Chakram

And that's just what that one priest does, when he goes against what he knows to be right, touching that there Sacred Chakram (Limited Edition! Only 500,000 in circulation!) when he knows he ain't put in the winning bid on eBay. So Wienie Priest becomes Wienie Roast Priest, and since he went there in the first place cos Kel told him to, and Ares told Kel not to be telling folks to go steal the Last Chakram, only Ares gets to do stuff like that, the studly god gets a bit ticked at that second rate upstart trailer trash godling for egging the priest on in the first place.

There's a bit at the beginning, with Ares and the Ugly Duckling God, Kel (wasn't he in 10 Little Warlords? What else? Who can name them?), where they go over the plot up till now and introduce some of the supporting characters in Kel's temple (which looks just like Ares' temple, except there's more beer cans and pizza boxes in the corners), and an even longer bit at the very beginning that rehashes the high points of Fallen Angel, just in case we'd forgot or watched Dawson's Creek that week, so we're all supposed to be up on the action, to wit:

• X&G were dead. For the Greater Good, or something.
• While dead, they rearranged Heaven and Hell and incidently, redeemed Callisto.
• Callisto worked through Eli to bring X&G back to life (Ares is very snotty about this. As if he ever did such a cool trick.)
• Eli, for some reason, is taking all the credit for it.

The real story finally begins next scene, with X&G cuddled up on stone slabs wrapped in flour sacks and sipping bowls of Campbell's Veggie Deluxe, and Amarice comes back into the pre-Mycenian mortuary with another wooly blanket for Xena and the two halves of the broken chakram (the one Xena's carried around with her for nigh on ten winters now, across Asia and Greece and Africa and Europe and Britannia, where it survived the raising of Stonehenge unscathed, and only at the last in Ides of March did it finally give up and bust, very symbolic that was, and a refreshing tip o' the hat to continuity, since it's supposed to be busted when Janice and Mel find Ares' tomb in Xena Scrolls) and offers them to Xena, who takes them in much the same manner as one would take a dead squirrel from the mouth of a loved cat.

Uh-oh.

After Amarice leaves, Xena and Gabrielle look at each other lingeringly, and talk a bit about being back. Together. Again. Always. And smile tiredly while LoDuca tosses in a phrase or two from the end of Bitter Suite, and then Xena starts fooling with the chakram bits, and lets out that she don't know what they are.

Uh-oh.

Well, it had to happen. Gab's only been dead once or twice, whereas this is Xena's what? fourth time to come back? You know, in the best RPGs this ressurection thing takes its toll on a person, and after a few times, you're just not quite the Warrior Princess you once were.

So after the title sequence, (where we learn we're watching Xena: Warrior Princess! Yay!) they go to the market of the neaby town to pick up some clothes and other odds and ends (did I mention Joxer was in this ep? No? How forgetful of me.) and that bit with the busted chakram is the last bit of continuity we'll see for awhile, since a major bit of Ides of March and Fallen Angel was that it was snowing. Winter. Cold. X&G, back from the dead, are still a bit chilly, so the clothes our heroines choose are suited to what kind of climate? Okay, whattheheck, Gabrielle's new outfit warmed me right up.

While Xena's checking the effect of a shawl in a mirror, Gabrielle comes out with a pair of fancy knives (sais, they're called, Rob's infatuation with Japanese budget flicks is showing again) and presents them to Xena. Xena's mode of fighting has always been a single broadsword wielded either one- or two-handed, so Gabrielle naturally feels that a pair of long knives with cup-hooked guards will suit her right down to the ground. This is not how you jog the memory of an amnesiac, by surrounding her with new and different things, and Xena feels that, loved cat or not, she ain't touching that squirrel. Just then an assortment of ne'er-do-well scumbags surround them and Gabrielle and Amarice go to work kicking butt while Xena stands there looking puzzled. You can see she's starting to work things out, this at least is familiar territory, but before she can get very far one of the uglies knocks her to her knees. The head baddie strolls onto the scene just then, and in a flurry of punches and kicks, X&G and Amarice get away long enough for Xena to drop the town gate between them and the bad guys. (Why on earth so many walled towns in the Xenaverse have gates and such that can only be opened or closed from the outside is beyond me, no wonder they have so much trouble with warlords overrunning them all the time.) The bad guys call out impotent threats through the bars to the effect that this ain't the end of things (I should hope not, show's scheduled to run for another 40 minutes), Kel will have them, eep!

More confusion for poor Xena's muddled memories, who's Kel? Should she know? Maybe there's a phone number in her datebook. She'll have to check when she has a minute.

They make it back to their hideaway in the hills, where Eli awaits them. He thinks the memory thing might be his fault, he sneezed or something during the Callisto mind-meld energy-transfer thing that kept Xena's awareness of the violent parts of her past (aka 65%, with 25% being time spent playing horsie with Borias, remember how he was so keen on the Centaurs? and the rest being the miscellanious she's got total recall on now) from polluting the pure vessel that was once a Destroyer of Nations.

Gabrielle looks out the window to see the uglies from the marketplace have figured out how the gate works and are even now on the path to their door. Where I would have proposed rigging a fast rock drop over the lintel, Eli (and this just illustrates why he's such a wimp) leads them all outside (presumably down another, non-brigand-infested path) to go have a sensitive chat with an old friend of his, who Eli thinks has Kel's unlisted number on his icebox. As they leave, Ares materializes in the doorway, watching them out.

Next scene shows our party strolling leisurely along a sun-dappled path through a lightly wooded region (snow's stopped) and Joxer takes Eli aside (Joxer's in this ep) to ask his advice on how to tell Gabrielle he's in love with her. I always check with ascetics on the best way to get women to notice me, too. They pull up in a clearing and Amarice prepares to slip off to bag something for the pot. Xena wants to tag along, but Amarice wants to be alone, despite Xena showing how fast she can move. Amarice does not like weirdness, and a Xena who can't fight but who can still move like Flash Gordon is high on her list of Weirdnesses to be Avoided. Xena trails after her anyway, just in time to get captured by Kel's Boys, who apparently jogged down the path instead of strolling, and shows the value of Keeping in Shape and Sticking to Your Plan, which lessons make X:WP highly desirable viewing for the kidlings in your life.

(Meanwhile, back at the campfire, Gabrielle and Eli have a sensitive chat about Ways and Paths and such. Gabrielle says that her Way is not the Way of Wimpiness Love after all, big surprise, but the Way of Protecting Xena Till She's Got Her Shit Together And Then We'll See Love.)

Amarice, who got herself captured first, tries to fight their way out of the mess, but it don't work, since that Kel dude is one of the uglies. She gets knocked out when he breathes on her (god-breath! don't let it happen to your teeth!) and they take Xena away.

Some time later (it's dark. the moon's out, though. surprise.), Gabrielle, who's dedicated her life to protecting Xena, finally remembers that her charge has wandered off into the woods (give the bard a break—she was dead, too) and goes to look for her. She finds Amarice instead, still groggy. Gabrielle picks up the trail of the gang and everyone follows her. Ares appears again as they leave the clearing, looking put out or possibly constipated.

Scene shifts to Xena and Kel in the temple from the opening sequence, where Kel and Ares had their chat. Kel wants Xena to go after the remaining chakram for him, since he's not having much luck using his regular courier service, and the chakram would seemingly give him some kind of edge over Ares in the war god rankings. Ares shows up just then and he's majorly pissed with Kel. He zaps the manacles off Xena's wrists and then he and Kel go at it. While they're fighting, Xena catches sight of a chakram designed into a wall mosaic, and traces its form. This plus the noise of the fight brings back some memories of herself using a chakram to kick butt from here to yonder, and since the Big Dogs are all distracted with each other, she eases out a handy window and meets up with Gabrielle and the gang in the woods outside the temple. She and Gabrielle must wear radio collars. Or maybe it's like that radar love thing. Whatever.

They all continue on their way to Eli's friend's place, turns out it's the same priest who was barbequed in the opening, but luckily he's left a lot of writings and scrolls and knickknacks lying around for Eli to look through. While he's doing that, Xena goes off to get a bath. Joxer takes that moment to ask Xena's advice on this hopeless Gab thing he's all et up with, and she tells him to stop worrying about getting a response, just tell her he loves her and leave it at that. He goes off.

Ares appears right then and tries to seduce Xena, using her memory loss to his advantage. There's a touch of plot advancement, wherein Ares confirms that her inability to relate to concepts of evil and wrong is for a reason. Bet he doesn't know what it is, though. He does pretend, and tries to kiss Xena, but Gabrielle comes in right then and chews his butt from here to the barn for being such a scuzbag, and he dematerializes in a fit of self-justification.

She and Xena go back into Caleb's living room where Eli confirms that it's the Chakram of Light that Kel and Ares are after, and only the purest soul can touch it. It can kill a god, too, which makes it Special, like Hind's blood, and it's anyone's guess as to why Xena's own chakram, aka the Chakram of Not-Light, never evinced any power to kill immortals, but boy howdy! it did for that bunny rabbit in Aiden's Paradise, didn't it!

I ain't tangented this whole spoiler, I've been just good as gold, and I can NOT stand it any longer: that there Chakram of Light, it's called that cos it's sitting on the light side of a yin-yang piller in what must be the Chakram Hut (I'm really getting way over the use of yin-yang symbology in this show) and in all other respects it is the identical twin to the one Xena's had since forbloodyever, the one that used to once upon a time sit on the dark side of that very pedestal fore Ares nicked it, and what I want to know is, we only have anecdotal evidence that Xena's chakram did indeed come from the dark side—it might've come from the light, you know, and later on someone got a stick or a twig or a pure-as-snow monk and used that to shove the remaining chakram onto the light side... I mean, really, if they'd both been there and a large dog wandered past, wagging its tail and brushed them both to the floor, it'd be anyone's guess as to which was which, wouldn't it? Hey, it could've happened. Betcha it did, too. More than once.

So anyway we'll just take it as read (for now) that the chakram Xena's been frisbeeing all over the Known World is the Chakram of Dark, and now it's busted, and the one they're after (and that neither Ares nor Kel want them to get) is the Chakram of Light. Xena's still concerned that when she does go after it, it'll bring back all the dark stuff she's free of now, and how can that be good? she asks the sky. She wants a sign. Gabrielle comes up just then and they have a sensitive chat about light needing darkness and how balance is really good and lots of cool sage stuff like that. And the sky continues to not fall, so Xena takes that as her Sign.

Next thing we know, Amarice and Gabrielle are infiltrating the forces surrounding the Hut and demoralizing the soldiery and blowing up the gate! Cool! Eli and Xena and Joxer rush in through the chaos and Xena keeps going through the door of the Hut while Gabrielle and Amarice defend her rear. (Dunno what Joxer and Eli are doing just at this moment, but then, why would it matter?) Xena gets all the way into the room with the pedestal and picks up the Chakram of Light. She rushes back outside with it, just in time to join Amarice and Gabrielle and the boys on the front steps, facing off against Kel and Ares and their band. The bad guys take a step back when they see Xena has the Chakram and apparently knows how to use it, but then she says she can't kill (!) and drops it to the ground. Ares is way happy about this, so's Kel and they charge. Gabrielle shoves Xena back inside the Hut, and Amarice follows, snatching up the Chakram as she goes. (that girl's pretty bright, ya know? Annoying in many ways, but very bright.)

Things are starting to really heat up now. Eli's speed reading through that scroll of Caleb's, and notices incidently for all you YAXI collectors out there, that once the Chakram's off the pedestal, anyone can touch it, so neener neener. Also, while the bad guys are coming in and Joxer's telling Gabrielle he loves her and she's looking at him like he was a dead squirrel the cat brought in last week and forgot to mention till now, Eli points out that if the two Chakrams are joined, their power to kill gods is diffused, which would make them of no use to Ares or Kel, so there's an idea, eh? Xena gets the broken one from Amarice (Amarice makes a good Argo-substitute, so far's carrying stuff goes) and puts them all on the pedestal and the busted one fuses in a shower of sparkly things and while it's doing that, Gabrielle is trying to hold off Kel, with not much success, since he's the one with the knock-out breath, and Ares and Eli are facing off, and Ares tries to shove Eli aside but he can't, Eli's got that Avatar thing going for him, and Kel tries to finish off Gabrielle and that does it for Xena's reluctance to kill, she pulls the Light Chakram off the pedestal and splits Kel in two with it and he fries to a pile of dusty charcoal briquettes right there.

Ares tries that mindgame thing on Xena, the one from the bath scene in Caleb's, to get the Chakram from her before she uses it on him, but instead she fuses the two together, forming a yin-yang Chakram that whirls and twirls, slices and dices, splits apart and locks together at the lightest whim of the fx crew. Then our grrls clean house on the remaining uglies. Ares goes bye-bye, the Xena he loves to watch is back and that's fine with him, even if he doesn't get a godkilling toy. Xena and Gabrielle say bye-bye in their turn to Eli, and head for home with Amarice and Joxer (anyone remember why he was in this?) walking ahead.

Okay, 'nother cool ep, with a fair amount of butt-kicking and a worthy successor to the famous Bilious Green Sports Bra. Jury's still out on the yin-yang chakram, though, and goodness knows now how it gets defused and the dark one busted up again in time to find its way into Ares' tomb, but then, Ares ain't been entombed yet, so we'll see. Maybe a dog walks past Xena when she's hanging around a tavern, wagging its tail...