Legacy

Okay, that's enough screwing around. Our story opens in the desert, a long way away from wherever the Ship of Chicks disembarked, and X&G are dressed fit to kill, in flowing robes and various and sundry accoutrements as sold in your better Saks Fifth Avenues, and that's just as well, since killing is something any fortune teller hack could predict would be in their futures. What's in their immediate future, though, is a bath.

Gab must got one of them there divining rods, or maybe it's something to do with how she holds the sais, cos she can find standing sweet water even in the middle of a sandstorm. I think it's a sandstorm. Looks a lot more like the dream sequence in Oklahoma!, at least the lighting and the way it's supposed to be blowing sand a mile a minute and Xena's hair barely ruffles and they neither of them seem bothered with sand in their eyes. Anyway, they find an oasis with a sunken bath and the storm goes away and their stunt doubles get all clean. Gabrielle mentions the desert's beauty and Xena notes how she always looks for the good in things, and that right there's the hook of the ep. They hear sounds of fighting in the distance and go to check it out.

Horse banditry have surrounded a group of good folks (the horse people wear dark. the foot people wear white. this is not rocket science.) and are pressing closely. X&G decide to dive right in and help out the foot people, since they're also dressed in whites and pastels and light earth tones and you want, when sorting out your mission and life's work on this planet, to stick close to them as wear complimentary colours.

The butt-kicking's in full swing, right here at the top of the ep. The bandidos are driven off, though Gab's got some slight issues with making the killing thrust when she gets one of them on the ground. The nomads (led by Kahina) are surprisingly ungrateful for their help. When Kahina hears Gab call Xena by name, though, non-gratitude turns into open hostility. Seems Xena and Gabrielle (Kahina calls Gab, "the Battlin' Bard of Potedia". Someone help me out here—when did Gabrielle find time to moonlight as a roller derby queen?) are worshipped hereabouts, and these folk don't take kindly to imposters. Xena proves who they are by putting the Amazing Ronco Slicing Dicing Chakram through its paces, and next thing ya know, all the nomads bow down to the sand right at Xena's and Gabrielle's royal battlin' tootsies.

The bowing down don't stop there, we catch up with them in a tent, settin' on cushions and pretending to eat nameless stir-fry while Kahina wriggles like a kid at Santa's knee, all a-twitter cos she's got the answer to her Roman-hating prayers right in front of her. She's so chuffed, she offers her two boy cousins as bedwarmers for our grrls. Or maybe it's that they're so butt-ugly Kahina takes every opportunity to foist them off on unsuspecting passers-by. This may be the real source of all that animosity between the various nomad tribes in the area, they've sampled Kahina's hospitality once too often. Ah, well, when you're the leader, ya sometimes gotta do stuff like that in the servicing of your own people.

Gabrielle dreams up an Amazon Chastity Oath on the spur of the moment and they retire alone. While drowsing on more cushions, Gabrielle asks Xena if she ever has doubts about when to kill and when to just maim, possibly for life, and Xena says she don't worry about stuff like that and Gab shouldn't either, cos that's how you get hurt. Ethical pondering is a potentially fatal activity in the Xenaverse. Anyway, next day they meet up with another nomad band, whose leader's son was with the original nomad band what was set on by bandits, stay with me here, it can get ugly trying to scorecard all the chatty walk-ons in this ep. The son, Korah, is a pivotal redshi—character. He's one of the first hardcore nutballs in history, tells his dad that X&G practically defeated the evil bandits by doing no more than scrunching their eyebrows meaningfully and so on, and dad goes with it, though in a mature adult progenitor kind of way.

X&G end up in Yet Another Tent, this time with Korah, who adores them, especially Gabrielle, and washes her feet and if he'd had hair longer than earlobe-length would have dried them with it, he's that far gone, and they chat about what it means to be a warrior and the old stories from Gabrielle's battlin' scrolls and so on and so forth and would you teach me how to gut, castrate and hamstring Evil with long knives just like you, Gabs? Well, yeah, she'll be happy to, soon's they have a moment. Not right now, Xena wants to know something pertinant about the Roman defenses and the nomads don't know the answer, so she's gotta find out for herself. Can't do without Gabrielle, though, so the two of them ride off (remember Horse? and how Gabrielle was simply consumed with horselust and how good the two of them worked together, grrl and flowing muscled seaborn mystical sentient beast? The apples they shared? Okay, well, Horse is dust now, or possibly aging glue, it's been awhile since that magical moment. Still, obviously the effects linger on. Gabrielle will ride any four-legged vegan around now.) The twain trot into the nearest Roman fortification and bull their way into the Governor's hall. Xena pretends to be an investor in certain business interests and Gab's her slave. The Roman Gov goes for it, there's apparently so many independently wealthy ladies in Roman Arabia that it's impossible to verify them all, so he doesn't question her claims to high society, he just goes along with whatever she says, and assures her that the nomads are easy pickings for his crack legions.

I have only one query on this and subsequent interactions with the Romans—since when in Sam Hill did the Italian Stallions of Yesteryear affect a Georgian accent? This is weird enough coming from Lucy Lawless, but from the Roman Gov, also a Kiwi through and through, it's an odd mix. The funny part is, he doesn't start that way, but falls into it after Xena drawls a few lines.

Regardless of that, this ep is rife with bit characters mouthing off. Musta been expensive to produce on that score alone, never mind the cost of matching pastels. Right here in the Roman camp is a legionnaire who idly styles Xena as "Caesar's Thracian whore" and other compliments. Why he's wearing blue is a mystery, he's got "redshirt" written all over him.

Anyway, Xena's got the measure of her opponents, and knows how to take them out. Shame that gets sidetracked on the road back, but it does. There's another sandstorm, this one a doozy, it ruffles the mane of Xena's mount, and Gabrielle actually behaves like they've lost sight of one another. It's so bad that Xena takes to carrying the chakram on her left hip. A Shape appears out of the blowing grains and fluff, holding an Implement of Unknown Utility aloft in the manner of the lad who bore the banner midst snow and ice, why is immaterial since to Gabrielle, not to mention judges from all Olympic nations, it looks just like a dagger held aloft in a threatening position Right Next to Xena.

So Gab jumps the guy. I would've, too. Turns out it was Korah with a scroll, a peace treaty scroll at that, but Mohammed in a bucket—just how many cc's of water was on that boy's brain to be wandering around holding a scroll like that? He's supposed to have grown up in the desert, amidst warring tribes and bloodfeuds and all manner of hostilities, and he jogs around holding scrolls aloft like they was daggers? Look, whatever else, he needed to be offed for the good of the gene pool.

Okay, so Gabrielle is consumed with guilt over stabbing Korah. Xena is consumed with the need to cover up and blame it on the Romans. Nice plan, but Gabrielle won't play along. She's one of Those kinds of people, the ones what can't be dissuaded from taking personal responsibility for their actions, no matter what their intentions or the consequences.

So despite Xena taking Korah's body back to his daddy, and conniving by silence in misdirection over who kilt him ("The Romans did it! She saw tracks! In a sandstorm! We'll go for it! We hate Romans! And the Washington Redskins! They're evil!"), Gabrielle is still remorseful. When the nomads capture a random Roman soldier in the desert and decide to execute him for Korah's murder, Gabrielle can stand it no longer. She confesses.

Well, don't the sand hit the fan on that one. Everyone's pissed with Xena cos she lied to them and now they don't think she's moral enough to lead the combined tribes into battle, no wonder they're oppressed if they got such standards for a field marshall. And what they think of Gabrielle now is a complete 180° turn from where they were before. They take her off to Korah's old tribe where she has to spend the night in vigil with his body. She's manacled to the bier, of course, the manacles are big enough for her to slip her hands out any time, but she's too noble to do stuff like that, not like me, and Korah's dad stops in long enough to slap her around and call her names (he don't score real high on the nobility meter neither) and she thinks back on her life since she left home to tag along with Xena, it's a really nice flashback sequence, and seems that despite having the best intentions of not killing or destroying, of breaking the cycle of violence through love, she's still ended up here, beside the body of an innocent whom she's killed. She could use some St. John's wort, fer shure.

Next morning they haul her out into the desert and bury her up to her lip gloss in the sand. While she watches, they play polo with skulls all around her. It's very ritualistic and symbolic and actually highly evolved. Meanwhile, back at Tara, Xena's sipping mint juleps with the Roman governor and persuading him to step up attack preparations on the nomads, who've finally decided to get serious in their game. As they're thundering down the ritual gauntlet alley (which stretches quite a bit in order to build up the suspense), Xena uses her Special Teleporting talent to arrive just in time to chakram the nomads' mallet heads before they can score the winning goal. She's apparently brought the Romans through with her, which distracts the nomads long enough for Xena to dig Gab out (with her bare hands, don't take more'n a few seconds) and hoover her spanking sparkly sand-free, dry-clean her duster and everything, and they have a sensitive chat where Gabrielle voices her inner despair and Xena says that when she felt that way once, Gabrielle was the one who showed her there was yet reasons to go on. And sure enough, there was, so Gab needs to have a bit of faith. Then they join up with the nomads and convince them to let them go ahead with the original plan.

The nomads hightail it down a side canyon and get into position. They've evaded the Romans and come up behind them somehow, and arranged for a sandstorm to further confuse things. Xena takes out the legionnaire what called her a Thracian whore, seemed to take a lot of personal satisfaction in that one, no one ever accused Xena of saintly qualities which saves her a lot of angst when juggling stuff like the Greater Good and Gabrielle's Life, and Gab saves Korah's dad from certain death and she's using her staff again, where's she been keeping it? Maybe the Ganges flows into the Nile and it's just been inching its way along all these years. I'll bet Horse would've, too, if horses lived as long as staves.

Anyway, it's a very nicely done battle, all fast moves and confusion and blowing sand and the good guys win. Later, around the fire, Xena and Gabrielle chat some more and reaffirm what they mean to each other and Korah's dad comes up and now he's talking like he's been eating grits all his life, and while he's ready to forgive Gabrielle he's not ever gonna forget and neither will she, cos Korah coulda been a great warrior, just like Gabrielle, and don't that hurt? Worse'n being buried alive and watching polo ponies charge right for ya.

Very cool ep, lots well-done butt-kicking and several sensitive chats and Gabrielle focus and now she's got to come to terms with what happens when you live your life as a plot device and how to bring it all together into a fully viable ethical theory. Not bad for forty-four minutes.