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Oh, I wish they'd left Gabrielle's "You sure you dont want to double check with Joxer the Mighty?" in? I love scenes where it shows Gabrielle was genuinely fond of Joxer.

There were a lot of things going through my head as I was reading.

I wish they'd left in the Hope reference. One of the things that really bugged me about the Eve arc was that they never mentioned Hope--that suddenly Xena had this huge priority, and Gabrielle didn't have an important reason to make it her priority as well, except for her love for Xena (which seemed a little lopsided regarding this particular thing in the aired version). With Xena's "you did it," they were equals, and it seemed like it healed one more part of the Rift.

Eve's changed reactions to Xena were interesting. I think I liked the aired version of those better, though. Onscreen, it seemed like Eve half-knew Xena was telling the truth about being her mother (she knew everything Solan knew), but she didn't have any proof, and so she chose to disbelieve it because of those abandoned child human reasons (y'know, how dare you walk into my life now). In this original version, it seemed like she knew all along she was Xena's daughter, but she chose to model herself after Xena the warlord rather than the woman Xena had become.

LK, I can see your point about TPTB changing the way Xena prays, asking Eli for help rather than referring to the god who gave her the way of the warrior. Since I loved that scene, I'll say I liked the aired version better. However, this original version did raise one issue that I never felt like was satisfactorily dealt with in X:WP. Throughout the show, there was this conflict between who people are originally and who they are made to be (by others, by their circumstances, by their lives). Xena probably dealt with more mixed messages than any other character in the show. What if she'd never defended her village? What if she'd given up her hatred of Borias at the crucial moment and stayed with Lao Ma? What if she'd given up fighting when Gabrielle did? She got to find out the answers to most of those questions, but never in a way that told her what to do with her life in the future. So I could see her screaming at the one deity who was supposed to be different--who'd explicitly given her a task and a direction--and then seemed to back away and let her struggle again. I would have liked to see that dealt with in some form or other--maybe not in that way in that scene, but at some point.

I would have liked to see that last scene--if it was cut, I bet it was just because of time constraints, because it all fits.

LK,

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I don't think Xena would have openly acknowledged the Hope parallel, and I like better that it was only implied.

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Really? I always thought it was strange that Xena never mentioned it. She was usually so good at taking responsibility--she did say it was her fault that she'd left Livia alive and Livia was out there killing people--it seemed weird to me that she'd have asked something of Gabrielle in the past that she wasn't asking of herself at this point without even acknowledging it. You've mentioned that maybe Xena still wouldn't let herself acknowledge that Hope was Gabrielle's child in the same way Eve was hers...I think season 3 Xena couldn't do that, but by season 5, she'd grown so much.

So, RoyalJess + Brabmuffin, I'm with you in wishing this scene was left in (well, thanks for the transcript, LK; I made a copy on my computer, so now I can at least see it on imaginary theatre)!

LK,

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Xena actually does say "I love you" after "Eli, save my daughter -- I couldn't" ; for some reason that was left out of the transcript.

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Yay!!!

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Also, it would have made Xena look like a hypocrite -- if she actually acknowledged that Gabrielle had killed a daughter whom she loved as much as she herself loved Eve, and told Gabrielle that she could do no less ... and then backed off.

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If she'd intentionally done that, I agree. But I don't think it would have been hypocrisy if Xena had said it, fully intending to do it, and then come to the crucial moment and then found out that she couldn't. After all, that was how blood innocence worked--you don't understand what it's actually like to do it until you're there. I read the battle that Xena was fully trying to kill Eve. When she prayed, it was a last resort, but if nothing had happened, Xena would have either found a way to do it, or she would have held Eve in place long enough that someone else could.