Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 02 (1996)

Season two of Xena: Warrior Princess is noteworthy for several reasons, though two of these stand out above all the rest. The first was the promotion to full "regular" status of the series' principal comedy-relief character, a bumbling wannabe warrior named Joxer (Ted Raimi), who had previously shown up in the first-season installment "Callisto." The second occurred during the two-part adventure "Destiny"/"The Quest," in which heroine Xena (Lucy Lawless) actually died and was brought back to life -- one of several termination-resurrection scenarios which would proliferate in the seasons to come. A potential series-threatening crisis occurred in October 1996, when star Lucy Lawless fell from a horse during a publicity stunt staged for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Suffering a broken pelvis, the actress was forced to sit out several weeks of shooting, necessitating the hastily written episodes "Intimate Stranger" and "Ten Little Warlords," in which Xena's mind and soul was briefly "possessed" by the body of her arch-enemy Callisto (Hudson Leick). Deftly balancing dead-serious episodes (especially those wherein the usually pacifistic Gabrielle [Renee O'Connor] would toy with the notion of learning how to kill her enemies) with delightful excursions into comedy and whimsy (notably "Here She Comes? Miss Amphipolis" and "A Comedy of Eros"), Xena: Warrior Princess wrapped up its second season with 22 highly-rated installments. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi