Well, here I am at last, trotting out my review of Xena's latest adventure (at least it is here in Atlanta). It occurs so far back in time they had yet to learn "I" before "E" except after "C." Yes, it's spelled "Rheingold" and it went kinda like this....

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First off, let me say that while I studied mythology in school, somehow we never did much with the Scandinavian gods. I've heard the names of Odin, Beowulf, Grindl (I'm going to be using Whoosh!'s spelling throughout), and so on, but for me, this was all basically new stuff, so if I miss some historical/mythological slant, sorry! All I know is they were skewering the Norse legends just like all the other legends they twist to their devious ends! More power to 'em.

This being Xena's last season, it kind of reminded me of the big Norse gods arc they did on Hercules right towards the end of that show. Perhaps Mr. Tapert was attracted to this material because they could reuse a bunch of left over Hercules props? Probably had dozens of cans of "fake snow" laying about in storage. Not much good in an Egyptian setting. Just a thought.

First off, I could see immediately that this was a Xena "past lives" episode. They don't immediately tell you it's happening thirty five years ago, but Lucy, who is so good at playing different characters, really sells you that this is the pre-Hercules, evil Xena just with her expression, and that LOOK in her eyes (ah, those eyes!). I loved the new outfit: evil and stylish! And one of her many skills is now apparently blacksmithing! Is there anything she can't do besides cook?

I swear Grindl is the Destroyer's lost brother (sister? thing?). Even the way Grindl was revealed in the lightning flash reminded me of the Destroyer's unveiling in "Family Affair" in the barn. Of course, half the fun of the old Xena episodes was watching them recycle props. Again, traces of the good old days. Whoever said it was the Destroyer on a bad hair day (bad spike day?) was right on! To the creature's disadvantage, it also has the Destroyer's physical moves: slow, standing around a lot just letting Xena whack away. It doesn't die, but it doesn't seem to be the kind of creature that would give a swift and intelligent foe like Xena much trouble. No, Grindl didn't really "scare" me too much. If Xena could handle the Destroyer, she can handle this poser. And she does, right into a gated and locked abandoned mine. It must've been one strong building. Sure, it had that raven lock, but if Grindl is such a bad ass, couldn't it knock out a window or wall or something and get out?

I had to laugh when Xena took a bite out of Grindl's hand during the fight. Anything to win, Xena!

When Xena lets the creature keep the ring it stole from her during the fight, you know you have an excuse for a good hour's worth of television.

Suddenly, it's thirty five years later. Let's see, frozen twenty five years, been with Gabrielle about six years. This must've happened only about five years before Xena met Gabrielle, not the traditional ten years. Where's the continuity department? We all know everything happened to Xena ten years P.G. (Pre Gabrielle)!

I've seen a couple of people mention the familiar-looking tavern where Xena and Gabrielle are eating. It looks kind of like Gabrielle's old house, and it also looks like Virgil/Joxer's house. Probably simply another generic building on the lot painted up as something new.

Xena and Gabrielle's dinner conversation is hilarious. Xena eyeing Gab's unfinished dinner, complaining about the size of the meals. Gabrielle's simply "relishing" her meal. But Xena looks sooooo hungry! I had to laugh!

Beowulf shows up, drops the rusty broken lock from Grindl's jail on the table, and you can pretty much guess the rest of the show. Yep, shouldn't have left that ring behind. I guess this was the show where Xena learns to complete the jobs she starts.

Now, here's where I start complaining. Xena and Gabrielle have grown together, right? They're best friends who have learned through bitter, very "Bitter," experience the value of being honest with each other. So right after the commercial break, Xena talks privately with Beowulf, and what happens? Gabrielle: "What's this about?" Xena: "Nothing." Xena's expression says loud and clear: "Everything!" What?! Xena--tell Gabrielle what's going down! Doesn't she know she can trust her? This just seemed totally out of character for her at this point in time. Even Gabrielle shakes her head in amazement, as if thinking, "Has she learned nothing about me in all these years?"

Gabrielle, being the sweetheart she is, only knows that Xena is suffering somehow, and not knowing how else to offer comfort, she offers Xena her left over meal, which her friend had so coveted only moments before. What a kind gesture, worthy of a true friend. I found this touching. Xena declines, claiming to have lost her appetite. Well, Xena's shut down the lines of communication. Shame on her! Gabrielle should have gotten up and left, in my opinion.

However, come bed time, we see Gabrielle has at least learned to confront Xena and talk things out. "Still keeping secrets from me. After all these years," she says. At least Gabrielle has grown up. Xena claims she's not trying to shut her out, but then proceeds to do just that. Gabrielle again offers to sacrifice her peace of mind, and tells Xena that "Part of being a friend is letting people keep secrets. I respect that." OK, Xena, respect your friend back and tell her something! This isn't some trifle-from-the-past kind of secret. It's a big, lethal secret! At this point, Gabrielle lies down to sleep, but she looks really disappointed in Xena, and I can't blame her a bit. And why are they sleeping with all (literally all, boots, armor--all!) their clothes on? Are they expecting to have to run off to, say, Scandinavia during the night?

This being the "back to basics" season, Xena leaves during the night, so Gabrielle won't follow. Then Gabrielle follows. The old formula. Again, doesn't Xena know Gabrielle well enough by now to know how totally futile that is? Gabrielle is like a dog you can lose five hundred miles from home, but it shows up at your door step two years later. Look what happened in Chin! Surely Xena doesn't want to break out that big headstock from the prop department again?

However, when Gabrielle finds Xena's note, I began to think that perhaps Xena had been kidnapped and taken up north by Beowulf. He forced her to write the note to keep Gabrielle off their trail, not realizing she would follow anyway. How else to explain this bizarre act of betrayal? But, as the episode plays out, we find that Xena just up and left on her own. Xena, Xena, Xena....

I loved the way Xena signed the note with a big "X" that sort of looked like a sword with one leg longer than the others. And that does indeed look like a kiss at the end, but if it was, it was one mouth-wide-open kiss! What was Xena thinking? Heh-heh.

Well, as much as I dislike overdubbed narration in shows (it's TV, just show us, don't talk about it), I liked the use of it here to show how Gabrielle is back to writing her scrolls again. At least I think it's her scrolls. The way she's writing, it almost sounds more like a private diary, but perhaps they are one-in-the-same to Gabrielle.

Gotta love the way they tip their hat to the weather, yet don't leave out the eye-candy. Gabrielle goes farther north than she's ever been before, and it looks darn cold (just what I want to see on TV as winter moves in outside). Gabrielle has her nifty tan-and-white winter coat on, but she leaves it unfastened in front. We get to see the lovely bard's wondrous form, but you can't tell me she's not freezing her cute little tush off! Probably covered head-to-toe in goose bumps! Look how everyone else dresses, and they are used to the cold!

In a transparent effort to get the story moving, Gabrielle just happens to wander into a Norse village, and the first merchant she sees just happens to know the story behind the Valkyries. Somehow, she seems to intuitively know that this concerns Xena's whereabouts. She even finds a picture of past Xena as a Valkyrie, even though from the illustration it could be any dark- and long-haired woman (of course, with everyone being blond there, I guess it did stick out a bit). And when the merchant can't remember the Valkyrie's name, there just happens to be a Xena expert standing within earshot. What a series of coincidences! How fortunate for our Gabs.

I had my doubts about Odin's intelligence right from the start. He's an immortal god who's tired of living in a land in constant turmoil. What's he do? He hangs himself in a tree. Will that kill him? No. Will that make the world better? No. Will his suffering change a darn thing? No. No wonder Xena is able to manipulate him so easily. And what's Odin's line in this? He's supposed to be providing peace for his land, but he lets Xena very easily under his skin, and he makes this conflict-crazy chick one of his main Valkyries. I don't think Xena made for a good peace-maker at this point in her career.

Let's see, just where is Xena right now, mentally? She's just gotten out of Chin, so she's already been influenced by Lao Ma. She still hasn't run into Alti. So, I'm a bit surprised at how ruthless she is in this episode (more on that later on) considering Lao Ma's teachings. I saw a few people who thought she appeared a bit less intelligent here, but perhaps this is due to her not meeting Alti yet. She still just saw herself as a warrior, but one whose mission has changed from protecting her homeland to getting revenge against Caesar. So she hadn't had her evil inclinations focused by Alti's influence, so perhaps she was off a bit. She was licking her wounds in preparation to go after Caesar, killing time and staying hidden, and when she stumbled onto the situation here in the frozen north, she found a possibility to attain more power before possibly moving on. I don't think she really had a plan beyond seducing Odin and taking advantage of that--she was primarily ad libbing her plan as it went along.

So we see Xena and the lead Valkyrie, Grinhilda, butting heads over the proper way to do battle. Personally, given the choice of living to fight another day and dying in the name of Odin, it wouldn't take me long to find my way over behind Grinhilda's horse! The way Xena berates the troops here, I'm surprised they don't ask Grinhilda to make Xena go away! But, they are sent to the slaughter against an overwhelming force, and we get our first taste of Xena's bloodthirsty philosophy: the answer to anything is "fight." I was a bit surprised that she didn't join the battle, but rather sits off on the sidelines watching. With her battle skills, she might've turned the battle in their favor.

Did anyone else think Grinhilda looked a lot like Danielle Cormack (Ephiny) with a long blond wig on?

I suppose everyone caught the ironic way Xena tells Odin that he can live without love. Try telling that to Gabrielle! She knows better. Yep, she says just that to Brunhilda in the very next scene. (This "-hilda" stuff was starting to get hard to follow. Then there's Grindl and Grinhilda....)

So Brunhilda attacks Gabrielle in the middle of the night. What a friend! Geez! If she wanted to show Gabrielle what a great warrior she was, just say, "Hey, let me show you some of my moves." Somebody could've gotten killed. After that, I'm surprised Gabrielle can trust her. And I loved the way she slapped Brun's hand out of the way as Brun offered to help her up. She's so great when she cops an attitude!

Next, we see Odin giving Xena the ability to start fires with the power of her mind. They make a big deal out of it here, yet don't really do anything with it during the episode. I can only assume this will come into play later in this trilogy. Possibly Xena causes Grindl to self-combust? Nah, too obvious. But we'll see. Again, this reminded me of Lao Ma teaching Xena how to harness her mind's powers earlier. With all these powers she's learning, it's kind of surprising she didn't ultimately turn into a goddess herself at some point. She's got everything but the immortality and the ability to poof in and out of a scene.

Still, Xena wants more. She asks Odin about the Rheingold, showing that she knows something about it already, or she wouldn't know to ask. Odin refuses to tell her about it, but then Xena puts on quite the acting job, all petulant and weepy-eyed (Lucy can say more with just her eyes than most actors can do with their entire bodies!). This melts Odin's heart (don't tell me he's forsaken love--he wants the warrior princess), so he spills the beans, even though the Rheingold apparently is dangerous to handle if you haven't forsaken love. Fortunately, Xena has forsaken love (or so she tells herself--we know otherwise!), so she's going right to it.

One of the better comic lines this episode (not too many here in this drama) comes when Odin is surprised to learn that the local bards are singing about the Rheingold. Odin says, "The local bards know this?" and Grinhilda shoots back with, "Oh, you ought to mix with the people more, Odin." This was all the funnier due to being buried in an otherwise quite dramatic dialogue.

Great fight between Grinhilda and her Valkyries and Xena on flying horses. You know this has to be shot with a blue screen, yet the illusion was almost flawless. When Xena cuts the one Valkyrie's saddle, I loved the way the Valkyrie falls on the back of Xena's horse. She sits up, smiling at having been lucky enough to not fall to her death. Xena simply smiles back, then knocks the poor girl off with a hard elbow to the face! Ouch! Again, Xena's quite unrelenting in this episode. And considering how easily Xena keeps knocking Valkyries out of their saddles, don't you think someone would have invented seatbelts for the saddles by now? Another question: why do the angels need wings to fly, but these horses don't?

The next scene, after Xena and Grin fall off their horses is a little odd. First, considering how far they fell, both women should be nothing but a bloody mass of broken bones. Then, when Xena gets up and prepares to kill the still struggling Grinhilda, she hesitates, and, in a moment worthy of Gabrielle, decides not to kill (being the softie she is, she merely kicks Grinhilda's face, knocking her unconscious). Usually, when Gabrielle lets someone live like that, she ends up regretting it later. I have a feeling Xena's gonna wish she'd done it when she had the chance, but we'll see. Why does she save Grinhilda's life? That's a mystery, but like I said earlier, she had been introduced to Lao Ma's philosophy by now, and perhaps this was just a bit of that beginning to surface. Or perhaps, considering the fall, the weather, and the distance from home they must be, perhaps she just figured Grinhilda's as good as dead anyway, let nature do her in. That's all I can figure. Considering her previous and upcoming behavior, this was quite out of character.

Brunhilda: "Now, only the Rhein Maidens stood between Xena and ultimate power." Don't you think they'd find some slightly more vicious guards for something as important as the Rheingold? These ditzy cutie-pie little innocent girls couldn't defend themselves from mosquitoes, much less a warrior princess Hell-bent on world conquest! Odin needs to get busy and reorganize the Norse gods. Give these Rhein Maidens some combat lessons, at least!

This leads to one of the most surreal and bizarre set pieces they've come up with on this show (and very beautifully costumed and staged). Xena finds the Rhein Maidens, then proceeds to flirt them to death, to paraphrase Gabrielle from last season. In quite the lesbo love fest, Xena splashes water at the girls and frolics suggestively in their bucolic wonderland. The word "love" is bandied about recklessly. One of the girls even goes underwater and does something that gets a reaction of surprise from Xena! Yes, the subtext crowd will be discussing this for awhile, no doubt.

It only takes Xena a few minutes to talk the most gullible of the maidens into revealing their deepest darkest secret, once again underlining their total lack of clued-in-ness. The girl takes Xena straight to the Rheingold, and we are again treated with a bit of underwater snuggling between the two ladies. But if you think Xena's going to go soft on these girls, when the maiden asks Xena if she's forsaken love, Xena answers her by again applying her elbow to the girl's face (told you she was nasty!). That elbow's getting quite a workout this episode. The maiden, with bloody nose, appears to be more hurt by Xena's treachery than any physical pain, and she does nothing further to stop Xena from leaving with the gold. It doesn't show how she got out past the two remaining maidens, but presumably an elbow to the face was required at some point.

Xena forges the gold into a ring, giving her the power of invincibility. Gabrielle, upon being told this by Brunhilda, says that Xena wouldn't need that, that she's a great fighter. True, Gabrielle, to a point, but there is a difference between being "great" and being "invincible." Xena apparently made this distinction. I don't think Gabrielle, being the pacifist she is, can really understand Xena's mindset back in those days. It must be mysterious and frightening to her to contemplate some of evil Xena's antics.

Since Xena and Gabrielle can't be together this show much, we get the obligatory campfire heart-to-heart between Gabrielle and Brunhilda this time. Hearing Gab talk about her friendship with Xena and the price it extracts from her was touching. She admits she likes to pay the price, and considering that includes dying from time to time, that's quite a powerful statement. Understated, but powerful. At first, when Brun makes the remark, "She must be on a very dangerous mission, otherwise she wouldn't have left you behind," it sounds like a cutting remark meant to undermine Gabrielle's assertion of deep friendship with Xena. Kind of a catty statement from someone who'd like to be Xena's number two girl if given the chance. Gabrielle doesn't look like she knows how to take it, either, but she admits that's exactly what Xena wrote in her note. Somehow, that gives me a shudder. There's something not quite right here, but I can't put my finger on it.

Again, I think Xena's a bit out of character. Back in the present, she and Beowulf are walking along discussing Gabrielle's plentiful attributes ("Oh, you'd like her," Xena says wryly), when Beo makes the comment that it's too bad they won't live long enough to see Gabrielle again. This, coupled with the scene coming soon where Xena bids goodbye ("Stay strong, Gabrielle"), makes it sound like Xena is resigned to going into a losing battle and essentially committing suicide (Brunhilda even uses "suicide" to describe it to Gabrielle). She gives absolutely no indication that anything else is on her mind. Is this our smart warrior princess? Surely she would be looking to scope out the enemy, find some weakness, and exploit that with some utterly brilliant scheme. I don't think she would simply walk into an unwinnable situation without having a few options worked out. And, if Gabrielle had come along, she might've been able to help Xena formulate those plans. Xena, snap out of it!

Here, the writers drop another teaser in. Xena admits to Beowulf, as they wait for Grindl's attack, that she created the monster. No time to go into it now, but I assume we'll get an explanation in parts two and three. Frustrating, but fun to mentally munch on until next week.

It seemed odd to me that Brunhilda waits so long to tell Gabrielle about Grindl. Wasn't Grindl their unstated destination at that point, since that's where Xena was going? "Oh, hey, I forgot to tell you about the monster that could attack us and rip us to shreds any minute. Sorry."

Speaking of Grindl, he's attacking Xena and Beowulf, and boy, thirty five years of isolated confinement haven't been good to it. Instead of looking like the Destroyer, it's more the image of the creature from "Alien," except looking a bit more root-encrusted here. No, this monster hasn't aged well. Or are we seeing what the Destroyer would look like had it lived long enough? Actually, it probably looks the same (don't think they'd pay the prop department to make two monster suits in one week), but it's better lit here. No more quick moving than before, yet somehow, it manages to defeat Xena, and last we see of them, it's moving in for the kill(?).

It's touching when Brunhilda tells Gabrielle she wishes she had a friend like her. Gabrielle turns to her and says, "You do." Very sweet, but does Brunhilda deserves her friendship at this point? Perhaps, but I still wonder about that unprovoked attack at the start of the show, and the lame way she forgot to mention Grindl earlier. But that's Gabrielle for you, full of kindness and generosity, and as Virgil told her, we wouldn't have it any other way.

And what an ending! Gabrielle and Brunhilda get there just in time to find Beowulf's battered form in the rubble. He informs them Grindl carried off Xena, but we don't know if she's alive or dead. We are left with Gabrielle, looking worried and frightened, calling Xena's name and holding her bloody breastplate. To Be Continued indeed!

So, as a reviewer, what am I to make of all this? It's difficult to give a rating to, since this really was only a third of the story. This was the setup for the next two episodes, and we have no closure at all. Where's Xena? Where did Grindl come from, and how did Xena fit into its creation? What are Grinhilda and Odin up to, if anything? What's behind Brunhilda, who seems to me like she's hiding something? How will they defeat the plodding yet unstoppable Grindl? Will Gabrielle keep getting more adorable by the day? We can only stay tuned. I think the show was full of brilliant set pieces (the Rhein Maidens, the aerial horse battles, the lush setting of Valhalla). These appear to have sprung from the visual mind of Rob Tapert, but I could be wrong. Sometimes he gets so much into what the episode looks like, he doesn't seem to care what it takes to make it happen, narratively speaking. For me, the brilliance of the individual scenes was often offset by the erratic and uncharacteristic way Xena behaves (as outlined in detail above). I guess I just wanted to throw Xena up against a wall and tell her to go back and get Gabrielle, her most powerful resource. Anyway, I won't be talking Helen into believing this is the best Xena episode ever this time, since I'm only going to give it a three chakram rating out of five. It was exciting, but not enough to overcome my misgivings about the plot. The trailer for next week's episode looks awesome, and I'm sure by the time this trilogy is done, I'll have a better impression of the overall story arc. It was a good enough beginning, but it was only that.
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!

"Gabrielle, do you really need to chain us together by the ankles?" --Xena
"I'm not taking any more chances!" --Gabrielle, closing the lock