Xena Reviews: Season 3, Episode 1

The Furies – Director: Gilbert Shilton/Writer: R.J. Stewart

This one starts with the Furies doing a sexy dance for Ares, but he’s not really into it; he has a grievance against Xena and gets the Furies to punish her with both persecution and madness. Meanwhile, Xena and Gabi are having a race (Xena wins) when they’re beset by bandits. Xena and Gabi pound them, but the madness kicks in and Xena starts doing a bunch of Three Stooges moves during the fight.

Gabi realizes something’s wrong and gets Xena to put the Pinch on one of their opponents. After some inane questions about when he lost his virginity and the capital of Assyria, they learn about the Furies cursing Xena with persecution and madness. Gabi convinces Xena to accompany her to the Furies’ temple to find out what’s going on. That night, Gabi wakes up and finds Xena gone, having left all her weapons, clothes, and armour behind. Gabi finds her raving at some villagers, hallucinating that they’ve crucified women and kids. Gabi talks Xena down and they go to the Furies’ temple the next day. The priest tells them Xena has been cursed for not avenging the murder of a family member. At first, Xena thinks he’s talking about Lyceus, but he says it’s her father whose murder she’s supposed to avenge.

Xena takes off into the forest, hallucinating that Bacchus, the Dryads, and Callisto are after her. She almost attacks Gabi, until Gabi gets through to her again. Xena becomes lucid enough to tie Gabi to a tree because she doesn’t trust herself not to hurt Gabi. Xena heads to Amphipolis to see her mom (managing to pound some more ruffians in the midst of her madness) and Gabi gets loose and follows her. When Gabi arrives, Cyrene is taking care of Xena, who’s really out of it now. Cyrene already has a pretty good idea what’s happening and admits to Gabi that she’s the one who killed Xena’s father.

Cyrene tells Gabi (and Xena) how she killed Xena’s father because he came home drunk from the Temple of Ares saying he had to kill Xena. She was only seven at the time, so Cyrene whacked him with an axe before he could kill Xena. Now Xena has to kill her own mother to remove the Furies’ curse, just as Orestes had to with his mother. Coincidentally, Orestes lives in a village not far away, so Gabi heads out to see him. As soon as she’s gone, Xena starts ranting about how life is a big joke played on mortals by the gods. She tells Cyrene she’s going to kill herself rather than commit matricide and asks about the night she was conceived. Cyrene tells Xena her father showed up unexpectedly when he was supposed to be away at war. Xena heads out to jump off a cliff but Ares shows up to talk her out of it, agreeing that life is a joke for most people, but for those who have the will to shape life to fit their own ambitions, it can be very meaningful. He mentions Xena’s father trying to kill her out of jealousy and urges her to avenge him by killing her mom. Xena decides maybe he’s right, but makes him promise she can do it in front of the Furies. She goes to get her mom and takes her to the Furies temple to kill her. Meanwhile, Gabi has found out that killing his mother didn’t lift Orestes’ curse, it just exchanged it for a new one, leaving him hopelessly insane. Gabi heads back to warn Xena, who’s preparing to kill her mother in the Furies’ temple.

Gabi tries to stop Xena, but Ares grabs her and shuts her up. Xena stops herself, telling the Furies that she can’t avenge her father because he’s not dead. She suggests Ares is her father, citing his comment about jealousy and prompting Cyrene to tell the Furies about her husband showing up unexpectedly the night Xena was conceived (which Gabi reinforces by mentioning the old stories about Ares taking the form of his warriors to visit their wives). Xena challenges Ares to fight, figuring if she can hold her own against him, she must be a demigod. She does hold her own and the Furies are convinced Ares is Xena’s father, removing the curses. Ares is pissed off (and denies being Xena’s father), but congratulates her for outwitting him again. Later, Cyrene apologizes for taking Xena’s father away from her and asks her forgiveness, but Xena says there’s nothing to forgive since she did it to save Xena’s life. Xena thanks her and says they’ll move on and grow stronger together.

This is a pretty good episode (it’s #79 on my all-time list), with some good background on Xena and another attempt by Ares to sway her to his side. This episode (and the next one) was meant to be part of Season 2, but the producers decided to have only 22 episodes per season, so these first two were held over for Season 3, even though they were shot earlier. I know some fans don’t like the tonal shift in this one, thinking Xena’s change from slapstick to hallucinations to homicidal rage is too jarring, but I think it works to illustrate the different facets of her madness. Xena’s mind is out of control, and for someone who prides herself on focus, that can’t be easy. She does seem to be able to focus somewhat, which helps her figure out Ares is manipulating her and come up with a counter-plan. Maybe living with her own kind of madness (the bloodlust and anger caused by her Dark side) helps her resist the Furies’ madness here. The fact that she’s willing to kill herself rather than her mom proves she never went completely over the edge.

There’s a big debate among fans about whether Ares really is Xena’s father. It would explain how she can do things most people can’t, but I don’t think she’s a demigod. I think she was just saying that to get out of the Furies’ curse, prompting Gabi and Cyrene to play along with her to make it more believable. I hope Ares isn’t her father, since that would make all her accomplishments less special; instead of being a mortal who pushed herself to be the ultimate warrior, she’d just be another demigod like Hercules. Plus, it would make all the sexual innuendo between her and Ares really fucking creepy. I can’t imagine Ares wanting to bang his own daughter, and we’ll see in future episodes that Xena is turned on (physically at least) by Ares; if Xena thought there was even the remotest chance Ares could actually be her father, I don’t think she’d have the hots for him. Of course, that raises a question about what Cyrene said, that Xena’s father showed up to bang her when he was supposed to be away at war. But since Ares obviously set this all up, maybe he was really playing the long game; he could’ve brought Xena’s father (who Cyrene says was very devoted to Ares) to see Cyrene as a reward, or as a set-up. Apparently Xena’s father came back from Ares’ temple the night he tried to kill Xena, and Ares did mention jealousy, so maybe Ares had one of his priests tell Atrius that Xena wasn’t really his kid. (It could even be true; Ares could’ve arranged for someone else to visit Cyrene and used his god-magic to make him look like Atrius.) So maybe Ares set the whole thing up well in advance, or maybe he just knew about it through his priests; so, he probably figured pushing Xena into killing her mother would either leave her insane from the Furies’ punishment, or so far beyond redemption that he’d have no trouble corrupting her to his side. Either way, Ares gets Xena as his champion again.

We also get to see how strong the bond between Xena and Gabi has grown. Gabi is able to talk Xena out of hurting the villagers, breaking through whatever hallucinations Xena is having, whereas in previous episodes she had to whack Xena over the head with a pitchfork, or go out and risk her own life on the battlefield to get through to Xena. In fact, I’m wondering why Gabi woke up in the middle of the night and went to look for Xena; we know Gabi can sleep through pretty much anything, so I think it was the connection she and Xena share that woke her; Gabi felt something was wrong, woke up, and went to find Xena. We also see that however crazy Xena is, she still cares about Gabi; Xena ties Gabi up because she’s afraid she might hurt her in her confused state. And in the scene where Gabi goes to see Orestes, Xena is completely silent while Gabi’s there but as soon as she leaves, Xena gets very animated and tells her mom she plans to kill herself. I think she knew Gabi would try to stop her and was afraid she might hurt Gabi, so he waited until she was gone before revealing her plan. Ares even senses the connection (asking Xena what she sees in Gabi), and I think he’s a bit jealous of it.

Noticeable Things:

• When Xena first starts losing it, she calls Gabi “Mavis” several times, which Lucy apparently ad-libbed.
• Gabi and Cyrene obviously know each other and are quite comfortable around each other here, which lends credence to my theory that Xena and Gabi have been stopping in at Amphipolis in between episodes.
• When we first see them, Xena and Gabi are making a bet on who can win a race between them. If Gabi wins, Xena has to collect firewood for a week and if Xena wins, Gabi has to make “those little dumplings with the red stuff inside”. I guess Gabi’s a better cook than Xena, but I’m wondering how complicated those dumplings are to make, since Gabi doesn’t look happy when Xena names the stakes.

Favourite Quotes:

• “I love the smell of warrior sweat in the morning.” Xena after defeating the bounty hunters.
• “When you and daddy were rolling around like a pair of crazed weasels, was it good?” Xena ever-so-tactfully asking her mother about the night she was conceived. (For the record, Cyrene says it was good.)
• “For those who just endure life, yeah, it is a very nasty joke. But for those who form it with their will, the joke is on those who get in the way.” Ares giving Xena his philosophy of life in a nutshell.
• “Hey, come on you two, you’re not gonna get it on again, are you?” Xena after she knocks Ares on top of her mother in the Furies’ temple.