X-Files S3E1: Mixed Blessings

Sestra Amateur: 

It’s a new season of The X-Files, but mere minutes have passed since the events of the Season 2 finale. Albert Hosteen is doing a lot of voiceover work in this one. I’m trying to figure out whether the show thought it was an easier way to explain things to the viewers instead of generating forced exposition conversation with other characters. Unfortunately, it becomes somewhat jarring because of frequent cuts between the action in New Mexico and Washington, D.C. 

But here’s something different: We start with a frantic Cancer Man. Sure, he’ll be his calm, cool and collected self later in the ep, but here he’s actually panicky. CSM and his military men storm into Albert’s home. They beat up the elderly Native American and his grandson, but end up leaving empty-handed. 

Scully soon arrives and sees Cancer Man’s handiwork. She heads to the still smoldering train car, but doesn’t find Mulder. Later that night, Dana gets stopped by the military men in their helicopter. They take Fox’s files, but can't find the digital cassette because she doesn't have it.

Scully returns to the FBI supervisory firing squad, setting off the security alarm when she walks in. Since what happens in New Mexico (and Massachusetts) doesn’t stay in New Mexico (and Massachusetts), Dana does not leave unscathed. She’s stripped of her badge and gun by the nameless superiors. Skinner tries to convince her there will be a thorough investigation involving all of the events from last episode, but Scully starts playing the Mulder role and calls the assistant director on his lack of authority. She’s going to exhibit more of Fox's traits as the episode goes on. She tries to retrieve the DAT copy from Mulder’s desk, but it’s gone. Upset about everything that has happened, Dana heads to her mother’s house. 

Meanwhile, the Syndicate is exercising its right to second-hand smoke exposure in enclosed environments. CSM tries to convince the other members that Mulder is really dead. Of course, he is not dead. Albert and his family find him unconscious and buried under the rocks in the quarry. The wise old man explains the Blessing Way chant, which is Fox’s only chance at not dying. I guess it was between that or actual medical assistance in a hospital. The Blessing Way chant turns into a "This is Your Life" scenario for Mulder, who gets spiritual visits from Deep Throat and his father, William. Deep Throat quotes Nietzsche and Fox’s dad is cryptic.

Frohike drunkenly shows up at Scully’s place. She learns about Kenneth Soona (aka The Thinker) and his relation to the sought-after digital cassette. Dana tries to talk with Skinner about it, but he refuses to try and link Soona’s and Bill Mulder’s shootings via ballistics testing. The assistant director also has a few choice words for Scully before she leaves. Yeah, Walter, anybody can have a good comeback when they have a day to think of one. Cancer Man appears and the tape is discussed. 

On her way out of FBI headquarters, Dana realizes how she set off the metal detector. A teeny tiny computer chip seems to be embedded in her neck. Her doctor removes it and Scully takes it home. She tells Melissa about it and her sister encourages – more like browbeats – Dana to go to a shrink to uncover lost memories from her abduction. During the regression session Scully panics and bolts. Is she scared of the unknown or did she actually remember something that spooked her? When she gets home, Dana sees Skinner leaving her apartment but doesn’t approach him.

Mulder is conscious after three days of the chant. Knowing "the FBI man" is going to leave, Albert tells him how to complete the ritual. Can you imagine he’s not allowed to bathe for at least four days? That’s going to be one ripe Fox. The ceremony ends rather unceremoniously with Mulder alone with his bag of sunflower seeds. 

Back home, Scully calls Skinner while he’s in the presence of Cancer Man, so he denies going to her apartment. Fox pops up in Dana’s dream, convincing her he’s still alive. Scully attends Bill Mulder’s funeral in Boston and finally meets Fox’s mother, Teena. Scully tells her Mulder is probably alive. The Well-Manicured Man -- a member of CSM’s “smoking club” -- meets with Scully and privately warns her she is in danger. He also feeds her paranoia, which leads her further down the Mulder behavioral path. 

When Teena returns home, Fox is there waiting for her. He wastes no time interrogating her trying to get answers to his father’s activities in the 1970s. Dana and Melissa arrange a late-night meeting at Scully’s apartment to talk about the visit to the hypnotherapist. Dana remembers WMM’s warning and decides to meet her sister at her place instead. Of course, Melissa doesn’t get the phone message. 

Scully gets intercepted by Skinner, who drives her to Mulder’s apartment. Maybe Dana should use her cell phone to update Melissa again. I swear, they only have those phones for plot purposes. When I worked, it was never turned off and it went with me everywhere. Melissa enters Scully’s place and promptly gets shot by Krycek. Clearly, his target was Dana, who’s now holding Skinner at gunpoint in Mulder’s place. Walter admits to taking the digital tape and is about to show Scully when she gets distracted by someone outside. The assistant director then pulls his gun and he and Dana are in a standoff. This could get messy.
 
Sestra Professional:

I'd like to change this episode title to "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." It is a very polarizing episode. But I would upgrade "The Good" to great. After an amazing cliffhanger, "The Blessing Way" ends with, in some ways, an even better cliffhanger. Cigarette-Smoking Man sold the train car-full-of-aliens conflagration with "burn it," but Scully and Skinner holding guns on each other? That's an even more emotional kick. Way to up the ante, Chris Carter. 

Not sure if this goes under "The Bad" or "The Ugly," but the show's proclivity for the most pretentious voiceover passes from justified to overcooked in this season opener. I think it's a lot like Sestra Am said, Albert Hosteen had to provide the exposition about "the FBI man."  (That description wears thin after about 10 uses of it.) But even if Native Americans go about their business the way it's laid out here, it still comes off as very heavy-handed.

"Memory like fire is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it," Albert says in a very even tone. Yeah, 'cause no one ever remembered things inaccurately. "Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth," he continues. Cue eye rolling. No kudos this time, Chris Carter.

Gillian Anderson can sure do a great call for Mulder across vast areas. But it isn't her penchant for projecting that makes this a great Scully episode. Director R.W. Goodwin gets the credit for the nice set piece in which Dana is stopped on a dark desert highway with a cool wind in her hair. The rest of the ep is a showcase for Gillian as the show's acting powerhouse. 

What they're doing is putting an official stamp on the perpetuation of a lie: Scully has to justify herself in front of a whole new group of superiors, but at least none of them are as stiff as a certain show creator in the previous ep. Tough cop looks good on Dana. She knows the score, she knows that Mulder's dad's murderer is not meant to be found.

Everything I know about buzzards, I learned from The X-Files. They're not actually preying on the flesh they tear apart. They're just flying around in wait for something to die. Hold on, here's Albert with some more platitudes -- "The desert takes no mercy and can kill a man in less than a day." And the most egregious offender of them all, Mulder wouldn't have had a chance if he hadn't stayed underground, "protected like the jack rabbit or the fox." That last one is way too on the nose.

We get some fleshing out of the supporting characters, Frohike takes to the bottle due to the perceived loss of Mulder (and probably that of The Thinker, who was three times more of a counterculture patriot than The Lone Gunmen have proved to be so far). Meanwhile, in New Mexico, the healing ritual continues -- songs and prayers for Mulder that have to be performed the way they had been for centuries. But at some point, those scenes seem more like Fox is hanging out at a planetarium laser-light show. He's just naked and lying under shrubbery instead of smoking the shrubbery. 

The dull clarity of the dead: Deep Throat encourages him to hold on because he's found truth, but no justice or judgment. Do not look into the abyss. (I wish I could avoid doing so during this sequence.) There's a downer of a flashback of what happened to those aliens that Mulder found in the train car. The pretensions continue with Dad's visit. "The lies I told you were a pox and poison to my soul. I stand here ashamed of the choices I made so long ago." No one talks like that, even in the afterlife. (I hope.)

But Dana's story really makes up for it. It kicks into gear when she sets off an alarm while walking through FBI security. She tries to aid the investigation by calling for a comparison of the bullets that killed The Thinker and Bill Mulder. And although Walter doesn't appear very helpful, Goodwin and/or Mitch Pileggi wordlessly (no self-important babble!) conveys the antipathy the assistant director has for CSM.

We go back to the land of affectation with hippie sister Melissa on Dana's case about accessing her own memory with professional help, but she won't be bothering her (or the fans) much longer. Back in the day, Missy was truly detested by X-Philes, not really sure if it was because of her new-age ways or some perceived threat to a possible Sculder romance. I get a good chuckle out of the initial insinuation that Krycek was the trigger man, since at the time, actors Nicholas Lea and Melinda McGraw were involved.

The sanctity of this ep's Scully story gets decimated further when she dreams of Mulder and gets her own view of the laser-light show. Somewhat uncharacteristically, she then clings to the belief that Mulder is alive. But maybe she needs to pay heed to that thought in much the same way Frohike utilized the alcohol.

Motives are rarely unselfish: We start getting a look at the consortium that CSM is a part of. The Well-Manicured Man proves to be an interesting component. He gives that group an air of authority and dignity when it otherwise might come off as two-dimensional. In many ways, he comes off as the mirror image of Deep Throat. We don't really know Deep Throat's relationship to the consortium, we just recognize that he knew a lot about their dealings. But he could have been in much the same position as the Well-Manicured Man.
 
When Skinner shows up at Scully's apartment, he's basically fulfilling each and every one of the prophecies WMM gave Scully under the guise of not being thrilled with the consortium's modus operandi. Finally, something more for him to do. Welcome to the party, Walter!