PATREON ONLY: Xena Warrior Princess 2x22 Reaction
Added 2024-08-23 17:19:04 +0000 UTC
Comments
We are now in the area of the show where both characters can have male AND female love interests. But it’s the female love interests that make far more sense. And that does of course include each other.
Girl4Music
2024-08-24 08:38:27 +0000 UTCThank you very much
Girl4Music
2024-08-24 08:34:41 +0000 UTCLol, thank you for watching this show, lol, your reaction is literally the same as mine even up to hiding my eyes behind my hand and being disgusted by Xena and Gabrielle kissing the guys. Lmao. Your posts are one of the best part of my week, what I look forward to
Bo D
2024-08-24 08:20:07 +0000 UTCIt was uploaded on July 28th. You can find it by searching Xena in the search box.
mary smith
2024-08-24 01:37:31 +0000 UTCwhere is episode 16 with Aphrodite's first appearance?
Dudley, the Stardew Valley cat 2
2024-08-24 01:15:57 +0000 UTCI absolutely love this. What a hilarious season finale! I think what I find the most funny is seeing these characters behave in a way that you would NEVER expect! The final scene, though... that hurts. 😢 But that scene was so well done. I really do love Joxer. Gotta say Ted is pretty damn good.
Michael
2024-08-23 23:48:24 +0000 UTCWonderfully written. And I mean that sincerely.
Michael
2024-08-23 23:41:06 +0000 UTCYes, it's so funny that it's so out of character for them now ha! even them can't believe it from each other, something is wrong here!
Herbert West MD
2024-08-23 22:34:40 +0000 UTCI love how outraged and incredulous you get when the arrow hits gabrielle and she's so close to seeing Xena but instead sees joxer first lmao. I love how we are at the point in the show where it has to be a ruse or supernatural for Xena & Gabrielle to fall in love with men.
mary smith
2024-08-23 22:28:22 +0000 UTCHaha that sounds hilarious, I'm going to look for that podcast.. thanks for the information
Herbert West MD
2024-08-23 22:10:54 +0000 UTCLol - reminds me of the hosts comment on that Xena Warrior Podcast on this episode: *hands on shoulder* Sorry Joxer Im about to go bang the woman you love. *walks off in Gabrielles direction* lol But seriously, Xena seems equal parts sad in solidarity of also being a part of the 'hopelessly in love with gabrielle' club. But also a bit of guilt that she's got her and joxer has no chance. I mean talk about having to compete with Xena in Gabrielle's eyes. That is a TALL task.
mary smith
2024-08-23 21:33:33 +0000 UTC'Twas but a joke
Herbert West MD
2024-08-23 20:56:23 +0000 UTCNah, I really don’t think she was doing that. That would be quite cruel. Even if he didn’t know what was going on with them. I see it more as a moment of solidarity. She’s deeply in love with Gabrielle too but it doesn’t make things any easier for her than it is for Joxer. And she acknowledges his pain because she feels it too.
Girl4Music
2024-08-23 20:50:52 +0000 UTCWhen Xena puts her hand on Joxer's shoulder to comfort him at the end of the episode, you can tell in her eyes that she's saying "sorry bro, she's mine" 😆
Herbert West MD
2024-08-23 20:07:30 +0000 UTCYeah, but if they did get zapped, would have anything really changed? It was funnier to do it this way.
Girl4Music
2024-08-23 18:24:37 +0000 UTCYou love Joxer? Wow. Didn’t take long for him to grow on you. I guess you can see that he is used as kind of a joke. He represents the showrunners malicious compliance to the network who said they wanted more of a male presence in the show alongside Xena and Gabrielle. So they came up with Joxer. The showrunners of course do not want that at all so this was their workaround for complying to those rules. They also wanted the male character to fall in love with one of the lead female characters…. Well, that certainly happened all right but that didn’t mean it was going to be a reciprocated love between them. As frustrating as it might be to see episodes like this, you can trust in these writers, believe me. They want what you want.
Girl4Music
2024-08-23 18:17:27 +0000 UTCThe reason why Draco's men were running from the Hestial virgins in this slamming door farce was that they knew Draco would skewer them alive if they ruined the virgins' value by... making them not virgins anymore. ... What woman could resist Joxer the Mighty? ... Seriously, this season-ending comedy is quite well done, and the ending with Joxer's private sorrow is an emotional curve ball that hits hard. ... Cupid and his wife, Psyche, got together on Hercules, but we see their baby, Bliss, for the first time here. ... Your response to Xena and Gabrielle NOT getting zapped by Bliss was pretty much what might be expected from you. 😁
Koz
2024-08-23 18:15:41 +0000 UTC‘A Comedy Of Eros’ is an interesting episode to me because while it’s a comedy episode, it actually sets up a pretty important subplot of the entire show through Joxer. Yes… I’m going to talk about Joxer and his unrequited love for Gabrielle because it has greater significance to Xena and Gabrielle’s epic love story and where I believe their relationship is at in the finale. So when Gabrielle gets hit by Cupid’s arrow they do this whole dream-like slow-mo shot sequence where you think the first thing she’s going to see after being hit is Xena but it ends up being Joxer. From then on, practically the whole episode is showing Gabrielle showering Joxer with love and affection (and really aggressive ear-biting. I don’t know whether it’s just the love spell emphasising her passion or the girl is actually rough and kinky in the bedroll.) Anyway, after all the shenanigans that go on in the episode… we get to the end of the episode and Cupid realizes the love spell can’t be taken off Joxer but it can be taken off Gabrielle. So this means Joxer either fell in love with Gabrielle while under the spell or he was in love with her beforehand and just wasn’t aware of it. Gabrielle starts making jokes about the two of them possibly being in love and laughing about the ridiculousness of it all. And then all you see is just sad-faced Joxer sat there and the only person who comes to comfort him is Xena. I think it’s important to unpack why this is. Under the interpretation that Xena and Gabrielle are now a couple surely it would sting Joxer much worse because it’s been established Xena has Gabrielle’s heart since ‘The Quest’. Is she coming over to him to gloat about the fact she has Gabrielle and he doesn’t? No, Joxer isn’t even aware at this point what the nature of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship is. In fact, I don’t think Xena and Gabrielle themselves are either because they haven’t defined it yet. Xena comes to comfort Joxer because she knows exactly how he feels because she’s in love with Gabrielle too and even though they’ve likely been much more intimate than Gabrielle and Joxer have or ever will… she feels his pain in pining over a woman of which they can’t have. Their mutual best friend. I interpret that comforting moment as a moment of genuine understanding and empathy from Xena because Xena is deeply in love with Gabrielle and both her and Gabrielle are aware of it. They’re both aware of their romantic/sexual feelings for each other and have likely allowed themselves to express them frequently… but that doesn’t mean they’re a couple or even that they can be at this point. There’s still so much unprocessed trauma to work through for the both of them. There’s still unresolved feelings for other people. There’s still a lot going on that regardless of them being best friends with benefits… they can’t evolve into a commitment yet. So yeah, Xena gets it and instead of just ignoring Joxer and letting him wallow in self-pity, she walks up to him, puts her hand on his shoulder and gives him the most sincere expression she can that she feels for him. It’s a comforting moment of solidarity between the two characters because it’s indicative of how they both feel for Gabrielle at this point in the show. Yeah, Xena’s gotten further because she knows Gabrielle feels the same for her back… but it’s not nearly enough for either her or Gabrielle given what’s gone on in their respective individual main character arcs. I firmly believe that they’re still only best friends that allow themselves to explore their feelings further with each other every now and again but nothing more can come from their evolving epic romance/love story yet. So she’s in the same boat as Joxer really. She could be annoyed by him but she isn’t. She isn’t at any point. Instead she’s empathetic because loving Gabrielle is painful when there’s just so much left open to the air that can’t be closed or concluded or consummated. It’s a very significant serious scene in an otherwise episode so full of humour and over-the-top theatrics and that’s what I’m talking about with how they get that balance of drama and comedy so right in Xena. It makes watching the comedy (or some would say “campy”) episodes worthwhile because there’s heart and soul in them. And it makes it easier to watch the drama episodes because there’s beats that lighten up the dark tone. That offer respite. We refer to this as “camp” because camp is exactly for that purpose. The experience of watching ‘Xena’ or ‘Buffy’ or ‘Charmed’ or even ‘The X Files’ is like this because genre shows focussed and centered on character over plot. And genre shows are usually, if not always, supernatural/fantasy (sometimes referred to as “sci-fi”) TV shows. Going back to ‘A Comedy Of Eros’ and what they did with this little heartfelt beat between Xena and Joxer. I think it teaches something quite profound about how experiencing or feeling love isn’t a one-size fits all. You could experience that as not enough or all that you deserve even if you are technically in the exact same situation. And Xena and Joxer are because love goes beyond emotional or physical intimacy. You know you can be constantly physically intimate and close with someone and still be distant from them. Or you can be the opposite. You can be constantly there for each other, caring for them all the time but have no physical contact with them. And experiencing or feeling ‘love’ for them makes no difference because regardless whether it’s real or not real, it’s still painful. When it’s not real, those feelings go away even after emotional or physical intimacy. When it is real, it lingers and it stings like a bastard. Especially when the subject of your love and affection doesn’t feel the same way for you as you do for them. And even more so when they do and you can’t get past the friendship or friends with benefits stage because things are much more complicated and that that has to be acknowledged. You know, the pain of loving someone is still there regardless of what’s experienced or felt with them because it’s about you and where you’re at in yourself. Whether you can allow yourself to love and be loved. Whether love is all you want to feel and experience but for whatever reason can’t do so with that someone. Xena isn’t any better off than Joxer is at this point in the show though you might think and believe that way because Gabrielle does reciprocate love for Xena back. In some ways it may even be more painful for her because she knows it’s hurting the both of them to have to deliberate on their devotion to each other because circumstances just aren’t in a good place to go further, to evolve the relationship past friendship. So she gets it. She heavily gets it and she comforts Joxer who probably feels like he is the only one to feel so much pain out of a love for a woman he can’t have. It all goes to show and teach me that love can’t and shouldn’t be played with. People’s feelings are valid even if they’re unrequited or unreciprocated. People’s feelings are valid even when they’re not and both people are so in love with each other that they’re afraid of becoming anything more than just a private romp in the night every now and again because… life. And it’s so much more interesting and compelling to think about the arching of Xena and Gabrielle’s epic romance/love story in this way because it provides a dynamic that otherwise is completely lost in WLW representation today. The dynamic of slow burn and how, through it, the relationship can be more worth it to ship because you’re shown the entire journey of it regardless of whether it’s confirmed as canon or not. What is canon? It’s not whether two characters have love or feel love for one another. It’s whether you’re given absolutely-no-doubt inclination that they do. But I’m sorry because when does the Xena creators ever give you any inclination that Xena and Gabrielle don’t? They instead give you a similar situation to Joxer’s character in that the love he experiences or feels for Gabrielle isn’t a love that is so simple to have but the difference is that that’s because Gabrielle says it so because she doesn’t feel that same way for him. With Xena however - she does but it’s still not simple and that’s what I think the creators are playing on here at the finale of Season 2. That love is complicated and painful. That you can’t just fall into it without hardship. And this is MASSIVE. This is what a lot of shows today don’t do. ESPECIALLY when it comes to queer ships. Having a comforting moment of solidarity between two opposite sex characters that love the same woman shows that the Xena creators are not playing around with their love. Rather - they’re validating it and they’re doing it through unconventional means but they’re doing it sincerely to represent it properly. This is a 90’s show. This episode was aired in the 90’s. But it’s doing things that shows today still cannot do. Representing and validating bisexual narratives and telling queer stories all the while avoiding the censors. Ambiguously, yes. But genuinely and sincerely. If you have the imagination to read between the lines of this show then you do get a very CANON WLW love story. Maybe it requires reading or listening to meta. Maybe it requires somebody else pointing it out. But it’s real because the creators themselves wanted it to be real. And I’m telling you that that is all that is ever needed because subtext is not a bad thing when it’s used purposefully for the RIGHT reasons. To represent you instead of exploit you. To serve you instead of use you. When the creators/cast/crew is in your corner - your very queer corner - magic like this is cultivated from it. And people can get so fucking mad at the Joxer/Gabrielle subplot - but I just think it all helps the queer narrative just become even deeper than it already is and I always think that because I know the straight narrative is the one that the creators don’t even want. I know it’s straight-baiting why they include it at all so I have no problem with any straight narratives in Xena. I think people just need to appreciate the slow burn more because you aren’t even afforded WLW slow burn today because TV networks won’t let you have the entire journey of a WLW or queer ship without extensive fucking backlash and protesting about it. And it’s just like… it’s too much effort for something that should be just provided without hesitation today. But it really says something that it was provided in whatever convoluted ways it had to be with Xena because the TV landscape was vastly different then. And the only reason why it was was because the creators tried their hardest to represent a severely unrepresented minority of people on a major TV network that much preferred to financially support a heterosexual and patriarchal depiction of storytelling of which the creators/cast/crew were heavily against and resisted as much as they could by depicting queer and feminist storytelling consistently. Over and over. This moment in ‘A Comedy Of Eros’ interpreted the way I interpret it proves that Xena really succeeded in ways in which TV shows with queer characters in that are created and aired today won’t because they don’t have to live under the radar of severe censorship of telling queer narratives anymore. They just want to. It’s fine, I guess. But I’d rather watch something that represents me as a queer person - bisexual specifically. I’m going to be 100x the follower and supporter of characters and storytelling like that and this is why I never ever shut up about Xena because even though they weren’t allowed to do that - they still did it in their own subtextual but very sincere ways. Sure, they were very much ‘have your cake and eat it too’ - as the expression goes - but they really cared about their queer fandom and they still do to this day because that’s what ‘to be in solidarity’ really means.
Girl4Music
2024-08-23 17:23:46 +0000 UTC
