PATREON ONLY: Xena Warrior Princess 3x17 Reaction
Added 2024-10-20 12:46:45 +0000 UTC
Comments
I need “But yeah, let’s get into it” on a T-shirt, the way I need oxygen to breathe. 😂
Tyler Ward
2024-12-19 00:35:31 +0000 UTCWell that's just life isn't it? Evil Xena was young and reckless, good Xena is around 10 years older and has learned a lot and become wiser.. just like all of us, hopefully ha!
Herbert West MD
2024-10-21 11:26:06 +0000 UTCIt’s storytelling on a budget with a purpose. Xena is always great at that.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 22:37:20 +0000 UTCWell. Since this season is all about chipping away at her naivety and innocence, that makes a lot of sense.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 22:35:27 +0000 UTCUsually clip show episodes are kind of a drag, but this is one is so well paced and the flashbacks fit so well into the narrative of the episode that you forget you're watching a clip show.. not to mention when they add new information into the flashback at the end recontextualizing the whole thing.. it's just brilliant, and Renee and Kevin are just great here.. love this episode
Herbert West MD
2024-10-20 22:16:53 +0000 UTCOhhhh that's a great point, you're right, I really like that 😁😁
Herbert West MD
2024-10-20 21:12:10 +0000 UTCGabrielle having to come to terms for the first time with the selfishness and jealousy that can come with truly being in love for the first time. Think she's finally seeing there was some truth to aphrodite's views on love in 'for whom the bell tolls'
mary smith
2024-10-20 20:04:08 +0000 UTCIncredible scene 😁
Herbert West MD
2024-10-20 19:25:04 +0000 UTCAh I see. I thought it was because Xena turned good on her own so that’s why I thought he said it that way.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 18:35:00 +0000 UTCNo, I mean Joxer kept giving himself credit for things Xena did, but when it came to the Hercules joke, since the real story is Herc turned Xena good (which is essentially what happened) Joxer isn't going to tell empty Gabby that Hercules turned HIM good, he changes it to "Herc turned evil and I turned him back to good" so Joxer's still the hero.
Koz
2024-10-20 17:43:22 +0000 UTC'I HATED her for LOVING someone else'...powerful bit of truth there from gabrielle.
mary smith
2024-10-20 17:33:01 +0000 UTCAh, so they played it as Xena was the one who turned Hercules good? But since she turned good on her own he just said “it was complicated”.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 17:30:15 +0000 UTCAnother example of how the people behind this show, and its sibling, make great use of the need to produce occasional clip shows. It's serious drama with Gabby going down memory lane, and plenty of funny stuff with Joxer and blank Gabrielle. (To be clear, no one converted Hercules "back from being evil;" that's Joxer's spin on Xena's first appearances on Hercules, and it's maybe my favorite joke in this episode. I think the clue that this isn't the real Ares is that he disappears with a very different effect than the true god of war usually has. ... I really like how much you enjoyed this one.
Koz
2024-10-20 16:46:19 +0000 UTCShe was riddled with so much negative emotion - so much anger and hate. Of course she would be stupid because all her decisions would be reckless and careless. Her energy wouldn’t be in the right place so neither would her mind. The only reason why she’s much smarter as a good guy is because she thinks things through a lot more. She’s not impulsive unless she’s full of rage and contempt.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 14:42:17 +0000 UTCIt's so funny how good Xena is basically a genius and evil Xena is kind of stupid. I guess ancient Greece is lucky she wasn't at her best when she was marauding through the country. And wow, Gabrielle is good at lying to herself lol. Like, she accepted Ares' help to ruin Xena's plan and she couldn't admit it was out of jealousy? Speaking of, I do like how they spelled it out like that. Lao Ma had such a big impact on Xena. ( not as much as Gabrielle) But of COURSE Gabrielle would be jealous with the way Xena was going on about her, and how she admitted she would throw everything away for a debt.
TurnK
2024-10-20 14:29:31 +0000 UTCRenee was fierce in ‘Forget Me Not’. One of her best acting performances for sure. But I’ve got to talk about Ted Raimi’s side of this episode because he was great too with the character development portrayed for Joxer. Initially takes advantage of Gabrielle having no memories of who she is or who she is in love with. Realizes ON HIS OWN (as in - without being told anything or called out) that he is wrong for it. That is positive CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Take note, Willow. It also checks out that he didn’t cause her to lose her memories. That happens because Gabrielle chooses to erase her memories and going to a temple to do it. He helps her to get her memories back which is only something Gabrielle can do by herself in her head. “And then I realized that I was completely taken by this handsome, mysterious dark leader of men." When you realise that Joxer did tell the scrolls accurately. All he did was replace his name with Xena’s and genderbend while reading it back to Gabrielle. So the events and intimate relations he was narrating were all true but the part about it being Joxer that all these events and intimate relations happened with was not. Further realisation from this unravels itself in a spiral. The scrolls were not just the stories of ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’. The stories were entirely written from Gabrielle’s perspective. Which means they were basically love letters to Xena.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 14:29:08 +0000 UTC'The Debt 1&2' was an interesting turn of events for the show. I think with the introduction of the character Lao Ma you suddenly could interpret Xena's backstory very differently to how you did before because with the establishment of Xena turning evil due to Caesar's betrayal - a past lover in Xena's life - there was also the other side of the coin where - if you want - another past lover in Xena's life had the opportunity of trying to save her from going even further down the evil route and potentially turn her to good again. Interpreting Lao Ma as Xena's first girlfriend, as well as obviously a mentor, provided some context to who Xena really was and that she was struggling with her nature. She wasn't fully evil. she wasn't fully good. She was a mix of dark and light, good and evil, peace and war, violence and pacifism - all these polar opposite contradictions could be seen in her nature so you had to have the characters surrounding her bringing that out. Lao Ma was one of them. And she was so close... yet so far away... Ultimately, Xena turned good on her own but keeping her on the right path was the true challenge... and that's why Gabrielle was so instrumental to Xena's character and her cause for the greater good. It was entirely believable to me that Gabrielle was jealous of Lao Ma because - if you'll allow me to use the 'Dreamworker' water scene analogy, Lao Ma was really the first stone in the ocean after Caesar and if she had the power to pull Xena back into her world and arms enough that Xena would actually kill for her... yeah... it's believable. All of that extra insight only comes into the story of 'The Debt' if you choose to interpret the show as a WLW love story though. If you choose to perceive and understand the characters as queer characters because the show writing leaves it ambiguous enough that you can go either way with it. There's enough room for either way. I just think it's more valuable to interpret all of what goes on in the show as a love story and I specifically think 'The Debt' works for that because it does somewhat validate Xena as a bisexual character.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 13:29:25 +0000 UTCRemember what I was saying about bisexual narratives? This is one but since it's about a female romantic interest they had to be a lot more careful with it. But the fact they did an entire episode about the concept of Gabrielle being jealous over Xena and Lao Ma's intimate relationship is significant, and again, just proves how much they took Xena and Gabrielle's relationship seriously whether it was interpreted as a romantic one or not because this is a DRAMA. It's not a joke. In fact it's the only Gabrielle-centric drama. Yeah, there's humour in it with an amnesiac Gabrielle and Joxer trying to get her to remember but that's completely besides the point of what they're saying here. Which is that Gabrielle betrayed Xena in Chin because she thought Xena was leaving her and going to hook back up with an ex-girlfriend because neither Xena nor Gabrielle had any idea Lao Ma was dead until the point of reaching Chin and then learning that information. So making this an episode in actual context of why Gabrielle did what she did in betraying Xena makes complete sense. Why wouldn't she think that when Xena literally says to her that she'd give her life up with Gabrielle to fulfil some insane debt to a woman she once loved. Gabrielle doesn't understand what that debt is UNTIL Xena explains it after the whole ordeal so - naturally - Gabrielle would think in her grief and anger shit like: "She still loves her and she doesn't want to be with me anymore. I'm nothing to her. I'm not a lover, I'm not a friend, I'm not a sidekick... I never was important to her at all. I was only there to help her pass the time away. Why should I let her have happiness now? Why should I let her have that power over me?" and they really go into this area of thought with her as a full-on drama because petty jealousy like that can be a really compelling storyline and vehicle for character development and we come to get a whole other dimension to Gabrielle's character that we have never gotten before - that we probably never wanted to get - but the creators were like "No, we're taking this relationship so seriously to the point where we have to depict the ugliness in it as well as the beauty because that's what real life couples go through” and Gabrielle has to finally stop lying to herself as well as Xena that her motivations for betraying her and hurting her were not selfish or self-serving because they were and she had to come to terms with the fact that she was never like this when it came to any of the male romantic interests in Xena's life. But with a female one... because she knew Xena was a lot more emotionally invested there... she was a lot worse than she ever was when it came to Ares or Draco or Marcus. She was a lot more fucking concerned and rightly so because like if Xena was into women - why the hell haven't they gotten together? Why are they not more than they are? So you see what I mean about how interpreting them as a slow burn really works with everything going on in the show with all of the narratives because they can do an episode like this and it doesn't feel like it's just come out of left field at all. It feels logical and necessary. I think as much as Season 3 showed us Gabrielle wasn't the entirely innocent, pure or selfless character - this was the storyline arc that showed that she could be pretty freaking vindictive when she can't get her way with Xena or when she wasn't the center of her attention but I thought that all this made her even more of a great character because she wasn't clean cut anymore. She could be a bitch too and so she was on more equal footing as Xena who we know used to be and would absolutely understand where Gabrielle was coming from.
Girl4Music
2024-10-20 13:26:41 +0000 UTC
