Paradise Found
written by Chris Manheim - Producer
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 09
SD: Lucy’s pregnancy probably changed a lot of the originally planned stories.
Chris (laughing): Yes, we had to scramble a bit to accommodate it, but she gave us a call and thanked us so much for being able to do this. It was very sweet of her.
SD: I remember talking to you before “Paradise Found” aired and you referred to it as a small show.
Chris: It was what is called a “bottle” show with only a certain amount of days in which to shoot and a limited number of characters.
SD (laughing): Which comes first - I’ve thought of a show with four characters or a memo from the boss saying the budget’s in an iron lung?
Chris (laughing): The memo. It usually says we've only got five days. It’s time for a bottle show.
SD: This episode seemed connected to the India arc of stories.
Chris: It was the kickoff to their trip to India. I remember having to write a line for the top of the show during the thunder and lightning sequence where Xena says, “Gabrielle, I’m all for your spiritual quest and India is a fine place to go, but remind me why we decided to take the scenic route.” Rob came to me and said we’re going to use this episode as the introduction to the India episodes, so we needed to reiterate the spiritual quest aspect of their trip. I had 10 seconds to work it in.
SD: From Khrafstar (“The Deliverer”), to Najara (“The Convert” and “Crusader”) to Aiden (“Paradise Found”), Gabrielle was constantly striving to find someone to guide her in her spiritual life. Something that Xena wasn't able to help her with. She believed in these people and they all let her down or tried to destroy her.
Chris: Gabrielle will always be vulnerable to this type of person because of her capacity to hope that there really are good people doing great things for the world who could be her mentors. The fact that she is nonskeptical, or at least doesn't bring the amount of skepticism to the world Xena does, only speaks to Gabrielle’s willingness to be open to positive change without violence. Because usually the people she falls for are non-violent or seem to be.
SD: They look good from the outside.
Chris: Right. And the fact that she isn’t supercritical of them to begin with just says this is a woman who lacks the life experience that kicks you around to where you’re wary of everything. She has the capacity to embrace new thinking.
SD: And it's not as if she's searching for her favorite flavor of ice cream. These people represent her life's dream of healing the world.
Chris: It’s really to her credit she can walk away from heavily disillusioning experiences and still have the capacity to open her heart and mind to a new thing. That takes a certain courage that many people don’t have.
SD: Rob said one of the things he liked about this episode was that it gave him the opportunity to make Gabrielle look great and Xena look monstrous.
Chris: He did an incredible job of it, too. Renee has never looked lovelier. And, as an actress, she enhanced her beauty with a peace that radiated from within. She was terrific. And Lucy, God! So many actresses are afraid to let themselves look absolutely awful and Lucy never hesitates. She just goes for it. I think that’s a credit to her solid feeling about herself as an actress and a beautiful woman.
SD: Can you tell me something about the genesis of this episode?
Chris: It’s been a while, but it seems to me it began with Milton's Paradise Lost. I was told to read that. There was the archangel Michael, the Garden of Eden and other Milton references that were distilled as the show kept getting smaller.
I do remember the substance of this show in a nutshell and I was never sure the audience made the connection. What I wanted people to walk away with was the notion that good cannot exist in the absence of evil. The reason someone can be leached of their goodness is because there’s no evil which calls forth the goodness in you to balance it. Creating a perfect world looks, on the surface, like the best thing to aim for. But perfection only results in a static kind of environment. And where there's no growth, there's death. And that is evil. It’s a lot of intellectual talk, but it’s fun to think about.
SD: Aiden - god? Conjurer? Mystic? Mesmer? Did he have real power?
Chris: For me, Aiden certainly had power beyond normal human beings. He really did leach people's goodness to empower himself. Aiden hoped to expand out of that valley he was in by tapping into Gabrielle's goodness. Remember the hole you had to fall through to get to him? And the lunatic, Gar, that runs around guarding the gates? Gar was trying to keep people out because that meant Aiden was kept in a very small sphere of influence.
SD: Aiden said that after Gabrielle got in touch with her stillness, they would change the world.
Chris: Part of the story we weren’t able to include focused on Aiden's plan to break out and do some damage in the world.
SD: When Aiden was fighting Xena, he had to go and jump on Gabrielle’s heels to recharge himself.
Chris: That served two purposes. It made Xena a more formidable foe because it took so much out of him to fight her. And, it was an imaginative way (thank you, Rob) to make what had to be a very contained fight more interesting visually.
SD: Gabrielle wasn’t able to break free of Aiden's influence when it appeared he was about to kill Xena, but only when Xena was about to kill Gar. Why didn't she try to save Xena?
Chris: Actually, she was saving Xena in the sense that Gabrielle would never allow Xena to take an innocent life and that was what Xena was about to do and endanger her own immortal soul.
SD: That’s what Xena said at the end to Gabrielle, “I knew you wouldn't allow me to take an innocent life.”
Chris: Xena knew that would awaken Gabrielle.
SD: And that was Xena’s plan. In actuality, it never got to the point where Xena was at the point of being killed herself.
Chris: Right.
SD: Was Aiden controlling what was happening to Xena, her hallucinations?
Chris: Only in the sense that what was happening to Xena was caused by the world Aiden had created.
SD: And Xena was of no use to Aiden?
Chris: No. At the very end he wanted to leach what little goodness was left in her, but she didn't have anything. She had divested herself of all goodness so she couldn’t be a power source for him.
SD: Where was Xena going when she dived into that hole?
Chris: After Gabrielle.
SD: That was one really big leap of faith!
Chris: Could you look down that hole and say, “Whew, I wouldn't go down there. Oh well, poor Gabrielle” and walk away? (laughs) I don’t think so.
SD (laughing): No one really questioned it.
Chris (laughing): I didn’t think twice about writing it.
SD: Why are all Xena’s delusions about hurting Gabrielle?
Chris: The evil in her is taking over more and more. And how much more evil can you get than wanting to hurt the person you love most? Given the dark deeds of her past, her karma was weighing heavily against her. Because she hasn’t done enough to balance the scales yet as a good person, the evil outweighed the good in her. That's what was bringing her down. What she had to do at the end to win was completely rid herself, on her own volition, of any goodness she possessed in order to make the plan work.
SD: Both R.J. (Stewart) and Steve (Sears) have mentioned the seed of goodness at Xena's core.
Chris: She started out as a normal kid until Cortese attacked her town. It’s not as if she woke up one day and started killing for no reason. Life threw something her way and she responded saying, “I've got to defend my village. And I’d better take a few of the villages around mine just in case they decide to come against us.” You could say she came into evil from a positive place.
She’s integrating more and more of her positive self, but, when you look at what she did in China, you have to say, “When she was bad, she was very, very bad!”
SD: Xena has been shown to have such an evil past, that some people say it’s impossible for her to be redeemed. For others, they say she gives hope to all of us that no matter how bad we are, don’t stop trying to change.
Chris: That’s how I feel. You can come back from it. Xena’s whole philosophy is that you recreate yourself every day. No matter what you’ve done the day before, you have a chance to do better that day. I've heard R.J. quote that often.
SD: Xena wanted to awaken Gabrielle’s good side to save them, but Aiden fed on goodness so that could have backfired and helped him.
Chris: I believe, when Gabrielle was turning to stone, she was a pure soul and there was no bad in her.
SD: Does Gabrielle have a dark side?
Chris: I think everybody does. And I think we’ll come to know that dark side a little more this coming season. It’s not like Gabrielle's going on some mad killing spree, but she's becoming a more integrated person.
As is Xena. I think motherhood is doing wonders for Xena and it's also bringing Gabrielle into sharper focus for herself.