A jealous Aphrodite casts a spell on Gabrielle’s scroll, which causes everything she writes to come true. Of course, what Gabrielle writes isn’t always precisely what she means.
Vandals have graffitied Aphrodite’s (Alexandra Tydings) temple with slogans like “Xena rules” and Xena should be a god. Ares (Kevin Smith) appears and tells his sister that it’s all Gabrielle’s fault because she is the bard who spreads Xena’s name all over the land, making the warrior famous.
Aphrodite goes to visit Xena and Gabrielle at their campsite, where Gabrielle is preparing a new scroll. Xena suggests Gabrielle try writing fiction and make someone else the hero for a change. So Gabrielle begins to write and sends Xena fishing. She declares herself to be the “warrior Gabrielle” who “wakes with a jerk” to find herself under attack by five barbarians. Aphrodite finds this amusing and puts a spell on the scroll so that the words will come true.
Gabrielle does awaken to the sounds of an attack; she defeats the five men, with some highly unlikely manoeuvres with her staff. She finds that Joxer (Ted Raimi) is with her now, not Xena, and realises that the words on the scroll have come true. (Wakes with a jerk. Get it?) Now she believes she can do great good with the scroll.
A fun episode stuck in the middle of a minefield. How do they work out the schedules? Maybe the Powers That Be are trying to lighten the mood knowing full well it’s going to take a while to get over the events of the rift arc episodes.
It was nice to see Ares and Aphrodite as mortals, having to work with Gabrielle to get their powers back. The hygiene humour got a bit much though. It was quite a silly episode really.
Disclaimer: No naked Gabrielle’s were harmed during the production of this motion picture.
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