X-Files S2E13: Now the show's simply Irresistible

Sestra Amateur: 

This episode begins at the funeral of a beautiful young blonde named Jennifer. We don’t know who she is or how she died, and frankly, that’s not important to this story. Instead of Mark Snow’s usual score, we’re treated to Erik Satie’s "Gymnopedie No. 1," which I know mainly from the movie My Dinner with Andre – or the TV show Community’s homage to My Dinner with Andre. I’m always confusing the two; it was a pretty accurate homage. But I digress, as I’m known to do here. 

Donnie Pfaster, played by Nick Chinlund, who has one of those faces you know you’ve seen before but can’t figure out from where, goes to pay his last respects to Jennifer. He comes off as a little creepy. These are actually his next-to-last respects -- a morgue employee finds Donnie after he has cut off Jennifer’s beautiful hair and sent her to her final resting place with the worst haircut imaginable. Picture Christina Crawford immediately after Joan Crawford hacked off her hair with a pair of scissors in Mommie Dearest. 

Pfaster, who actually worked for the funeral home, gets fired. One thing that you’ll notice while watching the episode; when some people take a glimpse at Donnie he appears to be a demon or devil. But the images are fleeting and never really get explained. The morgue employee did that when he was trying to figure out who was messing around near Jennifer’s casket. Interesting editing choice.

Sculder are called in after someone desecrates a grave in Minneapolis to cut off a dead woman’s hair and fingernails. Local FBI Agent Moe Bocks – played by Bruce Weitz from Hill Street Blues -- and now Mike Post’s theme is in my head – thinks it’s aliens. Mulder quickly debunks the theory in favor of a non-supernatural fetishist.

Now that the case is no longer an X-File, Mulder wants to go watch the Vikings play the Redskins. Now we all love how I love to be the voice of reason and the debunker of theories here. Well on Nov. 13, 1994, the date that this episode is supposed to take place, the Vikings played the Patriots … in New England and Minnesota ended up losing the game. Ironically, that was the one game the Vikings played in November 1994 that wasn’t at the Metrodome. It’s a moot point anyway; Sculder get called back into the investigation by Agent Bocks because more bodies have been unearthed and are missing hair and fingernails. This case has Scully unusually rattled, probably more so because it’s not looking like an X-File, but the work of a true sociopath.

Meanwhile, Pfaster is interviewing for a job with a frozen food company. Too bad his future employer clearly doesn’t call his last place of business for a reference, although you have to wonder whether Donnie put it on his resume in the first place. Even his prior job descriptions sound creepy, especially when you know his fetishes. Donnie later picks up a blonde hooker, brings her home and prepares an ice cold bath for her. That, coupled with a bedroom decorated like a funeral, freaks her out but she's unable to get away. Pfaster takes her hair, fingernails and even a couple of fingers. 

Agent Bocks and Sculder go to the scene where Donnie dumped her body, but Scully can’t handle it. The next day Donnie starts his new job as a delivery man and he’s already got the wheels turning for future victims. Turns out he likes brunettes too. And of course, we’ll later finds out he’s fond of redheads as well. Meanwhile, Scully performs the hooker’s autopsy. Her written report articulates how much the case disturbs her. While Mulder and Agent Bocks try to come up with some leads, Donnie is attending a mythology class at a local adult education center. Afterward, he attacks a female classmate, but she gets away and Donnie is arrested. 

Dana has a nightmare that it’s her body on the slab when Mulder calls to tell her a suspect is in custody. But Sculder and Agent Bocks are interrogating the wrong man; Donnie is in the next cell and cannot stop staring at Scully. Dana sees him but doesn’t “see” him. She doesn’t explain her discomfort to Fox and instead chooses to return to D.C. with the hooker’s body to see whether the lab can recover evidence to identify their suspect. Yet another Chris Carter script where a plot contrivance makes them act out of character for the sole purpose of stretching the story out to 45 minutes. A quick “Hey, what’s the deal with this creepy guy?” might have resolved everything much smoother and way less traumatically for our heroine. While awaiting the evidence to be processed in D.C., Scully has a therapy session and admits she trusts Mulder with her life, but she doesn't want to talk to him about her feelings on this particular case.

A print is recovered from the hooker’s body and it leads Fox and Bocks to Donnie’s apartment, but he's not there. Turns out he’s following Dana, who flew back to Minneapolis after getting the new information. Pfaster forces Scully’s car off the road and takes her hostage. She really should invest in some type of kidnapping insurance. The cops find her rental car and Mulder actually goes to the trouble of having the car parts physically sent back to D.C. to determine the make and model of the vehicle for possible identification. Why not check to see vehicles registered to Donnie? Or his immediate family? Why weren’t they checking local connections to Pfaster while waiting hours for D.C. to come up with something? 

It turns out Donnie is driving his mother’s car, and now he's hiding Dana in his mother’s house. I would have found Scully hours before Mulder and Company do. But Pfaster's timeline is out of whack too. He really should have put Scully in the bath hours before he actually did. Why leave her tied up in a closet? It gave her time to gather her strength and fight him. After seeing images of Donnie as a demon, Dana manages to knock him into the tub, tumble down the stairs with him and disarm him before the cavalry arrives on the scene. 

Relieved, Scully finally breaks down in Mulder’s arms. Fox's epilogue indicates Donnie’s behavior is related to deep resentment toward his older sisters. That may explain Pfaster's hatred of women, but I don’t see how it explains specific hair and nail fetishes. The boy in the old photographs does look like a future psycho. Sestra Pro, by any chance are those pictures another inside joke (from writer Chris Carter or director David Nutter’s childhood) or just good casting?  

Sestra Professional:

The bar is definitely raised with "Irresistible," possibly the creepiest episode of the show's entire run.

From the get go, Carter and Nutter are delivering a different kind of story. For one thing, Mulder knows right away it's not the work of aliens. From his background in violent crimes, he figures the suspect to be an escalating fetishist who worked at a mortuary or cemetery. He explains: "Some people collect salt and pepper shakers. Fetishists collect dead things -- fingernails and hair. No one quite knows why, though I've never really understood salt and pepper shakers myself."

A body has a story to tell: We also see Scully more diametrically opposed to Mulder than usual. She's shaken by the case, but she's still able to point out crucial details in her report, deeming Pfaster's crimes to be among the most angry and dehumanizing murders imaginable. In her report, Dana states: "It is somehow easier to believe, as Agent Bocks does, in aliens and UFOs than in the kind of cold-hearted, inhuman monster who could prey on the living to scavenge from the dead."

Mulder's digging further into the deeper psychosis of the suspect, suspecting him of possessing an unfathomable hatred of women for which he may have been treated and possibly even arrested for at an earlier and less deadly date. "This kind of monster isn't made overnight," he says.

Scully stays as far away as she can for as long as she can. "You think you can look into the face of pure evil and then you find yourself paralyzed by it," she recounts in the second person to her therapist. But Dana's father's death and her own abduction are pointed to as moments that might have made her more sensitive to the horrors she's witnessed on the case.

I'm not really on board with Sestra Am in regards to Scully being suspicious of Pfaster when she saw him in jail. Dana didn't have any reason to think he was the guy they were looking for, she was basically bugging out and feeling vulnerable by everything and everyone she came across. Since this could have been an extension of that, I'm willing to take that particular scene at face value. Ya, maybe she could have said "What's this guy in here for?" but she's really at loose ends and basically wanting to high-tail it out of town so she could try to work the case through her wheelhouse -- science.

Then Sestra Am mentioned Mulder and his foot soldier could have been doing all that other grunt work -- finding out about the family's homes and cards -- while the feds were working on the physical evidence, but I'm pretty sure we could ask that question of any procedural on air ever. I think law enforcement proved more adept than usual, ultimately getting ahold of Donnie a lot sooner than might have been reasonably expected. It wasn't too long before the residents of Minneapolis were able to go back to leaving their doors unlocked. I'll also buy Mulder's early explanation that death fetishists often procure hair and fingernails, just because that's what they are prone to do and not something any of us would rationally be able to understand. 

There's no way out, girly girl: It's another tour de force for Gillian Anderson. Not so much the fighting off of Pfaster -- but, yeah, girl power! Go Dana!! The therapy session was right on, but the scene that really got me was after Mulder and the fuzz show up. She's avoiding eye contact, but when Fox forces her to look at him, then and only then does she break down and admit how the case has affected her.

Mulder wraps up by stating Donnie was only extraordinary in his ordinariness. His summation about that fact being as frightening as any X-File is what really sends the chills through viewers' bones. The man whose compulsion is to solve these cases when no one else can or is interested is telling us that there is an equally greater evil lurking all around us. No wonder the locking of the doors line seems dated this many years later.

For years, Carter has told a funny story on the unfunny nature of the episode, namely how Fox program standards prevented the show from portraying Donnie as a necrophiliac and downgrading him to fetishist. Yet when the episode was described in TV Guide, that very word was used in the synopsis. Also, this ep inspired the writer/producer to create sister show Millennium.

In The Complete X-Files, Carter explained the demonic aspect, detailing a recurring theme from the real world. "There are reports of people who had been under the spell of Jeffrey Dahmer who actually claimed that he shape-shifted during those hours when they were held hostage, that his image actually changed," he explained.

But lest we all lose our minds, some light-hearted albeit on-the-nose meta regarding the Vikings-Redskins game that was debunked by Sestra Am. We see footage of Cris Carter (the receiver, not the misspelled show runner) making a play during another game between those two teams. And sorry, no more details, on the child actor used for Donnie's picture at the end -- except to say the show has always been great at creepy kid casting.

Guest star of the week: Nick Chinlund, of course. He might be a little creepier than need be, since the script seems to want people to initially see him as Joe Average, but Chinlund keeps his performance very metered and controlled. We can almost feel his pulse running at a normal rate as he plans and carries out Donnie's gruesome crimes. In doing so, he makes Pfaster more of a monster than anything we've seen on the show so far, and we've run across some dubious and devious characters. 

Coming up: We will ring in new year with the introduction of a man who helped elevate the show from merely interesting to the standard by which others ultimately would be judged as Kim Manners comes on board as one of The X-Files' definitive directors.