The Prodigal
written by Chris Manheim
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 23
SD: This was the first episode you wrote for the series?
Chris: Yeah, the first character I wrote was Gabrielle. This was pretty much a Xena-free episode. She bookended the show, but it was basically a Gabrielle episode.
SD: Was Lucy at NAPTE that week?
Chris: No one told me where she was. I wrote this script as a freelancer and they just said I couldn't use Xena in anything but the teaser (beginning) and the tag (end) because Lucy wasn't available for filming.
SD (laughs): That’s funny. Here you are hired to write an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess and there’s no Xena!
Chris (laughs): Yeah! When I went in the second time, they said, “She can write Gabrielle, but can she write Xena?” That was the challenge for me when I wrote a second episode.
SD: What was your second episode?
Chris: “Altared States.”
SD: Hey, we haven't covered that one yet and it was very popular. We’ll do that next month.
Chris (laughs): Boy, that was a hard episode. I had never written action before. And the fun I had writing “Altared” was a revelation to me!
SD: You'd written for Murder She Wrote just before Xena?
Chris: Yes and Columbo. Neither of those shows have much action at all. On Murder She Wrote, we were told that anything horrible takes place off camera. There might have been a little bit of a chase scene, but it would have been “through darkened corridors.” Nothing like the action on Xena.
SD (laughs): Angela Lansbury in high heels is nothing like Xena out to “kill ’em all!”
Chris (laughs): She didn’t kick a lot of butt!
SD: One of the things I thought of while watching “Prodigal” and remembering the series you'd written for previously, was that you're a people person. You're really into writing relationships between characters. Xena is set in medieval times with a semi-supernatural lead character. Did that affect the way you wrote for the show or did you just treat the characters on the show as if they were the same as in a modern-day show?
Chris: I treated them as normal. It seemed to me that was what the show was doing. The show was anything but reverent. (laughs) And, except for two scenes, I didn't have anyone supernatural in the story in any way. They were just townspeople looking to stop bad guys from hurting them. Even Meleager was all too human.
The thing I had the most fun with was playing the teenage girls (Gabrielle and her sister Lila) and making the references to the time period the show takes place in. Lila was jealous of Xena and the fact that Gabrielle had gone off with her. I remember there was a line Lila had where she said, “Xena, Xena, Xena. You want me to build a temple to her!” That's such a teenage girl thing to say. And yet to have the reference to a “temple” puts it in the time period.
This stuff just came so naturally picturing siblings and then adding the specific Xena-type references. So much fun!
SD: I didn’t realize you were a freelancer on the first episode and not yet a staff writer.
Chris: Oh yeah. Also for “Altared States.”
SD: Do you have any recollection of what they told you about the show, the characters, when you were hired to write that first script?
Chris: For this episode, they told me to look at The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai because I’d never seen those movies. The Magnificent Seven is the one that stuck with me because Meleager was like the Robert Vaughn character in that film.
SD: Did they have you look at any episodes so you could see who Gabrielle was?
Chris: I remember my impression was that she was the talkative one. So they must have given me some scripts to read. I don't remember looking at any episodes. This was so early on in the series, I don’t think they had anything in the can yet.
SD: Steve Sears said they had him look at a Hercules episode.
Chris: They didn't have me do that and I'm glad. Only because there really was a subtle difference in tone between the two shows.
SD: I found Xena more real - the violence more frightening.
Chris: Yeah, Xena was darker. It was even lit differently. I wouldn't have wanted to have the Hercules image in my head when writing for Xena.
SD: It was lit differently?
Chris: I think it was. Hercules so rarely used dark lighting. Maybe it’s just the sets, but, when I think of Hercules. I always think of it as a sunny show. Kevin Sorbo striding through fields with the sun gleaming down on him. And that's not at all the way I think of Xena. It's dark blues and interiors. It's edgier.
SD: It’s ironic that although Xena was a show with two female leads and Hercules had two male leads, I always felt more of a sense of danger on Xena. Xena was a more threatening character than Hercules even though they were both the heroes.
Chris: What I liked about Xena was her relish of battle! She really liked mixing it up. (laughs) Hercules did it for the right reasons. He never fought because he liked to get in there and beat up people. But there was that edge to Xena that she really liked fighting. That made it a bit more dangerous. There was always the question, “Will she stop before she kills everybody?” (laughs) For Hercules, fighting was a last resort. He honored how much strength he had and didn’t misuse it. For Xena, it was oftentimes the first method she'd think of to solve a problem.
What they told me about Gabrielle is that she likes to talk her way out of things. She doesn't fight. She’s a quick-witted, very articulate character.
SD: Having just interviewed Steve about “Dreamworker” and Xena giving Gabrielle the Rules of Survival, I saw one of the rules pop up in “The Prodigal.” When Gabrielle is captured, she starts talking and…
Chris (laughs): …right, right! She's trying to talk her way out of it and the bad guy turns to his cohort and says, “Kill her.” (laughs)
SD (laughs): Yeah, that was the fourth Rule: Talk your way out of it. Is it fun to have a chatty character to write for?
Chris: Oh, are you kidding, it’s great! (laughs) For Xena, R.J. would tell us to write her like Clint Eastwood with boobs. She was a woman of few words. With Gabrielle, you could just lavish her with words. And Renee was so good at playing that. It was a joy to watch her babble away with the speeches you gave her.
SD: I just did an interview with Renee and she told me she auditioned for a sitcom, but thinks one-liners may not be the best type of comedy for her.
Chris: She needs to have the comedy come out of character.
SD: That’s what she thought.
Chris: She immerses herself in the character and all the comedy that comes out of that is truly funny. Not the artificiality of beat, beat, joke, beat, beat, joke.
SD: This episode started off with Gabrielle the Pan Pipe player.
Chris: That was my only disappointment with the episode. She was supposed to be a bit sad. Wasn't she walking along playing this little pipe tune and doing a skipping-type movement?
SD: Yeah, she is.
Chris: I did not write it that way. John Kretchmer, the director of “Prodigal,” also directed a later episode I wrote called “A Solstice Carol.” During the filming of “Solstice,” he called me with every question he had. He was the most faithful director I've ever had. I wrote him a note of thanks afterward because I thought he did a wonderful job and he never once ran in some direction without checking to see if what he wanted to do would serve the story as I saw it.
So I was amazed at the opening of “Prodigal.” What is Gabrielle talking about when she says she’s having a crisis of confidence when she's just been bopping along playing this happy song? That is not at all what it was meant to be.
SD (looking at the script): It says, “We hear the halting notes of a very simple melody.”
Chris: It was not supposed to be a happy time for Gabrielle. She's approaching a crisis of confidence and she’s not playing a happy tune.
SD: The way it played out on screen was that Gabrielle was fine and dandy until the bad guys sent the cart filled with pointed logs charging down at Xena and Gabrielle and Gabrielle froze which almost killed the two of them. When I started writing the questions for this episode, I wanted to ask what this episode was supposed to show about Gabrielle.
Chris: In the first few episodes, wasn't she always yelling out for Xena to save her? I think what Gabrielle learns is that she can act on her own. Up to this point, she feels Xena always has to save her. And she thinks that endangers Xena. She goes home and rallies everyone to defend her village. After that she feels more a companion to Xena and not a hindrance.
SD: This was a real progression for Gabrielle as a character. It's interesting to wonder if Lucy hadn't had to leave the show for a week to do PR work at NAPTE, would an episode like this ever have been written?
Chris: Or at least written that early on in the series.
SD: I should ask R.J. about that.
Chris: He was so great to me on this episode. He called me about 9:00 at night when he was through reading the script. He said he had intended just to pick it up and read the teaser to get a sense of the script and then he just kept reading. He enjoyed it, so he called to tell me. And I was so blown away that the head writer on a show would take his free time to call me, at night, from home, just to tell me how much he enjoyed the script.
SD (laughs): That's not the norm in Hollywood?
Chris (laughs): Definitely not. He was very thoughtful about what a freelancer goes through.
SD: So the beginning where Gabrielle was playing the pipes was supposed to give you the feeling she was already having doubts about staying with Xena?
Chris: Right. John is a terrific director, but somehow there was a miscommunication about the tone of that scene.
SD: In the Bible, the prodigal son leaves home, lives a wasted life and returns home to be welcomed by his father. That's not what happens to Gabrielle in this episode.
Chris: I don't know that a wasted life would apply to Gabrielle unless you look at it from her family's point of view which is that she's traveling with Xena and they don't approve of that. They think Gabrielle should be home, married to a young farmer, tilling the field and having children. You can look at it that way. I'm not saying Gabrielle would have called herself a prodigal, but her family might. She ran away with that awful Xena! (laughs)
Nobody really much cottoned to Xena for the longest time, especially in Gabrielle's family. Xena was newly reformed and people still thought of her as a holy terror. To them, Gabrielle staying with Xena was like throwing her life away.
SD: So, the prodigal goes home to her family, but at the end of the episode, she returns to Xena who is her real home.
Chris: Yeah. That's the truth. Gabrielle has to find that out. She has to know that her decision to stay with Xena is the right one for her. And she needs to find out how much she’s learning by staying with Xena which is brought home to Gabrielle when she helps save the village.
SD: There is a very cute scene in the beginning where Gabrielle is hitchhiking a ride home.
Chris: That's one of my favorite scenes. It was based on a scene from It Happened One Night when Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are trying to hitch a ride. Renee played the hell out of that moment. (laughs)
SD: Gabrielle leaves Xena and Xena looked to be heartbroken.
Chris: I would imagine Xena was hurt. Early in the first season, Xena appeared to be annoyed with this young girl tagging along. If Gabrielle had said, “I'm going home,” Xena would have responded with, “Good riddance.” I think, by this point, they had bonded. It’s not that Xena had begun to count on Gabrielle, but it’s that old, “I've grown accustomed to your face.” (laughs)
SD: It’s nice having a warm puppy around?
Chris: Yeah.
SD: Gabrielle's admiration appeals to Xena's ego?
Chris: And I think Xena's aware of the fact Gabrielle forces her to be a better person just by being present.
SD: I thought the discussion at the beginning between Xena and Gabrielle about “sometimes you need your family” was very poignant. That seemed like such a blow to Xena that Gabrielle couldn't talk to her about her problem.
Chris: I'm sure Lucy must have played it that way. Cause a little part of Xena was thinking, “Aren't I family?” Xena at the end of “Chariots Of War” asked Gabrielle if she missed her family and Gabrielle answered, “Not as much when I'm with you.” Lucy would have been playing the reverberation of that.
SD: Meleager reminded me of someone and it wasn’t from The Magnificent Seven. (laughs)
Chris (laughs): No, it was Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. Wasn't Tim Thomerson terrific? How fortunate was that casting? He really made the show. Because there was so little Xena in this episode, it rested on Gabrielle and whoever was cast as Meleager and he did a great job.
SD: Complete with that shock of silver hair!
Chris (laughs): I'm sure Tim was thinking, “I'll just do my best Lee Marvin.”
SD: This was the second time we’ve seen Gabrielle’s sister, Lila, since the first episode. And Lila is feeling so jealous and left behind.
Chris: We needed some conflict aside from the baddies wanting to pillage the town, something personal, some character study. I think that’s what shows Gabrielle that Xena is her family. She comes to know that at the end of the episode.
I must have been given the pilot episode script, “Sins Of The Past,” to read to be able to write for Lila. I needed to know as much as possible about her from what was set up in the earlier episode. I referenced the bedroom scene in “Sins” between Gabrielle and Lila when Gabrielle decides to leave home and follow Xena.
SD: Is this typical sibling rivalry?
Chris: I think so except that Lila wouldn't be happy out there having adventures. You know how it is? You can be jealous because someone else is having a good time, but it’s not really what you would enjoy. And you wouldn’t be having that much fun if you were living that life. But, at sixteen, you don't realize that. Lila sees Gabrielle out there having adventures and she's stuck at home with mom and dad.
It occurs to me now, years later, it would have been interesting to have had a scene with Gabrielle’s former fiance, Perdicus. We didn't mention him at all in this episode.
SD: It would have been interesting to see the new Gabrielle through his eyes.
Chris: Yeah. (laughs) I’m rewriting the episode in my head right now. What if instead of being jealous, Lila was worried Gabrielle had come back to supplant her and be the popular daughter again right when Lila was getting it on with Perdicus. (laughs) Would Perdicus want to get back with Gabrielle or stay with Lila.
SD (laughs): What an interesting thought.
Chris (laughs): It could have been a whole different story between the sisters.
SD: Yeah, wouldn’t Gabrielle have appeared glamorous to Perdicus?
Chris: Yeah!
SD: Lila felt so left behind by Gabrielle even commenting, “You never wrote.” She lost her older sister.
Chris: Lila would have looked up to Gabrielle the way Gabrielle looked up to Xena. And Gabrielle would have felt protective of Lila the way Xena was protective of her. Lila's whole relationship of having someone to look up to and to protect her was shattered when Gabrielle left. That was the heart of the episode.
SD: Do you think Gabrielle was going home for good? That’s what you have her say to Lila when they meet.
Chris: Yeah, I think Gabrielle was really disturbed. Not just that she froze, but that, in freezing, she endangered Xena. Rather than be the cause of the death of someone she really cares about, she'd just as soon go home. I think that was why Gabrielle said that in earnest to Lila. I don't think she could countenance if something she did, or did not do, caused the death of Xena. It was a sobering incident. Which is why I wanted her to be in a reflective place at the beginning of the episode and not whistling a happy tune.
SD: Can you imagine Gabrielle's life if she'd stayed in Poteidaia?
Chris: It would have been one of those inauthentic lives that a lot of people live, sadly enough.
SD: She might have become a dried-up old stick of a woman with all the life juices sucked out of her.
Chris: She might have ended up being the town character. Acting out because she never got out into the world. She'd have had a lot of intelligence. She would have taught herself to read. Who she really was would have come out in strange, wacky ways. I don’t think she'd have become embittered, but I think the frustration of not having lived to the potential of her life would have come out in weird ways.
In the alternate universe episode “Remember Nothing,” Gabrielle became a slave because there was no Xena to save her village. So, really, what would have happened is what we saw in that episode. But, if Xena had showed up, saved Poteidaia and moved on without Gabrielle, then she might have ended up the town crackpot.
SD: There was a touching scene between Gabrielle and Lila on the battlements toward the end of the episode”
Gabrielle: “I watched you yesterday. You know what I saw? I saw a competent, caring woman. You weren't the little girl you were when I left here. It just hit me. You've grown up.”
Lila: “Sometimes I just think I'm growing old. But you, planning all those traps? Figuring out those strategies? Xena really taught you a lot?”
Gabrielle: “Yes, she did. She taught me when to fight, when to talk. She taught me how to know the difference between a friend and an enemy. And, she taught me what it means to have a best friend.”
Lila: “Then, why'd you come back?”
Gabrielle: “Because some things can’t be taught. Some things, you either have or you don't.
Like the connection you can only feel with your sister. Xena can't teach me that. I already have it.”
Chris: What struck me when you read those lines was that the first part of the lines are a bit of self-reflection for Gabrielle. What Xena can't teach her is not to freeze in the face of danger. That’s either coming from within her or it's not. That's what Gabrielle is reflecting on. It’s why she left Xena. Maybe she doesn't have the mettle to be with someone like Xena. That's what I think she's recalling to herself in the first lines.
But then she comes out of that self-reverie and says something meaningful to Lila, both as a gift and because Xena really is like a sister to Gabrielle at this time. I don't think Gabrielle would say that Xena wasn't. And this is a gift that will allow Lila to feel fulfilled at home, with mom and dad, in the village.
SD: And know that she hasn’t lost her sister.
Chris: Right.
SD: Even though it was a requirement to bring Xena back into the story at the end - when Lucy came back from NAPTE - it felt so right, storywise, that Xena would come back and look for Gabrielle.
Chris: It's nice because you've watched Gabrielle grow and realize what she's learned by being with Xena. And then you get to actually see what Xena's learned which is to care for another person besides herself. That's a real change for Xena. They don't have to talk about it. It's in Xena's actions. It's lovely because you see the balance between them. It's not all just Xena teaching Gabrielle about life, it's Gabrielle teaching Xena about the heart.