It’s hard to remember now, but in the 90s Xena: Warrior Princess was a force to be reckoned with. Basically a mash-up of history and ancient mythology, the show was shot in New Zealand, and had that otherworldly feeling that worked even more effectively in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. It also had a (mostly) unspoken lesbian “subtext” between the two stars of the show, which gave it a nice “Batman & Robin” quality.
Somewhere in the depths of the third season (1998) they decided to go for the musical episode. As the Buffy episode would do, a few years later, the musical was used as a way to break the tensions that had been building up between the main characters over the last few years.
It also had some good, old-fashioned dance numbers:
