Vanishing Act – Director: Andrew Merrifield/Writer: Terence Winter
This one starts with Xena heading out to take care of something, leaving Gabi to participate in a festival dedicated to Pax, Goddess of Peace. Xena and Gabi’s friend Hadar makes a speech commemorating the end of hostilities between his town and a neighbouring one, but the next day, the golden statue of Pax is gone and the villagers start blaming each other. Xena returns and quickly uncovers a possible suspect … Autolycus, who’s disguised as an old woman. But Autolycus insists he didn’t steal the statue.
Autolycus doesn’t know who stole the statue or how they did it, so he wants to recover the statue so he can reclaim the mantle of King of Thieves. He
asks Xena to help him (mentioning the favour she owes him from The Quest), but makes her promise to do things his way—with finesse instead of brute force—to restore his reputation as the best thief in the world. Xena and Gabi talk about Autolycus’s past and how he became a thief to avenge his brother, who was killed by a business rival. Autolycus stole everything from the killer and left him destitute, but that set him on the path to becoming the King of Thieves. 
They figure out the statue was dragged from the harbour and when Autolycus’s subtlety doesn’t get any info from the wharf-master, Xena’s Pinch does. Turns out a guy named Tarses (who lives on Mykonos) hired a ship to do some clandestine business last night. Autolycus is familiar with Tarses and they head for Mykonos to check things out. Gabi is sent in undercover as a fence named Myopia who wants to bid on the stolen statue. That makes Tarses nervous and he tells Gabi he’s going to melt the statue down.
Xena comes in disguised as another fence (Ezra) and says she’s fine with the statue being melted down but wants to see it before she bids. Autolycus
is disguised as her servant (a hunchback named Bentley) and distracts everyone long enough for Xena to bust the furnace. That stops the statue from being melted right away and Xena and Gabi start a bidding war to keep Tarses occupied long enough for Autolycus to snoop around. He finds a weird false-perspective hallway (like in a Roadrunner cartoon) and that gives him an idea on how to get the statue back. Xena wins the bidding war (which pisses Gabi off) and she 
sneaks around with Autolycus looking for the materials to carry out his plan, while Gabi attends a dinner. Xena and Autolycus show up at the dinner and Tarses’ woman (who seems to have a fetish for hunchbacks) kinda blows Autolycus’s cover. Tarses makes a toast to the man who made him what he is today … Autolycus. Yeah, turns out Tarses is the guy Autolycus ruined for killing his brother.
Autolycus and Xena are hauled away, but Gabi’s cover is intact and she asks to bid on the gold again. Tarses says that’s fine, but he’s got a Scylosian general coming in the morning to bid, so if she doesn’t have her money
there by then, he’ll assume she’s a fraud too. Autolycus is chained with 200 locks and Xena is tied to a chair in her room. She escapes quickly and she and Gabi gather paint and brushes to carry out Autolycus’s plan, expecting him to join them once he escapes. Xena and Gabi finish their task by dawn, but Autolycus never shows up. Xena checks and finds he’s escaped and she realizes he’s going to kill Tarses to avenge his brother.
Autolycus is ready to kill Tarses, but Xena talks him out of it, saying his brother wouldn’t want him to become a killer. Xena and Autolycus join Gabi 
in the courtyard and they end up fighting Tarses and his men. The general arrives to bid on the statue, but it’s disappeared. Xena and Gabi hide while Autolycus claims responsibility for stealing the statue back from Tarses. The general is pissed off that Tarses offered him something he no longer has and takes off. Tarses is mad, but Xena pounds him. Turns out the statue was there all along: they painted a false wall to blend in with the castle walls and hid the statue behind it. They return the statue to the village and Autolycus thanks them for helping him, saying Xena is the second-best thief he’s ever met.
This isn’t really that good of an episode; it’s currently #123 on my all-time list, but it’s technically not a terrible episode, so it could probably move up a
bit. For me, the main problem with this one is that it’s kinda forgettable. It just doesn’t stand out for me, either comedy-wise or action-wise. Even the whole thing about Autolycus wanting to avenge his brother is lacking in tension; I never really believed he’d kill Tarses in cold blood, although it was interesting to see Xena talking him out of killing. She says Autolycus doesn’t have the heart of a killer, which I guess means she does (or that’s the way she sees herself, 
anyway … Gabi would probably disagree). But the whole thing just seems forced; even Xena being absent while the statue was stolen is a bit contrived. And if Autolycus recognized Tarses’ name right away, does that mean he was always thinking about killing him? And when did Tarses realize who Autolycus was? It seems like he doesn’t figure it out until Thea reveals “Bentley’s” hump is fake, but then Tarses seems to put things together almost too quickly.
As I said, this isn’t really a bad episode, it’s just not as good as many of the others. There are some good comedy moments, like Xena and Gabi’s competing fences with their goofy accents (Xena sounds like Fran Drescher and Gabi’s like a slightly less European version of the Contessa from Here She Comes … Miss Amphipolis). Autolycus does Bentley with a Ronald
Reagan voice and shows his mettle by opening the 200 locks in no time at all. (Xena shows her preferred way of opening locks when she kicks down a door.) When Xena puts the Pinch on the wharf-master, Gabi is counting the seconds and taking his pulse while Xena and Autolycus argue. And Xena and Gabi trying to one-up each other in the bidding war was kind of funny; Gabi was mad afterwards because Xena won … maybe that’s some of the “sidekick syndrome” we saw in Fins, Femmes, and Gems?
Noticeable Things:
- I’m not sure where this is set. The villagers are dressed in a Middle-Eastern fashion and the music sounds Middle-Eastern too, but they’re within sailing distance of Mykonos. Maybe it’s a port city that has lots of foreign influences.
- When Xena uncovers Autolycus’s old lady disguise, she drags him down a gangplank face-first, reminiscent of what she did to him in Royal Couple of Thieves.
- During the big fight against Tarses and his men, there’s a really quick
close-up of Gabi’s staff slamming into some guy’s gut. There must have been a camera attached to the staff and it gives a really interesting (if somewhat vertiginous) perspective on the fight, but I don’t think that trick was ever used again. - At the end, Autolycus kisses Xena (on the cheek) to thank her for helping him and it looks like Gabi is angling for a kiss too, but ends up disappointed. Maybe Autolycus thought she was too young and innocent.
Favourite Quotes:
- “I do not pay for goo.” Gabi telling Tarses why she doesn’t want the Pax statue melted down.
- “Bentley … what an unfortunate name.” Gabi making fun of the name Xena uses for her hunchbacked servant, which she obviously made up on the spot.
- “Myopia, I’ve heard of you. They say you used to be good-lookin’” Xena throwing a little shade at Gabi while they’re undercover.