Animal Attraction

which is more than we know about the new bit player in this ep. Our story opens in a winter wonderland (snow's back, what kinda revolving lazy Susan is the climate of New Xenaland sitting on, anyway?) with Amarice and Joxer shivering their way up a path and Gabrielle and Xena (on Argo) hanging behind. Our bard today is sporting a very fine white and tan suede duster, just thought you'd like to know that. In this show, you take your fashion reviews where you can find them, and frankly, boys and girls, Xena ain't it these days. She's scrapped the maternity leathers for a hall carpet. Looks like a funeral barge under full sail, she does, and that's just as tacky as I get, so moving on, Amarice and Joxer are sniping like a pair of eight-year-olds in the back of a station wagon on a five hour trip across Kansas when Dad's flung the map out the window somewhere back in Missouri and Mom's not said a word since Alabama and everyone knows, in their heart of hearts, that they may someday see Disneyland but they won't like it much by then. Joxer keeps turning around to not-look at Gabrielle, with an expression on his features reminescent of a basset hound that, having eaten an inner tube, is starting to regret it.

I gotta warn ya right off, this is one of the busier eps, so far as plot is concerned, it's another spaghetti western homage thing, like Dirty Half Dozen, even reuses the "women don't need men? oh, yes they do" theme but without the apple eating thing, thank goodness, and Xena carries, right out in plain view on her saddlehorn, a sure 'nough lasso.

Xena: Cowgirl Princess? Hm. Anyway, bearing all that in mind, and realizing that when Chris Mannheim was hunting up inspiration for this ep, her local Blockbuster Video was having some kind of 'rent five, get a sixth free' special going on, and that if nothing else, Argo is in this ep, which has to be a point in its favour, still and all, I'm sure that somewhere in all of this is one of them there unifying theme things that most storytellers feel is essential. It is here, and I will find it.

So they're trundling down the dirt road, like I said, and Xena's on Argo... where the heck has Argo been all this time, anyone know? And how come she's never around when Eli is? Anyway, Xena's nodding off every other step, very strange behaviour for her, but she wakes up when she senses a disturbance in the Force nearby. She and Gabrielle take off at a run to find its source, gathering in Amarice as they go and leaving Joxer to cool his heels. They find a horse in a clearing, its left foreleg caught in a trap! Oh gosh, don't let the kidlings look—its hoof is all bloodied and the poor thing is crazed with the pain, yet with minimal fuss, Xena lassos it and ties the free end of the rope off on Argo. Then, with Gabrielle making soothing noises in the beast's face, Xena bends down and opens the trap. I'm going into this in such detail cos I think the stuff with Horse is a heck of a lot more interesting than lots other stuff in this ep, and there's an excess of plot anyway, so why not pick and choose? Just because Xenastaff didn't is no reason why I can't.

Xena wants to turn Horse loose, but Gabrielle's already in severe horse-lust, so they wrap up its owwie and lead it off to the nearest town to recuperate. The nearest town is Spamona, a hot spring haven, just like every other town in New Xenaland, and there's a cow skull adorning the arch over the main road, testament, no doubt, to the temperature of the local springs, and some pre-Mycenian frontier-type props (including a bbq pit, I'm hungry, but why they'd need that when they can just flash-boil entire cows?) hither and yon, otherwise it's pretty much the same as when it was known as An Indian Village. They check Horse into the local stable, where the stableman who took acting lessons from Tor informs them that there's a law against carrying weapons in town. On his heels is the local sheriff, ready to enforce it, she gets to carry all kinds weapons, hm, maybe the unifying theme is inequity in social class structure.

It's time for the titles and a bit of reflection on the dim and distant past, when the Xenaverse was chock full of Cyclopses and warlords and Max Factor outlets in every village. When the Way-Back Machine lets us out again, Xena and the sheriff go at it, Xena wins of course and it turns out they're old buddies from back before even the titles were filmed. It's happy reunion time, and they go off to the local tavern (it's got them swinging half-doors, one of the many little authentic pre-Mycenian frontier touches we'll see in this ep) to catch up. Gabrielle, Amarice and Joxer decline to go with them, Xena's proposed menu of raspberry jam and raw fish doesn't strike them as particularly nummy, (okay Gabrielle thinks about it for a second) and while they're at the tavern the deputy comes in and says traces of the indigenous Bad Guy Gang been seen in the hills, he resigns right there and then by leaving his silver sand dollar star on the table, talk about your wimps, it's okay being deputy when there's no one to push around but the locals, but let real trouble rear its nine-headed hydra self on the horizon, and he's checking the want ads in the next county.

Xena wants to help but Thalia is emphatic about Dartcon and the Dartcondidos being her own personal iss-ewe, and the one thing I really really wanna know, as Xena gives a two-fingered salute to indicate she'll no-fooling let Thalia do this her way, is when in Tartarus or Hell or Parrot Perch Purgatory did Xena have time to be a Scout? Hey, innkeeper's daughters are kept at the job from before dawn to well after dusk, so it can't have been in Amphipolis. And after, well, one could say she was always prepared, yeah, but true in thought, word and deed?

The scene changes abruptly to a unisex bathhouse, filled to the rafters with beautiful bods clad only in artfully draped white linen. One of them has added his own special style, in the form of a cowboy hat and spurs, which puzzles Amarice as it would any right-thinking human outside of Austin or maybe Calgary and she's so bemused by this that she backs into a young man by a hot tub. The young man goes ass over teakettle into the tub and whacks his head, so Amarice has to haul him out and resusitate him. He is smitten. She is smitten. In the middle of this touching flow of pheremones comes Joxer, who recognizes the young man as Armand, whose daddy Joxer killed late last season, it was an accident, Joxer couldn't peel gum on purpose and a man like that is let to run around New Xenaland with a sharp sword, go figure. They do their boy-bonding thing, no hard feelings, dad was scum, and to cement it Joxer starts digging at Amarice, who tries to leave rather than kill them both, she's more mature than that, but she slips on wet toweling and falls flat backward.

Do they jump to her aid? No.

Do they call for help? No.

Do they do anything remotely useful? (she did just revive Armand, you'd think he might have some similar impulse here, but boy-bonding is severe in its excesses) No.

They laugh uproarously, well before they could have any clue that she hadn't smacked her head open on the flagstones. No inkling of any possiblity of concern for her wellbeing crosses the minds of these two cretins-in-training. If I were male I would be screaming to TPTB for this dissing of my sex.

So that sets up the mega-contrived love-interest of the ep, in time-honoured comedic fashion, where it's obvious to all that these two hearts have been sundered by fleeting circumstance only and that underneath the side-splitting antics of the pair in question, cry out two voices that speak as one, two souls split in the training-pants phase of the Universe, two hips carved apart where before in another life they were joined so that no one, not even their best friends, could tell them they really need to develop outside interests, maybe yoga or tai chi or fly fishing.

Member when I said I wanted to find that unifying theme? Right, then, let's tally off what we got so far:

• band of bad guys threatening town, with whose leader the local sheriff once dallied.
• Gabrielle in throes of serious horse-lust over hurted Horse.
• Joxer still in unrequited Gab-lust.
• Amarice and Armand lust in unison, but not in harmony.

I'm seeing a pattern here, anyone else?

Okay, so after a session in the sauna, Xena goes to the doctor. She's been feeling peculiar. He says she's fine, considering she's pregnant. Uh-oh, something else to add to the list:

• Xena: Immaculate Princess

Damn, spring's just bustin' out all over. But hang on a second—Xena didn't lust after no one, she's real clear on that point, but she's the one what's knocked up? Lesson there for the kidlings: use protection, even in Heaven.

Meanwhile, Gab can't swing a bag of apples without finding Joxer at the other end, on the bright side, though, she's making good time with Horse. Armand manages to screw up saying it with flowers to Amarice; of course, he has help from Joxer.

Xena finally (after chatting with Thalia) accepts that she's tossing her cookies for two now. Armand has another go at Amarice, with no better luck than he's had before, since he's still too busy being a guy to really listen to what she says. They all end up in the stables, where Gabrielle has finally managed some real rapport with Horse, it's so sweet, I let slip a tear or two when Horse finally took the apple from her hand, and Amarice and Armand and Joxer are all sniping and picking and shouting, Horse is upset, Gab's upset cos Horse is upset, Xena finally shuts the lot up by shouting her news. Close-up on Gabrielle, frantically pondering when this could have happened.

Did I say this was a busy ep? You have no idea how much I'm condensing here. Gabrielle congratulates Xena, so does Amarice, Joxer makes a smart remark and Armand pops him for it, whereupon he behaves slightly better, but not enough better to avoid being slapped away from her belly by Xena. The whole reason he was looking for Xena now comes out: seems Dartcon and the Dartcondidos ('member them?) are approaching town and Thalia's nowhere to be found. So it's up to Our Gang to mount a defense, which they do, severally, but there's no time left in the ep for stuff like this. Xena and Gab go somewheres to survey the area and have a sensitive chat about where this kid came from, Xena don't know, but she's sure it ain't Ares and pretty sure it ain't Herc. Armand finds Amarice alone, and for once they manage to communicate with their hearts rather than their gonads, and actually reach an understanding, and then Dartcon rides in.

Before Xena can do anything about it, Thalia strides out from wherever she was, whyever she was there, and confronts Dartcon. You know, I think I've seen him somewhere before, maybe in a temple shouting about being the Deliverer, and if so, I can also see why he would have been cast as such, since the Deliverer's head had been dipped in about an inch of latex and they needed someone who could wriggle his facial features through all of that, and boy, this Dartcon dude is a face-wrigglin' fool.¹ His band disperses throughout the town, where Xena and Gab and Armand and Amarice (Joxer's done for the ep, we don't see him again. The serious stuff has started, and the Gab-lust thing is going nowhere anyway.) can do mop-up while Thalia and Dartcon engage in prime showdown style. The real high point of this fight (Thalia wins, surprise) is when Gabrielle is pleading with a Dartcondido to not set fire to the stable, when he's trampled by Horse breaking out to come to Gabrielle's aid.

I do think horse-lust must be one of the purest states of a grrl's life. It's just so beautiful, watching those two nuzzle and bond, sharing apples and maybe the odd nudge to the flank...

Anyway, Armand and Amarice part on very friendly terms, and Gab and Xena ride off into the sunset together. I'm not sure where Armand is going, or Amarice, but I guess it would be a bit much, even for an ep named Animal Attraction, for Amarice to ride off behind X&G mounted on Armand. Though it would have helped with the unifying theme thing.