In Sickness and in Hell
Written by Adam Armus and Nora Kay Foster
Directed by Josh Becker
Suffering an array of physical ailments, Xena and Gabrielle battle a Scythian army.
Tropes
- Chekhov's Gag: Joxer's awful cooking ends up defeating the bad guys.
- Everyone Has Standards: After the job is done, Joxer gets paid 500 dinars, but he just can't take money from poor villagers. He tells them to use it for developing and improving the village instead.
- Got Me Doing It: Xena treating Argo as more than just a horse starts to rub off on Gabrielle.Xena: You don't know how moody she can be. She doesn't open up to you.
Gabrielle: She doesn't like me, does she? What is it? Is it my personality? What? My hair color? [realizing] The fact that I talk about her like she's a real person? - Heroic BSoD: Xena over Argo letting someone else (particularly the head of the Scythians) ride her.
- Irony: Xena reflects on Joxer defeating an army of ruthless warriors without shedding a single drop of blood.
- Lethal Chef: Joxer. He manages to make life even worse for Xena and Gabrielle making it difficult for them to fight. It later comes in handy as he gets all the Scythians sick from his food.
- Mundane Utility: The Chakram as a backscratcher.
- Killer Rabbit: Gabrielle thought hunting rabbits would be easy. The one rabbit she does find ends up being this, even biting her ear at one point.
- Self-Deprecation: The villagers denounce Joxer's song, calling the meter awful.
- Shout-Out: To South Park of all things, when Xena kills a louse one of the others complains about her having killed Kenny and another calls her a bitch.
- Sick Episode
- Something We Forgot: Argo was left behind early on in the first episode of the season and otherwise not talked about. This episode is about reuniting her, with Xena acknowledging how she's never been separated from her for so long.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Xena frets that Argo is willingly with the Scythians out of anger for being left behind for so long. It turns out Argo just wanted apples, much to Xena's irritation.
