And so the long-awaited India Arc begins.
(Hey, when did Xenastaff start reading fanfic, anyway???)
I have to say I was expecting a lot more negative reaction to this episode.
As for me, I liked it a lot - but not so much the second time around, interestingly
enough. The utter bizarreness of it all wasn't as appealing on repeat
viewing. It has been fascinating reading everyone's comments, though.
I totally missed the yin/yang window near the bath (but who could miss
the bed? Talk about being hit over the head with symbolism - that
kind of turned me off). And I hadn't given much thought to the significance
of the animals around the estate - I just thought it was a nod to all those
Disney cartoons with birds singing and little animals frolicking everywhere,
not symbols for Xena and Gabrielle. Shows you what I know. :)
One thing I noticed right away was the apparent significance of the
costuming (or not ;) choices in this episode. In the beginning in
the cave Gabrielle is clad only in -- what was that, one of their bedrolls?
She puts her BGSB back on, but leaves her hair down. This is quite
unusual -- Gabrielle usually has her hair held back in some way, either
with a braid or a barrette or something. All this seemed to me to
indicate Gabrielle's desire to get down to her own bare essence (if you
will :), unadorned by anything. Then when she's with Aiden she's
wearing the clothes he gave her, which turn out to be as much of an illusion
as the rest of his estate. Throughout all of this, Xena is wearing
her armor, as she always does. The only time she takes it off is
when she's in the bath (of course), and when she's doing the crunches in
their room - but then she's still got her leathers on. Xena's not
going to change... at least, not intentionally.
Random notes:
-
I do have to say that I loved Gabrielle in the little harem-pants
outfit. (One wonders just what Mrs. Rob Tapert thought while watching
the final edit of this episode, the alternate title for which could surely
be "Celebrating Renee O'Connor's Body". That muscle tone...)
-
I also was digging the whole massage scene. Very well done.
I'm sure that one left lots of people hot and bothered for hours afterwards!!!
-
Like, it seems, most others, I hated the whole Xena: Warrior Bunny schtick
at the end. It was totally unnecessary, and made what should have
been a powerful scene just plain silly. (Did anyone else think that
with the teeth and wild hair going, she looked kind of like Minya?
Don't ask me why I thought that.)
-
Did anyone else think "rooster!" when Xena nailed the birdies with her
round killing thing? I don't think that was supposed to be funny,
but it just totally cracked me up.
I didn't see the TV Guide ad Greg Cox pointed out until the weekend (our
TV Guide doesn't run ads for X:WP -- we're lucky if we even get an episode
description :P), but I have to agree with his comment: "'Xena goes
insane!' - Yeah, what else is new?" Xena's been getting progressively
more unhinged all year. I really hope this is leading up to
something, and not just because Lucy has changed the way she's playing
the character. I've been watching the 1st season eps on USA this
week, and it's like she was a completely different character then (with
such a cute little Kiwi lilt, too ;). I have to say I like the older
Xena much better than the doubtful, twitchy, paranoid Xena we've seen this
year. Did almost losing Gabrielle really knock her that far off her
rocker??? Will she ever just Get Over It and get that trademark glower
back? I guess we'll just have to see.
Episode Rating: 8
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