The Furies (Xena episode)

Xena: Warrior Princess episode
“The Furies”
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 1
Guest star(s)	Kevin Smith (Ares); Darien Takle (Cyrene); Asa Lindh (Alceto); Graciela Heredia (Megaera); Celi Foncesca (Tisiphone); Gordon Hatfield (Rufinus); Craig Walsh-Wrightson (Lysis); Reuben Purchase (Keeper); Steve Farac-Ciprian (Orestes); Hudson Leick (Callisto/Gabrielle)
Writer(s)	R. J. Stewart; Jim Prior (editor)
Director	Gilbert Shilton
Production no.	#V0224
Original airdate	1997 Sept. 29
Episode chronology
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"A Comedy of Eros"	"Been There, Done That"
List of Xena episodes

Ares has brought charges against Xena, before the Furies. The Furies agree to punish her with both persecution and madness. Her crime: failure to avenge the death of her father — at the hands of her mother.

Xena, it turns out, was more fortunate than Iphigeneia, who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon. Frequent references are made to Orestes and his madness when placed in a similar situation: go mad or murder his mother in vengeance for her (justified) murder of his father.

Xena, faced with the risk of doing harm to others, makes another choice. "Mother, I am a lunatic with lethal combat skills. If I stay around here much longer, some innocent people are going to get killed."

Notes

• The Furies are an exotic bunch of sexed-up dancers. Alecto in particular has a rather New Wave 80s haircut and makeup.
• When Xena first loses her reason in the midst of a battle with some marauders, she goes all Three Stooges with her fighting style. At the end she hilariously sniffs her armpit and says "I love the smell of warrior sweat in the morning."
• Xena leaps backwards onto Argo: "Alley-oop, Argo! Hey, I like this. I can see where I've been!"
• When Gabrielle reminds her to "put the pinch" on one of the marauders to get info, she says, "I've cut off the flow of blood to your brain and other pertinent body parts. So tell me, how old were you when you lost your virginity?"
• Naked Xena stands firm in her insanity.
• Xena: "You know to the god, we are nothing but dirty little beetles, and they'll kill us for their sport." Quote based on Shakespeare: "We are to the gods as flies to wanton boys: they kill us for their sport."
• Ares' Nietzschean philosophy: "Life isn't worth living. It's to be taken, and beaten, and wrestled, and formed in your image. That's where the meaning lies: in what you can twist life into. For those who just endure life -- yeah, it is a very nasty joke. But for those who form it with their will, the joke is on those who get in their way."
• Ares may, or may not, be Xena's father.
• As Xena walks off with Gabrielle & Xena's mom, Ares says, "I still don't get what you see in her."
• Liz Friedman, Producer: "The issue in "The Furies" about whether or not Ares was Xena's father was -- there was a lot of debate over that. And, you know, initially in the scripts, all the way up I believe to the production draft, Ares was Xena's father. I definitely was very divided about it. I don't want to believe that the only way that Xena can do these amazingly cool stuff is because of, you know, godly sperm, shall we say?" Steven L. Sears: "We left it up to the audience. ... I was actually against it. ... The reason I was against it was that would make her half-god. And I really wanted to believe that no, this was a mortal that was special." (Interview on DVD release of Season 3)

Disclaimer

Xena's sanity was not harmed during the production of this motion picture. The Furies, however, will be opening their own lap dancing variety show off-off-off Broadway soon.

Intertextuality

• Robert Gillies, Production Designer: "All of our sort of pole-fights and things are basically pillaged from the Hong Kong genre of action films, so we would watch those, and go huh how did they do that, you know, and come up with a nutty way, our version of how we would do it." (Interview on DVD release of Season 3)