Xena Reviews: Season 6, Episode 6

The Abyss – Director: Rick Jacobson/Writer: James Kahn

This one starts with Virgil and a friend (or maybe one of his brothers?) named Hosep being chased by a tribe of wild men. Hosep is caught and Virgil follows, keeping out of sight. Nearby, Xena and Gabi are hunting and after Gabi misses a deer on purpose, Xena realizes she’s still freaked out about killing Korah last episode. Xena brought Gabi here to relax her, but it hasn’t assuaged her guilt at all. They head to Virgil and Hosep’s camp and realize they were attacked. When Virgil finds the village where Hosep was taken, he sees Hosep being cooked on a spit and realizes their attackers are cannibals.

Xena and Gabi search for Virgil and Hosep’s trail and Gabi still questions her own judgment. Virgil goes to find Xena and Gabi, but sets off a primitive alarm and is caught by the cannibals. Xena and Gabi find Virgil’s wrecked boat and Xena knows they’re being watched. Virgil is taken back to the village and freaks out when he sees what’s left of Hosep. Xena and Gabi are attacked on the river and soon realize their opponents are cannibals when they try to bite pieces off them. Gabi’s guilt holds her back from killing an attacker and she’s stabbed in the side. Gabi is tossed in the river and Xena jumps in after her. Gabi is swept under by the rapids and gets caught in an underwater framework that the cannibals seem to use to store the skeletons of their victims.

Xena rescues Gabi and takes her to a riverside cave, where she digs the broken tip of a dagger out of Gabi’s wound. Xena knows Gabi’s wound is probably infected, so she tries to climb the cliffs to look for healing herbs, but the cannibals throw rocks at her and she’s forced to return to the cave. In the village, Virgil figures he’s next on the menu and tries to escape, but he’s knocked out and locked in a prison hut. In the cave, Gabi’s wound makes her delirious and she thinks she’s talking to Hope, warning her that Xena wants to kill her. Xena feels guilty, but plays along. Outside, the rain is pouring down and the river is rising, threatening to flood the cave. In the village, Virgil meets a fellow prisoner named Rubio and stuffs himself with food until Rubio points out that the cannibals want him to fatten up before they eat him. (Rubio has been starving himself to avoid being eaten.) In the cave, Gabi is no longer delirious, but her fever is still high. She tells Xena that if she dies, she wants to be buried with Xena and her family in Amphipolis instead of back home in Poteidaia. Xena ties Gabi to her back and climbs the cliff in the rain, but when she gets to the top (in a very Shawshank moment) she sees the cannibals are close by. Xena attracts their attention and leaves Gabi where they can find her, gambling that they’ll heal her before they eat her.

Xena follows the cannibals to their village, killing one so she can wear his outfit as a disguise. Gabi is tossed in with Virgil and Rubio and Xena’s hunch proves correct; the cannibals do heal her, although their methods don’t exactly qualify as TLC. Xena starts cutting down trees and moving rocks to create a dam on the river, setting up a trigger rope so she can bring the dam down and cause a huge flood. By the next morning, Gabi is feeling much better and she’s taken out to be basted before she’s cooked.

Xena heads back to the village, but has to fight her way through some cannibals first. Xena shows up just in time to keep Gabi from being roasted and they start pounding cannibals. Gabi frees Virgil and Rubio and they all flee on horseback, followed by the entire cannibal village. Xena has Rubio take the horses while she leads the cannibals around under the dam, telling Gabi and Virgil to cut the trigger rope on her signal. But some cannibals show up and start nosing around the trigger rope, so Gabi and Virgil have to attack them. Xena leads the cannibals into the trap and yells for Gabi to cut the rope, but she’s still fighting the cannibals. Gabi overcomes her reluctance to kill, wasting a cannibal and cutting the rope. Xena jumps to safety while the cannibals all drown when the dam collapses. Later, while Rubio finally enjoys some food, Gabi tells Xena she’ll have to learn to live with her mistakes and not let them define her.

This is a pretty good episode, although it kinda drags a bit when it focuses on Virgil. But when it concentrates on Xena and Gabi—especially their scenes together in the cave—it’s great, which is why it’s at #30 on my all-time list. It’s good to see some follow-up from last episode and to see Gabi coming to terms with her mistake. It won’t magically erase her guilt (as Xena certainly knows), but at least she won’t get herself killed by hesitating in battle. Gabi says she has a warrior’s reflexes but not the judgment to match, but Xena points out that she only killed Korah because she thought he was about to kill Xena. Being willing to kill to save Xena is something we’ve seen before and something that actually does fit with Gabi’s particular Way of Love.

As I said above, the best part of this episode is the interaction between Xena and Gabi. You can see how much they love each other, especially in the cave scenes (which even Lucy said made her teary-eyed when she watched the episode on TV). We see that Gabi still feels guilty over Hope (which we’ve seen before), but Xena apparently feels bad for putting Gabi through that in the first place; when she pretends to be Hope to the delirious Gabi, Xena is crying and tells Gabi she understands everything that she’s saying. But any self-hatred Xena has is soon wiped out when (the now-lucid) Gabi tells her she wants to be buried with Xena’s family instead of her own because Xena is a part of her. Xena still feels bad for taking Gabi away from her true path, until Gabi points out that their true path is together.

Noticeable Things:

• I’m not sure where this is meant to take place. Xena doesn’t seem to recognize the cannibals (and obviously didn’t know they were around), but when the dam bursts,one of them yells “Kaltaka” the Horde word for water. It kinda looks like that yell was added in post-production, maybe to establish a connection between the cannibals and the Horde. But the Horde were never cannibals as far as we’ve seen, so maybe they just share a few words in common.
• When Virgil is telling Rubio that Xena will come to rescue them, Rubio keeps referring to her as Zebra.
• When the cannibals capture Gabi, they don’t remove her sais from her boots. Obviously, they don’t recognize them as weapons, probably just taking them for decoration.
• In the scene where Gabi’s being tied up and basted, she was supposed to be struggling against her bonds. But Renee said she was so freaked out by that scene that if she’d started struggling, she would’ve gone too far and broken loose before she was supposed to.
• This is Virgil’s last appearance on the show. Greg Lee said he was supposed to come back, but the scheduling didn’t work out and he was sorry he didn’t get a chance to do a proper farewell.

Favourite Quotes:

• “Just don’t know what kind of wine goes with bark.” Xena’s comment when Gabi intentionally misses a deer and puts an arrow into a tree.
• “Never apologize for having compassion, Gabrielle.” Virgil reminding Gabi that one of her greatest strengths isn’t a weakness.
• “I love them but I’m a part of you. I want it to be like that forever.” Gabi telling Xena she wants to be buried in Amphipolis with her and her family instead of in Poteidaia. It’s interesting to note that Joxer had already figured that out back in Fallen Angel.
• “Any path is okay, Xena, as long as it’s with you.” Gabi letting Xena know where her true path lies.