X-Files S2E7: Sometimes 3 isn't a magic number

Sestra Amateur: 

Straight talk only here. I have really bad taste when it comes to movies. Ask anyone. Not everything, obviously, but there are some God-awful cheesy ones I enjoy watching, either because of the story, characters or music. Several vampire movies were released in the early '90s that are perfect examples: Pale Blood, Children of the Night, Blood Ties, Innocent Blood, Embrace of the Vampire. These movies were never meant to win any awards – well, maybe Razzies – but at least it was fun to pretend for 90 minutes that vampires could be real. So you’d think this episode would be right up my alley. 

The X-Files addresses all types of monsters, so it was only a matter of time before they wrote an episode about vampires. But "3" did everything wrong. The dialogue may have sounded better coming from actors and actresses (OK, one actress) who can actually act. Mulder, who’s clearly missing Scully, makes some majorly bad choices all through his investigation. Plus Glen Morgan and James Wong (who wrote the sterling "Beyond the Sea") are responsible for this?! It’s the perfect example of how every Empire Strikes Back writer has a little Phantom Menace in him. 

This episode opens in Hollywood Hills, California. Firefighters are battling wildfires in the background of the entire episode. Our victim’s first scene has him complaining ash fell into his glass of wine. People are losing their homes and their lives, but let’s not inconvenience the rich guy who made the conscious choice not to enjoy his beverage indoors. Turns out he sent his family away so he could play with some strange woman. She bites his neck and sucks his blood. Then another man comes out of hiding and they all struggle in the hot tub. Looks like the bloodsuckers won this round.

Back in Washington, D.C., Mulder is finally back inside the recently unlocked X-Files office. He moves the calendar from May to November and puts Scully’s case file in with the other X-Files. Mulder then goes to the crime scene in Hollywood Hills and talks to Commander Carver. Fox discloses that similar murders occurred in Memphis, Tennessee and Portland (Oregon) and the killers have to be around blood. Mulder says he plans on investigating alone. Guess he’s still smarting over that Krycek betrayal and his usual trust issues. 

He tracks down a suspect at a local blood bank with just a telephone and the Yellow Pages. Very innovative, Mulder. He takes John, a.k.a. The Son, into custody but John claims the bright lights in the interrogation room are hurting him. I wonder if keeping the lights on can result in an excessive force complaint. “Good Cop” Mulder turns them off and uses a softer red light, so John will now only talk to Mulder. The “Bad Cops” are happy to comply and leave the room. Mulder doesn’t believe John is a vampire because he can see John’s reflection in a mirror. But John believes he and his partners can prolong their lives by consuming other people’s blood. His partners are “The Father” and “The Unholy Spirit.” Mulder leaves and John somehow burns to death when he’s exposed to sunlight. Not his clothes or hair, though, just his skin. We’ll know more after Scully performs the autopsy. Oh yeah ... nevermind.

Mulder meets with the pathologist and they talk about medical conditions like porphyria and Gunther Disease, both of which can be related to false myths about vampires. A stamp on John’s hand leads Mulder to a club that looks and feels a little David Lynch-y. Mulder zeros in on Kristen, the first female he sees who’s looking into a compact that has no mirror. If she doesn’t use a mirror then how is her lipstick literally flawless? Is she “The Unholy Spirit?” That’s unknown but it appears “The Father” is in the club watching everything and sucking on his own hand. 

Kristen talks insipidly about blood, life, blah, blah, blah. Mulder seems engrossed – then grossed out when she offers him a finger of her blood. Our phlegm fatale leaves Mulder and hooks up with the next guy willing to suck her bloody finger. Fox follows them to a closed restaurant where the man thrashes Mulder and reminds him they are consenting adults. Then that man gets jumped and bitten, presumably to death. I’ll bet he didn’t consent to that. The pathologist on this one tells Mulder the bites are from three different people. 

Mulder, who now knows Kristen’s full name, learns she lived in Memphis and Portland. He goes to her house in the hills with Los Angeles Police Department detectives, who have a warrant. You know, there’s an awful lot of sunlight for someone who chooses to live in the dark. Does she really go to the trouble of covering her windows at night and removing them in the morning? Mulder checks her oven and sees a loaf of bread filled with blood. This apparently means she’s not a killer and is trying to protect herself from evil, not that she’s a really bad cook. No one who watches this episode will have strawberry jam on their toast ever again. 

Mulder somehow convinces the cops to leave without searching the rest of the house, then waits inside for Kristen to return home. The femme banal tells her sob story and even Fox looks bored. It started with her dad’s abuse. She and John got into freaky blood sports. She left him, but he hooked up with the other two and they’ve been following her since. Mulder convinces Kristen to try the normal route and they have sex. Makes you wonder if Fox had a condom in his wallet since Kristen probably didn’t have any in the house. And after his verbalized concerns in the club, it is unlikely he would have sex with her without one, unless he’s thinking with little Mulder. Oh, and “The Father” is outside watching them while the wildfires continue to rage nearby.

Now here’s where everything goes sideways. Just when we think we know what’s going on, John returns, unburned. He’s in Kristen’s kitchen with a knife and tries to convince her to kill Mulder. Kristen wakes him up, then stabs “The Father.” Mulder and Kristen incapacitate John, then try to leave in her car since his car is at the bottom of the hill. “The Unholy Spirit,” the Romanian woman who seduced the Hollywood Hills victim, grabs Mulder and pulls him up through the sun roof, rather effortlessly. Kristen hits the woman with her car. Mulder says he’ll run down the hill to his car. Really glad he didn’t take Kristen down there with him. Otherwise, she’d still be alive and we’d probably have to endure more episodes with her. 

Kristen licks blood she got from the trio because she thinks she’ll survive whatever happens next. Then she sets herself and John on fire. The house blows up and now the firefighters have even more work to do. They must be utterly exhausted. That woman was clearly a twisted, selfish waste of decent makeup. Mulder learns four burned bodies were found in the house. Wonder if he ever tells Scully about this case after her return. “Hey Fox, remember the time I disappeared and you nailed the blood addict because you were thinking with little Mulder?” 

A wise Mulder would keep this entire incident to himself. Everyone involved is dead. No harm, no foul. That’s enough for now. I just learned 1990’s Daughter of Darkness is available on Amazon Prime. Time to cleanse the palate.

Sestra Professional:

While Scully's away, Mulder will play. 

It's difficult to pinpoint the reason why this episode is so bad and so reviled among the show's faithful, maybe because there are too many culprits involved in the making it. It boasts a suspect list longer than the number of Murder on the Orient Express killers.  

There's the hubris of casting David Duchovny's then-girlfriend, Perrey Reeves, as the would-be vamp Mulder gets it on with. I suppose that wouldn't have been so bad if the whole thing wasn't so damn boring. Buffy the Vampire Slayer did interesting vamps for seven years, and The X-Files can't handle it for 44 minutes?

I suppose if anyone was going to turn Fox's head, it would have to be someone with a supernatural bent. Plus there's the added bonus of Kristen being the kind of helpless victim Mulder gravitates to in general, specifically after the trauma of losing Dana. Plus, the guy's pump already had to be primed after getting his hands inside his treasured X-Files drawers once again.

The story was penned by Chris Ruppenthal (who fared much better in the Season 1 outing "Roland," but didn't write another for the show after this abomination) with the seasoned team of Glen Morgan and James Wong handling the script. I'll just blame Ruppenthal for this trite yarn and credit Morgan and Wong for sly use of dialogue like a cop telling Mulder that "it's really hard to trust anyone" in California.

They have the same feeble grasp on the Bible as all those big-haired preachers do: I'd like to give the show credit for trying to make some advances on the basic vamp theme. Before Buffy, the vampire mythology was usually played a certain way. But these guys store the blood in advance, so they have no shortage later. That's a unique approach, right? Nah, still not interested.

Mulder says he works alone. Clearly, The X-Files shouldn't have played the Krycek villain card too soon. It could have been a fun three-way. Well, it could have been less monotonous at any rate. Especially if the story went a completely different way. 

Normal is not what I feel: Another possible saving grace might have been Mulder investigating something he previously discounted as mere myth. But this is handled in the most trite manner. There's no verve or zest to this episode. It's not just because Dana's not there and it's not because Mulder's getting it on with someone who is not Scully.
 

Show creator Chris Carter tried to explain the twist in The Official Guide to The X-Files, "This guy's a monk. Let's let him be a human. Especially in (Scully's) absence, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to do it." Count me among the precious few who would have accepted that, if there was anything remotely enticing about the way it was done.

The would-be vamp wishes she could die. We kinda do too. We get it, Kristen has got a thing for blood. So she goes to a club for fetishists. It's pretty difficult to avoid vampires when you do that, as it probably is their regular hangout. The pretentious, gothic place serves as a microcosm of the episode, pretending to be cool but really more eye-rolling.

There are a ton more exciting/sexy components (see also: the exact opposite), such as going to the would-be vamp's house with police and a warrant. Oooh, she has a snake bite kit and veterinary needles. I'm on pins and veterinary needles. Oooh, she's got bread with blood in it. That's supposed to protect her. Nothing in there that'll protect us?

Blood tastes dangerous: Then we get to know more about Kristen. That's a mistake. She likes the sweet and thick nature of blood. Please, you're killing us with the sexy here. And good lord, now back story, she was an abused kid. Could it be more heavy-handed? The beatings she took then and the fascination with blood now mark the only ways Kristen knew she was alive. Jury's out on the rest of us puttering around in waking comas.

Somewhere in there, there was a nugget of a plot -- these vamps are particularly dangerous when there's three of them. Could have, should have been a more intriguing story. Maybe one with less talking and less yelling about burning in harsh overhead lights and/or sunshine. Hopefully this makes Mulder think twice about getting involved again. One night with him, and the next day, his bedmate can't see past self-immolation. Thankfully, she took out the rest in the process. And finally something to love about the episode -- no pontificating, it just ends on that fact.