Soul Possession

Written by Melissa Blake
Directed by Josh Becker

There was once a writer who wrote serial adventures for a magazine. Each and every month, he would place his hero in a dangerous situation with a cliffhanger ending. Each and every month, he would get the hero out of the previous month's predicament, only to leave him in an even more precarious position.

One month, the writer left the hero at the bottom of a well with no apparent means of escape. The walls were too slick to climb, there was no rope -- you get the idea. It was an impossible escape.

The fans held their collective breath waiting to see how the hero would escape. When the new issue arrived, the story opened with the line, "After he escaped from the well."

Such was the situation with the shift from season three's Sacrifice to season four's A Family Affair. Gabrielle takes a fatal plunge with Hope, and reappears later with no explanation of how she escaped. Fans speculated for years on how the two survived. Finally, nearly three years later, we had our answer.

And this was it?

For only the second time in my history of watching the show, I wondered what was on other channels while Xena was airing a new episode (the other time was the abominable Life Blood which almost put me to sleep). It wasn't that this episode was particularly bad, I just felt that the story didn't work particularly well for me on any level.

There are two possible reasons for this. The first is that it is very difficult to retroactively fit an explanation into an old established storyline. How do you add to the tale without dramatically altering what would have followed (but is already written)?

The second is that we have yet another episode that is loaded with in-jokes and nods to the fans. I don't have a problem with this (indeed, the few bright moments in this dull story were the result of in-jokes and fan nods), but how many "fan tribute" episodes does the show need in its closing weeks?

The internal consistency was all off. Ares saves Gabrielle to use as a bargaining chip against Xena. Are we supposed to think that Ares released Gabrielle shortly after this, and that is when Xena finds her wandering in the forest? If Ares saved Hope as well, why wasn't he involved with the goings-on during A Family Affair?

A possible explanation is that he was making up the entire story about saving them, but that doesn't seem to work either. He knows too much, and we are left in the same situation we were before this episode. Maybe I am over analyzing the story, but even with this show, I expect a certain degree of... well... sense?

Added to this tangle of story is the almost insulting portrayal of Joxer. I understand he is the comic relief, but the profound grief he displays in the opening moments of A Family Affair is neatly dismantled. If he were with Xena during these events, why would he still be taking flowers to the lava pit? And why would Xena be checking down in there?

I would rather have kept the crude knot we had before this episode, rather than the hopeless snarl it has now become.

Other reviews at the time mention that the show's continuity is fouled up as well. I don't know about that, as I don't watch the show to nitpick details to that extreme. I also don't care to sit through the episode again to see if these criticisms are correct. It just didn't make any impression on me.

Some other random thoughts that come to mind:

What was the deal with switching the souls back at the end? I didn't realize Ares had the ability to do that sort of thing. Was this simply to placate the mob that got all irate over Deja Vu all Over Again? I suppose that if Ares was going to make Xena his bride (or whatever his plan was at that point -- I was too disinterested to care) it was necessary for him to actually have a "bride". (Though it strikes me as an awfully stupid double standard.)

For that matter, why didn't Ares mention this contract when he encountered Xena-as-Harry back at the end of season four? The more I look at this story, the more obvious the holes in the patch become, and the more upset I get.

I must admit that it was nice to see Josh Becker return to the director's chair, even if he didn't have a very good story to work with.

I think, in the final analysis, this episode failed for the same reasons I felt Send in the Clones was a weak offering. The story was divided between two different settings, and as a result neither one received the attention it deserved. This weakness was exacerbated in this case by Soul Possession's split personality. The modern-day press conference was paced and presented as a comedy, while the ancient-day central story was presented in a more dramatic fashion (making Joxer's comic excesses even more bothersome).

Sorry, but after six years I expect, and we deserve, much better than this. Final grade: D.

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