As far as Xena-lite episodes go, this one isn’t too bad at all. Parts of it are very entertaining.
Despite her condition, Xena still looks pretty intimidating. She can still do her flips. She makes the one bad guy come up to meet her, rather than bending over. Then she grabs him by the ear. You can hear one of the bad guys whine as they retreat, “she got me right in the jewels.” Xena grabs a torch before she enters Aphrodite’s shelter. It wasn’t THAT dark in there. Gabs: Who’da believed it? Aphrodite succoring to the ill.
>From the beginning: A group of thugs led by the captain of a warlord named
Therron, is sacking the Temple of Aphrodite. I am no prude, but we hear such lines as the following:
We are going to “penetrate the inner sanctum” of Aphrodite.
The reference of the statue’s breasts as a “real treasure chest.”
Xena and Gabby arrive, much as they do when the Fates’ temple was being
attacked in Remember Nothing. The girls win, of course, with Gabby even
using a sword and mace. Again, such writing…”she got me in the jewels!” Ahhh…the days of truly meaningful and tasteful dialogue. Xena tells the captain to tell his boss Therron to stop looking for her.
Aphrodite shows up…she seems never to be able to protect her own temples. She tells the girls that she is allowing a part of her temple to be used as a hospice. There is a young girl, Daphne, who is unconscious. This is like If The Shoe Fits where we have a meddling Aph. with a young girl who cannot accept the death of her mother. Also is one of the dumbest bunch of “warriors” we have ever seen.
Aph says the girl has lost her will to live. The dad stops in every day to see her, but nothing works. Xena, in a rare giving mood to a stranger says she would gladly trade places with the girl and give her a second chance. Aph says “okay” and puts Xena’s
soul into the kid.
NOTE! If Xena was in the kid during the mind-body switch, the kid would BE
Xena and Xena would contain a bewildered kid, who upon waking up, would see
herself as a six foot tall pregnant woman in her thirties.
Waking up, Daphne (it is easier to say this instead of Daphne/Xena) looks into a mirror to see Xena in it. She looks startled. Note: Since it IS Xena, why is she surprised to see her own face in the mirror? Aph says she did not complete the switch. Ooops!
IMPORTANT: Xena’s spirit is in the same body as Daphne, which means Xena and
her child are now DEAD! We have seen that when the spirit leaves the body, as in Destiny and Ides, when that happens, you are DEAD! To save the day, Aph should have zipped up to Olympus and gotten the right spell and got back in time before the three-minute time allowance for brain-death. But NO. Xena and her child are dead for the WHOLE DAY.
Daddy arrives and sees his kid is awake. Daphne is unaware that Mommy is dead.
Therron: the warlord looks ridiculous wearing a tinfoil mask, lamenting the fact that Xena disfigured him ten years earlier. He wants revenge. He sends his thugs out to find her. The girl is a good actress and steals every scene.Gabby wants to protect Xena’s (dead) body as Aph tries to find the right spell. Gabby says it is two souls trapped in one body. See!?? Xena has no soul, which means she is DEAD! Gabby is told by Aph that Xena will stay in Daphne forever unless they can separate them before sunset.
Zeus’ twins, Castor and Pollux are mentioned. Gabby knows that Castor has a special oil to separate the twins (body-wise) in times of battle. Note: Why are these guys joined as Siamese twins voluntarily? There is no mention of this situation in any mythology I ever read.Note” “Castor Oil.” Yuck-yuck!….sigh….
Aph promises not to use her magic anymore for the day.
Daphne is now aware that Xena is inside her mind and says she and dad never really talked. Xena appears as a reflection in everything shiny, and constantly nags the kid to talk to daddy all the time. This got really irritating.
Cave: Aph doesn’t even help Gabby carry the litter Xena (her body, I guess) is on. Gabby drags it into a cave. Why move Xena from the safety of the temple? They pick Xena up, and by the look of Gabby’s shaking leg muscles, they were really lifting SOMEBODY. Aph refers to Xena as a ‘soulless body.” Any more proof needed that Xena and her kid are dead?
The bad guys appear, about a dozen armed and armored men working for Therron. Aph leaves at once to leave Gabby alone to protect Xena. She flips Gabby off as she leaves. Again, this is the excellence of fine writing. How did these inept clods find the right cave?
The thugs attack Gabby, who instead of using her sais, uses a PIECE OF ROPE, WHICH SHE LATER LIGHTS ON FIRE! She manages to overcome the laws of physics and knock heavily-armed and armored men off their feet, even putting them into impossible spins. The rope simply does not have the mass to do this. If you get hit with a piece of rope, you may get a nasty red welt, but who are we to ask for something remotely accurate? The thugs all run away in fear….GAWD!
Gabby tells Xena she wishes she saw the fight.
Gemini Club: Okay. This overdone segment interfered with the really heartfelt situation with Daphne and her dad trying to cope with Mom’s death. It should have been two separate things, where we could see something “amusing” and something serious. As it happens, the scenes are constantly switched as a good scene with Daphne occurs, wrecking it.I will write them separately.
The club: only twins allowed, regular and Siamese. The ticket-taker was Leo
in King Con. He will not let Gabby and Aph inside since they are not twins.
The girls come back each wearing a blonde braided wig and a Norse-type
helmet with horns. They speak with a Swedish accent, and “Leo” now sees how
beautiful they are and lets them in. They have a sheet draped between them,
giving the impression that they are Siamese twins.
Inside, they see two women wrestlers in the ring. I am no prude, but one
woman leaps upon her opponent’s shoulders, burying her crotch right in the
other’s face. This was bad enough, but it happens AGAIN, and there is no way
it was an accident by RenPics. It shows how low the show was at that point.
Gabby and Aph pose as Brun and Hilda. They want to oil wrestle Castor and
Pollux, with the aim to steal the oil. Note: Aph could have materialized at the club and grabbed the oil and gotten away in an instant.
Gabby says it’s hanging below his belt, meaning the oil. Aph says she knows,
referring to his manhood. Again, such writing! The men speak “Swedish” and
ask the girls to have sex with them later. The girls, not knowing what was
said, agree. One says he and his brother are “cunning linguists.” Oh Ho!
Such meaningful dialogue! I wonder WHAT they meant by THAT!
The boys say “let’s get slippery, ladies.” I wonder if that could be taken
more than one way. I guess RenPics meant it only ONE way. The girls are
knocked face-down on the floor as the boys climb aboard. Aph likes it, but
Gabby kicks them and they get off. The girls are then facing the ropes
getting slammed from behind. I know how that sounds, but what the heck ELSE
are we supposed to think? Gabby then does a great kick, knocking the twins
down as she grabs the oil. The sheet falls off them and the boys say they
aren’t twins. Aph says Gabby lied to her and slaps her, a stupid thing to do.
Gabby announces that oil wrestling is a shameless exploitation of the female
form. She says this in MISS AMPHIPOLIS, too, but in PLAY, is all for it.
Continuity, please.
Meanwhile, between the sickening scenes at the Gemini Club, we see the serious stuff, which was wrecked by the constant interruptions of the sex scenes.
In the town square, a horse and cart are loose. Daphne takes a pot lid as a Chakram, and cuts what looked like a clothesline. She then does a flip, lands on the horse, and stops it. She had given the Xena-yell. Therron hears the kid is Xena, per the observations of his captain. He says “get the girl” to prove it.
Daphne helps with the dishes! Unusual for a kid. She is yelled at by dad, who doesn’t want to tell her how mom died. She runs off, only to fall in the exact spot of mom’s grave. Wow! What a co-incidence! The bad guys try to catch her, but Xena says to let her have total control of the body, so in a few moves, Daphne stomps the bad guys. These are the worst “warriors” I ever saw.
Back home, Daphne likes being Xena. Xena, still preaching, says Daphne and dad must take care of each other. Therron calls Xena “the leather-clad bitch.” She took half his face and he’s going to get revenge. As Daphne cooks (!!!) she hears Xena tell of missing the idea of her own father.
The girl goes out fishing and suddenly remembers that her mom drowned trying to save Daphne when she fell into the water. Dad spots her and yells for her to stay away from the water.Dad gets captured after Daphne runs off.
Gabby and Aph find Daphne crying and Gabby must talk to “Xena.” There is a
trade…Xena must give herself up to save dad. Aph is told to bring Xena’s body to the castle.Note: Aph must use teleportation to do this, i.e. use magic.
Outside, Gabby gets Daphne in by saying her little girl is selling Junior
Amazon cookies, and Daphne puts the Pinch on him to tell where dad is.
In the dungeon, Daphne finds dad. She uses a bone from a skeleton to open
the locks. I read in Shana’s review it was a “skeleton key”, heh-heh.
Xena, still meddling at this crucial moment, tells the kid to talk to daddy.
As they escape, the portcullis comes down and Daphne is trapped inside while
dad and Gabby are on the other side being attacked. Daphne is grabbed by the
captain who takes her up to the wall. Daphne kicks him away and he falls
down the stairs, out of action. Small loss.
Now Therron comes at her, and he takes off the foolish mask. It looks like he had a bad sunburn, and not really the horror we expected. The real horror, except for the performance of the fine little actress, was “writing.”
Gabby gets dad to use a sais to fight. He says he never fought but only
gutted fish. He seems to do well with a mace tho.
Therron now fights Daphne with a sword, and the girl is pretty good with it, and she is really agile. She runs up a stairway with a grin, which I thought was cute. Therron tries choking her, and she kicks him away. He grabs a mace, charges her, and goes over the wall as she dodges him. We hear a thud. End of evil guy.
Aph had put the oil on Daphne’s body (how did she find her?) and now the real Xena and small Daphne appear in the doorway as Gabby and dad finish the thug-stomping.
Daphne and dad make up. He gave her daisies, and Xena and Gabby walk along the beach after they say their goodbyes. This is an overlong scene, burning up a lot of film, but what else does RenPics have at this point in the series? The girls talk of Xena’s baby and of teenage years. This scares The Warrior Princess, as well it should.
NOTE: If the girls merely tried to console and fix things with daddy in this ep, as they did in SHOE FITS, it would have been better. There were inept warlords in each ep, so I think with Lucy Lawless’ condition, a more talky show was in order, which has been done successfully before. Making Gabby a super-heroine with a piece of rope was laughable, and the sex-preoccupation of the show in the Gemini Club had no place here.
It showed the series had lost its way a long time ago.
This is another bomb. First, the episode has two subplots, if you could call
them that. Each ran a couple minutes, then switched to the other so rapidly,
one could not get the emotion to really get into the story.