Amphipolis Under Siege

Written by Chris Black
Directed by Mark Beesley

I liked this episode. The drama, the humor, the fighting -- this is in many ways a "classic" episode, and if the fan response was any indication, the episode has (deservedly so) won a place on many fan's "personal favorite" lists.

I feel sorry for the actress playing Athena's champion. The atrocious make-up and costume that poor woman was subjected to just prevented me from taking her seriously. Satrina from Past Imperfect was a pretty lame villain, but she had more surface credibility than Ilainus who in my mind looked like a reject from a Bangles tribute band.

There is also a blatant shattering of mythological barriers with the force that Athena assembled. How many people were loyal to her? Greeks in the force, sure. Romans I can believe because the Romans ripped off the Greek myths and changed the names. Warriors from Britannia, though? Didn't they have their own deities? There were one or two other groups mentioned that historically wouldn't have had dealings with Athena, except perhaps to stomp her worshipers into the dust.

I point this out not to quibble, but to highlight the fact that we are not dealing with "historical" mythology here. This ain't Bullfinch folks. This is the Xenaverse, in all its convoluted YAXIdom. There is an internal consistency here (more or less) but attempting to draw literal parallels with the related source material (while enlightening) does little more than make your head spin with the apparent contradictions.

So with the need to justify all "historical" contradictions removed... let me highlight some of the better bits.

Everything except the commercial breaks. (Gods, I loved living in France. They put commercials where they belonged -- between shows. No bothersome commercial interruptions while catching the latest dubbed rerun of Star Trek.)

But seriously, I have to say that despite the ridiculous make-up job on Ilainus (can anybody justify that hideous blue eye-shadow?) there is nothing that springs to mind right away as glaringly bad in this episode. Okay, granted, it seemed a little odd for Athena not to check that it really was Eve before giving her a really short haircut, but I chalk that up to "Wizard's First Rule."

(For those of you not familiar with Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth books, the first of which is entitled Wizard's First Rule, it can be summed up like this: People are stupid. Actually, it is slightly more complex than that, but suffice to say that Athena didn't bother checking because she wanted to believe it was Eve. It is really easy to convince somebody of something when they want to believe it -- just check out old discussion about the "death of subtext". People saw it as dead because they wanted to believe it. It gave them an excuse to be mad at Rob Tapert & Co. because they mucked about with "their" show. But enough of my parenthetical editorializing.)

In fact, the First Rule is used on Ares as well. He suspects that Xena is trying to put one over on him -- again. Not surprising; how many times has she done it in the series? I've lost count. But Gabrielle's "don't do it" speech convinced him that Xena's offer was genuine. Brilliant little mind play.

I'm not sure whether Gab knew Ares was hanging around (perhaps some of Xena's "Ares Radar" has rubbed off on her) or simply guessed that he would be lurking nearby.

This episode had it all -- great fight scenes, drama, humor, sex (both literal and subtextual). The continuing saga of the Twilight continues in a much better fashion than the previous episode, which felt a little bit cobbled together.

The prophecy continues to be fulfilled -- despite being well regarded by the people of Amphipolis, Athena assures her own eventual "demise" by going after an innocent child. Gabrielle's speech to the men at the barricade summed up the conflict here pretty well. When the gods don't respect you, you should no longer have any respect for the gods. If you knuckle under, what is to stop them from coming back again and again? Ares is right, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A wonderful first-time script from Chris Black. He clearly has a sense of the characters, and despite some silly dialogue at times, tells the story very well. Orci and Kurtzman may not have been the best thing for the series, but they got the stories told, which is really all I ask for. They may not have been as good at it as R.J. Stewart, but I don't think they royally sucked either.

This actually brings me to my final point. When the first part of this season aired, people were lamenting the demise of the series, saying that it wasn't like the glory days of season one (or two, or whatever their favorite season happened to be). The show was dead, they wished it had ended with The Ides of March in season four rather than go through this ridiculous Twilight storyline.

Then, all of a sudden, these same people were cheering. "The magic is back! This is classic Xena and Gab! We love this show! Hoody hoo!" You get the idea.

I don't mean to come across as overly harsh, but what a bunch of fickle mush-heads.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy they found their faith in the series again. But one generally well-received episode and all is suddenly forgiven? It seems to me that the credibility behind their arguments against the show were washed away. Would a mediocre episode the next week have them all singing a funeral dirge again? Fandom opinion shifted with the winds, certainly. But this type of radical turnaround just struck me as a little bit ludicrous.

Just my opinion. Give it the weight it deserves.

Anyway, this was a solid episode all around. I find the Twilight story arc (especially after they got that bothersome pregnancy out of the way) very engaging with quite a bit of dramatic tension. There are also several more fascinating stories to be told. There is great interaction between all the actors, beautiful fight scenes, and very little to find fault with. I give it a solid "A" rating, and if you ask me, this one is a classic.

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