Gabrielle as a prisoner. Autolycus takes off, but, of course, returns just in time to help out in the final fight, which ends with the bad guys getting zapped with their own weapon Indiana Jones style. They return to the village with the box, and Autolycus accepts payment, but then secretly leaves it behind.

Autolycus! My love of Autolycus is boundless and pure. It's not just that he's Bruce Campbell (whom I actually saw first in Xena and Hercules; I only saw the Evil Dead movies once I was already sufficiently obsessed to be looking up everything these guys had done), but that Autolycus such an unadulterated archetype of the cocky antihero-with-heart-of-gold. He's just a joy to watch.

He's a thief, so he's not bad enough that liking him makes you morally uncomfortable (besides, he has more pet-the-dog moments than a toy poodle breeder), but he's got a bit of an edge and is frequently at odds with the goody-two-shoes heroes. He's clever and capable enough to be viable match for them; he pulls neat tricks which allow him to look cool and to slip away in the end; but he's also a bit of a spaz, which is endearing, and which allows Xena or Hercules to triumph when needed and keep him from stealing the show (too much). He's so confident that he's game for anything, making any situation wackier (of his ego he boasts, "Nothing is as big as mine"). He spends a lot of time ogling and putting the moves on Xena, and it's far more charming than it should be, perhaps because he is (as Gabrielle grudgingly notes) good-looking, and because he clearly never really expects it to work (I don't think he'd know what to do if it did; his adolescently innocent, suave yet never-winning kind of sexuality was about all I could handle in my Xena heyday of age 11). Mainly he's just a lot of fun; his thefts are these great, acrobatic capers and his dialogue is usually pretty sharp and always hilariously delivered.

Highlights: Autolycus whines when Xena drags him into a tavern with his hands bound, and asks for her to at least cover them so everyone else can't see his embarrassment. It's a totally in-character request, so it's not predictable when, moments later, he knocks fruit off the table and, while Xena is bending to pick it up, casually takes one hand from under the cloth and takes a sip of wine while Gabrielle gapes. (The fact that his suspicious fruit-dropping was done only so he could take a drink makes it all the better.) Moments later he shows off his unbound hands and stands to leave, only to fall because Xena bound his ankles while she was under the table.

Gabrielle only knows two things about Sintares: he's always spouting philosophical-sounding comments and he can kill a man with any object. Autolycus has the bravado to pull it off with goofy aplomb. His dialogue is meandering and delightful: "Of course, the trick in killing someone with an apricot is really in the wrist. The only drawback is it kills instantly, so there's no time to gather information. So for situations like that, well, I use the muffin." "You see, a woman's chastity is like a new hat. A beatiful thing that..." (Xena enters, looking daggers) "...'s going to kill me."

Even though there's no part of this I didn't see coming, I'll mention the time Autolycus says "One bed," then graciously offers to flip Xena for it, so Xena flips him. And steals his coin.

Xena performs a "dance of the two veils."

Lowlights: The box honestly turns out to be the ark of the covenant.

1x18 The Prodigal

After freezing in battle, Gabrielle decides she's a liability to Xena and heads home to Potedeia to do some thinking. There, she finds that the village under threat from Seven Samurai-type bandits, and the warrior they have hired to protect them, Meleager, is a washed-up drunk. Gabby gains some sympathy for him when he confides that he drinks because he's lost his nerve. Meanwhile, Gabby's sister Lilla resents her for leaving.

When Meleager is captured, Gabby uses her Xena-taught skills to track him, but ends up getting caught. She and Meleager team up to escape, return to the village, and prepare the townspeople for the attack. Lilla realizes how competent Gabrielle has become, and understands why she chooses to stay with Xena.

The day of the attack, Meleager disappears, but Lilla gives a rousing speech and the villagers decide to hold their ground anyway with a series of Home Alone-style traps. After some success, the tide of battle turns, but just in the nick of time, Meleager returns. The bandits are defeated and Gabrielle works things out with Lilla and returns to Xena with new confidence.

Highlights: Meleager and Gabby's teaching-the-villagers-to-fight sequence--I'm a sucker for a training montage. And when you finally see Xena at the end, it is pure love.

Slash Watch: Slash content is rather low as the episode focuses on Gabrielle alone, but she does rhapsodize about Xena's awesomeness. More poignant is the snatch we see of Xena's reaction to Gabrielle's decision to leave ("You're...coming back, right?") and talk things out with her sister ("What, you can't talk to me?"). As Gabby walks away, Xena briefly semi-raises a hand in a pathetic farewell wave.

Also the episode features a The Sentinel-style about-to-be-run-over pulldown.

1x19 Altared States

PLOT

Slash Watch:

1x20 Ties That Bind

 In his first appearance, Ares, the God of War, taunts a warlord, telling him Xena is coming. She is indeed on his trail, but not, as Ares suggests, to take over his army and lead it for herself: she just wants him to stop, like, enslaving girls and stuff.

Whilst freeing the slave girls, Xena and Gabrielle are helped by a man who claims to be Xena's father. Xena doesn't want to believe the man, Atrius, at first (Abandonment Issues), but she begins to trust him a little after he drops details about the past and after she verifies the truth of an apparent lie he told vis a vis the stolenness of his horse. There's also an incident where Gabrielle thinks she sees him murder a surrendering man in cold blood, but Atrius insists that the man had a concealed dagger, and a search of the body reveals it to be so. So he looks pretty trustworthy.

Gabrielle brings the slave girls back home while Xena and Atrius track the warlord. Xena tells Atrius she has a shameful past, but he doesn't mind: "Never regret the past; it allowed you to become the great woman you are today." He also hints that he has some regrets, and that he's trying to atone for wrongs done to the villagers. Xena and Atrius find out that the army is heading for the village, so they alter course. The villagers immediately mistrust Atrius, saying he is a member of the warlord's army who pretended to be an ally of the town, and then betrayed them. Xena stands up for him, saying that he, like her, is reformed. Atrius gives himself up to captivity, and Xena makes the village leader to agree to let him go if she defeats the evil army.

Xena quickly defeats the warlord in combat and wins the allegiance of his followers. When they arrive at the village, they find Atrius strung up in a stocks/crucifixion type scenario. Xena rides her army into town and cuts him down; he dies in her arms, and Xena instructs her army to "KILL 'EM ALL!"

Gabrielle fights her way out of the village-sacking chaos and faces down Xena with her staff. She tries to speechify Xena into sense, but Xena thrusts her aside. Gabrielle gets up and hits Xena as hard as she can, knocking her down; Xena gets up, dazed. "Gabrielle?" At this moment, Atrius rises from the dead, energetically yelling at Xena to fight for him. Xena correctly identifies Atrius as Ares. Ares tries to get Xena to join him, hinting that he really is Xena's father, but Xena doesn't believe him. Ares gets angry and beats the crap out of Xena. She tells him to kill her: "I'd rather be dead than go back to you." Ares telekinesises a sword at her, but stops it just before it hits, and then disappears, annoyed.

Highlights: I love Xena interacting with evil warlords in season one; she's so darkly joyful.

Slash Watch:

1x21 The Greater Good

A Mysterious Figure!! (aficionados will recognize Callisto's armor) shoots Xena with a poison dart, causing her to gradually lose her strength. Although Xena immediately knows from an experimental lick that the poison is fatal (she has many skills) she does not let on, because she is in the middle of protecting a town from a warlord (or something? the town/warlord politics are pretty boring. Also, the annoying merchant from Hercules, Salmoneus, is involved.) She needs to appear to be at her best. She does not even tell Gabrielle until she is quite weak, prompting some gentle, sorrowful chiding.

The episode takes a turn for the goofy when Xena convinces Gabrielle to dress up as her in order to fool the warlord into thinking she is still up and about. With some surprising flashes of quality, we continually turn on a dime back and forth: from Gabby's silly speechifying and chakram slapstick to her sudden realization that Xena is actually grooming her to take over the warrior princess gig for good. When Gabrielle tearfully asks if Xena is going to die, Xena avoids the issue.

She is adamant, however, that they not leave and seek medical help elsewhere: the good of the town is more important than her life. Oh, Xena and her broody guilt-ridden death wish. Gabrielle promises to take Xena's body back to Amphipolis to lie with her brother's. When she returns from her next Xena-imitating gig, Xena is dead. Gabrielle allows herself a moment to weep and kiss the corpse, and then brusquely tells Salmoneus that they need to carry on--for the Greater Good.

Gabrielle manages to fill Xena's shoes for awhile but just when things go south, of course, the real Xena turns up. She was just faking! She went into a deathlike state to clear the poison. Or something. She didn't tell Gabrielle her plan because... she didn't know if it would work and she didn't want Gabrielle to count on her/mourn her twice? I think I'm conjecturing here, because it's silly that she didn't tell Gabby her plan. Also, mean. When they finish succeeding, Xena thanks Gabrielle for giving her peace of mind: if and when she does kick it, she knows Gabby can take care of her wishes. I'm sure Gabrielle is thrilled.

Slash Watch: The whole episode. There's not much in the hee-hee-double-entendre category, but we clearly see the depth of their relationship, their immense love and respect for each other. And Gabrielle officially becomes Xena's next-of-kin, will-executor, power-of-attorney-if-such-a-thing-existed-in-ancient-Greece type person.

1x22 Callisto

Xena and Gabrielle are hanging out in a tavern when they run across a Man In Distress, like you do. He just got back to his town to find everyone wiped out, including his family. He swears vengeance. When Xena offers to help stop the culprit and introduces herself, he draws his sword: it was Xena who killed his family! Unable to convince him he is mistaken, she ends up leaving him tied to a tree.

Xena comes to a flaming town in mid-pillage. She throws her chakram and it is caught! By someone else! It's the blonde female warrior who blowdarted Xena last episode. Her real name is Callisto. She banters evilly with Xena a bit, already proving herself an admirable and entertaining nemesis. Xena insists that she never slaughtered women and children, and Callisto smirks, "You have now." When asked who she is and why she is doing this, in Xena's name no less, Callisto simply says, "Remember Cirra?"

Around the campfire, Xena explains to Gabrielle that Cirra was a clusterfuck. (I am paraphrasing.) Xena's army was looting, pillaging, capturing or killing the men, as per usual. Somehow a fire started and everything raged out of control. Chaos in the town square. Panic at the disco. From the wreckage, Callisto rose, becoming both a copycat and and a vengeance-seeker.

Callisto plans to frame Xena for the murder of an oracle, but Xena manages to stop her. A horse chase follows. Xena captures Callisto. Gabrielle reports that the Man in Distress from before is organizing a lynch mob in town. Callisto says cheerily, "How will you feel to watch your creation be executed?" Xena's clearly troubled and asks, "What would you do if I let you go?" Callisto laughs that she would dedicate her life to killing everything Xena loves. Xena reluctantly brings her into town, protecting her from the angry citizens, and locks her in jail to await what will undoubtedly be a super fair trial.

"Oh, this is perfect," says Callisto when a townsperson throws a lit torch into the inexplicably hay-filled cell. "Don't worry, Xena, I won't scream like my sister." Xena opens the cell, but Callisto doesn't come out, and when Xena goes in to haul her out, Callisto beans her with the handcuffs she's already escaped from and runs out. She gallops off on her horse, yanking Gabrielle up as she rides by.

Our final fight is in this elaborate arena in an alley full of ladders with Gabrielle dangling from a flaming rope. Of course it is. Using cartoon physics, Xena makes a ladder seesaw to catch and balance Gabrielle's weight while catapulting Callisto onto the flaming rope. "Let it burn," Callisto orders her man who tries to bring her down. But when the rope burns through and drops, Xena grabs it, saving her. Callisto screams in anguish.

"I'm glad you saved her," Gabrielle tells Xena as they walk by a cuffed Callisto, later. "That's what they think," Callisto says to herself, unnervingly smiley again.

Callisto Quotes:

Highlights:

Slash Watch:

1x23 Death Mask

Xena and Gabrielle are ambushed on the road by bandits in masks which Xena recognizes as the signature of the Cortes's army. Cortes, she tells Gabby, is the warlord who originally sacked her village, starting her on the path of (at first defensive) warrior princessing. They head into the village to fight the army, and Gabby kicks a surprising amount of ass.

Back on the road, they run into one of the gang, who turns out to be... Xena's brother!! This is very surprising for the audience both because Xena's brother is canonically dead (but you see this isn't Lyceus, the murdered one that she loved, but Taurus, a new one she has never mentioned) and because Taurus doesn't look like Xena at all but instead vaguely resembles a scrawny Hercules. Taurus explains he has just joined the gang to get close to Cortes to kill him. (Sure.) Xena doesn't want Taurus to start murdering people. I feel like if he's joined a warlord gang, he probably already has. Also, I mean, I know this not just an issue for this episode, but is murder really that big a deal in Ancient Greece? Especially vengeance murder. I mean isn't that considered good? Anyway there's some friction because Taurus has never forgiven Xena for turning the Amphipolan villagers into hardened warriors (wait, isn't he turning himself into a hardened warrior?), and he thinks she's doing the same thing to Gabrielle now, but they agree to work together to bring Cortes to "legal justice."

Taurus sneaks Xena into the encampment to poke around and she finds a seal from the king. Intending to tell the king there's a spy in his midst, they proceed to the nearest ridiculous-looking squat castle decorated entirely in primary colors and guards in comically giant shoulder pads. The king presents himself: it's Cortes! He's a warlord and the king! It's... a tax scheme? Cortes, I have to interject here, pulls exaggerated faces and sweeps around in his kimono in a manner not un-reminiscent of the guy who directed "Springtime for Hitler." He opens a trapdoor beneath their feet but Xena escapes by shooting out as if propelled by a jetpack, and then fighting back guards using wet towels. I can't really explain why the acting, directing, and special effects for this episode seem to be under the impression that it's a slapstick comedy. The script seems to think it's a melodrama, as evidenced by the following scene of Taurus stating how he was wrong about Gabrielle and "she's brave because she is," and he's such a coward (slams tree). This episode perplexes me.

Taurus goes off on his own to try to get Cortes and Xena goes after him, walking knowingly into a trap. The captured heroes are brought to the palace where Xena uses Cortes's messenger doves to call forth the bandit army. The palace guards and the bandits are confused and angered when Cortes gives orders to both of them and the head guard kills the head bandit. Xena offers Cortes to Taurus but at the last moment he inevitably decides not to deliver the killing blow. He plans to return home to Mom.

Lowlights: Taurus's mullet.

Slash Watch: Gabrielle bickers with Xena and then tells Taurus, "I'm sorry you had to witness that."

1x24 Is There A Doctor In the House?

As Xena and Gabrielle creep through a woodsy pass where a war is raging, they happen upon Ephiny, the ex-Amazon, lying pregnant and injured in the road. As they try to fix her up, Gabrielle mentions offhand that Xena should try to stop the war, so she does.

Xena captures one of the generals and brings him with her to the other side's makeshift hospital in a temple, where she proceeds to introduce the temple healers, including one Hippocrates, to every medical procedure ever, including, but not limited to, tracheotomies, amputation, and Cesarian section. Meanwhile Gabrielle inadvertently wins the affection of a young acolyte as she helps to nurse the soldiers with her kind words and distracting stories. She tells the opposing general a terrible pointless fable about a guy who turns into a deer. She's injured when she runs out to try to help an injured soldier's child. Xena, cool and collected while treating everyone else, is visibly panicked when Gabrielle is brought in, and in one of the slashiest scene in the series, refuses to let Gabrielle die, pounding on her chest and screaming "Don't you leave me!"

Anyway Gabrielle lives, Ephiny's creepy baby centaur is born, they're successful at convincing the general to try to stop the war (somehow), and two weeks later all of the soldiers die of infection from cross-contaminated boob knives (I can only assume).

Slash Watch: