As a brief intro to this week's review of "Legacy," let me say thanks to all those who wrote during the last week saying how much they enjoyed reading all the episode reviews posted (not just mine). I also love to read other reviews; it's one of my favorite reasons for being on this list. You writers don't hear much from me, however, because I always wait to read your reviews just before I write my own (I don't want to know too much before my first viewing), so by then, they have been pretty well talked over by the group. Also, by that point, my replies end up going into my review. So, if you read one of my reviews, if I touch on something you wrote about, consider it a reply to you. This being said, I was particularly struck by two reviews this week. Kudos to Shana for writing an excellent analysis which leaves me little new ground to cover (which won't stop me here in a minute). Also, John, I thought your short review put an almost poetic twist on the entire show (concentrating on much of the visual imagery), getting me to see more abstract story elements I hadn't realized on first viewing (P.S. I didn't think of "Sheik of Araby" so much as "Midnight At the Oasis"). So, without further ass-kissing, on to this week's latest adventure:

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OK, right off, the big question is, where the heck is Eve? I mean, Virgil is a big guy who can take care of himself--he can wander off. When baby Eve disappeared last season for the Egyptian episode, at least they dropped in a line about leaving Eve with Cyrene (even though that put Xena's mom in danger from the Olympian Gods at that moment...). I mean, last we saw of Eve, she was still Mommy's Little Girl, lurking under Xena's protective wing. Since they don't mention her not being there, I can only assume Eve was there the whole time, so she must've been in Argo's saddlebags. Apparently, Gabrielle finally had enough, and stuffed the poor girl-- I guess I should stick to just the facts!

Speaking of Argo, why not camels this time out? I don't believe horses are the preferred means of desert travel, and when has Xena been hesitant about giving Argo some time off if she's going someplace a horse shouldn't be? Surely when they stopped to purchase some desert garb, they could've picked up a couple of used camels? Actually, it doesn't look like Argo she's using, but rather a dark brown horse. Perhaps it's an anorexic camel?

Again, we are given a reworked theme from previous seasons. Here, Gabrielle has to come to grips with her role as a warrior. She appears much as she did prior to last season, wondering how to reconcile her hatred of killing with the unavoidable times in which she has to kill. Here, she kills accidentally, but considering the circumstances, surely it can be filed away as an "unfortunate incident" rather than "murder." Surely, even Gabrielle doesn't feel she should pay for this honest mistake with her very life? A bright girl like this ought to realize that the world isn't all black and white, but shades of gray. Sometimes you simply have to kill in defense, sometimes people just are in the wrong place at the wrong time and get killed. She must've put this bit of her conscience on hold during Xena's pregnancy last season. She had to protect Xena at all costs, but now that Xena can take care of things again, she is returning to her doubting ways of old. Get over it, Gabrielle: the ancient world was a raw, dangerous, and often lethal place!

Well, the opening sequences started things off right. A bit of comedic banter as Xena and Gabrielle make their way through a sand storm. Then, yet another memorable hot tub scene, with Gabrielle doing her "surf" impression by playfully splashing Xena in the face. When the two get out of the water, we get a rather good view of them walking about stark naked. Whether using stunt doubles, body suits, or computer graphics, it looked quite real and, dare I say, exciting! (Anybody got a screen grab of that?) "Strange beauty to the desert," Gabrielle says. Just what beauty is she talking about? Heh-heh!

Best comic exchange in the show: "Well, sand up my wazoo gets me a little edgy," Gabrielle observes. "I hate it when that happens," is Xena's reply. I'd say from the previous nude shot, she's got her wazoo pretty well cleaned out at this point!

Well, here's Alison Bruce turning up in yet another role (her third?), as Kahina. Are they running out of actresses down there? Not that she's bad, but can't they find somebody new to play a new character? Just a thought.

I loved the scene during the opening fight in which Gabrielle is about to put some nomad out of his misery with her sais, when she suddenly realizes knocking the guy out is just as good as killing him. She flips her sais about with the trademarked whooshing sound, and konks the guy with the blunt end. In just a brief instant, you can read so much on Gabrielle's face just then, and her actions in this brief flash foreshadow all the events to follow. Excellently done.

One of the better running gags this time out is seeing how the nomads, raised on tales of the "legendary" Xena, react to her sudden appearance in their lives. Here, Kahina reacts with rage, and drawn sword, that the woman who saved her dares to use the name of "Xena, the legendary warrior princess." When informed that this is indeed Xena, Kahina says, "Impossible!" and Gabrielle retorts with, "No, it's just hard to explain." Hilarious. Then when Kahina refers to Gabrielle as "the battling bard of Potidaea," I thought I'd just die with mirth! Gabrielle's amused reaction ("I've never heard it used like that, but yeah, I'm Gabrielle") was great understatement, and her little smile was perfect. Just when I thought they'd milked all the humor from this confrontation, Xena gives a chakram demonstration for the nomads as further proof of her Xenahood. Just a standard, ho-hum toss, but then at the end after the chakram returns to her, she bounces it off her heel and sticks her hip out to catch it on its hook! And how do the nomads react to this incredible display of skill? They drop to the ground in worship! Probably much like I'll do if I get to meet Lucy at the Pasadena convention! Anyway, this was just simply one of the best scenes in recent memory, and the opening credits hadn't even rolled yet! I was getting a good feel about this episode.

The humor runs past the break and into the episode proper, in which Xena and Gabrielle are welcomed by the nomads with tributes. I'm surprised that they allow themselves to be worshipped, especially considering how Xena always stresses people not relying on the gods so much. But she probably figures this is a good place to spend a day or two, and they'll come to see that she's just a normal person like the rest of them (normal with many, and lethal, skills, granted). Unfortunately, the unfolding plot leaves little room for sharing before the whole cast is thrown into intrigue and war with the Romans.

When Gabrielle says she's "pleased" that her scrolls have made it this far, I get the impression she really wants to jump up to do a little victory jig, but she is hampered by her modesty! Surely, seeing the influence her scrolls have had in "the future," she must see the importance of continuing her writing.

Another nice little scene unfolds as young Korah fawns all over Gabrielle. Here, I think Gabrielle lets Korah's admiration of her fighting skills go to her head a bit. She's used to Xena getting all the accolades for fighting, and here's this guy who thinks she's just the fighting machine from Heaven! He wants her to teach him how to use the sais, and she points out that they can kill as well as be used as blunt instruments. More foreshadowing! And when he offers to wash her feet (probably a big sign of respect in his culture), she says, "I don't think you want to do that!" before finally caving in to his whim. I loved watching him sponge off Gabrielle's pretty little bare feet, but hey, that's just me!

I found it interesting that Korah observes Gabrielle's maturation in his reading of her scrolls. When he mentions this to Gabrielle, she claims she is unaware of this facet of her writing. Surely she is aware of how much she has changed over the years, and being a writer, how much this is reflected in her scrolls. Is she really this unaware, or was she simply being modest in deflecting Korah's implied compliment?

Another good non-verbal moment occurs when Xena looks for Gabrielle and finds her with wet feet. Xena looks a bit jealous, Korah looks like he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and Gabrielle looks at Korah with a what-did-you-expect expression. Perhaps a toss to the subtexters?

I found it funny that Gabrielle, posing as Xena's slave during an information-gathering visit to the Roman governor, expressed "For once, I'd like to be the Roman noble, and you be the slave." Seems like usually Gabrielle does get the upper hand in these dress-up roles. It seems like Xena usually get the dirty roll of the underling in these plots (such as in "Here She Comes, Miss Amphipolis"), but it makes you wonder if perhaps there isn't a wider meaning to Gab's comment. What do they do at night when the cameras aren't rolling? Another scrap tossed out to the subtexters. Again, they are going back to the "old way" of Xena episodes past, and I'm not complaining. I don't believe in subtext, myself, but it's amusing to see how they place clues into the stories. It's also interesting how Gabrielle plays a slave, yet she speaks up on occasion without being spoken to. I think most slaves would get a good beating for that (the governor does mention this, saying, "You seem a little outspoken for a slave. I think someone should be punished."). Play the role, Gabrielle, and let Xena do the talking.

At this point, as I mentioned above, Gabrielle accidentally kills Korah in confusion as he attempts to get a scroll to Xena during a sand storm. An honest mistake, but Gabrielle doesn't take it this way. But I'm watching this episode again, and I paused the tape as the sand-enshrouded figure first shows the "scroll" he is carrying. I'm sorry, but with stop action, he's holding a knife very clearly. That ain't no scroll, but perhaps the director wanted to show what Gabrielle was imagining, so I'll let it go. On second glimpse, it is a scroll, but that leads to two questions: 1) why is Korah brandishing a scroll as though it were a knife, and 2) why is it so important to deliver the scroll during a horrible sand storm? Surely the news could wait until the storm blows over? OK, the peace treaty between the nomad tribes was signed, but couldn't it wait until Xena and Gabrielle returned?

When Xena returns to the nomads, sans Gabrielle, to bring back the body and explain what happened, I was a bit disappointed in how she handled things. She allows Kahina and Tazere (the leader of the other nomad tribe) to jump to all sorts of conclusions and nearly get into a fight before she admits to seeing "tracks" near the body, implicating the Romans. Now, it seems more in character to me if she'd just told them straight out what happened and how it was an honest, if unfortunate, mistake. Instead, she tells what she thinks will be a white lie to get Gabrielle off the hook. Of course, the lie only comes back to haunt her later, as the nomads question her truthfulness and reliability later on. If the nomads insist on killing Gabrielle as retribution, well, at least Gabrielle is off hiding for the moment, and she can get their minds off it by concentrating of the upcoming battle with the Romans. Instead, she uncharacteristically lies....

I can understand Gabrielle being upset at Xena for not telling the nomads the truth, but why does she insist on setting the record straight when she knows it will be her death warrant? As Xena points out, what will her death accomplish? Gabrielle is a woman of many great accomplishments, and she needs to get over this mistake and atone for it with further good deeds, not by defacto suicide. This doesn't ring true to me as coming from a character as smart and analytical as Gabrielle, and I couldn't help thinking she was a victim of some weak writing (in an otherwise well-written script).

When Kahina comes in, you can just see Gabrielle straining to keep her mouth shut while Xena is worried she'll let the cat out of the bag. Last week, Xena knocked out Gabrielle to keep her from saying something stupid--you'd think maybe she'd do the same here! Just kidding. Of course, when Gabrielle realizes an "innocent" Roman soldier will die for her sin (in this show, what Roman is truly innocent?--besides, the guy'll probably get it in the upcoming battle anyway), she has to fess up. And boy, does that tick off Xena--just look at her expression!

As Gabrielle sits up all night, chained near the dead body and awaiting execution in the morning, she thinks back over all the things in her life that led her down a warrior path since meeting Xena. The flashback sequence is very well chosen and covers all the pertinent bases. The clip from the first episode, in which Gabrielle tells Lila that she's "going to join up with Xena. I'm going to be a warrior," is particularly chilling in light of recent events. The poor peasant girl doesn't know what she's asking for, and perhaps it's only now that Gabrielle begins to have some insight into what goes along with the job description. She plays warrior with her old staff and dresses up in Xena's clothes, but her innocence shines through. Then we see her watch as Perdicus dies, and she makes her first kill in the service of Dahak. And despite Eli's talk of love, there is the time she breaks and slaughters the Roman legion, defending Xena when her spine gets broken, crossing once-and-for-all the line between true pacifist and balls-to-the-wall warrior. The innocent Gabrielle is gone, and even when she decides not to kill Gurkhan herself, she still allows him to die later on. And when she reflects on killing Korah, she finally sheds a tear, not so much for Korah as for the loss of her own peaceful self. Perhaps this is why she is so eager to die here--she considers something about her core selfhood already dead and irretrievably gone. At one point, she talks to herself saying, "Xena, you once prayed never to see the light go out in me. I just don't think there's much of that left in here. This is best for everyone." So sad. Of course, Xena knows otherwise, and it's up to her to shake Gabrielle out of this funk she's fallen into. As they've said before in this show, once you've killed, it changes everything.

Meanwhile, Xena tosses away the night trying to come up with a plan to save Gabrielle and the nomads. I would tend to think Xena would simply storm the tent where Gabrielle is and take her away, as she's done many times in the past, but perhaps she doesn't want to piss off the nomads again. I think she knows that without her leadership, the nomad alliance will probably fall apart, leaving them open to Roman genocide. Instead, she gets the Romans to attack the nomads, which might sound callous, but she knew a fight was going to come down, whether it was this day or the next, so why not hasten things along if it'll save Gabrielle? I thought on first viewing that she was kind of bad bringing this on the nomads, but on second thought, given what had gone on already, it was kind of a clever way out of this whole mess.

The scenes of Gabrielle buried in the sand and awaiting execution by polo mallet were chilling. Her passive standing still as she's buried alive, and the look in her eyes as she watches the nomads practice on skulls nearby was almost more than I could stand. A woman with this much good to give shouldn't die like this! And what a horrible way to go! What if the first hit doesn't kill you right away? I shudder to think of what would follow, but fortunately, Xena shows up to keep us from finding out how this gruesome execution is concluded. (You knew she would! Nobody messes with Gabs when the warrior princess is around.)

Nit-pick Department: It took Xena nine seconds to exhume Gabrielle from a roughly five foot deep filled sand pit, brush off all traces of sand from her clothing, and get them both on top of her horse to speed away. Nine seconds? I don't think so! Perhaps one of the witches (Holly Marie Combs?) from "Charmed" came by to stop time for her?

Finally, as Xena and Gabrielle look down from a sand dune on the armies preparing for battle, Xena has a chance to reassure Gabrielle about what has occurred. You can see it coming a mile away, yet when Gabrielle asked what changed things for Xena (during her dark, murderous days), Xena replies, "You did." Gabrielle then realizes that "I guess we've come full circle." Awww, what a cute and touching scene. These two are just so perfect together!

I'm a bit surprised that when Xena and Gabrielle return to the nomads to help them prepare for battle, they just seem to drop their desire to see Gabs executed. It's like, well if we don't get her killed the first attempt, just forget it! Of course, Gabrielle later proves herself in battle by helping the nomads, and thus wins her pardon, they didn't know that at this point! Seems like the nomads are a tough, hard-bitten group who would not be quite so quick to forgive.

I'm also a bit dodgy on how Gabrielle expects their fight with the Romans to give Korah's death "meaning." His death had nothing to do with the Romans, and was, as I said, an accident. But it sounded good right before going into battle. And Kahina and Tazere both accept Xena's proclamation that she keeps her promises, in this case her promise to help them with the Romans. If Kahina and Tazere both knew about Xena bringing the Romans down on their backs like this (when they really weren't prepared yet), would they still have been as accepting? I don't think so, but what can you do? Fight the Romans now, worry about the rest later. Of course, the smart Kahina begins to suspect the truth since the Roman attack was seemingly timed to help out Gabrielle. Kahina goes up to Gabrielle and says, "You left a few details out of those stories, didn't you?" Burn! And Gabrielle knows it, too! She doesn't even try to offer up an explanation or excuse. Kind of makes you wonder how much Gabrielle did edit from her scrolls over the years. Does she leave out anything that might make Xena or herself look bad?

This being Xena, all the problems are ironed out in a good battle scene (just like in real life!). The good guys slice and dice the bad guys. Xena makes up for bringing down the Roman legion by devising the plan to defeat them. Gabrielle grabs a staff and begins doing a bit of Gab-of-yore with it. Of course, she saves Tazere's life, and thereby atones for causing the death of his son (although later on she admits nothing can really make up for losing someone like that). Xena then tells a Roman soldier to give Caesar her regards. The message won't get far, however, because the soldier is impaled (with good squishy sound effects) on Xena's sword. But something tells me word will leak back to Rome, and then, we'll see....

At the end, we see a nice little talk between Xena and Gabrielle, in which Xena says that saving Gabrielle, for her, is more important than the Greater Good (which is supposed to justify her bringing the Romans down on the nomads). That was nice, but Gabrielle asks, "What if it was my choice?" Xena tells her she would still interfere (to keep Gabrielle from making a "mistake?"). Anyway, Gabrielle accepts this sign of Xena's devotion and seems resolved to get on with things finally. It was a nice affirmation of their dependence on each other.

Finally, Tazere comes up, and after discussing what happened, calls Gabrielle a "great warrior." After all that's transpired, I wonder what she thought of that label? She's seen the impact her scrolls have had in this future world, and at the end as the final fade occurs, she appears to be pondering a return to something a little less blood thirsty. I'm sure we'll hear more about this in coming episodes, but for now we're left with a very bittersweet ending. Poor Gabrielle. I just wanted to walk into my TV and put my arm around her.

So we come to the end of another action-packed episode. Overall, a good solid workmanlike Xena episode. I'm giving it a three chakram rating. The story wasn't remarkable enough for a higher score, Gabrielle seems to be travelling over familiar psychic terrain, and Xena behaves in a bit more underhanded way than is her usual modus operandi, all taking a bit of the shine off an otherwise good episode. I'm tempted to give it an extra star for featuring Gabrielle so heavily, but not everyone shares my passion for the warrior bard, so I'll let it slide this time. The desert scenes were beautifully done, there were several good Xena-and-Gab talks, and Renee really shines with the material she has to work with in what is in essence a Gabrielle episode. I loved the desert costumes, and the lack of exposed female skin was offset by the cool hot tub scene. Lots of cute subtext allusions, and it was interesting the way the humor of the opening segments gave way to the violence and danger of the last part of the show (anybody seen a movie named "Bonnie and Clyde?"). And we enjoyed Xena's leaving Eve behind on this one, but, again, where in the heck was she, exactly? I guess she's out preaching the word of Eli. Maybe I'm glad we're not around to see that! Not a classic episode (although there were individual scenes worthy of "classic"), but certainly nothing to be embarrassed about in this strong season so far. Bring on next week!
Rick(Gabriologist since the late 20th Century)
Visit my web site at ricks-studio.com for Episode Reviews,
Humorous Quotes, and other Xena-themed writing!

"By the gods, I've got sand up my wazoo again!" --Gabrielle, looking uncomfortable
"Maybe you should try wearing some underwear." --Xena, offering advice to live by