RhondaWeasley.com

Recently, I headed back into the journey of Xena and Hercules. The good thing about watching one of your favorite dearly departed shows after a long time is that you’ve forgotten most of it. The funniest thing about the Xena, Herc years of my life is the fact that I pretty much didn’t watch a lot of it "in sequence" as they were part of the era of "syndicated TV" series and, because they belonged to themselves and not networks, they tended to jump channels or time slots and sometimes disappear for months at a time before I found them again.

I honestly remember being into Xena first. I remeber very clearly loving Gabrielle from the start and wanting to know what would happen as she joined onto the journey of this really cool warrior woman. It’s kind of funny, despite being pretty much a big ol’ Lesbo I never quite got into any Gabby/Xena are “Hot” type of thing. I was completely convinced they were in love with each other (despite the fact the series spent the first season trying to convince us they were in love with this or that man-of-the-week). In fact, Season 1 suffers what I like to call “man of the week” symdrom. I don’t think a single Season 1 episode passed without having a man in Gabrielle or Xena’s life. I understand the reason behind it. Apparently before the show even hit the ground good there was an issue with the opening credits. Namely, the scene where Xena seductively approaches Draco (a man) and the “voice” of the opening credits says “the passion”. Because Draco has long hair and it’s an over the shoulder shot there was this whole issue of Xena looking like she’s approaching a woman passionately. The higher ups feared her being thought of as a lesbian (especially since she was going to be traveling with another woman every week in the series). Producer Liz Friedman (a lesbian herself) thought this ridiculous and said “No one’s going to think they’re lesbians”. Of course she turned out to be wrong as most of Xena’s fans (lesbian and non-lesbian alike) did think Gabrielle and Xena had something going on, but (unlike the higher ups thought) it wasn’t a bad thing. Obsession over the sub-text romance sold the majority of the fan base on the show. Thinking the girls were lesbians was probably the best thing to happen to the show. I think after year one (though they tried the man-of-the-week formula a few times after) they bought a clue and realized “men-of-the-week” were (more often than not) an annoyance, not an asset. Eventually the show just figured out the gold they had with Xena and Gabrielle. It is often talked about that there relationship remained vague, but so did Mulder and Scully’s up until “I Want to Believe” (the recently released movie). Chris Carter cleverly skirted the issue. So I’m not even offended that (at the end of the day) the series was a little afraid to directly confirm the relationship of the women one way or another. Besides, after “The Quest” (season 2) and the “kiss” (in a man’s body or not) I didn’t need ANYONE to more clearly define anything. Besides, I loved it as much for the adventure and growth of Gabby as I did everything else.

Which is why I knew *something* was missing in my Xena re-watching and it was Hercules. I mean I liked Hercules afterall. So I not only sought out Hercules, I sought out Young Hercules and got my hands on a fan-made copy of the series. Young Hercules was fun, even if half of it contradicts “Big” Hercules. I actually discovered in re-watching Herc that I had seen one of it’s pilot movies before (Amazon Women) but hadn’t made the connection in all these years as it was just something I caught on TV. But I’m so glad I decided to rewind my watching and watch both Xena and Hercules, because Xena is a great show and so is Hercules, but as a pair they’re just … well … amazing. And much like Buffy/Angel, a little empty without the other.