Altared States – Director: Michael Levine/Writer: Chris Manheim
This one starts with a woman (Zora) telling her son Icus to run away because someone’s after him. At a pastoral lake we see Xena and Gabi’s clothes hanging from a bush and some suggestive dialogue makes it sound like they’re having some sexy fun, but it’s a big fake-out … they’re just fishing. Icus shows up at the lake, pursued by a bunch of zealots and Xena (still naked) kicks their asses using fish as a weapon. The zealot leader (Mael) shows up and warns Xena this is none of her business, but she refuses to turn Icus over so the beaten zealots leave. Icus tells Xena the zealots want to sacrifice him to their God and that Icus’s father is the one who ordered it.
Icus tells Xena and Gabi that their God has commanded Icus’s father (Anteus) to sacrifice him and that the zealot leader Mael is his brother,
dutifully carrying out his father’s orders. Xena is appalled and Icus says his father’s been sick lately and acting kinda weird. Xena hides Gabi and Icus in a cave and heads to Anteus’s place to talk some sense into him. Anteus is already questioning why his God would want him to sacrifice his son, but Mael says it’s not up to them to question divine will. Xena gives Anteus shit and says she’s keeping Icus safe until Anteus comes to his senses. Anteus doesn’t seem all that bloodthirsty, forbidding Mael from attacking Xena because their religion is supposed to be a peaceful one. Mael disobeys, sending his zealots after Xena, hoping to 
find Icus. In the cave, Gabi tries to keep Icus entertained and ends up eating all the nutbread his mother packed for him. Xena finds Zora at a Hestian shrine and Zora admits her faith has wavered since Icus’s death sentence. Zora tells Xena that their God commanded Anteus to make Icus his successor instead of Mael (who’s older) and that makes Xena wonder. Zora asks Xena to bring some more nutbread to Icus, mentioning that Mael has been making it specially for Anteus. Xena sniffs the nutbread and realizes it’s drugged, so she heads back to the cave, only to find Gabi sprawled on the ground.
Xena soon revives Gabi, but she’s whacked out on the drugged nutbread, seeing things that aren’t there and having wild mood swings, really freaking out when she realizes Icus is gone. Xena tells Gabi to stay in the
cave with her friends (the rocks) and work on their singing while she goes to look for Icus. Icus is at home, asking his mother to come help stoned-out Gabi. Mael’s men show up and grab Icus, leaving one of their number to keep Zora from following. After getting away from more of the zealots, Xena takes out the guard watching Zora, who urges her to go after Icus. Xena heads up a nearby mountain and manages to get Icus away from the zealots. Anteus is on top of the mountain praying when he hears thunder from a clear sky and the voice of God telling him to show his faith by sacrificing Icus.
Xena and Icus find Anteus passed out on the mountain and decide to take him home. Gabi finally gets tired of her rock chorus and leaves the cave. 
Xena tries to reason with Anteus, who says faith isn’t something you can have when it’s convenient and ignore when it’s not. Anteus obviously doesn’t want to sacrifice his son, but can’t abandon his faith in God. When they reach Anteus’s home, Xena tells them that Mael has been feeding Anteus drugged nutbread, which explains why he’s been feeling like crap lately. Gabi shows up, still whacked out of her gourd. When Mael arrives and threatens to kill Gabi, Icus surrenders to save her, and to go along with the will of their God. Xena and Gabi are tossed down the well and Icus willingly heads up the mountain with Anteus to be sacrificed.
Xena and Gabi (who’s now recovered from the drugged nutbread but can’t remember anything) climb out of the well, just barely making it before the
crossbeam breaks. Anteus prepares to sacrifice Icus but he’s having second thoughts until he hears God’s voice again. We see it’s really Mael, beating a sheet of metal to simulate thunder and using a megaphone to sound like God. Xena finds Mael across a rope bridge and he tosses the megaphone over a cliff after ordering Anteus to kill Icus. Xena sends Gabi after the megaphone and tries to cross the bridge. Mael admits he was pissed off that Icus was made heir to the leadership instead of him, but now nothing will stand in his way. Mael cuts the rope bridge, but Xena flips over him and he slips, ending up clinging to a vine over the canyon. Xena offers her hand, but Mael is too proud to take it 
and lets go, plummeting into the canyon. Gabi hasn’t retrieved the megaphone, so Xena runs up the mountain and throws her chakram just as Anteus is about to kill Icus. But a voice from the heavens commands Anteus to stop, saying his willingness to obey God is proof enough of his faith. As Xena and Gabi leave later, Xena gives Gabi shit for waiting so long to use the megaphone to call off Anteus. But Gabi says she never got the megaphone and assumed the voice she heard was another hallucination. Xena and Gabi realize that neither of them was the Voice that saved Icus and look up to the sky …
This isn’t one of my favourites (it’s #119 on my all-time list), but it’s not all
bad. The religious theme doesn’t really work for me, so all the scenes leading to the sacrifice and Anteus questioning his resolve are kinda boring for me. If you know anything about the Bible, it’s pretty obvious that Anteus is meant to be Abraham, Icus is Isaac, Mael is Ishmael, and Zora is Sarah; that’s fine, but it kinda takes away some of the suspense since we know how it ends (with God stopping Abraham from sacrificing his son). Of course, in the Bible it really was God 
who demanded Isaac be sacrificed, while here it was just Mael being a jealous asshole, but the result is the same. Apparently, this episode came in short for time, which is why there are so many sweeping shots of the New Zealand countryside (which is certainly beautiful) and characters traveling, not to mention a lot of cuts back and forth between characters. It gives the episode a certain cinematic quality—which is nice—but the story isn’t really majestic enough to match it as far as I’m concerned.
The good parts of this episode are (as usual) when Xena and Gabi are on screen together. Gabi’s great in this episode and Renee does a great job of playing Gabi when she’s wasted on henbane. Her goofing around in the cave
and when she shows up at Anteus’s house is a welcome relief from all the religious allegory. (Yes, I’m an atheist, how could you tell?) The scene where Gabi and Xena climb out of the well is great too, with some good banter and Gabi literally climbing up Xena’s body and clinging to her (which some fans really loved …) That brings me to the famous opening scene, where we’re supposed to think Xena and Gabi are getting it on in the lake, but they turn out to just be fishing. A lot of fans cite this as evidence of Xena and Gabi’s romance, but I 
still think it’s too early for that. I definitely believe Xena and Gabi do become much more than friends—and I’ll talk more about that next season when the evidence starts mounting—but I can’t really count this episode as proof. First of all, they weren’t actually doing anything other than fishing; and second, Chris Manheim has said she was specifically asked to throw some suggestive dialogue into that opening scene just to screw with the audience. For me, that’s a meta-reference, which means I can’t count it as evidence of anything because it’s technically not part of the story … or it’s not an organic part of the story
anyway. Some people also mention Gabi’s declaration of Xena beauty in the cave when she’s high on henbane, but Gabi has described Xena as beautiful before (when looking for her in the prison in Black Wolf) and she was stone cold sober then. So Gabi definitely appreciates Xena’s beauty, which could make her more open to a relationship later on, but right now I think she’s still in hero worship mode. I’ll talk more about this in my Season 1 overview.
Noticeable Things:
- When asked why she’s protecting Icus, Xena says it’s her maternal instinct; maybe she’s thinking about Solan, who she can’t protect since she gave him up?
- When they’re hiding in the cave, Gabi tells Icus about the Trojan Horse from Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts and starts making up a bunch of wild stuff when she realizes he isn’t listening.
- When Gabi leaves the cave, she tells one of the rocks to stay there and
it sounds like it answers her. I guess that was just a way of making Gabi’s hallucinations more concrete. - Xena’s pretty cynical about gods in general and doesn’t seem to believe in Anteus’s God. In fact, she doesn’t seem to have even heard of this particular God, but she saw God’s power in Royal Couple of Thieves when the Ark was opened, and she was bringing the Ark back for her Israelite friends. Maybe they never told Xena what God they worship and she never bothered to ask.
Favourite Quotes:
- “A woman with the strength of ten men, out in the world alone save for her scrawny companion …” Mael’s description of Xena, who he considers an abomination before God. I guess it is a pretty patriarchal religion.
- “By the gods … you are beautiful!” Gabi telling Xena how hot she is and igniting the passions of texters everywhere.
- “Yeah, I mean his voice was a little gravelly, but I understood.” Gabi relating how a rock told her to leave the cave and find Xena and Icus.