For years I thought Married with Fishsticks was one of the worst episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, but having rewatched and reflected on it, I see something else.

What once looked like pointless nonsense now feels like one of the strangest, most subversive episodes of the series. In fact, I’ve come to read it as Gabrielle’s queer feminist nightmare; a hallucination where she’s forced into Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique.

When Gabrielle wakes up in this fishy suburban dreamworld, she’s saddled with a “husband” she doesn’t know or want. She’s expected to smile, cook, fit in, and keep up appearances for the neighbors. The whole thing is played with a laugh-track energy, but it’s suffocating in a way that feels intentional. This is Friedan’s “problem with no name”, the malaise of being told that housewifery and marriage are the pinnacle of fulfilment, even when they feel empty. Only here, it’s played as absurdist parody.

By Season 5, Gabrielle’s life with Xena is the heart of the show. Their partnership, romantic, even if coyly unspoken on 90s TV, was about adventure, choice, and freedom. So when Gabrielle is forced into a suburban nuclear family fantasy, the wrongness is glaring. The audience knows this isn’t her truth. She belongs on the road with Xena, writing her own story, not stuck in a sitcom where her identity is reduced to that of “wife"

What might seem to be goofy nonsense, I now see as intentional satire, this isn’t Gabrielle’s dream. It’s her nightmare.

The late 90s were still a cautious time for queer representation on television. Same-sex intimacy was implied through subtext, longing looks, and emotional depth rather than spoken aloud. Xena played that game masterfully.

And here’s the sly trick of Married with Fishsticks, the sitcom conventions were so straight, so domestically “proper,” that they became a parody of the very world mainstream TV normally upheld. What censors might have seen as goofy comedy, queer viewers could recognize as critique.

When Gabrielle finally wakes from the fishy fantasy, she shrugs it off. The whole experience is dismissed as nonsense, and she returns to the reality that matters, her bond with Xena.

That’s why I’ve come to appreciate this episode. For me, it’s not bad comedy anymore; it’s a surreal queer feminist nightmare. Gabrielle is forced to live the heteronormative script and finds it hollow, uncanny, and false. Waking up means choosing her real life, her chosen love, her authentic self.

The episode feels like a like a strange little parable about the dangers of heteronormativity & compulsory heterosexuality. The Mystique isn’t happiness. Living her truth with Xena is.