My titles are getting too long. Or maybe not. Whatever.

So... I guess I'll start with what's fresh in my mind. That, of course, being the series finale of Xena: Warrior Princess. (All heads now bow.)

Let's bring on the disclaimer: WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD. If you have not yet seen the finale, do NOT read further. Unless, of course, you're one of those people who doesn't mind having things spoiled, or you just don't care anyway. But in the latter case, one must wonder why you've even read this far. If you don't care anyway, why waste the time? Whatever. Warning has been given.

There's a lot of good things I could say about this episode (both parts). There's a lot of bad things I could say about it. I held off on doing any review last week, because I wanted to see the conclusion before making comment. Now... I'll start my comments in the general territory of what I disliked, and wander aimlessly from there. Eventually, I'll probably end up discussing what I really liked. Or at least that's the theory. Anyway, enough of this mindless verbage.

Last week, A Friend in Need: Part I started the final arc by following a narrative style that should now be very familiar to even the most half-assed of Xenites: The backstory, where we learn more about Xena's dark past. Usually, this is accomplished through Xena getting some urgent message about a catastrophe somewhere, and while Xena and Gabrielle travel to help, Xena relates to Gab all the sordid details of past events, which inevitably ends up with Xena somehow being responsible for the trouble they are about to face presently.

It's an effective narrative style, and the show has exercised it to good effect on many occassions. As far as Xena episodes go, this was a good one. But for a finale? It strikes me as odd that the producers would want to spend the last bits of airtime introducing mostly new characters in a previously unmentioned plotline about Xena's past that we had never heard of until then. "Oh, and BTW, Xena also did all this other stuff 10 winters + 25 years ago, and now needs to travel even farther to Japan to make amends. Oh, and while she was there last time, she had another nice fling with a hot little Asian chick. Gabrielle always enjoys hearing about those."

(Actually, this time, they didn't explicitly mention the time lapse. But we can extrapolate, based on the temporal sandwiching between the Loa Ma encounter and the Cyan's Amazons incident, that it did indeed also fall into the "10 winters ago" chronology (With 25 years added to adjust for Season 5 cryogenic time travel. Heehee.))

(And yes, I am aware that this Japan plot was not the first choice of the people putting together the show, because the evil PHB censors axed their original Sappho finale idea. My comment still stands, however.)

This review is way too convoluted to make any sense. Funny. Kind of like the plot itself. But I digress. We're still very deep in the "dislike" territory. A bit more ground to cover before moving on.

Alright. Fine. So the episode is writing more convoluted backstory. In the flashback, Xena's girlfriend / ransom hostage returns to her father's house. To Xena's surprise, she gives her father the pinch Xena had just taught her, and as he dies, she curses him for killing the rest of her family. That's it. No explanation as to why or how he killed his own family members, or any further insight into the workings of the family. He just did. For 30 seconds, he's onscreen. And now he's dead. And his daughter is avenged. Then she commits suicide (possibly to preserve her honor). Her last request is for Xena to carry her ashes to the family burial ground. Yadda yadda.

If we're gonna do backstory, it should at least make some cohesive sense. Well, I suppose it sort of does, in its own strange and convoluted way. But as Part 1 wraps up, and with throughout Part 2, the mess that is the story for these episodes gets even worse. I expect this show to be ridiculous and outlandish. But just plain stupid and jumbled? No.

Alright, so I'm being extra harsh because expectations for a finale are extra high. I shall continue.

I don't give a rat's ass whether Xena is saving forty thousand dead souls or 2 dozen. As far as I'm concerned, they're all just a bunch of nameless nothings whose existence we never even knew of until a week ago. And they're already DEAD, for crying out loud! Who cares! At least in Adventures in Sin Trade (Season 4), we got to see the faces of those poor Amazons who were blocked from entering their rightful place in the land of the dead. This time, it was just a bunch of silly floating fx figments. Who cares!

Other problem: The villian(s). The main bad guy ghost, quite simply, sucked. (My alternative: They should have brought back Hudson Leick for one last showdown as evil Callisto. I don't care how messed up of a plot it would have required to explain away her conversion back to the dark side. No matter how silly, it couldn't have been as goofy as what we had here.) For one thing, we never knew in the first place what motivated him to kill his family. As a big bad dead power ghost, he was just evil for evil's sake, and not very interesting at that.

Same pretty much goes for the real live Samauri guy Gabrielle was fighting in Part 2? He randomly comes in, has his army kill Xena (I warned of spoilers), chops her head off, hangs her body up for show, and then makes evil faces at Gabrielle while they fight? This begs for some further context. Anything. Even a 1-sentence explanation as to what he was doing there in the first place. (Or did I just blink and miss it?)

[Bitscape shakes his head.]

So. We have sufficiently established that what bits of flimsy plot existed as the basis for this finale made little or no sense, and the new characters which were introduced, with the exception of Akemi (Xena's love of yesteryear), were flat, uninteresting and one dimensional. Moving on to greener pastures...

The finale. Part 2. (And really, Part 1 was nothing more than a setup for the elaborate final hour.) This was probably the most effects-laden Xena episode ever made. When it came to flashing, explosions, CGI effects, wide shot vistas, and stunts, no expense was spared. They really went all-out with the visuals.

For the teaser, an interesting choice was made. No title sequence. Just a brief full-screen "Xena: Warrior Princess" graphic, and Lucy Lawless + Renee O'Connor credits as the action began. Then, in an extended extra long teaser from Hades, Xena fights what we later learn (spoiler!) will truly be her last battle in the flesh. And gets pummeled with more arrows than she can possibly catch (but of course, she had intentionally allowed herself to be placed into that situation). Slashing and fighting to the end. Then, after she has collapsed, abruptly cut to commercial. Interesting dramatic choice.

In many ways, the episode is what you would expect from a finale. Montages of intense moments from over the years. But not too many. Lots of really sappy scenes (even moreso than usual). Actually, those are where this episode really shines. Hats off to Lucy and Renee for that one. Fortunately, Tapert and Stewart had the good sense to write in lots of intense Xena/Gab moments, and let Lucy and Renee do their thing.

I would imagine that for some people, the kiss was what they've been waiting for for six years. (Apparently, the one in Return of the Valkrie didn't quite "count" because one of the parties was unconscious. Whatever.) For me, it gave final certainty in foreshadowing Xena's demise. Not so much because of the kiss itself, but because of where it was placed. Hmmmm. So they kiss right before she goes back to fight the ghost. Given that it's such a huge "event" in the context of censor-happy tv people, wouldn't it have made more dramatic sense to put it after she wins the final battle? Unless.... Of course. So then I knew for sure. That was their last real moment together. (Well, not quite...)

For me, the best moment in the episode was during the last act, while they were intercutting between Xena's supernatural fight with big nasty spinning ghost, and Gabrielle fighting the stupid Samauri fool. It was when she picked up Xena's chakram, held it in her hand contemplating for a moment, and made the throw. It hit its mark. For what I think is the the first time in Season 6, the chakram had a return time of less than 30 seconds. Gabrielle raised her hand and caught it. No needless cheesy slow-mo or other silliness. She just caught it and smiled.

At that moment, I spontaniously applauded. A silly and obvious attempt to extract an emotional response from the audience? Of course. But it worked, and it wasn't overdone (IMO).

And the last couple of tear jerking scenes at the end? Well... I say Emmys to both of them. There.

THE END.

Now I'll do a little Memento-esque nonsense. Haha!

After arriving home from the hike, I checked into Argo's console, and did a little web surfing. Then I noticed that Jaeger had left a message informing me that a Star Trek 5 viewing would commence at his house, with an implicit invitation therein. Under normal circumstances, I would have jumped up and ran out the door. However, in this case...

"Hmmm... Go to Boulder Compound and watch Star Trek 5 again, or... see the brand new, final, last ever Xena episode to air for all eternity."

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which option I chose.

---

Sitting on a bolder. Out in the wilderness. Pine trees and meadows all around. A view of the city in the distance below. The sun sinking beneath the mountain which towers behind me. In my hands, a small electronic device. As I frantically race around the track, pounding on the A button and banking my turns as tight as possible, I vie for second place. "Yes! Finished the Knight courses on Expert level. Haha!" I stand up, extend my arms, and hold my Gameboy to the sky in victory. Now, if only I could get make it through Bishop...

I'll be expecting that check in the mail next week, Nintendo people.

---

Hmmmm... Do I want to retell that dream? No, I think not. I don't remember most of it now anyway. Besides, it's time to go have another dream. Tomorrow, I might just be doing some acting of my own. Can't wait to see just how bad that is.

SLEEP.