This is one of those episodes that is doomed from the start. Men approach Xena with a warrant for her arrest. She is charged with murder. To Gabrielle's astonishment, the reformed Xena allows herself to be arrested and put on trial, where she does not plead innocent. The justice is harsh: Xena gets sentenced for life on the dreaded Shark Island, where the cruel but - of course - just second-in-command has a lesson prepared for them: a woman, who killed a guard while trying to escape, has been kept waiting for the arrivals and is then promptly hanged in front of them as a warning. Yawn. How many times has that cliché been done? And isn't it a bit unlikely that the prisons in movies and TV programs just coincidentally happen to have an inmate who's guilty of something punishable by death waiting just for the new arrivals? The clichés continue: when the "ripe" body is about to be thrown to the sharks, Xena insists that she be buried. Cue a grave-digging scene in - what else? - rain... Then it's time for the next cliché: an inmate is too weak to perform his duties, so Xena offers to help her. Naturally, the guards intervene and a fight breaks out. Yawn. Eventually, Xena surrenders and the plot has a very unlikely twist. A twist, that is necessary because this series is called "Xena: Warrior Princess", not "Xena: Sentenced for Life". You see, the only way this episode can end is for Xena to be released, so she can continue her adventures. Furthermore, in order for Xena to continue her adventures, the sentence she was given has to be overturned. Now how could that possibly happen? Yawn. In the end, the episode fails to fulfill its premise: Xena went voluntarily to prison in order to *learn* to pay for her crimes, but that lesson is never learned because of the plot twist. Also, the clichés include a riot, Xena fighting the other inmates and (this is a Xena cliché) Gabrielle helping someone to "see the light". The only redeeming feature in this hopelessly unoriginal episode is the eye candy: it's a revelation to see facial scars make a woman sexy. Or maybe it was the ample cleavage...
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