Final Tributes - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
I can remember watching the first half of season one and thinking, after every episode, "When are they going to dump Gabrielle?" It's not that I disliked her that much. It's just that every episode offered a little promise, a little hope for the character, and then it sort of dumped her back at square one. Was this intentional? Actually, I think it was the dress. I never really liked Gabrielle's Poteideia outfit. She started showing some fashion sense when she became an Amazon princess. You can't just walk around in the woods without ripping your skirt to shreds. Maybe it was the total lack of patches on her clothes that bothered me so much.
But "Hooves and Harlets" came and went and suddenly Gabrielle was the girl of the hour, the maiden with the honor. The show was no longer Xena's. Steven Sears once told a group of people at a convention that he realized early on the show really wasn't about Xena. It was about Gabrielle. And I have to agree. There aren't many really good "Xena" moments where only Xena is involved. Gabrielle is at the heart of Xena's recovery. Had it not been for Gabrielle, Xena never would have found her way out of the encumbering darkness of her guilt. And Gabrielle had no idea of what she was doing for Xena. She was just bebopping along, doing her thing, being Gabrielle.
I do miss some things about Gabrielle. Her blood-innocence being one of the most important factors. Should it be an inevitable consequence of the hero-profession that everyone who plies the trade eventually kills someone? I don't think so. Was it absolutely necessary to put blood on Gabrielle's hands and send her down a dark path? I don't think so. But that is what happened, and we lost the Gabrielle that I, like so many others, had come to know and appreciate.
People can be exasperating. They change on you. They tumble out of the wagon and go staggering down the road in a drunken stupor and your only thought is, "She was doing so well." But what a drunken stupor Gabrielle treated us to. Losing her blood innocence forced Gabrielle to grow, just as becoming an Amazon princess had forced her to grow. In fact, simply meeting Xena forced Gabrielle to grow. Gabrielle told her sister Lilla that she was stagnating in Poteideia. Xena proved to be a nurturing force in Gabrielle's life. Xena needed a catalyst in order to live with herself and accomplish some good, but Gabrielle needed a richer environment in which she could flourish. They both gave each other what they most needed.
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