Xena gets an urgent message from an old friend about a fragile peace that is in serious danger. In order to protect the innocent lives involved, Xena and Gabrielle will have to go undercover and put on one hell of a show.
SYNOPSIS
Xena and Gabrielle arrive at a beach community due to a distress call that requested help. Everything seems ok, but there are tracks of a war wagon that can be found in the sand. Xena mentions how this area had seen a great deal of warfare until a peace treaty was signed by multiple factions about a year ago. Suddenly there are a bunch of scantily clad women running from some creepy bros. Xena of course fights off the creeps, and she finds old Salmoneus, the greedy huckster, thanking her. He is the one who sent the distress call. Turns out that he is producing a beauty contest as part of a one year anniversary celebration for the peace treaty. He needs help keeping the peace since he feels as though someone is trying to sabotage everything. Who could this be? Xena is on the case, and she'll have to pose as a contestant in this all-female pageant. She'll be Miss Amphipolis, and Gabrielle will pose as her wealthy sponsor the Marquessa.
The women in this contest are quite competitive, and they don't exactly welcome Miss Amphipolis with open arms at first. Everyone of them is in it to win it. Gabrielle, posing as the Marquessa, finds that the men sponsoring the contestants are kind of simple minded and shallow. Furthermore, they don't really trust each other as the peace accord binding their armies is fragile. Does someone want to sabotage this entire pageant? If so, why? Xena discovers that the contestants each have their own reasons for being in the pageant. Some are doing it to please their wealthy boyfriends/sponsors, and others are doing it with the hopes of winning so that they can help feed their home villages. The recent war was long and put a great burden on the communities represented by the contestants.
The pageant begins and everyone is doing very well. However, Gabrielle is in the recurring meetings of the sponsors between pageant performances, and she knows that patience is wearing thin. War could easily break out if any of the sponsors feels as though his contestant was unfairly robbed of the crown. Xena saves the day when a sabotage attempt nearly kills a contestant on stage, and she realizes that it was the host of the pageant who wanted to end the peace. He had been making good money during the war, but the peace accord ended that. In his failed attempt to kill Xena he is overheard by the various sponsors who were tied up and hidden in the room so as to hear his confession. Xena and Gabrielle save the day, and the contestants decide to step down and not compete against each other. Their hearts were not in it, and they wanted to be honest with themselves and everyone else.
NOTES
Xena protects the identity of a man playing a woman in the pageant; a big moment for network tv in 1997. Salmoneus does a good job singing while hosting the pageant, and Gabrielle has a convincing accent while playing the Marquessa. Lucy Lawless is a previous winner of the Miss New Zealand contest, and it shows in her performance as Miss Amphipolis
Enter: Miss Messini, Doge of Messini, Miss Artiphys
1 out of 2 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
