Hercules/Xena (Spoilers)

[kirk55555]

I don't know what else to say. I HATE evil Xena. I have no desire to see her do anything. There also hasn't been one essential flashback episode yet ("essential" to me being an episode I'd have to see or end up getting confused during later episodes). So, all trying to watch Adventures in the Sin Trade would do is make me angry, andI don't find that idea very attractive (especially after just sitting through the horrible Sacrifice). I read the decently detailed summary on the xena wiki, and now I'm moving on. This tactic hasn't failed me so far, and helped prevent wasted time. Xena's past is in the past, and I'm only interested in what she's doing in her present.

 

[Forbin]

Her past is how she GOT to her present.
You must have no family photo albums.

I had to watch Sin Trade last night just because. I'd forgotten the brilliant cinematography, phenomenal musical/choral score. The ep is a visual and auditory, practically hallucinatory, experience. Sometimes the story isn't all - the experience is. The journey, not the destination. Reading a summary gives you none of it.

 

[kirk55555]

Her past is how she GOT to her present.
You must have no family photo albums.

I had to watch Sin Trade last night just because. I'd forgotten the brilliant cinematography, phenomenal musical/choral score. The ep is a visual and auditory, practically hallucinatory, experience. Sometimes the story isn't all - the experience is. The journey, not the destination. Reading a summary gives you none of it.

Well, we all like different things. I'm personally not watching Xena for a "visual and auditory, practically hallucinatory, experience". I just want to see good characters having adventures. Evil Xena is a badly done character, she's irritating (when she's not just cartoonishly evil) and I already know how her story will go.

Xena's past is very important to the character and show, and it can be used well. But, not by flashback episodes. Its when things come from the past but have all the events take place in the present (like normal TV shows) where the past needs to be used (and even then it doesn't always work, like how badly her interactions with Caesar are generally written). I don't need to waste time watching events that sound really irritating happen to a character I don't like.

 

[kirk55555]

Mercenary (Hercules) - Hercules is escorting a convict to Sparta for trial, when the boat they're on is shipwrecked. They end up on a deserted island with a lot of danger, and end up helping themselves. They get to know each other, and after Spartan authorities decide to kill the mercenary without a fair trial, Hercules helps him escape and return to his family, on the condition that he gives up being a mercenary. This was a fairly standard adventure, but it was entertaining and done well.

 

[kirk55555]

In Sickness and In Hell (Xena) - This was a great, goofy episode. Xena has to go get Argo, who she apparently left alone when she went traveling in Adventures in the Sin Trade. Along the way she gets head lice, and Gabrielle gets a horrible rash. They end up having to help Joxer save a village from a group of horsemen, the leader of which now has Argo. This episode was funny and entertaining. Seeing Xena and Gabrielle slowly lose it as their problems get worse was great. Gabrielle versus the killer rabbit was also surprising and funny. This was exactly the type of episode I needed after sitting through Sacrifice.

 

[Forbin]

Eczema and Scabrielle. Heh.

 

[kirk55555]

Doomsday (Hercules) - This was a lackluster episode. An inventor named Daedalus starts making weapons after the death of his son Icarus, and hercules has to stop the weapons from being used for evil. along the way a pretty pointless, and annoying, reporter named Katrina tags along basically doing nothing important for the whole episode. Overall, this was bad, just not very good. The mechanical fighting suit was kind of interesting, though.

 

[kirk55555]

Love Takes a Holiday (Hercules) - This was a fun episode. Aphrodite gets bored with being the goddess of love, so she quits and tries to find a new job (causing trouble for all the romantic couples of the world). At the same time, Hephaestus decides he wants a wife, so he unfreezes a village he had frozen in time to try to get a woman he wanted to marry him. The woman just wants to find her son, and runs into Iolaus while trying to find him. E

ventually, they figure out that her son escaped the time freeze curse, and eventually grew up and fathered Ioalus, making the woman his grandmother. Aphrodite falls for Hephaestus (he was already in love with her) and she goes back to being the goddess of love. This was a very good episode. Hercules doesn't appear at all, but Iolaus and Aphrodite have a bunch of great scenes together, and the story was entertaining.

 

[Timewalker]

I never saw that one. I'll have to look it up.

 

[kirk55555]

A Good Day (Xena) - A bland episode. It wasn't bad, but it was forgettable. Caesar shows upin Greece fighting a civil war among the Romans, but its not that interesting. The best thing I can say about the episode is that Xena doesn't act like a cartoonishly obsessed idiot in this episode, which I hope continues if (or more likely when) Caesar appears again.

 

[kirk55555]

A Tale of Two Muses (Xena) - Xena spoofs/rips off Footloose, and its horrible. I don't know why they decided to steal the plot of a horrible movie and do any episode about it, but it was atrocious. To make things worse, they use the super annoying teen Tara again. Not even Autolycus can save this pile. It was a complete waste of 45 minutes.

 

[kirk55555]

Mummy Dearest (Hercules) - This was a decent adventure. Two thieves steal an egyptian mummy that is (of course) cursed. In ends up in the hands of Salmoneus (who doesn't know its stolen) as the main attraction of "Salmoneus's House of Horrors", in a city that is setting up for a Halloween-like celebration. The mummy comes to life, and Hercules has to defeat it. In the end, he beats it by sealing it in wax, although the end showed it might still be alive (although I doubt we'll see it again). This was an ok episode, and Salmoneus had some good parts. The mummy looked pretty good, although the other villain (who wanted to control the mummy) was kind of generic, and the egyptian princess wasn't very interesting.

 

[kirk55555]

Locked Up and Tied Down (Xena) - This as a complete waste of 45 minutes. It was irritating, and had no redeeming elements. Basically, Xena gets put in prison for someone she killed when she was evil. It turns out the person wasn't dead, and obviously Xena leaves the prison. Its far from the worst episode, but it is worthless. Its just a mediocre episode made to fill a slot in the season schedule.

 

[kirk55555]

Crusader (Xena ) - Another waste of time. It wastes a lot of the episode trying to make you think that Xena and gabriewlle are splitting up, with Gabrielle going with the guest character/crazy woman Najara. I'm pretty sure no one has ever been fooled by this. Najara herself was boring at best and annoying at worst. Najara is a religious warrior "purging" the world of evil, which means a lot of killing, including (Xena and gabrielle find out near the end) unarmed prisoners without a trial. Xena and Najara had a decent fight, but that's really the only positive about this episode. The rest was mostly "meh".

Past imperfect (Xena) - This is an evil Xena flashback episode, so its obviously getting skipped. It is kind of funny that they decide to flashback to Xena's war of the centaurs/Solan's birth, long after that was over and done with. That probably makes this the most pointless flashback episode.

 

[kirk55555]

Not Fade Away (Hercules) - This was a pretty good episode. We see Hera make a new Enforcer (a artifical being made to serve hera, this time a woman who is made of fire) and the return of the first Enforcer (a woman made of water). The first Enforcer helps Hercules beat the second one because of a deal Hercules made with Hades. If Hercules brings the first Enforcer with him Hades will resurrect Ioalus, who was killed by the second Enforcer. We also see Hercules's mother and Jason. The story was entertaining, and there were some good fights between the two Enforcers and the second Enforcer with Hercules. Ioalus also meets his father in Tartarus, which was interesting but I wish he'd mentioned seeing his Dad's mother, recently saved from a time freeze curse in Love Takes a Holiday.

 

[Merlanthe]

Past imperfect (Xena) - This is an evil Xena flashback episode, so its obviously getting skipped. It is kind of funny that they decide to flashback to Xena's war of the centaurs/Solan's birth, long after that was over and done with. That probably makes this the most pointless flashback episode.

Only half the episode is flashbacks and they correspond with what's happening to Xena in the present as she realises that her own city conquering strategies are being used by the evil invaders so her imperfect past has come back to haunt her. Also you may have noticed when reading the summaries for skipped episodes that most the flashback episodes this season, sin trade and the road trip to China, feature Solan's father Borias as a main player.

Borias undergoes character development throughout those episodes going from ruthless warlord to trying to be a decent person. Basically he undergoes the same character arc that Xena did when she decided to change and seek redemption for her past actions. His undoing is that he genuinely cares about Xena and wants her to change with him but she just isn't ready for that yet.

It's one of Xena's regrets that she held him back from having the same chance at redemption that she got and contributed to his death. IMHO those flashback episodes are more about Borias character arc than Xena and I see this episode as the tragic conclusion of Borias story and quite far from pointless but that's just me.

 

[kirk55555]

Well, to me, everything I needed to know about Borias was explained in the episode where we learned about Solan. He's not a character that needed fleshing out, at least in my opinion. I'm sure Xena got together with a lot of people in her older days. All Borias did that was relevant to the "present" Xena was that he fathered Solan, besides that he really doesn't matter, at least to me

Anyway, back to the episode I've watched:

The Key to the Kingdom (Xena) - This was a great episode. Its technically a "Xena-lite" episode, but one where Lucy Lawless is in throughout. but, she's playing Meg for the majority of the episode, with Autolycus and Joxer also being the main characters of the story. They want to get the crown of Athena, a valuable object, but of course things aren't always what they seem, and hijinks ensue. The "key" to getting the crown turns out to be a baby, and it turns out Meg just wanted to get the baby because she felt it was unloved (it was being held by warlords who were trying to figure out how to use it to get the crown) and she wanted to give it a good life.

They end up using the baby to get the crown, revealing along the way that the baby is the King who had originally possessed the crown before Athena turned him into a baby to teach him a lesson. Xena shows up at the end to save the day, and give a disappointed Meg a pep talk. This was a very good episode. Having Meg, Joxer and autolycus together was great. Lawless did a great job as Meg, and the three characters together were very entertaining.

 

[kirk55555]

Daughter of Pomira (Xena) - This was kind of a Xena version of TNG's Suddenly Human, and just as bad as that one. Xena and Gabrielle find a girl who had been kidnapped by the Horde as a child, and raised by them. They try to get her back for her parents, and the predictable stuff occurs. The girl stays with the horde, but to try and bring peace. The episode was predictable and annoying.

 

[kirk55555]

If the Shoe Fits (Xena) - Gabrielle tells a little girl a Xena version of Cinderella. Its apparently the only appearance of Aphrodite this season, and its horrible. Its a comedy episodethat's just boring and tedious, with no redeeming qualities.

Paradise Found (Xena) - This was a horrible episode. Basically, an evil Yoga Instructor tries to teach Gabrielle his new agey methods, so that she'll turn into the statue after xena and gabrielle end up in his world. This world is basically just around to give the most blatant, lazy symbolism they could (Xena gets darker and more monstrous looking and Gabrielle finds "peace", and they even sleep on a giant yin/yang chaped round bed ).

The villain is a generic "new agey" type guru, so basically he's a pretentious ass. He's easily one of the worst villains that has ever appeared on the show. The episode is super predictable too, and its beyond irritating. It also wastes huge amounts of time on yoga montages and training segments that go nowhere, I guess in an attempt to distract the viewers or something. OVerall, this isn't as bad as The Bitter Suite, but its still really bad, and extremely annoying and pointless.

 

[OmahaStar]

OVerall, this isn't as bad as The Bitter Suite ...

Out of curiosity, how would you know? You didn't actually watch that episode, as you'll recall ...