X-Files S3E4: Morgan comes alive

Sestra Amateur: 

In St. Paul, Minnesota, Peter Boyle’s character – Clyde Bruckman – buys a tabloid featuring predictions from The Stupendous Yappi, which, in my opinion, is a stupendously bad psychic name. Clyde walks into a killer but doesn’t know he’s a killer. The man – played by Stuart Charno, one of those actors you’ve probably seen before but don’t know from where -- arranges a reading with a fortune teller, who is so bad at her job she doesn’t even foretell her own murder. Maybe the killer’s psychic, he did kind of see it coming but only because he was doing it. Too bad the psychic couldn’t tell our killer why he does these horrible things. He might have spared her life.

Three days later, local detectives are investigating a separate murder in which the killer left behind the victim’s eyeballs and entrails. Isn’t that what little boys are made of? Oh yeah, it’s snips, snails and puppy dog tails. Carry on. The detectives discuss bringing in someone to assist them with the investigation. Someone … spooky. Mulder arrives on cue, with Scully in tow, but the detectives actually weren’t talking about him. Fox links this murder to the fortune-teller ones by showing that the victim was a semi-professional tea reader. 

Meanwhile, the not-spooky-just-Craptastic Yappi and his entourage arrive at the scene. He puts on quite a show and proves he can spot a skeptic a mile away. Yep, he calls out Mulder for blocking his powers with negative energy. Scully is clearly enjoying this, as much as she can while being involved in a serial killer investigation. The local cops buy the Yapster’s bit. I’ll bet they find that male suspect, 17 to 34 years old who may or may not have a tattoo in record time.

Let’s check in on Clyde, who is proving to be the world’s worst insurance salesman because he truly is psychic – just specifically psychic. Bruckman deters a client from buying a boat because the client will be killed by a drunk driver in two years. Clyde then returns to his sad, lonely, alcohol-fueled existence. He takes out his elderly neighbor’s garbage and has a vision of Mrs. Lowe’s adorable Pomeranian feasting on her dead body. Bruckman then finds the fortune teller’s body -- sans eyes -- in the dumpster. 

Sculder arrive and want to know more because Bruckman knew about the missing eyes without turning over the body. They take him to the tea leaf reader’s house. After making fun of Mulder’s name, Clyde “sees” the murder. Bruckman starts to sound like the Horrendous Yappi until he claims the victim had consensual sex with her killer. Clyde tells Sculder where to find her body, and of course, he’s right. The murderer is there too amongst the onlookers. 

Bruckman, who bought a lottery ticket, manages to miss each number by one digit. How frustrating is that?!? Fox still believes in Clyde's abilities. I think Darin Morgan -- who really wrote a great story with some amusing lines -- missed a golden opportunity when Bruckman asked Mulder whether he wants to know how he’ll die. Fox’s perfect response could have been: “Again?” Mulder tests Clyde’s powers and learns he only knows how people will die. Scully does a better job testing Bruckman, touching a keychain makes Clyde realize former insurance customer Claude Dukenfield (who based his market strategy on astrological forecasts) is also dead. 

While heading to the woods to find the body, Bruckman nonchalantly tells Fox that autoerotic asphyxiation is the most undignified way to die. Maybe he’s confusing Mulder with Californication’s Hank Moody. You really can’t engage in small talk with someone who has Clyde’s talent. By the way, they found Claude; Scully parked on top of his body. In her defense, he was buried in the mud.

Later, Bruckman has a vision of Fox chasing the killer through a kitchen and the killer then slitting Mulder’s throat. Clyde’s weird sense of humor comes through while he describes Fox’s murder scenario to Sculder. Bruckman also receives a letter from the murderer, which was sent before our psychic joined the investigation. It turns into an I-know-you-know-I-know situation. Sculder arrange to keep Clyde safe in a hotel room. 

During Dana’s watch, Bruckman tells her he had a vision of them in bed together. Scully misinterprets his words and shoots him down. Wow, the ego on that girl. Not everyone in the world is trying to nail you, Dana. Mulder takes over on guard duty and gets a bad night’s sleep. Speaking of bad nights – and bad luck – our serial killer is a bellhop at the same hotel. A local detective relieves Sculder so they can go to the tarot card reader’s crime scene. Clyde “sees” the detective’s death, but doesn’t say anything. He opens the door for our killer bellhop and they finally “see” each other. Oh, crap. 

Bruckman solves the mystery about why our bellhop kills -- because he’s a homicidal maniac. That makes total sense. Our killer takes out the detective because it’s not time to kill Clyde ... yet. Meanwhile, Dana has solved the case and rushes to the hotel. Fox also heads back and chases the killer to, yep, you guessed it -- the kitchen. Mulder remembers enough to defend himself until Scully arrives and shoots the killer to death. Our killer didn’t see that coming!

Sculder return to Bruckman’s apartment hoping to find him there. They find a note he wrote to Dana regarding the now-deceased Mrs. Lowe and her owner-less dog. The agents then find Clyde’s dead body. He committed suicide -- the vision of Bruckman and Scully in bed together has come true. This one hits Dana pretty hard. Maybe next time she won’t jump to the wrong conclusion. Scully takes the dog home with her and together they endure a night of television and lame Despicable Yappi commercials. Hopefully, the addition of the dog won’t be a jump-the-shark moment.

Sestra Professional:

I bow down before Darin Morgan for a perfectly crafted hour of television, but then again, the Academy of Arts and Sciences did too -- awarding The X-Files' one and only writing Emmy to him for this episode. Morgan only received writing credit for five XF eps (to date), but his fingerprints are all over some of the very best the show has to offer. If his second-season "Humbug" gave license for the exploration of humor beyond mere quips, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" really opened the canvas up. 

The setup here is gorgeous. Law enforcement personnel are waiting for help from an unorthodox, publicity-minded expert. We think they mean Mulder, but Fox walks in and they say "who the hell are you?" We should rename our writer Darin MacGuffin because he's so very good at them, and not in a painfully obvious way. Then we meet Yappi, who gives an array of entertaining clues -- "facial hair or not"  and "a tattoo somewhere on his body, maybe the tattoo has the facial hair." The tables turned again as we're set up to believe Scully is providing negative energy, but it's Mulder. What the what?!? Basically MacGuffin uses our own knowledge against us, and he thrives on doing that. 

What the hell is Lollapalozzo? We get insight into the downside of people with prognosticating abilities. Bruckman can't get hits when playing the lottery (he was pretty close, though) and he's compelled to be honest when talking with an insurance customer. (That guy really should have listened, right?) Even the murderer is afforded some personality. "Don't apologize, you're a better dancer than my last date," he says upon his initial run-in with Clyde.

I'm supposed to believe that's a real name? Mulder and Scully actually come off pretty smartly in this episode, jokes at Fox's expense aside. Fox is right about Yappi's leads being vague and easily interpreted as correct after the fact. Mr. Stupendous said the body was dumped somewhere, then it's found in a dumpster. That sets everyone a-tingle but Sculder ... and us. And they're aware that Bruckman knows more than he should. Within this context, there's still room for the traditional conflict between our leads. Mulder doesn't believe Clyde's the killer; Scully doesn't believe he's psychic.

The way Morgan looks at the world proves endlessly fascinating. Bruckman's theory about the dolls could be the most resonant piece of dialogue for me over the course of the whole series. "Why did this woman collect dolls? What was it about her life? Was it one specific moment when she suddenly said, 'I know ... dolls.' Or was it a whole series of things, starting when her parents first met and somehow combined in such a way that, in the end, she had no choice but to be a doll collector?" Darin thinks about these things. And now I do too. 

Morgan also throws in a premise that's begotten eternal discussion by the fan base -- Scully doesn't die. What did Clyde mean by that? What did Darin mean by that? Was there a premise behind that or was it just supposed to bug the snot out X-Philes? It's definitely done the latter. People are still pondering its meaning.

If my Miss Manners serves me right, that protrusion from his left cornea is a salad fork: Everything Morgan writes has layers upon layers, the through line of this story certainly would be interesting enough for a stand-alone episode. But he's got a lot of quips to share and questions to raise beyond that. And there's room for mere coincidence, not everything has to be of the supernatural variety. "If the future is already written, then why bother to do anything?" Fox asks Clyde. "Now you're catching on," he replies.

The sequence in which Bruckman recounts how he sees his own death is another highlight, telling us perhaps too much about Morgan's mental state at the time. In The Complete X-Files, Darin recalls watching the first season ep "Beyond the Sea" and wanting to do something in that vein. "My original intention was to be very dark and depressing. I ended up putting jokes in it just because I couldn't help myself."

Stop ... meta time: The Stupendous Yappi was written for and played by Jaap Broeker, David Duchovny's stand-in on the show. Broeker's eyebrow-shifting ability is truly dazzling. ... There's a great moment from the Season 3 blooper reel when Boyle is riding with Duchovny and Anderson and their car doesn't stop on cue. ... Morgan sort of commandeered Ritchie Valens' tale of flipping a coin for the last seat on Buddy Holly's chartered jet. The Big Bopper was ill and already scheduled to be on that plane, it was Valens who "won" the coin toss. ... Many of the guest characters in this ep are named for really people, including Bruckman -- a prolific writer-director from the silent film era. ... Stuart Charno, who played the killer, was married to one-time show writer Sara Charno.

Guest star of the week: Well, duh. Peter Boyle also got an Emmy for his standout take on Clyde Bruckman. Every moment is perfect, from the previously mentioned doll tirade to the way he details the type of pie Mulder steps on in the kitchen. In The Complete X-Files, Anderson and director David Nutter recalled how the late actor struggled with the ep, particularly since he had issues with mortality. None of that is evident in his performance. He's all in.