All right, here’s the deal. Girl Clumsy and I, despite being comrades in arms and best of friends, have a bitter feud which divides us. Like all feuds, it is a matter of honour, of principle, and of pig-headed stubborness to not see things from the other’s point of view. It involves something which we are both passionate about, about which we care deeply. It is, simply, this-
I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the best musical episode ever, while GC thinks Xena: Warrior Princess not only has a better musical episode, but did theirs first.
Obviously, this is a matter of great importance. Such things rend friendships in two, leaving only bitterness and anger in their wake. We had to settle this once and for all. So we decided a duel was required. We would be the combatants, and the episodes would be our weapons. We would match them against each other, and see who would be the victor.
Also, we would cook up some pasta and also have chips and softdrink and stuff.
So it was that I ventured to Chez Clumsy, armed with my copy of Once More With Feeling. GC, for her part, was ready for me, having the entire six seasons of Xena on DVD, including The Bitter Suite.
We decided the fairest option would be to review the episoide we weren’t championing, in order to get a non-fan’s opinion of it. Also we’d probably be able to snark more.
Therefore, I’ll be reviewing The Bitter Suite here on olilolo. Girl Clumsy will be reviewing Once More With Feeling on her blog. Click over there for part 2, the thrilling conclusion!
XENA: WARRIROR PRINCESS- THE BITTER SUITE
You have to respect an episode with a pun right in the title. It’s giving you something for free, right up front.
Although I am championing Buffy in favour of it don’t get me wrong, I was always a fan of Xena back when it was on TV. Especially her costume, which was basically bondage leathers and a sword, which appealed to a 13 year old Stu immensely. Hell, it appeals to a 26 year old Stu quite a bit as well.
But I always felt the show was a bit too goofy for its own good, something I’ve come to reconsider recently, having re-watched a few episodes and realising the fun everyone involved with the show seemed to be having. That sort of thing is infectious, and you find yourself having fun just watching the show, as the joy of playing dress-ups with swords and bodices bleeds out of the screen.
However I don’t feel it ever reached the greatness which Buffy did in terms of writing and acting. And for my money, nowhere is this more apparent than their respective musical episodes.
Suite is not a bad hour of television. It’s visually arresting, funny in places and tragic in others, and all round a decent experience to watch. But it has its problems.
First of all, you can’t really call it a “musical episode”. It’s an episode of the show which happens to have the characters singing. That sounds like nitpicking, but hear me out. To truly be a short form musical, it would need to be in that format from the start. It should ideally open with either a chorus number or at least some form of introductory song. Instead we see the fallout from the previous episode, with Xena wanting to murder long-suffering sidekick Gabrielle, who she blames for the death of her son, and literally dragging her behind her horse before trying to throw her off a cliff. I mean, I’ll totally take that as an opening, that is awesome. But it’s not a musical.
Instead, they wind up falling off the cliff, and also apparently drop a bunch of acid, because when they awake they’re in the land of “Illusia”, a world of wonders and mystic portents. Also they’re both naked. They definitely score points for this, but lose them again for the somewhat awkward framing device. Obviously there has to be some justification for the characters suddenly singing, but this just left me cold for some reason.
From there we get a series of musical numbers from lightly comic to deeply tragic. Lucy Lawless shines in this, as she is actually a trained singer with a strong alto, and can really start belting out the notes during songs like “Hearts Are Hurting”. Kevin Smith, who plays Ares, also impresses with a light baritone and a swagger that would make him the star of any stage he appeared on. And Ted Raimi is hilarious in his self-aggrandising “Joxer the Mighty”. However the disappointing thing for me was that the episode uses voice doubles for two of the major parts- Gabrielle is dubbed by Broadway singer Susan Wood, while Callisto, who serves as a sort of Greek Chorus (no pun intended) and guide figure in the episode is dubbed by Broadway and film actor Michelle Nicastro. These are two integral parts, especially Gabrielle who has several key songs with Xena, and to have them dubbed makes the episode lose more points, in my opinion.
To its credit though, Suite really latches onto the concept of Big Emotions in songs, the idea that something sung can have more resonance than something merely spoken. It’s an idea which also drives Once More With Feeling, but in The Bitter Sweet it’s taken to its most operatic level, with Xena and Gabrielle practically screaming their lyrics to each other in a genuinely moving series of moments.
My problem with this format is that everything feels as if it’s disconnected from everything else. One moment we’ve got Joxer capering around, the next we’ve got Ares doing what sounds like a cover of Arabian Nights from Aladdin, before a series of near-arias between Xena and Gabrielle. It feels like several songs thrown together, not a coherent muscial episode.
Still, it’s a lot of fun, even with shit getting heavy towards the end. But from what I saw, it never rises to the level of Once More With Feeling, which is a coherent self-contained musical while also pushing the plot of the show forward in several key ways.
None of those were “having its two hot female leads hugging in the surf” though, so one up for Xena there I guess.
Now if the competition had been between Once More With Feeling and Xena‘s SECOND musical episode Lyre Lyre Hearts on Fire, it would have been no contest, cause Lyre is fucking AWESOME.
In it, a quest for a magical lyre causes Xena et al to travel to Melodia (Greece’s music capital!) where they organise a Battle of the Bands (no, really), including a group of Amazons, a band of warriors and Joxer’s campy brother Jace, who talks with an exaggerated Spanish accent, wears silk shirts and flamboyantly latin-dances. The episode includes the war band playing a thrashed up version of “Kick out the Jams”, and culminates with Xena and the Warlord Draco (played by Jay Laga’aia!) having a fight while crowdsurfing as the Amazon band play a metal version of Xena’s theme song. It is RAD AS HELL.
But it wasn’t in the running, and therefore has no bearing on this duel. Truly a missed opportunity.
Here is the entire audio track of our viewing of The Bitter Suite. For best results, have your own copy ready to go and press play when prompted. This will give you something to watch during the long pauses when we run out of “funny” things to say and just sit and watch the episode, quietly crunching twisties.
For those of you who don’t want to sit through nearly an hour of two nerds snarking, here is some edited highlights-
8:04- GC- “So now we have Gabrielle being whipped by Amazons” Stu- “Actually there’s retreats which offer this service now.”
8:15- GC- “And here we see our first bare ass of the episode” Stu- “I will admit, you do not get that in Buffy.”
9:10- GC- “Okay if you listen here that’s actually Lucy Lawless singing” Stu- “Is there nothing that woman can’t do?” GC- “No.”
11:40- Stu- “See if this were a different type of film, they’d start kissing now.” GC- “Actually in later seasons they basically just do.”
16:10- GC- (commenting on the lush New Zealand coastline standing in for ancient Greece) “I think this was why I was so freaked out when I visited the Cyclades.”
17:08- (Xena and Gabrielle have plunged into the sea) Stu- “All right, we’re currently in a washing machine ad.” GC- “Gets rid of grease and grime from all of your leather!”
20:08- Stu- “There’s currently an eagle a bull and a lion… AND a jackal-headed god, AND a small dog singing to Xena… in fact everything in this scene including the tables and chairs are singing to Xena.”
24:40- GC- “Currently Xena is being serenaded by a brutish group of warriors.” Stu- “Really the only thing that 300 was lacking was a few show tunes.”
27:45- (An incredible story by GC about how she nearly got cast as an extra on Xena one time. She has the best stories)
29:09- Stu- “This is a big war song between a bunch of soldiers and a bunch of peasants with pitchforks. Historically, those battles tend to be a little one-sided.” GC- “Gabrielle’s got a scythe.” Stu- “Never bring a scythe to a swordfight.”
29:45- (Xena and Gabrielle are fighting) Stu- “Gabrielle has rolled with Xena for how long now? Exactly how well does she think this is going to go?” (Gabrielle is stabbed in the gut by Xena) Stu- “That went about exactly as I was expecting it to.”
31:14- GC- “And now Xena and Ares are sexy-dancing, Xena’s in a sexy tight red dress…” Stu- “She’s got the girl equivalent of a murder boner up.”
33:17- Stu- “Ah it was all a clever ruse!” GC- “Well you know it is Mindfuckistan.”
40:00- Stu- “We’ve just seen a grim reaper looking thing with a hood that turned into a trumpet and blew a fanfare, which is much funnier than you’d think it would be.”
51:40- GC “And that was The Bitter Suite, filmed entirely on location in New Zealand. Any similarity to persons living or dead purely coincidental.” Stu- “Meanwhile there’s a woman on a couch dressed in leather going ‘this is BULLSHIT!’”
