Cheap Xena Warrior Princess - Season Two (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 Two

A dramatic improvement over Season One
Many shows improve dramatically in their second season, but XENA was so different as to be almost a different show. It isn't hard to locate precisely why XENA was so much better in its second season. Season One of XENA saw the show treating each of its action plots with complete seriousness. It completely lacked ironical distance from its plotlines. The stories in both Season One and Season Two were absurd, but while in Season One the show acted as if it imagined they weren't, while Season Two proceeded with a frank acknowledge of how much of the show was ridiculous. In other words, in Season Two XENA in part became a comedy. In large part this was helped by the discovery that Lucy Lawless was a good comic actress. <
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>There were other reasons for the improvement in Season Two. The overall writing improved markedly. Though still not a big budget show, they clearly had a larger operating budget in Season Two. Most striking was the addition, despite the preponderance of comic episodes, of several very dark and surprisingly effect serious episodes. Although the show had trouble "selling" the serious episodes in the debut season, several in Season Two were very compelling. <
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>Another change in Season Two was the increasingly moving relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. XENA started off as a female buddy picture, but as fans identified (or perhaps more accurately, created) a lesbian subtext the show did more and more to feed the fans. XENA was, in fact, one of the first shows to respond in a strong way to the way that fans were responding to the show. Although both Xena and Gabrielle are portrayed throughout the series as heterosexual, the show from Season Two until the end of the series continued to foster the idea that the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was deeper and more profound than any that either would have with any man. <
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>Nonetheless, the show both in Season Two and until the end of the series, managed to be alienating to many viewers. I've never enjoyed Asian martial arts films because of the extraordinary reliance on wirework. I even find such masters of filmmaking as Yimou Zhang difficult to appreciate because of the physical impossibility of the things the characters do. So for me the outrageous jumps and leaps that Xena routinely makes serve to distance me and alienate me from the overall story. BUFFY would very occasionally use wirework, but only rarely. XENA is addicted to it. To the show's credit, it intentionally made many of these elements sillier and sillier, as if conceding that it is all in fun. Xena's use of her chakram gets increasingly impossible. In one scene she is waiting for the arrival of a giant in a village and, bored, she tries to pass time by bouncing her chakram off several surfaces. It is all done so routinely that it reminded me of Steve McQueen bouncing his baseball off the wall in the prison camp in THE GREAT ESCAPE. <
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>The second source of continuing alienation is the continued abuse and misuse of history. There is a scene in BABE: PIG IN THE CITY in which Babe looks out over the skyline of the city and sees the Eifel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House, and several other famous structures adorning the city. It is absurd in the same way that the world of Xena is. Basically every famous person from the ancient period from the Homeric Age to the late Roman Empire is alive. Xena meets and romances both Ulysses and Julius Caesar. Goliath turns out to be a good friend and Gabrielle nurses a crush on David. For perspective, I found it difficult to enjoy the series ROME because of historical liberties. But ROME strives to be historically respectable; XENA uses historical and mythological figures any way that it wishes. <
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>The bad news is that XENA would persist in its defiance of both physics and history. The good news is that the stories would continue to improve. Its third season would represent an improvement over the first two. In fact, it is only in Season Three that the central story of the series actually begins.

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continuing the same great Xenariffic stuff
The first 2 seasons were wonderful. This one has everything you liked from the first season, but more of it. Old favorites are back, such as Joxer, Autolycus, Ares, Hades, Callisto, Ephiny, and some new ones, like Aphrodite, Cupid, and Poseidon. I highly recommend season 2. You get to know the supporting characters a lot more in this season, mainly because Lucy Lawless was injured and unable to do a few episodes.

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Xena Warrior Princess -Season 2
If you love girl power, good v evil, historical fiction & greek mythology; you will love Xena Warrior Princess - Season 2. Yes, it can be corny, but that is the beauty of the character & the series.