I love Legend of the Seeker, but Xena looks lame.
However, so many of the same people were involved making Xena. Anyway, I’m wondering if it is a good show or not.
Shows I like:
Buffy
Angel
Legend of Seeker
X-files
LOST
Battlestar
Firefly
Dollhouse
Supernatural
We also like the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies.
Thoughts?
I haven’t watched any of the other shows you mentioned (other then LOTR and HP) but I really don’t think it’s anything like them at all. It was more along the lines of Hercules, in fact, I think it was a spin off of Hercules and I know they crossed paths from time to time. I remember liking it, but then I was an 18 years old guy and what wasn’t there to like about Xena and Michele. I doubt I could sit through the whole series now, but I see it’s on Netflix Instant so perhaps I’ll check it out.
Having said that, I picked OK. I remember it being really good back when I was in high school and college, but then I don’t remember there being much else on and I wasn’t really into the sci-fi/fantasy thing other then this one show.
I remember in college pestering my (female) roommate week after week to watch it with me because I thought it was such a good show. I finally got her to watch one episode and she looked at me and said, with her eye rolled, “Are they all like this?” Of all the episodes to watch, she watched the one that was a musical.
Gabrielle. Xena’s sidekick was named Gabrielle. I loved the series, as well as the Hercules series, but my standard for great TV was limited. I think it’s one of those awesomely bad shows. It’s eye candy and fun.
It’s cheesy camp, like Hercules was cheesy camp, so if you like cheesy camp, you’ll like it.
:smack: Who the hell is Michele (and spelled wrong at that)? I have no idea what I was thinking when I typed that.
ETA, I see lots of typos in that whole post, I probably should have paused my movie while I was typing. BTW, she rolled both eyes, not just one.
Cheesy camp that had homoerotic subtext that became real text. Cheesy camp that took on not only Greek but also Christianity mythology. Cheesy camp that’s at least as good as Buffy or similar.
In my mind, that’s a good show.
Agreed.
You have to go into it knowing what to expect. Even allowing for the continual divine meddling, everything in the show is anachronistic. If there was some bit of history or myth or religion that the writers felt they could use, and it’s from more than 1000 years ago, they tossed it in, regardless of what time or culture it actually came from. If you watch the show expecting it to be a serious take on Greek myth (or, for that matter, a serious take on anything at all), this will probably frustrate you no end. If, however, you watch it expecting it to be a cheesy campy romp with only the vaguest of connections to anything resembling history, then it’s great.
I had to vote “Other.” It is not a great show, or even very good, but it was funner than a box of drunk ferrets.
Xena is…OK. It would have been different if it was an out-and-out fictional world (like Seeker), but it wasn’t, and that earns a lot of demerits in my book. I truly hate the “everyone in leather pants and armour” school of “Historical” fantasy - like that Robin Hood show, too… And the action choreography was “meh”. On the other hand, great cast of actors, and campy and self-aware, so it’s a wash in the long run.
The women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children… well they are mostly half-gods and lucky to survive to adulthood. I loved the show. You have to go into it knowing what you are getting, and as long as you are expecting and can appreciate the campiness I think you’ll like it.
My pre-child days when I was single and carefree had a Sunday morning ritual that included Xena, huevos rancheros and margaritas. I’m looking forward to that again when the kids go to college - hope it’s still on Netflix by then!
one of those shows that works on so many levels.
Mmmmm…cheeeezy…mmmmm.
And them wimminz were hawt!
Xena is one of my favorites from the 90’s. It held up well until the weird final season.
I watched Hercules too. But, Hercules seemed to get very repetitive after a few seasons.
Xena is what I call “Bong-TV”–ie, the kind of thing you liked as a student, usually while in a somewhat less than sober condition. Some skin, some action, some camp.
I happen to have been re-watching Xena lately and yes, it’s campy fun still. However, the Sam Raimian physics (as opposed to Newtonian physics the rest of us use) are really getting to me. Xena’s too good at what she does: she never misses with her chakram, she can catch arrows and swords with her hands, she can punch and kick as hard as the men and she never gets tired or even out of breath, they do that ridiculous chop-socky, homage to martial arts movies stuff in nearly every episode… look, I know it’s meant to be silly and over-the-top. Of course it is. But I kinda wish they had taken the opportunity to show what women can really do with strength and skill.
I don’t have any problems with the wobbly mythology and history issues; in fact I really enjoy it when the gods show up and start messing with the mortals. Xena, as good as she is, isn’t the child of a god the way Hercules is, so that raises the stakes. And she’s an excellent strategist as well as a formidable fighter. Lucy Lawless really made that show; she made the idea of a female warrior plausible. Xena as a character is known far and wide in her ancient Greek world, and everybody takes her seriously: she shows up and starts giving orders, and the male characters just get to work and do what she says without question, because she obviously knows what she’s doing and can be trusted as a leader. This was a good thing to see on TV. I just wish they hadn’t made her so superhuman.
I voted “good, but not really good”, but I think that many episodes of Xena were really good. But the last couple of seasons were, IMHO, really NOT good. I went from being a dedicated fan who religiously taped each episode to a person who made no effort to catch the show and would only watch it if someone else had it on.
Based on the OP’s other interests, I’d recommend the first three seasons of Xena and at least some of the fourth season. I haven’t seen all the shows **Mahaloth **listed, but FWIW at the time Xena was on the air there was considerable overlap between Xena fandom and Buffy and X-Files fandoms. As for seasons five and six, well, in retrospect I kind of wish the show had ended with the fourth season.
I can’t remember the details now, but at some point the production company behind Xena was bought out and a number of the behind-the-scenes people were replaced. Xena was shot in New Zealand, and after the fourth season a number of crew members and supporting actors also left to work on the Lord of the Rings movies. The writers also had to work around star Lucy Lawless’s pregnancy during season five, and I think they wound up painting themselves into a corner with some of the decisions they made there. Anyway, the last two seasons felt to me like a very different and inferior show that just happened to have the same basic premise and main characters.
This sounds very negative, but it’s because I LOVED the earlier seasons of Xena. It was a very fun show, and managed to pull off a mix of action, humor, and drama for a long time. The character of Xena herself was also a really cool action heroine, and I liked that she was a tall, solid looking adult woman. I’ve seen too many beautiful waifs cast in action roles since then. I mean, I like Keira Knightley just fine as an actress and I’m sure she’s in much better shape than I am, but I don’t look at her and think “There’s an imposing warrior woman.” I think “I could kick her ass, and I’m a librarian.”
ETA:
Wikipedia tells me that Xena is currently being reissued on DVD by Universal in the US, with seasons one and two already available. I would recommend against buying the older DVDs from Anchor Bay. I have not seen them myself, but there were a lot of complaints about the picture quality and close captioning was not available. The Universal DVDs are close captioned and the picture quality is reportedly at least somewhat better.
Personally, I preferred Sword of Damocles.
(we’ll see how many people get the reference)
Well, I just watched the first episode…I get the feeling I’ll be re-watching the series. I forgot how much I actually liked it.
The First episode, do you mean the one where Hercules persuades Xena to help people instead of kill them?
I think there were maybe two or three specials with Hercules and Xena that lead to launching the series. It’s been years since I saw them.