An opinion of Xena season five

Guest review from Xena fan Salmoneus

Fallen Angel is dreadful.
“In a world of ancient gods” is suddenly turned into a world of modern gods. The most modern god of them all, family values and evangelical fundamentalism.

Xena and Gabrielle are sent to Christian Hell for being gay, but then TPTB realise that if they are together it ain’t Hell. So they send Gabrielle to Hell and Xena to Heaven. Xena leads the angel army to rescue Gabrielle. Then the angels kidnap Gabrielle so Xena must lead the army of devils to rescue her.

In Ides of March, Gabrielle took out a Roman Legion and I thought she had recovered from being Eli’s pet bald zombie, but in Fallen Angel she is pet zombie to yet another pious hypocrite, St. Michael, the underpants gnome.

The episode officially ends with our heroes being resurrected, but they ain’t. Gabby doesn’t resurrect, she is just the useless tag-along, peroxide psychopath that Eli made her.

There’s also Eli’s apparent change of mind. TPTB are thinking great we’ve got this huge battle scene which is really boring because the wings get in the way of the hidden wires and there is no moral difference between the two factions and then Aaaarrrgghh! 5 minutes to the end. Aarrgghh! How do we get out of this? Eli changes his mind.

Eli has this great plan with Callisto to murder Xena and get the 1,000,000 dinar bounty from Caesar. But in the end even he loves Gabrielle.

I assumed in series 4 that Eli was a priest of Dahak, but in Fallen Angel he prays to Callisto. Callisto is turned good so he is turned good. That’s what I thought at the time. But if Eli had turned good then he would have taken off the curse and Gabrielle would get her soul back and the subtext would return. No such luck, she is still the peroxide psychopath, the useless tag-along. And in Back in the Bottle, Xena becomes the useless tag-along too.

TPTB made so much profit out of Eli destroying Gabrielle’s soul that in Purity and even more so in Back in the Bottle daughter destroys Xena’s soul. It’s perfectly acceptable for Xena to have sex with Lao Ma’s daughter, but she isn’t allowed to even talk to Gabby.

There was a cabinet minister called Allan Clarke. He made his millions by shagging a mother and her daughters. Xena used to be Maggie Thatcher turned good, now TPTB have made her Allan Clarke turned useless. Plus, it is clearly implied that Lao Ma’s daughters are Xena’s own children. This is sick.

Little Problems. The return of the subtext for one week only
Xena is a six year old kid. Then and only then will TPTB allow Gabby to have her. I have given up watching.
I’ve got my videos. I’ve got my photos of real Gabrielle and that’s all there is.

Salmoneus June 2000