XWP: The Bitter Suite
Here it is! After, like, a million years of waiting for the right time to review it and after fighting a sudden onslaught of May allergies yesterday after going for a run and after deciding I rather wanted to read Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games instead of writing, well, anything, I'm ready!
Yay!
I'm so pumped! This episode is like Clariton for the Xena fan's allergic reaction!
1) When we last saw our intrepid pair, they were no longer really a pair. In agony over what she saw as Gabrielle's involvement in the death of her son by Hope, Xena cut ties with her and leaves the Amazon village.
2) The time line is a little shady, but we know that it's been at least three days since Maternal Instincts because that's about as long as Gabrielle has stuffed herself away in an Amazon hut, enduring some kind of purification ritual that involves being naked, laying in steam, and getting hit along the back of the body with palm leaves.
While she's in there, a dream!Callisto comes in and does her best to turn Gabrielle against Xena in her grief. Because, at this point, Gabrielle is mourning a few different things: The death of Hope (who, despite it all, was her daughter), the death of Solan, the death of her relationship with Xena, and, in essence, the death of her own spirit.
But just as we, as fans, can debate all day as to where the blame for Solan's death should be put, so can these characters. And Gabrielle has taken the blame. But Dream!Callisto pushes at Gabrielle, reminding her of all the things Xena had done wrong since Britannia and, after pushing particularly hard, actually gets Gabrielle to admit that she hates Xena.
3) Meanwhile, Xena's on top of a nearby mountain, singing in mourning, as Ares goads her, basically putting the death of Solan squarely on Gabrielle's shoulders. In her grief, this doesn't not make sense to Xena and she goes to do something about it.
4) Now, when Gabrielle decides that she might hate Xena, she undergoes a purification ritual and dresses in a long, billowing, white toga and doesn't really do anything about it. But when Xena decides that she hates Gabrielle, it's not exactly an omen for anythig happy or peaceful going down.
So when Ares goads Xena into going after Gabrielle, go after Gabrielle she does. And, by virtue of this fact, we have what must be the most infamous incident on all of Xena's history: The Gab Drag.
Xena rides into the village, breaks Ephiny's arm, beats up some Amazons, and sets her sights on Gabrielle, weak from the ritual. She manages to wrap Gabrielle's ankles with her whip, attaches the other end of her saddle, and rides off, Gabrielle dragging behind. It's actually a pretty brutal scene. Gabrielle is dragged over plants, rocks, and fire pits and through water and brush.
Xena drags her all the way to a cliff that overlooks a river and by the time they get there, Gabrielle is completely unconscious, beaten and bloody, cuts and bruises all over her. I mean, they don't sugar coat it. Xena is an incredibly violent show. The hero pretty much kills at least one person per episode and often uses her sword or chakram to do so. But even when the show is at its most violent, it's rare that the audience gets any kind of realistic look at what death in this manner looks like. So when Xena stops the horse (interesting, the horse is not Argo) and we see Gabrielle looking like she's been beaten within an inch of her life, it's pretty startling.
And it's no wonder that it's an incident that gets fans, still to this day, 14 or so years later, up in arms.
5) After Xena releases Gabrielle from the whip, she picks her up, intending to throw her over the cliff, to kill her off in a final moment of vengeance to make up for Solan's death. (Isn't it interesting to look at this scene after remembering how Gabrielle, in the episode Callisto back in season one, made Xena promise she wouldn't go off the deep end in the event of her death?) Gabrielle regains consciousness at the last moment, though, and kicks Xena in the head, causing both of them to fall to the ground.
When Gabrielle and Xena get up, facing each other, it's a pretty chilling moment. I might even go as far to argue that it's one of the most out-there moments on the show, at least as it involves their relationship, because they're both out of their minds. Xena has her crazy feral smile we saw in flashbacks from her Evil!Xena days and Gabrielle has no warmth or empathy or love for Xena in her expression at all. In fact, all we see is loathing. And then she screams out at Xena, "I hate you!", rushes her, and plummets both of them over the cliff and into the river.
It's really amazing. The two have gone from having a relationship stronger than death, where Xena literally came back from the dead because of Gabrielle, to complete and total hatred of each other.
6) Luckily for both of them (assuming they like having lives to live), the river transports them to a magical world called Illusia.
Xena is let out of the water first, but a Joker!Callisto. Now, there's a lot in this episode that has to do with tarot cards, but I know nothing about tarot cards, so all of the allusions and symbols are completely lost on me, so don't judge me for not knowing why Callisto is the joker or why Xena is dressed up like a queen or why, later in the episode, Gabrielle is dressed as Justice (which I only learned from listening to the commentary with Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor).
So, yeah, Xena gets out of the water first and Joker!Callisto gives her a brand new outfit and shows her this wheel. It's a wheel that gives Xena the ability to see her fate if she continues on the path of hatred she's currently working down.
7) Gabrielle is snatched from the river by Joker!Joxer (I don't know if he's actually supposed to be a Joker, but let's just say he is, okay?) and also gets a chance to see what her life may be like if she continues on the same path and, more importantly I think, if Xena continues on her path and their lives are no longer entwined.
8) There's a song. I don't really know how to write about the songs, really, so I guess I'll just summarize what I think happens in them to advance the plot forward.
Xena joins up with Ares and heads his army. There, she is worshipped by her men as she finally gives in to Ares' will and goes back to her old ways. For Xena, her path of hatred is leading her straight back to the life she has been working so hard to get away from for the past three years. Death, destruction, hatred, sadness, no will power.
On the converse side, Gabrielle goes back to Potadeia for a life of a peace. That sounds fine, but the problem is that she goes back to a town that doesn't understand her and, perhaps more fundamentally, cannot understand her. The person she was when she left is not the person she now is. How can she go back to her old life after everything she has seen and done? After Xena and Hope? So, in her life of a peace, really comes a life of lonliness and stagnation.
Xena's army prepares her with a sword while Gabrielle's village prepares her with a scythe, drawing the parallel that this is supposed to be her weapon. Is it her weapon because going back to Potadeia leads to the same kind of hatred for Xena that going back to Ares' army gives Xena?
I'm honestly not sure.
But when the song is over and Gabrielle and Xena meet up with their weapons, the first to strike is Gabrielle and her scythe. She runs at Xena much as she did on the cliff's edge, but Xena quickly rebuffs her blow, knocks her weapon to the side, knocks her to the floor, and rams her sword into her chest.
Yes, Xena kills Gabrielle.
9) Xena comes to the realization that she's actually killed Gabrielle. There's a song and dance number where Ares tries to get her to finally and totally succumb to his will again, but, at the end, as Xena looks once more towards Gabrielle's body, Joker!Callisto comes back and warns Xena that her anger will poison her completely unless she manages to let it go.
Now, this is a serious thing to talk to Xena about. The likelihood of Xena actually letting go of her anger is small. I mean, she's been full of rage for ten years or so. Even in her do-gooder position, she still has anger. It's just that now, her anger is ratcheted up a notch because it's directed at the person she cared about the most. The perceived betrayal has augmented what has been there all along. So even good Xena has anger. So how can she truly let it go?
10) Still, this Xena seems somewhat confused and devastated that she's actually killed Gabrielle, and as she holds the body in her hand, everything around her disappears. The army, the village people, Ares, and Callisto.
A door opens another Gabrielle appears, presumably the real Gabrielle, who sees what Xena has done. "By the gods, Xena," she says. "You killed me."
Xena tries to explain that it's not like any of what they're going through in Illusia is real, so she just killed an illusion, but Gabrielle is not exactly comforted by that thought. Not that I blame her.
11) Suddenly, they are transported to a new place: The Chamber of Echos.
They try to figure out where they are and why they are there, but it devolves into a shouting match where each places the blame of their fates on each other. As they argue, their voices, magnified in volume, bounce back to them. The more they blame each other and accuse each other about the past, the less they can hear from each other. Their accusations are making it impossible for them to listen. And if they can't listen to each other, they can't get beyond the blame.
So Xena gets Gabrielle to admit to a truth, a personal feeling she has in the present and Gabrielle comes up with, "I hurt inside. Don't you?"
And the chamber immediately becomes silent.
Xena tries to walk away at Gabrielle's question of, "Don't you?" Because it must be difficult to know that this situation hurts Gabrielle as deeply as it hurts Xena because, in order to feel the hatred bubbling within her and in order to give it a tangible outlet, it's probably easier to imagine that Gabrielle has no feelings of pain about what happened. Or maybe it's more important for Xena to shut off the outlet to her own feelings and just go numb. Because isn't that what the poison of hatred does to her? It numbs her and maybe, at the moment, that numbness is more welcome than drudging up her hurt.
12) Still, this a musical and there are songs in musicals, and every good musical will have songs that allow the singers to emote. And Xena is no different.
"My heart is hurting beyond words," she sings. "The pain is tearing up my soul." And it's a start and Gabrielle sings of her own pain, but they aren't quite open to really listening to each other.
Again, the song devolves into a blame game. Gabrielle blames Xena for her hatred for Caesar, which took them to Britannia in the first place and poisoned their relationship, and Xena blames Gabrielle for Solan's death, for keeping Hope's survival a secret.
13) The land of Illusia seems sick of playing this game, so it transports them, yet again, to Dahak's Temple, where Gabrielle finds herself back on the altar, her hands covered with blood, as she and Xena finds themselves surrounded by the spirits that have plagued them since the beginning of their journey together: Caesar Khrafstar, Callisto, Ares. And, interestingly enough, Xena and Gabrielle.
Gabrielle's put back on the altar, Xena back on the cross. The spirit of Gabrielle breaks Xena's legs and the spirit of Xena goes to plunge a knife it's Gabrielle. Meanwhile, the other spirits just kind of look on.
Because, yeah, they suck. Ares, Khrafstar/Dahak, Caesar, Callisto . . . They all suck. They aren't fun demons to have plaguing you, for sure. But . . . When Xena and Gabrielle are together, are a unit, their demons are surmountable. They can be fought and conquered. Apart . . . There's no way. Because neither of them are complete without the other.
What they failed to realize is that, because of this, they are each other's worst enemy. And their inability to tell each other the truth about their feelings and about some of the deeper issues in their lives and their relationship really cost them. It made them even worse off than they would have been had they never met. Because when you exist in a relationship where another person is your other half, it creates complications if there's no real communication.
14) So Xena and Gabrielle figure out that the anger and pain they were feeling in their own lives blinded them to the anger and pain the other was feeling. They didn't trust each other to talk it out or come clean. But the good news is that the pattern need not continue. If they can look forward together, they will once again find love. Love is the key. All of their problems have come from hate. The cure to that is the embracement of love. Love is to be their guide.
With this revelation, all of the spirits present die and they are set free from their shackles/cross (burdens).
15) A waterfall appears and, on the other side is Solan. It was Solan who orchestrated Illusia, to force Gabrielle and Xena to face their demons and their hate so that they could continue on their path.
16) They go towards him. Gabrielle crosses through the water and finds herself on the other side with Solan, but when Xena tries to go through, the water burns her hand. She's stuck.
Out of the temple comes the spirit of Ming Tien. This is the one thing Xena has not come clean about. Gabrielle had no idea that Xena had killed him and this breach of trust prevents Xena from truly being free.
So she sings for her forgiveness. She tells Gabrielle that she lied about Ming Tien because she wanted to protect Gabrielle from the truth. Whether that was Ming Tien's death or Xena herself is a bit of a question, but in keeping with Xena's nature, it's more likely that she was trying to prevent Gabrielle from coming to close to the taint of her inadequacies, her inability to be noble or full of honor, in killing Mint Tien without a real need to (even though it had been Lao Ma's final wish). In trying to protect Gabrielle from herself, Xena unwittingly put up a brick in the wall that had already been building between the two. It was, in essence, not much different than Gabrielle's lack of truth when it came to Hope's survival.
17) Not only does Xena ask Gabrielle for forgiveness, she also asks for Solan's forgiveness. After all, she never told him while he lived that she was his mother and she missed pretty much all of his development. And this is the final secret she has to unburden herself with. When Gabrielle and Solan forgive her for these secrets, she's able to cross over.
18) She embraces Solan before waking up on the beach with Gabrielle, their journey in Illusia over, but not forgotten. In one of the cheesiest moments of the show (and this is a show with a lot of cheesy moments), the two embrace and then lay down in the surf, giggling and kicking in the waves.
The commentary with Lucy and Renee is pretty funny for this scene. They're like, "Uh, what are we doing? It's like they couldn't think of a way to end the episode so they told us to lie down and frolic a bit in the waves."
19) But there ends The Rift. But the question is . . . Was it real?
Not Solan's death or Hope or any of it, but Gabrielle wakes up without a scratch on her. Did Illusia heal her or did the Gab Drag happen at all? Was it some kind of rageful fantasy Xena imagined? Because it's never mentioned ever again. Not even by the Amazons. And considering Xena's penchant for self loathing, it seems like something she's really beat herself up over.
Food for thought, at least.
So that was The Bitter Suite. It was difficult to think about how to review a musical episode and I know I didn't really talk much about the songs themselves at all, aside from the lyrical content that pushed the story forward. Maybe I should just let the songs themselves do some of the talking.
Here's "Hearts Are Hurting" (though I really don't like the voice of Gabrielle . . . doesn't sound like her).
And here is the only video I could find of "The Love Of Your Love" (for some reason, the video does not match the audio):
It's really a great episode. It's a fun and dynamic way of closing up The Rift which has plagued these two for almost the entire season and it closed some storylines, including Ch'in. It's freaking epic, man! Which is why I'm going to give The Bitter Suite 5 out of 5 airlocks.
Yay!
I'm so pumped! This episode is like Clariton for the Xena fan's allergic reaction!
1) When we last saw our intrepid pair, they were no longer really a pair. In agony over what she saw as Gabrielle's involvement in the death of her son by Hope, Xena cut ties with her and leaves the Amazon village.
2) The time line is a little shady, but we know that it's been at least three days since Maternal Instincts because that's about as long as Gabrielle has stuffed herself away in an Amazon hut, enduring some kind of purification ritual that involves being naked, laying in steam, and getting hit along the back of the body with palm leaves.
While she's in there, a dream!Callisto comes in and does her best to turn Gabrielle against Xena in her grief. Because, at this point, Gabrielle is mourning a few different things: The death of Hope (who, despite it all, was her daughter), the death of Solan, the death of her relationship with Xena, and, in essence, the death of her own spirit.
But just as we, as fans, can debate all day as to where the blame for Solan's death should be put, so can these characters. And Gabrielle has taken the blame. But Dream!Callisto pushes at Gabrielle, reminding her of all the things Xena had done wrong since Britannia and, after pushing particularly hard, actually gets Gabrielle to admit that she hates Xena.
3) Meanwhile, Xena's on top of a nearby mountain, singing in mourning, as Ares goads her, basically putting the death of Solan squarely on Gabrielle's shoulders. In her grief, this doesn't not make sense to Xena and she goes to do something about it.
4) Now, when Gabrielle decides that she might hate Xena, she undergoes a purification ritual and dresses in a long, billowing, white toga and doesn't really do anything about it. But when Xena decides that she hates Gabrielle, it's not exactly an omen for anythig happy or peaceful going down.
So when Ares goads Xena into going after Gabrielle, go after Gabrielle she does. And, by virtue of this fact, we have what must be the most infamous incident on all of Xena's history: The Gab Drag.
Xena rides into the village, breaks Ephiny's arm, beats up some Amazons, and sets her sights on Gabrielle, weak from the ritual. She manages to wrap Gabrielle's ankles with her whip, attaches the other end of her saddle, and rides off, Gabrielle dragging behind. It's actually a pretty brutal scene. Gabrielle is dragged over plants, rocks, and fire pits and through water and brush.
Xena drags her all the way to a cliff that overlooks a river and by the time they get there, Gabrielle is completely unconscious, beaten and bloody, cuts and bruises all over her. I mean, they don't sugar coat it. Xena is an incredibly violent show. The hero pretty much kills at least one person per episode and often uses her sword or chakram to do so. But even when the show is at its most violent, it's rare that the audience gets any kind of realistic look at what death in this manner looks like. So when Xena stops the horse (interesting, the horse is not Argo) and we see Gabrielle looking like she's been beaten within an inch of her life, it's pretty startling.
And it's no wonder that it's an incident that gets fans, still to this day, 14 or so years later, up in arms.
5) After Xena releases Gabrielle from the whip, she picks her up, intending to throw her over the cliff, to kill her off in a final moment of vengeance to make up for Solan's death. (Isn't it interesting to look at this scene after remembering how Gabrielle, in the episode Callisto back in season one, made Xena promise she wouldn't go off the deep end in the event of her death?) Gabrielle regains consciousness at the last moment, though, and kicks Xena in the head, causing both of them to fall to the ground.
When Gabrielle and Xena get up, facing each other, it's a pretty chilling moment. I might even go as far to argue that it's one of the most out-there moments on the show, at least as it involves their relationship, because they're both out of their minds. Xena has her crazy feral smile we saw in flashbacks from her Evil!Xena days and Gabrielle has no warmth or empathy or love for Xena in her expression at all. In fact, all we see is loathing. And then she screams out at Xena, "I hate you!", rushes her, and plummets both of them over the cliff and into the river.
It's really amazing. The two have gone from having a relationship stronger than death, where Xena literally came back from the dead because of Gabrielle, to complete and total hatred of each other.
6) Luckily for both of them (assuming they like having lives to live), the river transports them to a magical world called Illusia.
Xena is let out of the water first, but a Joker!Callisto. Now, there's a lot in this episode that has to do with tarot cards, but I know nothing about tarot cards, so all of the allusions and symbols are completely lost on me, so don't judge me for not knowing why Callisto is the joker or why Xena is dressed up like a queen or why, later in the episode, Gabrielle is dressed as Justice (which I only learned from listening to the commentary with Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor).
So, yeah, Xena gets out of the water first and Joker!Callisto gives her a brand new outfit and shows her this wheel. It's a wheel that gives Xena the ability to see her fate if she continues on the path of hatred she's currently working down.
7) Gabrielle is snatched from the river by Joker!Joxer (I don't know if he's actually supposed to be a Joker, but let's just say he is, okay?) and also gets a chance to see what her life may be like if she continues on the same path and, more importantly I think, if Xena continues on her path and their lives are no longer entwined.
8) There's a song. I don't really know how to write about the songs, really, so I guess I'll just summarize what I think happens in them to advance the plot forward.
Xena joins up with Ares and heads his army. There, she is worshipped by her men as she finally gives in to Ares' will and goes back to her old ways. For Xena, her path of hatred is leading her straight back to the life she has been working so hard to get away from for the past three years. Death, destruction, hatred, sadness, no will power.
On the converse side, Gabrielle goes back to Potadeia for a life of a peace. That sounds fine, but the problem is that she goes back to a town that doesn't understand her and, perhaps more fundamentally, cannot understand her. The person she was when she left is not the person she now is. How can she go back to her old life after everything she has seen and done? After Xena and Hope? So, in her life of a peace, really comes a life of lonliness and stagnation.
Xena's army prepares her with a sword while Gabrielle's village prepares her with a scythe, drawing the parallel that this is supposed to be her weapon. Is it her weapon because going back to Potadeia leads to the same kind of hatred for Xena that going back to Ares' army gives Xena?
I'm honestly not sure.
But when the song is over and Gabrielle and Xena meet up with their weapons, the first to strike is Gabrielle and her scythe. She runs at Xena much as she did on the cliff's edge, but Xena quickly rebuffs her blow, knocks her weapon to the side, knocks her to the floor, and rams her sword into her chest.
Yes, Xena kills Gabrielle.
9) Xena comes to the realization that she's actually killed Gabrielle. There's a song and dance number where Ares tries to get her to finally and totally succumb to his will again, but, at the end, as Xena looks once more towards Gabrielle's body, Joker!Callisto comes back and warns Xena that her anger will poison her completely unless she manages to let it go.
Now, this is a serious thing to talk to Xena about. The likelihood of Xena actually letting go of her anger is small. I mean, she's been full of rage for ten years or so. Even in her do-gooder position, she still has anger. It's just that now, her anger is ratcheted up a notch because it's directed at the person she cared about the most. The perceived betrayal has augmented what has been there all along. So even good Xena has anger. So how can she truly let it go?
10) Still, this Xena seems somewhat confused and devastated that she's actually killed Gabrielle, and as she holds the body in her hand, everything around her disappears. The army, the village people, Ares, and Callisto.
A door opens another Gabrielle appears, presumably the real Gabrielle, who sees what Xena has done. "By the gods, Xena," she says. "You killed me."
Xena tries to explain that it's not like any of what they're going through in Illusia is real, so she just killed an illusion, but Gabrielle is not exactly comforted by that thought. Not that I blame her.
11) Suddenly, they are transported to a new place: The Chamber of Echos.
They try to figure out where they are and why they are there, but it devolves into a shouting match where each places the blame of their fates on each other. As they argue, their voices, magnified in volume, bounce back to them. The more they blame each other and accuse each other about the past, the less they can hear from each other. Their accusations are making it impossible for them to listen. And if they can't listen to each other, they can't get beyond the blame.
So Xena gets Gabrielle to admit to a truth, a personal feeling she has in the present and Gabrielle comes up with, "I hurt inside. Don't you?"
And the chamber immediately becomes silent.
Xena tries to walk away at Gabrielle's question of, "Don't you?" Because it must be difficult to know that this situation hurts Gabrielle as deeply as it hurts Xena because, in order to feel the hatred bubbling within her and in order to give it a tangible outlet, it's probably easier to imagine that Gabrielle has no feelings of pain about what happened. Or maybe it's more important for Xena to shut off the outlet to her own feelings and just go numb. Because isn't that what the poison of hatred does to her? It numbs her and maybe, at the moment, that numbness is more welcome than drudging up her hurt.
12) Still, this a musical and there are songs in musicals, and every good musical will have songs that allow the singers to emote. And Xena is no different.
"My heart is hurting beyond words," she sings. "The pain is tearing up my soul." And it's a start and Gabrielle sings of her own pain, but they aren't quite open to really listening to each other.
Again, the song devolves into a blame game. Gabrielle blames Xena for her hatred for Caesar, which took them to Britannia in the first place and poisoned their relationship, and Xena blames Gabrielle for Solan's death, for keeping Hope's survival a secret.
13) The land of Illusia seems sick of playing this game, so it transports them, yet again, to Dahak's Temple, where Gabrielle finds herself back on the altar, her hands covered with blood, as she and Xena finds themselves surrounded by the spirits that have plagued them since the beginning of their journey together: Caesar Khrafstar, Callisto, Ares. And, interestingly enough, Xena and Gabrielle.
Gabrielle's put back on the altar, Xena back on the cross. The spirit of Gabrielle breaks Xena's legs and the spirit of Xena goes to plunge a knife it's Gabrielle. Meanwhile, the other spirits just kind of look on.
Because, yeah, they suck. Ares, Khrafstar/Dahak, Caesar, Callisto . . . They all suck. They aren't fun demons to have plaguing you, for sure. But . . . When Xena and Gabrielle are together, are a unit, their demons are surmountable. They can be fought and conquered. Apart . . . There's no way. Because neither of them are complete without the other.
What they failed to realize is that, because of this, they are each other's worst enemy. And their inability to tell each other the truth about their feelings and about some of the deeper issues in their lives and their relationship really cost them. It made them even worse off than they would have been had they never met. Because when you exist in a relationship where another person is your other half, it creates complications if there's no real communication.
14) So Xena and Gabrielle figure out that the anger and pain they were feeling in their own lives blinded them to the anger and pain the other was feeling. They didn't trust each other to talk it out or come clean. But the good news is that the pattern need not continue. If they can look forward together, they will once again find love. Love is the key. All of their problems have come from hate. The cure to that is the embracement of love. Love is to be their guide.
With this revelation, all of the spirits present die and they are set free from their shackles/cross (burdens).
15) A waterfall appears and, on the other side is Solan. It was Solan who orchestrated Illusia, to force Gabrielle and Xena to face their demons and their hate so that they could continue on their path.
16) They go towards him. Gabrielle crosses through the water and finds herself on the other side with Solan, but when Xena tries to go through, the water burns her hand. She's stuck.
Out of the temple comes the spirit of Ming Tien. This is the one thing Xena has not come clean about. Gabrielle had no idea that Xena had killed him and this breach of trust prevents Xena from truly being free.
So she sings for her forgiveness. She tells Gabrielle that she lied about Ming Tien because she wanted to protect Gabrielle from the truth. Whether that was Ming Tien's death or Xena herself is a bit of a question, but in keeping with Xena's nature, it's more likely that she was trying to prevent Gabrielle from coming to close to the taint of her inadequacies, her inability to be noble or full of honor, in killing Mint Tien without a real need to (even though it had been Lao Ma's final wish). In trying to protect Gabrielle from herself, Xena unwittingly put up a brick in the wall that had already been building between the two. It was, in essence, not much different than Gabrielle's lack of truth when it came to Hope's survival.
17) Not only does Xena ask Gabrielle for forgiveness, she also asks for Solan's forgiveness. After all, she never told him while he lived that she was his mother and she missed pretty much all of his development. And this is the final secret she has to unburden herself with. When Gabrielle and Solan forgive her for these secrets, she's able to cross over.
18) She embraces Solan before waking up on the beach with Gabrielle, their journey in Illusia over, but not forgotten. In one of the cheesiest moments of the show (and this is a show with a lot of cheesy moments), the two embrace and then lay down in the surf, giggling and kicking in the waves.
The commentary with Lucy and Renee is pretty funny for this scene. They're like, "Uh, what are we doing? It's like they couldn't think of a way to end the episode so they told us to lie down and frolic a bit in the waves."
19) But there ends The Rift. But the question is . . . Was it real?
Not Solan's death or Hope or any of it, but Gabrielle wakes up without a scratch on her. Did Illusia heal her or did the Gab Drag happen at all? Was it some kind of rageful fantasy Xena imagined? Because it's never mentioned ever again. Not even by the Amazons. And considering Xena's penchant for self loathing, it seems like something she's really beat herself up over.
Food for thought, at least.
So that was The Bitter Suite. It was difficult to think about how to review a musical episode and I know I didn't really talk much about the songs themselves at all, aside from the lyrical content that pushed the story forward. Maybe I should just let the songs themselves do some of the talking.
Here's "Hearts Are Hurting" (though I really don't like the voice of Gabrielle . . . doesn't sound like her).
Click to viewAnd here is the only video I could find of "The Love Of Your Love" (for some reason, the video does not match the audio):
It's really a great episode. It's a fun and dynamic way of closing up The Rift which has plagued these two for almost the entire season and it closed some storylines, including Ch'in. It's freaking epic, man! Which is why I'm going to give The Bitter Suite 5 out of 5 airlocks.