In a Time of Ancient Gods: The Xena Podcast
A Xena: Warrior Princess rewatch podcast! Join Justine and Hayley as they research the truth behind myths, histories, and characters we meet in the Xenaverse.
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In a Time of Ancient Gods: The Xena Podcast
Tsunami
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"Oh Captain Xena, my Captain Xena! Our fearful trip is done! The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won!" MEANWHILE Hayley & Justine rewatch Xena Season 3's "Tsunami" and discuss Hayley's research on diamonds, mining, and slavery in Ancient Greece!
Visit our Patreon for Justine's research on The Art of Palm Reading
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Record record.
SPEAKER_04Hello and welcome. We are in a time of ancient gods, the Xena podcast, and we are re-watching every episode of our favorite TV show, Xena Warrior Princess. And we are researching the myths, the heroes, the themes we meet in the Xenaverse. I'm Justine, and my lovely co-host with me as always is Hayley.
SPEAKER_00She's there. I'm still here. And there's a spectral presence off to my left-hand shoulder.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yes, it's Xina, the Xina Standy, who we love bringing her in for our episodes. She just stands behind me.
SPEAKER_00She's down. She actually looks great, as always.
SPEAKER_04She's looking right at me. She's making direct eye contact with me as well. I think it's a magical situation. Top of the episode, as always, I'm going to plug our Patreon where we post screenshots from the episodes and our research references for every episode, and little mini sodes with extra research. There's a link in the description of this episode, but you can also go to InATimeofancientGods.com. In a timeofancient gods.com.
SPEAKER_00I was there yesterday. Oh yeah, just scrolling.
SPEAKER_04Scrolling around, seeing what's what, what have I done? What haven't I done? That's right. It's a snapshot of our past and future. Um, what have you been up to, Haley?
SPEAKER_00Just the standard, you know? I've been um I I admit I got kind of stuck in ER season uh 11 or something like that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, just let it play.
SPEAKER_00I know. You gotta let it play. I'm like, I don't know how many children caught in a bus I can watch at this moment, but we'll get through that. I'll make it to the other side.
SPEAKER_04Oh, is that the one where the like the bus crashes over the edge and then there's they have to like airlift a bunch of people out?
SPEAKER_00I couldn't even tell you. After that second helicopter crash, I just thought, I don't I don't know what's going on anymore.
SPEAKER_01It's but yeah, I'll make a show.
SPEAKER_00Um I think Justine and I have both been trying out some new old shows. I I got back into Mad Men, which I know people have conflicting opinions on, but I'm enjoying the character development going on there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, I have been trying to get into Law and Order SVU successfully. It's great.
SPEAKER_00I've got to take it off. Maybe that's gonna be my next in next uh indulgence. I think you like it.
SPEAKER_04I mean it's a lot of like it's a lot of episodes. It's a lot of episodes, and it's like all sex crimes, which is a lot. But they handle things for the time very well. I see why people are so into the show because they're just like fighting for everyone's rights, even if they don't use the kind of language we'd use today. Yeah, they're um doing their best. All right. But I recently had like a stomach flu situation, which was awful, but I stayed in bed for about 48 hours and I watched all of the Abby Jacobson's show A League of Their Own, like based on the movie.
SPEAKER_00I didn't even know there was a show.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, it came out like uh two years ago, I think. They did like renew it, which is awful, but it's so good.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really?
SPEAKER_04Highly recommend because I know we were all most of us millennial girls were huge fans of A League of Their One. Like such a good show.
SPEAKER_00Very distinctive memories of sitting in a friend's house watching that.
SPEAKER_04It was so formative and so important. Since I was so like protective of the movie, I was kind of hesitant to watch the show when it came out. But it was like we we've all watched Broad City, right? Like one of I think the best shows of you know recent years of like female friendship and just like so with women being so hilarious. And Abby Jacobson like really brings that to the League of Their Own world, but in like a lovely authentic like you hear her voice coming through, but it's also like true to the characters. Great. I think where the movie couldn't really get into like race and gender expression and sexuality, the show does it really beautifully. So great. And like, spoiler, um, like Rosie O'Donnell gets to play a queer character in the show. Wonderful. Where she wasn't, you know, able to do that in the movie. And oh god, it was so good. Highly recommended.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm gonna check it out because I now that I now that you mentioned it, my like vague back brain memory is starting to recall it. And I would love to watch that.
SPEAKER_04I think the female friendships are so funny. Just like, yeah, this is what girls talk about. Like stuff they're interested in and they make each other laugh. Like that's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00What a lovely discovery. I love all these moments that we can revisit, and then all the all the kind of especially the new shows that are coming out that really emphasize female friendship, but the ones that go back as well. So what a lovely discovery.
SPEAKER_04And yeah, and it's so nice to see Abby Jacobson just like continue to do such great work and be just acknowledged for like the wonderful work she's doing and getting to like send up all these other creatives with her too. It was really, really good.
SPEAKER_00Great. Okay, so where are we today though? What is happening? Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_04Weird Zeniverse, IRL, both I don't know, man. So in the Xeniverse, we are in season three's tsunami. This is written by Chris Mannheim. And in this season alone, Chris Mannheim has written King Khan, Bittersweet, Maternal Instincts, The Deliverer. Oh my gosh. And the dirty half dozen. Chris was a Xenoverse queen. We love her. Mm-hmm. And this was directed by John Lang. And this is his second directorial escapade in the Xenoverse. We met him this season a few episodes ago for When in Rome. Okay. So I'm not really seeing his voice coming through so much, but uh, that's okay. We'll get there. We'll get there. It's originally aired on April 20th, 1998. And would you like to hear the IMDB description? Always.
SPEAKER_00Tell me.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Gabrielle discovers Atolychus is embarking in a ship of slaves, and she and Xina find themselves traveling with him. But everything changes when a giant wave provoked by the eruption of Mount Etna makes the ship sink, and they must find a way to get out of the ship and survive.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'm giving it a solid B.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think it's accurate. Yeah. It's exactly what happened, and it leaves out the boring parts.
SPEAKER_00It's a little long, but it captures what we need to know exactly what happens in that.
SPEAKER_04Agreed. And then putting us in the context of the greater pop culture of the era, Titanic had come out in December 1997. Got it. So we're like, you know, four months out. Titanic Mania was in full effect here. You know, we're still traumatized.
SPEAKER_00Wearing their heart of the ocean necklace around every little girl's birthday party. My friend is pr practicing her Titanic theme on the piano so she can record it on that cassette tape and give it to me for my birthday. Oh my gosh. Everything is coming together in terms of sea accidents and giant ships.
SPEAKER_04Oh, that is such a beautiful memory. So, who is the big bad in this episode?
SPEAKER_00Uh, who is the big bad in this episode? Well, I think it is Mount Etna for arresting and causing a big problem on the show.
SPEAKER_04I mean, she did, but she also like created this catalyst of change in the minds of these horrible men. I feel like I don't even know it's the proper term, but like trans-Mediterranean slavery. Like that, I feel like that's the big bad. That's true.
SPEAKER_00Forced labor in general. Forced labor, probably the big bad here.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04What gods do we see here? None. None.
SPEAKER_00I don't think they don't exist in this ship. They're gone.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, Poseidon's mentioned, but again, we're just like, give us more Poseidon's universe. This would have been such a nice.
SPEAKER_00I mean, we'll take the Aries, but and the Aphrodite, but we'd love a little more Poseidon.
SPEAKER_04I feel like there's a there's a pun in there.
SPEAKER_00That's just my comment for today, especially because the Amazon like thumbnail for this episode has a picture of Poseidon. That's what we see.
SPEAKER_04Who put that there? I know. When we were first like texting about this episode, Haley was like, Oh, is this like another Poseidon episode? And I was like, I don't think so, girl.
SPEAKER_00I just when are we gonna see Poseidon jump out of the ocean and talk to Xena? Although I do say I I think in the the theme, I don't think Poseidon actually speaking words is gonna come through as powerfully as that one image of him jumping out of the ocean.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no. Does to me. Yeah, but we'll just have to make our fanfic of Poseidon being chatty.
SPEAKER_01How's it going, Zina? Where are you off to today? Going back down under. See ya.
SPEAKER_04Speaking of goofy things, do we have any villagers in this episode? We have plenty of villagers. Got a lot of seaside town villagers. Yeah. Some of our favorites, I think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've we've had a lot of great seaside town. You know, they don't usually get the villagers out of there when they're going through a seaside town. We get the full spectrum.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, often like the weather isn't really like acclimated, like too. I feel like it's always too chilly. So the villagers are inside. But really, we're like, we're here, we're out, we're exploring, we're chatting.
SPEAKER_00Summer on by the Mediterranean. People are getting ready to buy their ropes. They're busy.
SPEAKER_04Do we have any doctor Xena in this episode?
SPEAKER_00We sure do.
SPEAKER_04Yes, we do.
SPEAKER_00She's very active using some classic methods.
SPEAKER_04It's not a cult watch episode, not really a dungeon, except that we're like trapped under the sea. We're all kind of in the dungeon of the Davy Jones locker.
SPEAKER_00Right, but there's no potential for the leaping out of a hole in the ceiling of the dungeon. So we're kind of mainly in high.
SPEAKER_04I know. I guess she is leaping through the ceiling because the ship's turned over.
SPEAKER_01Well, okay. I take it back.
SPEAKER_04Oh, and the love interest in this episode. 100% Gabby. Yeah, 100%. Just Gabby. And what did we research? What are you talking about today, Haley?
SPEAKER_00Oh, well, I researched because we've been talking about diamonds a little bit in the past few episodes. I researched diamonds in the ancient world. Damn. And a girl's best friend. Woo! And I also researched a little bit about um uh slavery and slave transportation and slaves in mines in the ancient world. Amazing.
SPEAKER_04I can't wait to hear about it. And then today I did research for Patreon. I researched Palmistry, Palm Reading, also known as Chiromancy. That's gonna be pretty fun. So check that out on Patreon, guys. Woohoo! Okay. So I'm gonna take a little sip of water, get ready for this.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna take a nice sip of my homemade cafe au lait from this lovely Xena mug. Xena mug. I'm sipping from the top of her head as if the coffee is Athene erupting, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Jumping out of Zeus's head. I mean, it's an apt metaphor, I would say.
SPEAKER_00It's exactly the metaphor I want to be thinking of at this moment.
SPEAKER_04Oh, we love it. All those piercing eyes. I, you know, on screen right now I see two Xenas and one Haley. I know. That's the ratio we like to have. Round the zoom. Okay. Episode recap. So we open on a beautiful sunrise at sea. The gulls are skimming the wave crests. We see a boat, there are sailors getting ready to sail, and then it's kind of giving us little mermaid, you know, the beginning of little mermaid, right?
SPEAKER_00We get that kind of red sunset. The sailors are all doing stuff. One sailor is, for undisclosed reasons, just looping a rope around the Jacob's ladder that goes up to the, you know, that post on the floor.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00He's just looping it around. And you know, they're just yelling out their sailor vocab.
SPEAKER_04It's great. And then we travel from there to a fortune teller's room. We find an older woman draped in scarves, all of her fingers covered in rings, and she has a little feather on her forehead and a dangling diadem. And she's reading Gabby's palm and her future. And we'll learn more about exactly what's happening over on Patreon. But she tells Gabby, You're going on a long voyage. I see a man. And then Zina pops in through these like 90s beaded curtains and says, Let me guess. Tall, dark, and handsome.
SPEAKER_00She's unimpressed. But she's trying to let Gabby get involved in the experience. She's not trying to pull her out, she's inserting a little bit of skepticism.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a nice skully molder situation. Totally. Gabby's like annoyed that Zina's a non-believer, and she clarifies that, like, oh, we're actually not taking a ship anywhere. We're just kind of passing through town for some supplies. And then they leave. Zina's teasing a little more on their way out, but the palm reader insists that she sees great danger and death in Gabby's palm. Gabby follows Zina and she's like, danger and death? That's every day. Zina's laughing. They go to the port town. There's a classic Zina and Gabby chat where Zina's like, you know, your future is less in your palm than in your own two hands. It's what you make of it.
SPEAKER_00Totally. It's fairly. And then we get a practical Gabby moment. Oh, yeah. And she's like, you know what should be in the palm of my hands? Some fish cakes. So she goes off to find some food for dinner.
unknownTotally.
SPEAKER_04I love that. They split up. Zina goes like to get whatever supplies, blah, blah, blah. And we learn Argo is roaming free for everyone who was wondering about Argo.
SPEAKER_00Argo's just like I noted it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And this port town is like, I feel very Muppety. Kind of everything's kind of like at an angle, kind of weathered, oversized, but it's also a little bit of a bummer vibe. Like this, it's overcast here, I think, but like, and no one's selling salt pork. We still see villagers.
SPEAKER_00We don't hear a lot of villagers like yelling out their wares for sale.
SPEAKER_04It's a somber tone today. So Gabby's wandering the docks and she's stopped by a very polite man who's telling her to be careful around the chained convicts boarding a ship. And Gabby sees the captain of the ship is like screaming at the convicts, belittling them. And we know she doesn't like that at all. You know, she's not into men yelling at anyone. Yeah. Same. And so this kind band feels bad for these guys too. The convicts have been sold off to work in the diamond mines, which means certain death. I think this guy might be my scene queen. He was just so kind.
SPEAKER_00It's great. It's true.
SPEAKER_04He was such a gentle soul. So Gabby's watching the prisoners. She's not really sure there's anything she can do when she sees a familiar face.
SPEAKER_00Getting loaded onto the ship?
SPEAKER_04Why?
SPEAKER_00It's a Tollochus. How did he get into this situation?
SPEAKER_04Oh my gosh. Gabby grabs his arm. She's trying to figure out what happens. And he's like, it was a small miscalculation.
SPEAKER_00And he's telling Gabby to scram. Get out of here, Gabby. He's like, don't worry. It's just I'm going to have to deal with it. He can't say anything else at this at this crux in the story.
SPEAKER_04No. But we know he's at the end of the little chain gang and he's being shoved onto the ship. Gabby's shocked. A crew member runs up, shoves her aside while the prisoners are boarding the ship, but she's not going to take no for an answer. And she hops on the boat to go after Atolychus.
SPEAKER_00Just wait for Zina, Gabby. I know. We can just solve it. She goes on and she starts fighting immediately. Granted, they try to push her off, but she does a good job with her staff kind of back and amongst it.
SPEAKER_04Well, because the guys were all like shoving the prisoners, and she was like, Why don't you you know fight somebody who can actually fight back? And then she takes out all of them. She's so tough. Like one and then whatever, circle kick basically with the staff. And the autologist gets knocked unconscious. And then we kind of cut to Xena at a vendor stall, just comparing different kinds of rope.
SPEAKER_00She's just quietly bargaining. She's saying, I'll take this one. She takes them both.
SPEAKER_04She's like, I'll take both of them.
SPEAKER_00Two different rope selections. One's like a darker brown and one is a lighter brown. And she needs them both for whatever she's planning next.
SPEAKER_04Oh, it was so nice. I think my extra Oscar might be this guy. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Wait, I have a second contender too. I have some others, but I yeah.
SPEAKER_04I was like, oh god, yeah, the rope salesman. He's really selling it.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Gabby runs to the side of the ship and she's like, Zina!
SPEAKER_02Help!
SPEAKER_04And Xena drops the rope. She jogs over to the landing and sees Gabby sailing away. We've seen this before. Oh, yeah. We know what's gonna happen. We know what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01The theme.
SPEAKER_00It's so good every time. And yet again, this time I was like, wow, this theme is so great. Every time. I don't know how it happens.
SPEAKER_04Many themes I skip, but this one, I would never, never. Yeah. With the Law and Order SVU. It's a really good theme, but I skip it. I gotta skip it. Zina, not skipping. You can't skip the Xena theme. Okay, so Xena runs. She's still in the port town. She runs to the highest ground she can get to, jumps, and does this like gymnastic bar spin around this poly system, building momentum, spins like 30 times in the air, uvulating. Then she flies in the air, lands on the ship deck, her sword drawn. And the crew, uh, one guy puts a knife to Gabby's neck to stop Zina, and she says, Guess we're going on a voyage after all, huh? The Chirom answer was right.
SPEAKER_00And a man in silken pantaloons and a robe runs onto the deck, followed by a lovely lady in a like cerulean blue scarf and drapey dress or cloak. And he's just shouting, Run and Huddy's name is going on. And we're all thinking, haven't you been on this ship? My gosh, what were you doing?
SPEAKER_04Just sitting around cotton in your ears, eating bonbons. And he's like, Who are these women? I'm not paying for the ship to take on passengers. And the captain's trying to blame Gabby. Mm-hmm. She tried to free a prisoner. You gotta arrest her. And Zina's like, you did what?
SPEAKER_00Like I left you alone for about 10 minutes. What happens?
SPEAKER_04So funny. And I think the captain's doing a really good job. Like, I fully believe that he's this little slummy guy. Mm-hmm. Gabby's like yelling, there's been a mistake. And then this kind of younger, rich woman pipes up, and she does seem very kindly. She seems like a nice person.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And she was like, wants Gabby to have a place to explain herself. And we learn that this man is named Thaddeus and the young woman is named Soroya. And Thaddeus runs the diamond mine and buys convicts as slave labor. And he's talking to everyone. He thinks he's really important. And he's referring to the convicts as animals. He's just this like awful guy.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. He's never thought about the people that he's forcing to work in the mines at all, besides as disposable labor and even as kind of subhuman. So he's not a great person. We don't like him. We're like conditioned that we're kind of he's not in on Xena's view of the world and we don't like it.
SPEAKER_04No. And neither does Gabby. She's sticking up for Atolicus, and Zina's like, what does Atolicus have to do with this? Which is Zina's immediately like, oh, I see. Yeah, she's just like, I was just trying to buy rope, and now everything's full of nonsense. We go down into the ship's hold. It's dark, and the camera's shifting back and forth. So we know we're at sea.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Classic move. Zina's splashing water on Autolycus to wake him up. He wakes up, they're both wondering why the other person's on the ship. And then behind Xena, we hear this really awful creep named Macon. He's like, I got something you can look at. Bet you like it. I hate him, I guess.
SPEAKER_00We hate him so much. And he is like the embodiment of like 90s surly teen attitude, but in a man. We just don't like it.
SPEAKER_04I just want to describe him really quick. He's like head is all patchy, shaved down, like he used a rusty knife. He's wearing a bunch of jewelry made of bones and like other kind of collectibles that looks like he stole kind of from someone else. Like it doesn't, he's really, really nasty.
SPEAKER_00I will say his physical appearance made me double check to make sure he wasn't the I could have been a contender guy from Muppet Treasure Island.
SPEAKER_04It's just two, this whole thing was so Muppety. I know. He wasn't that guy though, was he?
SPEAKER_00No, he was not. Two different actors.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But the pirate C like unsavory character mode came through very clearly.
SPEAKER_04Oh God. I think I feel like for the rest of this episode, I'm just going to be singing professional pirate in my head. I'm not sure. And I'm not going to put anyone into it. When I was just a lad looking for my true. Okay. So he Macon is like mocking the third prisoner's name. So there's three prisoners here. So we had Atolekus, Macon, and this third guy. Um, and Macon's just calling him petrified when his real name is Petrodes, which is like a pretty good burn.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And Petrodes is uh he's a lot younger. He's maybe in his early 20s. He has like floppy blonde hair, seems really nervous and sad. And Atolychus is the only deep V in the room, uh, only deep V on the ship, even. So I think we can rest easy that there's no love interest except for Gabby on the ship.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. Had you any inkling that there would be another love interest buried somewhere on this ship, we're quickly recognizing that Atolychus is the only tall, dark, handsome man here. And it's just friends.
SPEAKER_04I love it. Okay, these prisoners are all chained in the hold, and the chains are like these long wrist chains that go up to the ceiling so they can kind of move around in the hold. And Makon's mad about something, and he tries to strangle Petrides with his chain. And then I forget what it is. He's just mad about whatever.
SPEAKER_00It doesn't even matter. He's just like mad about something that nobody cares about. But he tries to strangle the other prisoner. And then Zina challenges Makon with her sword.
SPEAKER_04And Thaddeus peeks in and he's like, Wow, I'm totally right to enslave all these people. They're all so awful. And we're just like you're the worst.
SPEAKER_00Wherever you need to be to stop it. Quarantine yourself, please, Thaddeus. We don't need any more of it.
SPEAKER_04And luckily, Zina's in the room, though, so we know everything's probably control. Everything's under control.
SPEAKER_00We're feeling pretty secure in this episode because Zina's here the whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04Not like other Atolicus uh Gabby episodes. Yeah. So Atolicus like chatty foods his way between Zina and Macon. And Xina just like totally outbullies the bully, which you have to do sometimes. I'm just gonna say. Sometimes you gotta just be the bigger force in the room.
SPEAKER_00But she's not gonna let him break all of the like social rules here. No.
SPEAKER_04She's not gonna back down. Macon drops the chain. Zina lowers her sword, pulls Atalicus aside, and is like, what's going on? Nobody keeps the king of thieves in chains unless he wants to be there. So and then like obviously he just wants to steal a diamond.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And she's like, You would wouldn't go unless you want to be there. So why would you want to be sent to these mines? And then she's like, Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04And then he doesn't want her to blow his cover, and then she's a little sassy about being involved in this scam and being out at sea. And then uh I just I love their dynamic, it's just so fun all the time. They're like it's a very fun time. But suddenly they feel this big jolt in the ship. My goodness. Zina doesn't like it. We cut to Gabby in the captain's quarters with Soraya, and they're besties now, I guess.
SPEAKER_00I know. I wrote cut to Gabby in her new BFF.
unknownI know.
SPEAKER_04And both their hair is like looks like it's been brushed a thousand times. They're just like beautiful princesses.
SPEAKER_00I know.
SPEAKER_04Like the soft candlelight. It's all we do. And you know, I think the look now and the vibes now is a huge contrast to later on what's gonna happen. We have to create this soft candlelight. And they these jolts keep happening. No one's sure exactly what's going on. Gabby doesn't like it either. And there's this general feeling of unease on the ship.
SPEAKER_00Right. The um Soraya has is feeling kind of seasick and she's like, can't quite get settled. And Gabby jumps in and is like, well, I've got so many pressure points to try. Just let me do the pressure points. I'll clear it all up. And she's like very aggressively pushing the press pressure points. And Soraya's like, no, please don't do pressure points. And she finally grabs her tummy, which is the indication that she has is with child.
SPEAKER_04She's with child, and she's not seasick, Gabby. And Gabby is just thrilled for her because they're best friends.
SPEAKER_00She's like, Oh my gosh, you've been trying for so long. I'm so excited for you. We've just met. But Sarah's terrified. Yeah, she's scared because she and Thaddeus had this kind of agreement that they would not get pregnant because Thaddeus's mother died in childbirth. Am I remembering that correctly?
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah, and he's too scared to lose her. And I think this side plot is so freaking weird. Yeah. Uh, she seems like a child bride.
SPEAKER_00She's like, Okay, my first reaction was like, I totally thought she was his daughter.
SPEAKER_04So I'm very weirded out by this. I don't know why there's such a giant age difference between them. I think this is very weird casting.
SPEAKER_00I don't know why we're supposed to be compassionate for this guy who's like we don't actually care that much about him because he's already sending like thousands of people to their deaths like yearly. So him being like scared about having a child is also not that sympathetic, but whatever. So, like, like the idea that this is part of the plot is bizarre, but fine, we're rolling with it. Gabby is feeling defensive of Soraya. Maybe this is like to make us feel more invested in Soraya.
SPEAKER_04I think it's to make us, yeah, feel compassionate for Soraya, and then it helps him later be a little more humanized.
SPEAKER_00Like get out of his malaise later. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And yeah, for for him to help kind of turn a leaf. But we still hate him. And I don't, there's like not much that can redeem him in our eyes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And also, like, what it exactly did he expect to happen? Like there's some birth control then, but like it's like there's two people like basically ridden.
SPEAKER_04Yes, like not really that secure. Totally. And it's not your fault, Soraya. Yeah, exactly. Just so two people in this relationship.
SPEAKER_00This is throwing us for a loop because we all thought she was his daughter and we're like readjusting right now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But luckily, Gabby's there to help.
SPEAKER_04Yes, she is she's calming everyone down. So we go um never mind. Sorry, never mind. Thaddeus is all blustering. I uh was thinking about also in my sickness, I rewatched all the twilights.
SPEAKER_00There's gotta be some way to connect this to Twilight.
SPEAKER_04And I was like, oh my god, Gabby's just like Jasper. She can just like calm everyone, like that's her vibe. Sorry, stupid. Uh okay, so we go back above deck, and Thaddeus is all like blustering, mad that everyone's listening to Xena and not him. And he thinks she wants to go back to port to save her buddy Atolychus. But Zina is just trying to save everybody. She can feel something's off. You know, there's a smell in the air, even because they're near Mount Aetna, which is an active volcano.
SPEAKER_00She's around. And there's like a giant like chimney of smoke coming out of Mount Aetna. And that is just like, oh, it's a rain cloud. Oh my god. It's like, oh my gosh. So nobody's ever seen a rain cloud that looks like that.
SPEAKER_04No. Like adding to his horrible character traits. He's a climate change denier, too. He's just this like a horrible man who's like, don't look up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. He spends his entire time buttoning those little silk buttons on his vest.
SPEAKER_04And so luckily the captain listens to Xena and bleeds his own eyes. It's not a rain cloud, like ashes in the air. And Zina asks one of the deck hands what their depth is. And it's six fathoms. They should be running 10 fathoms at least. And I learned a fathom is six feet. So they're like 36 feet above seabed. Is this true? Ship person? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that sounds about right. And it really doesn't sound like that much that, you know, that deep for a ship. Yeah, so like I worry.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's really close to the seabed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. That's not what you want to hear. No, Zena's water. The winds died.
SPEAKER_04Everyone's on high alert. They can't go back to port now. Captain changes course. He does a hard turn. Everyone on the ship shifts. Gabby's trying to, you know, make sure Soraya's okay. Captain is totally deferring to Zina. Clearly, she's in charge here. We love it. And he tells Zina the water is full of reefs and geysers, and they'll try to ride the current away from the sea because they don't want to go into the geysers or the reefs, right? Sure.
SPEAKER_00I mean, at sea, the dangerous thing really is being close to the shore. That's the most dangerous thing at sea. Every once in a while there's like a wild wave that can destabilize things, but shipwrecks happen on reefs and rocks and sandy bottoms. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And unfortunately, we're close to these things. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00So the kids he's trying to ride the current away.
SPEAKER_04Uh Xena orders Thaddeus to go below with Gabby and Saraya. And he's like, Why are we running from a volcano? Which is so stupid in itself. Like, of course he would run.
SPEAKER_00I mean, technically, also, if this was a real tsunami, being out at sea is better than being close to port because then the water just rises and then goes down.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But we're gonna assume they're close enough to land that this is a real emergency.
SPEAKER_04I I mean they're pretty close, they're pretty close to that volcano. Oh yeah. And if they're like 36 feet from the ground, I feel I feel like this is a dangerous situation we're in. They gotta get out of there. And they're not running from the volcano, they're running from the tsunami. And then Gabby and Soraya are like feeling these big shifts down below deck. Gabby doesn't know exactly what's happening. And then Thaddeus runs in and drags them all down to the hold. So everyone's kind of going down to the bottom of the ship, I guess, to like Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I guess because they don't want to be swept off if the tsunami hits. Like again, a tsunami just is a rising water level. So it's not like necessarily a 50-foot like wave wave that we think when we see like surfers riding along.
SPEAKER_04It's like it becomes a wave wave like only when it gets to shore, right?
SPEAKER_00Because it's just so yeah, but anyway, should a giant wave hit the ship, you could be swept off of it. And so they're worried about that. They're going below deck to not get hit by that.
SPEAKER_04And I I feel like Zina is anticipating the ship turning over too. So she would want everyone to be on like the bottom of the ship so then they could have the easiest way of getting out, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And when Gabby runs up again, we can see that what is actually happening here is like a 50-foot wave that's about to crash on top of them.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. When she runs up, yeah, Zina's pulling on some rope, tightening a sail. Did you note that part? It was really nice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she's not sure what she's doing. I know I'm only like somewhere between 18 and 45 right now. But I've been on thousands of ships. She's been on thousands.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, she yells at Gabby to get back down. But when Gabby was running up, she yells Xina in such a great like in this episode, the way she screams Zina just really stuck with me.
SPEAKER_00She's like, We love their bond in this episode. They're so in sync. That's really great.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Giant wave of the distance. Captain yells at everyone to get to safety. Sailors are jumping overboard. Zina gets everyone she can below deck. The wave crashes into the ship, knocking, you know, everyone who is still on deck overboard by sailors. So a lot of people die right now.
SPEAKER_00A lot of people that we never even really realized were on the boat on the ship are now gone. Well, these are the ones who are like trying to beat up Gabby.
SPEAKER_04So by punishment for that?
SPEAKER_00Death.
SPEAKER_04That sea.
SPEAKER_00Maybe they swam away. Although swimming was pretty uncommon. I don't know. Maybe the Greeks were better at it, but probably. Maybe they swam away. But we have a shipwreck.
SPEAKER_04She's beaten and battered. The mast is shattered. Commercial break. Quick, go get a snack. Get some juice. Get some ketchup for your tater tots. Maybe some sprinkles. We come back from commercial and we see the flotsum and jetsum on the surface level. The camera dives below. We see the ship. We're upside down in the mysterious fathoms below.
SPEAKER_00I love the setting of this, like the kind of you know, blue lighting, the kind of underwater stage lighting. Totally.
SPEAKER_04And this like miniature of the ship. Oh, so tactile and satisfying. And the ship is like bobbing back and forth, sinking slowly. And inside the ship, everything is higgledy-piggledy. Oh, yeah. We're upside down. We're on the ceiling. There's like some subtle light from somewhere reflecting on the water surface. We're not quite sure how we're getting light in here, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_00It's dark, it's dank, there's baskets and bags just everywhere. Sea chests have been thrown asunder.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we have no way to kind of place where we are. Apples are everywhere. Zena wakes up, she's completely soaked, the ceiling's dripping on her. She's assessing the situation, and she can tell the hull is leaking slowly. So they're running out of time immediately. We're tense. Right. The sound of the water pressure on the ship is so scary. It's like so titanic. It's just like the ship is the monster itself. It's groaning and creaky. Xena's frantically looking for Gabby, pulling piles of debris off of bodies. First, she finds make on. He's still chained up. He has this like bloody face. She figures out there must be air trapped in the cabins in a forward compartment that's keeping them afloat.
SPEAKER_00Surely there's also air trapped in their cabin, but this is not generally mentioned.
SPEAKER_04I think yeah, but I think she's just implying that like there's air trapped in multiple. I think she's saying that because there's like a disaster, a situation happens later where sochus pops in, he unlocks his chains just because he can, you know, can do that easily, and they go look for Gabby. And Soroya calls out for help. Thaddeus is trapped, he's bobbing in water under a giant box of cargo, and it's too heavy for just seeing an Autolychus. So they need Makon's help. And they ask Thaddeus for his key for the handcuffs. And Thaddeus is like, no, we can't let these scumbags loose. And Autolychus says, sure, we can. We don't need your key to do it. And he wiggles his fingers. And I think this is my fave Bruce Campbell moment. I just love like, I don't know, his like finger wiggling was really, really charismatic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. We love his confident escape tactics too. He's he is the king of thieves.
SPEAKER_04He's just so good at his job.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And Thaddeus is just shocked that Atolikus freed himself. And Zina does a quick triage assessment and she determines that Thaddeus has like broken his leg and they're gonna have to make a splint.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, Dr. Zina's here.
unknownDr.
SPEAKER_04Zina's arrived in the hull.
SPEAKER_00So we hear from the other, you know, compartment someone yelling, oh no, she's dead. Zina runs over, and it turns out it's Gabby's arm. Oh, it's Gabby. She's got blood all over her stomach, but it's not her blood.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, Gabby's still fine. She's fine, but Petrodese is freaking out. Mm-hmm. And it turns out this blood was the captain's. And he's injured, but he's like, he's near death. Captain is not doing well.
SPEAKER_00He's not doing well. Gabby's got a little concussion, but not much else.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, she's okay. She wakes up, she's worried about the captain.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. We're worried as watchers of ER that she might have some internal bleeding, which they should probably check. Totally. But and she's had a head injury. But in Xenaverse, that's all fine.
unknownIt's fine.
SPEAKER_04Because we need her to help with Thaddeus' leg. So, like, come on, Gabby. Time to work. Just get up. Okay. So they all rush back to their compartment, like sloshing through the water. We're only like seeing the upper half of everyone because they're half underwater. And they grab hold of Thaddeus' leg and Zina says, Okay, Gabby, you can feel when it's back in place. And Zina's just like moving his leg around while he's screaming. And Gabby's like, It's not.
SPEAKER_00Classic Dr. Zina.
SPEAKER_04That was so good. They finally pop his leg back in. And Zina calls out for Soroya to grab some sail thread so Zina can stitch up his wounds, which is like this is so filthy. Yeah. In our universe, this man would 100% die from this.
SPEAKER_00Right. There's just staff everywhere on this ship. And the salt from the salt water is not going to do a lot to prevent the gangrene from setting in.
SPEAKER_04But luckily, we're in the Xenoverse. So it's all going to be.
SPEAKER_00So it's fine. And these stitches are going to be just fine. We don't even know what's injured, but we don't care so much. I mean, assume it's his leg. But she's stitching up something. Makin is causing trouble, as always. He's just time stitching or resetting or anything else. He wants to get out of the ship.
SPEAKER_04And then to force everyone to listen to him, he grabs Gabby, like putting a rope around her neck, threatening to kill her if they don't all stop and leave right now. His brilliant plan is to break through the hull, swim straight up to the surface, and Xina's like sewing up Thaddeus' leg, and she's talking to Macon, like really slow. Yeah. Explaining his plan won't work. The waves hit them too hard, the ship sunk too far. And she can tell by all the leaks in the hull raining down on them that the nails have been forced out by the pressure of the sea. And Macon looks around for nails, and Zina throws a knife at him, cutting the roof and freeing Gabby. Gabby hits him and runs back to Zina.
SPEAKER_00I love their coordination here where Gabby likes escapes right away, gets a knife, and runs back.
SPEAKER_04So oh, it's really, really nice. And then Zina says she'll kill him if he tries that again. And then she just keeps patching up that she's just so screen control. Control of everything at all times. So then we cut to like a little time has passed. Zina's now trying to just patch up the leaks, and Gabby is dressing Petrides's arm wound. And he's just a bummer. He's like, nothing matters, we're all gonna die. Right. Mekong keeps giving him a hard time for being a chicken. Soraya tries to defend Petrides, and Thaddeus is just being awful about everything, saying there's no use talking to convicts after they're all like, you know, even though they're all just doing their best to keep him alive. Like everyone saved his life, and he's being a nightmare.
SPEAKER_00Everyone is just wasting air. Like Macon is like yelling, he's like, you know, just being annoying, making people exercise when they don't need to. Like this, my inner core is like everyone should just calm down and be calm in an emergency. Yeah. And don't yell a lot because then you're wasting the air.
SPEAKER_04You're doing exactly what everybody shouldn't be doing. And you know what Zena's doing just that. She's keeping calm. She's not yelling. Admiring her.
SPEAKER_00She's just calmly fixing a wound, fixing the ship, just thinking about the ballast. I did like Atolicus's suggestion that they could like spin the ship by moving the ballast. That was great.
SPEAKER_04Because he was coming up with solutions. He's like being a good idea guy. But Zena's like, we're too heavy. It's too, you know, much of the ship is flooded, and there's so much air trapped in that other compartment, keeping them buoyant. They're not going to be able to flip around. Yeah. But I also feel like this episode is a weird use of Itolychus. Like he doesn't really, Bruce Campbell doesn't really have like Bruce Campbell-y moments.
SPEAKER_00Right. He's there to be the like bait for them to get out to sea, but not much else. But we do love his story and his participation in solution making here.
SPEAKER_04And it's like a little bit of a reminder that he's like a sensitive bad boy. Because the episode after this is also an Atolicus episode. So we're kind of setting up for that in a weird way. Okay, so everyone's looking to Zina for answers, and of course she has them. So she knows their ship is moving with the current because they are still moving. So maybe they can turn the rudder and crash into a reef to stop sinking further and buy them some time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Autolychus and Gabby are like, sure, yeah, totally. Let's do it. Makeon thinks they're crazy. He freaks out. He runs to open the door because he wants to swim away. But that compartment's flooded and the rush of water pushes him back. Zina runs over to shut the door because she's so strong, but the shift in pressure causes the ship to sink further. Yeah. Everyone's tossing around and Zina's yelling, we're going down.
SPEAKER_00It's a perfect panic scene. It's really scary. Just a lot of arms in the air, a lot of frantic glances. Things are moving. The camera's moving.
SPEAKER_04Zina, uh, yeah, she shuts it down. The ship deepens out. She takes charge again. She tells the girls to like tend to the wounded and the boys to help her with the rudder. And we're we're doing Xena's plan. Like everyone else has lost any say in anything. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00That opening the door plan was a bad one. So we're gonna try Xena's plan, which is gonna be a good one.
SPEAKER_04That's gonna be a good one. And she's thrown around a lot of shipping terms. Like we know she knows what she's doing.
SPEAKER_00The rudder stock. She's got the rudder. She said some other shit right now.
SPEAKER_04Well she said.
SPEAKER_00Break down the bulwark.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Petrides has gone completely out of his body and mind. He's praying to Poseidon. Xena smacks him out of it because they're gonna need him help his help smashing through a wall to get to the steering gear room. The layout of the ship is like kind of unclear.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we don't know how this. Actually fits into an ancient Greek vessel. So we're just going with it today. The physics of it, the science of it, the ship of it. We're just in the story. We're in this. This is all to get them underwater, stuck on a sinking ship. That's all we care about.
SPEAKER_04That's all it is. And they successively like break through these walls. They get to the rudder, but the rudder is so slippery and gross that they can't really get a hold on it. And Makon's just kind of standing by a wall, mocking them, his favorite activity. Such a spoil sport. He's so awful. But Xena fishes around in the water for a harpoon. Mm-hmm. And she tells Actolicus and Petrides a stand back. And she throws this harpoon so hard, the harpoon pierces the rudder pole, and they can use it as a lever to turn the gears. So great.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that great? Learn about levers, people. So that I love their hard work faces. They're all doing their best. Like, I'm working so hard. This is a very difficult thing to push faces.
SPEAKER_04Love it. And I feel like it would be such an unpleasant episode to act in because you're just in water so much at the time. I feel like a lot of the uh misery isn't just acting, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_04They're like, I actually am hating this. I really want to get out. So then we cut to an outside view of the ship, passing through these underwater geysers, just like the captain said. Makon finally helps push, and they turn the rudder, redirect the ship, crash in between geysers. This worked. Everyone's excited. And Petrides calls out, Poseidon, listened. We're saved. And it's like, dude, your gods have no power here. I know. The nice lady saved you. We're not big fans of Petrodis either. No, he's everyone, everyone else in the ship is just really lame.
SPEAKER_00We pretty much just, I guess we kind of like Soraya, but mainly Xena, Gabby, and Italychus. Yeah. But we're gonna go with it. So Macon is like, well, we might not be saved forever, which is kind of true. They're still underwater.
SPEAKER_04But it's not like you have one up on anyone, Macon. I know. Zena is doing the best. And so the boat starts pipping. They all fall forward, but then the boat writes itself, we're okay for now. Phew. How long will it last? Uh we cut to sometime later. They're all sitting around in the water. Gabby and Zina are like tending to the captain. He's lost so much blood. His pulse is weak. He's in shock. And Gabby's kind of also in shock. Yeah. She's really worried about running out of air.
SPEAKER_00I mean, she's she's in reasonable shock. She's like shocked, but she's like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to get out of this because we are stuck, I mean, at least six fathoms below. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Probably more. Probably more.
SPEAKER_00And we're in a ship. Hard to see how you come out of that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and Zina's working on a plan. She wants Gabby to just keep the captain as warm as she can. They're all, I mean, I don't know how it's this is probably isn't like you know, 20 degrees Titanic Atlantic Ocean kind of water. But we're probably you know pretty cold.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this isn't your swimming pool, like 80-degree you know, warmed up cozy water either.
SPEAKER_04Zina's doing her best, and we don't see any ideas from anyone else here. And then Macon jumps out, tries to drown Thaddeus. So here he's screaming.
SPEAKER_00Using that air again. Like if you just didn't try to drown him, you'd both have enough air. Just try to breathe shallow breaths, Macon.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god. And Sarah is like screaming. She hits Macon with a big chunk of wood. Uh, he's just completely in it for himself. He's yelling that Thaddeus is going to die, so why are they letting him use up all their air?
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04And he wants to like kill him for treating them like animals, also, which is like, okay, I understand this feeling like you finally have power over this guy.
SPEAKER_00And it gets into kind of like a like slightly cheesy who's right, who's wrong, very brief dialogue.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Where it's like Thaddeus is also amoral and misled. So who's really right here? But then in the show, I think Thaddeus is like kind of he's characterized as like amoral. Yeah. And Macon is characterized as immoral. And so it lands a little flat, but it's okay. We're having that kind of it's pre-prompting the debate.
SPEAKER_04I think it has like greater ideas about like what is violence, you know, and like who are violence and cruel people. But Makon's point is saying like he wants to kill Thaddeus because he treats them all like animals. And Atolikus says, You're right, and killing him makes it true. So, like, and then this message kind of comes through to the thing.
SPEAKER_00I think at the end it comes together better.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I think this kind of sets us up for the next episode too, of like where Atolekus isn't a killer. And so, like, this is a big part of his character that I think we don't I think it's talked about a lot later, but in leading up to here, I don't know how much we've talked about it. Is like he's just he's a thief, he's not, you know, he does sneaky stuff, but he's not he's not killing people. Yeah. And they're not gonna let Makon kill anybody. Right. And he calls them all losers, which is like kind of funny.
SPEAKER_00You're all just losers. Yeah, this is where his like teen characterization comes through, too.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's like, oh my god. So Zina's like patting Atolicus on the back for being a good guy. He's a little shaken about getting everyone into this mess. Like he just wanted to steal a few lousy stones. And then we reminisce about the time Zina's soul was trapped in Atolychus' body, and she's seen him from the inside. Totally. He sees himself as an opportunist, not a hero. And he's like feeling really bad about getting Gabby into this, and Gabby takes responsibility for her own actions. Mm-hmm. And Atolychus is like, you know, he's just feeling really guilty, and he pulls out this like wine bladder to drink away the pain, but it's empty, it's full of nothing but hot air. And he tosses it aside and Xena sees it floating. Huh.
SPEAKER_00Huh. Atolicus, you're a genius. I've got a plan, but it's risky. That's what everyone's been waiting to hear.
SPEAKER_04Oh my gosh. So these reefs are so full of volcanic geysers and underwater springs, shooting jets of water up to the surface. They can fill up some of the wineskins with air, then knock a hole in the side of the ship, swim for a geyser, breathe the wineskin air, and shoot up to the surface. But wouldn't you be like breathing carbon dioxide? I know.
SPEAKER_00This is like another moment where they're asking us to just suspend dyspolite. So I was like, you're definitely Okay, you're filling them up with carbon dioxide, and then the geysers probably are scalding. Yeah. And so filling them up with carbon dioxide and then expecting a geyser to lift you up is a recipe for certain death. But that's not how things work here. But and also though, like, what other option do they have? It's true. It's true. I mean, I was thinking to myself, like, maybe some carbon dioxide, maybe some oxygen's mixed in when you breathe out, and it's like just mostly carbon dioxide. I would think you could just like just like fill it in the back. Like pull on the sides, like you would with, you know, a bag, like a plastic bag that you're gonna try to keep chips fine.
SPEAKER_04What are those like what are they like a fetters? Like what are those for the yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00Those like little um fireplace whoosher. Yeah, the whoosher.
SPEAKER_04The billows.
SPEAKER_00They had lanterns in there before, so maybe they have a whoosher too. That's what I would do, but it's not what we're doing. We're not writing it, we're not physically there. Um Xena's got a plan. Macon hates the idea. Everyone else is on board. And you know what? He's not nice about it. Yeah. But we're all skeptical. Yeah. But I don't have a better idea. It's true. I mean, basically what they need to do is get out of the ship and start swimming. Yeah. And if they need those bladders full of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide to feel like they can do it, then try it out.
SPEAKER_04But I think also part of it is that like a a lot of them aren't strong enough swimmers. And a couple of them are sick, you know. So they have to.
SPEAKER_00I think true. But when they first had the wineskins, I thought, well, maybe that'll help them like float to the surface because they're holding them and then it'll be like little balloons.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't think there's enough air in it though. I think probably like the wineskin itself is heavier than the air it's holding.
SPEAKER_00Plus, when you see them swimming out, they think they're basically collapsed when you see the scenes of them swimming. But it's all fine. We're watching it in live time. We can't rewind and look at it again. No. When we're watching Xena, they're swimming out, and to our knowledge, they're full of air. But we're not swimming yet. We're not we're not even there yet. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
unknownOkay, okay.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So Megan's calling them all sheeple for listening to Xena. He's like, they are gonna be scalded to death in the geysers, and their insides will burst from the pressure. And Zina's like, we'll just stick to the outside of the geyser. You know, you it's gonna be fine. Don't be stupid. But how would any of us know that? I would I don't know how a geyser works.
SPEAKER_00I don't know how a geyser, I don't even know, like, if you could ride the geyser current. Doesn't seem strong enough, but maybe it's helpful enough. Maybe it's strong enough to help. I think it'd just be enough.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's gonna be fine. Makon calls for a vote and he's harassing Petrodis to try to get him on his side. And Petrodies has had it. He screams, he pulls a crossbow out of the water, shoots it at Macon, and Zina throws her shock room to knock the trajectory. The arrow hits the hole, and the violent action shifts the boat further into the seabed. They're sinking again. Oh no. Stalagmites crash through the boat hull, water's rushing in. This situation is dire. And Gabby looks at these stalagmites holes and says, We can't fix these. True, Gabby. And Zina's has not lost hope, though. She's feeling the water and she can tell it's warm. And it's not from P. No, it's from a geyser. It's from a geyser. And so the geyser's on that side of the ship. So she delegates Gabby and Soraya to blow up some wineskins. Atolekus has to break through the woods so they can swim out. Petrides is in shock again. And I wonder, we didn't ever explain why he got arrested. What do we think happened? Like, why is he just for being such a scaredy cat?
SPEAKER_00We're like, we're tired of it. Just get in the cart.
SPEAKER_04Stop being scared. Oh, and so Xena tries to get through to him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He has like a terrible story about his younger brother getting sucked out to sea, which is traumatizing. And it's just unnecessary. We don't need all these backstories. Or like we didn't care about Petrodes before. No. And that's fine. So he's scared of the ocean. And so he's like worried that his brother's taking revenge. Zina reminds him that the dead can hear our thoughts. Classic Zina chat. Classic. He knows that Petrodes loves him and that it was an accident. And we're through that. And Petrodes decides he's gonna contemplate that for a few minutes.
SPEAKER_04And then cut over to Gabby blowing up wineskins, really taking charge of her job. She's doing a great job.
SPEAKER_00And we're like, this is ancient Greece. They don't know about oxygen and carbon dioxide. All gases are the same, I guess.
SPEAKER_04And what we don't know won't kill us, right? So Thaddeus takes Gabby aside, you know, distracts her from her task to make sure, asking her to make sure that Soraya gets out of this okay, even if he doesn't make it. And then I he tries to pay Gabby with a diamond necklace, and she's like, I don't want that. I'm gonna make sure everybody gets out. Like you don't know.
SPEAKER_00She's like, I was already gonna do that, so let's just let me finish filling these sacks with carbon dioxide.
SPEAKER_04And then he only understands transactional relationships, so it's just whatever. True. And then Soraya over here is she's furious about the whole thing. She confesses she's pregnant. They have a moment, and I don't care about these people at all. No, couldn't care less.
SPEAKER_00So Tolicus and Xena are smashing and crashing through the whole shit. I said he doesn't trust her to be capable. She tells him she's pregnant and they decide to stay together. I'm not super invested. It's like, don't care. Fine. I wasn't interested anyway. At all. Wake up or stay together. I'd rather if she had that baby with the Amazons and everything would be like closed. But yeah, whatever. They're gonna stay married. Okay.
SPEAKER_04And like I wish they'd given Gabby more to do rather than like dividing all the screen time with all these randoms. Mm-hmm. Okay, so Atalicus and Xena are just like really we're drawn out, the two of them pulling wood up from the deck. Uh but just again, I'm just thinking about how awful it must have been to film this, like this gross water. So they've all just been stewing in.
SPEAKER_00I mean, also I'm thinking like there must be an entryway like into the deck that they could have come out of, right? From like the upper deck to the lower deck, there must be an opening. But whatever, they've gotta go through the wall. So they're pulling up the ball.
SPEAKER_04I think it's like, yeah, shifted even.
SPEAKER_00Maybe it's blocked by the wood or whatever the.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, all like the piles of stuff. And I feel like they're kind of ripping up near the I don't know what I thought.
SPEAKER_00Doesn't matter. They're getting out.
SPEAKER_04I don't know why you think about it. Cena's like, okay, everybody, we're gonna push the injured through first, then everybody else, and I'm gonna go last. And Atalchus and Stroya are gonna go first and help Thaddeus. So everyone grabs a wineskin. Gabby's gonna take the captain, and Petri is agrees to help, but he we learned earlier that he can't swim.
SPEAKER_00I know. So I was thinking, is that wise? But I guess they have to do what they can.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, okay. So Gabby's, you know, dealing with this dying guy and a guy who can't swim, but Gabby can handle it. She's fine. Atolichus leads the way, and they all take deep breaths, dive under, and we see a little model of the ship and tiny little figures swimming towards the geyser, which is kind of far away. I thought it was closer to them.
SPEAKER_00It's okay. They gotta get close to that hot boiling water. And they do.
SPEAKER_04They're swept up in the current to the surface. Mm-hmm. Back on the ship, we're having a little moment with Xina and Gabby before she goes, and she's like, see a topside, huh? Mm-hmm. And then Gabby dives underwater with Petrides and the captain. Zina's pretty anxious about this, and she's turning to Makon, who is like so nervous, drags him over, tells him to take a deep breath, keep calm, shoves him under, then she follows him. Right. They swim to the geyser in the bubbles, in the chaos. Makon loses his air skin. He can't get it back, so he swims back down to take Xena's.
SPEAKER_00He's just wasting time and air struggling. It's like, just go to the surface. That's where all the air is.
SPEAKER_04He just can't think two steps ahead, you know. He's just like so ugly so gross.
SPEAKER_00I know. I was like, he is just super dumb, and that's just his character.
SPEAKER_04He's just a dumb, mean, violent guy. Zina fights him, and she's, you know, trying to keep them both alive, though. They're tussling in the geyser. He tries to strangle her. She yells. It's like, Zina, don't keep that oxygen. Right. Uh she kicks him away. She has her air skin, takes a breath, she grabs him and then helps him to the surface. But did they make it?
SPEAKER_00We won't know until we're back on the beach. The teen survived, surprisingly. And he saved the captain. He's now wearing the equivalent of a shell necklace, which I didn't notice before. He's like a 90s beach teen now. Which one's the one? And he looks proud. The teen. Oh, the teen. Well, I'm calling Petra Disney. To me, he seems like a like an older teenager. Yeah. Oh, that's funny.
SPEAKER_04Um, yeah, everyone made it. He did it. That's really funny.
SPEAKER_00Everyone made it. Atolychus has helped the loving couple to the beach. Uh he sees the diamond necklace down on the sand and picks it up, thinks about it. Was it all worth it, Atolychus?
SPEAKER_04You did all of this for this. You caused this to your friends. And you just let the diamond slip through your hands.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. He gives it back to Thaddeus, overcoming this potentially awkward moment when Thaddeus is gonna have to decide if he gives that to Atolychus or not. And then Thaddeus takes it gratefully and announces that he will no more use slave labor in his minds and only hire workers and pay them fairly and treat them well. And we think to ourselves, wow, okay, what a hero. I believe it when I see it completely. And also just do that all the time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm not gonna cheer you on, man. Yeah. For doing the bigger lesson we just learned. Such a nightmare. We hope he learns more before that baby comes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So he puts his arms out and he and Itologist do a manly arm grip handshake, our favorite arm clasp, like two well-met centaurs. Right. Really?
SPEAKER_00And we kind of just wish that that was us doing the hand clasp. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04But so we're like, okay, uh things are coming around there. But Gabby sees another body on the shore, but it's Macon. He's still alive, unfortunately. Gabby's desperate to find Xina, and so are we. And we look out into the onto the sea, and we see in the distance, Zina's washed ashore. She's okay. She's okay. She's walking through the surf, emerging from the waves. She's a little shaky. Gabby runs up to her yelling, Xina! Mikan asks why she went back for him. What did she expect from him? And she says, From you, nothing. From me, nothing less.
SPEAKER_00He gets And we love it. We're so pleased with that. And we think this is what the episode is about. It's about integrity to yourself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And we're into it. Integrity to yourself and the people around you and inspiring other people to have like their minimum integrity.
SPEAKER_00Just have a little shred of integrity.
SPEAKER_04What does it make?
SPEAKER_00It makes me want to learn how to swim well enough to save someone from like a deep ocean shipwreck.
SPEAKER_04Totally. For the 43 minutes we watch this, I also want to swim well enough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. I may not want to do the work for it, but I want that to be me.
SPEAKER_04I want my end result for sure. Okay, so then Macon gets off, walks in the distance, shaking his head. Gabby's like, he doesn't get it, does he? And he doesn't. No. Gabby asks Zeno what she thinks about her poem reading now. Just another average day of this universe.
SPEAKER_00Yay! And they enjoy a nice walk along the beach. Which is nice. They're probably gonna hang with the tolercus for a little bit. Just relax.
SPEAKER_04Go on the next adventure.
SPEAKER_00Everything's okay. Maybe get some fish cakes somewhere. Somewhere. They gotta find that fish cake.
SPEAKER_04And where are we even?
SPEAKER_00Who knows? Doesn't matter. Actually, I could tell you some possible places. Do you want to hear my research? Ugh, great. Well, I did a little research. I know I've researched slavery and enslavement in ancient Greece a few times in previous episodes. So I'm gonna do something a little different today. I'm gonna talk briefly about processes of enslavement and then talk more about like mines and quarrying, which is one place where slaves were employed.
SPEAKER_04The minds of Moria. Yes.
SPEAKER_00And they call it a mine. Call it a mine. And these really are mines, my friends. These are not the mines of Maurya. Yeah. All right. So so we know that slavery was a big part of kind of the economy and political system in Athens and ancient Greece more generally. But slavery as a legal penalty was actually fairly uncommon. Oh, interesting. So most people were enslaved through capture in battle or wartime enslavement. And in those cases, it was fairly common for people to be executed or ransomed back or as part of a prisoner exchange. And so captives were politically powerful in those circumstances, but many of them also were taken into lifelong enslavement. But as a legal penalty, it was again kind of fairly uncommon. So the cases here in this episode, at least as far as I could tell from my research, were probably not the main way that people were punished for, for example, stealing something or general kind of petty crime. Okay. So in Athens, at least slavery as a legal penalty was a consequence for like a citizen trying to overturn a law or for falling out of the property requirements, I guess, so kind of falling into pop poverty. One potential consequence was slavery. Residents, so residents that were not citizens who failed to pay their tax, or married an Athenian citizen, or didn't have a citizen patron, or those who attempted to secure citizenship but were found ineligible, could be enslaved for those kind of legal violations. So it's interesting to think about those in terms of kind of slavery as a punishment for a crime against the status of citizen or something like that. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that that just like hits so prescient in these times, you know, with everything that's happening with citizenship in America and immigration rights and everything that's really interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it's absolutely kind of one of these ways in the ancient world that kind of feels like it has repercussions throughout other institutions of slavery and confinement over time and forced labor over time. That is the conception of slavery as like non belonging or social death and as kind of the inverse of full participation. Participation in society. So in those cases, we probably wouldn't have seen a lot of transportation because I assume those cases of enslavement would have been more local. You're enslaved in Athens, you probably will serve as a slave in Athens unless you're transported and sold someplace else. But in cases where we do have long transport, it could be by land or by sea, especially in cases when it's captivity through warfare. People who were enslaved often came from the Black Sea region or the Aegean across those bodies of water and transported to Greece. Major ports included Byzantium, but also Abydus, Cyzikis, Perinthus, and the island of Delos. Oh, yeah. So these kind of port areas also did have slave markets. Within Greece, there were slave markets in Corinth and Athens, as well as in Thessaly and Boeotia, more generally. So again, most of those would have been markets for enslaved people captured during warfare. And there's broader context in the book I read for today, Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece by Sarah Forsteike from Cambridge University Press in 2021, has a much bigger and in-depth depiction of what that looked like. But many enslaved people did go into mining and quarrying in ancient Greece. So it was very physically demanding and mostly done by enslaved people, according to Forsteig. And in Attica, apparently in the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, there were between 10 and 30,000 people working in these conditions. Around the mines, enslaved people generally lived or often lived in family groupings. So with separate households, marriage and children were possible in these circumstances. But the labor itself was both skilled and semi-skilled and extremely dangerous and labor-intensive. So contemporaries wrote about extreme temperatures, of course, the kind of chemical and noxious gases that would be present in mines, as well as the danger of collapse. Even in the ore processing, you can imagine that's going to have very extreme temperatures and some risks associated with that, and the labor requirements. What kind of uh materials were being mined? So in ancient Greece, there were no diamond mines, as far as I could tell. So it was um silver, copper, gold, lead, these kind of ores that would have been in the rock primarily. And those would be the main things that these mines were devoted to. So very intensive work, and as they said in the episode, often equivalent to a death sentence because of the likelihood of being worked to death. Yeah. Now there are very many variations of that, but the conditions were were very dire. Yeah. So yeah, they were very unlikely to have been mining for diamonds. Most likely targets were silver, gold, lead, and copper. Diamonds, by contrast, were not generally mined uh in that sense in the ancient world, as far as I can tell. Um, they were exceedingly rare in ancient Greece and mostly came from alluvial or riverbed diamonds. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So these are kind of deposited by volcanic activity over millions of years that brings them to the surface, and then water washes away the covering, exposing the gems beneath. And these sources were mostly in South Asia, so India, that subcontinent in this time period. And they didn't have a lot of stone-cutting technology.
SPEAKER_04Well, thinking of, yeah, just thinking about this episode, like the indications of like how Thaddeus was dressed, like in all the silks and the bright colors and everything, he could have been taking them to like Asia or somewhere. Yeah. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, it could have been going on an oceanic path, especially if we're kind of in the Roman era now, in this time period in this universe. So I'll get to that in a few minutes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sorry. Okay.
SPEAKER_00But um, it's fine. But yeah, so I was interested in this idea of diamonds as a gemstone because you do see it in rings and jewelry in the early Roman period or kind of second century CE, really. But earlier, it's not really a brilliant stone because they don't have the technology to cut the facets.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They can crush it a little bit, but it's more of an unpolished stone that's prized for its durability.
SPEAKER_04So are people using it more for um like glass cutting and um things like that? Oh, okay. Exactly. Yes, I think I'm a star student. Thanks, Haley.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So it's the name diamond comes from the Greek adamas, which means unconquerable or invincible. Uh isn't that cool? And in classical usage, that word also, even in Hellenistic times, the word also signified other strong metals like steel or substances of extraordinary strength, like uh Cerberus's chain is made of Adamas. But it's in, I believe, the second century CE or maybe a little earlier, first century CE, when we see more clear descriptions of diamonds associated with that word. And so descriptions that will talk about the diamond shape, which is actually the shape of many of the crystals, is that classic diamond shape there. Interesting. Octrahedral, I guess. So it has this kind of association with extraordinary strength and invincibility. So before I get into all of that, we can talk a little bit about how it was used in the classical world. So it was generally used for little drill bits and engraving points used to engrave other gems. So when you see engraved gems from the classical world and Hellenistic world, they may have used kind of ground diamonds to make the point that was uh engraving those. Interesting. It did also start to accumulate, especially in South Asia, but into the Mediterranean world as well, symbolic associations with power. So as opposed to this kind of idea of diamonds as a sparkling jewel that's kind of an ornament, it was associated with um protective symbolism. So as something that could protect you from fire, flood, disease that would frighten evildoers and thieves.
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, I mean it's it's the strongest substance. And to have enough of that in your hands, what couldn't you defeat?
SPEAKER_00And according to Jack Ogden in his book Diamonds, an early history of the King of Gems from Yale University Press in 2018, in ancient India they were considered suitable only for men to kind of wear. Interesting. Because they were associated with this kind of strength and virility, really. And so they were kind of gendered as male, a male gemstone. Interesting. Yeah. So by the time we get to the Roman period, so prior to the Roman period, the references in Greece are really few and far between. Even in the Mediterranean more generally, there aren't many references that are definitely diamonds. The other gemstones seem to be more prevalent. But the Hellenistic expansion of the Greek world and the kind of greater contact with South Asia after Alexander the Great introduced more diamonds or more references to diamonds into that region. But it's really not until the Roman period and Pliny, and then especially in the second century CE, that we see greater specific references to diamonds in written accounts and also growing number of examples of diamond jewelry and things like that in the Roman world. And this is in part because, especially under the Romans, they started to recognize the strength of the monsoons in the Indian Ocean for trading there. And Roman ships began to go directly from Egypt into the Indian Ocean and back. So it a much more direct trade, and that produces more examples by the second century. So to sum it up, in this case here, certainly Atolychus and his fellow enslaved people aboard this ship might have been going to a mine, not likely a diamond mine. But we're starting to see perhaps the beginnings of this Roman market for diamonds in the Greco-Roman world.
SPEAKER_04Wow, the placing us in history, it's so delightful.
SPEAKER_00It's so fun. Yeah. I mean, they give so much fuel for kind of rabbit holes in this show.
SPEAKER_04So much so. I love it. And I just I love, I just love thinking of this, like the beautiful overlap of dimensions and universes of the Xenoverse and our universe, and just seeing if we like plucked her from there where she would land in ours in our world. It's so absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Thank you, Haley. Yeah, so we see a lot of continuities here too. And of course, those of us who are perhaps thinking about contemporary connections, we probably do think to citizenship and forced labor more generally, penal servitude, and also the cruelties of diamond exploitative practices of mining and diamond mining in particular. Totally.
SPEAKER_04And then these ideas of these like these great democracies and these, you know, like pillars of like Western evolution or whatever, just relying so much on forced labor and enslaved people, and that uh it's just so constant in our history that there's how do we escape this? Of just how do how do we break out of this cycle and still be a um a recognizable society? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think we have, you know, a partial answer, even though it's a TV answer, I think the answer of the show is actually pretty enduring that you have integrity in what you do and try to remember that as you go forward. I know.
SPEAKER_04Make me cry. All right. Well, on that really, really um uh just powerful message. Shall we discuss our final thoughts for the episode? Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. So the themes, what did Zina learn?
SPEAKER_00Zina learned that some people don't know how to swim. She was shocked, she was absolutely shocked that Petrides didn't know how to swim. I was like, lots of people don't know how Zina. Especially then. She's so But he made it anyway. He figured it out on the fly. So good job, Petrides.
SPEAKER_04He just floated, he floated his way out. I said that she learned she can hold her breath for a really long time. That's true. That's true. That is a tricky thing, and she did it. The longest she's ever had to hold her breath. Hopefully. She taught so much. She taught an old man that human beings should not be chained and enslaved for his profit. We should, you know, really treat all life as sacred and valuable, whether you not you agree with their politics or how they live their lives. She taught us not to stoop to a terrible person's level. Totally. That because then you're just as terrible as them. Yeah, and integrity. Integrity, I think, is the key point here. Mm-hmm. Be chill.
SPEAKER_00I wrote, you can't control everyone around you, but you can control your own decisions. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Operating on your own decisions. Cry. I didn't think that this would be such a um a tear-filled episode.
SPEAKER_00These episodes come around and surprise us.
unknownYou know.
SPEAKER_04When I first watched it, I was like, okay, here we go. We're at a ship, and now I'm like crying about the integrity of men. Yep.
SPEAKER_01That's how good, Zina.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Extra Oscar. Um, I got two. The uh guy who's selling rope to Zena. Yeah. It's a rope heavy extra episode. And then the ship crew. Like they're everyone on the crew, most of the ones who died, but funny.
SPEAKER_00I put the guy who is loop looping the rope around the Jacobs ladder. Yeah. Because I was like, he obviously doesn't know how to sail.
SPEAKER_01He's just like, you just want this around here. No, it's not. Why would you tie that there?
SPEAKER_04Oh, that's great. Yeah. I think they're both really worthy of it. So we'll send them both the award. Okay, the civil award for actors who are playing recurring characters in the Xeniverse. Um, okay, we got a couple. We got Steven Tozer as Thaddeus. He looked familiar. Yeah. We met him in season one's The Path Not Taken. And in season two's Remember Nothing as Mizentius. This is his final appearance in the Xeniverse. So if we want to take that into consideration. Um, Angela Dochen as Soraya. This is her only appearance in Xenoverse, but she was a recurring character in the Herciverse and Young Hercules, starring our favorite friend Ryan Gosling. Oh. Interesting. Okay. Okay. Stephen Hall as captain. Might be a Xenoverse legend. He played seven different characters in the Xenoverse. Oh, yeah. Mostly named, all one-offs. Uh, we last met him in the Quill is Mightier as Thelonius, who I think was the character who was like kind of running around looking. He bought the sword or he was looking for the sword. Remember, he was wearing like the little um kind of Roman outfit. Kind of.
SPEAKER_00I mean, yes.
SPEAKER_04And then we first met him in he played Hector in episode one, Sins of the Past. So he's been not entirely memorable anything, but very charismatic. Yeah. Slade Leaf played Sailor, quote unquote. And we've met him before as Capucius in season two's Remember Nothing, and Citicles in season two's Destiny. And we'll meet him again. Oh, great. But the big one, I think this is my my vote. Todd Ripon, who plays Making. We met him before in season two's The Giant Killer. Oh, yeah. As Goliath the Giant. Okay.
SPEAKER_00I mean we kind of have to give it to him.
SPEAKER_04This makes me think of Haley and I went to see the short and tall production Xena parody show. Mm-hmm. Where they did the giant killer and they used one of those inflatable dancing tube men as Goliath.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04And it was I one of it just brought me such joy. It hit like every funny bone I have.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It really felt the same way.
SPEAKER_00I did. I did. I love those giant wavy dancer guys. And we love Zena Inflatable Dan. And we love Xena. And we love. And I thought Macon really knocked it out of the park for his character in this episode.
SPEAKER_04He was, yeah. So separate from Goliath. Totally different character.
SPEAKER_00Totally different characters, but both memorable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I would so I would give it to him. And then an honorable mention, I would say, to Steven Tozer. Tozer exits the Xenoverse stage. Thank you so much for all you've done.
SPEAKER_00We loved your we loved how you played these characters.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I feel like they're very similar vibes and encapsulated them very well.
SPEAKER_04Completely. Who's your scene queen? You have any?
SPEAKER_00Oh, the scene queen. I only chose an extra Oscar. But I will say, I mean, I know you're leaning towards the man who was talking to Gabby on the dock. Oh, yeah. I think I was kind of hoping the rope sailor would. I think he was kind of a scene queen for me because I was hoping he I kept watching to see is he gonna do something to really steal my heart. Yeah. Um but he did he? He didn't. So maybe we have to give it to your scene queen.
SPEAKER_04It was the hope of rope, but there, but nope.
unknownRope hope.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, for me, it was just that guy. He was just like so he had integrity. He was making sure Gabby was safe. He was worried about everybody there. Totally.
SPEAKER_00He encapsulated the message. That's very true. He was like a secret precursor. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I'm we love him. I didn't even get his name. Just passed by.
SPEAKER_02We're crying again, you know.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so none of the actors were in Star Trek. And Lord of the Rings, though, Todd Ripon, Goliath Macon, he uh starring role in Return of the King as uh Harod Leader number one. He's the guys at the elephants.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. I remember him. Yeah, I can envision him right in my brain right now. He was great. Yeah, so he's behind this Cybil Award.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, yeah. It was really good. Oh no, that was that was the Lord of the Yeah. Good Sybil Award. Good Worthy on L O T R loader. Okay. We've arrived to our favorite Gabby moment.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I've got it. What are you? What's yours?
SPEAKER_00My favorite Gabby moment. I mean, I had so many. Yeah. I dearly loved when she reacted with such quick reflexes when Zina threw that knife. Yeah, yeah. That might be my favorite Gabby moment. My first inclination was the pressure points.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah, that was so funny.
SPEAKER_00Because I'm like, she's gonna use it every time now. She's on a ship. She's love telling everyone about it. I love her excitement to share what she's learned. But I think I had the most like emotional reaction to her reacting so quickly with the knife.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00I had loved that.
SPEAKER_04I think I had missed that. So I'm so thankful you brought that to my attention of like their quick just the partnership and how they handle the situation. I also loved The Girl Hangs with Soraya. That was just so delicious. I loved when she's like, we can't patch this up. Yeah. Like, you're right. I loved her being charge of the wineskins. I feel like you liked that too, though. I did too. Yeah. And then I really I loved her yelling, Xena. Like I there was some difference in this episode where she's just like, Xena.
SPEAKER_00I feel like they're really, I mean, some episodes, especially, I think we get like their journey episodes, and then we get their like totally on the same page in sync episodes. And this was one of their in-sync episodes where they're like the Xena call is like a direct heart-to-heart vocalization of their bond.
SPEAKER_04Completely. Yeah, it's just so great. We loved it. This is a this was a great episode. It was really good. I was uh I'm so glad we got to talk about it.
SPEAKER_00Me too. I think like I loved that they just went for it, and I love that they didn't think too hard about those wineskins, you know. I don't want them to. No. The last thing I want them to do is to have a conversation about whether that's gonna work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I love that they just went for it.
SPEAKER_04And sometimes on TV, it can just be an adventure, you know?
SPEAKER_00It doesn't we don't need you to explain everything.
SPEAKER_04Not everything has to be explained, not everything has to be based in fact. It can have a you know a truthiness, to quote Stephen Colbert.
SPEAKER_00That's right. We want to feel it in our gut that they are underwater, the ship's turned over, and this geyser is gonna get them out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's all we need. Perfect. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Haley. Always the most fun. I love that we get to chat. Me too. If you guys like the podcast, please like, subscribe, follow, leave us a review. It really helps the pod. Share episodes with your friends. We have merch on our website you can check out. We have like t-shirts and mugs and tote bags, all sorts of fun stuff at inatimeofancient gods.com. And stay tuned for our next episode, Vanishing Act. So if you didn't get enough Bruce Campbell in this episode, don't worry. He'll be back with antics. And I'm I'm excited to talk about that episode because it's it's wacky. I think it's a little divisive among the xenites. So we'll talk.
SPEAKER_00Exciting. Anything else, Aileen?
SPEAKER_04We can't wait. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right. Anything you want to add? We all good? Are we ready to go? We're ready to go. Okay. I love this episode. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. We love all you have. I hope you're re-watching too, because it's just so fun to see it too.
SPEAKER_04Oh, it's the best.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04Thank you guys. And until next time.
SPEAKER_01How's it going, Zina? Where are you off to today? Going back down under. See ya.