User Reviews

Young women are disappearing and Xena knows that Bacchus, the god of wine and trouble, is behind all of this. She and Gabrielle will need to work with an interesting team in order to save these innocent young maidens.

SYNOPSIS

Xena and Gabrielle learn that young women are being kidnapped from their villages. Xena knows that this is the work of Bacchus who wants to turn them into his Bacchae who are crazed vampire-like followers of his cult. She and Gabrielle are joined by endearing fool, and poor man's warrior, Joxer the Mighty. Along in his satchel Joxer carries the talking head of Orpheus who has been robbed of his body by Bacchus. Xena and Orpheus have a difficult past. Xena's army was once involved in a battle where Orpheus' wife was accidentally killed in the fog of war. Xena emphasizes her sorrow for this regrettable accident, but Orpheus still places some of the blame on Xena.

The group knows that they can defeat Bacchus by getting Orpheus' lyre back. Since Orpheus is currently missing his body, Joxer volunteers to play it while Orpheus sings. They go into town to get the instrument back from Orpheus' friend, but the man is dead and the lyre is missing. This was the work of Bacchus' lady Bacchae who must have already taken it back to his lair. While in the village, Xena and Gabrielle look out for these Bacchae, and they're everywhere. A brief skirmish results in the Bacchae running off with the lyre, but Joxer is left worried that they bit Xena and thus infected her so that she'll turn into one of them. He warns Gabrielle. The group ventures the Bacchus' lair, but as they recover from a small attack they see that it's Gabrielle who is infected with the Bacchae curse! She runs off, and now the situation is very dangerous indeed.

Entering Bacchus' lair shows Xena and crew that all the young maidens, including Gabrielle, are close to being indoctrinated forever. This will happen at the right moment when they drink his blood, but he's delaying this ritual in anticipation of capturing Xena and adding her to his brood. A battle ensues, and Joxer gets his lights knocked out by Bacchus before he gets a chance to play the lyre. Turns out that now the only way to kill Bacchus is for one of his Bacchae to strike him down. Xena lets Gabrielle bite her and turn her into a Bacchae, and of course Bacchus watches this unfold with much glee. However, suddenly the two turn upon Bacchus and Xena kills him. All the possessed woman are freed from his grasp on them, and everyone is good to go home. Orpheus gets his entire body back, and he's grateful for Xena's help. As Xena and Gabrielle say goodbye to Joxer for the time being, they can hear beautiful music that Orpheus and his late wife are playing together.

NOTES

Joxer is somewhat of a buffoon to be sure, but he's righteous and actually can be very helpful to Xena and Gabrielle. Gabrielle and Xena's friendship is stronger than the spell cast by greedy Bacchus.

Enter: Orpheus, Bacchus

Xena, Gabrielle, and Joxer go up against Bacchus, who turns girls into Bacchae, essentially vampires. Orpheus whose music tames the Bacchae had his body taken so he can't play his lyre.

I feel like this episode embraces the fact that Xena became hip and winked the subtext to the audience in this one. First of all, vampires have always had a cool factor in pop culture. Then you have the club scene where Gabrielle is dancing with the two women, and what is playing? Some pretty decent dance rap music. Hip hop basically. Then you had the Gabs biting Xena in the neck scene which comes off as sexy.

Bacchus looks suspiciously like the devil from that 1985 movie Legend.

Joxer added to a lot of the humor here, being suspicious that Xena was a Bacchae and just his overall buffoonery. He was funny actually, and played that humor well off of Xena and Gabrielle. He has a funny line: " OH, YOU LITTLE BACCHAE!" Lol. Well, we get what the word Bacchae is in place of.

Had to laugh when Gabrielle pulled out the arm from the grave then screamed and tossed it away.

The dryads were pretty cool looking and reminded me of old Ray Harryhausen movies. I wonder with the actual dryads looked like? Maybe they should have had an episode with them.

We learn more about Xena's past. Her army went up against Bacchus. This is where Orpheus' wife was killed. Too bad they never did a flashback as they did later in the series to showcase Xena's past. Might have been interesting to see some of it.

I think the title embraces that it is girls who are all being turned into Bacchae, then they, in turn, turn other girls into them. So basically it's like "Bacchae Just wanna Have Fun."

The vampire getup wasn't that great. The fangs looked oversized to me. The slicked-back hair didn't look that great either. The scene when Xena and Gabs turn back into humans was done just by using a lot of flashes of different stills. I thought it was ok. Today they would use morphing effects to do it.

This was a fun episode that sort of reminded me of the old Abbott and Costello horror comedies. It had that same sort of adventure, horror, comedy feel to it. At the time, this episode aired near Halloween, which was probably deliberate. Guessing the studios wanted a "Halloween episode." I enjoyed it. I had fun watching it. 9/10.

*edit: Something I noticed after doing another rewatch of this episode, is that Ted Raimi(Joxer) had more lines, and perhaps even more screentime than Renee O'Connor(Gabrielle). And that really shouldn't be the case. For fans that are big Xena and Gab fans this could be a real turn-off.

A mish mash of vampire lore and, I assume, The Bacchae by Euripedes, the episode isn't very faithful to either and isn't very fun as well. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the one and only time that Xena and Gabrielle are seen necking on screen, unfortunately this is when Gabrielle is a bloodsucking Bacchae b*tch. There are more cheaply rendered flying things as well as a talking paper mache head, both of which provide the kind of lightheadedness that usually takes place after a blow to the head. There are also long shaky camera sequences, a Bacchus that looks like Tim Curry from Legend, and a rap song. However, Joxer, the mighty, returns and spending an hour watching Lucy Lawless is always pleasant.