Xena: Season 5 Summary

A great metaphor for this episode is like ordering Chick-fil-A. You take a few bites, and it’s so fucking delicious, but then suddenly you receive a mildly important phone call that you have to take. The call is positive enough, but now your Chick-fil-A is getting cold.

Ironically, Season 5 has so many good episodes, but it is so stiff at times that I can’t in good conscience rank it #1. Yes, it yielded the greatest work but it also brought me the greatest pain.

But not "Fallen Angel," omgggg. Season 5 could have had "Fallen Angel" and then 21 shitty episodes, and I would still stan it hard because of "Fallen Angel" alone. What a gift to humanity.

Now is a good time to amplify Xena's only Emmy win, which was this season for Joseph LoDuca's score for "Fallen Angel." Xena was nominated for seven Emmys throughout the seasons, all in the music category. Some might consider noms of this kind to be lesser fare, but it's the frickin Emmys. The Emmys announced to the world for years that Xena: Warrior Princess was a real player to be reckoned with. And in the year 2000, against The X-Files, Star Trek: Voyager, Falcone, and Felicity, it won. 

Now, look. Here’s all the big shit that happened in Season 5, girl:

1. Xena and Gabrielle both become archangels and demons in heaven and hell respectively
2. Xena trades her soul to save Callisto
3. Xena and Gabrielle come back to life
4. Callisto impregnates Xena
5. Xena combines the light chakram with her dark chakram, making a splitting chakram
6. Gabrielle is now a warrior who kills using the sai
7. Ares takes an interest in Gabrielle
8. Xena’s western episode
9. Xena is very pregnant
10. Another musical episode
11. Argo gets little
12. Xena gives birth to Eve, who’s to bring the twilight of the gods, so all the gods want to kill her
13. Hercules kills Zeus who killed Hera
14. Athena shimmers into our lives, not unlike the shimmer in Annihilation
15. Joxer almost dies
16. Ares proclaims his love to Xena
17. The worst fucking episode of Xena, ever
18. Gabrielle gives Eve her Amazon rite of caste
19. Gabrielle tries to get Xena to settle down with her, seriously
20. Xena cheats on Gabrielle with Antony
21. Xena and Gabrielle fake their deaths, wake up 25 years later
22. Eve evolves into 25-year-old Livia, champion of Rome who hates her mother
23. Joxer dies
24. Xena and Gabrielle turn Livia back into Eve
25. Xena chakrams Gabrielle in the back of the head, pretty much killing her
26. Ares gives up his immortality to save Eve and Gabrielle
27. Xena kills several prominent Greek gods, including Athena, Hades, Hephaestus and Artemis

A loooooot of shit happened, as you can see. A lazy season, it was not.

Confusing is the death shit. Did Gabrielle die at the end of "Motherhood?" And if someone is OUT for 25 years and doesn’t age, is that like dying? I am going to just interpret it thusly, because I can’t put nothing about that 25-year-long "death." 

Series Death-count So Far...  

Xena: 3.5 (.5 for fake dying and skipping 25 years)
Gabrielle: 4.5 (Ditto w/the .5, and I think Gabrielle died at the end of Ep 22 with Eve.) 

QUALITY: I had to watch a couple of these episodes on Hulu and my god was the quality awful. The discs are far better, if you can keep it. I need to check if the aspect ratio changed this season, though I didn't notice anything.

RANK: It is true Season 5 turned-out many amazing episodes, but there’s no way I think of it as fondly and cohesively as I do Season 4, and that’s…not my fault.

Favorite Seasons Rank:

1) Season 4
2) Season 5
3) Season 3
4) Season 2
5) Season 1
6)

Season 5 should feel lucky it's ahead of Season 3, because Season 3 was truer to the story than Season 5. I should actually re-examine my notes and consider moving Season 3 ahead of Season 5. Might also remove the last episode from favorite. It can’t just be a favorite from the chakram-throws. Can it?

Favorites I’m questioning: Definitely the last episode, "Motherhood," episode 22. It’s got real good stuff, but because I love the episodes right before it, I feel a little blinded.

On the one hand, episode 22 has amazing chakram action, and Xena kills all those gods. On the other hand, when I ask myself if I would include it in a "Favorites Only" viewing, especially curated for others, I can’t muster the love. Then again, you can’t watch “Livia” and “Eve” without watching "Motherhood." Hmm. Like is it an episode I enjoy watching? Leaning toward changing it to a non-favorite.

Other episodes I’m questioning: “Succession.” I go back and forth with faving it. I did enjoy it. Let's break it down:

• My Season 4, 6-star favorites are “In Sickness and in Hell,” “A Tale of Two Muses,” and “Takes One to Know One.” Are those three better than “Succession?” YES, FUCK. 
• My only Season 3, 6-star favorite is “The Dirty Half Dozen,” and it, too, is more engrossing than “Succession.” 
• Similarly, my only Season 2, 6-star fave was “The Lost Mariner,” and I reviewed it 6.5 years ago, so I kind of can’t even remember it. 
• “A Fistful of Dinars” is my 6-star, Season 1 favorite, and it is very similar to “The Dirty Half Dozen,” so I know I loved that one, and it was better than “Succession.” 

I don’t think I’ve ever been so torn about an episode, but yes I'm afraid "Succession" ultimately falls short of a favorite.

SUBTEXT: The subtext rolled-out HARD at the beginning of the season, then became non-existent, going extra-absent in the last five god damn episodes. Here are some scraps the show tossed us:

1. Demon Xena openly wanted Archangel Gabrielle’s ass
2. Xena and Gabrielle came back to life and said they'd always be together
3. Gabrielle pretty much says she loves Xena’s darkness when Xena turns good for an ep
4. Ares makes Xena and Gabrielle into one person in “Succession”
5. Xena tells the doctor she can’t be pregnant cuz she hasn’t duped a guy in a long time
6. Xena fears telling Gabrielle about being mysteriously pregnant, why?
7. Gabrielle sees Xena's baby as her own
8. Xena and Gabrielle cut their palms, clasp hands, and squish their blood together
9. Gabrielle says to someone that a home can sometimes be a person (wonder who she means)
10. Xena tells Ares that Gabrielle is the father, and Ares says he would’ve paid to see that
11. Callisto is actually Eve’s father...
12. Xena expresses rage and jealousy at Ares a few times for coming-on to Gabrielle
13. Joxer actually asks Gabrielle point blank why she doesn’t love him, she answers “Why do people love the people they do?” She’s clearly talking about Xena
14. Athena knows Gabrielle is Xena’s weak spot
15. Gabrielle threatens Ares while trying to stop him from taking advantage of Xena sexually. Later, Ares pleads with Xena to “leave (Gabrielle)”
16. The whole episode “Kindred Spirits” is literally about Xena and Gabrielle settling down together. It’s chock-full of subtext. And maintext. Xena and Gabrielle even break up
17. Xena tells Gabrielle that Eve's “our daughter”

Xena unfortunately kisses two guys this season: Ares and Antony. She kisses Ares several times and almost fucks him a couple times. Gabrielle kisses Joxer a few times. She almost kisses Lin Qi. Don’t think I forgot. Pathetic and lame. Xena and Gabrielle were TO. GETH. ER. at the beginning of this season, I’d maintain all the way up until the big whopper “Kindred Spirits." But after that, they’re so cold and distant to each other that Xena actually splits-open Gabrielle’s skull.

I definitely liked Season 5 better this time around than I did the first. The first time I watched Season 5, I didn’t realize the show would get better in Season 6. I just saw Xena declining in Season 5 and knew Season 6 was the last season, so therefore Season 6 probably was going to be frosty and off-putting as well. Now that I knew what happened in Season 6, I was able to relax this time and fully enjoy what Season 5 had to offer. There was so much good shit. Really. It gave us the best Xena episode so far, but also the worst. I now see where it went wrong, episode by episode, and can cherry-pick the amazing eps.

And Season 6? Maaaan, you don’t even KNOW. So just, get of my lawn, bitches. Just…prepare your bods for the sheer ecstasy about to bespill you.

βλέπω! Another stunning, if not a bit frigid and dickish, season of Xena: Warrior Princess: