 | Not my favorite Season of Xena
rating: 4
I watched Xena when I was going up. Stopped watching after the 4th season. I decided to watch the series again after it on to DVD. How nice not having to wait though commercials. Or waiting till next week to find out what happens. Season 1-3 was great! Season 4 was pretty good. Season 5 was alright. I really did enjoy the stories to the season. But Xena pregnant was so hard to grasp. Where in the other seasons she had left her son with the centaurs, so she could still be Xena. I know Lucy Lawless was pregnant while filming this Season. Why couldn't the Directors work around it? I agree with what someone said earlier. Why was Eve any different then Hope? I know Xena knew where the baby had come from. But who to say Eve wasn't another Hope. But I did enjoy the Season. But I just couldn't understand why Xena had to be Pregnant. I love the Series and if you love Xena then Buy this. Because i enjoyed every moment of it. Even though it wasn't one of my favs.
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They don't make shows like this anymore
rating: 5
(One person said this was the worst season ever I disagree with episodes like Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire (Musical), Antony and Cleopatra, and brining a new character into the mix Eve (Xena's daughter) was fulfilling. Yes I admit some of the episodes I didn't love Married with Fishsticks was one of them, but none the less what did you expect? They did almost everything imaginable in season 1-4 yet they still brought fresh ideas like (Animal Attraction) where the characters take a spin on The Wild Wild West, (Chakram) exploring what Xena would be like without her eagerness to fight and do good, or Xena battling and killing most of the Greek Gods. Bottom line great season)
This series had everything in it: Comedy, drama, inspiration, musicals, etc... I also believe this was a series that helped create certain television shows and movies. Watch (Here She Comes... Miss Amphipolis 1997) and tell me that's not similar to (Miss. Congeniality 2000). Remember that Xena was being played in a different time period (Historical Times) and Miss. Congeniality is being played in the present, yet they are still similar. The show not only had a few good laughs with the help of Joxer (Ted Rami)but also allows viewer the feeling of Catharsis. Seeing Xena battle her past demons and realizing she wouldn't be the hero she is without her past is PRICELESS. Also watching the growth of Xena (Lucy Lawless) and Gabrielle's (Renee O Conner) friendship is something very special. They become family and travel to the exotic lands of Asia and to the beautiful landscape of Egypt etc...
The DVDS are worth it I own all 6 seasons and the commentaries are GREAT. I especially love watching Hudson Leick's (Callisto)commentary she's intelligent, funny, and beautiful.
P.S. My one note would be buy the director's cut of The Final Episode (A Friend In Need) because it's much better. Plus you get great extras including commentary by Lucy, Renee, and Rob and you also get behind the scene footage including a little B-Day cake for Lucy. The commentary is great I just finished watching it again for my 100th time because I find Lucy and Renee hysterical.
I will always have faith that a Xena Movie will be made, although Gabrielle lost faith in her Hope; I will always have faith that Xena will eventually become a movie; plus I'm only 19 so I still have plenty of years left to wait lol.
Well Thank you Lucy, Renee, Rob, Hudson, Ted, Bruce, Kevin and all the other people that made Xena possible. You filled many homes with joy, laughter, and inspiration; it truly is one of televisions greatest moments!
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The worst season
rating: 3
What can I say, I brought this set only because it was offered as a deal. I intended on buying only season 6, but for a few dollars more I could buy s5 and almost complete my collection.
I loved 5 of the episodes (Fallen Angel, Chakram, Succession, Animal Attraction and Them Bones, Them Bones). Then it goes downhill very quickly without a light to brighten the tunnel in sight.
In fact, the only thing that kept me watching was the growth of Gabrielle as a kick-butt, take-names-later warrior herself.
The best thing about the rest of the episodes is the closing credits of 'Motherhood' (the last episode of season 5).
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I love Zena
rating: 5
I always like Zena now I do not have to wait to watch it. And I can all the picture I miss
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One of the strongest seasons in the entire run of the show
rating: 5
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
Season Four of XENA had been disappointing after a riveting Season Three, primarily because a long string of flat episodes in the middle of the season. Season Five, despite real life complications caused by Lucy Lawless's pregnancy, was not only a great return to form, but a great improvement in its dramatic arcs. Season Three was the series best season for comic episodes, but Seasons Five and Six took the dramatic arcs to the show's highest points.
This is the season where the payoff from the Season Four introduction of Eli bears fruit. The Eli arc structures the series in its final two seasons as much as any other aspect of the show excepting Xena and Gabrielle's deep relationship. His message of self-reliance framed in the context of relationships of love and without the need for the Olympian gods culminates in the death of Eli (at the hand of Ares in the show's 100th episode) and the growing influence of Eli's teachings. Eli's bearing more than a little physical resemblance to traditional representations of Jesus is not accidental, with John the Baptist in Season Six shown as a follower of Eli. And it is his teaching on how humans do not need the Gods combined with the Fates' prophesy that Xena's child will cause the downfall of the Olympians that generates one of the most compelling story arcs in the entire run of the series: the attempted destruction of Eve by the Gods.
XENA was never a show unwilling to take risks, but perhaps the single greatest risk the show ever took was "Looking Death in the Eye" and the two episodes that followed it, "Livia" and "Eve." In these, in an attempt to protect Eve from Athena, Hades, and the other Olympians, Xena and Gabrielle fake their own deaths. But their plans goes awry when Ares, who is unaware that they are feigning their deaths, takes both of them to icy coffins on an isolated mountain peak, and then seals the tomb. When a landslide awakens them from their long sleep, they discover that twenty-five years have passed. Eve had been raised by Octavius, who is now known as Augustus Caesar while she is now known as Livia. The Olympian gods, who have long thought that Eve was dead, have ceased looking for her. The final episodes of the season deal with Xena and Gabrielle convincing Eve that Xena is her mother and that she, who as Livia has been a persecutor of the followers of Eli, was prophesied to be Eli's messenger. The season ends with Xena having been granted the ability to kill gods through the purification of Eve. These arcs will all arise again in Season Six as Xena dispatches the Olympians with the unexpected assistance of some of the gods.
Season Five was a good one despite the presence of two of the stinkiest episodes I've ever seen on TV. "Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire," the second and by far the weakest of the two XENA musical episodes (the first was actually quite good) is the only episode of XENA that I've never been able to finish. But as bad as it was, "Married with Fishsticks" makes it look like a masterpiece. If I were asked to name the worst episode of any series that I have ever seen, I without hesitation would choose "Married with Fishsticks." In it, Gabrielle, who is unconscious after being hit in the head and nearly drowned, imagines she is the mermaid mother in a family consisting of Joxer and three half human/half sea creature children. In the commentaries accompanying the discs the crew and creative staff insist that XENA fans either love or hate the episode, but I simply do not believe them. Everyone I have ever talked to despises the episode. When most watch the episode, they scratch their heads and wonder what drugs were involved in inspiring it.
XENA is one of the more unique series in the history of TV. Its greatest claim to fame was providing TV with the first convincing female action hero in the history of TV, with the possible exception of Mrs. Emma Peel. But it raises multiple challenges to anyone who attempts to enjoy it. Whether you can enjoy or appreciate the show depends on suspending one's disbelief on several levels. For instance, that Xena and Gabrielle could have encountered in their lifetime such famous (and noncontemporary) individuals as King David, Goliath, Julius Caesar, Virgil, Homer, Euripides, Odin, Grendel, Beowulf, Ulysses, Pandora, Brutus, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and Augustus, not to mention Hercules and the full range of Olympian gods. Also, to steal a phrase from Firesign Theater, that everything you know [about history] is wrong. You have to be willing to accept that in this alternative universe Xena was the pivotal figure in the Battle of Actium, that it was Xena impersonating Cleopatra who ensnared Marc Antony, and that all the members of both triumvirates were engaged with one another at the same time. Furthermore, you have to believe that a warrior can make 50 foot forward somersaults. I'll confess that I found the history a bit easier to take over time, but I was never able to find anything like a comfort level with the wirework that made the absurd jumps possible. I was much more comfortable with the kind of fighting and stunts found on BUFFY, which resembled more the real world. Or KILL BILL, in which Zoë Bell, Lucy Lawless's stunt double in XENA, doubled Uma Thurman. But some fans never struggle believing anything they see in XENA. And there is nothing wrong with that.
The great thing for all fans, regardless of their capacity for suspension of disbelief, is that unlike the relatively flat Season Four, this season was fully back on track. And the arcs begun in the second half of the season were played out through Season Six until the end of the entire series.
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