Cheap Xena: Warrior Princess: Season One (DVD) (T.J. Scott, John Fawcett, Karen Dior, Robert Ginty, Patrick R. Norris, Allison Liddi, Oley Sassone, Charlie Haskell, Gilbert M. Shilton, Philip Sgriccia) Price

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Customer Reviews of Xena: Warrior Princess: Season One

The weakest season in the series, with better things to come
XENA is the very definition of a cult show. Its main claim to fame is that it was the first television series to feature as its lead a truly heroic female. It would very shortly be superceded by BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, not just because it also because it featured a strong female lead, but because on every level it surpassed XENA in quality of writing, acting, and narrative. Unlike XENA, which was reviled by TV critics from the moment it debuted to the second it ended, BUFFY was lavished with love by critics from its beginning until its end. And even today BUFFY is used by a host of mainstream critics as a benchmark for quality television. And unlike XENA, which has not expanded its North American fan base since the end of the series, BUFFY has more fans today than when it ended. <
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>Nonetheless, the historical importance of XENA cannot be exaggerated. With the exception of Dana Scully on THE X-FILES (who appeared two years before XENA), Xena and her companion Gabrielle were the first truly heroic women on television possibility since Mrs. Emma Peel on THE AVENGERS in the sixties. True, there were other superficially heroic women, but most were undercut by other factors. On WONDER WOMAN, the hero was undercut by her constant deference to Maj. Trevor and her determination to make him look good. Angie Dickinson's Pepper Anderson on POLICE WOMAN was hurt by her persistent dressing up as a hooker or stripper on multiple episodes. In 1991 Susan Faludi correctly wrote in her landmark book BACKLASH that television was populated almost exclusively by regressive female characters and cited network resistance to CAGNEY AND LACY and a preference by the studios by "nesting" female characters who were constantly regretting taking on careers instead of staying at home with the children on shows like thirtysomething. Dana Scully was an astonishing repudiation of this tradition. And Xena took this to a completely different level. Xena was the first heroic female figure in the grand tradition. She was the first female hero who could outfight heroic men, overwhelm opposing armies in one-on-many action, and who more or less make sex and gender irrelevant. <
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>Nonetheless, XENA's influence on subsequent has been far more difficult to gauge than one might expect. The main reason for this has been the appearance of BUFFY in XENA's second season. It is pretty clear that XENA exerted no influence on BUFFY. Though on TV XENA appeared in 1995 and BUFFY in 1997, Buffy had already appeared in movie form in 1992. And there is no question that virtually every female hero after Buffy was influenced far more by the Sunnydale vampire slayer rather than Xena. Most of the reason for this lies in the fact that XENA is made in the in the style of Hong Kong martial arts films. BUFFY utilized some wirework, but XENA was dominated by it. Also, all fights on BUFFY were presented from a point of view where you could see every facet of it, many of the key moments in a XENA fight were shot in extreme close up so that you couldn't really see the stunts that were supposed to be taking place. In short, even though BUFFY was about a vampire slayer, everything else was done in a fairly realistic style, whereas there was virtually nothing realistic about XENA. This was underscored by a huge range of aspects of the show that flew in the face of realism. Much of this concerns the incredible disjunct between everything that is known about ancient history and XENA's use of history. There are dozens of historical "howlers" that will horrify any student of ancient history. Among several score examples I will cite only one, where Gabrielle attends a bard's competition in Athens. She befriends another bard who turns out later to be Homer. For his part of the competition he tells the story of Spartacus, who led a slave revolt against the Roman Empire. Euripides also appears in this episode. Let's see. Current scholarship does not believe that there was an historical Homer, but that it is a collection of orally transmitted poems from the 9th and 8th centuries BC. Euripides lived in the 5th century BC. And Spartacus was a slave in the Balkans in the 2nd century BC. Fans of the show frequently feel that the use of history on the show is unimportant, but for people with a respect for history the footloose way of dealing with history can be as alienating as Xena's twenty-foot in the air forward somersaults or her rather more absurd throws of her chakram. <
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>Still, as XENA went on the abuse of history decreased (for an extended period of time following the introduction of Caesar in Season two they kept almost all the historical characters to a specific period of the Roman Empire), the overall writing improved dramatically, the two lead characters became more complex and fully developed, and the story as a whole became more complex. I believe Season One is an almost unmitigated failure, but the show definitely improved. <
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>Much of the future improvement was hinted at even in Season One. In the first few episodes both Xena and Gabrielle are very poorly sketched characters. Xena is merely a kicker of the tails of her enemies, Gabrielle her naive but enthusiastic follower. But by the end of the season, especially in the excellent two-parter "The Greater Good" and "Callisto," the show presented viewers with two very excellent episodes. Though Hudson Leick was a very marginal actress, her Callisto nonetheless seemed to bring the best out in Lucy Lawless. I want to emphasize that while I think most of the episodes of Season One to be inferior, it is not because of either Lucy Lawless or Renee O'Connor. Instead, it was the fault of the writers in giving them inferior material to work with. They were given almost no good material in Season One, but Season Two would see more and more excellent episode (though the season as a whole is also a failure). But by Season Three the show would have seen a dramatic improvement in the quality of the writing. <
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>By the end of Season One both Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor have, even with the inferior scripts, as likable characters that viewers come to care about. The two become perhaps the most successful female "buddies" in the history of TV. Much has been made about latent lesbian themes on the show, and no doubt in later seasons the writers did much to encourage this, but this is clearly secondary to the great friendship the two forge. <
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>Is Season One of XENA great television? No. In fact, it is pretty bad, but it is important to keep in mind that it would get better. Is it important television? Yes, because XENA, along with THE X-FILES in 1993 and BUFFY in 1997 signaled the emergence of the female hero on television. In large part we have such female characters on TV as Aeryn Sun, Max Guevera, Sydney Bristow, Kate Austen, River Tam, and Veronica Mars to the paths blazed by Dana Scully, Xena, and Buffy Summers.

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Xena...
Episodes were almost all the same. walk through the woods, someone needs help, fight a petty wannabe warlord. However, Xena had great costumes, wonderful cinematography, interesting characters. Sometimes episodes were silly and corny, but sometimes they were serious and touching. Xena has the right touch of humor, action and drama. I love it! Sometimes the seasons are "buy 1 get 1 free". wait and get a deal.

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Xena: Warrior Princess: Season One
This is was a gift and the whole family watches at least one show of it every night.