I didn't really like this ep (Faith) much - I'm really sick of this Dahak drivel! And I thought it was rather a cheap shot using Gilgamesh like that. It was nice seeing Tony Todd again - he's an excellent actor. But *WHY* does he allow himself to be typecast like that??!! He really is a fine actor, and handsome too - and yet he's spent pretty much his whole career playing horror movie villains... It was good to see Gina Torres as Nebula again too - another great actor and a fine presence. But the ep as a whole felt like warmed over chunks of the worse parts of X:WP season 3 to me...
OTOH (thank all the gods!), I felt *considerably* more positive about Adventures In The Sin Trade Part 1. I missed Gabrielle, of course. And I found it a *little* hard to follow, with all the jumping backwards and forwards, especially since there were a couple of things Xena said that I didn't quite catch. Also T.J.Scott's camera work in the fights, especially that final mêlée with the Amazons, made me seasick - does he *really* have to constantly bob the camera up and down as if he's filming from a rowboat on a rough sea? But this is just my way - I'm getting my negative points out of the way first... overall I thought it was a good ep. I found Xena's troubled mental state combined with her determination quite convincing and involving. And now we've finally got to see a 'bad mentor' to balance out those various good mentors (M'lila, Lao Ma), someone who actually *wanted* to make Xena The Destroyer Of Nations. I can see why Lucy didn't find this much fun to film though, and why she apparently was getting rather depressed during the early filming for this season... her best friend on the set gone, and that combined with gruelling physical conditions and demanding and painful acting. Hey you'd think marrying the producer should lead to an *improvement* in your job conditions, not this!
I'm not too keen on two parters - now I've got to wait till next week to really see where they take it... as my daughter said, why can't they give us a two-hour season premiere - some shows do? BTW, I watched the ep and taped it, and as soon as I emerged from the basement, my son and daughter wanted to grab the tape from me and watch it - I've really got my family rather converted now... as someone was saying just today, about our house "there's always somebody watching Xena at this place!"
Well I can see I'm going to end up defending this ep against my own criticisms if I'm not careful. Basically I liked it. But I did find I had to concentrate pretty hard, and there are still bits I don't understand. As for close-captioning - I'm afraid both my TV and my daughter's are too antique to support it.
On the comprehension issue, perhaps someone can help me a bit - the thing that I'm *most* confused about was the whole deal with that young blonde woman who came in with Alti when she first appeared. Alti introduced her as her (Alti's) "apprentice" I believe, or some such word. But then pretty much the next time we saw her was in the flashback based on that other young Amazon woman's recollection, where Xena was crying over her dead body and Borias was saying that she had only known her "for one moon". That was the same woman wasn't it? That is, the dead young blonde, was the same young blonde who came in with Alti? But then Xena followed her into the land of the dead, and she spurned Xena, saying Xena was a bad influence. And Alti said something about her, the blonde woman, being a follower of the path of light (or something - she did mean the young blonde woman who died, didn't she?) But if she was the apprentice of Alti the evil sorceress, how could she be a follower of the path of light? And what was this relationship she had with Xena - we didn't see any of it, did we? And how did she get killed?
All in all, I found it fascinating, and I loved the camera work (except for the seasick fight scenes), and the atmosphere. But I did feel as if I was watching a full-length movie that had been edited down to 40 minutes, losing much of the plot in the process.
I also didn't quite get what was happening with the blonde Amazon queen whose tribe couldn't pass through the gate... Xena said that she (Xena) killed her (the queen) - but we didn't see that, did we? Did we actually see *any* of what happened between the blonde queen's tribe and Xena in the past (if we did, I sort of missed it)?
I can certainly understand why the synopsis would have been hard to follow - heck, if I wrote a synopsis of this ep, you probably wouldn't be able to make any sense of it at all! Actually, I should go and dig out that synopsis and read it now - maybe it'll help with my questions.... Yes, I think I'll read the synopsis, and then watch the ep again.
Well I have to say that I'm relieved it wasn't just me... I really thought that perhaps I had just missed some vital connecting clues and all these points were clear to other people. And I really wasn't sure whether all the "young women with longish blonde hair" were really the same person - after all, she seemed to be a rather central and important character, but we never got *any* sort of real sense of her character or presentation of her story with any continuity. As I said, to me it felt very much like watching one of those movies that has ended up being shot *way* over length, and then been slashed down to fit a particular time format... there was a great sense of reality and atmosphere, but large chunks of events and characters seemed to be missing, and it was hard to follow. My daughter's complaint was "nobody really talked much in it", and I suppose that's partially true - there wasn't much in the way of extended dialogue between the main characters... a lot of atmosphere, and a lot of muttering and hints. I wonder if this is a new direction or something... (I also *really* wonder if they didn't have some editing problems...)
Well as I said, overall, I liked the ep. Why? Well I guess I found the atmosphere and the presentation of Xena's character and her quest fascinating. I was certainly rivetted to it from start to finish. OTOH, I have to agree that it did have real problems with respect to comprehensible presentation of the plot. At first I thought it might be just me, but even going over it again, and consulting fellow Xenites, it seems there's just a lot missing, a lot of jumps, a lot of loose ends... I'm almost completely convinced that they had some sort of editing crisis with this one, since the editing itself seemed awkward in parts. I admit I'm entirely gazing into the tea-leaves here (and I stress this - I'm talking *entirely* from what I saw on screen, and have *no* inside information at all), but my guess is they shot more material for the two-parter than they had screen-time for, and then grappled with editing and re-editing until the last minute... That's what it seemed like to me anyhow. Good footage. Good acting. Good atmosphere. But put together in an odd way, with bits clearly missing...
As a minor aside, the only bit of camera work I *really* didn't like was the final big mêlée, when the camera seemed to be sawing up and down constantly as if it was mounted on a small boat in a high sea... that literally gave me motion sickness, so I had to keep glancing away.
