X-Files S2E23: A tale of a fateful trip

Sestra Amateur: 

In Richmond, Virginia, Tony Shalhoub – in post-Wings and pre-Monk mode – is frantically searching for someone in a hotel. He bangs on the door, but the occupant won’t open it. A neighbor’s light starts flickering. The neighbor looks out the peephole to see who is causing the ruckus. Then, Monk’s shadow creeps under the neighbor’s door and kills him. By electrocution? Spontaneous combustion? A combination of the two? Either way, the neighbor dissolves into ash and Monk takes off. 

Scully gets called to assist former student Detective Kelly Ryan, who is assigned to investigate the “abduction” of said neighbor Patrick Newirth. You’d think Cigarette Smoking Man would have kept this person safe since Newirth is an executive with Morley Tobacco. Dana focuses on the heating vent as an entry point – nice nod to Eugene Tooms from "Squeeze." Ryan shows them the scorch mark on the carpet by the front door. Scully assumes it’s burned human flesh based on the contents of the ash. Mulder figures Patrick was probably looking out through the peephole and also notes the burned-out light in the hallway. Spontaneous combustion due to rapid oxidation is Fox’s theory du jour. 

Sculder visit the home of a woman who went missing prior to the latest vanishing act. Mulder notes another light-bulb issue. His fingerprint identification tool produces Dana’s geeky line, “For your next birthday, I’ll buy you a utility belt.” So in the past few weeks, Mulder has been compared to Superman and Batman. Maybe we’ll get a water episode so he can be Aquaman too. Fox thinks an Amtrak ticket is a lead. 

Of course, Monk is at the train station and he’s not looking so good. He keeps looking at the ground, specifically his shadow. He leaves, but gets stopped by local police for loitering. Monk tries to make a run for it. He hides in the shadows and tells the police officers to stay away from him. His warnings are vague enough to make himself sound really guilty. I would at least mention avoiding my shadow, even if it did sound crazy. If the alternative is death, then I would appreciate a heads-up. Unfortunately, both cops fall to Monk’s murderous shadow. Hope one of the patrol cars had a working camera.

Detective Kelly updates Sculder the following morning. Mulder suggests they start viewing the train video footage. Fox sees Monk behaving suspiciously and Dana notes his jacket logo – Polarity Magnetics – is the place where the first victim worked. I believe this is what they call a clue. Sculder – without Kelly – go to the facility and identify Monk as Dr. Chester Banton, who has been missing for five weeks. Turns out, Banton suffered an accident involving a dark-matter experiment. 

Dr. Christopher Davey shows Sculder Banton’s shadow burned into the wall of the accelerator room. Think of it as a “two-billion- watt X-ray.” Now Scully is on the spontaneous combustion bandwagon, but Mulder has already hopped off. Davey secretly listens to their conversation via the speaker. Sculder return to the train station and Fox realizes the lighting is diffused, aka soft light. Banton sees them and bolts. Sculder surround Banton just like the cops did, but luckily Mulder has more information than the police. He shoots out the lights so there are no shadows and they get Ryan’s man. 

Banton is taken to the Yaloff Psychiatric Hospital. He describes his shadow as a black hole that splits molecules and reduces matter into pure energy. That’s verbatim, by the way, so if I got it wrong, science nerds, then blame the screenwriter. In addition to accidentally killing his colleague, Gail Anne, Banton is paranoid the government is after him because of this power. Kelly arrives and kicks out Sculder because her supervisor didn’t invite the FBI into their investigation and the detective isn’t ready to admit she asked for Dana’s professional guidance. 

Of course, the police treat Banton like a normal suspect, so this will get messy. Well, not too messy because they’ll only need a Dustbuster for the cleanup. Sculder express differing opinions about what to do next. Mulder goes the Mr. X route, and he's way less helpful here than in the episode in which he saved Fox’s life. But later that night, X and his muscle show up at Yaloff to “transfer” Dr. Banton. The power goes out and emergency lighting causes Banton’s shadow to take out two of X’s lackeys. X lets Banton get away. 

Mulder figures Banton will head back to his lab. Ryan gets there first ... and alone. Banton, who allegedly “doesn’t want to hurt” her, intentionally crosses his shadow with hers so the detective is reduced to a pile of ash. Banton has Davey lock him in the accelerator room, but it turns out his partner is working for the government. He reports that he has Banton secured, but X arrives and shoots Chris in the head. That’s what you get for being a traitor, Davey. The accelerator gets activated and dissolves Banton and X gets away without Sculder seeing him. 

Mulder arranges another meet with X because Fox is livid his source tried to remove Banton from Yaloff. Mulder breaks up with X, who claims he did not kill the doctor (well, that one, anyway). Scully attends Ryan’s funeral. Fox learns Davey is considered a missing person and tells Dana he thinks Chris is the one burned into the accelerator room wall, not Banton. Can you get DNA from ash? Maybe not in 1995. Turns out, Mulder is right -- X has a broken and devastated Banton imprisoned and undergoing testing. Remember kids, just because you’re paranoid the government is out to get you doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Sestra Professional:

"Soft Light" has always seemed like an under-the-radar episode among The X-Files legion, but it's very intriguing, rather haunting, and of course, sports an amazing guest performance. It's also marks a fine entrance by Vince Gilligan, who you might have heard of as the mastermind behind Breaking Bad. But the XF fan cut his teeth on this show after mailing his first script to Fox. 

On Gilligan's island, when Scully says something like "Let's just forget for a moment that there's no scientific theory to support it," Mulder retorts "OK." Fox will also ask Dana if she "can spare a phrophylactic" when he wants to borrow some gloves.

It'll kill you. It doesn't care who you are: James Contnter directed this ep, and although it was his lone effort for the show, he went on to other shows in the same vein -- namely Buffy the Vampire Slayer (20 episodes) and Angel (13 episodes). He does a fine job with eerie atmosphere and the all-important people-dissolving-into-shadows bits. 

My favorite moment in "Soft Light" has to be X looking through the peephole of the particle accelerator, that's downright scary. The show has gone to great lengths to show that while X may have respected his predecessor, Deep Throat, he's nothing like him. He seems to only want to give Mulder assistance when it benefits him, and couldn't care less whether Fox likes that or not. Steven Williams drives those points home. Just look at that mug! Who would want to risk crossing him?

Dana's protege, Kelly Ryan, apparently admires Scully so much that she's fashioned her appearance just like her -- head to toe. Too bad she doesn't have Dana's sensibility or maybe she would have survived her first case. (By the way, actress Kate Twa, also looks a lot like the female half of the gender-switching killer from the episode "Gender Bender.") But rest assured it's still Mulder who poses the theories, and he's not wrong a lot in this one.

I'll die before I let them use me: Does Dr. Banton's passion for dark matter remind anyone of Fox's fervor for aliens and conspiracy? They definitely seem to be signs of the same coin, and an even greater warning to Mulder than the trite phraseologies emitted by X this week (instead of Skinner) -- "I have nothing to gain and everything to lose" and "You're choosing a dangerous time to go it alone." Why would Fox believe anything X says at this point?

Another strong element to this one was the Scully-Mulder clash. Dana doesn't mind assisting Kelly, because she understands what it's like to try to succeed in "the boys' club," but Fox counters that Ryan shouldn't be putting her own ambition first. Since Mulder's hunches and theories work out pretty much down the line, I suppose he's the victor here too as well. But Scully's point is valid.

Gilligan's first ep gets a little unwieldy when Banton worries about the government wanting to catch him for a "brain suck," but regains momentum when his partner turns on him. Truth be told, I was a little perpleXed by X's involvement. He told Fox he couldn't be contacted willy and nilly, and then in the next scene, X is after Banton. But then Mulder cleared it up for me, claiming his informer used the agents to lead Banton to him. Fox's theory percentages sure got a bump this week.


Guest star of the week: Shalhooooooub, of course. By turns, understandably frightened, empowered and then confined, the future star of Monk really delivers the goods. He's not in the proverbial shadows at all in "Soft Light," anchoring the episode by soft pedaling that premise that maybe Banton and Mulder aren't all that different.