xenainnuendoisland:

This is the kind of ridiculous stuff the Xena crew had to work against. 

And in this same interview, Rob talks about how they were told that Xena was not going to be a romance betwee two women. And therefore they intentionally threw various male characters at the ladies every other episode to keep the studio happy. Which explains the boy-of-the-week format season 1 seemed to have. 

Lucy says in this interview that if something risked being censored, then they hid it in the subtext.