Locked Up and Tied Down

Not that it has anything to do with anything, just between last week and this I done seen a lot of scaffolding, with nooses and trapdoors and whips and chains and backs bared for the lash and this isn't really germaine either, is it?

Um, right. Opening—a forest glade, peaceful & serene, and within its pristine midsts is a half-dressed warrior getting the kinks rubbed out by a fully dressed, or what passes for fully dressed in her world, bard. Xena tells Gabrielle to "look with her fingers, not her eyes" advice which I am more than willing to take any day of the week and twice on Sundays and so's Gab, cause she does and then finding the knots, says something on the lines of "what have you been carrying on these shoulders? The weight of the world?" tweet plot point!

Scruffians surround them, hiding in the underbrush, ah, but can't hide from Xena and a Xena-trained Amazon Princess, can they? Nuh-uh—we are treated to a run-of-the-mill fight sequence redeemed in its entirety with Gab's doing a backward somersault over her staff and coming to her feet already swinging.

The motley gang o' the week are thoroughly trounced, but seems they have a legitimate reason for attacking—they're the posse from a nearby village, got a warrant -n- everything. "Wanted: Xena, Warrior Princess, sometime Destroyer of Nations, for Murder of Sweet Young Thang who, if she'd lived, would've revitalized the economy, increased egg yield, brought light and harmony to all of Greece and (in her spare time) tatted new doilies for the court bailiffs."

Well. Jeez, ya know, it's a real shame. Anyway, when Xena hears this she immediately cops to da charges and they cuff her. Legs, wrists and neck cuff her. These guys came prepared. So they all go to trial and it seems that Xena didn't actually kill the girl outright, she staked her to a beach in a cave (yowza!) at low tide and used the threat of her death to coerce the town headman into revealing the location of their secret stash of goodies, back when she was a thievin' maraudin' murderin' scuzbag. In other words, back when she sported that way cool, bone-chilling happy smile. You know (warning! warning! tangent alert!), Evil Xena sure did smile a lot. One might, if one knew no better, think that she was happy, contented even. Had challenging work, perhaps, a purpose in life, many diverting pastimes. By contrast, Reformed Xena isn't nearly as cheery. Lesson there for the kidlings.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, the Hope of the Future is staked out on a beach and everyone takes off for the stash and leaves her there. With the tide inching in a bit. And terrible monsters floating in with it. Terrible, awful monsters. Hungry monsters. Scary, horrible monsters.

Okay, I'm lying. They were crabs. But there were lots of them! and they were fierce and mean and vicious! and they attacked that poor girl and and and ...

Well the script says they ate her. One crabby bite after another, I suppose. (nibble) (nibble) I think one of the villagers had a throwaway line to the effect that they were "maddened by the blood flowing from a cut inflicted on her by Xena's knife," but he mumbled it. Can't blame him, really. Maddened crabs, can you dig it?

Anyway, having to carve "Died of Crabs" on the girl's memorial urn as an epitaph apparently unhinged the townspeople, who swore out a ten winters' old warrant for Xena, should she ever come near their borders again (mumble) we'll get 'er next toime, lads (mutter).

(Speaking of chilling epitaphs, there's this plaque on a big rock, it's a famous rock, out in the bay right near the seawall in Stanley Park in Vancouver, put up by a grieving family member in remembrance of a lad who died diving off the top of the rock one day when he, and I quote, "failed to notice it was low tide". One wonders how, with such finely developed powers of observation, he had ever found his way out of his nice house across several busy streets, into the park and out to the rock, but then, perhaps his friends led him by the hand. Day after day. Hoping...)

So, anyway, Xena (remember Xena? This is a song about Xena.) is sentenced to life imprisonment on (drum roll) Shark Island Prison and she's carted off thence summarily on that ship Xenastaff is determined to use till it pays for itself, beige streamers from Lost Mariner still merrily floating in the sea breezes, while Gab looks on, despairing.

Since I'm tangenting like a madwoman, and there's another beer in the icebox still, let's just chat a bit about this prison thing. And the socio-economic development necessary to the support and maintenance of a prison of any sort. Friends -n- neighbors, prisons do not support themselves. Ever. Even Australia got handouts for the longest time. So a stronghold on a rock in the middle of shark-infested waters (and the crabs ate this girl?), lacking the obvious natural advantages of a virtual paradise as Australia hasn't a ghost of a chance to turn a profit.

So why am I going on about this? Hey, here's this little no-count, pissant backwater burg got the wherewithall to build and maintain an island fortress as a women's prison. (They must got some uppity women in that town, the prison was full.) What I want to know, is what the heck are they trading in to be so wealthy? And what I think is, they got some kind of full nelson on the crab market of New Xenaland. And that's why they were so all fired up about the girl gettin' et by crabs—they was feared the crabs would get cocky and turn on the fishing boats and start chewing up the nets and then the hulls and then next thing you know, they'd be raiding through the town itself, by moonlight, thousands and thousands of them, the Crabby Undead they'd be, slithering and sidling up the beach paths, through the marketplace and over the doorsills (only if they're low ones, though) and into the very homes of these simple, peaceful fisherfolk.

And once that happened, they'd have to let the women out of prison, cause then they couldn't afford the taxes to pay the guards.

Don't let this happen to your town, 'kay?

Well, so. Xena's done up fetchingly in burlap and irons, chain-ganged to a frizzy-haired lot of grrls just like the ones my mama warned me about and they're all being watched over by as sadistic a set of leather-clad, whip-wielding, knuckle-dragging, sloped-foreheaded, inbred, no-count extras as ever graced a NZ backlot. In short, we got Women in Prison, only this time it's in colour and there's no guns or heartfelt confessions about how their boyfriends hooked them on heroin. Of course, there's also no shared cigs in the courtyard or group showers, but that's life.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, er, town inn, Gab's plotting to sneak into the prison as the replacement healer. She learns there's a ship going that way once a week. (Once a week?! Did I say uppity women? My goodness, they must be real hellraisers in this town.)

Xena is in total "it's my fault, I did it; punish me" mode, taking all kinds of abuse from the guards, begging to be allowed to bury the body of a woman who was hanged just as Xena arrived, erecting a complex wooden cenotaph over the grave in the pouring rain, it's all symbolic of her massive, crushing sense of guilt and responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocents in her life, and that the ultimate marker over the grave looks rather like a stylized crab should not be allowed to detract from the effects of this outpouring of grief, since I'm sure it was an unconcious thing on the part of the set designer. (you can't trust those people. ever.)

Then comes the dawn, and things get confusing from here out, since I was fixing dinner and keeping my cat from killing an interloper and didn't really catch the entire sequence of events, but Gab shows up on the wall, looking just radiant and wonderful and colourful and all, in a lovely little number inspired by N'gila's stint in Haight-Ashbury, except without all the dirt and poverty and drugs, and at some point just before that Xena is doing her submissive thing carrying heavy barrels (she can barely lift them, and she's having to do it all herself cause she disrespected the guard captain, who wouldn't? he's a meanie.) and she's okay with that, she thinks she deserves this, I'm gonna throw up, and then the guard gets nasty with a little slip of a girl (what's her crime? puttin' ketchup on her crabs?) who tries to help Xena with the barrels and you know, Xena will take a lot of crap when it's her alone getting the brunt, but just you try to pick on someone else around her, someone smaller and weaker and more innocent (Lizzie Borden was more innocent, but that's a tangent I will not follow) and watch those backflips fly!

So there's a cool fight sequence, the neatest bit being that you're not sure if Xena will hold them all off, she's maybe been weakened a tad from the rotten living conditions, so there's this element of doubt, but she's doing it, she's whupping ass and taking names and then the El Commandante de la Shark Isle appears, in a swirl of black leather full length cape and high boots and severe 'do, on a high wall and shouts "Enough!" And (get this) everyone, including Xena, stops fighting.

See, the commandant is a woman. The woman. The one who, as a girl, had a close encounter with seafood. The Crab Girl. Not dead. Alive. Not murdered. Cut to commercial.

Not that Xena's entirely off the hook, Crabgrrl's missing an arm and it was obviously a painful ordeal, that afternoon on the beach, and we see the flashbacks to bring that home, all those crabs scuttling around, her toes twitching, their nostrils flaring as the scent of blood wafts toward them on the late evening breeze, their little crabby heads nodding in unison as a single thought consumes their tiny brains: long pig.

But Gab (remember Gab? this is a song about Gab.) has a sensitive chat with her in her office about letting go of pain and such like and rediscovering one's soul despite loss and all like that. Gab's good at that, and she looks simply too angelic for words while she's talking, they've done something with the lighting and maybe a touch of soft focus on the camera lens—who could resist? Not some crabbait chick, you know?

Meanwhile, back in Alcatraz, Xena's been tossed into solitary. Hogtied first, with chains. The commandant had some interesting, nay, innovative notions on the subject of rehabilitation and, knowing in her heart that in order to overcome her inner self-loathing, Xena must be made to face the true nature of her long ago wanton negligence, Crabgrrl has Xena chucked into the rat pit. Rats come pouring out of the walls, chittering and sharpening their teeth, ready to chow down.

Too bad for them.

So Gab's healing the commandant's psychic pain while her soulmate's going nutso in a slimey pit, catching rats in her teeth and breaking their backs with the force of her will and her mighty warrior princess jaw muscles, and eventually Gab gets free of her onerous healer duties long enough to fight her way to the door leading to the pit room, and tosses the chakram through the bars, where it rolls noisily and clatters to a halt resting on the grating twenty feet over Xena's head. There's a touching exchange of "Xena?" "Gabrielle?" "Xena!" "Gabrielle!" before Gab's dragged away by evil guarddudes.

They're gonna hang her, the commandant's pissed, guess she wasn't quite healed all through yet, and in a flurry of cut shots and such, the noose tightens around our Gabby's neck as Xena catches a last rat in her teeth and flings it upward (wonder if Lao Ma taught her that move?), with a nice precision not seen since Been There, Done That, all twenty feet skyward to tip the chakram so that it falls directly onto the chains binding her wrists, and next thing we know, that chakram's hurtling, JATO units on full bore, through the hanging rope just as the trap opens, and Gab falls to the ground, stunned, but whole.

Huge fight ensues, it's Xena and Gab against the lot of them, guards and prisoners alike, since they insist on protecting the commandant from the wrath of the mob. After all, Crabgrrl's just a wounded innocent, and what about how she's lived since she drug herself off that beach and slunk away into a life of middle management? Huh.

So X&G beat off the attacking hordes, most notably one woman who fights like she's been gettin' an extra crabmeat ration for teatime, and spending overtime in Shark Island's weight room. And the scales have fallen from Crabgrrl's eyes and all is just fine now, except Xena still can't forgive herself, ever, for being so wicked in her youth. But she will go so far as to take the next ship off the island, her mama didn't raise no fools, well maybe Lyceas was a bit of an ass, and we're not gonna go there with Torus, let's just say that her mama didn't raise no girl fools and leave it at that.

And more notable moments being some nice flashes of warrior butt when Xena does a backflip during the penultimate fight scene, and when Gab smilingly borrows a broom from an old woman prisoner long enough to inhibit her guard escort's future chances at fathering the next generation of skinheads and just as smilingly returns it, and let's not forget the flashback of the village elders and Warlord Xena returning to the beach to find naught there but some chewed up ropes and a bushelload of (I swear) poached crabs. Maybe boiled. Certainly cooked.

So, all in all a stellar ep, packed to the brim with morals and hurt/comfort (Gab gets whacked hard three times, but no comfort stems from this, on the other hand, she seems to recover immediately with no ill effects, hm.) and Good Triumphant and Redemption from Evil and the only thing lacking is the huge wave carrying sharks and crabs over the walls to eat the guards and free the rest of the women prisoners, who all seemed very nice, really, not at all the sort to steal your purse or pass bad checks.

Musta run over budget. Else it'd been there.