The Haunting of Amphipolis

I do believe that Xenastaff has a miracle here, that they're trying to keep the lid on and not let on about, but some stuff just can't be hid for long. What we have here, friends -n- neighbours, is the penultimate result of a full thousand years' of a full thousand monkeys scribbling.

In case anyone was expecting an homage to The Haunting of Hill House, well, you're outta luck. This is more like homaging The Exorcist, except without all that boring old plot stuff, like motivation and backstory and rising and falling action. Fearing to disturb the delicate spell woven by the piping of the faery chorus of the fifth season, this week's ep starts on one confused note and stays there throughout.

Well, as Opus said, maybe it isn't that bad. But lord, it isn't good.

Opening: starry sky, panning down to where Michael and Truckdriver Archangel are chatting about this and that (TA's grown his wing back already, well, it's been a year) and watching Xena, Gabrielle and Eve ride down the road via HercVortexVeiwCam, upgraded to HeavenlyPanoram©. Like all guys with too many channels to surf, they've become jaded and now stare blindly at the pretty pictures while dipping snuff. From their comments, one gleans the idea that Xena's riding toward a major crossroads, a confrontation with the very Forces of Hell, upon which hangs the Fate of the World, and even Heaven, yadda yadda yadda, and is the Superbowl on yet and this mint Skoal's not bad.

(And Xena stormed Olympus for these guys? Huh. Lesson for the kidlings: just say no to being dead.)

Switch scene (none too soon, lumberjacks are circling those boys, with blueprints for angelwood armoires) to Xena, Gabrielle and Eve (Xena's on Argo II! Yay!) clopping into town, all in a blue wash, just like the opening to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, but without the swooshy effects, they're not moving very fast, so far neither is the plot, and Amphipolis is deserted and run down, with tumblyweeds rolling in the chill breezes and they park their ponies in front of Ye Olde Axehead Saloon where mom used to ply the locals with wine and it's really spooky. Xena says that mom would never have left, heck, I'd have tooken off at the first cyanotic tinge to the skyline and I'm sure Cyrene's nobody's fool either.

Our grrls go inside, where it's all cobwebby and dusty and run to ruin, and even bluer and Gab says it's cold, in what she's wearing, Cancun beaches would be cold, and so of course they all split up cos that's what you do in horror flicks, split up so something scary can happen to everyone and they have to face it alone and maybe die or at least get grossed out enough to scream like seagulls. Xena goes upstairs, Gabrielle goes to the back, and Eve hangs out in the foyer. Xena wanders down a hall and sees a vision of her mom being hauled off by some guys and she's crying. Cut to exterior shot for absolutely no reason, then to Gabrielle doing nothing, and then Eve lighting candles and starting at demon burps. Suddenly a shot rings out! No wait, lemme start over. Suddenly she sees the guys dragging Cyrene and shouting about lighting the fire, maybe Cyrene was a Darsham all this time, and the ghost of grandmama passes through Eve, turns into a skull and disappears. Wheeee! Xena runs down the stairs and Gabrielle runs in from the greenroom and Eve tells Xena that Cyrene's dead. Y'know, if you're patient and keep at it and really spell it out and draw pictures for that kid, she does figure stuff out.

Time for the titles, yup, they're still different, and on with the show! Eve starts spouting off about how Cyrene's not at peace, she's trapped in the house, Heaven and Hell are spitting on their hands and squaring off for battle and Xena shuts her up and goes to check out the mausoleum (next to the toolshed in back) while Gab gets Eve her meds.

Hey, it's sunny out! No wait, it's storming, no, it's sunny... I can't keep up. The bright afternoon autumnal sunbeams pick out the grafitti all over the family crypts, and the blackened bones which look just like Cyrene, that's how Xena recognizes them, and Xena vows to um... well, do something useful. Back in the kitchen, Gabrielle's mixing up a little potion for Eve, or if she isn't she should be, that kid's going off the deep end fast.

Then the fruit Gab's munching on suddenly crosses its sell-by date. Gab runs for the water bucket where she splashes cold water on her face, while Eve takes the fruit out to the courtyard and dumps it and its passengers (big ol' mealworms—if Xena'd been there, we'd'a had another Fish, Femmes, Gems) on the flagstones. While worms start coming out the skin on Gab's hands, and then the flesh falls from her bones (so, apparently, do her bracelets), Eve kneels down among the worms and starts chanting. The following is a compilation of Eve's lines for the rest of the ep:

In the name of Eli and all the powers of Heaven, I command this evil presence to be cast out!

Goodness, lady, they were just mealworms. Anyway, they disappear, Gabrielle's hands return to their normal perfection, and Xena catches a wandering homeless plot device in the mausoleum. He says he just comes in there to get warm, right, I hang around haunted places when I'm feeling chilly myself. Xena clues him in on the fact that it's warm and sunny about a hundred yards down the path, and he tells her about Cyrene's last days and they each go their merry ways.

Seems Mephistopheles has been targeting Cyrene for years now—sent evil spirits to her tavern, drove her mad, and got the townspeople to burn her at the stake for being a witch. Then they carefully and lovingly piled all her charred bones in the family crypt.

At this point I would like to caution each and every one of you with at least half a functioning brain cell to just switch it off. Mephistopheles who? you might be wondering, why Cyrene? you might be musing (I'll bet Cyrene did, "out of all the gin joints in the world" and all that), what's wrong with being a witch in times of ancient gods, when lands are crying out for heroes? you might be expostulating.

It's no good, you know, asking questions like that. All I got out of it was a headache. And while you're nattering on with questions, you'll miss the bit where Gabrielle kneels in a hallway to better look at a weirdo squidshape branded into a flagstone and gets drug into the GreenSlimePool just underneath by zombies and animated skeletons (the zombies' makeup keeps coming off in the pool). Turns out the squid was an upsidedown devil's mark, they're all over the place, Eve's looking at one, Xena saw 'em in the crypt, and now Xena's trying to find Gabrielle by playing Marco Polo with her. (She tried asking Eve, with predictable results.)

The zombies figure out they have the wrong fish in their net, Gab ain't the Messenger, but no matter, she'll do for carrying a note to Xena. Who, by the way, has finally found the squidmarked flagstone and reaches through to pull Gabrielle back. The pool was a tad over-chlorinated, it seems, cos Gab complains of it still burning her. Xena and Eve drag her off to what may be the only working shower in Amphipolis, who'd'a thunk it? The place has been haunted and deserted and filled with evil spirits for years, but the plumbing still works.

Gabrielle id's Mephistopheles as the King of Hell, so that's one mystery solved. Then Eve, no doubt just to lighten mommy's load of cares, mentions that if Cyrene died unabsolved, then Mephistopheles would have possession of her soul.

I just report this stuff. I do not make it up. If that brain cell is still giving you trouble, with querilous whines about absolution being a foreign concept within Ancient NewGreeceland, send it to its room with a good book. Or you could try reminding it that Apollo's priests evidently did some kind of washing away of sins, as per the liner notes in that looking-better-every-day ep, Forgiven. Okay, Apollo's dead, which may or may not explain the erratic behaviour of the sun now, and I doubt very much he had any kind of repo arrangement with Mephistopheles, but still, there it is.

Maybe this is why Mike and Raphael (someone finally told me Truckdriver Archangel's name) were looking so catatonic at the top of the ep. Maybe they'd peeked in on all this using the HeavenlyPanoram™ and just didn't want to think too hard about it either.

Nevertheless, there's still twenty minutes or so of tape on the machine, of scenes Rob wished he coulda done back in the Evil Dead days and never had the money for till now ('nother lesson for the kidlings: do not give up your dreams), so I'd best get on with it.

Anyway, Gabrielle tells Xena about how Meph wants the blood of the Messenger, that would be Eve, that would, and while I think that's a fine and dandy solution to all the tangles woven so far this evening, Xena isn't so keen. She walks off and suddenly sees a vision of her younger, badder self beside a dead man on a table, Cyrene's there and weeping over the fellow, they keep calling him Lyceas even though Lyceas was a blond and this lad's a brunette (was he a brunette in Remember Nothing? I can't remember), and in the Vision Cyrene blames his death on Xena, since she persuaded him to fight the raiders instead of, well, whatever he was gonna do instead.

Present-day Xena hasn't changed in this one respect—she's as ready as ever to take the blame for all the wrongs in this world. Though if anyone can figure out what this scene has to do with anything else in this ep, you get a gold star.

Eve has gone to hang with the flagstones, them being so safe and comforting and all, so it comes as a complete surprise to her when they start raining blood upward from their joints, and she starts chanting again, and screaming and chanting and the blood's rolling toward her in tidal waves (what kind of church did the Taperts go to?). Meanwhile, back in the shower, Gab's come all over with cadmium red Tempera paints, mixed in with a bit of red sienna, it's pumping rythmically out of her crucifixion wounds and smeared all over her face, and next thing you know, she's got a nasty case of eczema all around her hairline and she musta left rinsing her eyes till last, cos they're all yellow.

PossessedGab licks her bloody fingers and smiles in one of the few highlights of the hour. Meanwhile, Eve's chanting reaches a frenzied pitch and as she rips her toga off and starts speaking in tongues while washing her own feet in oil from her pores and wiping them dry with her hair, wait, no, sorry, it would have fit, you know. She does chant something fierce though, and the blood wave disappears. She goes looking for X&G and behind her the GreenSlimePoolLight bursts the flagstones asunder.

Xena's found PossessedGab clinging naked from the ceiling, they have a roll on the floor where some bits of cloth are conveniently to hand and Xena manages to tie her up simultaneously with getting her dressed, which may be the second highlight of the ep, illustrating yet another of Xena's many skills. Eve shows up as Xena's asking PossessedGab/Meph what he wants with Eve. Eve breaks in with "He knows that I do this—" and so help me, she grabs PossessedGab by neck and abs and starts chanting again. At this point, I'm doing a little chanting of my own (In the name of Xena, and by the good taste of Xenites everywhere, I command that this silly wench hit the road!) and cheering on PossessedGab as she cackles and hisses and writhes her way through this scene. PG/Meph shows Xena a vision of Cyrene's last few minutes at the stake, and says that it's time for his reign on Earth to begin, since Xena cleared the god fields. He just needs the blood of the Messenger to transmogrify into flesh, that's all. A little blood, a couple drops, he couldn't wait for Eve to stub her toe and bloody her nose or something, no, he has to spend all his spiritual capital infesting a little tavern in a backwater village, not to mention alerting his would-be adversaries to his plans.

Fool don't deserve to rule a slimepool, if he's gonna be that dumb. Eve casts him out of PossessedGab, or he leaves on his own, hard to say which, and Eve runs off to chant some more by the glowing green hole in the courtyard. Xena and Gabrielle start after her, but are delayed by a purely egregious FX where their arms and legs are morphed together and they hobble off in search of Eve to fix this, dodging errant furniture and fixtures on the way.

Now comes one of the only other decent scenes so far, where Xena decides to fight Meph in Hell. She shows Gab how to put the Pinch on her and take it off (this spot's for the Pinch, that one's for stopping hearts, this other one makes latte), over Gabrielle's fervent objections. It's very touching and heartwarming. Then it's off to the Spiritual Realm for Xena.

Hell looks a lot like Tartartus, but with less slime and more dry ice. Cyrene's here, though, carring a bloodied axe and crying how she'd done for her husband Orestes (who? man's name was Atrius.) but she'd had no choice, well, she hadn't. No matter, but it does make one wonder about the minds of folks what'll dream up a religion a thousand times more cruel and arbitrary than any human society ever was.

Meph shows up (my sakes, that's one ugly dude—but even with all that latex he's still more lively than Mike or Raph) and FINALLY we get to the butt-kicking! WAHOO! I am so relieved, I can't begin to tell you. Meph's got this way wicked polearm-trident that Xena keeps whacking with her sword, can't be doing a thing for its edge, but despite being a better fighter, not to mention more witty, she can't put him down and out since her, um, her god-killing powers (that's what Meph says, puts me in mind of little switches and dials across her back, wonder what the "reset to factory defaults" combo is?) don't work outside of the earthly realm. She'll read the fine print next time, I'm sure.

During the fight, Meph tells Xena that if she kills him on Earth, she'll have to take his place and rule over Hell. She wants Cyrene released, but of course there's no reason why he should so he just laughs at her. If she won't get Eve to spill even just a few drops for him, he'll work on the kid directly. And he vanishes in a crinkly flash of red swirlies.

Eve's gone for water, we still have many yards of tape left, and when she dumps the bucket she also dumps out the severed head of one of her victims back from before she started treating Lithium as a breakfast cereal. This is a fairly cool scene, with several of her victims appearing and walking around her, complaining that since they'd died unabsolved, they are now in Limbo and it's her fault. Me, I'd be blaming the metaphysicians on staff, but I'm still alive even after watching this ep, and that likely makes a difference to one's perspective. Still, under the Olympians, these people would have ended up in the Elysian Fields. Worth remembering, I think. Anyway, on the plus side, Livia makes an appearance and the difference between Good and Evil is right there for all to see. Lesson for the kidlings (this ep is chock full of them): to be Good is to be a weepy whining chanter. To be Evil is to be happy, in control and swing a sharp sword from horseback.

Enough of that.

Gab's up top, having decided it's drizzle drazzle drozzle drome, time for this one to come home, and poking and prodding Xena's neck with a vengeance. She also checks her pulse a couple of times. Eventually she gets it in the right place with the right amount of force, and Xena's back in her body. Bet her neck's way bruised though. First thing they do is run look for Eve, who's all traumatised by her Livia flashback, and Xena says they're gonna give him what he wants. What I want is more beer. Commercial break, so yay! we all get what we want.

They scurry in a huddle back to the Hellmouth. Gabrielle plays !devil's advocate (tiny geek joke, sorry) and points out to Xena that the Greater Good will suffer mightily if she and Eve go through with this. Much better for Eve to grow a backbone and face Meph herself like she ought. Not that Xena:Stage Mommy will go for that, so Eve cuts her hand in Meph's name like Xena wants. Meph appears on cue and Xena whups up on him. Like he didn't know that would happen all along. He teases her again about the "rule in his place" thing and she bites on the bait and stabs him. Her family makes its own destiny, my great aunt's left elbow. Cool fight, though.

Xena's not the same afterward, but Cyrene's spirit appears long enough to bless everyone. And the weather gets better. But the Hellmouth is still smoking.

I think it's fairly clear what I thought of this ep. Clunky, kludgy, dragging, pieced together out of the shards of Xenastaff's collective toe-dips into the primordial slime, it was an inexplicable departure from normally pretty darn good production values. Basically, it sucked like a jet plane through a flock of migrating ducks.

The butt-kicking, though, was as cool as ever. Eve has gone from being "not bright" to "dumb as an Irish Setter in a thunderstorm."