With nothing else to see on DVD that we haven’t seen already, the wife rented the first season of Xena. Good stuff to me, since like Buffy, I started watching it far too late to know what was going on. But a discussion started, resulting in a bet. There is a matter of 20 bucks and some other stuff riding on this.
I say that Xena was first, and Hercules with Sorbo was the spinoff. The wife claims the opposite. I did a quick search and couldn’t find anything because the truth is buried in freakazoids with stalking pages for each with no real info other than lots of worship and stupid trivia.
What’s the deal?
Bonus question: What is the first episode where Callisto appears? Or at least, where she appears as Callisto, in all her yummy glory?
P.S. Callisto has nothing to do with the bet. This is just a question that we both have because well… it’s Callisto and she’s yummy.
According to imdb.com, both shows started in the same year. This says Hercules was on from 1995 to 1999, and this says Xena was on from 1995 to 2001.
I could have sworn that Hercules came first though. I remember my mom developing a crush on Kevin Sorbo and her complaining when “that Xena girl” showed up.
The bimbo was watching more TV than I was. Gimme a break though. It isn’t often that a spinoff is better than the original. I’m going to claim that I had Hercules confused with Beastmaster or something lame. It doesn’t matter though because she is still chuckling even now after stuffing a 20 into her wallet.
Trivia: Lucy Lawless appears as one of the Amazon Women in Hercules and the Amazon Women. So Turbo Dog, maybe you can pretend to your wife that you were just confused because of that!
It was the Hercules pilot movies first.
Hercules started as a series in January 1995. Xena was introduced as a character in episode 9 “The Warrior Princess.”
Xena’s series started in September 1995.
yep, there was a series of Hercules movies before it became a series. It was cool, especially his uncertainty over whether he was truly immortal, and having to ask his father for certain whether he’d survive the descent into Hades.
It was sad that they killed off his family to “free” him for the TV series. After all he’d gone through . . .
I disliked how much they changed his personality. In the original myths, Herc is a chauvinist, conceited, aggressive, jerk. He’s the stereotypical high school quarterback who dates the head cheerleader, is given good grades so he can stay on the team, and picks on the nerds as much as he can.
I realize that they had to change him in order for the show to work. Nobody wants to watch the jerk who was born with all the advantages get famous.
But, I would have started him off as kind of a jerk. Through his adventures and conversations with Aeolus, Herc gradually becomes a nice guy and finally a paragon of virtue. EG The first season or so Herc doesn’t think wives should be beaten. But, they should lnow their place. Eventually, he sees that women are equal to men and should be treated as equals.
Calisto-
YMMV But I was always turned off by her skinny arms. Shouldn’t a warrior have more muscular arms? A woman who’s spent years traing and fighting should have the physique of Sarah Connor as seen in T2 not T1.
BTW-For a while, the scarmbling of different myths, the changes in sequence of events, and the misuse of names from the myths really annoyed me. One day though, I had a revelation. The creators and writers knew as much mythology as I did. But, they knew that most viewers wouldn’t watch an accurate depiction of the culture or know if the myths were rewritten. But, there were injokes for those viewers who did know the stories. Salmoneus was a man who went mad and believed he was Zeus. He rode around in a chariot, clanging metal sheets to make thunder and throwing rocks he claimed were lightning. As you know, the name Salmoneus was given to the recurring greedy-merchant-with-soft-heart character. But, one episode does feature a renamed king who is the Salmoneus of the myths. Hera tells him that he is Zeus and plays on his madness. She grants him power and convinces him to kill Hercules.