The Sixth Extinction Part I written by Chris Carter and
directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: Scully works to unravel the mystery of the
spaceship on the beach whilst Mulder loses his mind…
Trust No-One: Mulder’s psychotic screams are haunting and
all kudos to the writers for not returning to the status quo at the beginning
of the season and giving the chilling idea of the Agent having lost his mind a
spin. I feel as if they could have taken Mulder’s extra sensory ability much
further than they do but Carter has another trick up his sleeve and an
intriguing new direction to take the character in the third part of this story.
Mulder’s comatose state would have been the perfect excuse to write him out of
the series (although Carter finds another, even more exciting one to do so) and
if it weren’t for the one lingering plot detail of his sister hanging he could
have departed a whole season earlier without anybody noticing too much of a
difference.
Brains’n’Beauty: Gillian Anderson pretty much goes solo in
The Sixth Extinction I and proves more than able, delivering a thoughtful
performance that never once descends into maudlin introspection. If this is a
sign of how the show will develop without Duchovny (it is her best solo work in
years) then when is he leaving? Scully has stayed on in Africa despite
everything she holds to be true, fighting the fight because Mulder cannot. For
Scully to admit that what is happening to Mulder might be extra terrestrial in
origin is a huge moment for the character and the long term fans.
Assistant Director: For a moment I thought that Mulder could
sense Skinner’s recent nefarious allegiance with Krychek given that his attack
is so vicious but it turns out it was just to pass a note to him to try and
help him out. I perhaps would have been a little more gentle in my approach.
Faux Mulder & Scully: Fowley seems to be about ready to
openly defy Skinner, giving him the filthiest looks when he actively orders her
away from Mulder. She clearly thinks she is in a class of her own, protected
because of her allegiance with the Smoking Man. Because he can read minds
now (I guess that makes Gibson Praise
defunct) Mulder finally realises what a duplicitous bitch Agent Fowley is and
warns Skinner of her intentions. No wonder she is about to leap off the mortal
coil; without Mulder on side to make Scully get in a tizzy every time she is
around, she is practically useless. Despite Mimi Rodgers’ best efforts the
character has never really taken off, falling into the same trap as Mr X (who
was more successful simply because Steve Williams imbued the character with
some real chutzpah) and Martia of the lengthly surname I can’t be bothered to
spell out (who only generated some interest once she was tortured horribly by
the Syndicate) of being given a vacuous, mysterious character with relatively
little background or personal detail beyond what the scripts (or more
specifically the arc plot) desires of her.
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘I will continue here for as long as I can.
As long as your beset by the illness that I saw consume your beautiful mind’ –
get used to this kind of cod romantic mush, folks. Season seven is the point
where Mulder and Scully finally admit their feelings for each other (off
screen, naturally) and occasionally the voiceovers stray into Mills & Boon.
Wait until Trust No1 in season nine, that’s the point where the poetic romance
becomes unbearable.
Ugh: Blood dashing against a rock in waves is certainly one
scene I’ll remember.
The Good: You have to give Chris Carter some credit for
daring to pull off some of the more startling imagery in the bible and
transplanting into a contemporary setting to suggest the approaching
apocalypse. Terrifying swarms of insects, burning oceans, a sea of blood…it has
a much greater meaning if you know where to look and they are still memorable
set pieces if you don’t. The beach location is a refreshing change of locale
for the show and cleverly Manners makes the wide open spaces feel quite
claustrophobic thanks to the divine warnings that beset Scully. There’s
something edgy and unpredictable Michael Ensign’s performance that really makes
him one to watch. Scully initially suspects Barnes but even when her guard was
down I always thought he might leap at her and snap her neck clean off her
shoulders. When he finally goes crackers and starts slaughtering natives he
really is a force to be reckoned with. The last time Michael Kritschgau
appeared in the show (Redux) he was accompanied by such a wave of exposition
across several scenes that I had to applaud John Finn for even daring to try
and vomit it all out in one go. Fortunately Carter has learnt from his mistakes
and re-introduces the character having suffered a negative reaction to his
faith in Mulder and living an disgraced life having been kicked out of the
military. Considering it is such an
‘out there’ idea I have to give Carter some credit for attempting to plausibly
orchestrate a plot that hinges around the idea that aliens had a directed hand
in human evolution, perhaps even the creation of the planet. Scully finding
scripture on the surface of the craft is a compelling argument for this case.
The Bad: As an introduction to a new season, The Sixth
Extinction is a little too slow and pensive for its own good. For that portion
of that audience that enjoys exploring deeper themes over stylish action
sequences it is a rare treat but if your preferences are the other way around
you might come out of this feeling short changed.
Pre Titles Sequence: This sequence, which sees Scully beset
by a plague of insects as foretold in the bible, would have been far more
impressive had it been played out in silence rather than the purple Chris
Carter voice over that is slapped over the top. Way to squeeze any tension out
of the moment. Are these Scully’s thoughts or has she written them down and is
recounting them to us? As filmed, this is beautifully executed and pretty
creepy. As written it is terribly pretentious and overblown. The moment when
she returns to the tent to find it crawling with buzzing insects is genuinely
skin crawling.
Moment to Watch Out For: The moment when Fowley discloses
that she is in league with the Smoking Man to Mulder (an empty gesture since he
can already see into her mind) is the most honest moment we have had from the
character. When she still says that she loves him after her confession that
made me pause for thought, wondering whether she might actually mean it.
Fashion Statement: Loving Scully’s laid back dress code
whilst staying in Africa. She still looks every bit the professional but in a
casual, studious manner rather than her fashion model look for the past three
seasons.
Orchestra: I wish Mark Snow would stop dragging out that
sting which mimics the theme tune that he initially created for the series. It
makes it feel as though he has run out of ideas and if that is the case then
perhaps it is time for him to pass the mantle onto to another musician.
Mythology: ‘Something like ESP called remote viewing. The
CIA, Mr Skinner. Extreme subjects would go into arrest, their minds working
harder than their bodies could sustain. It became in effect all brain.’
Result: Turn off your ‘The X-Files was crap in it’s final
three years’ school of thought and look at this episode for what it actually
is; a considerate, well shot and unusually reflective season opener that
manages to take hold of the momentous notions that were flaunted in Biogenesis
and run with them. Interestingly Mulder is removed from the series (at least
intellectually) and it didn’t seem to affect my interest levels one jot –
perhaps Carter was paying attention to his leads continuing discomfort in the
role that made him a name and was doing a dry run for season eight. Daring to
suggest a paranormal influence on the creation of life and the Earth is a
daring one for Carter to play about with and for once it is a good thing that
this series has one foot in reality. By never mocking religious belief but
presenting religious iconography in such a serious way he manages to make the suggestion
without anybody being belittled. Kim Manners ensures that this plays out in as
vivid a fashion as the budget will allow and the location work on the beach in
particular is a treat for the eyes. I really don’t know what to make of this
three parter overall because whilst it is in no way this show at its absolute
best, all three installments have much to recommend them and dare to do
something very different both in terms of their grand ideas and their approach
to tell a mythology story (contemplative rather than blockbuster). It doesn’t
even bother with a cliffhanger in the traditional sense but simply presents a
piece of action that provides an appropriate pause in the action. This episode
is the filling of a very satisfying sandwich and I’m pleased to say that it
doesn’t ruin the taste one little bit: 8/10
Result: I remember when I first saw both parts of The Sixth Extinction and declared that The X-Files had finally jumped the shark. I couldn’t believe that a show that had previously been so exciting was wasting its dying days (I genuinely thought this would be the final season at the time, as did the production team) popping into Mulder’s head and living out his fantasy life and to make things even worse there was a tantalizing glimpse at what an invasion might look like had Carter the balls to actually go through with it. To say I was not satisfied would be a dramatic understatement. Oh what an impetuous youth I was, and how wrong can one person be. Amor Fati is a fascinating experiment and one that could only be carried out once and in a show with a long history that doesn’t have much time left, two of it’s stalwart characters taking time out from their usual games to reflect on everything the show has thrown at them. It’s a big reunion and naturally you are going to get a mixture of characters that worked returning to play their part (Deep Throat, Samantha, The Smoking Man) and those that haven’t (Fowley, although bizarrely in her swansong she finally clicks into place, Teena Mulder, Kritschgau) but ultimately it is great fun to see them all brought together one last time. Carter’s input in the script is noticeable only so much as the story takes itself a little too seriously at times. This wasn’t a problem in the last episode where that sort of grounded reality was needed to slide the potentially objectionable ideas by an unforgiving portion of the audience but when you are talking about the next stage of evolution, an upcoming viral apocalypse and marrying that to a storyline that paints Mulder as a Christ-like figure (made explicit by some overdone iconography)…well let’s just say a little less earnestness and a little more humour wouldn’t have gone amiss. Still I would be disingenuous to suggest that Amor Fati is a failiure, it’s the third overly sedate and yet strangely beguiling mythology episode in a row. The X-Files has a near impossible task of picking up the pieces and running with a new mythology after Two Fathers/One Son and whilst I don’t think we have been set on a new trajectory, this tetrology of episodes has thrown so many fascinating ideas in the air in such a watchable fashion that I’m more than satisfied for the time being. Strong stuff, if a little obscure and open to interpretation. Watch out for the iconic moment when the Smoking Man watches the alien invasion tearing the world apart from Mulder’s window: 8/10
The Sixth Extinction Part II: Amor Fati written by David
Duchovny & Chris Carter and directed by Michael Watkins
What’s it about: Somewhere over the rainbow…
Trust No-One: Perhaps I should be a little frightened that
David Duchovny (who shares a writing credit with Chris Carter on this episode)
has digested Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ and drawn
some parallels between Jesus and his own character in Amor Fati. You might
think that the success of a character has gone to a writers head. However
Duchovny is too intelligent a writer to be swept away with the religious
analogies and he uses the idea to explore the idea of Mulder being tempted with
a life beyond his own, one where he has everything he could possibly want. He’s
not trying to suggest that Mulder is Christ (the very idea) but that Christ
really was the everyman in a tempting situation and one that is similar to what
his character goes through here. Thank goodness that Duchovny is engaged (he
should be because it is his own material) because this episode required the
work of a committed actor to pull off it’s many nuances and the main man is on
top form, not afraid to show his characters weaknesses and strengths. Mulder is
experiencing so much activity in his temporal lobe that it is effectively
destroying his brain, he is dying from the inside out. Rather wonderfully Deep
Throat gets to puncture Mulder’s pomposity and egotism, revealing that he is
not the hub of the universe or the cause of life and death. He’s just an
ordinary man trying to do good work. Within the perfect dream Mulder can
embrace Fowley, get married and become a father.
Brains’n’Beauty: Finally Scully and Fowley agree to cut the
crap and have it out with each other. About damn time. The moment at the end of
this episode where Scully breaks down because she doesn’t know what to believe
anymore is another standout one for the character. Anderson plays her
indecision so well, Scully has now reached a crossroads where she has been
given practical evidence of extraterrestrials and enough that it might tie up
with her faith and yet she doesn’t want to believe any of it. By the end of
this year she would have come to terms with these feelings, ready to face the task
of continuing Mulder’s work without him. I’m pleased that this scene was
included, her indecision despite the evidence of her own eyes shows the
constant conflict that this character faces. Even when Mulder’s world was
falling apart Scully was his constant, a touching reward of admission to her
for remaining so loyal over all these difficult years. She is his touchstone,
and he is hers and I thought for all the world that this was the point where
they would consummate their relationship. Emotionally they certainly have.
Smoking Man: William B Davis is given the chance to fly with
Amor Fati, to play a whole new side to the character now that his role in the
series has been revealed and made defunct. What else does the Smoking Man have
to lose now all of his life’s work has been destroyed? The only thing that is
left of importance is to sort out his family affairs, which include that of his
son (which is Mulder if this script is to be believed). Now he is a man without
a name he has come to love life’s simple pleasures.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘One well placed bullet. A punctuation
mark in a mans life and you get to start a whole new chapter.’
‘Extraordinary men are always tempted by the most ordinary
things.’
The Good: What a wonderful idea it was to have Mulder
reunited with so many of the series most memorable characters as he explores
his new fantasy life. If there was ever a point where the show should be
looking back at past successes it is at the beginning of its seventh year, and
the one where one of its stars would depart. Jerry Hardin was only a major
player in the first season and yet has never been forgotten as the enigmatic
Deep Throat and his surprise appearance in Amor Fati give me a wave of
nostalgia for that exciting and much simpler time for the show. Duchovny’s
reaction is that of an actor delighted that he is reunited with an old star
(Mulder and Deep Throat were never this tactile with each other) but the scene
plays in such a delightful fashion it is hard to be critical. The idea that
every character that has been shot dead in this show turning up in this
idealised version of suburbia tickled me. Does that mean we can expect to see
Mr X collecting his mail, Bill Mulder enjoying a cup of tea on the porch and
Melissa Scully going for a jog? I don’t
know where they manage to find these obscenely large houses and glorious
surroundings (Three of a Kind sported another equally impressive abode) but it
is the perfect location to shoot Mulder’s fantasy life. An incredible final
image, a sand sculpture of an alien spacecraft.
The Bad: Rebecca Toolan. She’s been especially flown in for
this performance and as ever they really shouldn’t have bothered. It is rare
for a show as savvy as The X-Files to consistently employ the services of such
a weak actress who under delivers year after year. I would have recast Teena
Mulder after Toolan’s first appearance. At least I got some sense that Teena
loved Mulder this time around, usually she treats him with all the affection
that you would bestow on a fish you are about to gut for supper. Didn’t we
managed to get rid of Albert Holstein in the last episode? He’s back and
spouting more ominous mystical prophecies than ever. Either John Finn isn’t the
best actor in the world or he simply cannot engage with this part. He’s
painfully wooden when delivering his dialogue and only becomes tolerable when
Scully starts slapping him about. Fowley’s murder is off screen, an ignominious
end to a character that never impacted the way she should have.
Pre Titles Sequence: As soon as Rebecca Toolan is out of
sight this sequence improves, a slow pan away from Mulder as he screams
telekinetically for his mother without any response from her. The direction is
subtle and absorbing, the light slowly going out over his bed as he is trapped
alone in his head with no-one to reach out to.
Is the Smoking Man the Devil trying to tempts Mulder from this life and
into another? Is he Mulder’s father? I’m starting to wonder if it even matters
anymore, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. The show paints its
regulars as mythological characters and their ultimate relation to each other
is irrelevant, it is how they interact that is more interesting.
Moment to Watch Out For: Just in case the parallels weren’t
made strongly enough, Duchovny and Watkins push the Jesus analogy a tad too far
by presenting a mock image of Mulder pinned to a trolley at the wrists in the
exact manner of Jesus on the crucifix. It’s the one point where I thought they
went a little too far. Countering that is the extraordinary sequence where
Mulder lives an entire life in a few seconds, getting married, having children
and losing his wife. And the astonishing effects shot that pulls away from the
Smoking Man at the window to reveal the alien invasion of the Earth, mushroom
explosions billowing in the distance and buildings left as broken husks. It’s
the closest we will witness of an actual attack on this scale so lap up these
few seconds worth of material.
Fashion Statement: Maybe Duchovny has had too many steak
dinners with his fat pay cheques as the series has grown in popularity because
he’s looking a little portly in the topless scene where Fowley seduces Mulder. ‘If
you lay all this on me after I sleep with you one time what’s it going to be
like tomorrow?’
Orchestra: This time it feels entirely appropriate for Snow
to include old cues in his score since this is a party full of memorable guest
characters from the past. I particularly liked the One Breath theme that
re-emerged during Scully’s crisis of faith at the climax.
Mythology: ‘It’s all here, sir. The foretelling of mass
extinction, the myth about the man who can save us from it. That’s why they
took Mulder, they think his illness is a gift, protection against the coming
plague.’ Rather than having to dig
through seasons of obscurity, Scully handily finds the new mythology that the
show is trying out written on the side of a spaceship. What a stroke of luck
for her and the audience. ‘We’re forcing the next step of evolution to save
man…’ – the implication being that Mulder’s new faculties are the sort that
can save a man from the coming viral apocalypse. Man, had they know that the
solution was built into the human psyche they wouldn’t have had to have
bothered with that 50 year scheme with the aliens.
Result: I remember when I first saw both parts of The Sixth Extinction and declared that The X-Files had finally jumped the shark. I couldn’t believe that a show that had previously been so exciting was wasting its dying days (I genuinely thought this would be the final season at the time, as did the production team) popping into Mulder’s head and living out his fantasy life and to make things even worse there was a tantalizing glimpse at what an invasion might look like had Carter the balls to actually go through with it. To say I was not satisfied would be a dramatic understatement. Oh what an impetuous youth I was, and how wrong can one person be. Amor Fati is a fascinating experiment and one that could only be carried out once and in a show with a long history that doesn’t have much time left, two of it’s stalwart characters taking time out from their usual games to reflect on everything the show has thrown at them. It’s a big reunion and naturally you are going to get a mixture of characters that worked returning to play their part (Deep Throat, Samantha, The Smoking Man) and those that haven’t (Fowley, although bizarrely in her swansong she finally clicks into place, Teena Mulder, Kritschgau) but ultimately it is great fun to see them all brought together one last time. Carter’s input in the script is noticeable only so much as the story takes itself a little too seriously at times. This wasn’t a problem in the last episode where that sort of grounded reality was needed to slide the potentially objectionable ideas by an unforgiving portion of the audience but when you are talking about the next stage of evolution, an upcoming viral apocalypse and marrying that to a storyline that paints Mulder as a Christ-like figure (made explicit by some overdone iconography)…well let’s just say a little less earnestness and a little more humour wouldn’t have gone amiss. Still I would be disingenuous to suggest that Amor Fati is a failiure, it’s the third overly sedate and yet strangely beguiling mythology episode in a row. The X-Files has a near impossible task of picking up the pieces and running with a new mythology after Two Fathers/One Son and whilst I don’t think we have been set on a new trajectory, this tetrology of episodes has thrown so many fascinating ideas in the air in such a watchable fashion that I’m more than satisfied for the time being. Strong stuff, if a little obscure and open to interpretation. Watch out for the iconic moment when the Smoking Man watches the alien invasion tearing the world apart from Mulder’s window: 8/10
Hungry written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: Rob Roberts and that gnawing pain in his
stomach…
Trust No-One: Mulder and Scully are introduced as we might
actually see them if they were a part of our lives, walking through the door of
Lucky Boy with a confident swagger and an attitude problem. Mulder makes cheap
shots at Rob’s profession and subtextually lets him know that he is onto him
every time he opens his mouth. You could say that Mulder is quite irresponsible
in Hungry, knowing that Rob is guilty from the off and yet saying nothing
whilst he can indulge in mind games. Anybody that is consumed throughout the
course of this episode could be said to be indirectly his fault as well. Mulder
describing their monster of the week as a carnivorous freak and monster to
Rob’s face lacks any kind of cordiality, it is amazing how insensitive he can
be made to look when the writers are really trying.
Brains’n’Beauty: Somehow Lucky Boy wouldn’t make Scully’s
list of favourite restaurants. Manners chooses the scene where Scully
interrogates Rob from his point of view so we can see what it would be like be
in that position, grilled under her cool, steely gaze.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘I don’t believe in monsters, but I do
believe in people. And sometimes they do terrible things. But I do believe that
deep down the worst of us want to do good’ – the tagline for Hungry.
‘I’m sorry but this is like good cop, insane cop’ – and
that’s the tag line for the series.
‘So they’re a bunch of fat people? So what?’
Ugh: Given that this episode is dealing with a form of
cannibalism (Rob is humanoid at the very least), it doesn’t really push things
as far as it could go. Perhaps Fox has learnt from previous controversies to
steer away from potentially upsetting footage but I would think more of them
had Gilligan and Manners gone all the way and shown somebody’s brain being
sucked out of their head through an inch thick hole. Ummm yummy. However the
humour can be jet black which almost compensates (‘Is that brain matter?’
‘No, I’d say that’s ground beef’). Speaking as somebody who has a living
fear of the dentist, watching Rob remove his teeth and spit some of them bloody
into the sink made my stomach flip. Brain steaks on the grill? Are you kidding
me?
The Good: Hungry would only work is Rob was a character that
we can believe in and sympathise with and fortunately in the hands of Vince
Gilligan and actor Chad Donelli neither of these is ever a problem. Everything
about Rob screams of him being a victim, either of how other people treat him,
his own biological functions or his awkward behaviour around other people. He
drives an unspectacular car, has an unspectacular job and goes home to an
unspectacular apartment. In every way he is not conforming to the American
dream. Even his name, Rob Roberts, shows a distinct lack of imagination on his
parents part. Donelli never actively seeks to engage the audiences sympathy but
instead pours all of his effort into making the character as awkward and as
trapped as possible so we’re behind him every step of the way. There’s nothing
more sympathetic than an underdog, especially one who is trying to break out of
their situation. How interesting to see a very young Mark Pellegrino in a minor
role as Rob’s work colleague long before he would go on to secure the roles of
Rita’s abusive husband in Dexter and Lucifer in Supernatural. He
has terrific screen presence even in a small role like this. We never leave
Rob’s side throughout the episode and so it is easy to sympathise with his
persecution because the audience is suffering it too. It’s the sort of thing
the show was going for in Terms of Endearment with Mulder dogging the footsteps
of Bruce Campbell’s character but this goes the whole hog and casts the Agent
in the role of the villain. The private investigator that Rob eats is the
spitting image of Mulder and he should be, that’s David Duchovny’s body double.
Hunger is a human need, an instinct that we cannot ignore and the unpleasant
sound effect of Rob’s complaining stomach really drives home his need (not
desire) to feed. When it comes to killing Derwent (what a name) there are three
motives; feeding Rob’s constant hunger, getting his medicine back and keeping
his mouth shut. The make up for Rob’s mutant form is excellent, not too
frightening (he is supposed to be a character that the audience can resonate
with) but pretty menacing all the same. The effect of his tongue piercing the
skull for easy access to the brain works a treat. For the most part I am not
fond of counsellors as depicted on television (in no small part thanks to the
yawnsome Counsellor Troi who plagued Star Trek: The Next Generation) but
Judith Hoag has a good stab at portraying a genuinely effective example. I love
the fact that even after Rob quits she still wants to see his therapy through
and even when confronted with the fact that he is the murderer and physically
repulsive, she still wants to comfort him. Mindy can see that Rob is a good
person deep down, just as we can. The final shot through Rob’s eyes as he takes
his dying breath is perhaps the most intimate the audience will ever get to be
with a monster of the week on this show.
The Bad: When the FBI is questioning all Lucky Boy employees
with the possibility that they might search their homes, leaving a bath of
blood and a clearly unsalvageable shirt dunked inside was not the smartest move
on Rob’s part.
Pre Titles Sequence: Wow, the guy who drives up to the Lucky
Boy drive thru is a real jackass in a way only consumerists can be when they
don’t get what they want. I’m not the sort of person to wish ill of people
(well not much anyway) but he justly deserves to be gobbled up for threatening
to call Rob’s manager and get him the sack over a simple misunderstanding. And
the music he is playing is horrible. It has been a while since we have
had a good jump out of your seat moment and even though it is obvious from the
cracking of bones and gorging on flesh noises that something is coming, the
moment is expertly handled by Kim Manners.
Moment to Watch Out For: For once it is not a shocking
moment or a twist in the tale that impressed me most but a performance that
shows an actor working overtime to try and make an implausible character seem
as real as possible. Donelli aces the scene at Overeaters Anonymous and when he
talks about his addiction to salty, fatty meats with such relish you can see
just how much this craving consumes Rob. It is a genuinely impressive piece of
acting. Hilariously, Rob’s mouth watering speech to the assembly has them
practically orgasming in their seats.
Fashion Statement: Not that I have a fetish for bald,
cannibalistic mutants but Rob in human form is pretty cute.
Result: ‘I can’t be something I’m not…’ You can
always expect something a bit different from Vince Gilligan (his last
contribution to the series is a riff on The Brady Bunch for goodness
sakes!) and he kicks of the season seven standalones with an innovative piece,
one that places Mulder and Scully in the role of the antagonists and spends the
entire episode from the point of view of the monster of the week. It’s proof
that The X-Files can paint and convincing portrayal of Generation X, Rob
Roberts turning out to be the most believable and sympathetic of the shows many
teenage protagonists over the years. It is mainly down to Chad Donelli’s
achingly sad performance of a boy who cannot control his hunger but Vince
Gilligan does a lot of the work too, placing him in a nightmare scenario where
Mulder is actively enjoying playing mind games with the kid. There’s not a
great to deal discuss about Hungry because of its linear nature and relatively
simplistic storytelling but this isn’t a piece of television that is concerned
with narrative substance but it’s emotional core. It relies on the relationship
between the audience and the protagonist and on those terms it is a huge
winner. The conclusion doesn’t even rely on Mulder and Scully’s presence,
that’s how invested we are in Rob’s fate by the end. For once, you might want the
monster to get away. So far that’s three for three in the much maligned season
seven. Even I have always considered this the shows weakest season but if it
manages to keep this up it is going to come in for some significant
re-appraisal: 8/10
Millennium written by Vince Gilligan & Frank Spotnitz
and directed by Thomas J. Wright
What’s it about: The climax to a superior series in an
inferior episode of another show…
Trust No-One: Two mythology episodes that try and do
something a bit different followed by a Vince Gilligan script that casts Mulder
and Scully in the roles of the antagonists…that means Millennium is the episode
to judge where Duchovny and Anderson are in terms of interest in their roles in
their seventh year. Unfortunately they both feel a little bored by the whole
affair, whether that is because it is dealing with the leftovers of another
series or because they have just had enough of the same roles I couldn’t tell
you. Aside from a few notable exceptions, this disinterest is rife throughout
season seven. Duchovny is ready to jump ship and Anderson needs something fresh
to do to perk her up. By the end of the year both would get their wishes.
Neither one of them can be bothered to inject any tension in their differences
of opinion any more and since we have seen this dance play out ad nauseum the
writers are pretty drained by the same old routine too. Frank Black is not what
Mulder was expecting, which I think is precisely the reaction a lot of people
had to the character when Millennium first aired. He’s quiet and unassuming,
prefer his own company getting under the skin of serial killers than pushing
his opinions on others like a certain fresh faced FBI agent was in the first
series of The X-Files.
Brains’n’Beauty: Anderson simply cannot muster any
enthusiasm in the scenes where Scully and Frank talk about a mythology that she
has never been apart of.
Ugh: Even when they have feature a zombie attack the camera
seems to shy away from the action. It makes you question whether the writers have
ever seen the show before, let alone be two of the most prolific authors. The
autopsy scene looks like it might be a good shock moment but the director cuts
away from the action again. Even the comedy episode Hollywood AD had a
corpse coming to life during an autopsy! When a zombie does eventually show up
and attack Scully it’s too little, too late. Besides compare the lame ass make
up job in this to the stunningly grotesque zombie make up in The Walking Dead
and weep. What should be jump out of your seat material down in Johnson’s
cellar comes across more like a keg party that has gotten out of hand and three
guys wound up in a darkened cellar scrabbling about for the light switch.
The Good: The one element that does ring true is the human
one. Frank is battling a custody war with Catherine’s parents over Jordan and
he is losing. One of the main strengths of Frank’s character was how his family
anchored him into living his life and the thought of stripping that away from
him is affecting because there is every possibility that he would disappear
inside his head never to return. He will sell insurance, get well, jump through
whatever hoops the authorities want him to in order to have his daughter in his
life once again.
The Bad: The writers are in something of a Catch-22
situation where they are in the position to tidy up the ending of Millennium
but in doing so they are forced to explain to the X-File audience who might
never have seen the show what it was all about. Cue an uncomfortably scripted
sequence in Skinner’s office where the backstory of the Millennium group is
skipped over in a few lines, reducing what was a detailed premise for the show
to something you might read on the back of a napkin. It is pretty shocking that
it takes Frank Black a full ten minutes to appear in the episode, especially
given this is his swansong to the Carter universe. When The X-Files has the
opportunity to cross the is and dot the ts of The Lone Gunmen series, they
don’t even bother with the pretence that it is an X-File episode. That’s what
they should have done here. Bizarrely the shows homage to COPS is much more
faithful in style and content than this is. It is just weird to have
Frank Black profiling a killer in The X-Files, especially in an episode this
lacking in atmosphere. It genuinely feels as if somebody has intercut two
separate episodes, one from each show, and broadcast them together. It doesn’t
help that this is the dullest and least frightening serial killer the show has
ever presented. Isn’t it amusing that they try and convince that Scully is dead
from her zombie attack and show Skinner rushing to the scene and solemnly
pulling back a shroud that he thinks she might be under. Like they would kill
off one of the lead characters in the fourth episode? Is this really what the
Millennium group was attempting to achieve all along? A zombie apocalypse? I
never got the sense of that at all when I was watching the show. It feels like
glib closure for a frustrating but sporadically genius television show.
Pre Titles Sequence: Admittedly I am not the biggest fan of
the zombie genre but even I can think of a better way of revealing that a
corpse has returned to life than burying the guy with his thumb on a mobile
phone call button and waiting for it to ring. How boring. It would have been
far more satisfying to have had something truly gruesome and memorable like him
bursting from the coffin in the middle of the service. For a show that almost
always aces it’s pre-titles sequences, this is one of those very rare occasions
where it fails to generate any interest whatsoever.
Moment to Watch Out For: Frank’s cuddle with Jordan. It’s
far more touching than the kiss between Mulder and Scully but gets far less
exposure. Duchovny and Anderson look as though they are being forced to kiss
each other against their will.
Orchestra: The first time this felt like a love letter to
Millennium was when the mournful strings of the music kicked in.
Result: ‘The world didn’t end…’ When Frank Black says
‘let’s get out of here’ at the climax, I figure he is talking about the
series he has wandered into. I also have a question. If you are given a second
chance to wrap up a series after a sudden cancellation, a series that you were
personally invested in creating and maintaining…how could you fudge it as badly
as this? It is an episode that the writers themselves thought unsuccessful,
that Lance Henriksen thought missed the point of the series that he spearheaded
and a merging of two series that were never going to be happy bedfellows. I hate
to say this because I think he is one of the strongest writers in television
but Vince Gilligan was not suited to Millennium in precisely the same way that
Chip Johannssen (a regular contributor to Millennium) was not suited to The
X-Files. Writers can dip their feet into other shows and sometimes it suits
their style and sometimes it doesn’t. Millennium (I’m talking about the series,
not the episode) was never the sort of show to feature comic book zombies and
yet it has suffer the ignominy of this as the climax to its three year saga.
Unfortunately this isn’t a particularly good X-File episode either; featuring a
dull opening set piece, some plodding interaction between the two leads and a
distinct lack of anything either scary or interesting going on. The one beat
that feels real is Frank’s love for his daughter but since he only appears in
about ten minutes of the episode it is hardly given the appropriate amount of
consideration. Millennium features what is possibly the most soporific
performances of Anderson and Duchovny and Heinriksen looks bored senseless too.
Personally I think shippers give this one a pass just for the Mulder/Scully
kiss at the conclusion but you have to work a lot harder than that to impress
me. For my money focussing on the regulars of this show at the climax takes
away from the reunion between Frank and Jordan and what this episode is
supposed to be all about: 3/10
Rush written by David Amann and directed by Robert Lieberman
What’s it about: Something about a wibbly effect that hands
out superpowers in a cave…
Trust No-One: Watching Mulder try and relate to the yoof is
toe curling. At least he gets slapped down for his troubles, asked how long ago
it was since he was a teen as though he was hitting puberty around the cretaceous
period. Maybe it is because it is pointed out and I was looking more closely
but Duchovny does look old in this.
Brains’n’Beauty: Again neither Duchovny nor Anderson seems
particularly captivated by this weeks material and phone in their performances.
Duchovny in particular sounds as though he would rather be somewhere (anywhere)
else but Anderson is hardly doing her best work either, reacting to the shocks
with all the effort of somebody who has done this 26 times a year for the last
six years. When Mulder starts going on about territorial and spiritual forces
at work Duchovny can’t quite bring himself to believe the material and Anderson
looks as though she is about to leave the room. Like Millennium, we have been
through this shtick too many times now for anybody to care. Season six pretty
much avoided this pitfall by either not including these scenes of disparate
opinions at all, going for something completely different or by taking the piss
out of it (Field Trip). Now it looks like we have reverted back to form, we’re
back in season five territory of going through the motions.
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘Don’t you think I know what you’re
doing. You’re like the tenth cop that’s come in here and tried to relate to me
until I confess’ – kids do not speak like this. Period.
‘You must have been a betty back in the day!’
‘Tony, we came here to get a fresh start, get away from them
bad schools, the wrong crowd…’ – not only terribly written but also the biggest
cliché in the book. Only Joss Whedon made this idea work.
‘Well Mulder he’s a teenager, everything about him is
changing. His body and brain chemistry is in a state of unparalleled upheaval,
plus there’s peer pressure and substance abuse…’
Ugh: The director manages to include a number of impressive stunts
in Rush but if the show got its set pieces wrong at this stage of the game then
there would be something very wrong going on indeed. The sequence in the lunch
hall is very nicely realised, Mr Babbit is murdered in an extremely
violent and bloody fashion involving a table that slices through his chest and
a chair that caves his face in. Not a moment to be forgotten in a hurry.
The Good: It says something when your younger guest actors
are putting in far more effort than your lead adults but that is definitely the
case in Rush. Rodney Scott and Nicki Aycox are both trying far too hard to make
their characters come alive, giving the material much more believability than
it deserves. Probably the most fun I had with re-watching this episode was the
moment when Tony Reed stepped into the breach and accepted the rush gift and
that was only because he was shaking wildly in a similar way to the Master’s
victims in The End of Time when everybody became a clone of the villain. Yes,
that’s how lifeless this is.
The Bad: This is The X-Files, not Smallville. The
idea of kids that have gained a superhero power of being able to run a marathon
in five seconds is hardly the most impressive of talents anyway. I can think of
a dozen more intriguing gifts that could have been bestowed on them off the top
of my head (strength, x-ray vision, the ability to read thoughts) that would
have been more interesting. It isn’t because the show is in its seventh year
and they have run out of fresh concepts (because season six was rife with
imagination and there would some terrific premises still to come), it is that
the writer has gone for the simplest and least amount of effort with his idea
to pull an episode off. I think Max Harden is supposed to be a teenage rebel
without a cause that we are supposed to admire but he is written and played in
such an unlikable fashion – he’s pretty boring because of it – that any hope of
that is out the window. Haven’t we been through the rigmarole of the Sheriff’s
son turning out to be the villain of the piece and complete douche bag before?
I can remember at least Red Museum as one example but I am certain there have
been others. The only reason to stick around is to witness Max’s downfall. Can
a kid be so corrupted by an ability that he has been given over others that it
would lead him to attack his own father? Maybe, but not a lame-ass power like
this one. That just shows that Max was a bit nutty to start off with.
Pre Titles Sequence: How weird to have two such unmemorable
pre-title sequences in consecutive episodes. Rush features three kids meeting
for a secret rendezvous in the park and one of them murders a local law
enforcement officer by means of turning into a blur of colour. Ooh, scary.
Moment to Watch Out For: The one moment that really stands
out is the exception effects shot of the bullet bursting through Max’s chest in
slow motion. We follow Chastity as she walks past the slow trajectory of the
bullet and steps into its path. That was the only thing I remembered when going
in for my re-watch. The rest was just a blank. As it will be again.
Fashion Statement: The one decent thing about an episode
that centres on a bunch of teenagers on the right side of puberty is that it
features some pretty handsome examples of twenty-somethings playing the roles.
Orchestra: Even Mark Snow’s music sounds a little subdued
this week. There’s one moment where this is epitomised when Chastity (what a
name) goes searching for the spot in the woods that hands out the rush
superpowers. It’s not a bad piece of music but compare it to a similar piece
orchestrated for when Mulder went searching a landscape for Wallace Shift in
Field Trip just six episode back and compare the difference. In the season six
installment Snow was driving the action, here he is stifling a yawn with his
score.
Result: Just when you think The X-Files finally has a
handle on ‘the yoof’ as exemplified in Hungry, Rush comes along to show that
it was just a one off fluke. There’s nothing worse than an older writer trying
to get ‘down with the kids’ and write on their level and David Amann fills
their mouths with some pretty cringeworthy dialogue. ‘Leave me alone, mom!
Will you just leave me alone?’ The dialogue is either utterly functional or
ground swallowingly embarrassing and not one of the characters is remotely
likable. This feels more like one of those season one episodes of Smallville
than The X-Files. Kid gains paranormal superpower, goes a little wild, kid gets
brought down, the end. That was the template for the first season of the Tom
Welling fronted show and it was unimpressive there as it is here. It’s a pretty
weak premise and an episode lacking in substance or decent characters. All that
salvages it from the waste bin is a number of well directed set pieces and the
odd nifty effect. It’s one of those installments that is just there: 4/10
Result: ‘You’re the one that got away…’ From one the lightest episodes of The X-Files to one of the most uncomfortable. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Chip Johannssen is clearly still yearning to write for Millennium and tries to shoehorn an extra episode into The X-Files with little success. The last time Donnie Pfaster turned up in this show it was fresh faced and still trying to impress but his return appearance is merely a trying experience; nasty for the sake of it, featuring some sick moments of gore, cod religious connotations and an ending that would try the patience of the most ardent of the series’ fans. You would think that after a year and a bit of near constant comedy and light drama that a return to something black and grisly would be welcome but for once I would say that The X-Files has gone too far. There’s trying to shock and there’s sheer tastelessness and whilst some might say that the show already ticked that box with season four’s Home at least the Morgan and Wong script indulged in putrescence playfully with lots of sly winks to the audience. Orison is played so earnestly that it manages to be boring. The one thing I will say is that the few scant moments where it is trying to be vicious and scary it does manage to achieve that, but only by treating Scully like a victim again (I thought we had jettisoned that cliché from the series long ago) and by having her shoot a man in cold blood at the climax which is completely out of character. Was Donnie Pfaster the Devil? Was the show ever going to come out and actually declare that? Of course not. If you are looking for a more responsible if overly simplistic parable on religion then check out this seasons Signs and Wonders. My measly score for this episode belongs to Rob Bowman for forging ahead bleakly with such a flawed script and generating an uncomfortable atmosphere and Mark Snow who delivers one of his more chilling and furious scores. An episode far too mired in its own self importance to make any impact aside from revulsion, this is one for those of you who enjoy watching women being mistreated abominably: 3/10
The Goldberg Variation written by Jeffrey Bell and directed
by Thomas J. Wright
What’s it about: Just why is Henry Weems enjoying such good
luck…and why isn’t he enjoying it?
Trust No-One: The only episode where Mulder emerges from the
pavement right behind Scully as she whinges about the fact she has made it to
Chicago and he isn’t there to meet her. Given Mulder’s disaster with his water
bed last year (over and over again) it is asking for trouble for him to
approach a leaking tap with a wrench. Mulder’s little karate noise when he
mimes the enforcer kicking down the door at Weems’ is delightful.
Brains’n’Beauty: ‘So basically you’re saying that we’re
looking for Wiley Coyote’ Watch Duchovny’s face when Anderson says that
line, he is dying to crack up. She then returns the favour when he gets a
continuous jet of water in the face and falls through the floor. She can’t help
but giggle when he comes back with the riposte ‘…yeah its okay, my ass broke
the fall.’ Mulder is squeamish about seeing a man put his false eye back in
the socket, whereas Scully has seen much worse in her time. There is a
definitely shift in the attitude of the main stars in this story. You can tell
they were having fun with this material (it’s the fact that there never seems
to be a smile far from their lips) in a very different way to how they were
going through the motions in both Millennium and Rush.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Technically falling 300-feet and surviving
isn’t a crime.’
‘Ma’am, we’re not plumbers.’
The Good: Whilst much of the joy of this episode comes down
to the intricacies of the plot, it is Willie Garson’s performance as the
lovable sap that just so happens to be the luckiest man alive that really sells
the piece. Henry Weems manages to be one of those characters that is slightly
pathetic and geeky but also entirely lovable and enjoyable to spend time with.
It is a role that Garson could play in his sleep and he aces his way through
the episode, engaging with the audiences sympathies at every turn. It’s nice to
see Mulder and Scully investigating on a busy American street rather than the
show constantly hiding out in expansive hillocks, beautiful beaches and
deserted back streets. The streets of Chicago feel busy, occupied and
sprawling, just how they would if The X-Files hadn’t dumped a camera in the
middle of the area. Ghoulishly, the only part of Weems that is left behind to
trace him with is his false eye, which leads to the wonderful moment when it is
clear that they have found their guy because he is hiding away wearing a
comical eye patch (Mulder hands him the eye and asks ‘d’you wanna try this
for size, Cinderella?’). It must be something about boys and gadgets but I
love the intricacy and the planned randomness Weems’ Rube Goldberg machine and
owing from the fact that he sounds as though he has creamed his pants, Mulder
does too (Scully stands back, clearly impressed, but being a career woman she
refuses to show anything more at something this irrelevant). Bad luck – Mulder
and Scully disappear into the lift just as the criminal thug emerges from the
stairwell to take out Weems. Good luck – Mulder has left his keys, presses the
buzzer and distracts the assassins bullet and all he manages to shoot is a
table lamp. This episode is built on these wonderful quirks of fortune. Tapping
into dumb luck is said to be Henry Weems’ greatest gift and it’s great that the
luck of simply overhearing Scully suggesting that he head down and buy a
lottery ticket and gain his fortune that way sets off another string of cause
of effect. Check out Marshall Manesh in a delightful little role as the
shopkeeper who lies through his teeth to Scully to get his hands on the winning
lottery ticket. It might not be the most elaborate interpretation of the
Goldberg principle but I still chuckled at the sequence where the stray bullet
ricocheted around the room before finding its way back into the chest of the
enforcer. The fact that Weems’ efforts have all been for the sole purpose of
being able to fly Richie to England and pay for his operation when he isn’t
even family, it is simply because Weems is a nice guy that doesn’t want to see
the kid suffer, is just lovely. It makes sense of why he would mix with
criminals and play the odds on the lottery. You know that Henry isn’t going to
die at the climax so the only natural conclusion you can draw is that something
horrible is going to happen to the criminals that have kidnapped him. Watching
their downfall play out with painful inevitability (emphasis on the painful) is
a treat. What a lovely touch it is that the head criminal is precisely the
right blood type for Richie and his death is what will ultimately save the boys
life. In an episode that promotes co-incidence this might be the only time when
such an amazing quirk of luck is vital to its conclusion.
The Bad: A shame that the production didn’t have the finance
to pull off the plane crash defying stunt but at least it gets a mention at
some point in the episode. I’ve seen some pretty bad examples of jaundice in my
time of watching television but Ritchie is a particularly special case. Were
the make up team having a laugh? What this episode is lacking is for an
ingenious way for Bell to tie the entire episode up, to show that they have all
been part of the integral workings of a Goldberg device in action. Mulder
starts to suggest that that might be the case but then the show shies away from
revealing anymore and instead goes for a sentimental climax. It is beautifully
handled so I’m not complaining too much but The Goldberg Variation still leaves
you with the lingering doubt that it hasn’t taken its premise to its natural
conclusion.
Pre Titles Sequence: I love that Henry is so daft that he
plays a game of poker knowing that he will win despite the fact that he doesn’t
know the rules in the slightest and has to ask how the game develops at every
turn. He is so utterly naïve that he thinks he can walk away from a poker game
with criminal hot rods with 100k of their cash and not lose his legs for the
trouble. Right from the start it is clear that this isn’t the kind of setting
where you would usually find Henry and that he clearly needs the cash for an
altruistic purpose. Look out for the impressive stunt of Weems being tossed off
a building and falling through the pavement and getting up and dusting himself
down. From the bubbly tone right down to Garson’s performance and Mark Snow’s
unusually effervescent music, you can tell this is not going to be your
traditional X-File. Given that Rush showed how dull they can be, this is no bad
thing.
Moment to Watch Out For: Cause and effect is explored in jet
black comedy form as Weems throws his winning lottery ticket in the trash and a
particularly irritating faux Goth steals it and goes running out onto
the street screaming that he has won a hundred grand and gets hit by a bus. Bet
he didn’t see that one coming. It might be improper but I couldn’t help but
laugh, especially at Weems’ extreme non-reaction.
Orchestra: Light and bubbly, like a glass of champers.
Perfectly scored, this one.
Result: ‘Maybe his luck is the X-File?’ It’s not
quite as fabulous as The Rain King, but The Goldberg Variation is a return to
form for a show that had gone to the dogs for a couple of episodes. Jeffrey
Bell has managed to tap into something sunny and moving, a lighter version of
The X-Files that does tips into outright comedy and which by all accounts
shouldn’t work but somehow does. We’ll forgive him Alpha since his remaining
episodes are so good (Signs and Wonders is one of the creepiest of the last
three seasons and I must one of a few people that really enjoys Salvage).
Whilst exploring the delightful irrelevancy of a Rube Goldberg device, this
episode doesn’t quite have the mutton chops to pull off something as intricate
and deliciously immaterial to be said to be a narrative version of the
principle itself but what it does manage to do is put some marvellously clever
and amusing set pieces that reveal the glorious inanity of cause and effect.
It’s not quite clever enough but it is still clever. The real joy of The
Goldberg Variation is that Mulder and Scully seem to have found their mojo
again, that sense of fun and gentle humour that has been missing from season
seven to date but was rife throughout the previous year. It is proof that the
investment that Anderson and Duchovny put into an individual episode can make
or break it. I think the reason that I prefer The Rain King is that the premise
in the previous seasons episode is so in your face and immediately arresting
that it practically sells itself to you on that alone. That and the
Mulder/Scully interaction was at it’s all time best when they were visiting
Kansas. The Goldberg Variation is a much more subtle, subdued affair but it still
has many charms to be unearthed; the bubbly tone, a delightful turn from Willie
Garson, some memorable set pieces and an ending that manages to warm your
heart. If season seven can keep knocking out episodes like this we will be in
great shape: 8/10
Orison written by Chip Johannssen and directed by Rob Bowman
What’s it about: Donnie Pfaster has escaped from prison…
Brains’n’Beauty: What can Gillian Anderson do with an
episode as badly conceived and written as this one? Her very best, I suppose,
which is what she tries to do. Irresistible was a breakout show for the actress
because she was able to show the audience a new side to the character, one that
was haunted by her experiences in the hunt for Donnie Pfaster. In the slightly
glib tone of season seven Scully isn’t treated to nearly the same amount of
care and attention and she waltzes through Orison airily, less troubled and
more a bit bored by the whole affair. I don’t like the way the writers randomly
bring up her faith every time they write an episode with a religious theme – it
should be something that is far more prevalent than it is if she is truly a
believer. Kira Nerys in DS9 is my idea of a character with religious beliefs
that works because her faith is never far from her heart and mentioned on a
regular occasion, whether the episode is centred around such things or not. It
was a part of her life. Scully’s religion only seems to be a part of her life
when the writers need it to make a point about something. Don’t get me wrong,
Pfaster is a nasty piece of work and somebody that needs to be punished for his
despicable actions. However I have a real issue with Scully emerging in slow
motion and shooting him in cold blood, regardless of whether the episode keeps
insisting he is the devil or not. This is supposed to be staunchly religious
woman and to reach for her gun and murder a man without compunction just
doesn’t sit well with what we have seen from Scully in the past seven years. It
doesn’t help that the detailed direction in slow motion rams the scene down our
throats. In Johannssen’s hands, I just don’t recognise Scully anymore. It
doesn’t surprise me that he never wrote for the series again. When is it ever
right for Scully to ignore the law and become an executioner in her own right?
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘We found women’s fingers in his freezer,
he’d like to eat them with his peas and carrots’ – with dialogue like that you
can tell that Johannssen has never written for Mulder before either.
‘Nobody can stop the world, Mulder, I don’t care how many
holes they have in their head’ – Scully is hardly being treated to her usual
standard of intelligent dialogue either.
The Bad: Whilst it is understandable given the treatment she
received at his hands that Scully would believe that Donnie Pfaster is pure
evil (‘plain and simple’), I don’t understand why the writer seems to
believe that too. Wouldn’t it have been more of a challenge (especially for the
viewer) had Pfaster turned out to have some redeeming features and enjoy
indulging in his death fetish. How could you reconcile the two? By making him
purely evil you simply have a monster that needs to be removed and a problem
where the conclusion is forced to turn Scully into a cold blooded murderer. And
that isn’t acceptable on any level. Wow, not only does the script go down the
obvious route of having 666 (or rather 606) to point to the fact that Pfaster
is the Devil (in that peculiar Carter obsession with digital clocks no less)
but Johannssen also feels the need to explain its significance to a less sophisticated
audience members. I would assume that anybody who has made it to The X-Files’
seventh season is a reasonably intelligent individual that doesn’t need to be
spoon fed the obvious. As for the significance of ‘Don’t Look Any Further’
playing throughout the episode…beats me chief. Something about reminding Scully
of the time when she first discovered the concept of evil in the world. It’s
supposedly a portent of Scully’s oncoming danger but I found the use of a
smooth love song to introduce Scully to a world a pain quite unpleasant. It is
rare for me to criticize moments of direction in this show and especially not
the work of Rob Bowman, who has been the most consistently excellent director
on staff…but I really didn’t like the way he kept shoving the camera in peoples
faces, particularly Pfaster’s. He’s trying to get us right down the guys
throat, to experience the lust that he is feeling for these women but it is
really uncomfortable to endure. It’s not bad direction by any means, just not
to my tastes. The simple fact of the matter is that with all the religious
overtones, Pfaster is a far less interesting character than the nasty death
fetishist that he was in Irresistible. Nick Chinlund has nothing to get his
teeth into here, he’s simply a walking nasty that is lusting after the
completion of his attack on Scully. In his debut, Chinlund was able to play the
everyman who deliveries groceries and is let casually into peoples homes and
then flip that on its head and become a predator to women in the evenings.
Being portrayed solely as a killer lacks any kind of finesse in comparison.
Half the time it feels like the Reverend Orison is a conceptual character, a
representation of Pfaster’s guilt that is his dogging his every footstep and
the rest of the time the episode suggests that he is a real person that is
suffering for his perseverance with the Devil in human guise. The fact that
there is that confusion at all is cause to panic. The sequence where Orison
gets Pfaster to dig his own grave is symptomatic of this episodes confusion
where it comes to its characters. One moment Pfaster is pleading for
forgiveness and weeping and the next he’s smiling sadistically and attempting
to murder his saviour. It’s a switch that could be pulled off if the writing
and acting were strong enough but as realised it feels like the internal
workings of these characters is being improvised as the story develops. Why
dress Donnie up as a literal devil? It didn’t work in Irresistible and it
especially doesn’t work here. How did Pfaster figure out where Scully lives?
How did he get in? The direction is so confusing in the climax that as a piece
of visual storytelling, Scully shooting Pfaster makes little sense. You don’t
get to see the gun discharging for ages after it has happened with too many
tight shots on the actors faces and the bizarre distraction of the exploding
light fittings still baffles me to this day. That last scene is trying to be
ambiguous but really it is attempting to justify Pfaster’s murder by suggesting
that another presence was at work inside Scully when she pulled the trigger.
Bollocks to that. She should just stand up and admit that she wanted him dead.
It wouldn’t make the climax any more reasonable but it would at least show some
guts, instead of this chicken shit attempt to get her off the hook.
Pre Titles Sequence: I take issue with the Church taking to
prisons and attempting to indoctrinate prisoners and lead them onto a better
road. Not because I think they will be successful in giving them a better life,
because I object to anybody preying on the weak and attempting to bend them to
their will. So Orison rubbed me up the wrong from the very beginning. I’m not
sure what the significance of the man who chops all of his fingers off with a
saw is all about aside from the fact that it is a crude and cheap way of
shoving some gore in your face before the credits have hit. I’m a much bigger
fan of psychological horror but I do think there is a place for gore within the
genre when it is justified. This really isn’t. Not even the slow motion
techniques employed were enough to convince me otherwise.
Moment to Watch Out For: We haven’t seen Scully attacked
like this for a long time. We have never seen her attacked with this
much fury and determination. Kudos to director Rob Bowman for going all out to
show how desperate and violent this struggle is…but that still doesn’t make it
a very nice sequence to watch. She tears at his eyes and rips flesh away, he
smashes her repeatedly against a mirror, she throws all manner of furniture at
him and he purrs over the thought of running her a bath and playing with her
hair and nails. The piercing scream she releases when she realises that this is
the end is truly discomforting to witness. I can’t decide whether this is any
good or not. It’s precisely executed but I wouldn’t want to be the sort of
person that enjoys watching this.
Orchestra: There’s a wonderful element of foreboding to the
episodes early scenes thanks to the unearthly music that plagues the scenes of
Scully sensing something is wrong. Snow bashes out all of his frustrations on
the piano to give Pfaster his own furious theme that expresses all his inner
rage. It’s really quite powerful.
The Amazing Maleeni written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban
& Frank Spotnitz and directed by Thomas J. Wright
What’s it about: A magicians severed head rolls away from
his body after his most impressive trick…
Trust No-One: ‘The Great Muldeeni!’ Both Mulder and
Scully are getting in on the fun of this episode. He’s talking like Tony
Randall and staging everything as a magicians reveal and she shows a real
aptitude for party trickery that leaves him completely baffled.
Brains’n’Beauty: Mulder has performed the neatest trick of
all by convincing Scully to drop everything and get on a plane to Los Angeles
for this open and shut case. All that is missing from Scully’s reaction to
Maleeni’s disability in the face of Mulder’s outrageous accusations is a polite
cough. I’ve read that Anderson was having so much fun on this episode that she
had to keep reminding herself and Duchovny that this was still the
investigation of a potential murder and that they had to treat at least that
part of the case with appropriate gravity. She failed at that totally but the
atmosphere of the episode is so bubbly that had she walked around with her
usual sincerity it would have felt really out of place. Or she would have felt
like the one party pooper. Instead the chemistry between her and Duchovny is
back in full force as they play tricks on one another and generally waltz
through the piece enjoying each others company. Bizarre how their interest in
the script determined their on screen relationship these days but the days when
it is on, it is really on.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘We built you a ramp!’
‘Behold! The Amazing Maleeni’s wallet’ ‘You picked his
pocket?’ ‘No I pilfered it from the evidence room to prevent them from
completing their final act prestidigitation.’
Ugh: The severed head looks horribly real. Kudos to the make
up department on that job.
The Good: It helps that real life magician Ricky Jay is on
hand to perform embody the role of Maleeni and he’s every bit as self
deprecating (I jest) and cynical as all the conjurors are. Aware of his own
abilities but refuse to sugar coat them for the masses, he walks through this
episode as if he owns the place and makes it a far more interesting experience
for it. He’s back up by his partner in crime (within the story at least) Billy
LaBonge, played with a furious lack of charm by Jonathan Levit and I love the
idea that there are rivalries between magicians and they would attempt to spoil
each others pitches. The fact that their rivalry is all one big con and that
they are working together is probably the most impressive trick The Amazing
Maleeni pulls off. LaBonge is dicing with death pulling a trick on a known gang
boss but he gets away with it through sheer confidence and pulling off the
neatest visual trick in the show, the flaming hand extinguishing to reveal his
wallet in his palm. Lots of lovely little moments and visual gags that make
this a sweeter experience like the doves that come flying out of Maleeni’s van
and scare the life out of Mulder.
The Bad: There’s a point around the 25- 30 minute mark where
this episode seems to have fallen off the track. It’s clear that some kind of
deception is in progress but it is mired in pretty standard bank robbery plot
that fails to generate much interest. It doesn’t help that the gangland boss is
faceless. Maleeni refrigerating the body of his brother, sawing his head of and
using that to pull off his head rolling trick and to fake his death manages to
be both blackly funny and quite a disappointing explanation. But then aren’t
all tricks disappointing once you’ve learnt how they are done? Maybe that’s why
this episode was never going to completely satisfy, because it always had to
reveal the inner cogs and workings of the deception that has been attempted.
I’m not sure that the final wrap is satisfying in any way. Not just because the
actual plotting of their episode is quite linear and by the book and his been
dressed up to appear to be more complicated than it looks but also because the
motive behind it all, to get back a somebody who made Maleeni’s life hell in
prison, is so mundane. It feels like it should be aiming higher somehow. This
whole thing has been about accessing electronic fund transfers using Mulder’s
fingerprint and badge number? Yawn. It’s a good thing that the tone is so
frothy and enjoyable.
Pre Titles Sequence: Maybe it is the way that it is executed
but I found that the head twisting trick that Maleeni performs in the teaser
just as tedious as the cup and balls trick. Perhaps because it is something
that has been mimicked from The Exorcist too man times but I was
expecting something really grandiose and death defying. The pre-titles sequence
is almost like the episode in a microcosm; fun, a neat idea but not fully
realised.
Moment to Watch Out For: The glorious moment of sick comedy
when Mulder accuses Maleeni of killing his brother and attempting to pull off
the greatest trick in the annals of magic before he pushes backwards from his
desk and reveals that he has no legs. It’s funny because it’s wrong in all the
best ways. I suppose we were warned (‘that poor man…’).
Fashion Statement: You know how we all have our weird
crushes that we try and keep to ourselves in fear of scorn and ridicule? Well I
have no problem with revealing that mine are Russell Howard, Richard
Ayeoade…and Robert Webb. I bring this up because Jonathan Levit is the spitting
image of Webb and so I was quite distracted during the moments when he was on
screen. He even plays Billy LaBonbe with Webb’s trademark dangerous humour and
unpredictability that really floats my boat. Basically he could have performed
any trick on me (no, not like that) because in my mind was somewhere
else. It’s a point I have made ever since season four but it seemed to vanish
through much of the last two years but it is hard to buy into characters like
Mulder and Scully when they walk around looking like perfectly coiffured
supermodels. Establishment authority figures that look as though they have
stepped out of Cosmopolitan – I can’t imagine many in the audience
identifying with them. Their look in season seven is more artifical and
stylised than ever, Scully rarely has a hair out of place in her perfectly
styled do and they are both squeezed into fitting and flattering designer
suits. Although Scully looks hot in a top hat, it has to be said.
Orchestra: Playful and memorable; why is it that all Snow’s
best scores feature in the lighter episodes these days?
Result: The Amazing Maleeni is rather like an experience at
a Chinese buffet. You get excited going in and enjoy your way through it’s very
appealing looking component parts and yet once you are finished you realise
that you are a little glutted of this kind of thing and that the meal has been
rather unmemorable. It is a sleight of hand narrative that has to play out like
a perfectly executed trick but that only pays off if the reveal exposes how
beautifully plotted the whole thing has been. Instead this seems to be built
around moments of pure luck and co-incidence, and it is far too overly
complicated for its own good. On the other hand it is so much better than
Orison (not a difficult feat, I grant you). As an overall experience it might
one that is better suited to those who dip in and out of the series casually
rather than an ardent fan who might pick it apart to see if it makes sense – I
remember watching this with my brother in law when it first aired and he was
delighted by the whole experience. It’s an episode that is massively boosted by
the efforts of it’s performers and there are two fantastic partnerships that
are great fun to watch; that of Anderson and Duchovny and also Ricky Jay and
Jonathan Levit. It’s rather nice to have an episode that has no connection to
the paranormal whatsoever, although it is interesting to note that Vince
Gilligan described writing this piece as ‘agony’ because there are signs that
for once he was struggling and the extra names on the credits shows that this
was one time when he needed to ask for help. Exposing how season seven is a
performing a notch down on season six, the relative proximity of lighter
episodes such as The Goldberg Variation and The Amazing Maleeni reminds me of
the string of comedy gems that piled up in the first half of last year but they
are not aspiring to the heights of shows like The Rain King or How the Ghosts
Stole Christmas. Flawed but fun: 7/10
Signs & Wonders written by Jeffrey Bell and directed by
Kim Manners
What’s it about: A war between churches and their respective
Priests handling of snakes…
Trust No-One: Mulder thinks that somebody offering you all
the answers can be a very powerful thing. Is he pining for Deep Throat? It’s a
rare serious showing for Duchovny where he looks like he gives a toss in early
season seven, which is why it is so frustrating that he suddenly sounds flat
and uninterested at the climax when he needs to make the reveal about Mackay
count. When he says ‘stay where you are’ he sounds just like Ninestein
from Terrahawks, and we all remember what a charmer he was.
Brains’n’Beauty: Trust Scully to spoil the party and bring
religion into the episode when it was chugging along just fine with it’s
hissing snake set pieces. Personally I find a massive difference between Scully
being attacked in Orison and the treatment she receives by O’Connor in Signs
and Wonders. In the former episode her personal space was invaded in the most
intimate way, she is beaten up in an extremely nasty way and it all feels as
though something that could (and probably does) happen in real life. To make
entertainment out of a woman having the shit kicked out of her like this just
doesn’t sit well with me. Whereas this is the much more comfortable fantasy
violence that The X-Files usually promotes where she is held down against a pit
full of snakes (eugh!) and her sins are judged. It’s slightly ridiculous and
that makes all the difference (it also helps that I can understand why O’Connor
behaves this way whereas Pfaster took to beating on Scully simply because he enjoyed
it…brrr).
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘These particular serpents actually were
serving evil? Are you going to type that on our travel request?’
Ugh: SNAKES! Snakes, snakes, snakes, snakes…..snaaaaaaaaakes!
Naturally The X-Files goes for broke and acquires the services of the nastiest
looking, slippery, hissing and snapping reptiles they can get their hands on
and the net result is this reviewer watching most of the episode from between
his fingers. I don’t know what it is about snakes that terrifies me so much (I
would hazard a guess that it is because they are about as far from the human
form as you can get with their lithe, slithery bodies, beedy eyes and flicking
tongues) but if I’m near one in a zoo I suddenly come over with apoplexy. The
sound effects deployed in Signs and Wonders are enough to give the willies all
on their own without even seeing the snakes crawl into view. At one point, what
looks like it is going to be a perfectly ordinary shot of O’Connor handling a
python (or as ordinary as such an act can be) Manners suddenly gains focus on
the snakes hissing face which is reaching towards the camera and the
unsuspecting audience. I nearly fell off my seat. If I was Iris I would have
screamed and screamed when the snake suddenly emerged from the sink. She turns
and is confronted by a tangle of reptiles all baying for her blood. What are
they trying to do to me? Just when you think it can’t get any more repulsive,
O’Connor’s snake bite wounds start oozing with yellow puss.
The Good: It is thanks to the work of Randy Oglesby as the
Reverend Mackey that the twist about him being the antagonist is kept hidden
for so long. The script wants you to believe so badly that Mackey is virtuous
and that O’Connor is as perfidious as a snake that you know things can’t quite
be as simple as they appear. As good as Oglesby is, he cannot match Michael
Childers who throws himself into the role of the furious evangelist with
everything he has. He lights up the screen whenever he appears, exactly the
sort of over the top preacher that you might role your eyes at when you
accidentally switch over to GOD TV but absolutely terrorizing with it. Whilst
it might be an overly simplistic overview of religious congregations, I rather
liked the intercut scenes of the two churches as they enjoy their evening mass.
One is an evangelistic nightmare of hysterical verse and promises of salvation
and miracle cures and the other is a solemn and contemplative expression of
brown study. The former is so dramatic (‘…if you are lukewarm he will vomit
you out of his mouth!’) so that the latter can be disguised as the one that
is innocent when the truth of the matter is the snake in the grass is Mackey
and not O’Connor. The Church of Signs
and Wonders brews up such a frenzied atmosphere it exposes everything that I
despise about this kind of Church, indoctrination through hysteria. The playful
final shot is the perfect way to close this unpretentious slice of horror.
The Bad: The one point where the snake attacks don’t really
work (I know because I was breaking out in a cold sweat at this stage) is
during the climax. Mulder shirking off a ton of rubbery examples that have been
draped over his jacket doesn’t really cut the mustard. However Manners saves
one moment, where the snake stares Mulder out and bites him suddenly in the
neck, until the very last moment. That made me jump out of my skin.
Pre Titles Sequence: Unlike season six which was pretty much
light with the odd shade of darkness thrown in to remind us that this was still
The X-Files, season seven seems to switch tones on an episode-by-episode basis.
Millennium was dark, Goldberg was light, Orison was dark, Maleeni was light and
now Signs and Wonders is dark again. You can pretty much tell with season seven
from the first scene whether this is going to be a light or dark kind of show
of which this with its storm lashed creepy house, spooky silhouettes at the
window and attacks by vicious snakes is most definitely the latter. After three
episodes with unmemorable opening set pieces, the gang of fat, slimy, hungry
snakes that attack are a magnificent return to form and a real touch of that
classic horror that the show used to promote far more than it does these days.
Moment to Watch Out For: One of the most memorably grisly
sequences on the show in some time, Gracie giving birth to a mass of writhing,
bloody snakes has never left my mind since I first watched this episode. It’s
obscenely graphic and might just be the most vomit inducing thing that Kim
Manners has put on screen since Home, perverting the sanctity of birth with
something truly grotesque. I love how it is staged as an attack and yet the
twist at the climax turns the whole sequence on its head and they are actually
trying to save Gracie.
Result: I knew this day would come…snakes! They are
one hundred percent my worst phobia to a point where I literally get the sweats
at watching them slithering about on my 52 inch TV. You can keep your spiders
and your confined spaces and heights, these reptiles get under my skin like
nothing else. After what feels like a long string of episodes away, Kim Manners
is back in the driving seat and the inconsistent tone that has plagued the
series since his last effort has gone (in reality it has been a measly five but
for Manners it is rare for him to be absent from the schedules this long). I
have moaned an awful lot these past two seasons when the show has tried to go
down the nostalgia route and failed by attempting a monster of the week episode
with no novelty. That’s a little unfair since that is a formula that works,
otherwise the show would never have taken off as it did. Signs and Wonders
proves that it can still work with a little effort (that’s the key
difference between this and non entities such as Alpha and Rush) because there
is nothing here that specifically states it has to take place in season seven,
it could just as comfortably snuggle into the shows first two years without
complaint. It’s got a terrifying monster, some nice twists, energetic
performances and lashings of atmosphere. It has all the things that put this
show on the map. It is weird to say that a story that is this creepy as hell is
a refreshing change, but that is where the show is at for the moment: 8/10
Sein und Zeit written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz
and directed by Michael Watkins
What’s it about: The abduction of a little girl unearths
some stirring emotions in Mulder…
Trust No-One: A little girl being abducted from her home at
night is bound to bring all sorts of feelings to the surface for Mulder. His
simple but demanding ‘I want this case’ says everything you need to know
about his head space. Duchovny sounds subdued but this time it is because he is
trying to bottle up Mulder’s emotions and release them only a bit at a time. If
he wasn’t invested enough in this case already, the death of his mother
encourages him to plunge into his work with even more passion. There was never
a particularly strong bond between Mulder and his mother and his awkward
reaction to her death reveals that more than ever. His life has been on a
continuous trajectory of conspiracy and murder so naturally he links the two
things in to his mothers death, suspecting foul play. It’s quite pathetic
really because this is a simple case of an old woman’s heart giving out. He’s a
man that is struggling with his work, suffering something of a nervous breakdown
at the loss of another family member but determined to forge ahead regardless.
Scully can only stand by and comfort him as he heads down a path of self
destruction.
Brains’n’Beauty: Scully rather bluntly states that Kethy was
convicted in a court of law for the murder of her son. Pretty tough talk for a
woman who got away with cold blooded murder just a few months back. She is
decidedly uncomfortable with the idea of performing an autopsy on Teena Mulder
and it proves the strength of feeling that she has for him that she goes ahead
anyway.
Assistant Director: How wonderful to finally get a chance to
see Skinner heading an investigation that isn’t solely about Mulder’s work with
The X-Files. He comes across very strongly in this episode with an almost
paternal affection for Mulder, understanding that the men under his control
have to blow of steam in whatever way they see fit given the nature of the case
and even serving as a man of action in the last five minutes when he finds and
halts the sick work of the predator in the Santa grotto.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘No one saw a stranger on a Friday at a
fairly early hour enter into a locked and lighted home and remove this little
girl undetected.’
Ugh: Somebody is filming little kids playing in the garden throwing
autumnal leaves and getting a thrill from it, sizing up his next victim. It
might just be the most shuddersome moment the series has presented yet, all the
more chilling for how understated it is. We don’t realise that it is a portent
of something rather wonderful and uplifting at this stage and so the ghostly
visitations of the dead children chill the blood and serve as a reminder to
what the parents have lost. Taking into account this isn’t the work of aliens
but a fat, perverted, middle-aged man who dresses up in a Santa costume and
films children visiting his grotto every Christmas; this episode is every
parents worst nightmare come true.
The Good: Considering this episode is about the abduction of
children by a paedophile you would think that The X-Files would have to tread a
very careful line. However Carter and Spotnitz pull their punches in what has
to described as their most hard hitting script. Gone is all the tosh about
alien bounty hunters and killer bees and instead they are focussing on real
human drama and tragedy. They clearly thought that this was an avenue that
worked for the show because they pretty much borrowed this story wholesale as
the backstory for John Doggett next year too similarly dramatic effect. The
subtle mention that the Agents in Skinners office have a pool going guessing
whether Amber-Lynn is dead or alive really hits home how these people cope with
the stresses of the nastier aspects of their job. Not even the appearance of
the stiff as plywood Rebecca Toolan can spoil the accomplished tone of this
episode. I can understand why the FBI believes that the parents had a hand in
the abduction of their child since all the evidence points in that direction
but Carter and Spotnitz’s script is clear enough that they are entirely
innocent, even before Mulder’s intervention. That means the clock is ticking
for him to prove their virtue. In an episode full of fantastic performances,
Kim Darby shines the brightest but does so by delivering one of the least
charismatic of characters. Kethy Lee Tencate is such a plain, uncomplicated
woman who has fallen victim to circumstances out of her control and tried to
make the best of a bad situation by owning up to the murder of her child,
despite the fact it isn’t true. She’s exactly what the LaPierre’s will be in
five years if Mulder doesn’t make an adequate case for them. The sad truth of
the matter is that Kethy has been living with the lie of killing her son for so
long that she has even started to believe it herself. And that’s horrible.
How about the family defence lawyer who is in over his head with this case?
What a lovely, realistic character. In an episode where quiet emotion is
favoured over melodrama, the death of Teena Mulder (hooray!) happens off screen
and isn’t sensationalised. It is a rather more dignified ending than the
character deserved but I appreciated the naturalism of it all the same. The
Walk-Ins, old souls looking for new homes, are barely touched upon in the first
episode, but sound like a genuinely interesting prospect. Here’s to learning
more about them. I like the idea of a child’s soul being coaxed from their body
to prevent them from having to go through an uncomfortable experience – it
gives hope to all those parents who have lost their children to despicable acts
of cruelty or co-incidence. Maybe it is because I know precisely the sort of
practices that are being conducted on the premises that makes me feel this way
but there is a certain unpleasant atmosphere to the Christmas themed ranch. It
doesn’t quite have the stylish sheen you would expect from such a place,
looking more than a little run down. Everything about Skinner’s pursuit of
their felon is beautifully executed; the crisp, sunny location chosen, the
fluid camerawork and Mark Snow’s dynamic score. Few shows can claim to have
literally taken my breath away and given me goosebumps at the same time but the
cliffhanging pull away from Mulder and Scully to reveal an obscene number of
protubences in the ground definitely qualifies. The graves of the dead children.
The Bad: The only thing that doesn’t quite ring true about
this episode is the co-incidence of Scully, Skinner and Mulder driving past the
sign for the Santa’s grotto where their nasty is conducting his obscene
business. That and Rebecca Toolan, of course.
Pre Titles Sequence: Quietly haunting, this is one of the
best pre-titles sequences of the year and every parents worst nightmare. I like
how it plays out at such a sedate pace with the LaPierre’s putting their
daughter to bed and going through their nightly routines (he stays up to watch
a late night movie, she goes straight to bed one Amber is tucked up). I’m not
sure what is more horrific, the visual horror of Amber being stone cold dead in
bed and covered in bruises or the conceptual horror of her mother being taken
over by the spirit of the kidnapper and quietly writing out the ransom note.
Either way it is not going to look good for the innocent parents. Because this
is a two parter it can play out over five minutes and it is all the more
chilling for it.
Moment to Watch Out For: The moment when Mulder finally
breaks down, unable to cope with the mundanity of his mothers death when he was
so determined that she was taken from him for some grand purpose. The fact that
this is a case of suicide in the face of a horribly incurable disease and
Mulder’s determination that she was murdered feels right.
Result: Season seven continues to veer between the
traditional and the pioneering and this is an exceptional example of the
latter. One the most unreliable pairings on this show, Carter and Spotnitz
clearly needed to clear the decks a lot sooner because since all the baggage
was tossed out the window in Two Fathers/One Son their mythology have all been
very strong and as we move into the eighth season will only get stronger.
Before the show kicks off a new chapter at the beginning of the next season,
the abduction of Samantha is the final box to be ticked of the mysteries that
powered the shows first seven seasons and this feels like the perfect time to
final spill the beans. Sein Und Zeit is a beautifully scripted human drama that
favours strong performances over any kind of sensationalism and so I can
understand why people approaching The X-Files for thrills and spills might be
disappointed but as an example of the type of story it is trying to tell it is
practically flawless. Atypical in it’s subtlety and injection of realism,
you’ll unearth a number of exceptional performances in this episode from all
three regulars right down to the impressive guest cast all playing their part
in making this as discomforting an experience as possible. If this isn’t quite
as flawless as the two part classic that stood proud in the middle of season
six (but then few episodes are), it is still very, very good and easily
the most accomplished piece of the season seven puzzle to date: 9/10
Closure written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz and
directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: Mulder finally learns the truth about his
sister…
Trust No-One: There has never been much doubt surrounding
Mulder’s belief that his sister was abducted by aliens before (perhaps in the
stunning season four episode Paper Hearts but I don’t think anybody was
convinced that this would be the work of a paedophile) so it is interesting to witness
that he was given treatment by a psychologist that doubted the credence of his
story. Look at that shot of Mulder in the half light with his ghostly mother
talking away in the background, it is hauntingly achieved. The scenes between
Harold and Mulder are vital because Harold is precisely who Mulder could become
if he let the search for his sister consume him totally to the exclusion of all
else. It’s another indictment of Scully who managed to keep him centred and
engaged with his work. Carter is on record as admitting that Duchovny was bored
with going through the same old rigmarole over the potential solution to the
Samantha problem and he promised that this was the last time he would have to
go through this routine. There is something of that season seven laxity to his
performance here but it works in context of the episode, Mulder is as sick of
getting his hopes up for a solution as Duchovny is. The flat emotion in his
voice during certain scenes (not all) actually helps to sell how this character
cannot take any more false promises and how much his mothers death has robbed
him of his spirit. It is what makes that smile of blissful contentment at the
climax so rewarding. It is important that we see Harold stomping off in the
last scene and refusing to believe that his son is dead. It contrasts
beautifully with Mulder who has found peace through acceptance at last.
Brains’n’Beauty: It is when Scully, his rock, tries to force
Mulder to accept the fact that Samantha is dead that he finally loses his temper.
It’s the last thing he wants to hear from the woman he trusts the most but she
is doing it for his own good.
Smoking Man: I like the fact that the Smoking Man (somehow I
can’t justify calling him CGB Spender, it’s just so boring) still has a
role to play in the series after his plans to prevent the colonisation of the
planet went to the dogs. At the beginning of the season he was used as a
conduit for Mulder to explore where his life’s work has brought him and to try
and offer him something more worthwhile (whilst dropping the unconvincing
clanger that he is his father, which we shall assume was a fib since it is
never mentioned again). His role in this episode is mandatory because he has
been so caught up in the answers during Mulder’s search for Samantha. Had he
not had a hand in her abduction and subsequent disappearance after all the
hints and whispers to the fact, it would have made a mockery of so much
material gone by. Now they are no further threat to his plans, now there is
nothing to protect any more, he can start spilling the beans and proving
himself an ally to Mulder and Scully. Despite the fact that they would never
buy into him as a reformed character. William B. Davis achieves some of his
best work in season seven (with En Ami to come), the only one of the regulars
who is at their zenith this year. The Smoking Man was ultimately responsible
for bringing Samantha to the airbase and raising her for a short while with
Jeffrey, but the Walk-Ins soon intervened when they realised what fate he had
in store for her.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘You don’t know how badly I wanted her
to be in one of those graves’ – take a second to digest what Mulder is saying
here. He is so tired of looking for answers when it comes to his sister that he
would be fulfilled with the explanation that she was interfered with an
murdered by Truelove. Wow. He just wants it to be over.
‘Who wrote that?’ ‘You did…’ – one of those spine-tingling
moments that creeps up on you. It explains away Billie LaPierre’s ransom note
in the last episode rather neatly too.
Ugh: Just when it feels like the story might be over with
the discovery of Samantha’s diary, there is a terrific shock moment where Teena
Mulder lurches at her sleeping son and starts talking mutely at him. Nice to see
her final shot is a surprising one.
The Good: We don’t even need to witness the interrogation of
Ed Truelove because that isn’t what this episode is all about. It would be far
too obvious to go down the route of a traditional police investigation (we can
leave that to countless other X-Files episodes that stick to convention) when
his guilt was simply a stepping stone to get from Amber-Lynn to Samantha.
Continuing the spread of phenomenal performances across these two episodes,
Closure is spearheaded by a bravura turn from Anthony Heald as Harold Piller. A
man who has also suffered a personal loss and is chasing after the memory of
his son, he is a character that undergoes several shifts throughout the episode
from assisting investigator to potential psychotic to a tragic victim of
circumstance like all the other parents featured. Certain members of the
audience couldn’t get their heads around the ideas of the Walk-Ins, possibly
because of the fairytale nature of being described as ‘good spirits.’ Liver eating
mutants, giant bloodsucking fluke worms and men that re-grow their heads when
decapitated are all fair game but when it comes to something as Disney as this
then all bets are off. I don’t buy it. It reminds when ardent fans of Doctor
Who watch a story and declare the ideas implausible and embarrassing and
yet they have bought into a show that features a centuries old alien that
travels all of time and space in a police box. Egg on your face. I think the
concept of a benevolent force that extracts the souls of children that are
about to undergo some awful trauma is rather beautiful, The X-Files offering a
positive spin on the supernatural for a change. Discovering Samantha and
Jeffrey’s hand prints in the cement at the air base is a small moment for the
episode but a massive moment for the series. It is the promise that the end is
nigh for this extended narrative, such a playful symbol is far too intimate to
be mocked up. It guarantees that the answers to her abduction are here.
The Bad: Minus half a point for that terrible, terrible
wig that they shove Duchovny in to try and suggest he is ten years younger. How
clumsily scripted are Samantha’s diary entries? ‘…but he gave me such a
chill when I asked would he crush out his cigarette’ is such an awkward way
to tell the audience of the Smoking Man’s involvement.
Pre Titles Sequence: Even the usual pretentious voiceover
seems more powerful than usual but then how can it not when it is playing over
the excavation of a crime scene that consists of so many dead childrens hastily
dug graves. Detectives weep as they drag the muddy corpses from the ground.
It’s almost too tragic to bear witness to and easily one of the most powerful
things that either Carter and Spotnitz have scripted. When starlight descends over
the scene and the souls of the children start emerging from the graves it is a
blessed relief. I couldn’t handle an entire episode that depressing. To shift
tone so effectively from something so sick and upsetting to an altogether more
uplifting affair shows a confidence that only a show in its seventh successful
year can pull off.
Moment to Watch Out For: Two sequences in Closure count
amongst my favourites of the shows run. The first comes halfway through the
episode and features a beautifully directed séance where Mulder, Scully and
Harold all hold hands and call forth the spirits of the dead. If that sounds
glib then I’m not explaining it very well because the resulting sequence where
the faces of the dead stare curiously at them is perfection itself. Snow’s
score here is rarely bettered, playing my emotions like a coaxing music from an
instrument. The second is the climax to the episode which finally reunites
Mulder and his sister in a way that nobody expected, and it is all the more
poignant for it. Samantha is dead, her spirit existing in an eternal playground
in starlight and because he has allowed himself to believe that it is true
Mulder can finally see the truth. It has been his assurance that she was
abducted by aliens that held this moment back, his own faith was his worst
enemy. Surprising, shot in beautiful sapphire sunshine, featuring a stunning
soundtrack (My Weakness by Moby) and managing to be touching without
every descending into maudlin territory, this is about as perfect an ending for
the Samantha storyline as I could have hoped for. Duchovny’s performance is the
icing on the cake, this is probably the last time he would truly break my heart
in the series and the sense of contentment and joy that he expresses in
Mulder’s smile as he embraces his sister is one of those rare moments that
provokes tears.
Orchestra: One of my favourite Mark Snow scores and one that
I wish I could find on a soundtrack, Closure features one beautiful piece of
music after another which perfectly captures the delicate tone of the piece and
eases the audience into feeling all the right emotions at the right times. I
love the way this man manipulates the piano to get a rise out of me and his
achingly poignant elegy during the séance sequence remains my favourite of all
his pieces of music.
Result: Closure has seven years worth of expectation stack
against it so it was bound to displease a certain portion of the audience. Like
the conclusion of Lost and Dexter that would come later, you
cannot dangle a carrot in front of your audience for so long and snatch it away
not expect your loyal audience to be a little upset. Sometimes I feel that the
fact that some long held is ending is enough for some people to throw their
toys out of the pram. I thought this was rather beautiful, defying every
expectation that I had for the conclusion of the Samantha arc and doing
something rather delicate and imaginative rather than plumping for the more
obvious route of pomp and circumstance. It’s true that her storyline ends with
a whimper rather than a bang but it is such a exquisitely crafted whimper that
I really can’t find much to fault it other than it wasn’t what I anticipated.
Mind you we have had so many possible outcomes for this character thrust under
our noses over the years pretty much any definitive answer would have satisfied
me at this point. Closure continues on from Sein Und Zeit in that it is a
perfectly pitched script that plays with the audiences emotions expertly, and
Kim Manners directs this piece as an illusory fairytale that helps to heal some
of the gaping wounds left after the stunning cliffhanger of the previous
episode. What astonishes me about this climactic (in terms of its aims, not its
content) two parter is that so much of the story is conveyed almost entirely
through the characters rather than relying on stylish set pieces to drive the
piece forwards. It makes a very refreshing change (so much so future episodes
John Doe and Release would repeat the formula to similar success) and means the
performances are more vital and impressive than ever. There are a few moments
of over sentimentality but overall the emotion that runs through this story is
perfectly judged. Featuring two of my favourite sequences, a contender for Mark
Snow’s best score and an ending that surprises in its quietness, Closure is not
at all what I was expecting and is all the better for it. The fact that they
manage to package an anti-climax so beautifully is a credit to the writers and
director: 9/10
X-Cops written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Michael
Watkins
What’s it about: ‘Bad Boys, Bad Boys…what’cho gunna do
when they come for you?’
Trust No-One: It looks like Mulder still doesn’t have that
filter that tells him when to hold his tongue and stop talking paranormal
gubbins when his audience isn’t responding well. Paula asks to see his badge
again because she is convinced that he is a nutter. Vince Gilligan has to write
for Mulder and Scully in a very different way than usual, like they are making
up what they are saying as they go along rather than delivering perfectly
scripted speeches. It means Duchovny and Anderson get to improvise a lot more
in their performance…but the net result is they seem much less charismatic than
usual, even dour. Mulder agrees with Keith that it is hard to have a fast track
career in law enforcement when everybody thinks you are nuts. He’s found a
kindred spirit in the Deputy.
Brains’n’Beauty: Here’s our chance to see Mulder and Scully
in the cold, crisp light of day instead of being expertly lit and shot to make
them look as gorgeous as possible…and they still look absolutely
stunning. Gillian Anderson gets to have the most fun with this episode as the
camera shy Scully, trying to duck behind whatever objects are available rather
than being exposed on national television as the sort of woman that
investigates paranormal. Mulder is flattered that she doesn’t want him looking
foolish to an audience of millions but Scully stops him in his tracks with the
hilarious statement that she doesn’t want her looking foolish. The
running joke that the FBI has nothing to hide made me howl, especially when
Scully delivers it straight to camera with a cheeky smile. Brilliantly, she
slams the back door of their rental car, refusing entrance to the COPS
cameraman. I’ve only just noticed it but Scully says ‘Oh God!’ with
alarming regularity considering her religious leanings.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Mulder have you noticed that we are on
television?’ ‘I don’t think it’s live television, Scully, she just said f*ck.’
‘I’m ready for my close up!’
The Good: Here’s a chance to see what The X-Files would look
like if it was shot on video instead of film and the results aren’t as cheap as
you might think. Because The X-Files is so well lit, X-Cops looks snappy and
stylish rather than flat and uninteresting as shows often can when losing the
sheen of film work. Shot documentary style, X-Cops feels like a real life drama
playing out rather than a lavish piece of genre television. The resulting
effect is something cold and crisp and very refreshing. This is also the only
X-Files episode to be shot in real time (Triangle flirted with the idea with
its blocks of continuous scenes but always took an ad break and wound up
somewhere else in the narrative when it came back) and exploits the drama of
investigating an unknown nasty over the space of one night with all the build
up of tension that comes with it. The cast deserve real kudos for their
performances in this episode, having to drop the pretence of playing characters
in a fictional show and pretending to be real life figures in a police
documentary. They all do a fine job, especially Dee Freeman who injects that
little extra melodrama into her performance as one of those people who are in
front of camera and pretend to object to its presence but in reality love the
exposure. Paula Duthie is your standard police sergeant, talking the talk,
strutting with attitude and not taking any of Mulder’s paranormal bollocks as
an explanation for what is going on (‘with all due respect what the f*ck are
you talking about?’). I usually hate it when gay stereotypes hit the
airwaves because it does nothing but confirm the more ignorant members of the
audiences expectations but every now again I stumble across some hilariously
done screaming queens that are just a delight to be around and Steve and Edie
definitely qualify (Armand and Albert from The Birdcage are right up
there too). They just love the camera and play up for it at every
opportunity, either by spreading malicious gossip or plastering their uber
dramatic domestics all over national television. The raid on the drugs den
proves to be a stimulating set piece because we go in over the shoulder of
Mulder and Scully and get to witness what a turbulent panic the atmosphere is.
Gilligan manages to plot out an effectively chilling story within this format
with the audience informed at every stage that each victim of this creatures is
seeing the thing that they fear the most. It means we never have to actually
see the monster of the week because it will take on a different guise to each
person. X-Cops features some of the best ever autopsy scenes with Scully having
to cope with a real hypochondriac of a lab assistant who is convinced they will
succumb to some kind of contamination. It’s a very clever piece of writing,
showing the assistants fear of contagion and then having her suffer from it,
thus exposing the nature of this weeks threat in the flesh without having to
show us any kind of ‘monster’ to spoil the realism of the piece. In the search
of the darkened crack den by the Deputy you have one of the most genuinely
frightening moments in The X-Files. We know this thing can be anything now and
he is trapped inside with it. I’m not sure what is funnier – finding the COPS
camera crew hiding in the cupboard, screaming or Scully’s reaction (‘I hate
you guys!’) and slamming the door on them again.
The Bad: Was it worth Vince Gilligan having a paddy over the
‘viewer discretion’ at the beginning of the episode? Yes and no. It wasn’t
absolutely necessary because as soon as Mulder and Scully appear in character
it would clear to everybody watching that this isn’t a genuine episode of COPS.
But given the Ghostwatch furore and the similarly art invading life a nature of
broadcasted panic such as The War of the Worlds it was probably a sensible
idea. I’m always saying that writers should treat their audience with
intelligence but the truth is there are daft people out there that would
probably be reaching for the phone after the pre-credits sequence thinking that
a copper has genuinely been mauled to death by a werewolf. By the very nature
of the episode we cannot hope for a satisfying conclusion in the way that the
show (sometimes) wraps things up with a polished set piece. This is trying
imitate real life and real life doesn’t work like that. As a result, listening
to Keith being attacked behind a closed door doesn’t quite live up to the rest
of the episode.
Pre Titles Sequence: I try and steer clear of reality
television on UK TV so I certainly don’t seek it out in the US (despite a
friends’ endless attempts to get me to watch something called Dog the Bounty
Hunter) but even I have heard of COPS and recognise the famous theme tune.
To have clips of the episode assembled into a montage and having Bad Boys
slapped over the top produced a delighted reaction in me. The X-Files is having
fun again, experimental style. The teaser itself is very well done because it
reveals instantly that they are going for a very authentic look. Not only that
but the attack that takes place with the cameraman being pursued through the
garden and then attacked in the police car is absolutely terrifying because we
are seeing the whole thing through the lens. We are there with them the whole
time the car is being flipped and crushed. It’s one of the best pre-title
sequences because it pulls off the potential of The X-Files/COPS merger
straight away and shows that this is really going to work whilst being heart
stoppingly tense at the same time. The director manages to tell the story and
make the footage look entirely random. It proves that old adage is true that it
is far scarier to not see the monster. We are pursued by something and
the frenzied panic is much more frightening because we don’t know what it is.
Moment to Watch Out For: The brilliant moment when Mulder
and Scully think that Steve and Edie are being attacked by the creature but it
turns out they are just having a periodic bitch fight with plenty of screaming
and wailing. The scenes of Mulder trying to placate the gay couple and get them
communicating again are worth the admission price alone. Duchovny’s reaction to
‘He wont make love to me…’ made me scream with laughter.
Orchestra: The bizarre thing about the dearth of music is
how little it is missed and how much atmosphere is created without it. Go
figure.
Result: X-Cops is the fourth excellent episode in a row…after a pretty shaky start has season seven turned a corner? To marry The X-Files and the police reality show is such an inspired, obvious idea that it is astonishing that nobody has ever thought of it before and it works brilliantly as an example of both, offering much for the audience of both shows. This is an extremely skilful piece of direction on Michael Watkins part because he has to shoot this episode documentary style and yet still ensure that the camera catches all the right pieces of visual information for the audience to be able to put the story together. It’s nice to have all the fluffs and bumps and awkward moments that comes with live television kept in too. Because this played out in real time there is a chance to build an atmosphere of terror unlike anything seen before and since in The X-Files and the action feels gripping and immediate. It borrows The Blair Witch Project’s giddy style of filming but applies to a far more satisfying script and the end result is a piece of television that is revolutionary, clever and very frightening in places. The only reason this isn’t getting full marks (because it probably deserves it) is because the idea runs out of steam just before the end and leaves the audience waiting for a denouement that never arrives (but then life doesn’t package things up in tidy endings). That aside, X-Cops is an unexpected delight that takes risks and wins and proves that Carter is still willing to push the boat out at the seven year mark: 9/10
Result: X-Cops is the fourth excellent episode in a row…after a pretty shaky start has season seven turned a corner? To marry The X-Files and the police reality show is such an inspired, obvious idea that it is astonishing that nobody has ever thought of it before and it works brilliantly as an example of both, offering much for the audience of both shows. This is an extremely skilful piece of direction on Michael Watkins part because he has to shoot this episode documentary style and yet still ensure that the camera catches all the right pieces of visual information for the audience to be able to put the story together. It’s nice to have all the fluffs and bumps and awkward moments that comes with live television kept in too. Because this played out in real time there is a chance to build an atmosphere of terror unlike anything seen before and since in The X-Files and the action feels gripping and immediate. It borrows The Blair Witch Project’s giddy style of filming but applies to a far more satisfying script and the end result is a piece of television that is revolutionary, clever and very frightening in places. The only reason this isn’t getting full marks (because it probably deserves it) is because the idea runs out of steam just before the end and leaves the audience waiting for a denouement that never arrives (but then life doesn’t package things up in tidy endings). That aside, X-Cops is an unexpected delight that takes risks and wins and proves that Carter is still willing to push the boat out at the seven year mark: 9/10
First Person Shooter written by William Gibson & Tom
Maddox and directed by Chris Carter
What’s it about: Words fail me…
Trust No-One: There was one quick moment that made me laugh
when Scully mentioned computer games and Mulder tries to tart it up calling it
‘digital media.’ It reminded me of my husband who calls a graphic novel a
‘comic book’ much to my chargin. Mulder calls Scully sexist in his defence of
the game…does not compute. He thinks that playing video games allows men to get
out all those violent and sexist impulses that civilised societies deny them.
Clearly he is just as bad as the rest of them, losing his instincts for
survival in the face of a (skankily dressed) vixen. Somehow I thought more of
him than that. The sight of Maitreya straddling a tank in combat gear was
probably enough to make Mulder cream his pants.
Brains’n’Beauty: The fact that Scully calls Maitreya a ‘voluptuous
vixen’ rather than a ‘male wank doll’ proves that she really doesn’t
understand what she is talking about. ‘What kind of moron gets his yayas out
like that?’ Scully condemns halfway through the episode…so can you imagine
where she ends up by the climax and absolutely loving it?
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Mulder, why does this game have the
effect of turning grown men back into moony adolescents?’
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘Woah, it’s a total massacre out there!’
is about as sophisticated as the dialogue gets.
‘The blood thirst is unquenchable’ – would even the most
anal of geeks say a line like that?
‘She’s packing a flintlock’ ‘That aint all she’s packing’ –
Mulder and the Lone Gunmen lusting over a leather clad non-entity that is
bursting out of her top.
‘No fair picking on a girl’ – picture me as the comic book
guy from The Simpsons when I say this…worst line ever.
‘Scully’s on fire!’ ‘The bloodlust is unquenchable!’ ‘Are
you witnessing this?’
Ugh: Pretty much my reaction throughout.
The Bad: Right from the start this episode assumes that it
is only tubsters and geeks that enjoy playing games that take you away from
reality, an assumption that certainly doesn’t work in my world. The only two
people that I know lose themselves in a virtual world are both full engaged
with the real world, mature and extremely attractive. Sending the Lone Gunmen
are talking like horny illiterate teenagers who cannot string a sentence
together unless it is stitched up by yoof slang and over excitement. They’ve
never sounded like this before and they never will again, it is Maddox and
Gibson taking their love for the trio to an extreme and as a result handing
them their worst interpretation in the entire nine years on the show. Try hard
as I might, I have encountered few characters as irritating as Ivan Martinez in
my long trawl through television archives. Self centred, amoral, cowardly,
geeky and sexist, there is so little going for this guy I am astonished that he
makes it out at the end. I’m not entirely sure why everybody is so in awe of
Darryl Musashi beyond the fact that he has a real aptitude for using his thumbs
to play video games. Big woo. That’ll come in handy during the apocalypse. When
he is plugged into the game he doesn’t appear any more skilled than the guys we
saw playing in the teaser and yet the Gunmen simultaneously sing his praises
whilst yanking on their little soldiers. I know I have been asked to get my
head around a lot of amazing concepts during the first seven years of this show
but I have really stuttered in First Person Shooter. I’m like K.9 going round
and round in circles screaming ‘does not compute…does not compute…’ I
don’t understand how a virtual character, somebody that has no physical
presence whatsoever, can will herself into existence and start murdering
people. You can’t make something out of nothing. And the guilty party
can be found hiding away in the back of most scenes, Phoebe embodying the role
of the female underdog casting worrying glances throughout. If you haven’t
figured out that she is responsible ten minutes in then your deductive
faculties have short circuited. Brilliantly, Maddox and Gibson hang a lantern
on the notion that simulated violence might be actualised in the real world, a
debate that belongs in a far more intelligent piece of work than this. But they
want you to know that they have considered it for about five seconds so you
can’t object when they get back to the fury of orgasmic violence. The climax,
which features Mulder and Scully decked out in shooter gear in a Wild West
setting blasting the crap out of a cowgirl vixen duplicates, is so awful I
thought I had stepped through into an alternative universe where The X-Files
was written by monkeys. To be fair they probably would have done a better job.
Carter tries to pitch the climax at as tragic loss of a game that would make
millions, Ivan the power mad creator suffering a breakdown at the loss of his
world. It’s just insane. Wow, there’s even an atrociously written voiceover to
close this abhorrence of the sort we haven’t suffered for some time.
Marvellous, the last scene suggests a sequel.
Pre Titles Sequence: I suppose the opening sequence does
have a certain mad energy to it, although to the less kind it could just be
called volume (screaming, rock music, alarms, bullets bursting from barrels).
What is immediately obvious is that even if this was the sort of thing that I
would like to engage in (which it really isn’t) it is actually a rather
boring game consisting of wandering around a street shooting at motorbikes. And
what kind of pleasure am I supposed to get out of that precisely? Perhaps the Grand
Theft Auto crowd can fill me in. I understand the adrenalin rush of
shooting a gun but surely you could come up with something a little more
imaginative than this. Shooting out warehouse windows is hardly the pique of
excitement. Still at least the fat guy buys the farm, his gut looking as though
it has literally burst pus from excitement. That’s what you get for eating too
many burgers before getting your kicks. Just so you know precisely what this
episode is about before the end of the teaser along pops Maitreya, armed with a
knife for butchering pigs and enough collagen in her lips to consume a small
continent. She’s a walking sexist cliché disguised as a figure of female
empowerment and she’s here to slice through the perception of women in the
media and set them back a few decades. In comparison to the pre-titles sequence
of their other X-Files episode, Gibson and Maddox have dropped the ball
completely here. The only way that Phoebe can strike a blow for women in a male
dominated industry is to create a buxom vixen that turns up as a surprise
executioner during a shoot’em up. I can’t believe I just strung that sentence
together, let alone that Fox green lit a piece of work with such a putrescent
premise and motivation.
Moment to Watch Out For: The police all standing around
outside the interrogation room practically rubbing themselves with excitement
at the hooker that is incarcerated inside. An unbelievably misogynistic moment
of television in a show that has done so much to promote a strong female lead.
The camera that is positioned for perfect exposure when she opens her legs
(much appreciated by a drooling Mulder) is obscene.
Fashion Statement: It’s impossible to describe just how
ridiculous Mulder and Scully look dressed as techno warriors but if I ever
suggest that the pair of them walking around decked out like catalogue models
is detrimental to the show again, remind me of this moment.
Result: They should have called this episode Jump the
Shark. About as bad as you can imagine The X-Files getting if nobody involved
was taking it seriously and then some. First Person Shooter and another
upcoming episode to feature in season seven are my two least favourite episodes
of the show, the only time that the discomfiture of almost no marks is assigned
to this incredible series. It reminds me of the Neil Gaiman experience over on
Doctor Who. An established, popular author writing an episode of a even more
popular TV series that goes down a storm…and then following that up with an
absolute stinker. It is David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson that I pity the
most, having to suffer the indignity of fronting a show that would put out
something as retarded and misogynistic as this. Slow (despite the furious
energy of some scenes), brainless, sexist, weighed down by atrocious dialogue
and directed with all the subtlety of a B Movie with a budget, First Person
Shooter feels like everybody involved was trying to make this episode as
insulting as it can be. I really wanted to turn this off halfway through (and
it took me nearly a week to prepare myself to watch it again after a four year
gap since the last time I put myself through it) that’s how bad this is.
Above everything, the game itself is really crap too: 0.5/10 (it only
gets that half point because there is an even worse, ungraded episode to come)
Theef written by and directed by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban
& Frank Spotnitz and directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: A simple calculation: Fresh Bones +
Sanguinarium = Theef
Trust No-One: ‘Mulder, why are we here…?’ He’s
getting in there before her these days, pre-empting her grumble. There’s an
attempt to play about with the formula in Theef and have Scully keeping Mulder
on his toes by offering surprising insights of her own. It’s different, but at
this stage feels like another variation on a theme to keep things interesting
rather than a natural development. What this show needs is a larger ensemble
and a shift around in central characters. Tick and tick next year. Until then
let’s just see the rest of this inconsistent year out.
The Good: If I were feeling generous I could give the climax
a kind word or two but I had been so numbed into a comatose state by that point
that I could barely wake up to muster any enthusiasm. Mark Snow is working his
damdest with the choral score to add some chills, Anderson plays a blinded
Scully with the fervour that she is lacking elsewhere and the direction in
general steps up a notch. Manners was poorly during this shoot so we’ll let him
off this once.
The Bad: We’ve dealt with both voodoo (Fresh Bones) and
witchcraft (Sanguinarium) before so I guess the writers figured if they allowed
the two to join forces it might equate to something original. They thought wrong.
My biggest gripe with Theef is that whilst it is very well cast for the most
part (The X-Files usually is but there is no weak link in the chain here), they
are all playing desperately underwritten characters. Everybody from the
celebrated Doctor and his whiter than white family to the landlady (she’s the
sort of character that pops up all the time on this show, an innocent that
stumbles on the horrors of the week), right through to Peattie himself whose
backstory we learn but I never got a sense of who this man is or why he would
go to such extreme lengths to murder his daughters inadvertent executioner.
It’s like asking very good actors to fill a void, to improvise characters to
life. Actually if that was the case you might have had better results. Pamela Gordon cameos in a role as
‘Proprietor’ (she’s so unimportant that she doesn’t even get a name) and all
the little tics that make this character work are in the performance. As
written she is a tenapenny magic shop owner. They manage to track down Peattie
because Mulder randomly catches a news report?
Pre Titles Sequence: In true horror movie fashion, if the
establishing scene is full of pretty, happy people then something grisly has to
happen to them before the day is out. When Irving takes a photograph to mark this
evening and his son-in-laws achievement he might as well have written out a hit
list for everybody in it. Peattie is a creepy presence and the music goes some
way to crawling under your skin but overall this merely a so-so pre titles
sequence of the sort we have seen a dozen times before. The writers are
desperate to make an impact these days and so include more blood than is
probably necessary to make the moment count.
Moment to Watch Out For: How can you fail to squirm during
the sequence where Nan is roasted alive inside the scanner. Peattie combines
hex craft and technology by putting a doll in the microwave and timing it just
right so she is fried alive inside the machine. The charred corpse that slides
out is pretty gruesome.
Result: Considering the writing and directing talent that
went into Theef, the fact that it is merely an adequate episode of The X-Files
is quite a surprise. Perhaps everybody is suffering from fatigue at this point
and needed a little break. There are no real surprises throughout the episode
since we learn precisely who is responsible in the teaser and so all that plays
out is a string of murders, and not very imaginative ones at that. This might
be my shortest X-File review of all because there really isn’t much to discuss
it is lacking so much substance – it’s not that it is an appalling piece of
work like First Person Shooter because both the direction and the script are
competent but that just serves to make the piece even more unmemorable.
Duchovny looks as though he has given up and Anderson is only a beat behind,
either somebody needs to give them a kick up the ass or the show needs a
desperate shake up. The performances are all very good but the characters they
are playing simply go through the motions. Apparently the script came in late
and they were pretty much winging it throughout with very little preparation
time so I guess the nicest thing I can say is that it at least pulled together
adequately enough to broadcast. If you were coming to the show with fresh eyes
and this was your first episode you might get something from this collection of
gruesome moments but if you have been with the series for seven years there is
nothing you haven’t seen before in better stories. So traditional it hurts,
surely this is nobody’s favourite X-File: 5/10
En Ami written by William B. Davis and directed by Rob
Bowman
What’s it about: Scully is off on a road trip with the
Smoking Man…
Trust No-One: Mulder knows Scully’s behaviour at this stage
of the game and so can tell when she is behaving out of character.
Interestingly last season when Scully was beguiled by Mulder’s author neighbour
there was no sense of jealousy at all. Only a feeling that he wanted to protect
his partner. When it comes to her putting her faith in the Smoking Man things
are very different and the sense of betrayal comes off Mulder in wafts.
Brains’n’Beauty: In a script that favours Anderson and gives
her something completely new to play, she finally wakes up after snoozing
through the last few installments (you can actually plot the moments in season
seven when Anderson is engaged and it is at all the points where her character
breaks out of the mould and is allowed to stretch her wings). I really like the
early scenes where she goes and visits Jason because they manage to merge two
of her opposing beliefs, her faith and her knowledge of medical science, in a
way that doesn’t quite feel right. How can Scully resist a potential cure for
cancer? Especially after her own personal experience of the disease. However
beguiled she is by the prospect of a medical breakthrough, she can barely sit
through the Smoking Man’s pop psychology overview of her relationship with
Mulder without squirming.
Smoking Man: When I heard what the central premise of this
episode was I wondered how on Earth Davis thought he was going to pull it off.
The Smoking Man has been a bitter rival of Scully and Mulder’s for so many
years now that the thought of him being able to seduce the former and get her
to lie to the latter given the level of distrust between them left me thinking
that there would be a ring of falsehood about the episode. Actually that isn’t
the case at all and it takes a very clever approach, seducing her with a
medical marvel, the one thing that would entice her to do whatever he says.
This episode wouldn’t work at any other point in the shows history but because
it is set after the destruction of his work with the Syndicate you can buy into
the idea that Smoking Man is dying of lung cancer and wants to share his
secrets with somebody who can do some good with them. One of the reasons that
the character has worked so well over the years is that Davis has always
believed that the Smoking Man is the hero of the show and when his hand in the
conspiracy was finally revealed, he was proven right. He was trying to save the
Earth from colonisation, he was just using terrible methods to go about it. An
anti-hero, perhaps? Or a benevolent villain? It isn’t such a leap that he would
want to ensure that a medical miracle is exposed before his lungs give way. To
bequeath a cure to millions of people and make his name. He admits that he has
always had an affection for both Mulder and Scully, despite them being on
opposing sides and that his intentions on this trip are honourable. Good, I don’t
think I could handle him lusting over her. In the much maligned but more
substantial than usual Doctor Who episode Boom Town there is some fascinating
discussion between the Doctor and the villain where he states that every now
and again you let one victim go to cleanse your conscience of the terrible
things that are committed. The visit to Marjorie Butters is the embodiment of
that idea; the Smoking Man selecting one kind, gentle woman and affording her
the gift of a cure for cancer and basking in the affection she has for him. It
is probably enough to convince him of his altruistic deeds whilst he is
organising the next round of mass executions. Whilst I question whether it was
all an act or not, the Smoking Man’s quiet humility in choosing evening wear
for Scully is gorgeous. He is not used to handling people as gently as this and
it shows.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘How many people are dying of cancer?
And here we are wasting time on the past’
- with an argument like that how can Scully possibly resist?
‘Tenants like having an FBI agent in the building. It gives
them a sense of security’ ‘Do you know how many people have died in there?’
‘To have this power. To visit this woman and see her joy. It
must be why you became a Doctor.’
‘How do you take your coffee?’ ‘Unadulterated, thank
you.’
The Good: The Smoking Man is a clever sod and no mistake. He
sets his trap elaborately and ensures that Scully sees everything that she
needs to in order to get her precisely where he needs her. Davis makes better use
of the Lone Gunmen in their brief appearance in En Ami than Maddox and Gibson
managed in an entire episodes worth of material for the trio in First Person
Shooter. Their disguises are comically inept. An extraterrestrial cure for all
human disease, perhaps the ultimate expression of the shows paranormal leanings
and it’s penchant for keeping one foot planted in the real world. Scully in a
black coat sailing on a boat, her red hair contrasting with the greyness of the
sky, reminded me potently of One Breath from season two. Gosh, that feels so
long ago now. How like the Smoking Man to have this all sown up from the start;
the fake office, the false correspondence between Scully and Cobra, the
assassin. What plays out is a series of inevitable events but only inevitable after
they have played out. Davis convinced me of his characters altruistic
intentions whilst simultaneously pulling the wool over my eyes. It is the point
where he asks to see the disc where this all falls into place, the Smoking Man
clearly palming the real one and handing her back a fake. He has set up this
whole affair to get her play her role in obtaining the disc. This whole episode
has been building to moment where she gets in that boat and obtains the
information for him. The release of the information that offers the cure to all
human disease would revolutionise the world as we know it (think of Torchwood:
Miracle Day) and would have to be handled in a delicate way so that the
population could be kept under control in a manageable way. It is dangerous
information. But that still doesn’t give the Smoking Man the right to destroy
it and allow all that suffering to continue. In doing so it is the most evil
act we have ever seen him commit. Did he do it to cure himself…or did he
destroy the data and his own chances of survival as well? I like that we don’t
find out here.
Pre Titles Sequence: I am so used to scenes of alien
abduction on this show nowadays that the merest hint of a light through the
window is enough to let my imagination run away and figure that all sorts of
nasty things are going to happen to Jason. Instead Davis is cleverly subverting
my expectations and it turns out to be the blinding lights from a car and men
in suits approaching to help cure his cancer. Bowman’s direction is creative
right up to his last episode on the show and he helps to sell this cheat
brilliantly. What’s immediately obvious as well as that Davis isn’t just
interested in spectacle, the idea of parents refusing medical aid for their son
who is a cancer patient on religious grounds is enough to get a lively debate
going amongst anybody in the audience. Given the fact that Jason is cured, you
would consider this a reward of your stringent faith.
Moment to Watch Out For: Gillian Anderson can capture so much
emotion in her face with a single look and her emotional conflict when she
realises they could be on the brink of the cure for all human disease is an
astonishing piece of acting. Snow’s music during this sequence is gorgeous too,
a pleasing piano melody that captures the enormity of the moment.
Result: ‘What we are being given is not the cure for
cancer. It is the Holiest of Grails, it’s the cure for all human disease…’
It would appear that the actors on this show are writing more accomplishedly
than the writers these days. Given the recent struggling labours of Gilligan,
Shiban and Spotnitz, Carter’s appalling Fight Club just around the corner and
newcomer David Amann’s unmemorable efforts, you are presented with a writing
team that is desperately in need of something inspirational to coax something
fresh and exciting from them. On the other hand the wilderness latter half of
season seven is strengthened by three efforts by Davis, Anderson and Duchovny
that all try and do new things with the characters and add some sanity to
proceedings. They aren’t all perfect (particularly Andersons) but they are all
taking the show into original places. It marks the last effort of director Rob
Bowman who has brought so much excitement and visual panache to the series over
the years that he is one of the core group of people that made the show the
success it was. I consider it a good sign of a strong episode that I headed
into the re-watch with a vivid memory of the majority of the material, in
particular the subtle Mark Snow score and the stunning location filming and the
clever interaction between Scully and the Smoking Man. En Ami (terrific title)
has two secret weapons up its sleeve; one being the astounding concept of a
potential cure for all human disease which opens up much discussion and the
other being the rarely featured partnership of Scully and the Smoking Man which,
Closure aside, I cannot recall them spending a single scene together alone in
seven years. I never thought that Davis could pull off a romantic sojourn between
these two characters but he achieves it by allowing both of them to remain
entirely in character and come together for a logical common cause. It is a
small intimate story that has a big heart and winds offering a lot more
substance than the louder, more garish examples of the season. I thought it was
rather charming, not a classic by any means but a very solid example of the
series trying something new and succeeding in its twilight years: 8/10
Chimera written by David Amann and directed by Cliff Bole
What’s it about: Murder in suburbia…
Trust No-One: Chimera feels like it belongs in the first
half of season six where Mulder and Scully were department-less and were being
forced to rake through the FBI dustbin for the worst assignments that are being
handed out. However it is quite a nice change to see them doing some down and
dirty field work rather than waltzing onto a murder scene dressed to the nines
and arrogantly assuming authority – I was starting to think they were working
for Torchwood! Stripped of his interplay with Anderson, Duchovny delivers a far
less sitcom-based performance than I am used to of late and seems to appreciate
a story with it’s feet planted firmly in reality. It is a shame that he chose
to abandon the show in it’s eighth year because there is about to be a wealth
of material of this nature to come. Next year we get many examples of The
X-Files featuring Scully without Mulder and this is rare opportunity to see how
the show would fare with that order in reverse. Not at all badly is the answer.
Perhaps the success of this show isn’t as tied up in Mulder and Scully
as I previously thought, or at least maybe it isn’t solely tied up in their
interaction. Here’s a chance to see how things might be if Mulder was married and
cared for by a kind woman and the results are rather pleasant. Things would
have been very different on this show had that been the case from the start.
Brains’n’Beauty: When Skinner reassigns Mulder to work
without Scully he is giving Gillian Anderson carte blanche to head off and
direct All Things. Amusingly this means that Scully is settling in for the
night in a crack den watching prostitutes whilst Mulder is tucking into a home
cooked meal in a nice, warm house.
Ugh: Ravens pecking at the face of a corpses isn’t an image
you’ll forget in a hurry.
The Good: The set designers have gone to town with the
stinking dive that Mulder and Scully are staking out in, a graffiti strewn rat
hole and the sort of location that we don’t usually find the agents hanging
around in. Amann has clearly thought about his guest cast quite hard and
figured out what makes this community tick and how they all fit into each
others lives. There is certainly more attention to detail in the
characterisation than there was in Arcadia, which is aided by some honest,
pragmatic dialogue. Whoever came up with the idea of shattering glass to herald
the presence of the demonic creature is a genius, it sells the horror of the
beast with a dramatic statement. I’ve seen ravens handled very effectively in
film and television before, the famous playground sequence in Alfred
Hitchcock’s The Birds and even Doctor Who’s Stones of Blood chillingly used
crows as a symbol for malevolence. The assertion that they are the companions
of evil is a frightening one, the birds aren’t dangerous in themselves but they
signal that death is about to come knocking. Ellen being menaced through the
house and saved by her husband leaves you with some doubt that the creature
might be him. The episode plays little tricks like that to provide a number of
suspects as the identity of the demon. In hindsight the clues were all there
that Howard was having an affair with the two victims; the perfect existence
that Ellen maintains for him strikes of somebody trying too hard to keep her
man after a near split and he looks decidedly uncomfortable when talking about
both of the victims around his wife. Because we have gotten under the skin of
this household through Mulder the confirmation of his adultery still manages to
cut deep. The punchline to the Scully plot, that the leggy blonde prostitute
turns out to be a dark haired evangelist who is saving the souls of hookers, is
worth waiting for. It ties very nicely into the central plot too, allowing
Mulder to realise that the killer has been hiding in plain sight. If Duchovny’s
performance falters at the climax, then the direction is better than ever and
more than compensates as Ellen attacks Mulder. The final explanation, that this
is a physical representation of multi personality disorder, caps things off
very nicely.
The Bad: Gina Mastrogiacomo is playing the hard down by
neighbour from the rough end of town and so the natural urge is to play the
character a little melodramatically, which she does. It’s not a bad performance,
per se, just one that could have been toned down a little. She’s playing what
people like to call a ‘certain sort’ and whilst acceptable, I would have bought
more into the characters innocence had it been brought down a notch or too.
Saying that I did quite like the scene in the hotel which reminds us that Jenny has a son and that she
is whoring it up in order to provide a good life for him before dispatching the
character. It adds a touch of tragedy to her story. There’s a bizarre moment in
the middle of Chimera where Mulder phones Scully for help and she is distracted
by something that is going on through her telescope. It feels as though the two
plots are about to marry up somehow but that is not the case at all. The
purpose was to cut this catch up with Scully short so we can have another one
in ten minutes time where she can give him the information he is after. This
was simply included to remind us that Scully exists.
Pre Titles Sequence: The one thing you can never count on is
the weather. Ever since the show re-located to Los Angeles the show has taken
on a far sunnier disposition than previous years and yet the one time when that
brilliant weather was needed, during the pre-titles sequence to Chimera, it is
nowhere to be seen. Trying to open on a modern day domestic paradise, the
camera pans across delicious food and people having fun in a gorgeously
cultivated garden. It is the very image of contemporary suburban bliss, except
for the hulking dark rain clouds that appear in the back of every shot. Cut to
scenes in a forest where sunlight can be simulated streaming through the trees,
or filmed on a completely different day. The scares come thick and fast in the
teaser so it is easy to jump and dive under a cushion, everything from a beady
eyed crow watching Martha on the phone, the mirror shattering and a disgusting
hulk menacing her from behind. Bole directs these shocks quickly and cuts away
to the credits before we even know what hit us. It left me quite dizzy with
fear.
Moment to Watch Out For: The realisation that Howard has
been having an affair means that the identity of the killer can only be one
person…
Result: Part whodunnit, part Nightmare in Suburbia and part
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, this is an episode that wears its
influences with pride and forges ahead confidently to become one of the
stronger standalone tales of season seven. That doesn’t necessarily equate to
it being a classic since the standard is quite inconsistent this year but I
will say that Amann’s script knows precisely what it is doing and Cliff Bole
adds some real scares to the piece with his judiciously cut fright moments.
Chimera is the serious version of last seasons Arcadia; either less
entertaining or more realistic depending on which angle you are coming from.
Characterisation is tops and far more convincing than it was in Arcadia but
Chimera lacks the gorgeous Mulder/Scully chemistry that was rampant in the
former episode. I rather like the idea of Mulder helping out one family and
horrors that are besetting their home, it has a much more intimate atmosphere
but by it’s very nature is going to be less ambitious and heavyweight than
usual. Michelle Joyner gives a lovely performance as Ellen and shares a gentle,
relaxed chemistry with David Duchovny, which is subtly different from his usual
interaction with Gillian Anderson and quite refreshing. I enjoyed Chimera a
great deal but it was a little too ordinary in places to stand out as something
really special. The X-Files always has one foot planted in reality, but Chimera
shows what it would be like if it tentatively put the other foot in too. This
is every bit as traditional as Theef but is put together with a great deal more
care and class: 7/10
all things written and directed by Gillian Anderson
What’s it about: Is Scully about to leave Mulder for the
love of her life?
Trust No-One: To be fair to Scully her criticism of Mulder’s
latest wild goose chase makes a lot of good sense. How is seeking out the
latest crop circles to do the rounds even remotely FBI related and what does he
hope to prove by seeking out those who created them? The implication at the
climax seems to be that Mulder and Scully spent the night together in whatever
capacity that you care to read into it. Their discussion about all roads leading
to this point seem to indicate that they have made their emotional choices and
are happy with the idea of a union. If it weren’t for this moment then next
season’s Per Manum might have made far less sense but actually its events slot
in rather neatly after this tale and the conclusions that the two characters
draw about their relationship.
Brains’n’Beauty: The whole purpose of All Things is to show
Scully at a crossroads in her life, wondering whether she should try and settle
down and find a normal one or continue to pursue Mulder (both in her career and
in her love life). It’s a decent enough starting point but it comes about three
seasons too late. At this stage in the game Scully is far too engaged with
Mulder both professionally and romantically and has been for quite some time.
It is jarring to have sequences such as those that concluded How the Ghosts
Stole Christmas and The Unnatural and then follow them up a year later with
this kind of indecision. The two don’t marry up. However had this come at the
tail end of season four when Scully was still suffering from cancer and had a
very good cause to look back at her previous choices and question where she was
going, it would have made perfect sense. Coming at the end of season seven it
feels oddly out of place. In her own penned script Anderson can’t even be
bothered to go through the whole she-bang of Scully pooh-poohing Mulder’s
latest whacky investigation and instead has her showing open contempt for their
work by preparing and eating her lunch whilst he takes her through the latest
slide show. How rude, I hope he reminds her of this moment the next time they
are re-assigned and she starts pining after the chance to work with him on The
X-Files again. She’s not interested in tracking down some sneaky farmers that
aced geometry in High School when she has more important things to do with her
weekend like have a bath. Scully has never been the reckless sort so I find it
hard to imagine her younger self being the sort of student to fall for an
intoxicating married professor of medicine. She was probably too square for
that. Scully learns that when his marriage broke up, Daniel moved to Washington
to be closer to her. When it came to Scully discovering the Buddhist temple and
rocking herself in beams of light as she undergoes a spiritual experience I
have to admit that I had lost the plot slightly. I thought Scully was a devout
Christian? Faces and images from the past seven season flash before her eyes as
she undergoes an intense flashback through her life. She’s not the same person
that she was who had an affair with Daniel all those years ago and she can’t
pick up where she left off. She considers what she would have missed had she
spent her entire life with Daniel.
The Bad: I’m very wary of slow motion sequences in
television. I usually feel as though they have to justify their use by
highlighting a particular twist or reaction or nuance that deserves being shown
at an unhurried pace. Anderson liberally sprinkles this episode with slow
motion sequences that prove to be distracting rather than necessary. In Daniel,
Anderson is asking us to care about man who is an extremely significant part of
Scully’s past that we have never heard of in the previous seven seasons. It
doesn’t wash that somebody who was this important in her formative years would
remain anonymous for so long and turning up this late in the day feels like a
last ditch attempt to drag some romantic value from Scully, long after she has
handed her heart to Mulder. Even the X-File angle of the episode is a little
too tepid for my tastes. There is no reason why Buddhist philosophy cannot be
married to science fiction effectively. Doctor Who managed to explore its
ideals and profundity whilst still providing a rip roaring tale that involved twenty
minute long chases, giant spiders and the death of the shows main star.
Marrying such a gentle supernatural angle to a bland soap opera style of drama
means that there is such a light atmosphere to this piece, both emotionally and
intellectually, that a gentle breeze would carry it away. It’s not an insulting
piece like First Person Shooter or Fight Club but it has about as much academic
weight. Maggie Wasterston is an irritating character, not because she is wrong
in her condemnation of Scully but also because she is written far too
single-mindedly and played in a very one-note fashion. Whilst I always think
that the best person for the job should be put forward, rather than a place
being deliberately found for individuals it does strike me as odd that this is
the first time in nearly seven entire seasons that this show has been directed
by a woman. It shocks me that the thought hadn’t occurred to me before.
Pre Titles Sequence: Given the opportunity to write her own
script Gillian Anderson has the chance to take the show in any direction she
wants for 45 minutes. Does she use it as an opportunity to study the intimate
details of her character as William B. Davis did with the Smoking Man in En
Ami? Or push the show in a wild direction as David Duchovny would shortly do in
Hollywood AD? Nope, Anderson instead chooses to ape Chris Carter’s penchant for
depressing and self-deprecating purple prose. The opening narration tells you
everything you need to know about All Things and it is mostly telling you to keep
away. This is going to be an episode that delves into the love life of Agent
Scully and question whether she should finally end up with Mulder or not…a
pairing that has all but been consummated anyway but that Carter seems
unwilling to go through (until Duchovny exits anyway).
Moment to Watch Out For: Parts of all things play out like a
particularly embarrassing pop video advertising a love song. Scully walks in
slow motion through a busy street to ostentatious music suggesting that something
really important is happening.
Scully undergoes a montage of scenes where she walks through her flat
(in slow motion, naturally) and up to Daniel’s bed in the hospital. The net
result is something a little humiliating rather than something reflective.
Result: The X-Files has never been about Scully and her love
life and every time it has touched on the subject the show has been on pretty
shaky ground. She was initially given a boyfriend in the pilot who was
summarily deleted because Carter thought that it would be fresher dynamic
without a distracting third wheel, The Jersey Devil revealed how awkward she is
when dating and Never Again exposed how uncomfortable it was for her to go wild
and have a one night stand. Only En Ami really worked because Scully was an unwilling
recipient of the Smoking Man’s charms. Unfortunately all things pushes the
domestic angle of the last two seasons too far and winds up looking more like a
bland daytime soap opera than a riveting installment of a science fiction
anthology series. Whilst it’s nice to see that the show can pretty much tip its
hand to any genre…that doesn’t necessarily mean that it should. When it
comes to older ex-tutors that Scully had an affair with in medical it is
details I could have happily have never been privy to. She was the young, eager
medical student, he was the dangerous, maverick teacher…it plays out like a
Mills & Boon novel with about as much of the depth, despite pretension to
the contrary. Unlike David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson is not a natural director
and she is asking the cameraman to perform all manner of distracting and
unnatural movements to sell her story. I’m not sure if Anderson intended all things
as a one-off or whether she genuinely felt that the show needed to be taken
more in this direction but for all its earnestness, this doesn’t stick out as a
particularly memorable episode in exactly the same way that no individual
episodes of a daytime soap stand out as being especially memorable. It’s not
unpleasant to watch but if this is your favourite episode of The X-Files then
you are watching the wrong show. Anderson acts this beautifully but if all things
proves anything then it is that performing is her vocation, not writing or
directing. Minus one extra point for the capital-less title that is trying to
push the levels of self-importance even further: 4/10
Brand X written by Steven Medea & Greg Walker and
directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: A dangerous new brand of cigarettes is on
the market…
Trust No-One: The funniest thing to happen in Brand X is
Mulder’s potential new addiction to smoking which afflicts him because he
allowed Daryl Weaver to smoke in his presence. That’ll teach him for being
polite. This could have run for his little remaining time as a central
character on the show, Mulder lighting up in the back of scenes to get his fix
whilst Scully gets on with interrogating people. I jest of course, but what
made me chuckle was how seriously this was all dealt with and how because of
that it made me laugh all the more. For once Mulder’s life is in danger from
something as mundane as a tobacco beetle…imagine if that was what finally
finished him off? Mulder has the taste of a cigarette lingering now and whilst
he throws the pack of Morleys in the bin publicly, as soon as he is left on his
own he stares longingly down at the packet…
Assistant Director: A very different kind of Skinner-centric
episode than in the past. Before when the writers have wanted to focus on the
character they have opted for atypical examples of the show, one dealing with
Skinner as a potential murderer, one showing him in the pocket of Alex Krychek
to obtain the cure for Scully’s cancer and one where he is seen to be dying and
the agents have to work overtime to try and save his life. However this is the
first occasion that he has been handed a traditional X-File of his own to solve
with only peripheral involvement from Mulder and Scully. It makes you wonder if
they are test driving the idea before his increased role in the series in
season eight, seeing how he fares taking Mulder’s place for a short time. He’s
been around long enough for this not to feel out of place and Mitch Pileggi is
such a natural, charismatic presence he is putting more effort into this
episode than Duchovny is in half of the current season.
Ugh: If you aren’t a bug person then this might not be the
episode for you. Prepare yourself for scenes of half devoured corpses with
nasty little tobacco beetles crawling about all over. The very thought of
inhaling something that hatches inside of you and eats its way out is enough to
poison the digestive juices of most. I personally think that the writer doesn’t
go far enough with the implications of smoking but the deaths that are seen are
certainly fairly graphic. The scene where Brimley vomits up a load of CGI bugs
is so grim it might make you bring up a little bile yourself.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘It’s all just part of the scientific
process…’
The Good: Let me tell you a little story about a woman so
stubborn that she would rather ruin her own health than quit an addiction that
she knows I bad for her for the simple reason that the government is telling
her to do it. My mom is a special case indeed and as much as I love her to
pieces she has been chain smoking since she was sixteen and despite the fact
that everybody else in the family has managed to quit (I’m the only member of
my family who never started), the more government warnings appear on packs and
they spread the word about lung cancer and how the habit kills, the more she
digs her heels in and refuses to be told what to do. It costs a fortune, it
makes her house reek and it is damaging her health. I can’t tell you how much
this frustrates me. Hurrah then for The X-Files who decided to take on the
inclination and turn it into something so obscene that it might make even the
staunchest addict think twice about lighting up. Unfortunately for me although
my mother was a massive fan of this show in its early years (yep, that old
chestnut), she gave up around series
six and never got to watch this warning against the dangers of smokers.
Needless to say going into Brand X, I already heartily approved of the premise.
I like that the cigarette company are so powerful that they think they can
arrogantly ignore the presence of the FBI. Darryl Weaver is such a vile
character, it is hard to consider him as any kind of victim of circumstance. We
visit his property where he is sitting in a barely furnished, filthy room
choking down cigarettes like they are going out of fashion. It isn’t any kind of
life, it is barely what I would call existing. Tobin Bell never shies away from
the uncharismatic nature of this man, and the way he underplays the villain is
commendable. He’s more frightening that way. All he wants is money and smokes
and once he realises that he is onto a winner with the tobacco company he is
perfectly happy to expose their secret and kill to get them. He’s a small man
that thinks he is onto something big and that is a dangerous combination.
Weaver is the real star of Brand X, a genuinely chilling ‘little person’ who
has suddenly come into the possession of a frightening gift.
Pre Titles Sequence: It’s one of those tense moments in The
X-Files where you are left screaming at the TV. This time it was when Skinner
approaches a body with is turned away from him and pulls it around so we can
see the full horror of what has happened. I was yelling ‘don’t turn it
over!’ but it was too late and the half eaten face was exposed to poison
stomachs up and down the country. There’s lovely. The irony of trying to
genetically engineer the tobacco to make it hardier but instead turning it
deadly, allowing the eggs of the tobacco beetle to exist within the substance
and be inhaled into the body, is so deliciously ironic. Trying to make more
money out peoples misery but ultimately murdering your client base and facing a
potential lawsuit that could cost the company billions.
Moment to Watch Out For: Skinner gets to kick start this
investigation, he’s there for all the important digging and he’s the one that
confronts the bad guy during the climax. He’s superb and you can see why he was
given a much larger role in episodes such as Within/Without and Via Negativa.
Result: ‘I’ve got all the coffin nails I can suck down…’
I like Brand X a lot but it is another example of how The X-Files isn’t quite
firing on all cylinders in it’s seventh season. It is a competently told story
with a great premise but it never feels as though it pushes the horror far
enough. There is far too much focus on the politics of the situation and not
enough focus on the physical ramifications of a tobacco on the market that when
inhaled will literally eat you from the inside out. Where were the scenes of
smokers on the street falling to their deaths en masse to really driving the point
home? Perhaps a town that was tested with the drug that is left a pestilential
graveyard of half eaten bodies? How very like The X-Files to take on something
as massive as smoking but to not want to offend anybody. However the premise is
pure gold dust and the characterisation of Skinner and the antagonist of the
week (played with creepy conviction by Saw’s Tobin Bell) is superb and
marks out newcomer Steven Medea as one to watch. His contributions to
subsequent seasons would be some of the strongest standalones of their
respective years (Redrum, 4-D, Audrey Pauley). A little more humour wouldn’t
have gone amiss either, this is another extremely po-faced season seven episode
in a show that is starting to feel like it has lost the fun. It’s a story without
any great surprises because everything is spelt out early on but it has a nice,
grisly atmosphere and for once Mulder’s life is in danger and it isn’t any of
the mythology elements that are responsible. Solid, not standout: 7/10
Hollywood AD written and directed by David Duchovny
What’s it about: Mulder and Scully become the inspiration
for a movie…
Trust No-One: ‘You’ve seen this movie 42 times? Doesn’t
that make you sad? It makes me sad..’ Shandling likes the way that Mulder
and Scully work – no warrants, no permission and no research, like studio
executives with guns blundering in. Or at least that might be how they appear
from an outside observer. Hollywood AD shows how badly people can get it wrong
when observing this couple and their work for just a few weeks. Basically
Duchovny is taking the mickey out of the non-fan and their potential perception
of this show, the godawful movie being the representation of what they think
The X-Files is week in, week out, a camp, mock scary b movie with little substance
to speak of. Had this come a couple of years back it would have had even more
of an impact but coming after the wave of comic gems in seasons six and seven
you could make an argument that the show really is this Hollywood these
days (The Rain King, The Amazing Maleeni). Mulder’s method of watching movies
that are so profoundly bad in such a childlike way that they free up the smart
side of his brain to make brilliant deductive leaps is genius. That is also why
I watch creaky old SF and B Movies until the cows come home. Oh yes it is. How
about that moment where Shandling is indirectly asking Mulder about his
sexuality and he declares ‘to the left…most of the time.’ Mulder has no
interest in Tea Leoni but seems intrigued by the interest of Shandling.
Brains’n’Beauty: Scully has been asked to rationalise some
pretty funky things in the past, sometimes to the point of obstinacy, but you
have to give her credit for trying to explain and bunch of bones grooving away
in a crypt. Some of that gorgeous season six Mulder/Scully chemistry leaks into
this episode thanks to the warm material that Duchovny writes for them both.
It’s there when Scully tells Mulder the story of the criminal activities of
Sister Spooky (‘That is a very cool story coming from you, Scully’),
when they bitch and indulge in a bubble bath (not together I might add) and
when after the movie when Mulder ponders their reputation and Scully confirms
that it was in the gutter anyway. I think this episode comes as close to see
Duchovny and Anderson on screen rather than Mulder and Scully and given their
partnership is about to come to an end I can think of no better time to indulge
in that sort of celebration of their work. Either Scully has been chomping down
on mind altering drugs or her hallucinations of Hoffman waking from the dead
and speaking from the lips of Jesus are symptomatic of the stress of a heavy
workload.
Assistant Director: ‘Sir, have I pissed you off in a way
that is more than normal?’ It’s not implausible that Skinner would have
gone to school with somebody who became a movie executive but I question
whether he would give them all access to Mulder and Scully’s work. Perhaps Gary
has been badgering him for ages and after the X-Cops debacle, transmitting an
X-Files case all over national television, he finally relented. Maybe he
figured it couldn’t get any more embarrassing than that.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘He’s like a Jehovah Witness meets
Harrison’s Ford’s Witness.’
‘One more pun and I’ll pull out my gun.’
‘Crazy people can be very persuasive’ ‘Well yes I know
that…’
‘Hey Scully, Skin-Man is calling me from a bubble bath!’
‘That’s still me Mulder…’
‘Hoffman and O’Fallon were these flawed, beautiful people
and now they’ll just be remembered as jokes because of this movie.’
‘Hopefully the movie will tank.’
The Good: Wayne Fenderman manages to redefine the term
irritation but since that seems to be the point of the character I can’t really
object too much. I say character, this turns out to be a real person pretending
to be making a movie and that horrifies me more than anything. A genuine star,
scripted and made to sound even more Hollywood than he probably already is.
Terrifying. His dialogue is so packed with pop culture references that it would
take me far too long to list them all but needless to say Duchovny is having a
go at topping the amount you can cram into one episode – previously held by
Joss Whedon. The idea of meeting one of candidates of the first American Pope
is exciting and it needs a strong character actor to fill that role and I can
think of none finer than Haris Yulin. In a story that is packed full of sitcom
performances, Yulin gives a respectful, understated turn as the disgraced
Cardinal. The awkward moment when everybody checks their phone and it turns out
O’Fallon has one too is blissful (mind you didn’t we already do the mobile
ringing from a buried corpse in Millennium?). Arresting O’Fallon for the murder
of Hoffman as he walks into the church might be the most embarrassing moment of
both Mulder and Scully’s careers (‘Best case scenario…you get to keep your
jobs’). Some of the in-jokes work a treat; I especially enjoyed Duchovny’s
coy performance in front of his real life girlfriend of the time Tea Leoni and
Scully’s attempts to show her how to run in heels, literally dashing back and
forth in the foreground of the scene.
The Bad: At the heart of this tale is a very poignant story
of a Cardinal that has been duped into thinking his faith has been rewarded by
the existence of genuine biblical artefacts. Whilst Yulin plays the part
wonderfully, it is not given enough exposure because Duchovny is desperate to
get to Hollywood and have some fun and so a lot of the aching sadness that made
The Unnatural so successful is missing. You’ve got all the fun of doing
something different without the heartbreaking sentiment to make it a nourishing
watch. All style and no substance? Not really, because there is plenty of
intelligent detail and discussion. Instead let’s call this all glitz and no
heart. The scene where Micha Hoffman wakes up on the autopsy table and asks for
his heart back fell flat for me and not just because the make up job is
appalling but because I have seen so many weird and wonderful things on this
show by this point that this kind of shock that would work on other, straighter
shows fails to make an impact at all. Man wakes up from the dead and has a
stretch? Seen it all before. What a shame that the O’Fallon/Hoffman that made
up so much of the first two thirds of this episode should be concluded off
screen (the murder/suicide would have made for an astonishing climax) in favour
of the shallowness of the Hollywood setting. Imagine if at the last stretch
Duchovny had abandoned the glamour and really gone for the jugular?
Pre Titles Sequence: Whilst hugely enjoyable to watch as a
one off, the X-File movie as portrayed as a blockbuster shows precisely how
awful the cinematic release could have been if some Hollywood exec had
gotten hold of the show and done their own thing with it. Plots involving the
Lazarus bowl where the Cigarette Smoking Man is an insane Cardinal, hunting
down Mulder in a foggy graveyard with sniper zombies and Scully being used in
the role of the traditional victim. It’s just dreadful but the point is within
this episode it is supposed to be, justifying Mulder and Scully’s
appalled reaction at the screening. Slow motion action, godawful dialogue (‘I’d
rather serve in heaven than rule in hell’), this is The X-Files without a
decent creative hand at the rudder. Chris Carter is in the audience, Skinner is
loving every second of it, Tea Leoni is the spitting image of Gillian Anderson
in the right light and Mulder and Scully’s reactions pretty much sum it up
perfectly. A gleeful opening.
Moment to Watch Out For: I think I can pinpoint the moment
when most fans would have been reaching for their remotes and declaring this
the ‘worst episode ever.’ Once a show that could chill you to the bone,
now it is one that has them dancing around a crypt in a quirky CGI sequence
complete with comedy music and a sitcom reaction from the guest artist of the
week. If there was ever a point where you could say this show went Hollywood
with it’s success, this is it. I object to the notion of it, but the scene still
made me laugh. The final set piece of the dancing zombies is so far from The
X-Files mission statement that it should be embraced. We’re never tipping over
the edge more than this.
Fashion Statement: Here’s your chance to lust over Mulder,
Scully and Skinner in a three way bubble bath. Make of that what you will.
Orchestra: I’m not sure I have ever had to say this before
but there are moments in this episode where the score felt a little off. Snow’s
music can border on the repetitive at times (and is it any surprise given how
many episodes he has scored?) but it usually feels tonally right for whatever
scene he is scoring. However I don’t think he went Hollywood enough in this
episode, for example the first shot of the studio lot is accompanied by a
slight tickling of glitz when the full blown trumpet horn of a musical number
was needed to drive him the moment.
Result: It is a shame that David Duchovny didn’t continue to
contribute towards the show in the shape of a writer or director in season
eight because these skills equal and in some cases surpass his talents as an
actor. I don’t mind a little taste of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and
paired with the inestimable talents of the actor ensured that this is an
intelligently written and put together installment. However if you wanted to
point at this episode and declare that it is the moment where The X-Files
jumped the shark or reached the point where it had sold out completely and
become something so different from its original conception that you could never
watch an episode again…well I wouldn’t blame you if this was the episode you
chose. This is about as far as you can take the show away from it’s
horror roots as you can get, it is blatantly bastardised and distorted out of
all recognition. However it is also a great deal of fun and I would rather go
with it the tide of change than fight it. Hollywood AD is shot through with a
wonderful sense of humour and more great lines than you can shake a stick it
and whilst certain scenes verge on parody, they are still amusing to watch. The
problem I have is that the show cannot go any further than this before it
becomes something that it is not and so in order for it to survive in it’s
final two years it needs to pull back to something recognisable again. The
lighter episodes worked a treat in season six but have become a little strained
in season seven (First Person Shooter and Fight Club are so wide of the mark it
is baffling how they ever got made) and I am pleased that the stream of jet
black horror is about to be injected back in the show as it enters a new phase.
Hollywood AD shows to what extreme this fluffiness can go to if pushed and
still work but I am pleased to say it never goes any further. If you are one of
those cynics who erroneously state that Duchovny and Anderson share no chemistry
and inject little charisma into the series then you could do with sticking this
episode on and seeing how wrong you are. Another example of why seven has taken
a step down from six, Hollywood AD is terrifically pleasurable but not a patch
on Duchovny’s previous writing/directing effort, The Unnatural. This is the
madness that ensues when a show believes it can do anything: 8/10
Fight Club written by Chris Carter and directed by Paul
Shapiro
What’s it about: You tell me…
Trust No-One: Mulder and Scully are clearly a pair of
seasoned agents to not recognise that the agents in hospital are the spitting
image of them and that they have worked together for exactly the same amount of
time. In an case involving twins. Carter tries to be cute with his dialogue
about the doubles not being involved but the whole situation is so retarded
that any attempts to miss the obvious and slip in sly gags is like shoving the
audiences face into a barrel full of sick. There were rumours that Duchovny and
Anderson couldn’t stand the sight of each other by this point and so the climax
where they kick the crap out of each other with such ferociousness that they
require major treatment might stand as a symbol of their true feelings. It’s a
spiteful move on Carter’s part, contributing to the episodes malicious tone.
Dreadful Dialogue: ‘I got sucked into a storm drain’ – a
line so offbeat that it requires some kind of explanation but Carter expects
Scully to just go with it. Mulder really spent the better part of a day climbing
through the sewers?
‘What does it all mean?’ – note to Carter, don’t pose the
question if you are going to give such an inconclusive answer.
Ugh: The whole episode.
The Bad: To put it simply, Kathy Griffin is not an actress.
She’s an entertainer. As such she is entirely unsuited to appearing on a show
like The X-Files because she exclaims every line as though the audience is just
out of reach and reacting with guffaws at her every utterance. She has no
screen presence and yet paradoxically has
too much (she’s too loud, too childish, too everything…). The gag (and I
use the term as loosely as possible) of a faux Mulder and Scully turning
up to investigate the violence that has occurred but being shot as though it
really is them doesn’t work because: 1) Steve Kiziak doesn’t quite look like
David Duchovny from behind and 2) their voices are so appallingly dubbed over
the action. I don’t understand the logic of this sequence – why would the
identical twins of Mulder and Scully sound like our Mulder and Scully
and how many absurd co-incidences would have to fall into play to have the
doubles find each other and end up working together? That you have to
experience the fight sequence again but this time with the false Mulder and
Scully at each others throat is a further indignity, especially when this is
executed in even more of a stilted fashion. This is always where I manage to
reach in every previous viewing of this episode. Going forwards, it is all new
material and I have never done that with any other episode of any other show.
There is zero chemistry between Cobb and Griffin which might have made the
unlikely pairing of Betty and Burt work. It’s just weird. It is never actually
explained how the convergence of two twins causes such terrible calamities, we
are just supposed to accept it. By the conclusion we are watching a boxing
match that has spiralled out of all control, where the audience is so hyped on
bloodlust that the propinquity of the redheads induces a violent frenzy. The
direction is insisting this is funny by the nature of the sitcom performances
and jazzy music and yet the outbreak of violence is disgusting…it is so tonally
defective I had to wonder if the writer and director had ever met. It’s so
atypical from anything The X-Files or television itself has ever done
before…and there is a good reason for that. Duchovny probably thought he was
onto a good thing getting out at this point.
Pre Titles Sequence: Comic Book Guy Moment: ‘Worst
Pre-Title Sequence Evah…’ Surely Carter could have concocted a more
imaginative scenario than this to expose the nature of the twins. Religious
indoctrination turned Reservoir Dogs? It’s not only childish and
offensive, it is irritatingly executed (not something I often accuse this show
of) with a horrendously cheap and nasty score (read the previous brackets
again). When it comes to the two missionaries kicking the shit out of each
other until they are covered in blood, I was appalled. It leaves an unpleasant
taste in your mouth and that is not the way to kick start an episode of The
X-Files.
Moment to Watch Out For: Watch the sequence where Scully has
to try and remonstrate with Angry Bob and see the point where Anderson gives up
trying to act and just wings her performance. This material hasn’t earned the
right for her to put any effort into it. She’s about two second away from
cracking up at the mess of hysterics this episode has devolved into.
Result: And so we reach the worst episode of The X-Files,
just about edging out First Person Shooter as the most abominable piece of
trash this show ever vomited up. It is a piece so far off the mark that you
have to wonder how Chris Carter could get it so badly wrong when he has shown
of late (How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, Milagro, Closure) that his creative juices
are still flowing strongly. Fight Club is trying so hard to be quirky it is
literally ramming the tasteless notion down your throat in a sarcastic and
violent way. You not only have to watch tedious, badly executed sequences…you
have to watch them twice! Double the pain, none of the enjoyment. Either this
is the work of sheer exhaustion or the result of somebody complacent in the
knowledge that this show is about to come to an end (as Carter thought at the
time) and any old garbage can be tossed at the audience to see them through to
the finale. Duchovny and Anderson try so hard to capture the magic that
happened between them in season six in their scenes but the material is so weak
they are fighting a loses battle. The only thing more painful than watching
their endeavours is the double performance by Kathy Griffin; so bad that I had
all but blocked it from my mind. Why does the proximity of twins cause such
devastation? Why the earthquakes? The violence? Why does Mulder fall down a
manhole and spend half a day trying to get out the sewers? The most disturbing
thing is I’m not even that bothered that none of this is adequately explained.
It doesn’t deserve an explanation. It’s not even a case of the show not
trying to be scary anymore, it isn’t even trying to be clever now. The sad
thing is that Fight Club is trying so hard to be funny it misses the point
entirely and winds up being tasteless. If you want to see Carter attempting to
try his hand at something quirky and succeed then go watch season nine’s Improbable.
All I wanted during this experience was for my twin to turn up and try and kill
me…: 0/10
Je Souhaite written and directed by Vince Gilligan
What’s it about: You’ve got three wishes…
Trust No-One: ‘He unrolled me…’ Where Scully is giddy
with excitement at the potential advancements to science with her invisible
man, Mulder is less keen to jump the gun. He’s going on about a man with a
colossal raging boner instead (‘Schwing!’). Poor Mulder thinks he is
doing the whole world a favour by wishing for peace on Earth but he forgets who
he is dealing with. Jenn has a devious side and even when whisking the entire
population of the Earth back into existence ensures that Mulder is humiliated
as he is suddenly ranting in the heavily populated office of Walter Skinner. As
he is about to be stolen away from the series, Mulder and Scully share one last
evening together with popcorn and a movie. If watching the last seven years was
just to reach this gorgeous, simple moment it was worth it.
Brains’n’Beauty: ‘It’s gonna change the boundaries of
science!’ Mulder and Scully can pretty much talk entirely in body language
these days; her walking into the office and gesturing to their visitor, him
warning her that it is not going to be a pretty sight…and yet she still yelps
at the sight of Anson’s sliced open mouth. Whilst it perfectly suits the tone
of this episode, the way that Mulder and Scully are having a blast going
through the usual motions of him presenting her with an unexplainable mystery
and her throwing potential solutions at him goes to show why the show does need
a shake up. It’s lost its dramatic value now and they pretty much understand
the formula that they have to go through each week and are enjoying it. That is
fun here but had the final two seasons featured this level of unwinding
attitude the show would have died a lingering death. Instead the drama is about
to be injected back into the show in a big way. It is funny that both Vince
Gilligan written and directed episodes (this and Sunshine Days) involve Scully
obtaining proof of the supernatural and getting excited at the thought of
showing other people what she has discovered only to have the evidence snatched
away from her. Anderson plays the moment where Scully brushes the corpse into
existence hilariously, at first confused, then shocked and finally giddy with
excitement as she powders Anson into visibility. I always thought it was
Duchovny who came across as being the most bored at this stage of the game but
actually it is Anderson who is giving the least amount of effort and playing
the part as pretty much herself. Fortunately for her that means Scully is
looser than ever and great fun to be around where Duchovny is still trying to
inject Mulder with a certain dour gravitas. This version of Scully is much more
fun to be around but it is a complete divergence from the character we spent
the first five years on this show with. She will be back next year with a
vengeance so let’s enjoy the silliness while we can. The moment when she
excitedly asks a group of her peers to the autopsy lab to view the invisible
body when we know that he has been willed back to life and moved on might just
make you laugh and cry and the same time. Bless her, finally validated and she
has no proof and is made to look the fool in the process. Now she knows how
Mulder feels. Mulder admits that he never made the world a happier place and
Scully leaps in to tell him that she is much happier for knowing him. If that
isn’t an argument for their relationship then I don’t know what is.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘They had to make me a whole new mouth!’
‘Your wish is breathtaking in its unoriginality.’
‘You missed a spot here. I can see straight through to his
ass.’
‘Unsurprisingly we don’t have any evidence to support any of
this…’
‘You don’t remember disappearing off the face of the Earth
for about an hour this morning?’
‘You examined an invisible body, didn’t you?’ ‘I thought I
did’ ‘Ohhhhhh!’ – Mulder speaks for the entire audience.
The Good: What a glorious visual the sailing ship in the
middle of the trailer park is. Affluence and poverty existing side by side. I
remember when I first watched this episode with friends and it led to a
conversation where we started naming what we would desire for if we were
granted three wishes. Gilligan manages to subvert the usual clichés by writing
in a sly genie who is so bored with the whole wish fulfilment gig that she
interprets her clients wishes as she pleases, usually giving them exactly what
they have asked for but not where or how those desires are usually placed.
Hence the boat that is beached in the middle of a trailer park. As my friends
and I were talking pretty much every wish we mentioned could be misinterpreted
in some way or another. Have a go…it’s really quite hard to be specific when it
comes to wishes. Kevin Weismann was always my favourite performer on JJ Abrams’
Alias, the gorgeously normal technical support guy who tried to juggle a
normal family life and his periphery role in the CIA. He’s a completely
different character here but just as delightful. Now he’s playing a down and
out who is so bad at everything he can’t even get three wishes right. Jenn
isn’t without redeeming features, she tries to point out to Anson that he could
restore his brothers ability to walk but she isn’t allowed to say that directly
and he is too stupid to understand her pointers. You just know that something
is going to go hideously wrong once Anson has turned invisible but even I
didn’t think the Gilligan would push the black humour so far as to have him
knocked down by a truck that cannot see him. That is probably the best
‘invisible person affecting objects’ sequence I have ever seen. You would think
that it wouldn’t be a recurring theme in television but you’d be surprised
(especially if you are a fan of low budget science fiction – invisible aliens
are extremely popular). The POV shot of Anson turning towards the truck that is
screaming towards him and the bike that flies over his invisible body at the
side of the road are both very funny moments (in the darkest of ways). How
funny is the sight of Jenn sighing disdainfully behind President Nixon…and all
the implications that come with that? Leslie is even more retarded than his
brother, figuring that he could wish for a solid gold wheelchair rather than
the use of his legs back. The tragic inevitability that the moment it finally
dawns upon him is when he finally slips off this mortal coil in a particularly
explosive way is pure irony being a bitch. The fact that Jenn twists wishes
because they aren’t more specific because that is the mistake that she made all
those years ago is a nice touch. Ultimately she isn’t a villain but rather a
tragic figure that has become caught in the mechanics of her own desires. All
she wants is to live her life moment by moment and watch the world go by with a
cup of coffee in her hand. That’s a lovely sentiment, it’s something that a lot
of us should probably do but never seem to find the time to savour the smell of
roasted beans (if coffee isn’t your poison then adapt to whatever you do like
to drink) and appreciate the world we live in because we are so busy. The last
scene in the coffee shop is just gorgeous.
Pre Titles Sequence: From the very beginning of Je Souhaite
you realise that it is going to be another light-hearted piece. It’s a genie
locked away in rug locked away in a storage locker for goodness sakes! It
doesn’t inform you directly that this is going to be a genie in a bottle
episode but all the pointers are there – Anson’s big mouth being sealed up
suddenly after giving the other Anson and earache is a massive clue. It’s
perhaps a little too quiet an introduction even for a comedy X-File but it is
such a step up from last week that I’ll let it go.
Moment to Watch Out For: ‘Oh crap…’ The deliberately
small scale nature of the episode (wish making in a very personal experience
after all) lead me to believe that this was going to be the cheapie of the
season but as soon as Mulder made his wish one of the most expensive set pieces
of the year emerged. As soon as Mulder wished for peace on Earth and the sound
died away both he and I realised what a dreadful mistake he had made. He might
have made an altruistic wish that benefited all of humanity but that is only
worth it if humanity is there to enjoy it. Cue an impressive scene of Mulder
rushing out onto what should be a busy Washington street and finding it
completely devoid of life.
Fashion Statement: Jenn is the chicest genie I’ve ever seen,
right down to her specified eyewear.
Result: ‘It’s like giving a chimpanzee a revolver…’
This is Vince Gilligan in a particularly frivolous mood and it works for all
the reasons that Fight Club didn’t; it is heart-warming, funny, clever and
sentimental. There’s only one episode that Gilligan would pen that is even
lighter and more gorgeous than this and that is the very last script he
contributed to the series. This is a genie in a lamp (or rather in a carpet)
tale and so you can imagine the fun that Gilligan has with the well worn
premise, and being the writer that he is he subverts expectations at every
turn. The conclusion that he seems to draw is that wish fulfilment is a pretty
scary business, especially given the series of cock ups with one mans wishes
leads him to commit suicide and one of Mulder’s causes the removal of humanity
from the face of the Earth. Paula Sorge gives a terrific performance as Jenn,
the bored genie who is tired of everybody’s tedious, self serving wishes and
wants somebody to surprise her. Just once. This is sitcom X-Files but being
played as straight as possible with Anderson in particular taken gleeful
delight in material that allows Scully to be the optimist to Mulder’s pessimist
for a change. The whole piece twists in the last third as Mulder is granted any
three wishes and then Gilligan really starts having fun. Je Souhaite is
a delightful little episode to lead us into the finale and is polished off with
a pair of touching scenes that left me feeling all cuddly inside. This is the
last classic X-File episode to feature just Mulder and Scully. Cherish it: 9/10
Requiem written by Chris Carter and directed by Kim Manners
What’s it about: Returning to the scene of Mulder and
Scully’s first X-File…
Trust No-One: ‘There’s so much more than this…’ After
everything that has been thrown at him over the past seven years it appears
that the thing that is going to bring Mulder down is…the FBI accountants. There
is a very telling moment when Mulder watches Scully playing with Teresa’s baby
and smiles. It might not mean anything important at this stage but it ties in
beautifully with the cliffhanger at the end of this episode and the question of
Scully’s baby’s parentage. In fact it would be revealed in Par Manum next
season that Mulder and Scully had already discussed the idea of him being a
sperm donor and if I’m honest there is every possibility that they could have
sealed the deal after the concluding scenes of Hollywood AD or Je Souhaite.
It’s gorgeously played by Duchovny and serves a very real purpose. Mulder
holding Scully in bed and telling her to get back to Washington and get on with
her life without is both heartbreaking and very sweet. The personal cost of his
crusade has been too much, there is no denying that, and he now wants to
protect the woman he loves the best way he can. Even if that means losing her.
It should be naff but Carter scripts this scene sensitivity and both actors are
determined to make this moment count. The way he touches and kisses her are the
actions of a man who has been in this position before, I rather think they
consummated their relationship off screen at some point during the season. The
way his abduction plays out is as if he wanted to go. Perhaps to save Scully,
perhaps for answers for his life’s work…
Brains’n’Beauty: Scully tries to explain that whilst their
track record might not be stellar, she and Mulder do open doors. It’s nice to
hear her defending the work she can so often be found criticising herself.
Scully turning up at Mulder’s room in the middle of the night is another cute
kiss to the past but more than that it sets up her pregnancy reveal at the end
of the episode. What should be a ridiculous soap opera moment of Scully
admitting she is pregnant salvages a depressing final scene with a ray of hope
for the future. It really works.
Smoking Man: So I guess the Smoking Man wasn’t lying to
Scully in En Ami when he informed her that he was dying and that he really did
destroy his potential cure. That’s some death wish. We re-visit him here on his
death bed; his hair whitening, a tracheotomy operation rendering his speech
grisly, an old man on his last legs making one last attempt to make his name.
He wants to rebuild the project with a new alien craft, for him, Marita and
Krychek to join forces and kick start a whole new power base in the vacuum left
behind by the Syndicate. After everything he has been through because of him,
Krychek wants to damn the soul of the Smoking Man and he is even willing to do
a deal with Mulder to make sure it happens. Tossing him down the stairs to his
death was probably no more than he deserved. He has outlived his usefulness at
this stage it is a good time for him to leave but William B. Davis is such good
value and the writers always find something interesting for him to do so I will
miss him anyway. It is such an undignified way to go, it feels perfect for this
moment in time.
Assistant Director: I wish we had seen more of Skinner in
season seven (was Mitch Pileggi juggling this and Stargate at the time?)
because the scene between him and Mulder shows that these two characters are
very relaxed around each other these days. He calls him Walter and apologises
if his actions have repercussions for the Assistant Director – back in the day
Mulder wouldn’t have given a shit whose careers his crusade trampled on. His scene
with Scully at the climax is probably the best moment the character has had to
date, a genuinely heartfelt moment of acceptance in the existence of extra
terrestrials. His chemistry with Scully is gorgeous too, offering much hope for
the future and his increased involvement.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘What it comes down to Agent Mulder is
that they don’t like you.’
Ugh: Teresa being dragged away from her screaming baby to
her death is pretty horrific. You don’t see anything but the very idea of a
bond being severed between mother and daughter permanently whist the baby is in
distress leaves a horrible taste in the mouth. The last thing Teresa would have
heard is her child screaming out for her.
The Good: Given that Carter thought this was the final
X-File to be transmitted (there may be potential movies but as far as the
production team were concerned this was the end of the road for the TV series)
it feels absolutely right that we should return to the scene of the very first
X-File all those years ago. Things have moved on so much since then that coming
back to Oregon where it all began brings with it that sense of anticipation
that the pilot had, when the show was fresh and new and could go anywhere and
do anything. Lost time, something wild going on in the woods, Billy Miles up to
his old tricks…it’s so deliriously nostalgic it makes me want to start the
whole process all over again. How bizarre to see Eddie Kaye Thomas in such a
small role before his career took off, but it is not unwelcome. Here’s a chance
to reboot the series’ mythology with a crash in Oregon that mimics the Roswell
landing, an alien spacecraft up for grabs. It just goes to show how far the
show has moved on since season one. In the pilot the alien involvement was all
hints and whispers, the series not established enough to go all the way and
confirm everything that Mulder believed. Now crashed alien ships are tenapenny
and the Syndicate’s conspiracy can be laughed at by FBI accountants. Would
Mulder’s painted cross still be visible from seven years ago? Who cares, it is
a lovely nod to the pilot. What a lovely little gift to have all the original
actors that played the parts of Detective Miles and son and Teresa Nemen from
the first episode. Think of all they have missed out on in the interim. It’s
nice to see that these characters had legs (no, not like that) because they
have all gone on to do something with their lives once Mulder and Scully moved
away. Billy found a career in law enforcement and Teresa got married and had
children. Those developments were nowhere near on the cards when we first met
them. The idea of the aliens taking their previous abductees away, cleaning up
their dirty work on Earth before (hopefully) moving on is both logical and
rather chilling when you think about what that means for Scully. It is a
brilliant red herring because we’re led to believe that it is Scully’s life
that is in danger but as soon as the final piece of the puzzle is put into
place – that the abductees have all displayed abnormal brain activity – then
the target is shifted to Mulder in a heartbeat. And it’s Mulder that’s sniffing
around at the crash site…
The Bad: Some money must have been spent on the effect but
Scully’s crazy dance in the forest looks a little comical.
Moment to Watch Out For: The last thing I ever expected was
for Skinner to move out of the way and be escorting Krychek and Marita to
Mulder’s office. It’s a genuine heart-in-mouth moment.
Fashion Statement: Let’s not beat around the bush, the
Marita and Krychek pairing is the hottest thing to have ever come out of this
show. Their extra curriculum activities might be enough to make a portion of
the male audience to stand to attention and the ladies to be itching to get
home to their honies. I certainly don’t
object to seeing Nick Lea in the shower either. Maybe I just have the raging
horn whilst watching this but Billy Miles is a cutie too.
Orchestra: Check out the music during Mulder’s abduction
sequence. That is exactly the sort of beautiful, unearthly, epic music I would
expect to play out had Snow gotten the chance to score a genuine alien invasion
of the Earth.
Mythology: To possess the alien craft is to possess the
answer to all things. It is nice to see that the ideas touted in The Sixth
Extinction about the alien involvement in the development of the Earth and
humanity being brought up again and tied into the central narrative. To be
honest they were too good to waste.
Foreboding: Mulder has been abducted, a move that has
massive ramifications for the series…
Result: ‘I’m not going to risk losing you…’ Rather
lovely, if feeling a little like ending the party with a whimper. Had this been
The X-Files series finale it would have been a little too quiet for its own
good, despite all the lovely kisses to the pilot to bring the show full circle.
Returning to Oregon is a smart move because it allows us to put into
perspective where the show began and how far it has come since then. The
attempt to built up a new mythology (something that season seven has vehemently
avoided until this point) feels a little pointless if this was going to be the
end and a little quiet if it was going to continue. All the ingredients are
there (an alien craft, abductions, the Smoking Man and Alex Krychek,
shapeshifters) but it just needs a little shake. What counts is the beating
heart that runs through the script that means that for once there is a personal
stake in events. I’ve always said that Carter’s best scripts are the ones where
he can marry big ideas with emotional content, so we are engaged on both
counts. He usually fails when one or the other is missing (usually the latter)
or occasionally when both are entirely absent (Fight Club). In this case the
ideas are old hat but the relationship drama that is playing out between Mulder
and Scully is almost entirely fresh and invigorating. It would appear they have
consummated their relationship and reached an emotional understanding but
coming back to Oregon makes Mulder realise everything he has put Scully through
and wants to try and set her free despite how much it would break his heart.
You would think he would have learnt not to wish for things like that
(especially after the previous episode) because fate has a cruel way of making
these things happen in the way you least suspect. Mulder’s abduction is almost
the opposite of drama, it feels inevitable given how the episode plays out.
Whilst it might lack drama here, it opens an exciting new avenue for the series
to explore in the next season. It was a great move, one that I felt should have
taken place a year ago. Requiem is an odd piece, one that is full of fantastic
material but doesn’t quite come together to have the impact of a classic
X-File. Still this is a much better finale for the series than the one we
eventually got. Bring on the delightful Agent Doggett: 8/10
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