X-Files S1E6: Don't go into the Shadows

Editors' Note: On the rewatch of The X-Files, Lorrie plays the part of Sestra Amateur and Paige serves as the resident "expert," aka Sestra Professional.

Sestra Amateur:

A Philadelphia man named Howard Graves is dead. His secretary, Lauren Kyte, is packing up his office. As she leaves, the boss' inspirational desk plate moves on its own. She steals it – I mean takes it as a memento – and leaves. Later that night, the woman is depositing her paycheck in an ATM when she gets attacked by two men. Two hours later, the men are found dead. Serves ‘em right.

Scully and Mulder are called to the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland by an unknown government agency to utilize their knowledge of extreme phenomena. They see the two dead men and learn the bodies are still warm after being dead for six hours. The men’s throats appear to have been crushed from the inside. Mulder claims he’s never seen an X-File like this before, but his pants were on fire when he said that – figuratively, not literally. The shadowy government agent sends Sculder on their way without giving any more case details. Mulder then admits the truth to Scully and reveals to her he obtained the dead men’s prints on his glasses. OK, that was pretty clever.
 

Lauren shows up for work and doesn’t look like she was in a life-or-death wrestling match with two guys. She wants to talk to Howard’s replacement Robert, who looks like Cigarette Smoking Man’s younger brother. But Robert’s secretary, who seems like the type who would be insulted if you called her a secretary instead of administrative assistant, gives Lauren a hard time. Something causes snippy secretary’s coffee to spill, which gives Lauren a chance to talk to the new boss. Lauren tells Robert she wants to quit, but he says he won’t let her leave and grabs her. Something then grabs him so Lauren can get away. Supernatural bodyguards are handy. 

Mulder identifies one of the men from the fingerprint he took and learns the dead bodies were found in Philadelphia, so the agents head there. (Hope they took plenty of Vitamin C, so they don’t catch the “Philadelphia Phunk.”) Mulder finds the ATM Lauren used and the video clearly shows her attack. It less clearly shows Supernatural Bodyguard in the background.  Or as Shaggy would say, “a g-g-g-g-ghost?!?!” Sculder go to Lauren’s house to talk to her. They show her the surveillance picture and she tells them part of the story. Sculder leave, but Supernatural Bodyguard takes control of their car and causes a crash. Prudent Scully assumes someone tampered with the car because they’re getting close to the truth. Mulder thinks it’s either Carrie or Poltergeist.

Scully learns Howard committed suicide and then Sculder follow Lauren to Howard’s grave. There, a creepy but genial gravedigger tells them Howard had a daughter who died 24 years earlier because of Howard’s neglect. Lucky for Sculder they conveniently stumbled across the most knowledgeable gravedigger ever. Mulder looks at a surveillance picture of Lauren and it looks like Howard is sitting beside her. Are they working a faked death case or ghost case? Supernatural Bodyguard -- Howard -- convinces Lauren he was murdered with some kind of bathtub reenactment. Scully confirms through leftover tissue that Howard really is dead. Lauren confronts Robert at work and he threatens her. And even though Lauren tells him that Howard told her the new honcho had her old boss killed, this guy doesn’t call her crazy. I would. 

Two people show up at Lauren’s home to kill her, but Supernatural Bodyguard dispatches them fairly easily. Sculder show up too late and take Lauren in for questioning, but she won’t talk, probably because she thinks no one will believe her. She's not familiar with Mulder obviously. When he queries whether Howard is watching over her, she won't stop talking. Scully takes a very un-Scully like approach by telling Lauren to help Howard with his unfinished business. Turns out Scully was just telling Lauren what she needed to hear. Sculder work with the shadowy agent from the beginning of the episode. Turns out he’s FBI too. They raid Lauren’s workplace looking for evidence against Robert. Lauren helps with the search; that’s really not a good idea. Defense attorneys would have a field day with that and could result in evidence being inadmissible. Lauren tries to stab Robert with a letter opener -- which would be another bad idea if Howard didn't help. Mulder witnesses everything, but Scully doesn’t, of course. Supernatural Bodyguard reveals a floppy disk of evidence behind the wallpaper in Robert’s office to cap the year-long investigation.

Case closed. So by episode 6,  we’ve addressed aliens, monsters of the week and ghosts. Only 201 more to go…    

Sestra Professional:

This episode seems strangely mundane, even with the presence of a pissed-off ghost. Even the title, "Shadows" is lame. This is not The X-Files wheelhouse. I remember a Chris Carter interview about the first season in which he talked about how the network brass wanted the intrepid agents to help those in trouble. I think they figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't the right formula for this show. The show never would have become what it did had it continued in this vein.

There are some interesting concepts, they just don't fit together too well. For example, Lauren's assaulted for quite a while at the ATM by "Mideast extremists" before Supernatural Bodyguard gets around to doing something about it. But heaven forbid snippy secretary not give her a quicker appointment with new boss. And what about the Sculder crash, Supernatural Beeyotch? They're trying to help you ... and Lauren. No need to get them trash compacted.

"I willfully participated in a campaign of misinformation:" Mulder has learned a lot in six episodes, since he's discovered the art of lying. I guess it won't be long until he's stealing inspirational desk plates too. On the other hand, his concept of solving cases is to make more pop culture references (making the quick jump from "how Carrie got even at the prom" to "they're heeeeere") than Sestra Am and I do.

It's borderline compelling that Howard's daughter died very young and Lauren would now be the same age, but that element of the story doesn't serve any purpose other than to offer an explanation about why Supernatural Bodyguard's hanging around. And it took him a few months to get around to showing her that he was killed of unnatural causes? Maybe he was like Sam Wheat in Ghost, and he couldn't figure out how to do it right away.  

Scully gets all revved up about solving a case that's tangible instead of chasing after shadows, and delivers a lot of important exposition on the serving of warrants for the sale of restricted manufactured parts in the form of falsified export licenses, parts manifests and communiques on computer disks or hard copy. Ooooh, exciting! Mulder would rather witness spectral phenomena. I haven't taken his side a lot in the early going, but I kinda agree this time.

And that climax, in which Mulder -- as Sestra Am said -- gets to experience the paranormal while Scully is inconveniently left out of that loop because she was carrying boxes. Let's just say that ghost can throw papers around a room better than an industrial-strength fan ... but perhaps not better than the winds that gusted down my block Friday before the recycling truck finally showed up. I had to clean up the street in front of my house about six times -- including a wine bottle, some gunky lotion decanters, an array of aluminum cans and an assortment of food boxes that we hadn't consumed. Yep, that was more stirring than this episode. But nice fakeout at the end with Lauren thinking Supernatural Bodyguard was still around, when it was just something of this world.

GUEST STAR OF THE WEEK: The best moment of the episode is actually an in-joke. It ... escapes me why Lauren would be upset about her old boss no longer having a parking space since he no longer has a body, buuuut since it's about to be stenciled over with the name Tom Braidwood, I'm willing to forgive and forget. Braidwood was a first assistant director on the show (albeit not credited for this ep) and later becomes one of the Lone Gunmen in the series, the first feature film and the short-lived spinoff.