Well... pretty much just the urge to indulge in preliminary maundering here, having just watched AFA on VR tonight.
How much did I like it? - Better than AITST2, but not as much as AITST1 right now. But I find my opinion of eps often changes quite a bit on subsequent viewings.
I thought big J. probably put in his most sympathetic portrayal yet in this ep. He was really only the butt of one dumb joke (the sheep-counting thing), and generally came across as quite consistently human - which is just as well, if we're going to be seeing more of him. Don't want to stir up major controversy here, but I can live with him quite happily as he was this week.
So... What about Gabby's return. Well - I just about had a fit when the initial explanation was offered: "Knocked into a niche" indeed! (Sidebar: Jimmy Hoffa wanders into Teamsters HQ - "It's ok boys - I was knocked into a niche!") Gimme a break! But then the "real" explanation offered a little later wasn't any more substantial - "I don't remember much... falling... fire... I woke up in a hospice..." Is this *really* all we're gonna get? Or is this a "fast boat to Chin" deal, where they tell us what *actually* happened in a clip show halfway through the season? (If so, I trust it won't involve any contractual obligations to gods of doubtful propensities this time...)
Oh, BTW, I see that Xena (I assume "officially") announced that the Ares / Fates "Xena kills Hope, Xena dies" deal is off!
And what else? Gab's family. Herodotus is still his old self. Hecuba's morphed completely. And what has Willa O'Neill being doing? I thought she'd been replaced too at first - she looked and acted so unlike her old self. Maybe it's just growing up - I guess she was pretty young when she first played Lila. But her voice sounded different too... I wondered if she'd been unwell or something.
And Hairy Harry turned out to be Spiny Norman after all. He was quite sweet actually. Sort of a cross between Boris Karloff's Frankenstein monster, the Predator and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. You've got to wonder though - about Dahak's plan to take over the universe, that is... I mean, if the best he can come up with in the way of a grandson / Destroyer is a mother-fixated sheep-eater with an IQ in single figures, somehow that doesn't say much for his prospects in the "top-god" department! And whose nose do you think Norman had - Reneé's or Kevin's?
Other random thoughts:
The Poteidaians must wear out their mill-stones real quickly if they haven't figured out how to disconnect them from the mill when they're not in use. And when Norman detached the mill wheel, threw it at Xena, and missed, shouldn't it have gone through the wall (if it hadn't been made of styrofoam, that is)?
How did Gab send Xena messages from the hospice? I've always wondered how you send a message to Xena... people seem to do it quite often - but how do they find her? Perhaps there's some sort of ancient Greek satellite positioning system that supplies the coordinates of Warrior Princesses for a modest price, so messengers know which direction to set out in with their missives...
Interesting that Herodotus and Hecuba have swords hung over their fireplace - I thought they were just "plain country folks"...
So far as I could see, the only wound Hope got was from Spiny Norman's fingernail through her shoulder - so why did she expire? And we don't really believe she's gone for good... do we now??
And speaking of which, do you think TPTB might be trying to tell us something with Gab's "Nothing's every really over. It always just comes back again..." comment??? I've got to say, that gave me sort of a BTDT feeling - "you mean I'm going to have to live through Hope's coming back and getting offed over and over again, indefinitely for the rest of the show's life??"
I hope I haven't reached that dread point of fandom, where no ep of Xena ever entirely lives up to my expectations.....
Well AITST1 came close - in fact it probably *exceeded* my "expectations". And my criticisms of it were mostly re omissions (apart from the motion sickness thing - but I don't hold that against TJ too much... apparently I wasn't the only one who felt that - someone posted on Xenaverse about it: certain types of POV motion just make some people ill - and I guess I'm unlucky that way).
And what about the Herc? I had my doubts about Morrigan - I feared she was hamming a bit at times. And the interpretation of the "Druids" seemed eccentric in the extreme, even by TPTB's revisionist standards (albeit interesting). On the whole I liked the ep - probably more consistently than I did AFA, in fact. I'm definitely starting to think that there might be something to this "Tapert taking over HTLJ" thing after all. Actually, this is the first HTLJ ep this season that I could truthfully say over-all I "liked" - I wasn't much taken with last week's rather disjointed "living dead" knock-off, and I've already rambled on about Faith. But Resurrection left me with a much more positive feeling (indeed, if they're going to make Herc as good as this, I almost wish they wouldn't show it right before Xena - it's sort of distracting... I guess I don't really have a TV attuned sensibility - I like to mull over one thing before I watch another).
