Hercules/Xena (Spoilers)

[kirk55555]

The Dirty Half Dozen (Xena) - This was a great episode. Ares gives the metal of Hephaestus to a warlord to give him unbreakable armor and weapons. To help defeat the warlord, Xena gets four people out of prison who she had trained when she was a warlord. She makes them a deal: they help her defeat ares plan, and she lets them go free. Her plans get screwed up because two of the people (the assassin and the thief) eventually betray her, but in the end the other two don't and she beats the warlord, destroys the metal and saves the day. The four criminals were interesting. They had been mostly normal people before they met Xena, and she shaped them into murderers. Its an interesting twist on how she works now. They kind of seemed like they were setting up the two possibly redeemed criminals for a return, but apparently that never happens. Overall, this was a very entertaining episode.

 

[Forbin]

The Groundhog Day episode was hysterical. I think Xena may have killed Joxer just because she was sick of his obnoxious "rise and shine!" every morning

 

[kirk55555]

The deliverer (Xena) - This episode sucked. The stuff with Caesar was decent, but everything with the evil god was irritating, especially since I was bored for most of it because I thought they were talking about the extremely dull "one god" stuff from earlier in the show, not a new "one god". I hope we won't see this evil god again, but I wouldn't bet on that. Gabrielle killed someone, which I knew was going to happen eventually but it was just idiotic how they did it. It would have been better if she'd killed someone (maybe even Caesar) to save Xena, not randomly kill someone to save a random guy she met a few days ago. It just felt like a waste.

This was the first time I've seen Caesar (since I skipped most of Destiny) but he looks like he's a decent villain. I don't know the specifics of his past with Xena because of the skipped episode, but the episode covered it nicely. He betrayed her, and he's evil. Overall, if they cut out all of the evil god stuff and had just made it a confrontation between Xena and Caesar, it could have been a good episode, but as it is its a fairly weak episode with a few good parts that's held back by the stupid evil god stuff.

 

[kirk55555]

Gabrielle's Hope (Xena) - This episode was horrible from beginning to end. It feels like the writers were out of ideas, decided to watch the movie The Omen, and then just ripped it off (not totally, obviously, but its still really out of place and stupid). The whole episode was just bad. The demon baby idea sucked, Gabrielle being a moron about it was irritating, and overall I spent almost every second wishing I was doing something else. The worst thing is, I just know that Hope is coming back in some form. I'm really not looking forward to that.

Also, just to get it out of the way

The Debt Part 1 and 2 (Xena) - Skipped (because I don't watch episodes that are all about showing something Xena's evil past)

 

[Agent Richard07]

^ Big mistake. I hope you reconsider. They're excellent episodes.

 

[Merlanthe]

Ceasar also broke her heart and is imho the root cause of all Xena's later inability to trust or be vulnerable with later romantic partners like Borias. Her tendancy to back stab people for no reason came from how Ceasar treated her. At least thats my take on things anyhow.

 

[Forbin]

The deliverer (Xena) - This episode sucked. The stuff with Caesar was decent, but everything with the evil god was irritating, especially since I was bored for most of it because I thought they were talking about the extremely dull "one god" stuff from earlier in the show, not a new "one god". I hope we won't see this evil god again, but I wouldn't bet on that. Gabrielle killed someone, which I knew was going to happen eventually but it was just idiotic how they did it. It would have been better if she'd killed someone (maybe even Caesar) to save Xena, not randomly kill someone to save a random guy she met a few days ago. It just felt like a waste.

This was the first time I've seen Caesar (since I skipped most of Destiny) but he looks like he's a decent villain. I don't know the specifics of his past with Xena because of the skipped episode, but the episode covered it nicely. He betrayed her, and he's evil. Overall, if they cut out all of the evil god stuff and had just made it a confrontation between Xena and Caesar, it could have been a good episode, but as it is its a fairly weak episode with a few good parts that's held back by the stupid evil god stuff.

Gabrielle's Hope (Xena) - This episode was horrible from beginning to end. It feels like the writers were out of ideas, decided to watch the movie The Omen, and then just ripped it off (not totally, obviously, but its still really out of place and stupid). The whole episode was just bad. The demon baby idea sucked, Gabrielle being a moron about it was irritating, and overall I spent almost every second wishing I was doing something else. The worst thing is, I just know that Hope is coming back in some form. I'm really not looking forward to that.

Also, just to get it out of the way

The Debt Part 1 and 2 (Xena) - Skipped (because I don't watch episodes that are all about showing something Xena's evil past)

Good grief.
The Hope arc is one of the best, most amazing stories in fantasy TV history. It's crossovers with the Callisto arc double its amazingness.
And The Debt is one of the most beautiful stories in the series.
You're (literally now!) Hopeless.

 

[kirk55555]

Good grief.
The Hope arc is one of the best, most amazing stories in fantasy TV history. It's crossovers with the Callisto arc double its amazingness.
And The Debt is one of the most beautiful stories in the series.
You're (literally now!) Hopeless.

Well, I don't know how a two parter about Xena almost becoming good, but then deciding she likes be evil more is "one of the most beautiful stories of the series", but everyone has different tastes. I read the in depth summary, I would have hated watching this two parter. I don't like evil Xena, and the story is something I can tell I'd loathe just by reading about it. I don't care why Xena is called the "Warrior Princess", and having her pressure point skills come from basically China (I'm not calling it Chin) is a bit uncomfortable really.

The characters sound horrible (oh, look, another evil warlord, but one without anything interesting this time) and giving Xena basically a "Kung Fu Master" is really stupid. The story is just: Evil Xena goes to China, evil Xena gets pressure point powers and a fancy nickname from a generic mystical martial arts master, evil Xena pretends to think about being good but instantly goes back to evil for...reasons (I know there is more, the summary is pretty in depth, but it really doesn't matter). I HATE evil Xena, and every single thing about the story is just painful. So, its a story I'm extremely happy to skip.

As for Hope, I won't skip episodes with her in it (I haven't yet), but I can't help that I've hated the episodes in the "Hope" arc so far The demon baby is idiotic, and the whole idea is just ridiculous.

Back to talking about episodes I've watched

The King of Assassins (Xena) - This was an awesome episode. Bruce Campbell is back as Autolycus, and Ted raimi pulls double duty as both Joxer and his evil brother Jett. Both Capmbell and Raimi were awesome. The Joxer/Jett stuff was great, plus both Campbell and Raimi are always good anyway. After the last couple of episodes, its great to see the show get back to being good again.

 

[kirk55555]

Warrior...Priestess...Tramp (Xena) - Another awesome episode. Gabrielle runs into another Xena look-a-like, a Hestian virgin priestess named Leah. Xena and gabrielle go to take her home, but find Meg (another Xena look-a-like from an earlier episode) pretending to be Leah. A group wants to kill all of the hestian virgins to get people to convert to their religion, and they're trying to use Meg to do it. Hijinks happen, and we get awesome scenes of a hestian virgin reacting to Xena, Gabrielle, and especially Meg and Meg's brothel/bar. Lucy Lawless did an amazing job playing all three characters, and from beginning to end the episode was just great.

 

[kirk55555]

King for a Day (Hercules) - This was a great episode that barely had any Hercules in it.After hercules had to go off by himself to help someone, Ioalus goes to a nearby town where he thinks he has relatives. He finds that he has a cousin who looks exactly like him, who happens to be the prince of the area. The prince (Orestes) is a drunk party animal. He gets drugged before his coronation, so Ioalus has to pretend to be him and become king. This whole episode was very good. Its an interesting idea, and Michael Hurst is great as Ioalus, even without Hercules around (not that I doubted he would be). It was cool to see him get an episode for himself. This was a great episode, I hope we see Orestes again.

 

[kirk55555]

Protean Challenge (Hercules) - This episode wasn't very good. Proteus, a gods who could change his shape, tried to get a woman to like him by using his shapeshifitng ability to cause trouble. This lead to an interesting Hercules vs. Fake Hercules fight, but besides that the episode wasn't very interesting.

Funnily enough, this is the fourth episode I've watched and posted about in a row that had copies of the characters in an episode. The King of Assassins had Joxer/Jett, Warrior...Priestess...Tramp had Xena/Meg/Leah, King for a Day had Ioalus/Orestes and Protean Challenge, while slightly different in that it wasn't actually a person who naturally looks like Hercules, still had Hercules fighting a copy of himself.

 

[kirk55555]

The Quill is Mightier... (Xena) - After some kids vandalize Aphrodite's temple with pro Xena graffitti, the goddess of love is convinced that Gabrielle's stories are to blame. so, she enchants one of Gabrielle's scrolls so that everything written on it comes true (right as Gabrielle decides to try to write fiction) to try to get gabrielle to stop writing. Hijinks ensue, which eventually leave Xena away fishing for most of the episode, and depower Ares and Aphrodite (and bring back Minya, Xena's "#1 fan" from an earlier episode). This episode was great. Gabrielle, Joxer, Ares and Aphrodite together were awesome, and there were a lot of great moments and lines in this episode. From beginning to end, this episode was just great.

 

[Forbin]

"Gabrielle awoke with a jerk."

 

[kirk55555]

Maternal Instincts (Xena) - This is a pretty good episode. Xena and Gabrielle return to the village where Xena's son lives to attend a peace meeting, right as Hope releases Callisto from the lava she was trapped in. Hope was much better as an evil kid than a demonic baby. Callisto was great as always, and the story was interesting. It was obvious that Solen was going to die, and I was kind of hoping it was going to be Callisto's doing, not Hope's. Hope ended up dying too, but I'm sure it won't last. Overall, this was a good episode with some intense moments that I was sure was going to be followed up well. Then, I got to the next episode...

The Bitter Suite (Xena) - What the actual f$%^ is this? Its an abomination, that's for damn sure. First off, it destroys all of Xena's character development over two and a half seasons. In an instant, she goes full evil and tries to murder Gabrielle, making every episode since her redemption on Hercules pointless from a character development standpoint. Then apparently the writers started, I don't know, huffing paint or something, and the episode becomes the most ridiculous out of nowhere BS I've ever seen. William Shatner could have shown up fighting a gorn and it would have made more sense. The episode became a musical Alice in Wonderland, and I turned it off as soon as it was clear that people were going to be dressing like idiots and singing.

This is beyond horrible. They follow up a tense and emotional episode with a horrible musical? I'm not against musical episodes per se. Buffy had an awesome one (Once More with Feeling) which is one of my favorite episodes of that show. It used the gimmick well, and it did a good job of still using the goofy idea to further plot and character development, including some pretty serious stuff. But the characters didn't dress like morons to do it, and it didn't take place in a set that looks like its for a middle school play. The Buffy episode also didn't magical solve everyone's problems at the end of the episode (I did read the last paragraph on the Xena wiki to find out that this was all for as a horrible reset button for Xena/Gabrielle's relationship, but I didn't waste my time even bothering to read the main part of the summary).

I have never seen stuff so horribly resolved in my life. This isn't jumping the shark. This is grabbing a shark, taming it with your bare hands, attaching wheels to the shark, filling a pit with rabid lions, and then jumping over the pit of rabid lions on the shark. This was legitimately insulting. Its like the people in charge were giving a giant middle finger to the audience. Or, more likely, they wrote themselves into a corner with the Xena/Gabrielle trouble, and decided to use a gimmick to fix a mistake they had made and weren't good enough to fix legitimately.

I honestly can't believe they did this. I like the characters way too much to quit, but if any episode this late in the game would have made me chuck my Xena DVDs, it would have been this one. It was a slap in the face, and easily the worst thing the show has ever done.

 

[Timewalker]

Xena's attempt to kill Gabrielle came from a place where Xena felt Gabrielle had betrayed her and was therefore ultimately responsible for Solon's death. Gabrielle had refused to destroy Hope, and Hope grew up to kill Solon. In Xena's mind, this makes it All Gabrielle's Fault and therefore Gabrielle must pay.

It's about mother-love, betrayal, revenge, and forgiveness.

And I don't like the musical aspect of it, either. They should have done it as a normal episode.

Mind you, there are some Xena fans who consider this the best episode of the entire series.

 

[OmahaStar]

I honestly can't believe they did this. I like the characters way too much to quit, but if any episode this late in the game would have made me chuck my Xena DVDs, it would have been this one. It was a slap in the face, and easily the worst thing the show has ever done.

Unfortunately, as you gave up (yet again), you simply do not know what you're talking about. Yes, it DID come after an extremely emotional episode. There is a reason for Bitter Suite, and if you had bothered to watch and stick around until the end, you would know what it was, and what Xena & Gabrielle have to go through.

I'm going to love your reaction to the series finale, since you've skipped about a third of the series, including every single episode that directly sets things up for the finale.

 

[kirk55555]

Xena's attempt to kill Gabrielle came from a place where Xena felt Gabrielle had betrayed her and was therefore ultimately responsible for Solon's death. Gabrielle had refused to destroy Hope, and Hope grew up to kill Solon. In Xena's mind, this makes it All Gabrielle's Fault and therefore Gabrielle must pay.

It's about mother-love, betrayal, revenge, and forgiveness.

I get that, but it still wasn't Xena. She was reformed enough to not revert back to murder, even if someone betrayed her. Or, at least, she should have been. It felt really out of character at this point in the series. The writers really needed to decide if they even want Xena to be a hero, because they can't keep reverting her to evil whenever they want to spice up an episode, its basically character assassination.

I honestly can't believe they did this. I like the characters way too much to quit, but if any episode this late in the game would have made me chuck my Xena DVDs, it would have been this one. It was a slap in the face, and easily the worst thing the show has ever done.

Unfortunately, as you gave up (yet again), you simply do not know what you're talking about. Yes, it DID come after an extremely emotional episode. There is a reason for Bitter Suite, and if you had bothered to watch and stick around until the end, you would know what it was, and what Xena & Gabrielle have to go through.

I'm going to love your reaction to the series finale, since you've skipped about a third of the series, including every single episode that directly sets things up for the finale.

Solan uses magic dying kid powers to make the worst dimension imaginable, probably because the writers realized that they had to reset the Xena/Gabrielle relationship which they'd royally messed up. They added singing as a moronic gimmick because they weren't good enough to figure out a way to fix the relationship in a normal episode without a gimmick to distract people. So, the cast dresses like the crew raided a high school drama class's wardrobe and set, and had everyone sing stupid songs so people wouldn't think about the fact that important stuff was being resolved way too quickly because the people in charge needed everything back to normal immediately.

As for the series finale, I know that Xena gets killed in Japan, because they couldn't think of a more random place I guess and killing Xena was the best way to troll the fans. Season 6 is going to be a tough one, if I even bother to watch that time skipped mess. It seems like Season 5's Anthony & Cleopatra would be a better ending point, since its the last episode before the events leading to the horrible time skip. Knowing how I am I'll almost certainly get season 6 eventually, but I'm not particularly excited to get to that part of the series.

Also, I want to point out that I've barely even skipped enough episodes to have skipped a third of a season, if that, much less a third of the series.

 

[Forbin]

When I saw the Bitter Suite, I though, wow, what an accomplishment - Joe LoDuca is a friggin genius. I love his music for the series, and he can write opera as well.

Over the years, and especially after the Buffy musical (which actually WAS genius), I found myself liking Bitter Suite less and less. On the basic level, it's just dialog set to music (which I guess pretty much defines opera), and at times was pretty clunky.

The goofy look, though, i think was appropriate to the dream/fanasty world Xena was trapped in. And a hell of a tour de force of 90s digital effects!

 

[kirk55555]

One Against An Army (Xena) - This was a decent, but predictable episode. Gabrielle gets hurt right as the persian army is invading. Xena has to choose between saving a poisoned Gabrielle or slowing down the persian army to help the Athenians. Of course she manages to do both, and the day is saved. The episode had no tension over gabrielle because I did not believe for an instant that she would die, but it was still done decently and had some good moments.

 

[Kelthaz]

When I saw the Bitter Suite, I though, wow, what an accomplishment - Joe LoDuca is a friggin genius. I love his music for the series, and he can write opera as well.

Over the years, and especially after the Buffy musical (which actually WAS genius), I found myself liking Bitter Suite less and less. On the basic level, it's just dialog set to music (which I guess pretty much defines opera), and at times was pretty clunky.

Unfortunately I saw "Bitter Suite" for the first time after I had already seen Buffy's "Once More With Feeling", so it didn't have the same impact on me. But it was still a great episode. The only criticism I have is that Xena forgave Gabrielle too easily. I would have preferred for them to remain apart for the rest of the season and only become friends again during the finale which would make you know what even more dramatic.