The Key to the Kingdom

Our latest Emmy award nominee opens with a huge styrofoam pig being wheeled into RenPic's prop room by two guardlike lackeys, grunting with the effort. It's very heavy, for styrofoam. You'd think this would clue them that All is Not As It Seems. But it doesn't, that's why they're lackeys and not warlords, and they drop off the piggie and exit the scene. We'll see them later, don't worry. Those guys never lack for work.

Soon's they take off, the piggie opens up and out pops... Gabrielle? No, she's not in this ep. Xena? No, she's barely in this ep. Nebula? Dream on. No, it's just Autolycus. Reset DEFCON levels to five. (Wouldn't it have been cool it'd been Nebula, though? Kinda pointless, but cool.) Auto's after some jewel that's set inside a mondo trappy thing and he (of course) knows just how to get it out. He does this by sawing a hole, a PERFECTLY ROUND HOLE, in the bottom of the setting so's the jewel falls out into his hand. The sawing shakes the heck out of the whole whizbang, but doesn't set off the HAIRTRIGGER TRAP, it's vibrating like a blender grinding rocks, no matter, when all's done and he has the gem, he just blows on the triggers and the trap springs shut. Why he didn't do that to begin with I can't tell you, cause then he could've taken a prybar to it all and had the gem a lot faster, but I'm not the King of Thieves and haven't studied their by-laws this year.

Quite pleased with himself, and we all know how that goes, he lets himself out via a handy window and drops to the ground. Then, and this has me stupified as to the logic of it, and I do expect a certain level of rudimentary logic, I'm sorry, but I do, he runs over to the OUTER GATE and (after shutting the gate doors) BARS THEM FROM THE OUTSIDE. My friends, the set designer was out to lunch here, and the director and the producer were both plying the poor fellow with strong drink, to go with such a bonehead bit of business. Any number of ways they could have handled that to get the same effect, and they do something that wouldn't have flown in a melodrama playing a one nighter in a Colorado mining town in 1868. It's sloppy, that's all it is. One doesn't build a stronghold that can be barred from the outside. Such a thing has never been built, nor will it ever be built.

Okay, I'm over it. Moving along, as he's beginning his swagger down the road, Xena steps in front of him. Looks like Xena. Stares impassively like Xena. Probably smells like Xena, but my tv is getting on in years and doesn't do that effect so I don't know. Autolycus thinks she's Xena, and shortly cops to the theft of the gem just as the folks inside the castle discover it's missing. They hollar about it, "The ruby! It's gone!" and Autolycus, wilting under faux-Xena's silent glare, tosses it over his shoulder and over the high wall, pacifying pursuit immediately ("The ruby! It's back!") and then has to put up with Joxer appearing and crowing over how he and Meg fooled the King of Thieves.

So they wander off to a tavern to drink, have a few laughs, run through the main plot points, stuff like that. We learn that Joxer's head is hollow. Okay, we knew that, but it's nice to have it confirmed. We also learn why Joxer and Meg are going around pretending Meg is Xena. Mainly because Reneé O'Connor needs the week off, but also because there's this crown, the Crown of Athena, that Athena hid more or less at the same time the current ruler of Thrasos (whose name I can't spell... Kleades? Cliades? Tim?) disappeared some years ago (ten winters maybe? anyone want to guess?) and that J&M are after this Crown. The Key to it is hidden in the castle of Thrasos, where two warlords have been holding sway since the ruler's disappearance. Joxer proposes some braindead scheme to get them all inside, which Autolycus counters with his own slightly less braindead scheme and they sally forth.

The first part of the plan is put into action immediately. Upon spying a minion of the warlords (a tax-collector! yar! boo!) they begin performing a medieval passion play extolling the deeds of Xena, Warrior Princess. Oh, wait... no, the tax-collector doesn't know they're just fooling. He's not too bright, I guess. He believes them, and that he's in danger from these tu'penny opera refugees, and that "Xena" just saved his bacon, and voila! Meg gets into the castle. She spins a yarn to the warlords about assassins and raising an army and wants to see their defenses and they go for it and show her the lot. Meanwhile, Joxer's off finding horses after selling his birthright to Auto for a mess of pottage and Auto's climbing in a convenient window upon receiving Meg's signal. The guards think Auto's the assassin Meg was talking about, but he eludes them and finds himself in the room where the Key's supposed to be. There's just that baby from Cradle of Hope, though, and Auto's confused. Meg comes in and he asks her about it. She says the baby is the Key, then calls for the guards to take Auto away. While they're occupied with doing that, she sneaks the baby into her backpack and saunters off. (An old nurse puts two and two together, though, as Meg's walking out. She's a plot point. Watch her like a hawk. She's, like, an unsung heroine of the ages here. Without her, this whole ep is just some sordid baby snatching thing, like what got Bruno Hauptmann in such a mess back with the Lindberghs and all, you know he probably didn't have anything to do with all that, am I digressing? Anyway, this nurse Knows All and has been just hanging out all these years waiting for some action on the baby train like what's just happened.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah, Autolycus is taken to the dungeon and the nurse follows him to find out about "Xena" and he tells her about Xena and Meg and she toddles off to find Meg and fill her in on the kid's real destiny. Meanwhile, there's this old decrepit prisoner there who spills the beans about the baby to Autolycus, the prophecy and all, says the baby will point the way to the door to the Crown and then will be NO MORE, o the pathos of it all.

So Autolycus absorbs this in the heartbeat it takes him to get loose of his shackles (there's a whole running joke with the shackles but I won't get into it) and while he's doing that we cut to Meg entering a stable (evidently a prearranged rendevous) with the baby and cooing to it and chatting up a storm like Meg does, that was her plan all along, phooey on the Crown, she wanted this baby. Joxer enters and accuses her of using him and Autolycus for her own ends and she says that's pretty much it and butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and isn't this a neat baby? Woman's a psychopath. Joxer accepts her non-explanation since he couldn't string a single thought across two minutes and therefore can't stay mad at anyone, and runs out for baby things at the local baby mart.

The two warlords are not as cheery. They've spent twenty years trying to get the baby to point to anything, a mobile, a purple dinosaur, a door to a Crown, with no luck whatsoever, but now they think "Xena's" figured it out, how to make the baby work (new batteries and wind its toes?) and they're gonna set up a hue and cry to find the twain before they get the Crown. So while they're getting their soldiers together, Autolycus bursts into the stable and confronts Meg and there's a touch of slapstick involving Joxer and we'll pass on describing that and in the melee the baby gets loose and crawls off at light speed and commandeers a two-horse chariot during a full scale riot in the marketplace and Joxer & Meg & Autolycus ride off in pursuit.

There are, in my humble estimation, at least three different babies involved in this little scrummage. That's not counting the paper mache' baby that drives the chariot.

Into a wooded glade they all finally collide, goodness knows what happens to the horses, but Meg and baby emerge unscathed from the wreckage of the chariot and they all camp out under the stars. Meg goes off with the baby and tells a touching tale of what the stars meant to her as a child all alone more or less and the baby gurgles and Autolycus recognizes its discarded nappy as the map to where the door to the Crown is.

They hike off next day to the deserted building or warehouse or whatever it is (it's close by. Everything is, in New Xenaland. More cities in half a day's journey than you can fit in a continent the size of Australia. And they all look alike, too. You know, people go on nowadays, deploring how all American towns are all looking alike, same Wal-Marts, same MickyD's on every street corner—they should get a good look at Ancient Greece, by golly, if they wanna see some REAL cookie-cutter civilizations.) and right there, under a 5K watt spotlight, is a bright red velvet cushion, just baby-sized, with gold embroidery and fringe and no dust like everything else has, right in front of this huge door. Don't take a rocket scientist to figure out what goes where in this picture, and a good thing, too, since all we got here are Joxer and Meg and Autolycus.

Auto won't let Meg put the baby on the cushion though, since he's really a softy inside and can't bear to see the kid disintegrate or whatever right in front of Meg, he just wanted to find the door so he can jimmy with the lock. So he comes clean about the entire prophecy and just then the warlords and their guards (told you those guys had work and to spare) stomp into the building and there's a scuffle and in the frenzy Xena shows up and the baby, while no one's looking, crawls all by its own self onto the cushion and sits there looking so pleased and happy and gurgling and well it might, since that opens the door and there's the Crown and in a rather nice special effect, the baby morphs into the missing ruler, Kliades.

Turns out the old nurse found Xena (nothing and no one, like I said, is ever really very far apart from anyone or anything else. The Xenaverse is very Einsteinian like that. It's just sort of folded in upon itself, and if you're like Xena, or looking for her, or have ever heard of her or look just like her, you too can travel directly across the congruencies in the folds instead of having to take the bus and deal with transfer stubs and stuff like that.) and told her about the baby and Meg and Autolycus and the Crown and the Key and Xena used her special powers (for the Greater Good, ya know) to transmit herself to the very building just in time for this brawl with the guards and save the day.

We're not done yet, there's still plenty of film in the canister, and so the warlords get away with the Crown while Kliades tells the story of his life as an unaging baby and why Athena did what she did, cos he was not doing a hot ruling job, all self-centred and like that and she figured that if he was a baby for a few years he'd be less self-centred... since babies are so thoroughly altruistic... maybe I missed something. Oh! It was so he could see the world through a baby's innocent eyes. Right. In the meanwhile, his subjects got a rest from his immaturity and simply thrived under the iron heels of two, count 'em, two evil warlords. So they erected temples on every street corner to Athena, you betcha.

Well, I'm sure Athena knew what she was doing. Anyway, they all trek back to the castle, takes maybe two minutes, get reacquainted, catch up on current events, and surprise the warlords in the midst of trying to loot the joint and skedaddle. Another big fight, very confusing, good guys win, and Kliades gets the Crown back, which he wants for his Queen, turns out she's the nurse, only now she's been released from her enchantment (there's some Athena rationale for this too, but it doesn't matter) and she's all young and beautiful and the Crown fits her just fine, thankyouverymuch.

And so everyone's happy, 'cept Meg is kind of melancholy since her baby's all grown up (Joxer's just beyond the pale maudlin about this, one wonders if he might've been whacked on the head too many times, if such a thing were possible.) and it's not like she can have children herself, probably a good thing considering her proclivities, they'd be neck-deep in babies otherwise, all looking just like Xena, hmm...

All in all, okay ep. The lack of Xena throughout three-quarters of the story is a weak point, since she's not really there in any of the narrative or dialogue either. Meg disguising herself as Xena is not enough as a place-holder. Had there been more buildup concerning where Xena was, what she was doing, what she might do if she knew what this trio were doing in her name... that might have salvaged this, made it an anticipated event when she did show up, so that her appearance in the building at that point was inevitable rather than convenient. Ultimately, the writers failed to focus on Xena as the main character, even off-screen, and so lost the point of the show. Meg can't hold it, even if Lucy Lawless plays both characters. The show isn't about Lucy Lawless, after all. It's about Xena. This ep wasn't.