Coming Home

Just for you, o spoiler-free fans, did I dig that little ditty up out of the sludge and muck that houses such piquant tunes as the Brady Bunch theme and that happy little be-bop what went along with the Tidy Bowl man. Ew. I Done Ma Dudie.

Lessee, where were we, Gab took a dive into a volcano, no, wait... Gab's the best thing in Xena's life... um, not quite it... Right. I got it—Xena slimmed the Pantheon down to maybe Pan, leastways I think he's the only one left, did she do for Dionysus? Anyone notice? Damn Jacobean tragedies, it's so hard to get a realistic body count, you'd think it was the Vietnam war (ahem) police action.

So our new and lastest season opens with an idyllic silvan scene, dappled spring leaves (whups! no leaves, just bare branches, so okay, bare branches) in the sunshine, dappled spring Amazon bellies shifting in and out of the shadows, clanking soldiery stolidly stumping down a forest path. Hm. 'Pears the Amazons are stalking them. Like Red Injuns and the cavalry. They're even all painted up (their lip gloss is a clashing colour, though) for fightin'.

We know they're Amazons cos they're women and they ain't hardly dressed to speak of. But what we don't know is, who're them soldier-boys? Okay, they got head to foot black leather, barely dance-hall quality, and enscrolled shields, but these're slightly different than the ones the Romans had in Britannia (they're shorter. I think the soldiers may be shorter too. Might not be, though.) and other than that, they're kinda anonymous. Hm.

So anyway, these generic warmongers are clanking down the high road, completely and totally oblivious to the bare naked abs not even partially hidden by the tree stumps and scorched branches they purport to hide behind. These dudes are so slow, you know they're gonna get their hinder whupped any second now.

No need to keep watching them. In another part of the forest, Xena and Gabrielle and Amarice, excuse me, Eve, Amarice died somewhere in all the fireworks, didn't she? Dang. Sing a song and torch some wood, however annoying she was, she was real good at carrying stuff and most importantly, she wasn't Eve. Anyway, Xena and Gab and Little Miss are hiking up a slope and going over backstory in case one of them forgot who did for the gods and who chucked her staff into a river, vowing eternal peaceableness and sharp sais, they've been dead a few times now and need reminding of stuff, you'll understand someday when you've been dead once or twice, and it seems that Ares (not quite dead, but no longer a god, and you know that just chaps him where he lives) wanted to meet them pretty much right there and they owe him everything (shame the way that being dead thing works the ol' brain cells into such porridge) cos he gave up his godhood to keep them from being killed yet again, not like they wouldn't have found a way around it, sheesh—war gods. Too many knocks on the noggin.

Anyway, seems they're hiking through Amazon lands, as Eve notices in the merest touch of foreshadowing, but Interfor's been there before them and the clearcutting can be seen from Mars. Amazons sans trees make for mighty exposed abs, which effect can be noted in the switch to a pitched battle between the soldiers and the Amazons we saw earlier. Now, RPG fans, you tell me—in an all-out confrontation between Dexterity and Studded Leather, what wins? Those boys have wooden heads, true, but they do have AC out the wazoo compared to the Deerskin Bikini tribe. Good thing Xena and Co. are in the vicinity, they turn the tide with their, um, their Starring Power +10 and the soldiers run away. (Eve manages some nice moves, despite being wrapped Roman style in pressed linen the colour of dead pond weeds. Someone should point out to the costumer that Romans hung out in the marketplace in that getup, they didn't go out brawling in it, if only because it binds one's left arm.)

Okay, so Our Grrls chat with the Zon Queen and learn much, mainly that Ares is the grand poobah of the leather boys and also the chairman of Interfor and is out on a rampage not seen since Billy Bob got into Orville's moonshine and took the tractor through the pumpkin patch and out into the lettuce fields. He's hurting for something, well, so was Billy Bob, but no matter, the titles are on!

In time of ancient.... what the hell? Hey, these are new, no, well, some of them are... damn. There ain't no one but a hardcore nutball woulda noticed, dunno why they bothered if that's all the change there's to be. Oh, well, whatever rocks Xenastaff's world.

Back to the action, Xena sends Gab off to chat with the queen about Ares, while she heads for Ares' camp. Cut to Ares chewing out the leader of the patrol what got its butt whupped just a bit ago. Ares stomps into his tent and can't even catch a fly, actually, we spend a hell of a lot of film on demonstrating that Ares ain't a god any more. Xena shows up and taunts him. Meanwhile, Gab gets more backstory out of Marga, the queen. Ares is harassing them, who knows why? Back in the tent, Ares tells Xena that he wants her to sneak into the Amazon village and get the ambrosia he knows they're hiding, so he can be a god again. She would rather he go to war, she likes it, he likes it, what's the problem?

Hey, this stuff is the plot, and I gotta lay out the plot, no matter how thin it is. Anyway, here's just tons of backstory, laid out nicely in a couple scenes as neat as you please. Not jarring a bit, till that last. Xena don't seem herself. Normally, while she might not object to nibbling Ares' earlobes, she does rain on the war parade.

Ares loves it, but can't quite go for it. Then Gabrielle shows up and he falls hook, line and sinker.

Back in Zonland, the Deerskin Bikini tribe is running the obstacle course under the watchful eyes of Varia and Eve. Varia, the second in command, is trying to get Eve to spar with her.

At the same time, Eve is in Ares' tent, crawling all over him. Then Xena and Gabrielle... a threesome... there's something fishy about all this.

Ares leaves the tent, to mobilize for all-out assault, and the three women change into Furies. It was them all along! Well, not them in the Amazon village, though why not I don't know. Heck, for all I know, it's been the Furies since the whole thing on the crosses with the snowy Romans and Caesar, and the real Xena and Gabrielle are hanging out in the Elysian Fields, keeping order since Hades was offed. Think about it—did you ever see Eve and Eli in the same place? Where it couldn't be explained by mirrors? Or wizards?

Okay, I'm reaching.

The Furies whole plan has been to get Ares to call on Xena for help to get her in range, then do her in in some way, so they could... rule in place of the Gods? Why on earth don't they just do that anyway? Okay, Lunacy says that's cos it would shoot them to number one with a bullet on Xena's hit parade, and gods know she's been shooting Expert when it comes to offing dieties lately. Okay, I'll buy that. I'm easy.

The mobilization is full underway. There's some more bits where Ares' armourer brings him a new breastplate and the Furies (disguised) chaff him into rejecting it. No one but Ares can see the Furies (disguised) so there's quite a bit of footage from now on used to show the reactions of his troops to him talking to air, like famous generals never do stuff like that. For cryin' out loud, troops don't bat an eye to anything outside of the sacrificing of babies in their leaders—they are not gonna blink at Ares talking to himself.

By the time the Furies (disguised) are done with Ares, he's just this side of babbling. Time to see what the Amazons are up to. Oh. Shucks. Varia's up to getting Eve to out herself as the Roman who killed Amazons, burnt their houses, sold the living into slavery and spat in their milk. That was easy, actually.

That sets up the bit where Xena and Eve and Gabrielle have a sensitive chat in the Amazon jail, about how Eve should have told them about the Amazon portion of her resume', and then in a segue clumsy as a three-legged ox on a rocky beach, Xena apologizes to Gabrielle for... bashing out her brains in a dead-on chakram toss.

Gabrielle cuts her off, of course. So would I. Woman's still got that chakram, after all. So Gab does the smart thing and forgives her.

Ares and his gang are busy clearing rocks from the pass (that ol' chakram, again, I condense a lot, you know) and FuryXena appears to taunt him about it. His soldiers worry about him. Then RealXena appears and they argue. That boy's just not right. She runs off and he shouts at the men. Even for a sometime god, the descent into madness is, well, banal.

The Deerskin Doegrrls prepare for war. Xena tries to persuade them to retreat. Marga puts her in her place with a few words, then nobly leads her people to what may be their last stand, but they'll go down the way they lived, by golly. Why Xena and Gabrielle think the Amazons are no match for a nutcase and his merry fellows is a mystery, but maybe they're adding the Dexterity v. AC scores and coming up short on the Amazon side of the ledger.

No matter. When the Zons and the Bozos meet, Xena taunts Ares into deserting his army and chasing her. With their leader, such as he was, gone, the soldiers have no stomach to continue the battle, and retreat. Zons cheer, arm in arm.

Okay, so the forest is saved for another day. Righteousness prevails. But hark! there is yet plot to be denoued. Xena, after riding hell for leather night and day and night and half a morning maybe, ends up in an part of the set with a totally different climate. It's snowy. And icy. Likely a bit chilly, too, but she seems warm enough. There's a froze-over pond nearby. She seems to be expecting it. Ares shows up, Xena flings the chakram at him (it misses) and they fight. With their fists. It looks painful, but not near so bad as it ought, some sensibility from 50's gunslinger brawls prevails. There's only a bit of blood drooling. Ares is wretched. Xena goads him into knocking her ass over teakettle into the pond, where he talks through a sheet of ice to her dying face. Once she's out of it, the Furies exit his ear in a stream of multi-coloured banners, much like a birthday party invite. They rejoice as he comes to his senses, then, before anyone can blink, the chakram hurtles round and lops off their heads. (Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run...) Ares pulls Xena's body to the shore and rages in his grief over what's been done. Just then, Gabrielle and Eve (Gab sprung Eve from jail in an object lesson on justice and morality) and brought her and a couple armloads of blankets to this spot, seems Xena told her what the plan was, and they wrap Xena's body in the blankets and Gabrielle gives her vigourous mouth-to-mouth, bruising her own lips in the process (or maybe Xena had a blueberry pie off-camera) and our heroine lives! just in time to catch the returning chakram.

Now, brainier folks than I have timed the chakram's path through the ether and have come up with four minutes' flight time, and have thusly posited that this just canNOT be for real, even in Xenaverse terms, cos when Xena flung the earlier record-breaking Chakram Toss of Tosses, in Been There, Done That, she spent damn near half the ep measuring and signifying and testing and angling and practically invented Euclidean geometry on the spot, took several days, and this time she just chucks it?! Well, my thought (for what it's worth) is that this is a different, new and improved, chakram. This is the chakram with not only the JATO units of the old, but also with some rudimentary powers of understanding and reasoning, and that Xena's been working with it during the off-season, teaching it first to sit, then to stay, and fetch, and find Timmy, and rescue trapped firefighters, until now when it counts, that chakram will hurtle right out of camera range and then hover until its cue is called. So there.

Okay, Xena's alive (surprise!) and the Furies aren't (just check off another three) and Ares is still mortal and still got it bad for Xena, but she tells him it ain't on and kisses him like it might be and that's that for the ep.

All in all, okay ep. This godkilling thing is at best forced, but this ep does it as well as any could. Nice to see Amazons fighting like warriors, even if they do wear lip gloss. Eve is, well, not bright.