From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V3 #289 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Wednesday, October 1 2003 Volume 03 : Number 289 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [chakram-refugees] 34 ASTON XENA 1800HD [IfeRae@aol.com] [chakram-refugees] RE: Lost Mariner and Ulysses ["Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] RE: Lost Mariner and Ulysses IfeRae Wrote: "You know, in a funny way you two are actually convincing me that they cast the right actor after all. There was a boyish quality about his emotions -- a superficiality perhaps borne of Ulysses leaving Ithaca and his wife as a teenager, returning 10 years later with perhaps the same notion of love, without having "grown" in that way." So as I understand it you see Ulysses as a case of arrested development. Well you are probably right. He left his wife as a very young man and he still probably does have very romantic notions about love. Also Xena is probably the first "normal" woman he has met - remember he has encounted nymphs and witches according to legend-so perhaps it is understandable that he would be attracted to her. "Xena kind of treats him as tho she is years older -- with a certain delicacy on one hand and "tough love" on the other. Her adult-adult conversation with him about responsibility at the end is like teacher to student. She still has to say, "go back to your wife." I hadn't thought of that but Xena does treat him very much like an adolescent who has crush on her. At lest she does once she realizes that he has a wife waiting for him. Perhaps it is Ulysses boyish enthusiasm is what attracts her in the first place. "I think we were dealing more with infatuation in LM, not deep "soulmate" love." Do you mean LM or Ulysses. I think when Cecrops speaks of his lost love it is real deep love. "Todd exudes too much depth, experience and wisdom for that. His decision about his wife might've been more tortured, lending a "heaviness" the ep didn't need." I suspect of Todd was to play Ulysses this would have been a very different episode and I doubt if you would have had such a cavalier attitude towards Pennelope that Ulysses seemed to have. I suspect you would have had a story about Ulysses wanting to be with his wife and Xena helping him. Of course now I am rewriting the epsiode. "Some fans thought D'Aquino (?) wasn't "all that" in terms of portraying a love interest for Xena. But the more I think about it, the more appropriate I think the shallowness we saw in the actor we got -- the somewhat boyish charm and self-centeredness that required Xena to make the choice he should've made himself." The problem was of course that D'Aquino was playing one of the great mythic heroes so we had expectation about how he should act. Ulysses was a bit shallow but he was larger than life and that is where D'Aquino failed. Oh but one more thing someone, perhaps you, pointed out that Ulysses couldn't bend the bow because of his wound, I never thouht of that so I now have reappraise my opinion that he was whimpy too. Just as she later recogized the ruthlessness in Antony, she chose the "right" decision over her own feelings -- which turned out to be "right" for her in terms of suitability for someone with her own depth, values and sense of honor. There was no real "match" for her, other than Gabrielle (subtext or not). Now we agree there. Gabrielle, for whatever her faults, was as honorable as Xena and as committed to Xena as was humanly possible. CherylA ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V3 #289 **************************************