Anthology
One of the aspects of US television which is least familiar to viewers from elsewhere in the world is the age-old tradition of the clip show. Jim Smith investigates examples from Xena and Hercules.
Official Xena Magazine: Issue 05
Effectively a clip show is a budget saving episode, and something of a necessity because of the long season lengths that dominate US television. The nature of a clip show is pretty self-explanatory. It's an episode where material from a number of previous instalments is reused in the form of 'flashbacks', all linked together by an essentially low-cost framing sequence.
Due to their very nature, clip shows rarely have any kind of artistic merit: anyone who's seen it can remember with a shudder the single Star Trek attempt at the genre, Shades of Gray from the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In fact, before Hercules and Xena, the only programme to make anything interesting out of the basic concept of collating old material was The Simpsons. The episode So It's Come to This, a Simpsons Clipshow was at least filled with enough self-effacing irony to show that they were entirely aware of the nature of the exercise.
The TV movie Hercules in the Underworld and the final episode of the second season of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Cave of Echoes are the closest Hercules or Xena ever got to a straightforward clip show. Hercules in the Underworld suffers because of the lack of material produced up to that point, less than a handful of TV movies. Nevertheless, its main plot, as Hercules explores the afterlife and underworld, is engaging and well done, and the film, whilst perhaps the least exciting of the initial batch of TV movies, is good solid entertainment.
Cave of Echoes is also fairly simple: Hercules wanders into the titular cave, a place where memories come alive, and is treated to ‘visions’ of memories, flashing back to the events of the TV movies and the first two seasons.
These two traditional clip shows are entertaining enough, and by and large they work because of the quality of the material being reused, but they are hardly works of staggering imagination. The Xena season one clip show Athens City Academy of the Performing Bards is an entirely different matter. In this extremely funny episode Gabrielle is left by Xena to take part in a ‘Battle of the Bards' at the institution from which the episode takes its name. In Xena's absence she has to stay in a bunkroom with a number of her fellow competitors and all of them take the opportunity to swap stories and show off their bardly skills. Athens City Academy... takes a radically different approach to the previous episodes, as it clips not only a number of scenes from previous episodes of Xena but also borrows from Hercules as well. Moreover, it takes footage from old Universal Steve Reeves’ Hercules films, and more than a bit from the late Stanley Kubrick’s film Spartacus. But there are other major differences: firstly, more than one person ‘narrates’ the clips, leading to multiple angles and opinions on various events (Gabrielle’s angle on Xena is understandably different from those of people who’ve never met her). On top of this, Gabrielle actually frequently lies, moving around pieces of the various stories and combining clips from several episodes in order to create a different narrative. Athens City Academy... is a major experiment with the basic concept of the clip show, making imaginative virtue out of necessity.
This new approach is built upon in the next seasons of each series, with both Xena and Hercules moving up a gear in their presentation of their annual clip shows. Hercules presents us with Les Contemptibles, a doublet-and-doubloons blockbuster set not long before the French Revolution. The main plot (the ‘framing sequence' comes across as the ends rather than the means this time) concerns the Charteuse Fox (Robert Trebor), a contemporary French hero. In what would become a tradition of the Hercules and Xena clip shows, the regular and semi-regular cast double up, playing characters other than their usual ones. In this episode, for example, the lovely Danielle Cormack, usually seen as the Amazon Ephiny, plays the Lady Marie De Valle, a French aristocrat.
The Xena Scrolls, the second season Xena clip show, is a pseudo-Indiana Jones romp, set in Macedonia during World War II. In it we follow the daughter of a great archaeologist (Lucy Lawless), a fedora-wearing Tomb Raider gal (Renee O'Connor) and a bungling French Military Policeman (Ted Raimi) all of whom are looking to uncover the scrolls that tell the story of Xena’s life. Clips from several episodes make appearances, as do bits of Universal horror films, dropped in to illustrate Jacques S’Er’s tales of his previous daring exploits. Somewhat unconvincingly, I might add. The episode ends with the release of Ares from a tomb where he’s been imprisoned for thousands of years, a plot thread that'll be picked up on in later episodes. In this instalment the flashbacks are integrated into the plot so unobtrusively that it's entirely possible to watch this episode and forget that you're watching a clip show at all.
This is also true of the Hercules season four clip show, Yes, Virginia, There is a Hercules. Concerning the production of the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, the regular cast play the production team - a production team who panic when their star, Kevin Sorbo, goes missing. This episode makes it clear that “Kevin Sorbo is the real myth” (to quote Ares), that the actor really is the immortal Hercules, still alive at the end of the 20th Century, and that the Hercules television show is his autobiography. This episode is more a ‘showreel' than a clip show, given that it showcases episodes of Young Hercules that hadn’t been screened at the time of broadcast, and has a clip from The Battle for Mount Olympus, the straight-to-video animated musical. It’s also self reflexive, confidently parodying the series of which it is a part, and in the process illustrating just why the programme is so great.
In this episode, the cast and the dialogue are wonderful. Bruce Campbell plays Robert Tapert as a lazy, fishing-obsessed maniac; Michael Hurst plays screenwriter Paul Robert Coyle as a gambling addicted alcoholic; and Robert Trebor’s studio head B.S. Hollinstoffer is a man utterly obsessed with money. Hollinstoffer gels the episode's best line, the capitalist mantra "Weekends are for Communists!”, whilst Kevin Smith’s Jerry Patrick Brown (the real show’s head writer) pulls guns on his colleagues and obsesses over his part in the wars in Vietnam and Korea. Ted Raimi’s Alex Kurtzman is a staff writer of unalloyed witlessness, a fact belied by checking out any of the real Kurtzman’s actual episodes... such as this one, in fact. The sheer confidence necessary to attempt such an exercise - the wilful portrayal of yourself and your colleagues as talentless, drunken, philandering, back-stabbing, lazy and egomaniacal ne’er-do-wells - lends the episode a joyous quality that rubs off on anyone who watches it. This is a writing team at the very peak of their game.
If Yes, Virginia... seemed to be outside the main flow of the series, the Xena third season clip show, Forget Me Not, is the exact opposite. This is an episode which compiles pieces of many episodes made up to that point in order to finally conclude the Xena/Gabrielle estrangement plotline (commonly known as The Rift ) that had been running since The Debt. Strong and moving, rather than silly and funny, Forget Me Not has little in common with the engaging gagfests that make up the majority of these regular clip shows.
In season five of Hercules we are treated to the glorious For Those of You Just Joining Us..., which revisits the basic idea that made Yes, Virginia... such a breath of fresh air, but gives it an extra twist. For Those of You... takes the staff of Renaissance Pictures to a corporate retreat, Camp Wannachuck, where they can learn to work together more effectively. Renee O'Connor is added to the cast as Sunny Day, a bouncy, happy girl who runs the camp - playing off the ‘happy presenter’ image she gained on The Mickey Mouse Club - and a plot unfolds concerning someone’s attempts to ruin the production of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
Incredibly self-referential, this episode examines the production of the fifth season as affectionately and ironically as Yes, Virginia... did for season four, and has the added advantage of illustrating the ongoing storyline of the season up to that point. It also provides the audience jumping on to the series with a handy summary of that season's long and complex ‘Dahak Arc’.
Michael Hurst’s interpretation of Paul Robert Coyle makes a welcome reappearance, and he is once again given a number of wonderful lines - the best being, “I’ll change my ways, I promise. I’ll only drink when I’m awake, and I’ll tip all the showgirls.” And Kevin Sorbo this time makes a full-blooded appearance rather than a final scene walk-on. When we first see Herc in his 'Sorbo' persona, his face is surrounded by stars and the soundtrack fills with applause. He then has an argument with Ares (who has appeared unannounced in Herc’s BMW) about merchandising rights and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys weekly “slandering” of the God of War. “In 5000 years nothing has changed, Ares. You’re still a whiner,” Hercules retorts.
This episode has much in common with many a Superman story. The hero, who has a secret identity, must try and save his friends and defeat the bad guys without revealing who he really is. Sorbo strolls through the role, in an incredibly cool and funny way. Relating the story of his/Herc’s life, whilst pitching it as a story idea, Sorbo turns to the camera and deadpans, “But what do I know, I’m just an actor.”
The episode begins with a clip from the comic Hercules episode One Fowl Day and then attacks its (deliberate, wonderful) absurdity. “This is your idea of quality programming?” asks Hollinstoffer. “I’ve never cared about quality,” Cambell's Tapert returns. Oh, and the “Friends forever, right Herc?” scene gets funnier every single time you watch it.
The Xena fourth season clip show was also the season finale. The vital positioning of this episode, straight after the incredible The Ides of March (in which Xena and Gabrielle were crucified), indicates the production team’s confidence in this episode. Déjà Vu All Over Again is Renee O' Connor's directorial debut, and is perhaps the clearest example of Renaissance’s subverting of the clip show format.
Taking place in contemporary LA, it concerns the young couple Harry (Raimi) and Annie (Lawless). Annie is a massive fan of the Xena television series, and is obsessed with the idea that she is actually a reincarnation of the warrior princess. (Based on the resemblance alone, you must admit she’s got a case.) Harry and Annie decide to consult a hypnotherapist (played with tripped-out authority by Renee O’Connor) in order to sort out their relationship and clear up Annie's obsession with Xena.
By this point, the 20th Century episodes - The Xena Scrolls, Yes, Virginia..., For Those of You..., and Déjà Vu All Over Again have effectively become an interesting spin-off mini-series in their own right. They have recurring characters, internal continuity and some kind of ongoing storyline, largely concerning the frustrations of Ares in the present day. He is now a God making mischief whilst adrift in an era where few openly worship him, where his brother is the happy star of a hit television show, and where the other Olympians are all long since gone.
As is so often the case on Xena or Hercules, the cliches of US television are taken to pieces, played with and then put back together in a different order to produce something more imaginative, compulsive, sillier and cleverer than any other show can manage. That Hercules and Xena's later clip shows are some of the finest episodes in either series’ runs is an indication of the imagination and determination of the production teams, and ultimately one of the finest testaments to the shows’ overall quality.
SIDEBAR: Anatomy of a Clip Show
Darker than most Xena and Hercules clip shows, Forget Me Not is a pivotal episode in the ongoing drama of ‘the rift’, the split between Xena and Gabrielle following events in The Debt and Maternal Instincts. Seeking solace at the temple of Mnemosyne, Gabrielle embarks on a mental journey through the recent past. This is, of course, a clever excuse lor a series of clips from Maternal Instincts, The Deliverer, When in Rome..., The Bitter Suite and both episodes of The Debt. The result is darker and more heavily dramatic than the likes of comedy clip shows like The Xena Scrolls (also directed by Charles Haskell, who did Forget Me Not) or Athens City Academy... The episode manages to sum up and resolve the rift’ storyline all at once, and proves to be a prime example of either Xena or Hercules series using the money-saving gambit of a clip show in an imaginative and dramatic way.