Xena Preview

As you can probably guess from the title and the image on this post, I’ve decided to make Xena: Warrior Princess the subject of my next TV review every Wednesday. Xena’s been on my short-list for a while now, but I’d hesitated to go ahead with it because there are a lot of episodes (134) and that’s a pretty big commitment, especially if I didn’t like the show. Luckily, the show is brilliant and I absolutely love it, so I’m happy to finally review it. My history with Xena is short, but rather interesting.

I never watched Xena back when it first aired. I was 23 when Xena started in 1995 and it seems like the sort of show I’d be predisposed to like: sword & sorcery, Greek mythology, plenty of ass-kicking and scantily-clad women … what’s not to like? But I think I may have seen an episode or two of Hercules and wasn’t too impressed. (I also remember trying to get into Sinbad and just not connecting with it.) So, I probably assumed Xena was just “Hercules with women” and never bothered to check it out. Man, was I ever wrong. Xena is such a great show … the writing is profound and subtle at the same time, the actors are perfect in their roles, and the show just gets better on repeat viewings. As soon as I started watching, it instantly became my favourite show of all time.

As I said, I never saw Xena back in the Nineties and over the years, I never bothered to check it out. But earlier this year, the Sci-Fi Channel here in Canada started re-running Xena every weekday, two episodes per day. I had been thinking about reviewing Xena here on the blog, so I figured I could check it out on Sci-Fi to see if I liked it or not. If I did, I’d review it, if not I’d find something else after finishing Veronica Mars. Now, I’m the kind of guy who can’t watch anything from the middle; I have to watch from the beginning, or it doesn’t work for me. When I first noticed Sci-Fi was running Xena, it was already into the third season (or thereabouts), so I thought I’d wait until it finished and started over again from Episode 1. (And at ten episodes a week, it wouldn’t take all that long.)

But there was still that nagging doubt in my mind about “What if I don’t like the show?” So when the Sci-Fi run got to season 6, I decided to check out a few episodes, just to see if I liked the show before committing to watching the entire run. As I said above, I loved the show and was instantly hooked. Even without any context from the first 5+ seasons, I thought the show was great and knew I wanted to see every episode. So I just had to wait a couple weeks until the first season rolled around again and I could watch the whole series straight through. But then I did something unthinkable …

Yeah, I watched the series finale.

Now, I’m not the kind of guy who’s bothered by spoilers; I’ve probably known details about half the media I’ve consumed before ever watching it, and that doesn’t take away from my enjoyment. So, knowing what happens in the finale didn’t spoil the rest of the episodes for me, but it did kinda colour the way I saw them. Certain lines or situations (“Promise me that you’ll never die on me again.”) have extra meaning when you know what’s ultimately going to happen. But as I said, I ended up loving the show and most of the episodes even though I knew exactly what was going to happen to Xena and Gabrielle in the end.

So, that’s how I came to choose Xena as my next TV review. Just so fellow Xenites have an idea where I’m coming from, I’ll answer some of the usual questions up front. I’m definitely a Texter; I think Xena and Gabi do fall in love and have a romantic (and physical) relationship, and I’m 100% in favour of it. I’m not a fan of the Xena/Ares stuff, mostly because I don’t think it fits Xena’s character. I could see the evil Xena going for Ares, but the good Xena wouldn’t, and Ares himself basically admits (in Looking Death in the Eye) that he could never accept Xena’s good side. I am a Joxer fan (which isn’t necessarily the same as being a Joxer apologist) because I think he adds to the show—when he’s written right—and he gives some much needed comedy relief once Gabi becomes more than just the goofy sidekick. And speaking of Gabi … she’s my favourite character in the show. I know some people don’t like her (the word “annoying” comes up a lot … even Renee said that about the early appearances), but I think Xena (the show and the character) couldn’t exist without Gabi. Gabi is Xena’s heart, her soul, her moral compass, and Xena wouldn’t be nearly as compelling without her. That’s not to discount all the great supporting characters (hero and villain) like Joxer, Callisto, Ares, Eve, Cyrene, Amarice, Aphrodite, Ephiny, Autolycus, or Minya. But for me, it’s the relationship (however you define that word) between Xena and Gabi that sets the show apart from all its imitators; the Xena/Gabi pairing is the true star of the show and it just gets better as the series goes on. I’ll talk more about these things as I review individual episodes, but I just wanted to set out the framework here so you get an idea where I’m coming from.

As for the reviews themselves, I’ll be keeping to my usual schedule, one episode every Wednesday, consisting of a synopsis of the episode followed by my analysis. The synopses probably won’t be as deep as they have been in previous reviews because there are already so many great review sites with in-depth synopses (and even transcripts), so there’s no point in me just re-hashing stuff that’s already out there. I’ll be concentrating more on my own impressions of each episode, trying to get into why I love the show so much and maybe pointing out some interesting things I noticed in the episodes. Naturally, there will be spoilers like crazy, including spoilers for episodes that I haven’t gotten to yet. One of the great things about Xena is that the overall series ties together so well and the characters have such great arcs, which means I can’t analyze episodes in a vacuum … I have to take a gestalt approach and look at the entire series when analyzing each episode.

As always, comments are encouraged; I’d love to get a dialogue going in the comments section. I know Xena elicits strong feelings in fans but I’m always willing to listen to other points of view as long as everyone stays civil. We are all Xena fans here, after all … or soon will be. So I hope you’ll join me next week, when I’ll be doing my reviews of Sins of the Past … one of my favourite episodes. (Just in case anyone cares, an ordered list of my favourite episodes is below.)

I’ll go into more detail on my reasoning for why my list shakes out this way after I’ve finished all the reviews (and the list may change by then … it’s already evolved a number of times since I first started ranking the episodes months ago). And if you see one of your favourites way down on my list, bear in mind that I love Xena so much that even an average episode is a seven out of ten for me, so basically anything above number 115 or so on my list would be at least a 7/10.