In which Stan gets lucky, Prince gets the shaft and Kai gets a new lease on life.
(U.S. premiere September 15, 2000)
Written by Paul Donovan and Lex Gigeroff
Directed by Chris Bould
| The Dance of Love and Death |
BUNNY: I bet I could make you aroused.KAI: I have not been aroused for 6,000 years.BUNNY: Boy, you must be really frustrated.KAI: The dead do not get frustrated. The dead do not have wants. The dead are simply dead.
BUNNY: You're so weird. |
BUNNY: That's a neat trick. Do other parts of you perform that well?XEV: No. Other "parts" do not perform at all. You'll have to get your satisfaction elsewhere.KAI: Likewise, Xev. |
XEV: He wants to get girls in bed. And since most girls, even those with highly accelerated libidos, do not want to go to bed with him, Stanley Tweedle is constantly looking for planets where the girls don't care who he is. |
GUEST STARS
Ralph Brown -- Duke
Jeff Pustil -- Fifi
Nigel Bennett -- Prince
Anna Kathrin Bleuler -- May
WHAT HAPPENED
Kai watches as the players of Gametown take to the court, blissfully unaware of the doom that is about to rain down upon them. Duke and Fifi lead a flight of moths in an attack against the city. The invaders keep outside the range of both the players' arrows and Kai's brace.
The attackers pick off the players one by one. With his dying breath, the leader of Gametown asks Kai to look after Bunny (the woman with whom Kai showered last episode). He tells the assassin, "She's in love with you."
As Gametown falls, one of Duke's ships flies too close to the burning city. Kai catches the moth with his brace, defenestrates the pilots, and takes over the ship. Duke orders his troops to return to Fire. Kai and Bunny return to the Lexx. (spoilers)
ANALYSIS
Now it can be told. As was hinted at in past episodes, the inhabitants of Fire and Water had lives elsewhere prior to their arrival on these planets. That's why Kai recognized Fifi last week. It wasn't just a case of the casting an actor in a different role. Fifi seems familiar because his soul is the soul of someone Kai met four thousand years in the past.
Fire and Water are where people go when they die. From what we've seen thus far, it appears that Fire is the destination for those who lived unredeemable lives while Water -- with its abundant food supplies, friendly natives and cities devoted to leisure and apparently consequence-free sex -- is the reward that awaits those who lived lives of virtue.
Thus, Kai's heroic sacrifice in the battle against His Shadow earned him a place on Water. Although his body and consciousness have walked the galaxy for millennia, some part of him -- and for the sake of convenience, why not call it his soul -- transcended the death of his body.
Similarly, Prince came back after May shot him because Fire and Water are where everyone goes -- even the people of Fire and Water -- when they die. This explains Duke's reaction to Prince's second demise in three episodes (the first was of course in "May"). Alive, Prince can be controlled, or at least contained. Dead, he will pop up someplace else, most likely someplace that will prove inconvenient to Duke's goal of total domination of two worlds.
This also seems to explains why Boomtown sex doesn't lead to reproduction. Although Fire and Water are places of life after death, it isn't possible for the dead -- even the flesh-and-blood living dead -- to conceive new life. Birth is something that happens outside the Fire and Water system. The only way to be born onto these planets is to die somewhere else.
Granted, this doesn't explain what happens to children who suffer untimely deaths. Perhaps they are exempted from the implied judgment process that consigns other souls to Fire or Water. Perhaps there is a plane beyond these worlds to which innocent souls gain automatic entry. Perhaps children simply congregate in their own Kidstown somewhere in the system. Whether the series will ever answer this question depends on how important the answer is to the unfolding story.
Since the women don't need to worry about conception, it's not surprising that there was a whole lotta shakin' goin' on in this episode. Even if Water isn't a literal heaven, it's as close as Stan is ever likely to get. Boomtown is the place he's been searching for since the destruction of the Cluster.
WHAT WE LEARN
The dead don't float
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Where has the living Kai been all this time?
Where will Prince turn up next?
Is May gone for good?
Will the Lexx's orbit begin decaying soon?
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK
It's up, up and away when Stan, Xev and the two Kais take a ride over Fire in a "Gondola".
Enjoying the third season of Lexx? Aren't you glad it got a fourth? Let the editor know how you feel.
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