This is Salmoneus’s last scene on Hercules the Legendary Journeys: “ Genies & Grecians & Geeks, Oh My!” ( Note the Wizard of Oz reference!). Sal was peddling art to a sultan. He wears a beret, now that he’s in the art world. He get strapped by a genie in a magic lamp with Autolycus the thief. Sal makes a wish that harkens back to one of his earlier eps, when he goes into the self-actualization business, in The Outcast (co-starring Lucy Lawless). There, he just wants to be “the best Sal I can be”, & make money hand over fist helping people.

 Here, he wishes for self-improvement, which conjures up 3 versions of himself. In the final scene, he & Autolycus manage to escape, & as they leave, Sal says to. Autolycus: “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship!” They each consider the implications of that, grimace, then slip away in opposite directions. This aired Oct 1998, & the final Herc ep ever aired a year later. During that time, it was joked on the show that Sal was arrested for tax fraud, & that gave me the idea of having Sal return as the object of Livia’s contempt, 21 years later. Sal’s final quote is a quote from “ Casablanca”, so it’s fitting that he’s exiled to Cyprus, which on Hercules, is a stand in for both Paris (given the Aphrodite connection & the use of similar letters), & the West African city of Casablanca. 

It appeared on only one ep, “We’ll Always Have Cyprus,” (another Casablanca  homage!) in which the city looks very much like a Moroccan milieu. To me, it’s a nice closure for the character. 

In my alt history of this show, Sal’s next appearance is over a year after his last one, the first of a trilogy where he reconnects with a character he previously met, & later becomes his wife.

Next week, I’ll discuss how I view canon on #Xena & #HerculesTheLegendaryJourneys