The Greater Good
written by Steven L. Sears
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 23
SD: Having interviewed you last issue for “Dreamworker,” when I went to look at “The Greater Good,” I noticed a similarity in the way the episodes begin. Gabrielle is practicing with a sword against a stump in “Dreamworker” and she’s practicing with her staff against Argo in “Greater.” A theme with you?
Steve: Yeah, it’s funny. At the time, I didn’t realize I was repeating the previous episode, but it’s a continuation of Gabrielle trying to expand her boundaries. Trying to think of herself more as a warrior. She’s trying to rush into the future she thinks is destined for her because she idolizes Xena. But the opening in “Greater” was to set up the relationship between Gabrielle and Argo. It was also to elaborate more on the relationship between Xena and Argo. That they have an unspoken communication.
SD (laughs): “Sometimes you have to be patient with things that annoy you,” Xena says to Argo, speaking about Gabrielle.
Steve: That was direct communication. Remember when Xena's about to walk away and she turns to Gabrielle and says, “Be sure to tighten the saddle”? In doing that, Xena shows that she knows Gabrielle well enough to know what Gabrielle is going to try to do - ride Argo. And she also knows Argo well enough to know what Argo's going to do - take Gabrielle for a wild ride. The fact that Xena whistled to call Argo interrupted what would have happened. That also established the whistling motif which is not something we dealt with very often - that Xena uses whistle commands with Argo when she needs to.
SD: Do you remember the genesis of this story?
Steve: I know one of the things we discussed was the mysterious person who shoots the poison dart at Xena. I'm trying to remember, way back then, if R.J. (Stewart) had already been developing the Callisto character before I began this story or whether it was just something we put in with the thought that it could be used later on. Because the “Callisto” script follows this one, I think the character of Callisto was already in the works.
One of the discussions I had with some fans was that they thought the footage of Callisto used in “Greater Good” was of Hudson Leick, who played the character in “Callisto.” It looked so much like her, but she hadn’t been hired yet. I think we went back and reshot certain parts of those scenes based on what we knew about Hudson when she was hired for the role. My memory's a bit cloudy on this.
But I think we shot the majority of it with the outfit and said, “We're gonna find someone who fits the suit.” If you look at the double in “Greater,” she matches Hudson's movements. Look at the way she is standing on the branch. She mimics very well Hudson’s stance.
SD: That might have been inserted?
Steve: Yeah. So, setting up the mysterious villain was one aspect needed in the episode. As far as things I wanted to play with, this was my first opportunity to write Salmoneus. I also had this little gag about seltzer water I wanted to use.
But, to motivate everyone, he couldn’t be Salmoneus, he had to be Lord Seltzer. It was a position he wasn’t used to because he had all these people giving him respect. In fact, a lot of people mistake that at the beginning when he's telling Xena. “Be quiet on the Salmoneus thing.” It sounds like he’s saying “This is part of my scam.” But. really, the subtext is that, “These people really like me, don't ruin this.”
SD: Knowing Salmoneus to be the ultimate con artist, I thought it was a scam, too. Why did you want to write for that character?
Steve: He was in an earlier episode, “The Black Wolf,” and I did the brush-up polish. When I was first approached by Babs Greyhosky about looking at this show, all she had was Hercules footage and one of the characters she really liked was Salmoneus. She thought he was hysterical. I thought he was funny and Robert Trebor was a very good actor. But he was kind of one-dimensional, because they were mostly focusing on the businessman aspects, the schemer. But you could see moments where Bob was pushing the emotional aspects of the character. It wasn’t a flaw of the directors or writers on Hercules - Salmoneus was originally intended to be just the comic foil.
When I had the chance to write for Salmoneus, I wanted to explore him in a lot more depth, but in the context of the character. One of the things I had heard about Bob Trebor was that he asked a lot of questions about his character. Some thought he asked too many questions. I've never really been bothered by that. My philosophy is that if you ask the right questions, that's great. If you ask the wrong questions. I'll shut you down.
I wanted to look at this character as more than the comic foil, but I wanted to keep it in the context of what Salmoneus knows - and that's business. Even if he were to have a romantic scene, it’s going to be in the context of business. And not in the shallow-type of transactional sense, but in the very words he uses.
For example, in “Greater Good,” when he’s talking to Gabrielle about the fact they should leave now that Xena is dead, instead of saying, “We can't do anything about Xena. Let's get everyone out of here.” He says, “Let’s cut our losses and leave.” It's the same idea, but it's the business way of expressing the thought. It's how he thinks.
So, when I started working on that character, I was looking to give Salmoneus more depth than he'd been given up to that point. By coincidence, I was flying to New Zealand for the beginning of this episode. I met Bob face-to-face for the first time. We sat down and he was very complimentary.
He commented on the fact that he could see what I was doing with Salmoneus. And the questions he asked were very much on the mark. None of them were confrontational. None of them were, “I don’t want to do this.” His questions were all about exploring the character. And he stuck to the script almost word for word. In fact, there’s one line I will give him complete credit for. He brought up what he wanted to say and I told him it was a great idea. It’s the line where he thinks Xena is dead and calls her a “proud warrioress.” I asked him why he wanted to say that and he said it was because that was the first thing Salmoneus ever said to Xena in the Hercules trilogy episodes. I thought it was a terrific idea. It's a very nice scene.
SD: Salmoneus’ discovery of Xena's body is a beautiful moment. And it was photographed beautifully too.
Steve: Yeah. It came together there. Gary Jones did some wonderful directing. Allen Guilford, the director of photography, did a wonderful job. The set, the props, everything. And working with Bob was quite enjoyable. We were very much in sync with what that character was supposed to be. And I find that to be the key with a lot of characters. If you try to force depth on them, it doesn't work. But if you look within the context of the character, then it works. And, for Salmoneus, it also becomes amusing - which is why the character is there. Even in his most sincere moments, you can feel sorry for the guy, but there's a part of you that says, “Well, that’s funny.”
SD: Two more Salmoneus-related questions, while we're on the character. “Talgamite” - the metal that dissolves when wet. Something you invented? Not real? (laughs)
Steve (laughs): I had to come up with something. I was probably reading about cave explorations. Looking for something that sounded earthy, but, at the same time, crumbly. Stalagmite was in my mind. And the word “mite” sounds crumbly to me.
SD: The guardian Moirae? Is that real?
Steve: Yes, it’s a mythological interpretation of a guardian angel. It's a Greek thing. Moirae is another word for the Fates who control the destiny of everyone.
SD (hearing pages flipping): What are you looking at?
Steve: I'm looking at my first draft of the script. I changed a few significant things, but it didn't change much in its emotional flow. Except in the original script, Xena went into a coma and everyone knew it - Salmoneus, Gabrielle. They were just worried about her dying. I can’t remember when we decided to change it to them believing Xena was actually dead and Xena mentioning the coma aspect at the end of the episode. “Tolmic poison” is also something I made up.
There was also a running gag about the burping that we didn’t use very much. For instance, Argo was supposed to be having a belching problem.
SD: Argo?!
Steve: Yeah. I think we did one small bit in the opening. We panned across Argo drinking water and there was one small belch, but it wasn’t loud enough to play on.
SD: Another major player in this episode is Argo. She's all over the story.
Steve: Argo becomes a character in this episode. And she finally establishes her gender, too. From bouncing back and forth between being male and female.
SD: (laughs): Right.
Steve: Here’s a small trivia item. One of the discussions we had after Gabrielle was given a staff was does she always carry the staff with her? It looked kind of clumsy for her to be carrying it everywhere. I came up with something we used in this episode and never used again - the collapsible staff. The prop department had to design a staff that would collapse in three sections into a two-foot stick that would fit in Argo’s saddlebag. There is a shot of Gabrielle putting it in the saddlebag, but you don't see a shot of the staff collapsing. And you see her taking it out. but not opening up.
I remember when I was in New Zealand, I got a call from the prop department saying they wanted to show me a bunch of props for this episode. We had such an eager and enthusiastic group of people working there. They were so proud of everything they made, even things we couldn't use.
They showed me this aluminum pole which had a tight piece of elastic running through the center. It had two hinges that allowed you to bend it twice. The problem was, there was so much tension on the elastic, you almost had to put it on the ground and use your foot to bend it. I told them Renee would look ridiculous trying to do that and if she dared let go. it would smack her in the head! We ended up making one that was totally flexible without any tension.
The other prop they showed me was the wooden picture of Salmoneus that Talmadeus throws his axe into. They said, “After the axe hits, we'll switch to this one.” And they showed me one with a different face that looked like Salmoneus realizing he's been hit by an axe! His hands are against his face and he's got this wide-eyed look. (laughing)
SD (laughing): What a great idea!
Steve: I told them it was a great idea, but I didn’t think we could do that. (laughing)
SD: Do you remember “Been There, Done That” where the sign on the inn kept changing throughout the episode as the story proceeded? (laughing)
Steve: I don’t remember that! And I'm usually pretty good at remembering in jokes.
SD: Back to Argo.
Steve: Right. Argo had a storyline in this episode that dealt with the relationship between her and Gabrielle. I wanted to play with exactly why Gabrielle has a problem with Argo. This was much more expanded in the original script.
The back story is this. When Gabrielle was younger, she had a pet pony named Tympani. It was more like a dog. It followed her everywhere. One of the lines I wrote was that it slept with her. Now, I meant it in the way that a dog will sleep at the foot of the bed. But I've been told it caused some unintentional laughter during the shooting. (laughs) Anyway, Gabrielle loved it dearly and then it died. She makes a comment that is in the episode where she says, “That’s the problem with things you love, they leave you.” At that point, she's unconsciously making an analogy between Tympani and Xena. She’s afraid Xena’s going to leave her.
There was a scene, before Xena dies, where Argo comes up and nuzzles Gabrielle and she turns to the horse and says, “Don't even try to get close to me.” I know people like that. They’ve lost a pet and friends tell them to go out and get another puppy, but they don't want to. They don't want to be reminded of the pain.
By the way, the pony was named Tympani because I used to play percussion in my high school band. It's also a very sweet name. At one point, after Xena dies and Gabrielle bashes the tree, Argo is supposed to be nuzzling her. Gabrielle says to Argo, “It’s just you and I. We have to focus.” In my original draft. I had her say, “We have to focus, Tympani.”
SD: A slip of the tongue.
Steve: Right. And it was to be played completely understated. Gabrielle doesn't realize what she’s said. For the audience's sake, it means Gabrielle has connected with that emotional side of her that she had for Tympani and she's transferred it to Argo.
However, all of that subtext took a back seat to our timing issues. We had to cut somewhere and that’s the stuff that had to go. Considering the balance that had to be made between the action and drama, I think everyone did an amazing job of putting as much as they could into each episode. With the canvas we had to work on, I think we painted some pretty detailed stories.
SD: Argo also talked with the other horses at the end and told them not to draw and quarter Xena. (laughs)
Steve (laughs): The unspoken bond between horses. If you put it in simple terms, every horse around Argo recognizes her as being the alpha horse. No horse is going to act without Argo's approval. The horses are being whipped and normally they would react to pain, but they just stand there because Argo is telling them not to move.
SD: Horses have an alpha?
Steve: Yes, but they’re usually the male of the species. But, then again, most heroes are usually male too. Break another stereotype here. (laughs)
SD (laughs): Interesting parallel. Speaking of Gabrielle bashing the tree after Xena dies, can you tell us what was cut from that scene between her and Argo?
Steve: When I wrote that scene of Gabrielle releasing her anger on the tree, I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew what I felt in my mind, but I didn't write it very elaborately. The truth is, Renee keyed in on exactly what I wanted. Usually, if you're lucky, what you write and what the actor does is close. But we were on the same level.
I wrote that Gabrielle takes out her grief on the tree in anger. I had some people, when they read the scene, say this wasn't going to work, it wasn't going to come across. They thought it didn’t make sense. I stuck to my guns and asked them to trust me, that this was going to be very powerful. And, it's true - the scene brings tears to many people's eyes.
What the original scene was supposed to be is that Gabrielle goes out, you see her wail on that tree and then she collapses, crying, telling herself she has to focus. Then there's a moment where Argo comes over to her and starts to nuzzle as if to say, “It's gonna be all right.” That's their bonding moment. That’s how the scene was to work creatively.
Now, functionally, horses are not the most literate of creatures. Horses have very little knowledge of subtext or multi-layers. Horses don't read their scripts and don't make notes in the margin. So, when Argo, AKA Tilly, had to go over and nuzzle Gabrielle, the director, Gary Jones, did not take the horse aside and say, “Here's your motivation. Here's your back story.” What he said was, “Let's put some hay down next to Renee so Argo will go over and eat the hay and it will look like she’s nuzzling Gabrielle.”
Well, the movements of a horse's head for nuzzling and the movements of a horse’s head for eating are completely different. In our cut, when we put it together, it was pretty obvious Argo was eating hay. No matter how emotionally Renee referred to Argo and stroked her and said, “We're going to get through this together,” it came off as Argo saying to her, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine, I'm eating.”
In fact, there's another scene at the beginning when Xena's on the ground and Argo comes running over to pick her up. We used the same technique. I remember when I was looking at it, the subtext in my mind, of what Argo was thinking, was, “Where's Xena, where’s Xena? Oh, happy treats!”
SD (laughs): Tilly found the hay!
Steve: Right. (laughs) Kinda takes the emotion out of it. If you watch the scene, she's got her head down and it looks as if she's looking for Xena. Then her head turns and she starts eating.
SD: In the beginning of the episode, Xena is walking behind the row of bad guys.
Steve: There was a bit in there that must have been trouble for the editor. I think it was the only choice they had and it still worked, but… There's one soldier in that group that looks more toward camera than he should. If he hadn't, it would have sold what Xena was doing completely. The idea was this - Xena's walking behind the troop. The guy at the head of the men turns around, sees her, she waves - which Lucy did hysterically - he screams, draws his sword and starts rushing into his own soldiers.
What's supposed to happen is that the soldiers don't know why he’s charging into them. But, in this one shot, where Xena waves, you can actually see someone turn away from camera and it almost looks as if he's looking back and spots Xena. But it still played okay.
SD: Xena gets shot with the dart. She takes it out, smells it and doesn't say anything. I automatically assumed she would say what it was. So often a show telegraphs that to the audience.
Steve: I would be lying to you if I said I haven't done that in the past. I call them neon arrows. For Xena to sniff the arrow and say, “Hm, poison,” that would be like putting a big neon arrow above her head saying, “Clue! Clue!” I prefer to unsay it because I think the audience is smart enough to figure out something is amiss. And, secondly, it's more enjoyable for the audience because they feel like they're in sync with the hero.
SD: “There’s something more to that dart than just a prick in the neck.”
Steve: Right. I tend to do what I call “unwriting.” I write a lot of dialogue when I have something I think is several layers deep. But if I can get away with one line, I do it. If I can get away with no lines, I do that. I think that's more powerful.
SD: With a poisoned Xena, you needed to come up with an action sequence. You devised the fight in the barn with the two baddies that starts off with a chicken walking over Xena's foot.
Steve: You should ask Bob Trebor about the chicken soup scene that was cut from the episode. But let me tell you one little thing about that. During the course of the series, I had a lot of fans send me gifts. They were very nice, very generous. They put a lot of effort into the items they sent me. In one of my “care” packages. I got a lot of food and all the food had packaging that referenced Xena like Centaur Pasta, Bacchus Wine. One of them was a can of Salmoneus Chicken Soup. It looked like a Campbell’s soup can with Salmoneus' picture in the round label. It even has directions. Everything on it is mythologically based. It's wonderful! This was a direct reference to the chicken soup scene that they'd heard Bob talk about.
SD (laughs): It’s fascinating when intelligent people latch on to something: the imaginative things they come up with. Back to the chicken and the fight.
Steve: There's a small bit at the beginning of the fight scene that was cut where the chicken is kicked by one of the bad guys and then runs across Xena’s foot. That signals to her something frightened the animal. The way it aired, you just see the chicken walking across her foot.
SD: Back to the original challenge I mentioned. Coming up with an action scene for a weakened, disabled hero.
Steve: It wasn't really that much of a challenge. (sound of pages flipping) One of the original ideas I had was to have her grab Gabrielle's staff. You don't look at it as being a hindrance. You say, “How can I take advantage of the situation I've got?” Xena is paralyzed from the waist down. She's very hazy and her vision is bad. What that tells me is that I can't use her legs for anything. I can use her upper body. And whatever she does cannot be specific. In other words, she can't jam her fingers into someone’s throat because she can only vaguely see their face and head.
Using that, what's the best way to fight? I backtrack from there. That means you wrestle. You wait till the person gets as close as possible. If they're not close to you, you get them close. At the beginning of the fight, Xena turns around and sprays seltzer in the guy's face. Then she ties a rope around the bottle and slings it in a wide arc. Since she can’t see people, the wide arc is what works. It wraps around the guy's feet and she uses that to pull him up to her so she can now fight him. Once they're wrestling, she uses pressure points to subdue him.
Then I had the other guy to deal with. Xena knows which points to press to make other parts of the body jerk. I knew she could see the outline of the second man and decided to have her use the man she was holding to fight the second man.
I didn't look at her being paralyzed as something I had to overcome. I looked at it as a way to be creative in a fight.
SD: It definitely was that.
Steve: (watching the fight play out on his television) She just cracked the guy's neck. In my original script, she killed him. That made some people uncomfortable. What we did is that, instead of having a loud cracking noise, you didn't hear it at all. We gave Salmoneus a line later that said the bad guy was still alive. She would have been killing him in cold blood while he was unconscious and some people didn't want to do that. My logic was that they tried to kill her and she used to be a killer. That's what she would do.
Probably for the audience’s sake it's best she didn't.
SD: After Xena dies, Gabrielle goes to find loleus hoping he can help them defeat the warlord. And then, suddenly, she’s back with no loleus and no explanation of why she doesn't have him with her. Did I miss something?
Steve: Yeah, you did. It wasn't there. (laughs) Another cut for time. There was a scene with a couple of Talmadeus' men heading out and another man rides up to them and says, “The war’s over, we've got Xena. Let's get back to camp.” As they ride off, you look in the bushes and there's Gabrielle listening. No time to find loleus, she has to get back.
SD: This episode had the first big Gabrielle fight. She's really been practicing with that sword!
Steve: It's combined with her focus and her passion. Everything Xena’s told her up to this point, she's now utilizing and yet she's not doing it deliberately. Her focus is this, “I'm taking Xena's body back to her brother.” That's it. Anything between me and that purpose is something I have to knock aside.
If she had gone into the camp thinking she had to fight the bad guys, she probably wouldn't have done it. Right now, when you look at how the final fight is staged, especially the way Gary shot it, it does look like she’s just pushing them out of the way. She's going to keep walking forward and anybody who gets in her way, she’s going to hit them with the staff. She doesn't even look at them as they go flying. Once they're down, she moves on. That's why she has that intensity. She wasn't thinking about fighting, she was only thinking about her friend.
SD: Gabrielle has Talmadeus at the point of her sword. To distract her, he says, “You don't even know how to hold a sword.”
Steve: The line Talmadeus uses to get the drop on Gabrielle is something I've used in other scripts to one degree or another because it plays on our uncertainty about ourselves. Gabrielle's had total focus up to that point. Talmadeus is standing there and he basically says to her, “The moment you flinch, the moment you lose focus, I have you.” And then he uses something very, very benign. It's a version of, “What's that behind you?” It sounds like he's trying to diminish her. All he needs is for her to drop her eyes and as soon as she does, he's got her. She dropped her focus for that moment. I particularly liked that scene because both actors played the moment very well.
SD: Speaking of the title of this episode, this was the first time the phrase, “the greater good,” was introduced. The idea of which has resonated so strongly with the fans.
Steve: I'm amazed at how many references are made to it. So much charity work has been done in the name of “the greater good,” and I'm proud and happy about that. I know I’d heard that phrase somewhere before, but when I named the episode, I thought it was a clumsy title like I was trying to force an idea. It didn't flow off the lips easily.
That phrase has now become part of the charitable lexicon which is kinda cool. It was another title that some others on Xena thought was weird. But, in that one scene where Xena sends Gabrielle off to defend the villagers, I think it worked. So I kept it.
SD: What was your goal in introducing that as a facet of Xena's philosophy?
Steve: My point was that in the things we do, we try to do good things, but we tend to interpret those things by our own interests. Our own values dictate what is worthwhile. Even when those goals are altruistic, it's still by our standard of altruism. But there’s a greater good that rises above our own self-interest and that, at some times, rises above life itself. For example, when we stop, sit back and say, “Okay, how can I make a difference? How can I do something that's good and do it for reasons other than taking credit for it?” That's a greater good.
If you donate money to a charitable cause and you have no… I'm having a hard time phrasing this. It's something I try to follow in my own life. This may sound a bit weird, but maybe I can explain it this way.
I had a discussion with someone and this person was a very Christian person. We were talking about Heaven. I said to them, “I bet you'll find a lot of atheists in Heaven.” The person asked me why? I said, “When an atheist does a good thing, they do it truly because it's good, not because they want approval from their God.” Obviously, this kind of good applies to anyone, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, anyone. But the ultimate approval in the world of a believer is that approval from their God. I'd like to think most people, regardless of belief, do good things because they are good people. But that’s my way of trying to make sense of this. You do things because they are truly good, not because it will benefit you directly. Not because of some unspoken approval you're going to get from either God or from other people in your life. You do it because it's the right thing to do and that is the only reason. And that's the greater good.
Someone who gives up their life to save a child isn't thinking about how they're going to be written up in the papers. They're servicing a greater good and their own lives are inconsequential compared to that.
There are charities that are using this idea because of the show and it seems to be working. And, if using the phrase, “the greater good,” helped in any way, then it kind of served the purpose it was illustrating.
SD: In this episode, Xena, who has been the mentor and rescuer, gives Gabrielle the responsibility for defeating Talmadeus. Does she think Gabrielle is up to it or does she just not have a choice?
Steve: First of all, Xena doesn't have a choice. She's thinking along the lines of a battlefield commander, “What do I have to work with? Gabrielle.” Then she's thinking she needs to buy time to defeat the poison in her system. She’s hoping Gabrielle, disguised as Xena, can scare off Talmadeus. When you look at what she's told Gabrielle to do, she's giving her a list of missions that seem to follow a particular line. First, let them think Xena's here. Secondly, let them know you'll fight. Throw the fireballs and run through the camp.
What Xena's doing is letting Gabrielle do the minimum required to keep Talmadeus on his heels. I think she even says that at one point.
SD: And Xena's thinking she's going to live.
Steve: Xena has every intention of living through this battle with the poison. But Gabrielle says something to her that’s very important. “Don't let the last thing you tell me be a lie.” Xena may be saying to herself there's only a ten percent chance I'm going to die, but when you're hit with a line like that, you can't say, “I'm going to be fine.” So she admits to Gabrielle there’s a chance she may die.
This is a revelation to the audience of Xena's growth. Remember what she was like in “Sins Of The Past”? She didn’t know what was good or bad. Everything she knew was lost. She’d gone through a few episodes fighting bad guys because they were bad. Was there a greater good? Yeah. Was she aware of it? No. You get to this episode, she's very aware there is a greater good. You've got Xena saying, “What happens to me doesn't matter.” This is the point Xena realizes the world doesn't begin and end with her.
SD: She's also putting Gabrielle at risk.
Steve: Yeah, she is. It's a perspective I hadn't thought about, but Xena, by extension, is saying, “This is not just a greater good I'm willing to die for, it's a greater good I'm willing to risk you for.” That changes later on in the series. But, at this particular moment, perhaps, in Xena's mind, her idea is that Gabrielle can get out if the situation goes bad.
What's interesting is that, when it does go bad and Xena's dead, Gabrielle could have turned to Salmoneus and said, “Let's get out of here.” But she didn't. Up until that point in the story, would Xena have allowed Gabrielle to blatantly risk her life? I would say no. However, at the point where it came down to Salmoneus saying, “We’ve lost Xena. Are we supposed to stand here and fight an army? Let’s get out of here. The villagers will be put into slavery, but at least they’ll be alive,” Gabrielle says they're going to stay and fight because that's the greater good.
SD: It seems like Xena went through three stages in the series. One, I won't put Gabrielle at risk. Two, I will put her at risk for the greater good. And then, at the end of the series, Xena puts Gabrielle's life over the greater good.
Steve: There’s another way to look at that. Xena was trying to teach Gabrielle what the real world was about. And, along the way, Xena was learning about herself. In one sense, as Xena was introducing the real world to Gabrielle, she trusted Gabrielle's own instincts to run away. “At a certain point, Gabrielle, I'm resigned to the fact that you are going to have to leave this life for your own safety.” What Xena didn't expect was that Gabrielle would embrace the cause. As you look at the later episodes, Gabrielle develops her own moral call and she starts to pursue it. And Xena says, “Wait a minute, now you're risking your life.” And Gabrielle responds, “I'm doing it for the greater good.”
SD: Xena's thinking, “Oh boy, I taught you that!”
Steve: Yeah, “I taught you this and now you've embraced it and you’re gonna get yourself killed.”
SD: That’s a lot of responsibility on Xena.
Steve: Right. What changed later on was Xena realizing she had this girl who wants to go out and turn the world into a good place. She's thinking she taught Gabrielle too well because it’s not that simple. In many ways, Gabrielle was wiser than Xena. Put what was learned in this episode up against the later episode, “The Price.” In “Price,” how much fighting does Gabrielle do? None. She did a lot of running, a lot of moralizing and then she chose her greater good by saying, “If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna go out there and make sure the wounded enemy has water.” And that realization of Gabrielle's greater good slapped Xena in the face.
SD: There was a discussion among the fans contrasting the difference between Gabrielle’s reaction to Xena dying in this episode and Xena's reaction to Gabrielle dying in “Doctor In The House.” They noted the quiet gentleness of Gabrielle's pain versus the violence and panicked frenzy of Xena when she thought Gabrielle was dead.
Steve: Xena's death was less traumatic. She wasn’t brought in gasping for breath and then dying as Gabrielle did in “Doctor.” Xena and Gabrielle had already had their “final” discussion. When Xena dies, it’s not as much of a shock to Gabrielle.
SD: One fan noted the warrior fighting against the inevitable versus the poet's acceptance.
Steve: That’s a very good way of putting it. It doesn't violate what I just said because both deaths had different lead-ups. The other side of it is that Xena, as a warrior, has accepted death many times because she's seen people die around her all her life. But this was Gabrielle. How do you fight death to protect your friend?
SD: And yet, such a contrast between Gabrielle's acceptance as she kneels beside Xena's body and then goes out and beats the hell out of that tree! It was heartbreaking. Renee has talked about how long the director kept her beating the tree trying to exhaust her.
Steve: In the dailies, you can see the staff disintegrate. You can actually see it on the cut that was used. You can see strings of the fiber of the staff hanging.
SD: All that rage coming out of that gentle, angelic person.
Steve: It shows the depth of her loss. Even when she was with Xena's body in the scene before, she was keeping to the idea of “focus.” Her rage was not about, “Why couldn't I stop this?” This was the rage of loss. Why does the world have to be this way?
SD: Xena wants to be buried at home next to her brother. She’s still yearning to go home.
Steve: It wasn't so much that she wanted to go home. It was that she wanted her remains to be with her brother. Obviously, the way the series ended, that all changed because her remains were going to stay with Gabrielle. The point being that Xena alive, the way she is now, has difficulty going home. But, she knows that if she's dead she can go home. And that's where she belongs. Through all her journeys, one thing she's learned is that home is where she belongs. And there was still that yearning inside that said, “What if I had stayed in Amphipolis? What if I had been the peasant girl that I was? Wouldn't that have been a better life?” There was always that curiosity. At this point in the series, in Xena's mind, her home is back in Amphipolis. As the series goes on, her home is anywhere Gabrielle is.