Xena Reviews: Season 3, Episode 12

The Bitter Suite – Director: Oley Sassone/Writers: Steven L. Sears, Chris Manheim

This is the culmination of the Rift, the sundering of Xena and Gabi’s relationship caused by them lying and mistrusting each other over the first half of this season (although Steve Sears says the Rift technically started in Sins of the Past, since Xena and Gabi have such different worldviews). This one starts with Gabi in an Amazon purging hut (where she’s been for three days), trying to get rid of the guilt she feels over Solan’s death last episode. Xena is on a mountain dealing with her grief when Ares appears and goads her into going after Gabi, saying she’s responsible for Solan’s death. In the purging hut, Callisto appears to remind Gabi that if Xena hadn’t been so consumed with hate for Caesar, Gabi wouldn’t have ended up giving birth to Dahok’s child and Solan would still be alive. This isn’t really Callisto, she just represents that dark part of Gabi’s mind that’s trying to assuage her own guilt by transferring blame to Xena (though she’s kinda right about Xena’s responsibility in the whole mess). Outside, Xena shows up looking for Gabi with murder in her eyes.

Ephiny and Joxer both try to stop Xena from taking Gabi; Ephiny gets a broken arm and Joxer gets decked. Xena drags Gabi behind a horse across miles of hard ground until they reach a cliff. Xena tries to throw Gabi off the cliff, but Gabi recovers enough to get free and tells Xena she hates her before tackling her and knocking both of them over the cliff. They land in the water and are separated. Xena washes up in a strange place with Aleph (who looks just like Callisto) reviving her with a kiss and telling her she’s now in Illusia.

We soon figure out two things about Illusia: everyone sings to impart information, and Tarot imagery is everywhere. Callisto will be Xena’s guide to Illusia and is dressed as The Fool, because she’s never lied about the hatred she feels for Xena. (In the Tarot imagery, the Fool isn’t a Fool because he’s stupid, he’s a Fool because he always tells the truth.) Xena herself is dressed as the High Priestess, which represents intuition and instinct, something Xena’s pretty good at. Callisto sings about Illusia, warning Xena that nothing there is as it seems and everyone she encounters will try to trick her. The Wheel of Fortune appears with Gabi’s face in place of the angel. Xena demands to know where Gabi (“the one who betrayed me”) is, but Callisto just tells her to spin the Wheel. Since Callisto is circumspect about it, I wonder if it’s because technically Xena betrayed herself by letting Gabi fall into Dahok’s clutches and by lying to her? As for Gabi, she wakes up elsewhere in Illusia (naked) and her guide is Joxer, who is a trustworthy guide because he loves Gabi (though she still isn’t aware of that). Joxer is dressed as the Hanged Man, which represents a dilemma or an unhappy situation. He introduces Gabi to Illusia and takes her to Poteidaia. Xena encounters an army of soldiers who worship her and finds Ares (dressed as the Emperor) at their head. Ares urges her to give in to her dark impulses and lead an army of conquest again, like she used to. He also clothes her as the Queen of Swords, which represents intelligence, candour, but also hidden pain. Meanwhile, the citizens of Poteidaia (including her sister Lila) urge Gabi to come home, but tell her she has to get rid of Xena first. Gabi is clothed as the Empress, which represents femininity, motherhood, and pregnancy. (Lila makes a point of telling Gabi that Hope would’ve been welcome in Poteidaia, unlike the reception she got from Xena.) The two groups sing in parallel, pushing Xena and Gabi toward a confrontation. These scenes represent the “safe spaces” for each of them: Xena feels safest when she’s leading an army of people who worship her dark side, while Gabi feels safest where she grew up; basically, this is supposed to be home for each of them. But as Callisto said, everything in Illusia isn’t as it seems; Xena and Gabi’s new homes are both illusory, since they each ran away from those places. Xena stopped wanting to be a warlord and Gabi left Poteidaia to get away from boring village life (one of the singers says “Vegetate until you die!”) Xena and Gabi arrive at a doorway simultaneously and Gabi attacks Xena, but Xena quickly kills her.

As Xena realizes what she’s done, Ares sings a song meant to draw her to his side again and the two of them do a rather sensual tango around Gabi’s dead body. Joxer shows up dressed as the Hermit (which represents soul-searching and self-reflection) to confirm Gabi is dead. Callisto (who’s now dressed as Justice, representing the consequences of one’s actions) asks Xena if she feels any better after killing Gabi, or if she just feels more empty (which parallels how Callisto felt after Solan’s death last episode). Everyone disappears and Xena realizes she’s killed the person who means most to her. But this is Illusia, so it turns out she didn’t kill the real Gabi, just a facsimile. I guess that was a catharsis for Xena, letting her express her anger and hatred without consequences, and showing her how low she’s sunk. But the real Gabi isn’t impressed with Xena trying to kill her, nor with Xena’s half-hearted excuses for her actions. The Wheel appears again and lightning strikes the Tower (which represents change), transporting them to the Hall of Echoes. They start blaming each other for everything until the echoes are deafening. Xena realizes that whenever they dredge up the past, it causes the echoes so they can’t even hear each other’s words. So she asks Gabi to forget the past and say how she feels right now and Gabi screams that she hurts inside. Xena sings about the depths of her own pain, but they end up blaming each other again and the echoes come back. Before they can resolve the argument, the Wheel reappears and a tendril of fire snakes out, grabbing Gabi and pulling her in. It’s Dahok’s fire and she yells her Xena, who tries to keep her from being pulled into the Wheel. But the force is too strong and they’re both pulled in.

They end up in Dahok’s temple, where Gabi lost her blood innocence. Gabi freaks, but Xena points out that whatever’s directing them around Illusia wants them to work together. A malevolent force (Torment) rises from a tomb and starts singing a song about hate. As Torment is joined by an unholy chorus (made up of Caesar, Ares, Callisto, and Khrafstar), Xena ends up tied to a cross and Gabi is chained to the altar, with Dark doppelgangers of each other ready to maim and kill them. As the evil doubles prepare to strike, Xena forgets about her own predicament and focuses on Gabi, which breaks the spell. Xena and Gabi sing a great duet about love overcoming hate, which drives away their tormentors and frees them from their bonds. The Wheel appears again, showing them an idyllic cavern on the other side of a waterfall. Gabi sees Solan waiting for them and realizes he’s the one who brought them there, to give them a chance to regain the love they feel for each other. Gabi runs through the waterfall, but when Xena tries to follow the water burns her like acid. She figures out why when Ming Tien appears and she admits to Gabi that she killed him and lied about it. Xena sings a song (Lucy’s performance here is heart-rending) asking Gabi for forgiveness, and pointing out that they not only need to forgive each other, they also have to forgive themselves. Solan appears and Xena asks his forgiveness too and Ming Tien’s shade vanishes. Gabi pulls Xena through the waterfall and she gets a last moment with Solan, who now knows she’s his mother and forgives her for not telling him. She hugs him goodbye, but opens her eyes to find she’s hugging Gabi. They’ve returned to the real world and are lying on a beach as the tide washes over them.

This is a great episode (it’s #23 on my all-time list) and definitely a classic. Singing is a great way to resolve the conflict between Xena and Gabi, since it helps convey the emotions they’re both feeling. Lucy has a great voice (as does Kevin Smith), but Renee and Hudson were dubbed for the singing parts. Hudson’s voice double sounds pretty close to her real voice , but Renee’s doesn’t sound like her at all, which is a bit distracting. The whole premise of Illusia is a little weird and there are questions about how Solan could’ve created it and brought Xena and Gabi there. Steve Sears said he might’ve had help from a “higher power” (God, Aphrodite, some universal force?), which makes some fans wonder if it was all in their heads. Xena and Gabi definitely remember it (since they reference it in Paradise Found), but it could be a shared illusion. Ultimately, I don’t think the details matter much; it’s the result that counts and the result is that Xena and Gabi are able to let go of their hate, anger, and mistrust and forgive each other (and themselves). That doesn’t mean everything will go back exactly the way it was before the Rift; it’ll take a while (most of the rest of this season) to get back where they were, but this is a good first step.

Some of the stuff in this episode is pretty intense. The fact that Xena and Gabi could go from loving each other to hating (and wanting to kill) each other is shocking, but Steve Sears said they had to dig right down to the depths of their negative feelings and purge it all, otherwise there would be lingering resentments going forward. Xena hits her nadir when she kills Gabi (or thinks she has) and realizes how low she’s sunk. She’s become a creature of pure will, like she was after Caesar’s betrayal, and Ares pushes her to take out her rage on Gabi, probably thinking she’ll be so devastated by killing Gabi that he can sway her to his side again … and it’ll be much easier without Gabi to act as Xena’s conscience. Some fans wonder about Gabi’s anger (and hate) towards Xena, but I think it’s justified, at least in Gabi’s mind. Xena did kinda abandon her in Britannia and let her get taken by Dahok’s cult, then tried to force her to kill her daughter, and ended up almost dragging her to death. The Gab Drag (as fans call it) is pretty intense … too intense, really; Steve Sears said they needed to show how angry Xena was with Gabi, but admitted they could’ve cut the Gab Drag down a lot and still gotten the message across. Of course, a lot of the anger they both feel isn’t at each other, it’s at themselves. Gabi blames herself for Solan’s death and somewhere deep inside, Xena blames herself for Gabi getting taken by Dahok and giving birth to his daughter. They direct their anger outward because it hurts too much to internalize it, but as Xena’s forgiveness song points out, they need to forgive themselves as much as each other. That goes for her song to Solan too; she’s asking his forgiveness, but also trying to forgive herself for not being there for him as he grew up.

Besides the Tarot archetypes (which came from the Book of Tokens: Tarot Meditations by Paul Foster Case), a recurring motif throughout the episode is water. Xena and Gabi both arrive in Illusia in water and Aleph says all things have their beginning in water. It represents birth (and rebirth), as well as purity and cleansing. Gabi is able to go through the waterfall at the end because she has a clear conscience, while Xena still harbours guilt over Ming Tien. As we’ll see later in the season (in Forget Me Not), Gabi actually does have another secret to feel guilty about, but Chris Manheim said Gabi has repressed that knowledge (personally, I think she might’ve had a little help from Ares with that), so when she walks through the waterfall, she really isn’t feeling guilty about anything. Some fans wondered about Gabi reaching out and pulling Xena through the waterfall after Xena’s forgiveness song banishes Ming Tien. Steve Sears said Xena could’ve walked through the water on her own without getting burnt (since she’s now purged her conscience), but Gabi’s gesture was symbolic, a way of letting Xena know that she’d forgiven her for everything (and symbolizing Xena forgiving herself for deceiving Gabi). And the scene at the end with them hugging on the beach together is highly symbolic; the tide rolls over them, washing away all their guilt and negative feelings and bringing back the love they have for each other.

Noticeable Things:

• It’s never mentioned again, but Xena’s going to have a couple more apologies to make to Ephiny and Joxer; I’m not sure if she’d bother singing those, though.
• The horse Xena uses to drag Gabi isn’t Argo. There was supposed to be a scene of Argo refusing to drag Gabi and Xena getting a different horse, but it was cut for time.
• There’s a scene of the Fool’s dog barking at the Tower that’s a duplicate of Toto barking at the Witch’s castle in Wizard of Oz. (By the way, Steve Sears says he thought the dog represented Argo, since she’s the only character who doesn’t appear in Illusia.)

Favourite Quotes:

• “What’s still unwritten you can erase.” Aleph letting Xena know that she can still change the path she’s on.
• “War can kill you, so can hate.” Xena being reminded that her negative emotions are harming her more than anyone.
• “Our hearts were hurting just the same.” Gabi pointing out that instead of blaming each other, she and Xena should’ve been helping work through their mutual pain.
• “I’m sorry, please help me, forgive me. Don’t hate me, don’t leave me, forgive me. Forgive me my debt as only you could. Forgive me the hate, Replace evil with good. Forgive me and find out that you will be able to forgive yourself too.” Xena telling Gabi (and herself) that forgiving each other is easy, forgiving themselves is the hard (but necessary) part.
• “We’re home.” Gabi pointing out that she and Xena are each other’s home, each other’s safe space (to which Xena replies, “At last.”)