Xena: Warrior Princess

Here's the thing, see, about XENA - the fantasy action show telling the tale of the formerly evil Xena, now a force for good, and Gabrielle the Amazon Queen, her warrior/bard partner.

You have two really beautiful women dressed in impractical leather goods flitting about the Ancient World wielding shiny weapons with great skill and nary a thought to chronology or historical accuracy. You have the relentless modern American speech. You have the over-discussed, over-analysed and highly subjective element of "lesbian subtext". You have campy humour, sly winks at the audience, over-the-top fight sequences, and more dialogue limited to the screaming of each other's names than the second half of Titanic.

You have re-used extras, recycled sets, a bikini-clad Aphrodite spouting Valley-girl speech, a penchant for killing off popular guest stars, TWO man-free pregnancies, high angst levels, a range of episodes that swing madly from dark violence to Andrew Lloyd-Webber style musicals and from intense drama to slapstick comedy.

You have strong female leads who accept responsibility for their choices and their actions, good and bad. You have really beautiful scenery in the form of New Zealand. You have great chemistry between the two stars, and you have enough smarts to know how to combine all of these things into a show that succeeds more than it fails.

Give it a chance. I promise, ten episodes and you'll be hooked. In short, XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS is smart TV pretending that it's dumb. Which is just fine by me, thanks.

One of the best TV shows ever.

Xena: Warrior Princess is the thinking person's fantasy/action show. A perfect mix of often dark drama, wacky/campy comedy, action, angst and romance, it was poignant, thrilling, funny, suspenseful, sexy and much more. Set in the fantasy world of a creatively reinvented antiquity, X:WP offers us the ultimate female hero: strong and vulnerable, tough and soft, brave and caring, heroic and deeply flawed, she's all warrior and all woman. We follow Xena's journey on her quest for redemption as well as Gabrielle's growth from a naive peasant girl to a reluctant warrior. And there are other fascinating characters: Ares, the God of War who is determined to lure Xena back to the dark side but is eventually changed by his love for her; Callisto, Xena's victim and nemesis who manages to be sympathetic even at her most evil; Joxer, the bumbling warrior wannabe with the heart of a lion.

Of course the show had its weak moments, especially in the last three seasons. At its best, however, it featured smart writing and creative directing, enhanced by the wonderful acting of Lucy Lawless as Xena, Renee O'Connor as Gabrielle, Kevin Smith as Ares, Ted Raimi as Joxer and Hudson Leick as Callisto. (Alexandra Tydings' Aphrodite, Paris Jefferson's Athena are worthy of mention as well; so are Karl Urban as Julius Caesar and Marton Csokas as Borias, Xena's lover in her days as a warlord.)

I have to comment on one of the reviews which mentioned Xena and Gabrielle being out for revenge against men and complained that the heroines beat up men all the time but never get hit themselves. Hello? Did this person even watch the show? I suspect not. Some of the most prominent villains on the show were women (Callisto, Najara, Alti), and many of Xena and Gabrielle's allies were men. In fact, the episode "The Dirty Half Dozen" explicitly repudiates hostility to men. X:WP's feminism was never anti-male or heavy-handed.

Bottom line? If you haven't seen this show, get the DVDs (or VHS) and give it a try. Start with the premiere, "Sins of the Past." The first half of S1 wasn't all that great (the show had yet to find its footing) but watch "Hooves and Harlots" and "The Reckoning." If you're not hooked yet, try "Ties That Bind," "The Greater Good" and "Callisto." You'll probably want to stay on for S2.

This one should have more fan base because of the new style of the time.

Lucy Lawless have a new style of strong women.

Not only being strong and beat up people but also being beautiful and seductive.

She was ahead of her time.

The six years that Xena appeared on American television and then in international distribution was the most marvelous ride on the entertainment merry-go-round since "Wonder Woman" premiered in 1975, twenty years earlier. This show had camp, pathos, mystery, intrigue, intricate character development and the invention of a magnificent new world through which the viewer was able to judge and measure his or her own living situation. If you ever get a chance, at least take the time to watch either the entire first or the entire fourth seasons of Xena (which had the most developed plots). It is a show that actually changed the world into a better place and that can be said of only a few shows in history.

If you like "Xena" you might also like "Queen of Swords", "Wonder Woman", "Supergirl" (maybe....), "Chameleon 1,2, &3", "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" or "Andromeda". You may also want to watch the direct to video cartoon release "Hercules and Xena: the Animated Movie: the Battle for Mount Olympus".

Just like Hercules it was really good-corny show.

Sure some effects were bad. That didn't matter to me because the show was able to carry itself and become an iCONIC show. It had great characters and a mystical story

Verdict: in 2021 people are still complaining about females not getting lead roles....umm...this "female" crushed the 90s. It was better than Hercules.