Succession

Oh, gosh, and they're black satin,too. The camera doesn't pull back far enough for me to tell if it's a round bed Ares and Trick O' the Week are wrestling on, or if there're any ceiling mirrors or even pompom ball fringe edging the medicine cabinet next to the Playboy magazine rack beside the _101 Bathroom Jokes_ bookshelf lining the wall above the toilet, but...

Am I wandering too far afield here? Moi? Well, maybe a little bitty bit, but for heaven's sake, wouldja get a load of the bazookas preceding Ares' latest tart's presence into a room! I do declare, that woman starts every fight she ever gets into with a topload handicap, no two ways about it.

And before anyone gets to wondering about my past history and how I spent my formative teen years, dammit, my big brother owned one of them there Chevy vans, and it had wall to wall and floor to ceiling and all round red (bright red, not any of that half-assed, get-to-know-you-first muted crimsons, but brick house red) carpets, with (in case you were a tad slow in getting the point) matching red pompom fringe around each and every side window.

I laughed my ass off, I did, looking at this van, but I didn't do it where my brother could hear me, since he could beat me up, but by god! I did have one major revelation looking at it, and that was, straight boys need therapy, desperately.

Ares, to give him his due, is brutally honest with Mavican, the Roller Derby queen he's hanging with. Says she ain't the One, even while she's nibbling his ear like a hamster working its way through a brazil nut. He bounds out of bed, nude, well I think he's nude, okay, I'm extrapolating here, it's prime-time tv after all and we're not talking about showing off a chick, which would be cool for the kidlings, but a grown man, which would not, don't ask me why, I just work here, and Mav doesn't want to hear it, she and Alti have a lot in common when it comes to accepting limitations, and the next thing ya know, Ares is fully dressed.

He didn't even wriggle his nose. Of course, he is the God of War, maybe it's not his nose that wriggles. Maybe it's his heavy brass-plated Ankh pendant or something. No, I didn't see the Ankh, I just inferred it from the black satin sheets. Some things don't have to be seen, you know.

Which, to be quite honest, is a mercy. Back to the action (back2back action slot, ain't that a mental picture, given what we're given this season?), and Ares gives us our plot point line o' the ep, "It's not a job, and Xena didn't ask me for anything."

Okay, well, that would have been enough for me, but then I do tech support over the phone for a living. Snuggling the God of War and kicking butt across the Known World, not to mention wedging my jiggly bits into a very tight corset are simply not on my dance card this millenium.

Next thing we know, there's bodies flying every which way and in voice over, Gab's expostulating with Xena to chill out, smell a rose or two, let her have a turn, you'd think she'd embraced the Way of the Warrior to the point of embroidering it on a lacy pillow. Must have been something in the soup she drank at the top of the last ep. Before that, she was so non-violent you'd'a thunk she was a plant. Then the soup and bang! first she buys the sais, then butt-kicking surpassing even the height of her staff-swinging days, back before A Good Day.

The scruffy-dude circus segues to Gabrielle, alone, in a deserted town (Fallen Angel used up the budget for townie extras), drawing water from the town well. Ares sparkles into being beside her and is nearly skewered for his pains. He does a little of the old soft shoe, if it were a kid brother, you'd think he was touching her for a loan till next race day, but she's not touchable right now and he pops off, happy with having sown a seed or two of discontent. Hard on his popoff comes a whirling, twirling, war-screeching dervish, bounding over the rooftops (they're not very tall), faster than a speeding bullet (well, if the rifling in the barrel's been jimmied with), more powerful than a... huh, it's Mavican, tits at full point, spear at parade rest, leather petticoat ruffles a-quiver, and a look of mild determination fighting its way through from under a coat of Mabelline Latex Spray-On Foundation. Given her druthers, she'd like to see Gab spinning on the pivot of her sword blade, since that would get her on the Warrior Princess' (remember Xena? This is a song about Xena.) calendar. Once there, apparently (this woman is a type A fer shure, she has her agenda to success all mapped out, five year plan be damned, she has it down to two minutes and counting) she figures to wrench the Princess crown from Xena's cold, dead fingers and sashay on to WarQueen glory.

After the titles, the giggly Coke drinkers, the mattress hawkers and the Ginsu knife wielders come and go, it's back to the action! Butt-kicking is the name of the game in this ep, we're gonna see a lot of it, Mav chucks the spear at Gab, who prepares to dodge, all business-like and in perfect control, when Xena steps in, grabs the spear and breaks it across her knee, brushing off Gabrielle's assertion that she was doing fine. Hm.

She and Mav have a little exchange of words and then throwing stars v. yinyang chakram, which ends up a draw, it's still way early in the ep, and somewhere in here we get our first look at the maternity leathers. Had my mama only known...

Ares pops in in the middle of all this and rings the bell for them to go to their corners. Apparently they've been fighting in the middle of Demeter's temple (well, it looked like a town square to me, maybe it did to them), which punches Ares' buttons, such as they are. He disclaims all involvment in Mavican's present quest, but then does a flipflop so quick I have to think he manipulated this whole confrontation thing from the get-go. He wriggles his fingers (that boy's a wriggling fool today) to create a vortex thingie to suck them into, well, if the next scene's any clue, the stage for an off-Broadway reprise of Saint Joan, Xena doesn't wanna go, neither does Gabrielle, but Ares twists the dial on the vortex and that sucks up Gabrielle, so of course Xena dives in after her ("Gabrielle! I'm coming!")

Next scene is Gabrielle getting to her feet on the deck, directly under the downlight of the Voices, and the camera pulls way back, this a visual clue, nothing happens here, no need to spend more'n ten NZ dollars on this puppy, cut to Xena stuck out in the middle of a clearing, no weapons, no Gab, oh, look, there's Mavican, all gung-ho to resume their little tete a tete. She natters on while they slap at each other, making sure we all understand the ground rules for this championship match—she can try to kill Xena, but Xena can't kill her, and nobody's got any swords or anything, and check out that lovely sunset. As a fight, this is slightly less compelling than mud-wrestling for quarters, evidently I'm not the only one who thinks so, Xena does too, cos she kicks Mav's hinder into a ravine and starts looking around for Gabrielle.

That sunset remark was actually important after all (surprise!) since when it gets dark, Xena and Gabrielle switch places. Now it's Xena's turn to ponder on who in her right mind would want Charles on the throne of France, an argument if I ever heard one for Jeanne (and God, for that matter) being off her nut, but she's distracted by the appearance of the HercVortexViewCam™ shot of Gabrielle slinking through the kill zone in the moonlight.

Gabrielle finds Mavican's campfire sans Mav, and sets up a trap for her. Unfortunately, it doesn't work (it had potential, so did this ep, but that's life in a Chevy van) and Gabrielle ends up in a cage Mavican, in her copious spare time, built using only vines, precut saplings and the sharper bits of her Wonderbra. Either that or she borrowed it from the Cyclops in Sins of the Past. Now that she's got her bait set in her XenaTrap, Mavican whiles away the the rest of the night speechifying like Caesar, Julius Caesar. It must be mindbogglingly boring, listening to her go on for hours about her Destiny, how she's gonna show them all, including Ares and how Gabrielle should write scrolls about her, and by the time the predawn light kisses a very haggard bard's features, you can tell that she, for one, is ready for the priests to light the fire under her. Anything to make it stop.

What happens instead is that the sun comes up and Xena takes Gab's place in the cage. This cheers Mavican no end. It doesn't do a thing for Xena, who'd already heard the Song of Mavican via HercVortexViewCam™ and isn't looking forward to five hundredth verse, same as the first.

Mav finally finishes talking and starts chucking javelins (javelins occur naturally throughout most of New Xenaland. Some parts of them are edible.) at Xena, who dodges them and then pretends to take one just below her princess waistline, which fools Mav into approaching the cage, where Xena pummels her about and, in a furious set-to, Xena ends up free. Mavican escapes to the treetops, from whence she taunts Xena, saying all she has to do is wait till dark, when she can whup up on Gab instead.

Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof, thinks Xena, and spends her time exploring the boundless resources of this natural wonderland for the raw materials she needs to move Mavican from starting lineup to injured reserve. She grinds rock into powder (with her bare hands, it's Special Rock), strips bark from trees, talks to Ares, cuts up yards of thorny vines, lays a trap with the powder and the bark and the vines, makes a fire to lure in Mavican... oh, wait. That chat with Ares was significant. He hints that it's not Mav that's being tested. And since it isn't Xena, either, it must be....

Gosh, how to save Gabrielle? Okay, for starters, let's get Mav trussed up in the thorny vines, this almost works, except Xena and Gabrielle do the shift before Xena ties that last knot, and Gab's still a bit woozy and so easy pickings for Mavican. Shucks. On to Plan B, which is for Gab to snatch up the staff Xena left leaning against a tree trunk, which triggers a trap Xena rigged while our backs were turned, a Destiny kind of trap, it's a swinging log-in-a-cradle that whaps Mav a good one in her belly, shutting her up for almost ten seconds. While Gab rushes in to finish her off, no wait... she just stands there, watching Mav writhe, until she gets her breath back (maybe those are spare air bladders?) and starts to sit up. Then Gab backs into the foliage. Mavican tosses a sharp rock at the bard that cuts her shoulder, but does sod all besides watch Gabrielle crash away in the underbrush. Oh, yeah, she talks. Like Velaska. "You can't hide from a Roller Derby Queen, Gabrielle!"

No wonder Ares wants to ditch her—this makes two major confrontations each with both Xena and Gabrielle where she failed to do more than tire their ears. An unfortunate side effect, though, is that even I'm wondering when they're all gonna get down to business.

Gabrielle finds her way into a cave, complete with bottomless pit, firepit (with a fresh dry woodpile nearby), fresh water springpit and possibly a tiny, fully stocked icebox in the corner next to the barpit. While building up a fire, she notices that the staff she's been hanging onto has bark wrapped around it, which she pulls off and guess what? It's a note from Xena, saying she's working late and Gabrielle should just thaw out something for supper and not wait up, and by the way, Ares is trying to pull a fast one so don't kill Mavican.

Gab feels lots better after reading this, she's been wondering about the sudden and total lack of Xena in her life, and thus is ready when Ares sparkles in for a little chat. He appreciates her, he says, even if Xena doesn't, and all's she has to do is off Mavican and she can be his new girlfriend, wear his ring and his letter jacket and go to the prom in his limo, here's a sai—think about it, and it's sparkly thing OUT; CUE Not Dark Nor Deadly—

Mavican has tracked Gabrielle to the cave, it's almost dawn, and they have another fight, this time Gab beats her to her knees and has the option to take her out entirely, but she won't play Ares' game, she decides (I was all atwitter, wondering if she would), and tosses the sai into the dust. Just then the sun comes up and Xena takes over, and before Mavican can do anything about it, Xena tugs on the vines in front of the cave mouth to trigger a rockslide tailor-made to block up the cave entrance. (You know, if Mavican had put as much effort into studying Xenaverse geology as she did into snuggling war gods, she'd have known about the rockslide/cave connection.)

Mavican is finally starting to clue in that Xena, up till now, has not been going all out, and that she, Mavican, might have a slightly different Destiny than she'd thought. Xena kicks her into a quivering dishrag of a warrior princess-wannabe, and they end up (after much wondrous, back-up-to-snuff buttkicking) both dangling on the vines hanging over the bottomless pit (that's another thing Mavican should have expected. I mean, we knew this was coming, why didn't she?) when Xena teases the tart into yelling for Ares.

He's pretty disgusted, especially with Xena giggling in the background over what a dip he picked this time, and without fooling around any longer he opens the vortex for Xena and shuts it behind her.

Mav is not believing this—he'd said she could ask for his help, plain as day he'd said so. He didn't say she should, replies twinkletoes, winking out and leaving Mavican to repair her ignorance of geology at her leisure, starting with the bottom of that pit, wherever it may be. (Unless, of course, those things are more like swim bladders and she floats out of the pit.)

Xena apologizes to Gabrielle (Gab also came through the vortex with her) for smothering her, and Gab reassures Xena that no matter what braindead thing she, Xena, might do, she, Gab, still loves her. And they wander off together, Xena promising to let Gab have the next seven bad dudes that get in their way, if they're little ones, anyway.

Okay, so fairly cool ep. Not much X&G screentime, but still lots of subtext as Xena watched Gabrielle coping through the HercVortexViewCam™, muttering advice, calling her name forlornly, biting her nails, punching Ares in the nose once for even thinking of suggesting he could lure Gab to the Dark Side. And there's Gabrielle, totally in the dark for most of the time, trying to find Xena and being very sad when she can't, and looking so all-out relieved to find them both safe and sound at the end that she doesn't even bury a sai in Ares' wriggly bits for playing fast and loose with the two of them when they have quite enough to worry about, thank you.

And all this, mind you, for approximately what my brother paid for that van.