In which Stan tries to fulfill the bargain he made with Prince and Kai shoots some hoops.
(U.S. premiere September 8, 2000)
Written by Paul Donovan and Lex Gigeroff
Directed by Bill Fleming
| Love and Hot Showers |
790: I'll die if you leave me.KAI: Then we will have something in common. |
KAI: What's your name?
BUNNY: Bunny.XEV: Who is Bunny?KAI: A naked young woman. |
790: I care about Mr. Death-o-licious. |
GUEST STARS
Nigel Bennett - Prince
Ralph Brown - Duke
Anna Kathrin Bleuler - May
Jeff Pustil - Fifi
WHAT HAPPENED
790 scans May in an attempt to explain her miraculous return from the dead. Stan is evasive when Xev and Kai ask him how May's resurrection was possible.
Xev presses Stan on the details of May's return. He tells them he was dreaming his rationalization of his deal with Prince and when he woke up, "she was better." Kai and Xev believe Stan's explanation does not make sense.
Stan tells May about his "dream." He insists, "Anything that happened in that dream wasn't real. Anything Prince said wasn't real. Anything that I agreed to wasn't real. So I don't have to pay any attention to it, do I?"
As Stan completes his chain of rationalization, May's wound acts up. Is this confirmation that Stan is bound by the terms of his deal? (spoilers)
ANALYSIS
There is a fundamental problem with episodes like "Gametown". The conflict and tension in the episode stemmed entirely from the fact of the main characters acting uncharacteristically dumb.
There was no reason aside from the minor detail that episode would otherwise have been about eighteen minutes long for Stan and Xev to spend so much time dancing around one another. Had either one of them spoken honestly about what was going on, they might have been quicker to realize that they had both been played from the beginning.
At the very least, Stan would not have gone through the motions of trying to destroy Water not once but twice.
The entire "but Prince is dead" argument is a sham. These people regularly do at least six impossible things before breakfast is his resurrection so hard to believe?
It's understandable that Stan would convince himself that he only made his deal in a dream so as to assuage the pangs of conscience he felt at the thought of destroying an inhabited world. Even so, the crew has survived so many life and death situations Stan even had his own heart punctured once that miraculous recoveries are just business as usual.
Besides, Stan and Xev hang out with a dead guy. That has to expand their outlook.
Brain dead
Speaking of the dead guy, if Stan and Xev were uncharacteristically dumb, then Kai was downright moronic. First of all, he completely dropped the ball when Stan asked him about "hypothetically" destroying a planet.
Kai's dialogue made it seem that the assassin knew precisely what Stan was really asking. Given that the character has demonstrated a strong moral center in the past, one imagines Kai should be able to offer Stan some perspective on the sacrifice the captain is contemplating.
If Kai's silence wasn't bad enough, the things he said when his mouth was open were even worse.
He was very casual about explaining the secrets of the moth breeders and the ships to a total stranger. By this time experience should have taught Kai the value of restraint.
How many times have the crew explained the Lexx to total strangers only to have the strangers turn around and try to steal the ship? If Kai needs to be that dumb to keep the plot going, then more thought needed to go into the script.
WHAT WE LEARN
790 now believes that his human brain fragment came from a woman. He justifies this by claiming, "deep inside this hard metal casing lies a burning passion that only a woman could feel for a man."
Xev's ability to roll at great speed comes from her cluster lizard side.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
What will Stans "reward" be?
REALITY CHECK
In "Super Nova", the Lexx extracted mineral nutrients from a planetary surface. In this episode, the ship claims it can eat all kinds of organic material. Have its dietary needs changed?
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK
As the Water-Fire conflict begins to boil, Stan learns that you can get too much of a good thing in "Boomtown".
Has the third
Lexx series converted you? The editor wants to know.
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