Well my first comment is not really about the ep itself at all... I was *really* hoping that that darned crucifixion scene would turn up here - mainly because I *HATE* foreshadowing. But it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to - no snow, wrong climate entirely, and anyhow, we haven't had the other foreshadowed scenes yet... although we did get the burning village - and I can't particularly see why Alti would have wanted to call that to Xena's mind. But then the more I think about it, that whole thing about calling future scenes to Xena's mind to try and kill her seems *more* and *more* nonsensical - how can you die now because you see your death in the future? (I mean if you die in the future, then surely you don't die now, by definition - unless you're going to do the yo-yo thing?)
Anyway it seems almost inevitable now that we are going to have to wait through the whole d**n season until the finale for that cross scene - then the *****ers will probably make it a &*^*# cliffhanger!!! I **HATE** it!!! It's bad enough in a novel when the author keeps telling you things that are going to happen (indeed if it's done too much, I tend to just throw the book aside in disgust) - but at least with a novel, you can finish reading the thing at your own pace. In a TV show which is doled out in episodes week by week with long doldrums of repeats (pardon my mixed metaphors...) foreshadowing and cliff-hangers really are the outer limit!
Well, now I've got that rant out of the way (reminds me of the character played by Michael Keaton in the movie Dream Team (made in Toronto, BTW)... what was it he suffered from? "Low frustration tolerance" - I think I have a touch of that...)
So what about "A Good Day" itself?
Well this was a return to classic Xena, it seemed to me, except now Gab has to be agonised about something. If you rewrote Gab with a bit less angst and a bit more chirpiness, this ep would fit comfortably into the second season, or even the first (although you'd have to push Gab a bit more for that...)
How many people had the feeling that poor Phlanagus was toast long before he bought it?? I certainly did. I mean I certainly didn't *want* the poor guy to die! But it's a bit of a formula - guys who keep harping about getting back to their families and living in peace rarely make it through to the last reel in war movies. The most recent example I can think of in the Xenaverse (assuming you include HTLJ, which I do) was in the HTLJ ep Twilight, where we had an extended flashback of young Herc's first experience of war, together with Jason and Iolaus and a guy who was anxious to get back to his young wife and obviously wasn't going to make it...
And Caesar. As some of you may know, I've never really liked Karl Urban in the role of Caesar - I always felt his portrayal was too weak chinned, too much coloured by a resemblance to Rob Lowe's typical version of an arrogant yuppie (e.g. imagine Caesar as the record exec in Wayne's World...) But I have to say that I feel he's getting better. Of course getting older probably doesn't hurt. Caesar actually seems to be achieving a bit more gravitas and pouting less. I can almost buy him as a general and potential emperor now...
You know, I liked this ep fine, but I don't really have a lot to say about it. And this seems to be not atypical. There hasn't really been a lot of discussion of it on the lists - or maybe it's just slow starting. I mean, I just read today's Chakram and Xenaverse, and I think there was one post about AGD.
The whole "Xena getting Caesar out of Greece" thing worked fine... and I guess it illustrates that the warrior princess is a) back on full functioning form, and b) able to deal with Caesar as a threat without getting too bound up in her personal obsessions - although I guess we already saw that to some extent in WIR. And as in WIR, the emphasis here falls once more mainly on Gab (which is perhaps not surprising, since this ep was written by Steven Sears, and he's the one who has said that X:WP is now more Gab's story than Xena's).
I was actually surprised that Gab wasn't angry with Xena for pretty much tricking her into commanding the army - I mean Gab said "no I can't do it", and Xena said "I'll tell Phlanagus"... and then she went and told Phlanagus to cede command to Gab as soon as Gab said anything! So yes, Gab charged into war waving a sword. And what was it she yelled? I thought it was "Take the wall!" and I was thinking "What wall?", but the CC (I rewatched this on my son's TV) says "Take the war!" Does this seem a strange battlecry to anyone else - or is it just me?
Anyway, she runs into battle waving a sword in her right hand... but if you look closely, she has her staff in her left hand, held low and parallel to the ground... and by the time she actually reaches the enemy, the sword has gone (where?) and she fights with her staff. So the whole blood / edged-weapon thing is avoided there. But then Phlanagus goes and gets himself bushwhacked... and what does Gab do? First she yells "Look out!". Then she dithers a bit. Then she grabs a spear, dithers a bit more, and then throws it. And misses! And the bad guy kills Phlanagus, and then Temecula, the "blood-innocent" youngster, kills the bad guy with an arrow.
Hmm... well, plenty of irony and paradoxes there, eh? Gab doesn't want to kill... and hence Phlanagus gets killed and Temecula looses his blood-innocence. (And BTW, I have to say, even though I know some people won't like it, that I found Gab's delivery of the famous "Everything changes" line to Temecula earlier in the ep singularly lacking in ooomph, and generally rather lifeless and unconvincing...) So? Is Gab thinking that now she's lost her blood-innocence, she might as well learn to fight well, and lethally where appropriate, if she's going to continue to be a warrior (or at least a warrior's companion, and hence herself often a warrior by default...)? Or is she about to do a Perdiass and drop her weapons and walk off the field entirely?? I don't know - do you? Perhaps she doesn't??
And then the ending.... Myself, I could have done without the final philosophising in this ep. Often in the past I've liked these little closing chats - but in this case I found it hokey and unconvincing. I didn't think it added anything usefully to the ep at all. The whole "It was a good day of fighting" just seemed kind of lame and pointless to me. Actually what it reminded me of was Chief Dan George's line in the movie Little Big Man (a movie I rate very highly, BTW)... but in that case it was a thought going into battle: "Today is a good day to die!" Now that made sense to me. It moved me. And it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this ep. The version in the closing chat here just seemed, as I say, rather lame. I think the ep could have been ended more powerfully without the chat, either just focussing on the funeral pyres after Xena's singing... or even dropping the funeral entirely, and just ending with Xena holding Gab, both of them exhausted and dirty on the battlefield - either of these would have been more powerful endings for me.
This ep was directed by Rick Jacobson, who did TDHD and Sac. 2 - I thought he did a pretty good job, generally workmanlike, and conveying some fairly complex goings on clearly, with the occasional striking shot (I liked the brief scene of the catapults being camouflaged with branches).
A couple of interesting casting tidbits - I notice Brutus, who has appeared twice before in the Xenaverse (Destiny and WIR) was played by a new actor here, joining the long line of Xenaverse characters with "split personalities". OTOH a couple of old friends returned. Jeremy Callaghan who we first saw as Palaemon in BF, reprised his Pompey (to good effect, I thought). And Nigel Harbrow, the splendidly snivelling Koulos from TBW, returned as the Patrol Centurion (he was also the stupid pirate, Basculis, in LM). And if you want to be completist, Peter Ford added to his list of appearances as "soldier" and "guard" by giving us his "artillery man". BTW, could *anybody* make out the name of the actor who played the "Patrol Sergeant Major"?? - it looked like John Loce, but that doesn't seem very likely... perhaps John Lock?
And what about the Herc? Caesar got his ass whupped there too - and right at the opposite end of Europe, to boot (which I thought was a bit strange - I mean *couldn't* they have managed to show these eps in different weeks?) I liked it, on the whole. Kevin Sorbo's not doing too badly at all with this new material. And Morrigan was really a pleasant presence in this ep. I didn't like the part about holding the child hostage (I feel rather strongly about that sort of thing...) but that didn't play out as horribly as it might have... and the guy who played the evil god was not bad at all. I'm not even going to try and comment on the travesty they're wreaking on Irish myth and legend - I'll leave that to those more competent (although even from my limited knowledge, I can tell it's a travesty...) Still, a very worthwhile ep. And I enjoyed the music too - rather more than I usually do the music on HTLJ... I mean Joseph LoDuca's music is always good, IMO, but it seems to come into its own weaving the whole atmosphere of the world more on X:WP than it has generally been allowed to do on HTLJ. But this season, HTLJ's use of music seems to be moving closer to X:WP's.
