“Let’s put it this way… maybe I’ll sleep with you if you’re the last man on earth. But we’re not on earth.” - Melanie Ballard, Ghosts of Mars

with Professor of Fangeekonomics, Ms. Melissa Voelker
 
Reference Materials for today’s class:
Xena: Warrior Princess, Episode 1.23 – Death Mask
 
Family serves many purposes in the Xenaverse.  They are there to reveal one’s softer side, such as when Xena laments the loss of her younger brother during the first battles that made her the warrior princess.  They are there to lean on when a crisis of faith in one’s self arises, such as when Gabrielle turns to Lila for comfort after freezing up in a fight.  Today, class, we will look at another purpose of family in the Xenaverse: to instruct on the differences between good and evil, and how murdering someone (no matter how evil or nasty or stinky they are) is never the right answer.
 
  A summary of today’s reference material:
While walking along in their normal wandering path, Gabrielle tries to figure out the secret to Xena’s super powers (like being able to catch arrows whizzing through the air at her UNLESS they are shot by Callisto, though that isn’t a point made in this episode, just something I’m wondering about myself.)  Xena gives her friend some philosophical hoo-ha about “listening with your body,” just before the women are attacked by masked thugs.   They manage to defeat their attackers (big surprise) and the warrior woman uses her Pinch to get info from one of them.  She asks who sent them after her and he tells her it was Cortese.  This response upsets the warrior more than a little bit, and it is revealed that Cortese was the guy that attacked Xena’s village back in the day and started her on the path of being a bad guy.
 
Not surprisingly, Xena is still holding a grudge against him.  When Cortese sends his men to attack a village, she and Gabby ride in to stop them.  They defeat the ruffians just before the kingdom’s soldiers arrive to defeat the ruffians and find their work done for them.  As the thugs flee the scene, one takes off his mask (did I mention they are all wearing dorky masks? Must have slipped my mind being as it is kinda lame) and recognizes Xena.  He goes to the leader of the bandit bunch (ha-ha, alliteration can be funny) and tells the dirtiest of the ruffians that he has to see Cortese and tell him about Xena.  But Malik (the dirty dude – there is that funny alliteration again!) refuses to let anyone speak to Cortese but his stinky self.  He goes to see their leader and finds that Cortese already knows all about the warrior princess.
 
And he isn’t the only one.  The tattletale from before shows up in Xena’s path and it turns out that (because this is just the day for historic revelations) he is her older brother, Toris.  He’s been working his way up the ranks of thugs in order to get close enough to Cortese to kill him.  Xena thinks this is a stupid plan and makes sure her brother knows it.  Gabrielle tries to work her bonding magic on the siblings, but they just bicker around her.  Toris is thinking assassination, while Xena is thinking of justice, which apparently is not the same thing.  The warrior princess tries to send Gabby off to the village (the one they saved that looks a lot like every other village they have saved) in order to keep her safe, but the little Amazon refuses to go.  She’s been growing quite a spine lately, Xena really should be proud.
 
Xena decides she needs more information about Cortese and his merry band of dirty thugs, so Toris pretends to bring her back to the camp as a prisoner.  He demands to see Cortese and is once again refused (Malik just doesn’t want to share his special one-on-one Cortese time with anyone else).  While the men are arguing, Xena sneaks around and finds some clues as to hinky goings-on between Cortese, his men, and the king (or something like that.)  Eventually Malik tries to get frisky with her but she is having none of it.  She has gotten what she needed and is ready to move on to something else.
 
While she is escaping from Malik’s not so heinous clutches, Toris alternates between worrying about her and hating her guts.  Gabrielle tries again to get some sibling love flowing between the brother and sister, but he is still having none of it.  When Xena returns with news that there is a spy at the castle, Gabby finally agrees to stay safe and sound in the village.  Then the brother/sister duo head off to see if they can warn the king about the traitor in his midst.  Unfortunately the traitor has gotten to the king first, or wait, he IS the king!  As it turns out, Cortese has been playing both sides of the fence for a while now, attacking his own people with his band of dirty thugs in order to tax them into poverty and make himself a super wealthy man (yeah, this guy is a pretty big a-hole.) 
 
  Toris attacks him and almost gets himself killed.  Xena manages to save her brother’s life, before Cortese springs a trap on both of them.  While they are floundering around trying to escape the trap, the king of all buttholes makes a break for it.  In true warrior princess fashion, Xena gets herself and her companion out of immediate danger, though the castle guards and the band of dirty thugs are now after them.  As they try to decide what course of action to follow next (like anyone really ever has a plan on this show), Toris has an emotional breakdown.  He blames himself for years of hell because he was a big sissy pants back in the day when their village was attacked.  Xena tries to console him, but he manages to put up a pretty good fit of self-realization anyways.  Then he falls back into being a pansy and starts throwing himself a pity party. 
 
As he is busy doing that, Xena tries to talk the villagers (yep, same village, apparently there is only one in this kingdom) into believing that Cortese and their king are the same guy.  Not surprisingly, they don’t believe her.  As they are having their go-nowhere chat, Toris turns himself into Malik and winds up tortured and beaten.  Xena goes to rescue him and ends up captured as well.  Soon they are hanging around (literally) in the castle dungeon and it is here that they are finally able to start to bond.  When the guards come down to poke at them with sticks (or something like that), Xena tries to tell them about the whole Cortese/king thing, but they don’t believe her anymore than the villagers did.  So Xena and her brother escape and decide to wreak a bit of havoc.  They send a message to the ruffians telling them to attack the castle, and then Xena takes Cortese prisoner.  Fighting soon ensues.  The thugs attack the castle, the castle guards attack the thugs, and Xena and Toris attack whoever looks like a bad guy. 
 
Eventually Cortese blows his own cover to save his a-hole little life and Malik sees this as a traitorous maneuver.  He tries to kill the king, but the head of the king’s guard kills him instead.  Then Xena offers Toris the chance to kill the king (and strangely this time the head of his guard does NOTHING to stop her) but he makes the right decision and lets the a-hole live.  Xena and her brother bond a little more and are able to part on good terms when he decides to head back home.
 
  Discussion from today’s reference material:
Once again family is used in the Xenaverse to make an important point about love and friendship and forgiveness and all that blah blah blah, but after this we will never really see Xena’s brother again so the point gets lost a bit.  It was interesting to hear more of the back-story that led to young Xena becoming bad Xena, and it was fun to watch her interact with her brother and eventually fight alongside him (which they did remarkably well considering that they supposedly haven’t seen each other in many, many years), but watching Toris walk off at the end of the episode and knowing that he would never be heard from again was a bit of a letdown.  Cortese was also a bit of a letdown.  Sure he was a big a-hole who was hurting his own kingdom just to put some money in his pockets, but he didn’t seem like the kind of great and evil tyrant that could have driven Xena into becoming a bloodthirsty warrior beast.  I expected more from the man who “created” her, and in the end I could have believed almost anyone was more evil than him (though maybe not more of a d-bag then him.) 

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About Melissa: By day a mild-mannered tv station receptionist, by night a fighter of crime and corruption in the dirty streets of Spokane, WA . . . or maybe not so much. More like a hyperactive, anal-retentive daytime receptionist and a melodramatic, hyperactive nighttime fangirl who only wishes she could be a fighter of crime and champion of justice (except that would lead to getting my super costume all dirty and I hate doing laundry.) Though my intent has always been to write bestselling novels and live a life of wealth and luxury, putting my talents for snarkiness and word doodling together while letting my geek flag fly suits me just fine - for now.