Rick's Studio

OK, first off, when is an episode given its own title, and when is it "Such and Such, Part 2"? This could've been "Purity, Part 2," but titles aside, we're given a nice little mini-arc through Chin. Interesting how it looks a lot like New Zealand! You can take Xena out of New Zealand, but you can't take the New Zealand out of Xena.

The opening sequence was great comic Xena: the more Xena tries to cook a rabbit with her mental powers, the more stone rabbits she piles up. Gabrielle's sarcasm was well done, and even Joxer gets in a lick with "If you'd try to turn the rabbits into stone, maybe we'd have more cooked rabbits" (or words to that effect). Nothing like a little humor to lead into another dramatic episode.

I was admiring the Chinese costumes again, and I realized even Joxer looks better! Without the ridiculous hat and trash can lid on his chest, he almost doesn't look like a doophus.

That black powder looks pretty dangerous. Imagine what would happen if the formula was available to arms-makers today! (Yeah, I know what black powder is; I'm just kidding...)

Then Xena finally meets the infamous Genghis Khan and the evil two-faced Ming Tien/Pao Tsu. Khan is a bit of a letdown, kind of like Ulysses was. Neither of them really lived up the their historical personas. Khan comes off more as a tool, or an evil warlord-of-the-week, to be used by Ming Tien. I expected a bit more ferocity and scene chewing. However, the two-faced Ming/Pao was one of their better villians, in the sense that s/he was really creepy. I don't know why, but it made my skin crawl a bit every time I watched the metamorphosis.

Another temporal glitch dept.: when Khan captures Gabrielle and Lin Qi, he attempts to blow them up in the black powder supply tent. From what we've seen previously, that stuff is incredibly powerful. How can he possibly expect to light the fuse from inside the tent and then get far enough away to save himself from the explosion? Well, Pao Tsu managed to get pretty far away from the exploding Gab/Joxer combo in "Purity", so maybe that same talent will come into play here for Khan. Gosh, those Chinese are clever! And what's with the net imprisoning Gabrielle and Lin Qi? They can't escape from it, but the second the fuse is extinguised, they just jump out like it's no problem. Just a little artistic license, eh?

There were some good little personal bonding moments in this show, and unlike in "Purity", they didn't tend to bog down the action much. The scene in which Lin Qi discusses Gabrielle's dormant bardly talents is quite well done. In a season in which Gabrielle's spent much of her time developing her hard, kick-butt image, it was nice to see her let down her guard a bit and get philosophical, and even a little wistful it seemed.

And, again, just what was Joxer even doing in this episode? Aside from his humorous recounting of his battle exploits, complete with gross imaginary sound effects, at the end, his buffoonery clashed with everything going on around it. Please, a break from Joxer!

After being a bit disappointed in "Purity," this made a good end to the mini-Chin-arc. Lots more action this time, and more chilling adversaries certainly helped. Consider the two episodes as one two-hour story, and I say it's a definite thumbs up. And with that, I'm caught up reviewing the season. Can't wait for the new baby stories to start!