Redux written by Chris Carter and directed by R.W. Goodwin
What’s it about: A dull lecture that boils down this show to
it’s most basic form.
Trust No-One: In a way the cliffhanger isn’t a con because
it looks as though Mulder genuinely was going to kill himself and on a well
timed phone call prevented him from doing so. Whilst this makes the idea behind
the cliffhanger more real (I genuinely thought it was one big lie conceived to
allow Mulder to investigate under a cover of anonymity) it also shows him to be
a moral coward, looking for the easy way out because his work has been proven
(rather limply considering it isn’t true) to be built on a lie.
Brains’n’Beauty: More bollocks admissions from Scully that
science is her salvation, her all encompassing religion, her life, her best
friend and her lover. Okay I exaggerate but it is continually pushed to the
forefront to the point that it is supposedly the only interesting thing about
her. Which isn’t the case.
Assistant Director: Why on Earth is Scully lying to Skinner?
Hasn’t this man done enough to prove himself to her? Doesn’t this make a
mockery of the journey we have gone on with these three characters? We’ve been
on a dance of trust with Mulder, Scully and Skinner ever since the end of the
first season and I finally thought we had come to some kind of conclusion of
their narrative of distrust. Apparently not. It looks like it will be brought
out of the closet and dusted down every time a mythology episode needs padding
out.
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘Your lying is on record, Agent Scully’
‘And what about yours?’ ‘As you compound the lies, you compound the
consequences for them’ ‘All lies lead to the truth, isn’t that right?’ ‘And
what about your lie, Agent Scully? What does that lead to?’ ‘The Truth!’ – at
this point I think that Carter is so used to the words ‘Lies’ and ‘Truth’ that
he just has his characters repeat them ad nauseum until it sounds like
something profound is happening. This is a particularly horrendous example. Even
Gillian Anderson looks humiliated.
The Good: There’s a beat of truthful characterisation when
the Smoking Man inspects Mulder’s apartment and finds a picture of him and his
sister as children. Emotions flash across his face from regret to sadness.
The Bad: What is up with the perpetual voiceovers that stain
this episode with mediocrity? They fail to add any depth because the dialogue
is so functional and informative and the actors sound as bored saying the lines
as we are listening to them adding up to an atmosphere of tedium when the show
should be going for the jugular. A voiceover is helpful sometimes if you want
to bridge two scenes and explain how a show makes a narrative leap (it’s still
not ideal but it at least it has a purpose) but Carter wallpapers this episode
with so much intimate exposition I can only assume that he had little or no
plot for this filling episode (the real meat is in the two installments either
side) that he had to fill the time with endless moments of therapy for the characters.
It is entirely the wrong note to get the season off on, looking inward into
these (apparently) self indulgent characters (are these really their thoughts?)
when we should be catapulted into the new year with something attention
grabbing and exciting. The thought of Mulder wandering around a bunch of
government corridors to find a cure for Scully’s cancer fills me with horror.
How could Carter possibly boil down what has been one of the most deftly
handled character arcs in the show to something quite this banal and
simplistic? Why would the existence of the cure be prove the certainty that
Mulder has believed in a lie from the start? Why couldn’t the government have
been performing tests on people and have the cure for cancer and be working
with aliens?
Moment to Watch Out For: Unbelievably the cliffhanger is
that Mulder has put us through this incessant hour of tedium to obtain
de-ionised water from the government facility. Does that mean we have to go
through this all over again?
Orchestra: How dull is Snow’s music in this? He is as bored
as the director, the actors and the audience. Everybody is feeding Carter’s ego
at this point and just getting through his yawnsome script so we can move on to
something more interesting.
Mythology: ‘Level four is a biological quarantine wing.
It houses a series of labs and medical facilities in an elaborate system for
the storage of vast quantities of DNA’ ‘DNA from whom?’ ‘Virtually every
American born since 1945. Every immigrant, every indigenous person who’s given
blood to a government Doctor. This is what I told you. This is the hoax into
which you have been drawn. The roots go back 50 years to the end of World War
II playing on a national appetite for bogus revelation. And a public newly
fearful of the atom bomb. The US military fanned the flames of what were called
“flying saucer” stories. There are truths which can kill a nation. The military
needed something to deflect attention away from its arms strategy: global
domination through the capability of total enemy annihilation. The nuclear card
was fine as long as we alone could play it but the generals knew they could not
win a public-relations war. Those photos from Hiroshima were not faces the
Americans wanted to see in a mirror. Oppenheimer knew it but we silenced him.
When the Russians developed the bomb, the fear in the military was an
armistice. The business of America isn’t business, it’s war. Since Antietam
nothing has driven the economy faster. We needed a reason to keep spending
money, if there wasn’t a war to justify it then we called it war anyway. The
Cold War was essentially a 50 year public relations battle. A pitched game of
chicken against an enemy that we only called names. The communists called us a
few names too. And the public believed it. After what McCarthy had done they
eat it with a big spoon. We squared off a few times in Cuba, Korea and Vietnam.
Nobody dropped the bomb, Nobody dared’ ‘What does all this have to do with
flying saucers?’ ‘The US military saw a good thing in ’47 when the Roswell
story broke. The more we denied it, the more people believed it was true.
Aliens had landed: a made to order cover story for generals looking to develop
the nation war chest. They brought in college professors and congressmen, fed
them enough bogus facts fuzzy photos and eyewitnesses that they believe it,
too. I can’t tell you how fortuitous the timing was. You know when the first
supersonic flight was? 1947. Soon every experimental aircraft being flown was a
UFO sighting. When the abduction stories started up, it was too perfect. We’d
almost gotten caught up in Korea, an ambitious misstep. China and Soviets knew
it’ ‘Germ warfare. We were accused of using it on the Koreans’ ‘It was
developmental then. Nothing like what the Russians have now. The bio weapons
used in the Gulf War were so ingenious as to be undetectable. Developed in this
very building’ ‘And all these reports of abductions have been lies?’ ‘Not lies
exactly, but citizens taken and unsuspecting and tested. A classified military
project above top secret and still ongoing.’ Absolutely hideous!
Not least because I have had to type out all of this pretentious claptrap! I’m
not sure which bugs me more; that this info dump is lumped together right in
the middle of this episode where you desperately need something to happen, that
Chris Carter has abandoned the show-don’t-tell approached and fallen into full
on paranoia lecture mode, that the dialogue is absolutely hideous and would
trip up a sophisticated performer let alone the cardboard cut out who has to
get this mouthful out or that there are germs of good ideas in this everlasting
speech (such as the government using aliens as a cover for getting on with
something even more hideous or the Cold War being one long PR stunt to allow
the government to continue spending money on weapons research) that are wasted
because after a few minutes you switch off and stop listening and just let the
pretty flashbacks wash over you. Had Mulder discovered all of these facts
through a well paced and plotted narrative with the revelations having personal
consequences for him and Scully then the effect would be quite different. I
might have been able to buy into the ideas that are driving season five (and
let’s be honest they are only going down this aliens-are-fake cul de sac
because they have to delay any progress in the mythology arc because the movie
– which has already been filmed – is set between season five and six and thus
they have to stall until we reach that point). This is so appallingly handled
I’m surprised an insulted audience didn’t abandon the show in droves (they hung
around waiting for the next monster of the week episode). The way that
Kritschgau is taken off by the government after he has gotten this phenomenally
awful amount of exposition out just goes to show that’s all he was there for.
His work is done, the episode no longer needs him. He wasn’t a character, he
was a walking repository of information for the audience.
Redux II written by Chris Carter and directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: Will Scully’s cancer ever be cured?
Trust No-One: Mulder gives Scully a gentle kiss when they
are re-united and I was reminded of one of the main reasons that I enjoy
watching this series. It was like Carter had forgotten that Mulder and
Scully are the beating heart of this show. He gently strokes her hair as she
asks him to lay the blame of the murder in his apartment on her since she is
dying anyway. It’s lovely stuff. Mulder and Bill Scully are coming at Scully’s
illness from two very different directions – Mulder is trying to fight to save
her whilst Bill has already given up and is waiting for her to die with
dignity. To be fair both approaches are valid, if Mulder hadn’t managed to save
her then it would have been feeding her with false hope. When Mulder dangles a
carrot of hope in front of her, Bill snaps and it takes his sister to calm
everybody down and remind them that they are working for the same goal. When
Bill points out that he has already lost one sister to Mulder’s cause his
irrational behaviour suddenly makes more sense. Melissa’s murder was a direct
consequence of Scully’s work with Mulder and whilst he isn’t responsible for
outside elements or for Scully’s assignment to The X-Files it is his cause
which moved in that direction and manoeuvred Melissa to be in the wrong place
at the wrong time. ‘Has it been worth it?’ is what Mulder is asked and
all he can answer apologetically is ‘no.’ Duchovny plays these scenes
really well because there is some kind of emotional truth to them. Compare to
his reaction to being reunited with his sister (again) and even the actor can’t
quite bring himself to invest in the idea because it has been proven false over
and over. When he is asked to almost break down before her, it smacks of an
acting trying to overcome his natural prejudice to the material. Again compare
that to the quiet moment when Mulder breaks down at Scully’s bedside whilst she
is sleeping – Duchovny looks physically pained during the scene as though
thought of losing Scully is too much for Mulder to bear. As an acknowledgement
of how close they have become there is no finer moment. Mulder wouldn’t be able
to live with himself if Scully took the fall for him in her death.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Let me at least give some meaning to
what’s happening to me…’
The Bad: Poor Don S. Williams. He’s a man of fine acting
talent but you would never be able to tell when he takes part in an X-Files
episode because he is forced to speak the most pompous dialogue whilst staring
into the middle distance and pretending to be menacing and powerful. It doesn’t
come off because we have never seen the real power that the men involved in the
Syndicate have or what the conspiracy is that they are involved in. In fact
most of the time they are running scared, worried about the work of one man who
nobody pays any attention to. It’s hard to be scary when you’re always looking
so afraid. When the Smoking Man turns up with Mulder’s sister it is hard to
feel anything but bored. Haven’t we done this already? Twice? How many times
can these cards keep being dealt? As soon as she turned up I was trying to
think of how many ways she could be immediately written out which involved her
turning out to be clone, killed or Mulder taking a dose of mind altering drugs.
Whatever happened I knew this wouldn’t turn out to be the real deal, which perhaps
it should have done because five years into a show you should be developing the
premise and the motives of the main characters rather than coasting with the
same mysteries touted in the first year.
Pre Titles Sequence: Blimey, there is more passion in the
first scene of this episode than existed across the entirety of the first part.
Carter has figured a few things out; one – that we need to see Scully suffering
from the cancer that Mulder is fighting to find the cure for in order to make
the fight count, two – that Mulder and Scully need to be seen together for this
show to really work, three – the characters need to interact with each other to
produce the best results (no sign of a voiceover in the pre-titles sequence)
and four – there needs to be a believable personal stake in the drama in order
to make the journey worthwhile (Mulder shows more concern towards Scully in two
minutes worth of material that was entirely absent during the laborious
voiceovers last week). It is as though Carter has suddenly woken up and
realised how drama actually works (why he should have forgotten when the
produced episodes such as Duane Barry and Irresistible in the past baffles me).
Orchestra: Finally Snow is given something to work. He adds
a real touch of delicacy to the scenes of Scully’s crisis of faith.
Result: Aside from Mulder obtaining the micro chip the
middle part of this trilogy was almost entirely redundant since this picks up
the threads that were left hanging in Gethsemane without a thought for all the
nonsense that was touted last week (and to be honest the way the Smoking Man approaches
Mulder he could have simply handed him the chip and prevent the 45 minutes
snooze-fest that bridges the book ending episodes). There’s a lot that’s wrong with Redux II (the Skinner problem,
the umpteenth return of Samantha, Don S. Williams’ lack of presence) but unlike
it’s predecessor it gets an awful lot right too including giving Mulder a
personal stake in his quest to find the cure for Scully’s cancer, giving
Scully’s family a powerful presence and reminding us why these characters are
worth giving a damn about (a clue, it has nothing to do with lengthly
monologues). I’m still unconvinced by this newfound aliens-are-fake angle that
the show is taking but I understand why they had to do that because of the
movie. Essentially season five is one long cul de sac now, and the show has to
stall until the movie can push things along. It comes as no surprise to me that
they shy away from the central aspects of the conspiracy story this season.
When it comes to the characters though, this is excellent and Anderson and
Duchovny is particular do some of their best ever work as both Scully and
Mulder finally face up to the idea that she might die of cancer despite their
efforts to fight it. Kim Manners direction is superb, especially of the more
intimate scenes but his pacing is more dynamic than R.W. Goodwin’s last week
too. The dramatic final five minutes are so strong they almost manage to make
up for the stodgy running around at the heart of this trilogy of episodes: 7/10
Unusual Suspects written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: Who were the Lone Gunmen before
they became Mulder’s confidantes?
Trust No-One: We’re introduced to a young, enthusiastic,
naïve and fairly incompetant Mulder who has yet to season, so unencumbered by
paranoia and conspiracy theories that he is a complete revelation. It goes to
show just how fun the character could be if he wasn’t saddled to this series’
myth arc. Could it possibly be that Mulder’s mistrustful behaviour is not
linked to a secret government plot that has robbed him of his sister but the
exposure to an insidious gas that gets under your skin and makes you fearful of
everyone and everything? Even suggesting the idea is the sort of cheek and
expression of confidence I love. It’s the sort of thing that Buffy does all the
time and only Darin Morgan and Vince Gilligan dare to play these kinds of games
when writing The X-Files.
The Lone Gunmen: What a curiosity The Lone Gunmen have
turned out to be. I find them a peculiar success despite the fact that I
sometimes find them extremely annoying. Introduced in the first season as
paranoid associates of Mulder, they haven’t ever really been developed beyond
that brief and have turned up at the appropriate times to provide technical
assistance and some quirky humour. They often give the mythology episodes a
real boost (although they have been used quite sparingly of late I have
noticed). This is the first time they have been frontrunners for the show, a
useful fallback whilst Duchovny and Anderson are off filming the movie. On the
strength of this episode you can see why Carter might have thought that a spin
off series featuring the three geeks would be a hit because they take to the
limelight like ducks to water. At least here. Like I said, surprising.
Frohike s my favourite of the three but I often find that he
is written to be the most likable of the bunch, with the filthiest humour and
attitude that mimics one of my closest friends’ short man syndrome. His and Langley’s
rivalry over who can provide the best bootleg cable stuck a smile on my face.
The only one that I cannot get on with on a regular basis is
Langly who strikes me as the worst excesses of geek hood in human form. Every
time he opens his mouth I want to stuff something fist sized inside, his mock
anger is wearying and I hate the way he always thinks he is right in that
pigeon holed way that geeks do when their dander is up. He’s the sort of person
that would hack into government files for something as facile as gaining access
to disabled parking areas.
The Good: The Usual Suspects is one of my favourite
films. As a piece of misdirection it is yet to be topped, as a modern day
nourish thriller it is beautifully directed and as a performance piece it
provides its cast with their best parts to date. It’s a remarkable piece of non
linear storytelling too. For The X-Files to rip off such a film means that
better know what they are doing and having the Lone Gunmen come together in a
police cell (aping the opening sequences of the film) is just inspired. The
non-linear storyline deployed here is fun too with the episode explaining how
it made it to the bizarre scenario that kick started events. Staging a ‘how the
Lone Gunmen met Mulder’ episode was a great idea and when he finally turns up
in the episode it is a triumphant moment as you realise that the foundations of
their friendship are about to be built. There are some lovely concessions to
the fact that this is set in the eighties from the quaint blocky space invaders
that Byers’ colleague is playing to the massive mobile phone that Mulder
sports. The Dungeons and Dragons sequence that plays out like a sinister game
of poker in a smoky, shadowy back room is really funny…I love how these guys
(especially Langly) take this game so seriously that they even look the part.
There is something quite delightful about meeting these guys (including Mulder)
before they are trapped in a paranoiac fantasy about the government, laughing
their heads off Scully-style at some of the conspiracy theories that are being
touted by Modeski. To be fair she does sound a little stir crazy until she
yanks a molar out of her mouth and shows how she is being tracked via one of
her teeth. The flashback appearance of Mr X is a firm reminder of how badly his
replacement is working out – if Marita whatsherface was half as menacing then
the mythology episodes might be in much better shape. Steven Williams does
silent menace so well.
The Bad: The ending just sort of…peters out to nothing.
Whereas the film has been building to its climax from its very first shot,
deceiving the audience from the word go it transpires that everything here is
exactly how it seems and the now we have seen how the Gunmen found each other
(and Mulder) they just head off together. I was waiting for something a bit
more juicy than Modeski being taking off by Mr X. That feels like the work of
Carter, not Gilligan. I know nothing about Homicide: Life on the Street
so the crossover did nothing to excite me but I can imagine for fans of both
shows this was something of a revelation.
Moment to Watch Out For: I doesn’t exactly take the work of
genius to figure out where The Lone Gunmen got their name from or that it had
something to do with JFK’s assassination but it doesn’t make the moment any
less sparkling when Mr X hands them their new cover on a platter.
Result: This is so cute that it practically leaps over the
fact that there isn’t a great deal of substance to the story or major
revelations to be had about the Lone Gunmen. It’s a simple story but after the
complexity of the last three mythology episodes that is something of a blessing
and a lot of the fun is in spotting the little details that have gone into
making this work (the suggested reason that Mulder began having paranoid
fantasies about aliens is worth the admission price alone). As a chance to hang
out with the Gunmen (and Mulder) before they are slaves to a paranoid fantasy
of governmental conspiracies it is fantastic fun and all four actors get to
play looser versions of the same characters that we are used to. Duchovny looks
especially funny with his 80s hairdo and happy trigger finger. The reason
Unusual Suspects works so well is exactly the same reason that The Lone Gunmen
TV show failed to ignite, it is a thrilling adventure to offset the usual
X-Files shtick. As soon as this became the template for a TV series it showed
itself up as a shallow, farcical sitcom…but that’s precisely what this episode
is aiming for as a one-off. Signy Coleman makes a particularly alluring femme
fatale and it is easy to see why they invited her back for a sequel (this isn’t
a show that often explores strong female characters when it has Scully at its
heart). The structure of the piece comes straight out of the movie of the same
name (they even mocked up a publicity photo that ripped off the movies
wholesale) although it does lack the audacious twist that made the film such a
delightful experience. Frivolous but highly refreshing: 8/10
What’s it about: A wander round the woods…
The Bad: Let me get this straight. They head out into the
jungle into a possibly perilous situation with no found, no way of finding
their way out without the guide (who – surprise surprise – is bumped off first)
and minimal weaponry. Similar scenes of being lost in the woods are played out
in Darkness Falls but in that episode they were tightly directed, acted with
conviction and the location was made to feel hostile and claustrophobic.
Gillian Anderson looks a little fed up when she tells Mulder that they are lost
without any sustenance or chance of finding a way out. It literally feels like
this is a ramble through the woods rather than a life or death situation. I
know the weather caused a production nightmare but this is technically the
first monster of the week tale of season five and everybody looks so
uninterested by the whole thing. Has this sub genre been exhausted? Bizarrely
the danger seems to be over before it has even begun and once Scully and Mulder
discover the nest of bodies they are rescued almost immediately. There is a
camera shot of the length of the forest that continues on up the trees as
though that is what has been menacing the agents throughout the episode. It’s
so utterly anti-climactic coming on the back of the body of an episode that has
so few surprises on offer you have to wonder if this really was the best that
Spotnitz could come up with. When the officer tells Mulder that he must be
making up his theory about evolved Spanish conquistadors it could just have
easily have been me aiming the same criticism at the writer. It just feels like
a throwaway explanation to give the piece some kind of closure but the audience
has in no way been lead to that being the answer to this strange affair. It
feels tacked on the worst possible way because we demand some kind of answer.
It’s a ‘that’ll do’ conclusion. The tacked on jeopardy at the climax baffled
me, especially the way it wasn’t resolved. Spotnitz implies that Scully could
have been in danger rather than actually going through with it which seems to
me to be a fitting epitaph for this episode.
Moment to Watch Out For: The one scene where Duchovny and
Anderson wake up as their extended chat in the woods and that is because for a
while they are able to engage in some meaningful discussion rather than going
through the motions chasing monsters. Their chemistry is so natural by this
point you could well believe that they were the best of friends behind the
scenes. Scully is right though. She really can’t carry a tune.
Detour written by Frank Spotnitz and directed by Brett
Dowler
Trust No-One: After all the heartache of the cancer arc it
seems odd to be wandering around the forest with Mulder and Scully again
looking for a supernatural nasty as if none of the previous character drama
ever happened. Perhaps this was deliberately nostalgic to express a
back-to-basics approach to go from something as heartbreakingly nuanced as
Redux II to something this simplistic feels a little discordant. This love
letter to season one coming after a buffer episode explaining the origins of
the Lone Gunmen feels like a step backwards somehow. I appreciated the chat in
the woods about Scully’s cancer but its interesting to note that once that is
mentioned it is quickly skipped over, like the writers wanted to acknowledge
that it did happen but also that they were moving on as quickly as possible to
new avenues. In this case who did you identify with the most in The
Flintstones.
Brains’n’Beauty: Hilariously Mulder and Scully are being
sent on one of those dreadful team building exercises that companies insists on
inflicting on their workers. These guys have absolutely no trouble
communicating on a professional level (in fact adversity in investigation is
one of their greatest strengths) and they have even managed to get their heads
around corresponding on a personal level now too. It’s another reason why this
feels about three seasons out of date. Had this taken place before Scully’s
abduction and cancer scare and before Mulder’s faith in his conspiracy theory
had been shattered then a little help with their interpersonal skills might
have been relevant. They’ve been through so much by now it can either be seen
as punishment (definitely a possibility) or as a paper pushing exercise. I
suppose there is something amusing about Mulder and Scully being sent on a team
building course only to be sidetracked into an investigation that requires a
great deal of teamwork but it’s the sort of joke that makes you laugh for five seconds
and then sigh. By the end of the episode they have to work together to make a
big pile of bodies to winch back up above ground. Go team.
Ugh: Points for effort…at least the show is trying to be
scary again. I think the last time this show attempt and honest to goodness
fright was way back in Elegy with the ghostly portents of death. This was once
a show that sold itself on its horror content but it seems to have been sifted
out in favour of more experimental and domestic storytelling. There is something
genuinely creepy about the red eyes appearing in the darkness but that was a
trick that was pulled off as far back as Squeeze in season one and Tooms had a
whole bag of tricks like that up his sleeves to scare the bejesus out of the
audience. This weeks nasty is simply an invisible man roaming the woods and
murdering people for no apparent reason. It feels like Spotnitz is making it up
as he goes along, ticking off his season one list as he goes. During the night
sequence the creature is mildly scary but when we are out in the sunshine its
merely a collection of nifty special effects and costumes. It doesn’t inspire
the same sort of fear that the best X-File nasties have managed, it’s more of a
curiosity. And not a very interesting one at that. When Scully fell down the
hole I would have been more surprised if that wasn’t where the bodies had
turned up.
The Good: Colleen Flynn turns quite a nice performance as
Officer Fazekas but it’s a role so underwritten that she barely gets anything
of note to do. If I had an actress that strong to hand I would adapt the script
to give her a meatier role. To be fair the episode isn’t exactly kind on
anybody…there is only so much mileage you can get out of a yomp around the
woods. Unfortunately the interesting (perhaps too strong of a word, its
entirely down to the performance) guest characters are bumped off first.
Pre Titles Sequence: I’m in two minds about the Vancouver
forest these days. On the one hand we’ve been stuck inside for the better part
of the last three episodes so it is refreshing to get out into wide open spaces
and it is very pretty scenery…but on the other hand we’ve had so many stories
set out in the forest by now it is starting to become as clichéd as it was on
Stargate SG-1. At least it isn’t the same forest doubling for a myriad of alien
planets on The X-Files. I’m looking forward to the move to the city. This pre
titles sequence really isn’t trying to be original because we have had nasties
lurking in the forest time (Fallen Angel) and time (Darkness Falls) and time
(Firewalker) again. I could go on but we’d be here all day. Besides the eyes
that snap open in the foliage providing a brief surprise there is nothing of
note to be found in this teaser.
Orchestra: Mark Snow pipes in a funky, almost child-like
version of his usual horror movie soundtrack to try and convince you that
something more interesting is going on beyond the evidence of your eyes.
Result: It feels like I have been sucked into a time warp
and materialised back in season one. Detour is as simplistic, unpretentious and
formulaic as they come with everything from the forest setting, the ambiguous
nasty, the signposted victims, Mulder and Scully banter and the lack of a
satisfying explanation tossed into the mix. Had this taken place in season one
it might have fitted in just fine but four years later it feels like it is
playing it far too safe for a show that has enjoyed the works of Darin Morgan
and Vince Gilligan throughout the experimental and thrillingly dark and funny
seasons three and four. I personally have had more exciting yomps through the
forest to find a picnic spot than this and the creature of the week inspires
little but fatigue because its nature isn’t laced explored in any way and
ultimately we are left to Mulder to guess what it was because the episode
itself has no idea. It is just there to chase them about for half an hour.
Anderson and Duchovny give the material all the effort it deserves (they made
far more of an effort with the life or death material of this nature in season
one when they still had something to prove) and a for once a fresh director
doesn’t yield gripping results as this is far more conventionally shot than I
am used to. It sure is pretty to look at most of the time (thanks to the forest
setting) and some of the banter is enjoyable but that aside this is almost
entirely devoid of interest. Let me save you from enduring what is possibly the
least substantial X-File on record; Scully and Mulder run about in the woods,
they have a cuddle and then she falls down a hole. The end. There’s some weird
insubstantial creature roaming about too but who the hell knows what that was
all about. The most surprising thing that Detour has to offer is its complete
lack of narrative: 4/10
The Post-Modern Prometheus written and directed by Chris
Carter
What’s it about: A two-headed mutated Cher-loving date
rapist. Why are you looking at me like that? It’s Carter who’s on the funny
stuff!
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Who could resist the temptation to
create life in his own image?’ ‘We already have that ability Mulder, it’s
called procreation.’
The Good: I am a big fan of Cher so even when I was frowning
through some of the inanities of this episode I was still enjoying the music.
Whilst the tragedy angle comes in too late (in the first half hour of this
episode all we see of the Great Mutato is him date raping women and dancing to
pop songs which gives you completely the wrong impression of what Carter is
actually going for which is something more lamentable and sympathetic) it is
the one emotion that you can pick out that really works. Mutato weeping over
his dead ‘father’, the only man who has ever cared for him, is a genuine flash
of sentiment. The one area where the black and white photography does improve
the production is in disguising the phoniness of Mutato’s make up. In this
washed out grey it is almost acceptable. It is another example of what I like
to call ‘closing the book syndrome’ where the final scene of an episode is so
strong it is enough to convince the audience that what they have just witnessed
has been just as good all the way through. Watching the Great Mutato enjoy a
Cher concert (the double is hilarious) evokes a real sense of joy that the rest
of The Post Modern Prometheus is lacking and Mulder and Scully enjoying a dance
together might just be the highlight of season five. For one scene only, this
episode kicks ass. And Walking to Memphis is a great song.
The Bad: I have no idea why Carter chose a comic book as the
framing device of this story since it doesn’t share any of the tropes of the
genre and very little of the episode is directed in the style that could
successfully take up a panel in a graphic novel. The whole point of a comic
book is that it is big, bold and budgetless telling stories that stretch the
imagination and go beyond what a television show is capable of producing
visually. The Post-Modern Prometheus is such a contained, intimate story that
it would feel completely out of place gracing the glossy pages of a comic book.
Instead with its gothic allusions and Frankenstein homage it would
perfect suit a musty old hardback found in the back of a bookstore for some
child to unearth on a rainy day and explore. It shows that Carter is on the
wrong page from…well the turning of the first page. Filming in black and white
is a much more skilled art than simply turning down the colour but that is
essentially what Carter does here without any of the concessions to the atmosphere
and style that comes with the method. Black and white means exactly that,
shades of light and dark, the use of silhouette and bold contrasts…what Carter
has done here is bleached the show of any depth by draining it of colour and
the result is a very flat, very grey looking episode. Besides which why would
you choose to have a black and white comic strip when there is the option to
have it bursting with colour? In it’s own way this town is as much full of
inbreds as the Peacock household was in Home; all of them thick as shit,
reactionary and made up of the most obvious of characteristics (the work shy
kid, the daft Southern mother, the mad scientist, the aggressive property
owner). In fact I would probably go as far to say that the characters in Home
had more depth to them because they at least were behaving on an instinctual
level and trying to salvage something they considered worth protecting. This
bunch of caricatures are obsessed with television, peanut butter and Cher. It’s
all remarkably shallow and not one of them rings true. It extends to the
performances too which are so latudinous that anything that might have been
salvaged from a more subtle interpretation is completely lost. It means that
for the first time ever Mulder and Scully are lost amongst a cast of completely
unbelievable characters. As a consequence Mulder and Scully are more credible
than ever but that’s just the silver lining running through a very dark cloud.
Pattie Tierce in particular plays her part as though she is on the studio set
of the latest sitcom and her every line of dialogue is about to be met with a
rousing burst of laughter and round of applause. Perhaps not surprising when
this part was originally written for Roseanne Barr. Perhaps the comedy is too
sophisticated for me (I doubt it) but I don’t get what is so funny about a town
of Mulder wannabes that turn on him the second he starts to doubt the veracity
of the Great Mutato. Is all this spitting in his breakfast and pouring coffee
in his lap supposed to be funny? The way this entire town is portrayed as
having one opinion merely adds to their incredulity. And its pretty gross too.
The reason the scenes of a torch waving mob fails to work as drama is because
tonally this story is all over the place, it has flung unsubtle sitcom humour
in our faces for far too long to suddenly expect as to take these cartoon
characters seriously as a threat. It’s as realistic as the town of Springfield
forming a heated throng and they are just as easy to dispel and placate as
Homer and his pals would be. I’m not sure what the hints of bestiality bring
the episode beyond Carter proving that he can include them.
Pre Titles Sequence: Flat out the most bizarre teaser the
show has produced yet, ineptly shot in black and white (discussed above) and
featuring a Jerry Springer loving caricature that doesn’t notice a tent being
sheathed over her house or a Cher obsessed grotesque filling it with knock out
gas until the last minute so he can have his wicked way with her. In it’s own
way this is just as tasteless as the teaser to Excelsis Dei, since they both
feature what is essentially a rape scene but this one is deploying all manner
of cute tricks to try and disguise the fact.
Orchestra: Carter’s starting point is a comic book but you
would never be able to tell that from Mark Snow’s score which instead is aping
a Elfman score from a Tim Burton movie. If this was really a comic book tale
come to life the score would be less frills and more stirring excitement. Again
it is far too contained for the genre. Saying that it is still a mighty fine
score, and certainly Snow’s most accomplished for some time.
Trust No-One: The idea of Mulder’s name being mentioned on The
Jerry Springer Show as the only person from the government to make house
call to a woman who claims to have had a werewolf baby sounds entirely
authentic. He’ll buy into anything as long as it sounds like it belongs on the
cover of the National Enquirer. Scully finally asks the question that must be
on everybody’s lips: ‘Is there anything that you don’t believe in, Mulder?’ The
answer is, strangely for this season only, the one thing that he has seen the
most evidence of.
Brains’n’Beauty: By the end of the episode Scully is without
a doubt my audience identification figure. She can’t quite believe the
preposterousness of the town she has come to visit and questions the veracity
of its inhabitants, she can’t see any logic in the existence of the creature
that they all revere and by the time a torch wielding mob tears past her to
bring him to justice she just stands back and lets it all wash over her with an
expression of disbelief slapped on her face. She removes herself from a story
that she doesn’t belong in and waits on the sidelines for Mutato to say his
speech, convince the townsfolk that he is a good guy and takes the first
opportunity to get out of town. I don’t know if I have ever found her more
believable.
‘You may have been right Scully’ ‘What that these people can
be reduced to cultural stereotypes?’ – at least the writer is upfront about
that.
Ugh: Filmed in black and white, this could have been the
scariest episode of The X-Files ever. Instead Carter goes for the comic jugular
and spoils any effort that could have gone into making this a toneless treat.
Season two’s Aubrey and Irresistible had a far greater understanding of how to
make black and white scary (although both filmed in colour they are muted
throughout and would have worked superbly in monochrome). I still dream of the
day that this show plumps for a black and white episode and shoots it in the
style and atmosphere of Hitchcock’s Psycho. This could have been that episode
but it’s too busy having fun to remember that one of this shows strengths is to
scare.
Moment to Watch Out For: The scene which sums up this
episode (which isn’t the triumphant final scene as some might have you
believe because that’s pretty much the only part of this hallucination that
does work very well) is that of the Great Mutato walking around his latest
victims smoke ridden house dancing to Cher like he is touring in a production
of her Greatest Hits. It’s not clever, funny or scary…its just weird.
Foreboding: You want a sympathetic nasty that really works,
go and watch season sevens Hungry. And if I want to watch The X-Files take a
stab at sitcom, I would choose Hollywood AD every time.
Result: ‘Hey, he’s no monster.’ What a schizophrenic
writer Chris Carter has turned out to be. If you had told me without any proof
that Redux and The Post-Modern Prometheus were written by the same man I would
probably laugh in your face for several hours. They are so different in every
respect – tone, pace and realisation – that they scream of the work of
different individuals or at least the work of an Incredible Hulk style
victim who produces cod-poetic monologues by day and gothic fairytales by
night. I’m not sure if either approach is any good but one is certainly more
fun (I’ll give you a clue - it’s not the one about the cure for cancer) and
hence far more watchable despite the desperate amount of tricks Carter tries to
throw at you to make you submit to the experience. The trouble with The
Post-Modern Prometheus is that it feels like a sequence of missed opportunities
in the hands of a writer and director that doesn’t quite have the skill to pull
off the idiosyncratic tone he is aiming for. It fails to work as a comic book
adventure (it’s far too intimate for that), a slice of atmospheric monochrome
(due to the lack of understanding of the medium), a gothic horror (on the
account that it isn’t scary), a comedy (because the comedy derives from pop
culture references that have no substance) or as a character drama (because
none of the characters are believable). I admire Carter for his ambition at
trying to do something left field but after failing to pull off a Darin Morgan
comedy (Syzygy) he now fails to pull off a Vince Gilligan style curiosity. It’s
weird because he has another stab at a comedy/horror this time next year and
gets it bang on the nail. A contemporary retelling of Frankenstein is a
great idea but had Carter stripped away all the frills and simply told a scary
and tragic character tale in the same vein as the book I think it would have
been far more successful. The barest bones of the homage can be seen at times
(the central element of the disgusting creature that just wants to be loved)
but it is smothered in too much extravagant decoration to emerge as anything
inventive or smart. Instead this is the work of a man aiming high but scoring
low whose only real success is in his looser interpretation of the characters
that made him famous in the first place. Mulder and Scully really work in this
setting, even if nobody else does. An extra point for the songs and the
glorious final scene but this is mostly a series of nice ideas that don’t
translate well on screen but seem to have been given a pass by the majority of
the audience because it is so unusual: 4/10
What’s it about: Melissa calls Scully and leads her to a
little girl in distress…
The Good: Every now and again either one or both of the
agents are teamed up with another law enforcement officer and the resulting
chemistry screams of a show that would do well to extend its regular cast
(ultimately it would do this out of necessity and it really works when it
does). It worked in Irresistible with Bruce Weitz’s Agent Moe Bucks and then
again in Hell Money with BD Wong’s Detective Chao but neither of them have a
patch on the superb performance that John Pyper-Ferguson gives in this episode.
By all accounts he is a replacement for Mulder and his scenes with Scully show
just how successful bringing in fresh characters to engage with the regulars
can work out. It is a very different sort of relationship to the one that she
has with Mulder but that is why it works so well. Detective Kresge never
patronises Scully and he quickly comes to realise how much this investigation
means to her and does everything in his power to help her out. I found it a
very refreshing pairing. I know that kids can sometimes look very similar but
the resemblance between Emily and Melissa is uncanny and sets the episode on a
new path that suggests a very personal revelation is just around the corner for
the Scully family. The plotting is so clean that the surprise that Emily is
Melissa’s daughter springs very naturally from the events that we have seen
take place and the information we have been given. It turns out that about four
years ago Melissa took off and went travelling, that is exactly the sort of
time when you experiment with different lovers and try and find yourself. Had Emily
turned out to be Melissa’s daughter then this would have been a cathartic
surprise, he death was so violent and sudden and it seems right that there
should be a little piece of her left behind for the family to treasure.
Pre Titles Sequence: A more subtle teaser than we are
generally used to with the Scully family returning to the military home that
they grew up in for Christmas which re-opens a lot of old wounds with regards
to its missing members. After Scully receives a ghostly call from her sister
telling her that somebody needs her help she traces the call and it leads her
to the crime scene of a recent suicide. For once this isn’t signposting the
monster of the week or dragging in all the usual mythology elements but a
genuine mystery to unravel.
Moment to Watch Out For: This episode is directed so
delicately that scenes that should drown in schmaltz work beautifully like the
one where teenage Dana and Melissa are given their first cross necklaces by
their mother in a scene lit warmly by the Christmas tree. It captures a feeling
of family and the closeness that religion can bring to them better than
anything I have seen in years. The flashbacks that chart the relationship
between Dana and Melissa through the years are beautifully done and make her
absence in the series felt more keenly than before.
What’s it about: Scully discovers that motherhood can be a
very painful experience…
Brains’n’Beauty: Scully is not happy to learn that Mulder
knew genetic experiments were being performed and children were being created
as a result of the alien abductions on women. He thought he was protecting her
but discovering that she has conceived a child after the tragic revelation that
she was barren proves that he would have better off (as ever) being open with
her at all times. It’s strange how no good ever comes of ‘I was just doing
it for your own good…’ As much as I could buy into Scully’s loneliness and
pain at never having children in Christmas Carol, I found it hard to invest
emotionally in her relationship with Emily because it was taken away as quickly
as it presented. Had this been the end of season five after we have spent some
time devoted to their continuing relationship then it would have really hit
home but instead what we’re left with is Gillian Anderson trying to sell a
connection to the audience that has never been there. It’s not her relationship
with Emily that she is frightened of losing but the potential that it has to
offer her. It feels like this is a last chance for the character to experience
motherhood but even that turns out to be a lie.
The Bad: It’s only when Mulder spells out exactly what has
happened to Scully over the past five years that you realise how ridiculous it
all seems. On a moment by moment basis Scully’s abduction, tests, return,
discovering that she is barren, discovery that she had cancer all played out in
a dramatically satisfying fashion. But when it is actually said aloud as a
whole narrative it comes across more like a bad soap opera plot. It might have
been nice to have watched Scully taking on the role of a mother across the
season (especially when this is the season that had to dodge mythology because
of the upcoming movie). Instead it feels dramatically unsatisfying to have gone
to the arduous lengths of convincing us that Scully is Emily’s biological
mother only to have her taken away almost as soon as this has been put out
there. It’s never gratifying to have an interesting idea suggested and then
snatched away before we can explore it. To have Emily turn out to be a
clone/alien/whatever those beings are that have the poisonous gas green blood
stream also takes the show in an mediocre direction. The joys of the first part
were that it played out as practically a straight drama and really worked on
those terms. As soon as Mulder is back the show cannot help reverting to type
and becoming less about character and more about plot, with all the usual
ingredients turning up. Its irritating that the return of Mulder means that his
surrogate for the previous episode (Kresge) doesn’t get to turn up until
halfway through the story. He’s briskly written out because the role he filled
is no longer vacant. And isn’t annoying how he suddenly behaves so irrationally
because the scripts needs him to depart – Mulder keeps telling him not to fire
at Calderon and yet he ignores this repeated advice and suffers the
consequences. What a waste of a great character. We don’t really know Emily and
so the sympathy that we have with her character is simply the sight of watching
a little girl having terrifying tests performed on her in order to save her
life. Whilst that is arresting enough, it would have been much more affecting
had we had the chance to get to spend some time with this character.
Pre Titles Sequence: Kudos for the outstanding special
effect that wistfully sees Scully crumble into dust and get carried away on the
wind. Boo hiss for the Carter purple prose that the trio of writers adopt to
kick start this episode. As usual it is trying to sound poetic but it winds up
sounding pretentious.
Christmas Carol written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban &
Frank Spotnitz and directed by Peter Markle
Brains’n’Beauty: Setting this during the holiday season is
the perfect way to separate Mulder and Scully for one week because it is very
natural for the agents to go their separate ways during Christmas. The Scully
family sequences had an air of believability to them in Gethsemane and that is
built on to great effect here and the atmosphere surrounding the characters as
they enjoy Christmas together is warm and inviting. Scully discovering that she
was barren really comes into play here as Bill and Tara Scully express their
happiness and excitement about the approaching birth of their child and whilst
his sister is perfectly happy for them it is an unpleasant reminder of what she
will never have. She never realised how much she wanted a child until she
couldn’t have it. How gorgeous to have Scully this upfront about her feelings,
especially when she is usually so guarded around Mulder. It feels perfectly
natural for her to confide in her mother like this. It’s proof for Bill that
she doesn’t need Mulder around to obsess about her work, that she will find any
excuse not to indulge in simply letting go and having fun with her family.
Perhaps they wont bother to invite her next year, she’s like the black cloud
around the dinner table. I find Sheila Larkin rock solid support for Gillian
Anderson in this series and I am pleased that Margaret Scully proved successful
enough a character to escape the annual culling of the guest cast. She’s an
understated character but usually more effective for it and she has to work
through a myriad of emotions in Christmas Carol from returning to the family
home to discovering that her daughter might have had a child that she didn’t
confide in her about. Larkin explores these scenes with effortless cool and her
chemistry with Anderson has never been more succinct. Dropping Emily in Dana’s
lap at the point in her life when she really wants to be able to have kids but
can’t might seem a little easy but it’s so nice to see her enjoying life for a
moment I am prepared to go with it. Bill Scully might always be cast in the role
of the bad guy but there is never a moment where his objections don’t ring
true, When he suggests that Scully might be looking too hard to fill a void
that is inside of her I found myself nodding in agreement. It’s great that the
script takes the time to point that out before dropping the revelation of who
Emily’s mother really is. I love the awkwardness to the scene where Bill points
all this out to Scully which is immediately cut short by the adoption agency
worker turning up, proving his point that she is trying to get the facts to fit
her needs. The look on her face when all the (perfectly valid) reasons are
spelt out for why she wouldn’t be a suitable candidate for adoption is one of
angry acceptance. Scully knows that she cannot argue any of the points that are
given to her. You get a real sense of need from Scully, the need to hold a
child and call it her own. I don’t think Scully has ever felt so real before,
an possibly since, this episode.
Ugh: The rabbit covered in maggots is pretty
gross. And I haven’t said that in a while. As was the drowned body in the
casket. If dream sequences are the closest we can get to The X-Files body
horror of old then I guess that’s what I’ll take.
Fashion Statement: Goodness knows what Mulder is getting up
to in the holiday season with that bandana on his head. Perhaps it is better
that we don’t know.
Result: Christmas Carol shows what happens when Carter hands
the responsibility of a mythology episode (or as close as season five gets to
one until Patient X) to other writers and the result is a superb instalment,
packed full of genuine character drama and tasty ideas. It is completely different
to the usual mythology shtick and feels refreshing as a result, turning out to
be far more akin to a normal detective drama (albeit with some ghostly
overtones). Compiling the feeling of freshness is the input of John
Pyper-Ferguson who serves as a foil for Scully whilst Mulder is away and he
gives a wonderful performance hinting at an existence for the show
post-Duchovny. Usually scripts written by a committee of writers feel
schizophrenic and cluttered as everybody tries to squeeze in their ideas and take
on the situation but in this instance the trio of writers that conjured up this
Christmas episode are completely in sync and provide one of the cleanest
plotted and fluid episodes in years with each new scrap of information
progressing the story towards that humdinger of a cliffhanger. Taken on its own
Scully declaring that Emily is her daughter feels out of the blue but in the
context of the episode it is a perfectly natural conclusion to draw. For once
there is no histrionics, no distrust of Skinner, no family members being blown
away to create empty drama…this is the story of a murder, a little girl who
fell into the wrong hands and a lonely FBI Agent who desperately wants to have
children. Both Anderson (Unusual Suspects) and Duchovny (Christmas Carol) had
time off in order to complete their work for the movie and whilst their solo
episodes are both strong, I would say that Anderson got the better deal.
Watching Mulder discover the Lone Gunmen for the first time was fun but
Christmas Carol probes Scully’s character deeply and yields some unexpectedly
touching results. Skilfully written, directed and acted, I thought this was an
understated gem: 8/10
Emily written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban & Frank
Spotnitz and directed by Kim Manners
Trust No-One: For somebody who can be so uptight it
surprises me that Mulder gets on so well with children. He manages to come down
to their level (physically as well as intellectually) and engage them. I think
he and Scully would make great parents because he could indulge in all the fun
creative stuff whilst Scully would take care of all the practicalities. His Mr
Potato Head is chucklesome. Whereas Detective Kresge was all about being as
helpful as possible, Mulder bounds onto the scene to tell Scully a few home
truths that hit home harder than if it were Bill or her mother telling her
because he is the closest person in her life. As well as it is shot from a low
angle to make Mulder more menacing, the scene where he attacks Calderon is
rendered somewhat less effect by the way he slaps him around the face gently
rather than giving him a left hook. It looks like Duchovny didn’t want to hurt
his fellow actor. I do like the idea that Mulder is standing up for something
genuinely horrific and personal now, rather than chasing after some mythical
conspiracy that he doesn’t even know exists.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘No matter how much you love this little
girl she is a miracle that was not meant to be.’
‘Whoever brought this child into the world didn’t intend to
love her.’
Moment to Watch Out For: Scully praying in the church. Her
religion continues to be a source of strength which is refreshing for a TV
drama.
Mythology: Emily suggests it is going to delve into the
mystery of what happened to the MUFON members when they were abducted and
whilst we trip over some experiments throughout the course of the episode, it
doesn’t explain a thing. What is wrong with letting us know what the parts of
this great mythology are all about as you go along? We wont think anything less
of you for it. In fact it might make these mythology episodes much more
bearable and prevent having to wrap up the series with a two hour long
explanation about what the previous nine season have been about.
Foreboding: Scully does fall pregnant eventually and the
subsequent storyline that springs from that proves to be a highlight of the
eighth and ninth seasons.
Result: I’m always criticising shows for not taking things
far enough when it comes to killing of children (only when it serves a story
purpose I might add, I’m not some kind of sadistic child murderer) but this was
one instance where the murder of an innocent felt like the easy way out rather
than the more difficult, probing path. After revealing how much Scully has been
affected by the news that she is barren and then dropping a child in her lap
that turns out to be hers I thought the show was about to take her character in
an entirely different reaction. To steal away that child as quickly as possible
and have her back to her normal self next week makes me wonder if we are supposed
to take these characters as seriously as Carter and company want us to. I believed
in Scully absolutely during Christmas Carol because it wasn’t an episode that
hinged on her feelings but with the sudden inclusion of Mulder it feels like
the show is reverting to norm and favouring plot over characterisation once
again. I’ m not saying that the death of Emily isn’t tragic or well performed
because it is very delicately handled by all involved (especially Gillian
Anderson) but it feels like the writers wanted to have their cake (to explore
motherhood through Scully) and eat it (to erase the idea and get back to
standalone adventures next week) and there is something deeply unsatisfying
about the way this squanders long term opportunities. It’s the sort of thing I
used to accuse Star Trek Voyager of doing all the time. As well acted as this
two parter has proven to be, it was nothing but a narrative blind alley that
frustratingly could have been so much more. Eventually Scully would have a
child in a long running storyline so it’s not like the series is chicken shit
but you would be hard pressed not to believe it on the strength of this
episode: 4/10
What’s it about: Robert Modell has wormed his way out of
prison and is apparently causing havoc again…
Ugh: One thing that is starting to exasperate me is how the
show seems to have forgotten its horror roots this season and is continually
avoiding the genre which made it such a hit in the first place. Redux was
little but a series of flashbacks, montages and voiceovers, Redux II boiled
down to being a character drama, Unusual Suspects was a cute piece of fluff,
Detour felt so unhorrific it was like the writer and director weren’t even
trying, Post-Modern Prometheus was more fluff and then a double whammy of
domestic drama again for Christmas Carol and Emily. It feels like this show has
either shrugged off its basic ability to frighten in order to do other things
or it has completely forgotten how to get it right. My favourite episode of
season four is Home which is about as nasty as it comes but there were other,
great examples of horror last year. Kitsunegari for all that it is entertaining
is another scare-free tale, this one more obsessed with mind games than mind
fucks. The one moment that is genuinely horrible is the man doused in blue
paint but even than errs on the side of surreal.
The Good: There was one superb moment of character when the
hypnotic powers of Bowman were put to a very original use. Using it to
euthanise her brother made me sit up for a second and see the bond that had
existed between them once. It made me wonder if perhaps this would have been
more intriguing had this episode played out as a lighter piece with Bowman
using her ability for altruistic purposes. That go horribly wrong, of course.
Pre Titles Sequence: As beautifully filmed to beguile and
mystify as it is, the teaser features possibly the daftest guard in the history
of television who, despite frequent warnings, enters Modell’s cell and listens
to what he has to say. I think I would have preferred it had Modell murdered
the man (because the repeated phrase ‘he had to go’ isn’t very effective) but
the show is trying to set up it’s twist that Modell is actually a good guy as
early as this.
Kitsunegari written by Vince Gilligan & Tim Minear and
directed by Daniel Sackheim
Trust No-One: Mulder is taking this vendetta so personally
almost as though he has been in regular contact with Modell ever since he shot
him in the head. The truth is he forgot about him almost the second it was over
but now the writers want to bring the character back he is suddenly cast in the
arch nemesis role. Naming this episode after the Japanese word for ‘Fox hunt’
is a lovely touch.
Assistant Director: It’s very nice to have Skinner involved
in a regular investigation for once rather than having the light of suspicion
thrown on him in the mythology episodes. Sometimes I wonder what he gets up to
when he isn’t having guns pointed at him by Mulder and Scully in their annual
vendetta against him.
The Bad: Its unlike Vince Gilligan to be as obvious to point
out that Linda Bowman is the villainess of the pieces. It would have been much
more exciting had this been left as a last minute twist. It would have been
much more exciting (and surprising) if people had been killed throughout the
episode so we thought that Modell was up to his old tricks and Bowman could
have been revealed as the real culprit at the 11th hour. It is so
frustrating that Mulder seems to be so much smarter than everybody else – only
he seems to be able to realise that Bowman is the real threat (when it is
glaringly obvious) and nobody wants to listen to his protests and so Skinner
relieves him of duty. In the way that it paints Mulder as the fount of all
knowledge, this feels very season one (where Scully’s rational explanations
were always being proven wrong). Skinner even feeds his ego at the end by
admitting he was right all along (although to give Mulder some credit he
doesn’t say I told you so). The Mulder/Scully face off at the conclusion is far
too obviously trying to recapture the stunning Russian roulette sequence from
the original to be effective. It’s well played (Scarwid does a remarkable
impression of Gillian Anderson) but its very inclusion makes this more of an
attempt to duplicate Pusher than it might otherwise have felt. That whole sense
of a small man that wanted to make himself count that made Modell so effective
and frightening seems to have been bled out of him since his injury to the
head.
Moment to Watch Out For: Without a doubt the finest moment
comes when the prison Doctor electrocutes herself whilst looking for her
glasses to name Linda Bowman as the woman who visited Modell in prison. It’s
excellently played Colleen Winton with just the right edge that this could be a
normal telephone call before you realise just a little too later what is
actually occurring. The episode needed more shocking twists of this
nature.
Result: Pusher was such a memorable episode of the shows
third season (amongst a lot of stiff competition I might add) and so
Kitsunegari was going to have to be very good indeed in order to trump it or
prove a worthy sequel. It doesn’t quite reach either because despite some
clever misdirection and intriguing mind games this feels like it is wheeling out
the character again because he was popular rather than because it was a story
that needed to be told. Before we get to the not very startling twist that
Modell is ultimately trying to do something benevolent this plays out the same
tricks we saw last time (tracing the call, people forced to murder themselves,
police officers falling victim) except this time they aren’t original and they
were done much better the first time around. My overall feeling was that the
episode felt quite empty – as much I might have complained about the conclusion
the previous two parter had a thread of character running through it that made
it fairly absorbing even when the plot crashed and burned. There wasn’t much in
the way of characterisation here, more a series of party tricks with a sting in
the tale which means this is entertaining but lacking anything in the way of
substance. Pusher felt dangerous in his debut but the way he leaves his victims
unaffected (‘he had to go’ gets old pretty fast) means the antagonists menace has
been bled away. This isn’t what I would call actively bad (Wisden is excellent
again) but season five has been coasting since it began and this attempt to
recapture past glories is another example of why this is one of the weaker
seasons of the show. Kitsunegari suggests that another sequel might be in the
pipeline but based on the evidence of this episode I am pleased that they
managed to resist: 5/10
Schizogeny written by Jessica Scott & Mike Wollaeger and
directed by Ralph Hemecker
What’s it about: Karin Matthews, psycho counsellor.
The Good: Schizogeny features one of the ugliest clichés
that emerged from The X-Files – the representation of children as angry,
hormonal monsters who only know how to give their parents a bad time. I much
prefer television dramas that give a more rounded view of adolescents and
suggest their potential (although with Star Trek The Next Generation’s Wesley
Crusher it shows how appalling it could be when taken too far the other way)
but at least in this episode the reason that Bobby is so anti-social is built
into the script rather than him simply being a pain in the ass because that is
who he is. This is such a self destructive family unit with the step father
feeding the son’s indolence by giving him such a hard time that it was bound to
end in heartache somewhere along the line. It comes to something when the work
of new writers is more effective at hiding a twist in the tale than the staff
writers. The surprise that Karin Matthews has been deliberately exacerbating
Bobby’s behaviour to act out some schizophrenic obsession in her own head with
regards to her hatred for her parents is expertly hidden from the audience but
is essentially the same surprise that Pusher promoted with regards to a hidden
female antagonist. Her dialogue points the audience in the right direction (she
calls the children ‘victims’ and refuses to work with the parents) without ever
making her intentions too obvious. I’ve always found stories that deal with
multiple personality disorder to be fascinating and whilst Schizogeny boils it
down to its most simplistic level (it’s basically a rehash of Psycho with Karin
reliving her childhood and playing herself as a victim and her domineering
father) it still makes for some edgy psychological horror. It is worth noting
that all the location work around in the woods at night is extremely effective
and it feels very different from the usual Vancouver forest. There is something
almost Sleepy Hollow-esque about the way the director captures this
setting. Watch the tracking shot through the misty woods as Karin pursues Bobby
during the climax, it’s gorgeous.
The Bad: Fox had a problem with the word dickweed? They are
fine with children being dragged out of a woman with rusty tongs and buried
alive but they take issue with a minor swear word? Studio execs are the
strangest people. The dubbing in this episode is particularly obvious, check
out any scene where Bobby talks. This is season one X-Files right down to the
random character that turns up for one scene to fill in some exposition and
then vanishes into the ether never to be seen again (except to pop up at the
climax and chop Karin’s head off). And the naff voiceover at the conclusion
where Mulder guesses what the whole episode has been about. Someone controlling
nature in order to protect children from abuse – I don’t know if that was an
angle worth exploring when the psychological terror of Karin’s counselling is
so much simpler and more effective. How did Karin control nature in this way?
How did she discover that she had this ability? It’s not enough to put these
ideas out there, I would like some kind of explanation beyond just because.
Pre Titles Sequence: The teaser is the first true example of
season five attempting to create an atmosphere of horror I could forgive it
almost anything. Dark, wet forest. Slippery mud. Mist. Lightning. And a man
being eaten by the earth. It’s memorably grisly for all the right reasons.
Trust No-One: This is another episode that feels like it has
sprung from the first season with Mulder once again on the right track whilst
Scully erroneously blames the most obvious suspect. It is starting to feel like
the third and fourth seasons never happened where the Agents were given much
more depth and development than this (particularly Scully). Would Mulder really
go to the lengths of grave robbing to gets answers?
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘I think he’s a hard kid to love.’
Moment to Watch Out For: The death of Aunt Linda is great
because you are just waiting for something to happen whilst she stupidly turns
her back to the world to try and save her niece. Cue a bloody spike protruding
through her chest and her head crashing through the window.
Result: Ironically this is quite a schizophrenic episode
which seems to want to make up for the sheer absence of horror in season five
by offering up both a supernatural (the killer trees) and psychological (Karin
Matthews are her vendetta against all parents) menace. One of those would have
done because there isn’t the time to adequately explore both and the latter is
favoured leaving the former high and dry. Season five seems to be reverting to
the formula of the shows debut season with Mulder and Scully fulfilling
particular roles (he’s the smart know-it-all and she is constantly proven
wrong), the nasty of the week taking precedent over any real characterisation
of them both and revelling in an atmosphere of terror. Some elements work
really well (I love how unpretentious the show feels at the moment) but I miss
the more substantial content of the last two series. The trouble is we’ve seen
most of this material already (a character playing both the hero and villain
was the centrepiece of Grotesque, a girl trapped in the cellar was much more
gripping in Oubliette, the expression of adolescent rage was handled in DPO)
and it was far more interesting and creepy the first time around. As the show
would go on to prove there is still a lot of ground to be covered so I’m not
sure what this nostalgia trip of old ideas in the style of season one is all
about this year. On the plus side the show is trying to be scary again (almost
to mock my recent complaints it is now trying a little too hard by throwing so
much at me) and I like the central premise of the episode (therapy gone bad).
Even if it doesn’t quite manage to get under Karin’s skin effectively anything
that reminds me of the stifling atmosphere of Psycho is doing something
right. Unfortunately just when the episode feels like it is heading somewhere
memorable it kills off the antagonist in the most crass way imaginable rather
than engaging with the psychological implications of her actions. A step in the
right direction, but in no way vintage X-Files: 6/10
Chinga written by Stephen King & Chris Carter and directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: A china doll that can force people to self
harm…
Brains’n’Beauty: I’m not surprised that Gillian Anderson
spoke her lines in a comical fashion, they are certainly written that way (all
this ‘she’s been carrying on with the butcher!’ is pure Carry On X-Files). Apparently Chris Carter had to remind her
that this was a serious episode which I think is the biggest joke of all. Don’t
get me wrong it is fantastic to see Scully going solo for a change but I just
wish it had been in a better episode (as a counterpoint to War of the
Coprophages Mulder definitely got the better deal). Before she met Mulder
Scully used to be able to enjoy holidays away and just forget about his life
but beyond her joining the X-Files she cannot even pop into a roadside service
station without encountering a mass of hysterical, bleeding, self harming victims.
Mulder rather patronisingly suggests that Scully is incapable of looking for
the right signs of paranormal activity and so she disdainfully points out all
the things that she has learnt over the years to shut him up (he asks her to
marry him instead). The joke of Scully just wanting to enjoy her holiday and
constantly being dragged into a multiple homicide investigation wears a bit
thin after a while. Even a mildly competent agent would put their holiday on
hold and muck in when they could and this disinterest has the adverse effect of
spreading to the audience. As a result Scully is on the periphery of the story
throughout and only comes anywhere near to involving herself fully at the
climax when she has to wrestle with the doll of death (actually it is more of a
casual breeze through the house rather than a struggle). There’s one moment
when I could have sworn she was a member of Torchwood, turning up at a crime
scene as the picture of arrogance and wearing her shades to try and shield her
apathy. She can’t quite bring herself to suggest that they explore more extreme
possibilities to investigate this case with any great conviction. This is
hardly a great test of Scully’s deductive prowess since all fingers point to
Melissa, Polly and the doll from the teaser onwards so the fact that it takes
her 45 minutes to catch up with them and microwave the doll is actually rather
humiliating. If she wasn’t so busy trying to catch some rays perhaps a few less
people might have been killed.
Ugh: The woman at the ice cream bar is so obnoxious it’s
hard not to want something awful to happen to her but even I would draw the
line at shoving her hair in the blender and having it torn from her head. There
is a thread of sadism that runs through this episode that is quite at odds with
its generally comic tone that feels highly discordant. The guy with the boat
hook through his throat is memorably grisly.
Pre Titles Sequence: Well I have been moaning that the show
hasn’t been horrific enough! This, however, was not the sort of thing I was
after. For a start the idea of a an evil doll is so hackneyed you have to
wonder why a show as fresh as The X-Files would even try and give it a spin. It
feels a little embarrassed by what King is asking of it and so the doll is kept
out of shot for the most part and doesn’t engage with anybody. Instead the
vicinity of the doll seems to make everybody want to tear their face off in a
bloody mess (en masse as this takes place in a shop) and turn the tools of
their trade upon themselves (a butcher has a nasty run in with a blade). It’s
so grossly unsubtle and nasty after such a quietly unhorrific first half of the
season that it stands out for all the wrong reasons. When Home disturbed
because it threw so much muck at the audience it knew exactly what it was
doing. This just feels like it is being crass for its own sake.
Moment to Watch Out For: It is the only X-File to be solved
by shoving a doll into a microwave and frying its porcelain brains out. I’m not
sure if this memorable for the right reasons.
What’s it about: Scully’s abduction returns to haunt her
whilst Mulder wants nothing to do with any of it…
Brains’n’Beauty: ‘Well I seem to be done here. You seem
to have invalidated your own work. Have a nice life…’ It takes Gillian
Anderson nearly 20 minutes to feature in this episode which leads me to wonder,
seasons eight and nine aside is this the year where the two main stars feature
the least across a season? Unusual Suspects, Christmas Carol, Chinga, Patient
X, Travellers and All Souls all feature one of the agents going AWOL for the
majority of the episode. It’s just bizarre to hear Mulder and Scully reading from
the same page with regards to aliens and having a civil conversation about it
where they are in total agreement. The only way to turn the tables on Scully
and Mulder and have her invested in an X-Files and him fighting against it
(which isn’t centred around her religion) is for the series to return to
Skyline Mountain where Scully was first abducted. She has a personal interest
in this sight, although I have to say she does sound a little unconvinced
herself when she is trying to persuade Mulder to listen to Cassandra
Spender.
Rat Boy: At this stage the writers have somewhat lost track
of where Krychek is and what his role in the show should be. He just turns up
every now and again to thrill long term fans of the show. In season two he was
a gripping recurring character who exposed the shows creed of ‘Trust No One’
better than anybody else but returning once a year just to be tortured seems
like a waste of a potentially interesting semi regular. He reminds of the
Master from eighties Doctor Who, turning up at random intervals with no
explanation as to how he survived their last encounter.
The Good: ‘Tell them it’s all going to hell…’ says Krychek,
talking of the relationship between the people of the Earth and the alien
colonists. He could just as easily be discussing the mythology arc. Either way
there is a feeling that this story is about to come to some sort of conclusion
soon, that we are wading through the same old clichés anymore and that the narrative
is building up some kind of momentum towards a climax. The idea of teaming up
Krychek and Marita is just about the most interesting thing they can do with
this character. Laurie Holden has been trying her damdest to make this
character interesting with absolutely nothing to work with. As written she is just a carbon copy of Mr X
without Steven Williams’ electrifying presence but let’s just say I can’t
imagine her predecessor getting into bed with Krychek in every sense of the
word. Veronica Cartwright proves to be one hell of a catch as Cassandra
Spender, providing the mythology arc with something that it has desperately
sought for some time but rarely succeeded (Tempus Fugit/Max aside) and that is
some kind of sympathetic character to make me care about the big concepts.
She’s a complete believer, but likable with it and seemingly credible for the
first part. It is easy to see why she returned to the series and how her son
gained such an important role since they provide a really strong backbone to the
next season, independent of Mulder and Scully which the show needed in order to
survive. The show had pretty much run out of ways to torture its central
characters at this point (how many more family members could they kill off?)
and it’s quite telling that whilst the Spender’s go through the agony of the
usual conspiracy guff next year, our heroes spend the majority of the season
smiling as if released from its shackles. It amuses me to think that there are
UFO conventions out there, dreamers and nutters alike who gather to convince
themselves there is far more going on on this planet than it actually appears.
Not so much a science fiction convention but a science factual one. Chris
Owens’ Jeffrey Spender is initially a much gentler character than the defiant
objector that he would later become, mainly down to the events of this story.
He wants to make a career for himself with the FBI and doesn’t want to have his
record tarnished with his mothers beliefs in the same way that Mulder’s was.
Returning to Skyland Mountain is a nice touch, the show looking back on its own
mythology and rewarding its fans.
Pre Titles Sequence: Uh-oh, another dreary monologue
delivered with somnambulistic excitement by David Duchovny…that can only mean
this episode is written by…yep! Who precisely is Mulder talking to in
these scenes? Does he spend his days standing in front of a mirror delivering
these pompous speeches? Or are his case files written in such a florid style?
It almost feels as if the gently mocking days of Darin Morgan never happened.
Some typically visceral and arresting Kim Manners imagery aside, this pre-titles
sequence promotes everything that is lacking in the mythology episodes of late,
at least in the narration.
Fashion Statement: Nick Lea is really gorgeous. As much as I
complain about his character flaws, he’s always very easy on the eye.
What’s it about: The rebels are making a move and nothing
will ever be the same again…apparently.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Here this, Agent Mulder. There is a war
raging. And unless you pull your head out of the sand you and I and another 5
billion other people are going to go the way of the dinosaur. I’m talking
planned invasion. Colonisation of this planet by an extraterrestrial race…’ –
it’s a great line but bizarrely this is the first point Mulder is made fully
aware of the central narrative of this tale. It’s ten minutes from the end of a
90 minute story.
The Bad: These mythology episodes don’t feel like decently
plotted standalone stories anymore, they are being presented as segments of a
larger whole. So you’re not so much being treated to a narrative that
progresses to a satisfying conclusion but random elements of a story that are
slowly starting to converge. As a result The Red and the Black feels strangely
disjointed and when random elements start being tossed in out of nowhere (like
when the rebel craft crashes partway through the episode) it feels less a part
of the plot and more another element tossed in to keep things exciting. It’s a
little embarrassing the way Mulder and Scully are dragged into the story right
at the end just so they can hold their hands up and say that they contributed
something. The alien bounty hunter pops up out of nowhere simply because he hasn’t
been involved for a while.
Moment to Watch Out For: With a mixture of some stunning
pyrotechnics (men in flames, flailing ad screaming), horrific make up (the
rebels), impressive effects work (Cassandra floating from her wheelchair to the
alien craft) and detail set design (the recreation of the dam in the studio)
everything about Scully’s hypnotic regression sequence looks astonishing. It’s
a pleasure to assaulted by so many cinematic treats. Gillian Anderson’s emotive
performance is the icing on the cake.
What’s it about: Uncovering the very first X-File…
Ugh: The horror of a spider climbing out of Skur’s mouth is
enough to give Aracnophobics the willies until the end of time. I think spiders
are rather cute but even I thought this a particularly chilling effect,
especially when one is crawling from one mans mouth, spittle drenched, and into
another’s. The spider that crawls out of Skur’s innards is really nasty, in a
moment of spectacular cruelty I deliberately called Simon in to which this
sequences as he isn’t good with guts or spiders. Needless to say he declared
this ‘sick’ television and promptly rushed from the room ashen faced. With the
blistered, stitched up faces of the alien rebels and spiders emerging from bloody
offal in Travelers the show is starting to remember its roots again. The fact
that this isn’t simply a horrific set piece for the sake of a good horror but
grounded in fact – xenotransplantation experiments are a bone of contention in
the scientific community and whilst this has been exaggerated for fictional
purposes it does open you mind up to a world of grisly possibilities.
The Good: The nourish touches to this episode (the expert
use of light and shadow, the voiceover, the hats and trench coats) are
marvellously atmospheric but it does take rather a long time to get to these
goodies. The way the director has the film aged to give the story the look of a
genuine 1950s movies seems to have worked because Simon ducked his head in the
door at one point to ask if I wanted a cup of coffee and couldn’t place what I
was watching. He thought it was some creaky old detective movie. You can see
why the production team have been after Darren McGavin for so many years
(attempting to sign him up as both Mulder’s father and Senator Matheson), he
brings Arthur Dales to life with a lovely sense of world weariness that smacks
of having seen everything that life can throw at him. Since he was one of the
inspirations behind the X-Files it does seem fitting that he finally gets to
make it into an episode. It’s a shame that he doesn’t get to do much more than
provide a decent voiceover in the end (I really thought the two sets of
flashbacks were going to tally up in some way so the 50s sequences provided
some vital information to the 90s ones beyond) and I’m pleased that McGavin was
afforded a larger role in season six.
Moment to Watch Out For: Bill Mulder ultimately lets Skur go
free. Despite the fact that he is involved in an international conspiracy that
threatens the lives of the entire population of the planet, he can still have
moments of conscience.
What’s it about: Is a blind woman capable of committing
murder?
Brains’n’Beauty: Scully isn’t quite as unsympathetic as I
remember in this episode (she has certainly been far worse in other stories)
and I am very pleased that somebody posed the suggestion that Marty might not
be blind after all. You can leave it to Scully to cut through all the
paranormal bollocks and find the simplest and most logical of explanations.
Even if she is wrong.
The Good: It’s interesting that our hearts go out to Marty
the second we realise she is blind when she actually behaves like a complete
bitch for the majority of the episode. It’s almost as though we have an
in-built excuse for her behaviour because of her disability. Lily Taylor always
manages to deliver 100% no matter what show she is taking part in (I have
recently watched the entire run of Six Feet Under where Taylor was a
memorable presence as the not quite as innocent as she seems Lisa Fisher) and
she is determined not to make Marty a nice person, keeping up her aggression
levels throughout. Marty is a tough woman, one who has had to adapt to a harsh
world without her sight and to me she comes across as the most real guest
character of the season. Just because she is blind, it doesn’t mean that she
isn’t capable of fraud, aggravated assault and petty theft. She smokes, she’s
full of attitude, she’s got a smart mouth when she is being interrogated and
she refuses help when it is offered – I’m automatically predisposed to like her
for so many reasons. Her way of feeling independent is to act like a right cow
(I love the moment when she cries ‘It’s a miracle!’ as though her sight
has magically come back). As soon as we learn that Marty’s mother was attacked
you start to realise why she is this closed off and it makes sense of a lot of
her behaviour (even if the link between her and the killer is laid bare at that
point).
Moment to Watch Out For: For a moment (despite the evidence
of my own eyes) I thought that Marty was the killer when she attacks Detective
Pennock but it results in the more heartbreaking notion that she wants to do
justice to her mothers death by killing her father. Regardless of what the
consequences might be. The idea of Marty having to go to prison with her father
is chilling and you can understand completely why she wants to put an end to
all this. Finally she will be completely alone again, trapped within her own
world. Plus the ending enjoys a greater level of threat this week because the
killer has been set up as a really nasty piece of work. This is really going to
be kill or be killed, between father and daughter. I was waiting for the moment
when Marty would finally get to see herself and when it comes it really doesn’t
disappoint. A shame that the only glimpse at her own features should come when
she is holding a gun on herself.
What’s it about: Scully gets a chance to grapple with her
demons over Emily’s death…
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘You got a bona fide super crazy
religious whacko on your hands!’ – even Duchovny seems uncomfortable trying to
say that line with a straight face.
The Good: All Souls goes to some lengths to convince the
audience that Father Gregory is the monster that is murdering the girls,
something that would have riled me up because I have seen far too many
‘religious nut jobs’ on television for it to have become a bit of a joke.
Cleverly, the episode is using that cliché as a deception, allowing the
audience to go down the usual path so that the reveal of Starkey as the
murderer genuinely shocks and says something about our natural assumptions. One
scene is shot in a water logged location, where stained glass is reflected on
the floor. It looks stunning.
Pre Titles Sequence: Is there a single episode of The
X-Files where the opening teaser isn’t appetite whetting? Even in episodes as
lacking as this one there is a real effort made to grip the audience in the
first stages. Perhaps Mark Snow could have calmed down on his revelatory
religious music but this is an exquisitely filmed sequence where a young girl
walks out into the rain and falls prostrate before an angelic figure that
removes her eyes. The image of her empty, burning sockets undampened by the
beautiful rain is very memorable.
What’s it about: Is Mulder undercover or has he genuinely
turned rogue?
Ugh: Horror in the cinema has taken on a sinister meaning
since the shooting in America last year. Discovering a theatre full of rotting
corpses feels a little more distasteful than it might have done before. Suddenly
those powerful torch beams are picking out something truly blood curdling. The
idea of the CIA performing tests on the population as a trial run for something
much larger in a foreign country is doubly chilling. Clearly this show has
little or no respect for those working behind the scenes to protect America’s
interests.
The Good: I love the gentle coughs during the hearing when
Skinner publicly states that their sting operation was a failiure. Nobody wants
to come forward and explain why, everybody is hanging back and seeing how gets
the blame. An anti-government terrorist with a biological agent that can melt
the flesh of anybody it comes into contact with? That is a terrifying
prospect. Shiban saw an opportunity to use Mulder’s outburst at the UFO conference
during Patient X and took it, the anti government cell seeking out what they
thought was a like minded individual to serve as a mole inside the FBI. I’m
glad somebody is mining some riches from the direction Mulder has been taken in
this year and suddenly it is starting to feel deliberate rather than a blind
alley to stall any development until the movie. It is revealed fairly early
that Bremer is onto Mulder’s deception, overhearing a conversation between
Mulder and Scully, and so when he defects once again to the other side he it
looks as though he is really walking into danger. Suddenly there is he
suggestion that this bio weapon was developed domestically, rather than in
Russia as the CIA would have the FBI believe. It turns out there are secrets to
be unearthed amongst the heroes of the piece too, that weapons are being
developed in secret that could cause untold devastation. With Mulder being sent
on a suicide mission to cover up the CIA’s bio technology leak, it looks like
he is in danger whatever the outcome. Shiban has constructed his episode so
that these revelations are stacked throughout, with fresh surprises every ten
minutes or so. Often with genre television you can tell where an episode is
going, even if you’re not sure what the overall outcome will be. Most shows
follow a predictable pattern, The X-Files included. This was one of those rare
occasions where I had no clue what was going to happen to Mulder and that his
chances of survival are made to look slimmer by the minute. They manage to
maintain that tension right up to the point where Mulder is about to be
executed with a bullet in the back of the head. Check out the fluidity of the
camerawork during the hold up sequences – it feels as if you ware walking right
behind the manager through the building as he heads toward the truck. Bank
robberies are tenapenny on television and film but rarely are they executed
with this much panache. If you struck a match the whole place would go up,
that’s how tense the atmosphere is. The insidious approach that the terrorists
take to infect the population made me sick to the stomach, contaminating a bank
vault stuffed full of money so that the virus would walk out onto the streets
and exchanges hands. There is even an old fashioned season one type ending that
suggests that the horror is still out there, a car veering off the road and the
camera linger across a corpse and the contaminated car keys.
Pre Titles Sequence: Superbly directed by Rob Bowman and
presenting the very interesting possibility of Mulder turning traitor, it takes
some skill to produce a chaotic sequence like and make it look natural rather
than contrived. Mark Snow’s music adds much to the pace of the set piece and
the effect of the flesh eating virus is genuinely grisly. All in all, a
terrific start.
Fashion Statement: Those creature feature masks used in the
robbery freaked me out but then I have something of a phobia about anything
playful that is used in a sinister way (especially when clowns are deployed as
scare tactics in films and television).
What’s it about: Has Mulder finally gone completely gaga?
Brains’n’Beauty: Scully respects Mulder enough that even
though he is behaving like a crazy person she will still continue to
investigate long after the case appears to be over.
The Good: By all accounts Kim Manners thought that the bug
suit created for the monster in this episode would signal the end of his career
if he shot it as produced. Instead it was a last minute rush to treat the suit
electronically after the episode was shot, ensuring that you only see the
monster indistinctly and adding that juddering effect that allows it to travel
from person to person in the blink of an eye. It was worth the extra expense
because the finished effect is unknowable and nightmarish. Brian Markinson is
one of those character actors that seems to have turned up in everything and
taking a look at his page on IMDB it confirms that he has. Often playing
slightly offbeat characters, he always feels very at home in the slightly
unreal atmosphere of genre television. His role here as the telephone operator
that has gone mad and is seeing evil bugs in the office is a licence for an
actor to go way over the top but he contains a lot of the material and brings
an intensity to the part the helps to sell the early scenes. I felt sorry for
the actor when he had to spout out some of the most preposterous lines about
brain sucking and mental telepathy during the scenes where he holds his fellow
employees hostage.
The Bad: Gary holding up the telesales office might have
been more effective if we hadn’t seen a similar scene in the previous episode
but handled ten times more effectively. Both the hostage scenario (Duane Barry)
and Mulder’s madness (Anasazi) have been achieved more effectively before in
the series. The idea of madness being a transferable affliction is an
intriguing one but it is played so broadly by David Duchovny that any sense of
psychological horror inherent in the idea is lost. Madness itself is such a
terrifying ordeal for anybody to face and to boil it down to something as
simple as seeing big bugs crawling about feels like a waste of a potentially
very scary premise. When I think back to how an episode like Blood dealt with
phobias with such intense conviction, this belly button fluff approach to
insanity suggests has perhaps become a little too comfortable in its
popularity. Surely each person has a diverse imagination and would actualise
the bug/zombies in different ways? You can share a delusion, but you would
visualise it in your own unique way. Wow, how can somebody who is only on
screen for 30 seconds appear so stiff and unconvincing (the nurse that
administers Mulder’s injection). A man strapped down in the insane ward being
attacked by one of his delusions and having his pleas ignored as a symptom of
his madness is a genuinely scary concept but it is played in pure comic book
style here and loses it’s ability to get under your skin. The whole episodes
feels like something of a missed opportunity in this respect. Was it a genuine
creature that only certain people could see or a shared delusion that was
transmitted from person to person? The episode wraps itself up so suddenly that
it never quite finds the time to tell us (or is that another example of
deliberate X-Files ambiguity?). Mulder has been making outrageous claims,
attacked his superior and claims he can see monsters and because Scully
declares him mentally fit he is immediately released? Talk about boiling this down
to it’s simplest form.
Pre Titles Sequence: Always be suspicious of these opening
sequences that feature a busy and apparently productive and happy workplace.
Something terrible is about to happen. I lasted a meagre two months in a
telesales job myself (I am far too sensitive a person to have abuse hurled at
me for eight hours a day) but I can tell you it was the most brain numbing
experience I have ever been through. I think I was starting to see giant bugs
attacking people in the office just to overcome the monotony of the job.
What’s it about: Has the X-Files finally been closed down?
Brains’n’Beauty: Feel the tension in the car as Scully
realises that Mulder and Fowley have history and that she now has a potential
rival and one whose mind is completely open to extreme possibilities. The
silence is agonising. Fowley suggests that she would have made a better partner
for Mulder than Scully, that two like minded people on cases with a paranormal
leaning would have been advantageous. Over the past five season we have seen
precisely the opposite in operation, that because Scully hasn’t believed Mulder
has been forced to work harder and often produced better results because of it.
Two like minded individuals might become complacent and there is no sign of
that with Mulder and Scully’s clash of ideologies. Scully is clearly riled by
the physical closeness between them, she cannot maintain her professionalism
and give them the information she has discovered, instead storming out of the
building and blowing off steam in her car. However when the office is destroyed
and their work is torn from them, it is Scully who attempts to comfort him.
Smoking Man: He’s paranoid enough to have sensors
surrounding his cabin to detect the approach of potential assassins. How the
mighty have fallen as we get to witness him fleeing for his life amongst the
Canadian mountains, leaving a bloody trail of footprints in his wake. It is
always a delight to catch up with the Smoking Man because William B. Davis
lights up the screen whenever he appears (the Syndicate scenes have been
abominable without him). Although I still fail to see what purpose his death
served in terms of the arc storyline except to (once again) pause the action
whilst we wait for the movie to air. He has no doubt that the Syndicate tried
to kill and once he is reunited with them he politely informs them that the man
they sent clearly wasn’t up to the job and they underestimated him. He’s a man
with nothing to lose now, no loyalty to these people and he seems to be
enjoying himself immensely.
Faux Mulder & Scully: The End marks the point where
Mulder and Scully are taken off The X-Files indefinitely and Jeffrey Spender
and Diana Fowley are brought in as semi regulars to fill the gap as their
replacements. It is an intriguing idea, forcing the agents out of their usual
roles and giving us a chance to see if somebody new can do a better job.
Spender and Mulder already have history which gives the situation immediate
tension and Fowley and Mulder have history (of the intimate kind) which gives
Scully a reason to hiss at her every time they cross paths. There isn’t even a
hint that Fowley is working for the other side during The End but she
immediately gets my heckles up because her presence drives a wedge between
Mulder and Scully. Similarly Mimi Rodgers delivers a polished performance where
her character is nothing but supportive and helpful and yet you still want to
tear her from the series as soon as possible. It is an appealing, uncomfortable
atmosphere and one that is well worth exploring further. In a season where
things have become a little too complacent this is a great shake up. Is Spender
ambitious, arrogant or protecting something? Mulder suspects all three but then
Spender is trying to keep him at arms length. Truthfully, I think it is because
Spender is intimidated by him, his ability and reputation. The End chronicles
the first meeting between Spender and his father, a relationship that would
only grow more cancerous as it proceeds.
Boy Genius: What to make of Gibson Praise? The idea of a boy
who can read the minds of everybody is an intriguing one and it serves a great
purpose in this episode as he spills out everybody’s secrets (‘I know what’s
on your mind. I know you’re thinking about one of the girls you brought’).
However nobody likes a smart alec kid, especially when they are played with
this amount of despondence. Jeff Gulka is only doing what the script asks of
him but there were several moments when I wanted to reach into the TV and
strangle him. Interestingly once his balls have dropped (Within/Without) and he
has had a little more experience of television acting, Gulka is far less irritating
to watch. Gibson is no chess master, he just has the unfair advantage of
knowing what move the other player is going to make next and can counteract
that accordingly. He has activity flaring in the God module part of the brain,
which isn’t just abnormal or anomalous but absolutely unheard of. He’s a
genuine paranormal phenomenon, potentially the key to everything in The
X-Files.
Ugh: This is arc material all the way so there is relatively
little horror on display.
Pre Titles Sequence: Have we really got to this stage where
this show can make something as undynamic as a chess match the most visually
exciting event of the year? Or did Chris Carter decide to take up a challenge
of turning the most intellectual of contests into something dramatically
satisfying to watch? The norm with crowd sequences of this nature is to film a
section of the audience and then cut and paste to make it look as though you
have an extras count of Ben Hur proportions. Carter decided to ask as
many fans as possible to attend the session in the stadium as a thank you for
their patience and welcome for the past five years of filming in Vancouver. It
must have been a hell of an operation but the resulting scene is one of the
most visually impressive in the shows nine years. A chess board picked out in
harsh spotlights, a child genius being targeted by an assassin and a shocked
crowd as it misses its target. My one question is whether this many people would
attend a chess match but maybe that is my hermitage that is at fault – I really
don’t know much about the game (beyond how to play it) and there might be
tournaments on this scale all the time. A great looking opening set piece, and
a fine final farewell to Vancouver and the incredible production team that
worked so tirelessly to make this show as good as it is.
Orchestra: Snow knows precisely how to score the season
finales, offering up an epic and exciting whirlwind of music that suggests that
important things are happening.
Chinga written by Stephen King & Chris Carter and directed by Kim Manners
Trust No-One: The gag that Mulder is watching the world
deadliest swarms when it is clear he is settling down to masturbate to porn in
his office…only for us to discover that he genuinely is watching the worlds
deadliest swarms is fantastic. It’s funny because it pokes fun of the character
in an affectionate way using something that we already know about him. His
anally retentive treatment of his pencils is a highlight of the episode.
The Bad: Is Polly Turner possessed by the doll or is she
just an opportunistic little girl that has realised that she has this unnerving
ability to be able to get her own way? The script is extremely vague either way
but I prefer to believe in the latter because it’s creepier. The episode goes
to such great lengths to prevent us from seeing the doll on the move and committing
murder (because ultimately the director knows it would look dreadful – this is
the same guy who had to try and make the killer pussies work in Teso Dos
Bichos) but without that visual identification the central menace seems to be a
stationary china doll with a catchphrase. Ooh scary. Why does the mother have
premonitions of the victims before they are dispatched by the deadly dolly? I
know horror can be pretty vague at times but there is an absence of any kind of
rational thought running through this script. Everything seems to be ‘because
we say it does…’ which wouldn’t be so blatant if the material was diverting
enough to avoid asking such questions. Here’s
a question, at the first sign of the dolls evil influence why didn’t
Polly’s mother simply take the toy from her and torch the damn thing? Instead
her method of dispatch is to hammer all the doors and windows shut and torch
the entire house with her and Polly inside. Is it because she thinks her
daughter is evil? Or that she cannot live with the fact that she could be an
accessory to mass murder? I have no clue what is going through these characters
minds because there are no pointers. The whole idea of this evil dolly being
dragged ashore by a fishing boat and given to a little girl who leaves a path
of mutilated corpses in her wake is so b-movie its embarrassing. Why does
nobody try to stop Melissa smacking herself on the head with a hammer?
Moment to Watch Out For: It is the only X-File to be solved
by shoving a doll into a microwave and frying its porcelain brains out. I’m not
sure if this memorable for the right reasons.
Orchestra: Remember Carter told Gillian Anderson that this
was in no way a comic piece, its obvious that Mark Snow didn’t get the memo
either and he has murder scenes playing to the Hokey Pokey and the bulk
of the soundtrack isn’t that dissimilar to that of Post-Modern Prometheus.
Result: ‘Let’s have fun!’ If only we could! Whoever
it was that said that Chinga feels like the work of somebody trying to rip of
Stephen King but misunderstanding the energy and twisted malevolence that goes
into his work was bang on the nail. Carter has taken a King script and gutted
it of everything it might have had going for it until it is just a plodding old
X-Files that could have come from the reject bin. No show with horror
influences should be doing a show as obvious as an evil doll in its fifth year.
All that substandard rip-offery should have been taken care of by now or at
least given an inventive new spin. There are only so many times that you can
listen to the Hokey Pokey and watch a doll not kill people before
you begin to ask if one of the greatest horror writers of several generations
has run out of decent ideas (his recent novels would seem to suggest so). For
that this is a Scully solo episode, the best scenes of the piece involve Mulder
and his lack of anything to do whilst she is away investigating a crime he is
much more suited to. Chinga is the sort of simple tale that The X-Files should
be able to master at this point in it’s run but it displays a lot of problems
the a new show would have to iron out including a poor pace, a clichéd central
premise and unnatural dialogue. In every respect (and I seem to be like a stuck
record on this subject) it is a throwback to season one. Considering this is a
collaboration between noted horror author Stephen King and series creator Chris
Carter I am shocked at how amateurish this all feels. The fact that they dare
to suggest a sequel might be in the offing seals this episodes fate: 3/10
Kill Switch written by William Gibson & Tom Maddox and directed by Rob Bowman
What’s it about: An AI has outgrown its masters and is loose
on the net…
Brains’n’Beauty: This is the sort of episode that requires a
geeks brain and so Scully is pretty much at sea throughout but that doesn’t
stop her making intelligent suggestions and suspecting the right people
throughout the course of the investigation. I know Scully has been proven wrong
an awful lot this season but how awesome is the look on Esther’s face in the
wake of the destruction of the shipping container. Watching her fight like Emma
Peel is so cool I think I might have turned straight for just a second.
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘You are correct, sir’ is a line that
Scully would never say in a million years. It’s one of several that she sports
in this episode that shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the
character.
The Good: I knew we were onto a winner when Mulder put the
disc into the hard drive and Twilight Time started pumping through the
speakers (and we cut to the car flashing it’s lights in time to that fantastic
tune). Whilst season five has been a little heavy with the source music (first
a Cher soundtrack, then the Hokey Pokey, and now Twilight Time)
this is the best example yet and the music provides a fine counterpoint to the
action that is taking place, especially at the climax. Naturally the Lone
Gunmen had to be involved in an episode that purports to be a techno thriller
and one that deals with the ‘inventor’ of the Internet. You’ve never heard them
talk as fondly of anybody (not even Mulder) as they do of Gelman or drool as
much over a single woman (not even Scully) as they do over Esther. It’s quite
nice to see how much they revert to children when they get to bask in the glory
of their heroes (and isn’t it so sweet that these three all sleep together
across two sofas?). Invisgoth is exactly the sort blonde haired, black eyed
leather clad hacker that geeks get all hot under the collar for, isn’t she?
This could have been the most blatantly sexist character to have emerged from
the show but instead Kristin Lehman plays her with such authority and dignity
(despite some dodgy dialogue) that even I was getting a bit hot on the collar.
There’s not point where you don’t believe in this character (against some
pretty insurmountable odds) and that is almost entirely down to Lehman’s
conviction. When Scully questions her integrity she rather wonderfully lists
her academic credentials. I love the attitude this script takes to artificial
life still being life – Gelman let an interlocking sequence of viruses loose on
the net so it could evolve in its natural environment. Scully is utterly
unconvinced (she says in the most un-Scully like line ‘do you believe this
load of crap?’) but it clearly appeals to Mulder as much as it does to me.
One scenes sees Scully escape from her cuffs and reach for the gun only for
Esther to offer it to her in her grief and tell her to shoot her – Scully goes
from victim to capable hero to comforter in a matter of seconds. The thumbprint
on the doorbell to figure the identity of the visitor is very clever. Mulder’s
dream about the nurses holding him down and the creepy old Doctor threatening
to cut his arms off might just be the scariest thing we have seen this year.
The computer using both its own representatives and Scully trying to extract
the information about the Kill Switch from Mulder shows that it is constantly
thinking of new ways to try and obtain the information. It’s bizarre but there
is something giddyingly romantic about Esther slaving herself to the computer
and losing her mind in the internet where she can exist with David in a realm
of pure information. Like all good Pertwee Doctor Who adventures, it ends on a
spectacular explosion too.
Pre Titles Sequence: This is the most exciting sequence to
have played out on the show this year; the whole thing is executed beautifully, it
has a fiendishly clever premise and it is expertly paced. This wouldn’t be at
all out of place at the beginning of a movie on the big screen. An artificial
intelligence wants to stop a man from cracking its programming and shutting it
down so it cleverly invites a whole bunch of rival criminals and US Marshall’s
to the diner where the man is working where they can blast away at each other
(and kill him in the process). What is it Agatha Christie said in the ABC
Murders? If you want to disguise one murder then hide it amongst a spate of
murders? This is precisely the way a disembodied intelligence would think,
cleverly getting other people do its work for it by preying on their weaknesses.
What I really liked about this is that it doesn’t have to explain itself as it
goes along, there is enough information present for the audience to piece it
all together. Suddenly season five feels confident and fresh. If we had had
started on this foot (around Detour) we would be in fine shape by now.
Fashion Statement: I have seen some moustaches in my time
(I’m a fan of 70s TV for goodness sake) but the handlebar monstrosity sported
by one of the criminals in the diner has to be seen to be believed.
Kill Switch written by William Gibson & Tom Maddox and directed by Rob Bowman
Trust No-One: It’s clear that Mulder and Scully are being
written by new writers to the show because they exchange witticisms and talk
street like never before. It feels like we are in the presence of two New York
street cops half the time (Scully says ‘no more screwing around!’ at one
point). Considering their characterisation (aside from a few rare examples) has
been shaky at best this year I am not complaining too much. Both the actors and
the characters are engaged which is a rare union this season. Mulder is back to
his reckless ways – first attempted body snatching in Schizogeny and now
stealing evidence here. I quite like this irresponsible streak of his, it makes
him a lot more dangerous than the walking catalogue model he has been of late.
Mulder’s dreams say a lot about his psyche – kinky nurses fulfilling his every
whim, losing his arms because he feels trapped and being saved by a kung-fu
fighting Scully who knocks them out with a kick to the head! The glowing cross
above his bed is just weird but you could read all manner of things into that.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Your name is Esther Nairn?’ is said in
exactly the same way Scully said ‘Her name is Bambi?’ in War of the
Coprophages, and it matches her intention to mock.
Ugh: David Markham as a sightless zombie trapped inside the
machine is a potent image and a strong warning against slaving yourself to a
machine. Not that anybody wants to do that, right? Imagine if you turned on the
TV at the point where Mulder’s bed sheets are pulled away and he is left
screaming at the sewn up stumps of arms? Would you think that The X-Files was
this whacked out every week?
The Bad: I wont pretend that some of the dialogue isn’t
horrendous with Maddox and Gibson trying to appeal to ‘da kidz’ in some
particularly excruciating exchanges. It is the Lone Gunmen that suffer the most
(although it is nothing compared to their treatment in First Person Shooter) – ‘Heavy
casualty’ ‘A brother goes down’ is Langley and Frohike talking about the
death of a hero, apparently.
Moment to Watch Out For: It’s a tough one to call because
the teaser, the climax and Mulder’s dreams are magnificent set pieces but the
sequence that had me biting my nails the most was when Esther’s shipping
container was targeted by Defense Department weapons platform and blown sky
high. If you want to see how to pace exciting television then study this set
piece. I especially loved the long shot of the shipping container going up like
a fireworks factory. You can see why this was the most expensive show to shoot
in the first five years.
Orchestra: One of Mark Snow’s best ever scores, showing that
he was really fired up by the very different take on the show. The mournful
warble that plays throughout the episode is tremendous and he gives the zaps
the appropriate amount of vitality.
Foreboding: Gibson & Maddox’s script for season five
provides one of the best episodes of the year. Their script for season seven
produces one of the worst X-File episodes of all time. Go figure.
Result: Let’s get one thing straight – in it’s own way Kill
Switch is an derivative as the rest of season five with it’s take on artifical
intelligence no more sophisticated than season one’s underrated Ghost in the
Machine. What marks this as different from that episode and from this season in
general is the way that the story is presented by the writers (if Chinga was a
reason not to bring in novelists who want to turn their hand to scriptwriting
then Kill Switch offers an opposing argument) and also how it is assembled by
the director too. There is a freshness to the presentation that permeates every
scene, the story is superbly paced so the whole thing feels as though it flies
by and the imagery throughout is stunning. Rob Bowman has had five years to
perfect his art on this show, honing his craft with some memorable stories and a
sizable budget. Kill Switch needed to be brought to life with some real pizzazz
and Bowman throws every resource into making this take on AI as spectacular as
possible. I have seen some movies that play with the same ideas that haven’t
had the excitement and gorgeous set pieces that this episode sports. Whilst
Gibson and Maddox might have a little trouble putting words in the regulars
mouths (Mulder & Scully sound like street cops half the time and the Lone
Gunmen have reverted to horny adolescents) they at least remember to give this
techno thriller a thread of character (mostly through Esther) which means when
the bangs and flashes are all over the struggle has meant something.
This is the last kind of episode I would imagine to emerge from the season to have
the most amount of heart. So, clichéd it may be but it is still one of the most
intriguing and gorgeous representations of this theme that I have seen achieved
in genre television. And the bolts of lightning are just brilliant: 9/10
Bad Blood written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Cliff
Bole
What’s it about: A community of vampires that just want to
stay hidden…
Brains’n’Beauty: In Scully’s eyes Mulder is a hyperactive,
endlessly chipper and slightly patronising man who expects her to do whatever
he says at the drop of a hat. She’s the professional who trails along in his
wake and tries to do whatever she can to please him. The typical X-File office
slide show becomes packed full of super fast exposition that Mulder reads off
with extreme zeal. When she tries to make an alternative suggestion he
practically laughs her out of the room. Mulder is so excited about evidence of
possible vampirism that he forgets Scully’s name and displays mild sexism in
front of over law enforcement officers. He is the grand master of the dramatic
exclamation (I pissed myself at the theatrical way he announced that the
victims shoes were untied). Only Scully could peer into a mans open stomach
contents and upon discovering he last ate a pizza start wistfully dreaming
about having one herself. He laughs manically to himself as he sends Scully off
at the dead of night to perform another autopsy, he’s almost unearthly in
himself from her point of view. In Scully’s mind she comes to her brilliant
revelation about the chlorohydrates in the pizza in dramatically satisfying,
logical, step-by-step fashion.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘What am I even looking for?’ (hands on
Scully’s shoulders) ‘I don’t know…’ – this is so beautifully played I
had to leave the room for a second.
The Good: It makes me chuckle to think that the director of
one of the best Star Trek TNG episodes (The Best of Both Worlds) was also the
director of one of the best X-Files episodes. The thought of Mulder being
responsible for a lawsuit against the FBI for 446,000 dollars makes me laugh so
hard my sides want to split. I found it very stimulating for the show to tell a
very different kind of narrative this week, playing the same story out twice
with two vastly different perspectives before bringing the two tales together
at the climax and providing a clever solution. Gilligan isn’t interested in
writing the usual X-Files shtick this year but instead is playing about with
his storytelling (Unusual Suspects also had fun with its narration and non
linear storytelling). It’s fascinating to see how the two agents perceive the
story differently because they have always come to these investigations from
very different angles and it makes sense that they would interpret the events
to fit in with their own world view. The events play out in exactly the same
way, narratively speaking, but the emphasis is completely different. It does feel
like you are watching two very different tales that just happen to follow the
same path. Where Bad Blood scores its biggest laughs is not only in how they
see each other but also how they judged the other characters within the story.
The Sherrif is the best (and most obvious) example because Scully clearly has a
bit of thing for him and sees him as a dashing hero (who is practically
introduced in slow motion) and Mulder sees him as a bumbling idiot with buck
teeth (perhaps because he is a threat to his relationship with Scully?). By
treating him as a figure to be mocked, Gilligan completely manages to disguise
the fact that he is one of the vampires that they are looking for. It does make
you start to wonder how life has any kind of internal consistency when you are
constantly discussing other people on a regular basis and all seeing different
things. The repeated autopsy scenes get more farcical as they progress, gross
from the start but with Scully getting more irked with each interpretation and
victim turning up. Gilligan even has fun with the usual text that scrawls
across the screen telling the audience where the scene is being set – Mulder
rewriting it when Scully gets the name of the place wrong. The gag of Mulder
waiting in the graveyard for the killer to turn up and Ronnie drives right by
and says hello says everything you need to know about his adeptness at catching
killers (isn’t he supposed to be one of the best?). I really liked how
mysteries posed in one story (Why is Mulder covered in mud? Who is on the other
end of the apparently dirty phone call that Scully receives?) are answered in
the other. It means that although they are telling the same narrative, they are
two halves of one greater story. Gilligan cleverly introduces the obsessive
compulsive behaviour idea early so Mulder gets to delay his attack when the
vampire reveals himself. When the narrative drops the first person POV of
Mulder or Scully its nice to see which details were correct from their
differing accounts. How they still both see what they thought in the Sherrif
(its actually somewhere in between) is hilarious. How delightfully post-modern
is the idea that a vampire has seen too many horror movies and wants to live up
to the stereotype? The idea of a community of blood suckers that just want to
integrate and are happy to exsanguinate pigs to get their fill of blood is new,
and if it wasn’t for one unruly teenage they would have gotten away with it
too. I love the creepiness of the climax as Mulder is surrounded by glowing
eyed vampires – in many ways it is as unsatisfying as the ending of Darkness
Falls when the nasty almost deliberately fails to murder the agent but the
lines about the vampires trying to keep a low profile cover that beautifully.
The Bad: Is the X-Files office suddenly twice the size that
it was? I seem to recall this always being a cramped space but suddenly there
is enough room to swing a cat around in there.
Moment to Watch Out For: I couldn’t pick one moment. There
are several with the caustic Scully that forced me to pause for laughing so
hard.
Trust No-One: After half a season where Mulder and Scully
seem to have reverted back to their season one personas it is now time for the
ever brilliant Vince Gilligan to deconstruct their characters in a very witty
way and find out what makes them tick. Bad Blood offers a rare glimpse into how
the two agents actually see each other, or at least how they like to present
each other to other people. The joy of the piece is watching Duchovny and
Anderson play these heightened versions of their usual characters and what’s
funny is that they are parodies but not so far removed from how we are used to
seeing them as to be unconvincing. As an audience member you could be well
within your rights to switch on and think it is business as usual if that is
how you see the characters normally. In Mulder’s eyes Scully is deeply
unimpressed by him, constantly sighing at the ridiculous investigations that he
drags her on and rolling her eyes as he tries to cast his open mind over the
facts. He thinks of himself as tentatively approaching her with his
supernatural theories and fearing that she will blow up in his face as a result
(‘Well it’s obvious not a vampire!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because they don’t exist!’).
Scully is apparently too busy flirting with the local law enforcement to focus
on anything else and yawns as Mulder starts prattling on about vampires and their
habits. There’s a fabulous droning monologue that Scully reels off from
Mulder’s POV where he looks physically pained to be listening to her whining (‘I
do it all for you Mulder!’). Tellingly in both stories Mulder makes a right
mess of Scully’s hotel (that I can definitely believe).
‘I just put money in the magic fingers…’
‘He had big bucked teeth?’
‘And then he flew at me like a flying squirrel?’
‘Probable cause of death. Gee, that’s a tough one.’
‘That is essentially exactly the way it happened.’
Pre Titles Sequence: The teaser is so clever because it
opens in typical X-Files fashion with somebody being pursued through the woods
(this tradition began as far back as the pilot episode) but in hilarious
fashion it turns out that Mulder is the stalker and the ‘victim’ is a suspected
vampire. I say suspected because when Mulder finally catches up with him
and rams a stake through his heart (what else are you going to do with a
vampire?) he turns out to be a regular guy with false vampire teeth in his
mouth. Cue credits. It’s wickedly funny and a great way to kick things,
presenting Mulder with the ultimate ‘get out of that’ situation. Finally his
zeal for exposing the supernatural has led him to murder. It was only a matter
of time. The look on Scully’s face as she holds up the false teeth might just
be the funniest thing this show ever presented.
Result: ‘Why don’t you tell me the way you think it
happened?’ I’ve seen this sort of POV story done since this episode was
aired but it was never as fun or imaginatively told as this. Bad Blood is
really funny stuff because it’s The X-files heightened to the level of sitcom
and yet because it is so grounded in character there is a great deal to be
learnt from it as well. It’s perfectly natural for a person to tell a story
that puts them in the best possible light and it is the skewered, negative
versions of Mulder and Scully that they present each other with that creates
the biggest belly laughs. Anderson and Duchovny have never been quite so fired
up by a script before and deliver superb comic performances – it is easy to see
why Carter upped the comedy next season because they clearly have great talent
in that direction that really comes alive on screen (compare this to their
near-suicide borderm from Redux). Given that I sat through seven season of
Buffy I thought I had seen every which way a comedy vampire story could be told
but apparently I was wrong because The X-Files avoids all the usual clichés and
promotes the idea of a vampire community that just wants to fit in (whilst
still having enough of the tropes – a wooden stake, patrolling a graveyard, a
body coming to life on the slab, the breadstick sign of the cross – for it to
feel authentic). You’ve got two versions of the same story but they nourish
each other to make a greater whole and ultimately it is a very clever mystery
where all the culprits are in plain sight but that is disguised beneath all the
giggles and character assassination. With Kill Switch and Bad Blood at the
heart of season five there is a furrow of innovation and style surrounded by a
whole lot of dryer scrubland. This is the second of two back to back classics: 10/10
Patient X written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz and
directed by Kim Manners
Trust No-One: ‘A conspiracy wrapped in a plot inside a
government agenda!’ Whilst he is very eloquent about his reasons, this is
the perfect illustration of how Mulder disappeared up an unconvincing cul de
sac in season five. Suddenly he doesn’t believe in aliens anymore and he is
convinced that because he was duped by the government for five long years (with
some pretty hefty evidence I might add) then everybody else has been too. As a
result he feels the need to get in touch with the shiny happy crowd and tell
them precisely where they have had the wool pulled over their eyes. Strangely
these scenes of Mulder publicly shattering their illusions have even less
credibility than those when he used to promote the opposite and uncensor his
beliefs with regards to alien life. Now he is single minded in a more closed
off direction and he looks like he is trying to shit on everybody else’s party.
At least before he had some kind of character consistency, even if he did come
across as a bit of a fruit loop. The reason I object to this dead end form of
reasoning is that in the advent of the movie he would have clear proof that
aliens do exist and all this time wasting doubt would be quietly swept under
the carpet (you would think at least Scully would mention the fact). The idea
of the whole conspiracy being one big lie is a pleasing one but we have seen
too much evidence as an audience to buy into it now and the fact that Mulder
does damages his credibility. It makes a mockery of all those tedious mythology
episodes we sat through. Hilariously Mulder is shocked that nobody will believe
him, basking in the insanity of their beliefs. A short while ago he was one of
those people and more determined to cling onto his beliefs than anybody.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘You look constipated actually’ ‘Well
that would make sense I’ve had my head up my rear end for the past five years.’
Ugh: The image of men being pinned down by wire and having
the black oil smothered over their faces was a potent one in last years
Tunguska two parter. The Red and the Black trump that by repeating the exercise
but this time putting a child through the experience. Finally some material to
make us squirm in the thus far censored season five. The kids stitched up,
bloody face oozing with black oil is genuinely horrific.
The Bad: Let me get this straight – the government is trying
to hide the evidence of biological weapons research by covering it up with a
wall of silence about the existence of extraterrestrials? How does that make
any sense to anybody but Mulder who thinks in the most convoluted of terms on
the best of days. Without the Smoking Man to abuse and manipulate, the scenes
with the Syndicate mostly fall flat.
Moment to Watch Out For: The cliffhanger is very
impressively staged with the remaining members of the UFO cult drawn to Skyline
Mountain, a UFO gliding overhead and the scarred, sewn up rebels starting to
incinerate the crowd. Say what you will about Carter and Spotnitz’s
storytelling (and I don’t hold back) but they sure know how to toss a memorable
set piece your way.
Mythology: ‘Now is a time of war and stress among the
alien nations, the different races are in upheaval…’ With Cassandra we have
a character who seems to understand what is going on with the alien conspiracy
plot but doesn’t talk in foreboding metaphors. In the final phases of the
aliens plans there are supposed to be assemblies but that is still supposed to
be fifteen years away. A rebel faction of aliens is declaring an act of war
against the aliens and the US government. I do like the idea that the mythology
arc has become so diseased and withered that a new element has to be added to
basically come in and cut away most of what we have seen so far. Although I
have to say that if the writers had adequately explained what was going on
between the government and the aliens all these years then watching it all fall
to pieces would have much more dramatic impact.
Result: A mixed bag but a generally positive one with plenty
of the kind of shocking imagery that the show has really lacked this year. The
best parts of Patient X are all the elements that are being added to the shows
mythology including a rebel faction that is so powerful it is threatening to
tear down everything the US government has worked towards, the introduction of
Cassandra Spender and her son Jeffrey and the stomach turning shots of people
being burnt alive and the sown up faces of the rebels. It feels as if the
storyline is moving onwards, ditching the elements from the past that didn’t
work out so well and forging a much clearer, and dramatically satisfying route
towards a conclusion. What fails to work is most of what we have already seen
in the past – Krychek turns up for his annual appearance offering little more
than something nice to look at, Marita Covarrubias continues to bore, the
Syndicate are exposed as dull old men sitting around in the dark without the
Smoking Man around to spice things up and Mulder and Scully are forced into
their least convincing role reversal yet. He’s resolute in bringing down every
person that believes in extraterrestrials in as determined a fashion as he was
to get everybody to believe in previous seasons but because he is so closed
minded he comes across as being bitter and unlikable. Therefore Scully has to
be our way into the story and whilst they touch upon the genius idea to return
to Skyline mountain, she doesn’t sound at all convinced as the person who
believes and who is trying to encourage Mulder to investigate. This whole angle
will be wiped away by the time of the movie which isn’t very far away now but
it does leave these season five episodes in something of a dead end backwater,
character wise. Even the removal of the Smoking Man is a red herring. I sound
overly negative but the truth is, some odd pacing aside, this is pretty
entertaining for the most part and it pleases me that some characters are
finally offering some decipherable information about the mythology arc: 7/10
The Red and the Black written by Chris Carter & Frank
Spotnitz and directed by Chris Carter
Trust No-One: There are only so many times that we can visit
the bedside of Mulder or Scully and agonise with whoever is waiting to see any
progress. It is starting to become cliché. It was affecting back in season two
when Scully was first abducted and when she discovered her cancer scare in
Momento Mori and even when she thought she was going to die in Redux II.
Because we have been here so many times before and both agents have always
pulled through unscathed it has started to lose something of its emotional
aptitude. This is where the endless biting between Mulder and Spender begins,
with him blaming the agents for encouraging her mothers quirky interests.
Because Mulder has abandoned the idea of the existence of extraterrestrials the
truth that he now seeks is no longer out there but in Scully. He figures the
chip in her neck is the answer to as much as they need to know about because it
directly affects them. It makes his quest a personal one and one we can buy in
to because we have seen this relationship develop over five years. He no longer
trusts the memories of his sisters abduction. After Krychek spells out to
Mulder precisely what has been going on behind his back throughout this two
parter he sits in his apartment looking utterly bemused. Its as though he is
wondering whether he actually belongs in this show anymore. He walks away from
this adventure with no evidence of an alien rebel and no clue of what is
actually going on. Story of his life, really.
Brains’n’Beauty: Scully is not willing to abandon Mulder’s
cause because she has been profoundly affected by it because of her abduction.
Everything they have been through has led her back to Skyline Mountain and she
is prepared to abandon asking questions when she cannot remember what occurred
there. Now she needs answers.
The Good: You have to give the show some real credit for the
locations they chose to shoot at, they really do spend their money wisely and
bring the most cinematic landscapes to the small screen. The opening as a
helicopter flies over the damn looks absolutely gorgeous. The fact that they
built a 50 foot reconstruction of the dam to film the abduction sequence goes
to show the sort of resources this show was commanding at the time. How
refreshing to see the entire Syndicate out of that dusty old office and getting
involved in the action. Infecting Marita and shoving her out of the way is the
kindest thing they could have done to her character. I find her appearance in
season six where she has been left for dead at the mercy of the black oil and
out for vengeance against the Smoking Man and his allies the most interesting
part of her little arc. Spender is an asshole but I can’t help liking him
anyway. He doesn’t want anything to do with the X-Files but thanks to his
mother and father he is about to be dragged into its murky, career destroying,
depths despite his wishes. Whilst I am pleased that the Smoking Man is alive
because I do think the show genuinely needs him are we ever going to hear an
explanation of how he faked his own death or like the Master are we to assume
that ‘I’m indestructible the whole universe knows that!’ It isn’t the
last time he pulls off this resurrection trick before the end of the series so
I guess that must be the case.
Pre Titles Sequence: Beautifully filmed and scored, this is
an intriguing opening that seemingly has nothing to do with the episode that
preceded it. If you can skip past the fact that the little kid can’t act for
toffee this is rather a neat mystery to be solved. In hindsight the answer is
obvious, but for a moment this unknowable presence in the snowy mountains is
intriguing.
Mythology: ‘If the boy was your trump card, why infected
him unless you could also cure him with a vaccine developed by the Russians?
One that works. It would mean that resistance to the alien colonists was now
possible…’ At one point Mulder amusingly points out that the perpetrators
in the chip have never been uncovered and their identity hasn’t even been
addressed. Who is he talking to here, the audience? The rebels are mutilating
their faces to protect themselves from infection from the black oil. If nothing
else came from this whole alien oil business, the imagery of the stitched up
faces of the rebels is a fantastically macabre progression of that idea. A war
has broken out between the alien colonists and the rebel faction and if we’re
not lucky the Earth will be the staging ground and its populace simply in the
way. The charred corpses at Skyline Mountain could just be the beginning. The
Syndicate now has a vaccine to the alien virus and are talking about siding
with the rebels to help wipe out their ‘allies.’ ‘The mass incinerations were strikes by an alien rebellion to
upset plans for occupation.’
Result: This looks absolutely gorgeous. Seriously,
has genre television ever looked this lavish before? All the background
information about the rebels and their war against the alien colonists and how
the Syndicate fits into all this re-ignites some interest in the mythology arc
once more. It feels, as it so often has before, as though this might actually
be heading somewhere. There’s talk of shifting allegiances and those in power
having to abandon their previous plans and make this up as they go along which
means much of what has gone before can be abandoned in favour of this far more
clear cut narrative. So yay for the rebels for cutting through all the murk and
bringing this story bang up to date and into some kind of recognisable state.
Where this fails is turning this two parter into a coherent story in its own
right – both Patient X and The Red and the Black are in no way standalone
X-Files but pieces of a larger puzzle and as such this would be one of the last
installments I would select if I wanted to stick on the odd episode (whereas
early mythology episodes like Little Green Men and Duane Barry can be watched
in isolation). Another fatal mistake is cutting Mulder and Scully so far out of
the main action. Everything seems to be going on behind their backs and they have
little awareness of the real story whilst they indulge in exorcising their
personal demons. Season five feels like it is in flux and preparing to cut the
main stars out of the action (the next episode barely features them at all)
whereas this isn’t the case for a good two seasons yet. Much of the acting is
superb (John Neville once again kicks ass) and there are some exceptional set
pieces but ultimately this two part story (along with The End) is an extended
trailer for the movie. It’s entertaining for the most part but of all the
X-Files episodes this might just have the least satisfying climax of all
because it is completely absent. Everything chugs along nicely and then it just
stops, to be continued in The End. Which wouldn’t be a problem if there wasn’t
a handful of episodes between now and then. Season five really has some
problems but there is still much to admire here: 6/10
Travelers written by John Shiban & Frank Spotnitz and
directed by William A. Graham
Trust No-One: As with Unusual Suspects earlier in the
season, it is great to be able to catch up with Mulder before when he was fresh
to the Bureau and still a little wet behind the ears. Unshackled by
extraterrestrial obsessions (believing in aliens or not), he is a far more
chipper and less pretentious character. With a touch shorter hair and the
glasses he sported in the pilot, Duchovny genuinely looks like a younger
version of his normal character.
Brains’n’Beauty: Missing in action, but Mulder’s involvement
is only peripheral and even then it is Mulder from seven years back.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘What are you talking about, I’m no
communist!’ ‘You are if you say you are…’ when Dales refuses to co-operate and
‘See, you’re a patriot again…’ when he does. This was the horror faced by any
American citizen who was suspected by HUAC. Suddenly the government had an
excuse that if your face didn’t fit or if you didn’t conform to what was
understood to be ‘American’ behaviour, you could be accused of being a
communist, subpoenaed and dragged before Congress to account for yourself.
Pre-Titles Sequence: A spooky old house, a desiccated
corpse, a creepy old man frothing at the mouth…some standard X-Files tropes
present but whilst there is nothing new this is atmospheric and sinister. Even
if I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Mythology: The X-Files are unsolved cases that have been
filed under ‘X’ because Dorothy Bahnsen ran out of space under ‘U’. There’s
always plenty of space in the X draw. Somehow The U-Files doesn’t quite have
the same ring to it, does it? The Directors office determines whether a case is
marked with an X, they are supposedly dead end cases that nobody is allowed to
see or follow up.
Result: Flashbacks within flashbacks, Travelers is a fine
episode and one which adds to the shows mythology in very original way. This
feels so different from anything that has come before (even Musings of a
Cigarette Smoking Man, of which this shares some similarities, was telling the
story of a series regular) because despite the appearance of a younger Mulder
we see practically the entire story through the eyes of Arthur Dales, the
founder of the X-Files. The 50s sequences are effortlessly conjured up by the
director, especially when you consider the times constraints that this episode
was made under and it is lovely to see a cameo by the younger Smoking Man and
Bill Mulder. The story is slow paced but has some marvellously grisly moments
and for the most part manages to slide by on the strength of its performances
and the atmospheric detail in the setting. Joe Ford the younger hated this
episode (probably for no more reason than it lacked the usual contemporary pace
and Scully) and I consider that something of a screaming endorsement of Travelers
as my teenage self seemed to miss all the subtleties in television and obsesses
over spectacle. This is a pleasing mix of horror, historical fact (the script
touches on the paranoia that surrounded HUAC and grisly xenotransplantation
experiments) and a marvellous exercise in creating a 50s nourish atmosphere.
Another episode of season five that omits Scully and (for the most part) Mulder
and that proves to be stronger as a result. You wouldn’t want every episode to
be as humourless as this but it makes for a gripping and authentic one off: 8/10
The Mind’s Eye written by Tim Minear and directed by Kim
Manners
Trust No-One: Marty enjoys Mulder’s company (although she
would never openly admit it) because he doesn’t patronise her. Quite the
reverse, he is convinced that she is innocent but it has nothing to do with the
fact that she is blind, to which he talks about with cheerful nonchalance. He
likes Marty and admires her but he doesn’t feel sorry for her. The way Mulder
gently probes Marty about the story of her mothers death reveals a sweetness
that has been missing since The Field Where I Died. If he was written this well
every week I would be tearing through these episodes at a much quicker rate but
the truth is this is exceptional characterisation when that should be the case
every week. The look of defeat on Mulder’s face when he realises he has been
used by Marty to kill her father is heartbreaking. The final scene between them
is beautifully played (‘you’re lucky he wasn’t a fan of the Ice Capades…’).
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Oh, it’s you’ ‘See what I mean?’ ‘It’s
not magic, it’s your crappy cologne.’
‘You are on sceptical guy, Agent Mulder!’
‘I hate the way you see me.’
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘Who exterminated him?’ – what is this,
Doctor Who?
Ugh: There is a heart pounding sequence that springs up in
the middle of the episode where Marty has a vision of the killer attacking a
woman he has met at a bar and tries to get to the location where the
altercation took place. Not only is this the most frightening looking killer
that the show has offered up in over a year (seriously his sneer could curdle
milk) but the direction when Marty blindly steps in front of traffic in a panic
made my heart skip a beat. It’s a wonderfully tense scene, superbly acted and
directed.
The Bad: The killer is Marty’s father? I saw that coming
after about ten minutes. I was hoping for a something a little less daytime soap
opera than that.
Pre Titles Sequence: Very season one in the way that it
spells out its premise in the teaser with absolute clarity so you pretty much
know the set pieces that the episode is going to explore. It’s weird that this
isn’t the episode penned by Stephen King because the idea of a blind girl being
able to see through the eyes of a killer is exactly the sort of simple,
powerful idea that his novels are famous for (whilst being very similar to the
premise of Creed). Can you imagine being blind for your entire life and then
suddenly being able to visualise somebody else’s surroundings? The sudden burst
of light, colour and shape would be overwhelming. Lily Taylor capture the first
moment when Marty has a vision beautifully, absolute shock, panic and an
attempt to bring it back before her eyes. I enjoyed the allusions to previous
season one episodes Tooms (the polygraph) and Beyond the Sea (‘let me guess
your killer is OJ Simpson’).
Result: A simple but effective premise, a memorable guest
performance from Lili Taylor, the best characterisation of Mulder of the season
and a clear cut investigation with a beginning, middle and end all combine to
make The Mind’s Eye one of the most effective episodes of the season. It’s a
shame that Tim Minear only contributed two scripts for the show because he
clearly has a better idea of how The X-Files works than some of the staff
writers and his dialogue is so real in places it hurts. This is one of the few
times in season five where the similarities to a first season episode is a real
strength (because half the time it has felt that the writers have forgotten how
to write for the show this year), there is an unpretentiousness to proceedings
that starts from the streamlined script and continues to impress through the
express direction of Kim Manners and focused performances of David Duchovny
and Lili Taylor. Ultimately this less of a supernatural thriller and more of a
performance piece and the relationship between Mulder and Marty is what really
makes this work. It’s an entirely unpatronising look at blindness and the walls
that somebody will put around themselves in order to cope with a disability in
a harsh world. The only problem is this
installment needed perhaps one more set piece and a twist to make proceedings a
little more interesting at the climax. Because The Mind’s Eye spells out
everything from its opening sequence if you aren’t invested in the Mulder/Marty
interaction then you might find yourself staring at your watch before the end.
This is solid stuff, had the entire season been made up of episodes like this
we would have been in much better shape: 8/10
All Souls written by Frank Spotnitz & John Shiban and directed by Allen Coulter
All Souls written by Frank Spotnitz & John Shiban and directed by Allen Coulter
Trust No-One: Considering he has taken his beliefs so
seriously in the past he has almost given his life for them time and again,
Mulder is a little sarcastic and mocking about religion. I think he is supposed
to sound hip and reactionary but he just comes across as uncompromising and
discourteous. His prejudice also encourages him to point the finger at the
wrong man.
Brains’n’Beauty: Oh gosh I am such a dunce. I am only now in
the closing stages of season five starting to notice the criss cross theme of
Mulder being the sceptic and Scully the believer that has played out across the
season. Following on from her emotional crisis at the beginning of the season
where she almost lost her life, it would seem that her eyes have been opened
somewhat since she has been given a second chance at life. The first mythology
two parter of the year (Christmas Carol & Emily) saw Scully seeking
parenthood through a child and the second one (Patient X & The Red and the
Black) Scully is trying to convince Mulder. Her faith is something that pops up
sporadically in the series, which is fine because I don’t think I know anybody
who shoves their religious beliefs in your face 24/7. It adds a fascinating
layer to her character because she is often found in conflict with her faith
because of her work. The death of Emily certainly had a profound impact on her
faith, it was hard to reconcile how a just and benevolent God could drop in her
lap the one thing she craved more than anything and then snatch it away again.
She is drawn to this case because the events surrounding the little girls death
mirrors how Emily was taken from her, suddenly and under bizarre circumstances.
In a heart stopping moment for the agent, she sees Emily resting on the autopsy
table instead of the victim which was perhaps the moment she should have stepped
away from this case. She no longer has any objectivity. This overwritten scene
(I don’t think Emily should have said anything) is worth it for Anderson’s
pained reaction. I’m not sure if the parallel between Scully letting Emily’s
memory rest and letting the final girl step into the light works but it allows
the show to move on so we’ll let it pass. I’d rather this than another season
of Scully depressed over the lost of her blink and you missed it child.
She wonders if accepting loss is what faith is all about.
‘I was raised to believe that God has his reason, however
mysterious’ ‘He may well have his reasons but he seems to use a lot of
psychotics to carry out his job orders’ – especially in the hands of
lazy television writers.
Ugh: Sightless dead girls aren’t the most stomach poisoning
images that the show has ever dished up but it is still pretty grim.
The Bad: This is Scully we are talking about, I had no doubt
in my mind that the apparently shocking act of an innocent girl dying because
of her was grossly exaggerated by a script that was trying to make an impact. I
think I’ve realised what my main issue with season five is (besides some
variable scripts and a pause in the myth arc to wait for the movie to pass) and
that is the absence of much Mulder and Scully interaction. Because of their
commitments to the movie the series has been forced to run a series of episodes
where one of the agents is investigating alone. Unusual Suspects, Christmas
Carol, Chinga, Travelers and All Souls all suffer from this curse. Season six
would rectify this in a major way and provide the audience with a wealth of
memorable episodes that highlight their relationship at its best but for the
time being it feels as if something is slightly askew between the characters
(or the actors) which really makes a difference when you are dealing with an
ensemble of two. Whilst Mulder eventually turns up in All Souls, for the first
fifteen minutes it plays out without him and really stutters as a result. The
horny shadow of the social worker is handled in such a blasé fashion (and the
very idea of revealing the devil in such a fashion just boggles the mind) that
it provokes laughter rather than shock.
Moment to Watch Out For: The moment that the Seraph reveals
its true nature to Scully, its head turning into different beasts (man, lion,
eagle, bull) in a diffuse light, is startling. After proof like this I hope she
isn’t going to suffer any doubts in the future.
Result: All Souls comes in for quite a bit of flack and
whilst it isn’t the finest X-File ever written it does offer some more insight
into Scully’s faith and provide some startling religious imagery that balances
some of the less successful elements of the episode. What really works for me
is Gillian Anderson’s committed performance and her chance to explore her
reactions to Emily’s death early in the season which felt as though they had
been summarily dropped after the episode because they didn’t want a character
walking through the season with emotional baggage. This could have come a lot
earlier so Scully could move on, but I appreciate the effort regardless. There
is also something of a deception taking place in All Souls where the story
tries to convince you that the priest is the antagonist (something I would have
objected to strongly because it is such an easy route to take…and most shows
do) when it was in fact the social worker. How that is revealed however might be
one of the most ludicrous moments in the shows history (a shadow with horns?).
It’s a bit of a plodder regardless of all these strengths, with only a scant
few moments of humour from a briefly seen Mulder to liven things up. The show
is about to up the entertainment factor when it hits LA for season six and I
cannot wait, this year has seen far too many episodes that try and take
themselves deadly seriously. There is a time and a place for that but not week
in, week out. I thought this was going to be far more unpleasant than it
actually turned out to be, but it is still pretty average all told: 5/10
The Pine Bluff Variant written by John Shiban and directed by Rob Bowman
The Pine Bluff Variant written by John Shiban and directed by Rob Bowman
Trust No-One: If there was ever a time to produce a ‘Mulder
gone rogue’ episode then it was during the fifth season where his character was
guided along a road where he doesn’t have a great deal of faith in his work
anymore. Whilst it would have been catastrophic for the series had Mulder truly
betrayed the FBI, there is at least a seed of possibility at this point in time
that wouldn’t have been possible at any other. Timing is everything. Mulder is
thrown into the lions den, forced to rub shoulders with people who will torture
you even if you are on their side. Should they find out at any time that he is
spying on them for the FBI, he is dead. Duchovny reacts well to this script,
getting to play the roguish action hero that I rather think he likes (he had a
similarly excited reaction in episodes like 731 and Tunguska where he got to
play the thug).
Brains’n’Beauty: Being closer to Mulder than anybody else,
Scully is baffled by Mulder’s apparently criminal behaviour. This does go
someway to helping the audience along with the deception because if Scully
isn’t in on the scam, the chances are there isn’t one.
Moment to Watch Out For: The torture scenes feel as though
they have sprung from 24. They are genuinely unpleasant to watch, Duchovny
leaving us with no doubt that Mulder is suffering excruciating agony. In a
series that is starting to promote hits heroes as catalogue models who
occasionally investigate the odd crime, this is a welcome touch of reality. His
broken finger is a nicely placed plot point too, allowing Scully to recognise
which Mulder is in and isolate it. The moment when Mulder’s allegiance is
tested and he has to shoot a victim in order to prove himself left me on the
edge of my seat waiting to see what action he would take.
Orchestra: Mark Snow seems excited by the material this week
and delivers one of his strongest scores of the year. It is a story that needs
a sense of movement and Snow delivers that in spades whilst providing some
extra meat for the more striking moments.
Result: ‘That money’s as dirty as you are…’ John
Shiban’s solo scripts aren’t amongst the strongest of The X-Files episodes
(although when he is paired with another writer the work produced is usually
much more agreeable) but this time around he has fashioned something that the
season has needed in abundance – some good, old fashioned entertainment. Whilst
some of you might question my description of a piece of television that
features terrorist attacks and torture as entertainment, my point is that there
is no pretence to any of the material. The Pine Bluff Variant isn’t deep or
meaningful; it is an exciting, fast paced thriller with plenty of memorable set
pieces and a great role undercover for Mulder. It doesn’t pretend to be
anything it isn’t and that is the joy of it. With Rob Bowman at the helm it is
also about as fulsomely realised as it could hope to be and he drives the
episode with a muscular tone and dynamic fluidity. The conviction with which
this drama is played is crucial, it feels as though Mulder is in genuine danger
and could lose his life in an instant if his cover is blown. With the introduction
of a conspiracy plot within this undercover operation, there are plenty of
surprises to go around and that feeling of trust no-one which has been
lost in later years is back with a vengeance. Genuine moments of threat, a
fantastic Mark Snow score and a great opportunity for David Duchovny to play
something fresh, The Pine Bluff Variant is a muscular hour of television that
stands out in this wilderness of a season for it’s ability to provide a great
ride: 8/10
Folie a Deux written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Kim
Manners
Trust No-One: Haven’t we been here before? Mulder
complaining about being punished by being handed ‘jerk off’ assignments and
baulking at how every apparent supernatural happening winds up in his lap. When
a show starts repeating itself like this you have to wonder if they have run
out of ideas. He’s also rather arrogantly using ‘I’ rather than ‘we’ when he
talks about their work on the X-Files and not taking Scully’s potential
interest in a case into consideration. What happened to that eager puppy from
season one, the one who leapt up at the chance to investigate anything related
to the paranormal? This would appear to be set up for the movie which introduces
Mulder to the big screen as a despondent and broken man (hardly the best way to
encourage potential new viewers to the series but hey ho) but I am pleased that
he managed to find the fun again in season six because he is no fun to be
around at all at the moment. In complete contrast to the previous episode,
Duchovny comes across as bored and uninvolved in Folie a Deux, like he has
played this kind of material before (let’s be honest he’s done madness on The
X-Files several times now). Rather than looking frightened as the creature
crawls across the ceiling, Duchovny looks like he wants to burst into laughter.
Assistant Director: If I were Skinner I would be more than a
little embarrassed by Mulder’s behaviour by now. He seems to be on the verge of
causing a law suit for the FBI every other week these days.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Five years together, Scully, you must
have seen this coming.’
Moment to Watch Out For: The horrendous moment when Mulder
thinks he sees the bug about to attack Skinner. Duchovny throws caution to the
wind and chews up the scenery with gay abandon. It’s excruciating to
watch.
Result: This is one of those episodes that falls between two
stools, trying to be both playful and serious and consequently doesn’t quite
manage either with a great amount of success. All the elements seem to be there
to make a cracking episode (Brian Markinson’s standout performance, a great
monster, strong concepts) but after being relatively entertained for an hour
nothing seems to stand out as being particularly memorable. A story where a man
goes nuts and accuses his boss Mr Pinkus of being a soul harvester is probably
the sort of nonsense that non fans suspect the X-Files is like every week and
so turning this episode on as your first taste would confirm every suspicion.
The trouble is it is not tongue in cheek enough to give the audience the hint
that this is supposed to be a little bit b-movie and so it looks like a
ridiculous premise is being played out with severe earnestness. It doesn’t help
that David Duchovny seems to have lost the plot, at first playing a bored and
listless Mulder but going insanely over the top in the latter half as he
succumbs to the madness. It is unlike Vince Gilligan to misjudge the tone of a
piece this badly and this must go on record as one of his least engaging
stories. Kim Manners does his best with the material and the extra work that
went into making the insect creature work was definitely worth it because it
provides the sort of nightmarish chills that the rest of the show is aiming for
but failing. Folie a Deux presents some intriguing ideas but isn’t sure if it
wants you to laugh at them or run away and hide from them. Forgettable but not
offensive, this is The X-Files on autopilot and killing time before the move to
LA: 4/10
The End written by Chris Carter and directed by R.W. Godwin
Trust No-One: Skinner can see that Mulder’s work on The
X-Files is getting him nowhere. He hasn’t found his sister, he’s pretty much
destroyed his career and he spends his days in the basement of the Bureau
following up hoax abductions and stories that could have leapt from the front
pages of the Enquirer. Finally somebody asks the man what he hopes to
achieve by following this self destructive path. Given the evidence of the past
year I would suggest that Mulder doesn’t enjoy his work anymore and at times it
is Scully that seems to be getting more enjoyment from it. Perhaps he is so
used to this line of work that he cannot see any future beyond it, despite the
fact that it has become a bit of a chore. That way depression lies (or madness,
and we saw a little of both in the last episode). Mulder lacks any degree of
subtlety when it comes to his work and to get his relationship with Agent
Spender off to a great start he walks into a room of professionals and tells
his soon to be replacement that he is wrong. Mulder often asks Scully to do his
legwork in these investigations and perhaps the best way to appease her with
the introduction of Fowley is not to ask his old flame to assist him in this
investigation instead. He was never exactly blessed with the social graces but
he seems to have taken a crash course in how not to behave of late. Mulder’s
quiet ‘I’ve done okay without you’ speaks volumes about their
relationship, the fact that he has to say it out loud and the suggestion that
she might have been extremely influential when they were together. Finally
Mulder gets excited about something – Gibson Praise could be the glue that
sticks together all the millions of little puzzle pieces that make up the
X-Files. Here is genetic proof of extraterrestrial tampering, a super human
enhanced by alien involvement. As angry as he might be, outwardly attacking
Spender in the FBI building and declaring his intent to bring him down might
not have been the smartest move to make. Especially when this man is about to
take on your life’s work.
Assistant Director: I guess Mulder’s psychosis in the last
episode and his attack on Skinner has been forgotten about since they are now
old chums once again.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘You’re allowed to investigate the
X-Files as an indulgence but draw the wrong kind of conclusion and they’ll shut
you down.’
The Good: Blimey, it feels as though we are in movie
territory already with the impressive pre-titles sequence and then a cut to a
stunning mountain range and a near execution in the snow. Has genre television
ever looked this good? It is extremely downbeat to close a season with the
heroes beaten, stripped of their work and any future assignments together and
forced to accept that their enemies have won. The shot of the X-Files office
being eaten away by flames sticks in your craw and the aftermath of Mulder and
Scully stepping into the ashen remains of their work endures. Where can the
series go from here?
The Bad: Whilst I would buy that the kid may have pushed
backwards away from the kill shot, I wouldn’t automatically assume that he had
sensed the assassination pre-cognitively. Maybe he was just lucky. ‘Control
the board, know which pieces to sacrifice’ - I think there is supposed to
be some kind of chess motif being played throughout the episode but it isn’t
clear enough in the writing (mind you check out Doctor Who’s Curse of Fenric
when the motif is made so abundant that it starts to irritate). Besides who
ever heard of somebody setting fire to the board because they have lost.
Moment to Watch Out For: Gibson’s ability to read minds
provides some effective moments, in particular when he informs Fowley that the
assassin is outside and is aiming directly at her.
Mythology: ‘Most of us have genes that we don’t use, they
lie there dormant, turned off. Science doesn’t know what they’re for, why
they’re there or where they came from. There’s a long held but unpopular theory
tied to prehistoric evidence of alien astronauts’ – Mulder is putting the
two elements together as an answer to Gibson Praise’s abilities. This is
setting up the movie to some extent where we get to witness the meeting between
prehistoric man and the first alien visitors to the planet.
Foreboding: The movie is coming…
Result: As I thought, now the wilderness year is over and we
have reached the movie all the gang are back together (the Smoking Man, the
Syndicate, Krychek, Skinner, the Lone Gunmen) and we can resume from pretty
much where we left off at the end of season four. It feels, a few decent
standalones aside, like this is the season that never was. The End is a fun
hour that takes the time to shake up the format at a time when the show was
starting to feel a little complacent. Spender returns (one element of season
five to make an impact) and immediately starts butting heads with Mulder and
Scully takes an instant dislike to Mulder’s ex flame Diana Fowley who
seductively slides between them and starts stealing his attention. The
foreknowledge that this pair will be taking over the X-Files next season has me
genuinely excited, there is a larger ensemble building and it is one that is
loaded with tension. Carter often writes best when he is focusing as much on
character as he is on plot (Redux II was far more agreeable the season opener
because he injected some strong character material into the mix) and whilst he
can be guilty of plying the show with soap opera elements (there is a strong
whiff of that here) the performances are usually decent enough to overcome that
and produce something very watchable. Gibson Praise manages to be both
fascinating and irritating in equal measure, but his abilities offer some
potential for future storylines. It genuinely feels like the end of an era with
Mulder and Scully stripped of their jobs, the Smoking Man reducing their office
to ashes and two replacement waiting in the wings. If the show was ever going
to take that step into a movie franchise this would have been the perfect time.
I for one am glad that the TV series continued because two of my favourite
seasons are still to come but I know there are many that believe that this was
a good place to stop churning out episodic X-Files and concentrate on big
screen adventures. The End leaves far too many threads dangling to be a
completely satisfying episode but it has plenty of tasty material within. It
closes a relatively uneventful season of The X-Files on a memorable note: 8/10
"Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured I was on the Internet within minutes registering my disgust throughout the world."
ReplyDeleteComic book guy: Worst. Episode. Ever.
ReplyDelete