Production #106: Duel with a Stranger

Writer: Elizabeth Keyishian Director: Richard Martin Cast: Cristián de la Fuente (Antonio) Eduardo Recabarren (Pietro)

"Duel with a Stranger" provided a brooding, handsome love interest for Señorita Tessa Alvarado, but a deadly adversary for the Queen of Swords. The inherent tension in this conflict of interests fueled scenarios that would have been overly melodramatic in a purely American setting. Fortunately, however, the Spanish Colonial ambience is forgiving of a little more emotional flamboyance in depicting Tessa's doomed romance.

The doom was inevitable, of course, as a distaff version of Bonanza's "Little Joe syndrome" of dead fiancés. A little more suprising, perhaps, was Marta's vehemence when she urged Tessa to shoot Antonio (Christian de la Fuente). If the gypsy had managed to get her hands on a pistol, she might have been the one to remove the threat to her ward's secret identity, but Captain Grisham took the honors instead. The intensity of the resulting death scene provided Tessie Santiago with some solid material for emoting, and she delivered. Unfortunately, she is still limited in her ability to infuse more ordinary scenes with a range of subtle emotion.

My primary complaint with the episode centers on the decision to cater to a modern sensibility in depicting Tessa's romance. The flashback scene of a young Tessa petting with her fiance was a jarring anachronism.

A series like Xena: Warrior Princess, which takes place in some mythical landscape lost in antiquity, can exercise unfettered license in the behavior of the women characters. However, the historical setting of the early 1800s is recent enough that many viewers will be aware of the cultural taboos that would not allow such unsupervised liberties between an unmarried woman and a man. A woman's honor was of paramount importance in a patriarchal society as sexually repressive as Roman Catholic Spain. Tessa would have seriously endangered her reputation by remaining in the company of a young man without the presence of a chaperone. And I have a hard time believing that Marta — shown to be so jealously protective of Tessa's welfare — could be bribed, or ordered, into endangering her ward's virginal status.

This isn't the peevish complaint of a pedant more concerned with verisimilitude than drama. Quite the contrary. The show is squandering a powerful story dynamic through such lazy pandering to contemporary sexual mores. Showing Tessa hemmed in by the restrictions of her society would heighten the contrast with her liberated actions as the Queen of Swords. Such freedom of movement, especially unregulated contact with men, would have much more impact if it was juxtaposed against Tessa's concessions to propriety. Not to mention that it would add depth and complexity to her motivations for taking on this heroic persona.

Changing Zorro from a man to a female Queen of Swords involves more than just a simple change of pronouns in the scripts. The short-sighted view is to consider the realities of Tessa's situation as an impediment to story telling, but the truth is that this gender-switch opens the door to unexplored creative territory — if the writers are sufficiently clever to take advantage of the opportunity.

Unfortunately — as presented in "Duel with a Stranger" in particular and the series in general — Tessa's assumption of the Queen of Swords role comes off more as a fashion choice than an explosive rebellion against repressive cultural expectations. Which brings me back to the limitations of Tessie Santiago. The decision to cast the lead role with an inexperienced actor, presumbaly based at least in part on her admitted visual appeal, implies that a significant concern of the producers was providing eye candy to the young male demographic of their audience. Ignoring the dramatic potential inherent in the title character reinforces the perception of a lack of serious intent in creating a heroine as the protagonist.

Buffy's Joss Whedon is a master at exploring the ramifications of portraying a heroine instead of a hero, and the Fireworks producers would do well to study his approach. On the other hand, Tessa is not Xena or Buffy, and attempts to mimic the camp contemporary sensibilities of those shows feels distinctly out of place on The Queen of Swords, which has more in common with reality-based Westerns than it does with the tongue-in-cheek fantasy genre. In order to forge its own identity, the series should go with its strengths — one of which is the rich Spanish culture of the 1800s. Let the Queen persona provide the audience with a focus for contemporary sympathies, but make Tessa Alvarado a believable anchor with this historical past.

—Carmen Carter