"Love Grows"
Airdate: January 21, 2000

Mistaking the accidental transmission of a porn video for a mayday from a planet full of horny women, Stan sends the Lexx after the signal causing the crash of a intergalactic truck carrying a cargo of hazardous waste. Mistaking the crippled vessel for food, the Lexx consumes it and things start to get weird. Mistaking the Lexx for a big bug, the now infected crew of the other ship just barely manage to escape being digested. Mistaking hokey for entertaining, the writer of this episode used stereotypical gender roles to amuse the viewer.

Now that was the biggest mistake of all.

While researching Lexx on the web I came across an interesting phenomena. It seems that there are a cadre of women out there who adore Kai (Michael McManus). More than one has even spent what looks like considerable time and effort to maintaining sites devoted to him and the show. From what I've seen on the series so far though, Kai seems to be nothing more than a plot device. He does whatever is necessary to either solve the silly dilemma of the episode ("Love Grows" and "The Nook") or pulls everyone's asses out of the fire ("LuvLiner") and then he goes back into cryogenic sleep.

But no matter how pretty the packaging -- and without that Flock of Seagull's `do Michael McManus ain't half bad -- plot device does not an obsession deserve.

Of course according to Rated Lexx and from what I've seen of these sites and their screen captures, Kai was involved in a complex set of events that led to his "dead guy" status. The problem lies in the fact that the episodes that The Sci Fi Channel has decided to air first relegate his backstory to some far distant memory. My conclusion must therefore be that what could possibly be a more cerebral avenue of Lexx storytelling has been ignored in favor of the pouting, purring, and posturing of the oversexed, and yet still helpless, Xev.

Right down to the cheesy music, Lexx seems to have traded what could have been a wellspring of rich and complex stories for the porn factor. And no, there's nothing wrong with sex or admitting that humans (and whatever these characters are supposed to be) do in fact have needs, it is just that... Well, how do I put this? Porn is stupid and boring.

Someone needs to remind the creators of Lexx and The Sci Fi Channel of a tried and true adage: stimulate a woman's brain and she'll always come back for more.

-- Linda M. Najera

Lexx airs at 10pm EST, Fridays on The Sci Fi Channel.

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