X-Files S3E7: The joyless no-luck club

Sestra Amateur: 

Victor Stans keeps attempting suicide, so he’s residing at an Army hospital in Maryland. The lieutenant colonel sounds delusional because he claims someone won’t let him die. So, of course, he gets left alone in his unlocked hospital room. Stans decides to boil his troubles away in one of the tubs in the physical therapy room. Victor gets into the tub, but the mysterious "benefactor" prevents his suicide by unlocking the door and setting off the fire alarm. Unfortunately for him, and possibly fortunately for our phantom because we don’t yet know his motives, Stans survives and his body is completely burned.

Three weeks later, Sculder meet with the lieutenant colonel. Turns out, the phantom may have caused the death of Stans’ wife and kids and is trying to keep him alive for payback. Captain Janet Draper interrupts the investigation on the orders of General Thomas Callahan. Not one to back down, Scully requests a meeting with the general, then goes back into Stans’ hospital room to finish their interview. The mail guy, Quinton “Roach” Freely seems really interested in the feds’ investigation. 

In group therapy, one crippled soldier recounts his dream of “the walk” -- also the name of the episode. Leonard “Rappo” Trimble, who lost both his arms and legs in battle, takes offense. Roach takes Leonard away and tells him the agents are asking questions about Stans. Sculder have made their way to General Callahan, who is clearly annoyed by the handling of their investigation. Dana asks the general why the death of Stans’ family is not included in the case file. I guess some would consider that a clue that something big was happening in the lieutenant colonel's life. Staff Sgt. Kevin Aiklin also lost his family in a fire and attempted suicide. He was stopped … at first. Then he found access to a wood chipper. There’s no bringing someone back from that. Callahan considers them casualties of war. Scully – and probably Mulder – aren’t buying it. Turns out, the general is seeing and hearing the same mysterious soldier who warns Callahan, “Your time is now, killer.” He then gets an eerie message on his answering machine even though the phone didn’t ring. That’s a neat trick.

Capt. Draper is apparently part of the equation too. She goes swimming after work and gets drowned in the pool. Interesting how the M.O.'s been switched up. Maybe she doesn’t have a house to burn down. But considering how the killer is murdering people close to others, did he target her because she works for the general? I started thinking they were having an affair, but that point never gets addressed. Dana inspects the crime scene and Draper’s body. She sees finger-sized bruising on the captain's neck and shoulders indicating a struggle in the pool, but the cameras don’t show anyone entering the area. 

The general tells Sculder about seeing a phantom soldier and the weird phone calls. At Callahan's house, his son, Trevor, sees a man enter and screams for his mother. The general and the agents arrive and search the place, but the man gets away through the backyard. Turns out it was Roach stealing the general’s mail for Trimble. Stans sees Leonard and recognizes him as the soldier who won’t let him die. Roach is identified as the intruder thanks to good old-fashioned fingerprint evidence and arrested pretty easily. Fox finds mail belonging to Draper, Aiklen, Stans and Callahan. Was Roach just careless or is Leonard setting him up?

Unfortunately for young Trevor, Trimble isn’t done yet. Callahan's son is playing in what looks more like a dirt pile than a sandbox in his backyard. Great idea to dig such a deep hole, kid. You made things so much easier for Leonard. So Trevor suffocates after being buried alive. His guard probably gets a dishonorable discharge. Meanwhile, Roach is convinced Leonard plans on killing him in his cell. His guard ignores Freely’s panicked cries. Scully later arrives to see Roach was suffocated with his bedsheet. Mulder’s theory? Trimble is committing the murders via astral projection. He plays the answering machine messages backwards and hears the caller say clearly, “Your time has come, killer.”

Sculder meet with Leonard, who says Freely got what he deserved but doesn’t admit to causing his death or anyone else's. Back at the general’s house, Trimble appears before him in full military gear – with his arms and legs intact. Callahan sees bloody footprints and follows them to find his wife’s dead body. He grabs his gun, ignores Dana’s phone call and heads back to the Army hospital. Stans tells Callahan about Trimble. The general then goes to Leonard’s room and the quadruple amputee admits to killing Callahan's wife and son. The general decides not to put Trimble out of his misery but to let him suffer with the rest of them. 

Our heroes arrive and catch Leonard in mid-astral projection as the phantom targets the general in the sub-basement. Mulder finds Callahan, but phantom Trimble knocks him away. Stans manages to get himself up to Leonard’s room, locks the door and smothers him with a pillow. Wouldn’t it have been quicker to just snap his neck? There’s a life-or-death situation going on downstairs. 

So life goes on for Callahan and Stans, who now has Roach’s job. This may be the most joyless episode of The X-Files I’ve ever seen. It’s almost as if the writer intentionally kept out Sculder’s usual moments of banter so they wouldn’t dilute from the seriousness of the devastated soldiers returning from battle. Clearly, Trimble had no intention of coping with the loss of all of his limbs and his revenge plan was brutal, to say the least. So how did Leonard develop the ability to astrally project? Project astrally? Let’s just go with leave his body to kill. The connection to the mail in the victims’ names doesn’t really make sense, they’re just letters sent to the victims, not things they created. The only thing personal about them is they have their names and addresses on them. Leonard knew their names and addresses already. Sestra Pro, ‘splainy?

Sestra Professional:

Something tells me that Leonard Trimble isn't the guy for the woman who saved Scully in "2Shy" after all, Sestra Am. And not just 'cause he's no longer with us. She's empathetic, but he's got way too much rage.

The only way I have to explain your question is to hypothesize that Rappo needs a map to get where he's going. He just plugs the address -- if he doesn't know the place, since he seems to be able to do fine in that regard -- into whatever ethereal data bank he's utilizing to gets where he's going. When this energy was harnessed a couple decades later, it became commonly known as Google Maps.

You're right on the mark about it being a joyless episode, and one devoid of verbal foreplay for the sake of not diminishing the subject matter. The origin of the story wasn't quite so dire. As writer John Shiban, delivering the first of many scripts for the show, explained in the third-season episode guide, he got the idea from a Marlon Brando movie called The Men, in which the lead character lost his legs. "I felt the whole idea behind the story was one of empathy -- this guy wanted his C.O. to feel how he feels. ... The only way to do that was to take everything away from the man, and what worse thing to lose than a child. It's horrific, but to me that's what a horror story is about."

He's just floating around town killing people? A ton of credit deserves to go to the effects team and director Rob Bowman for this one, starting with the hiding of actor Ian Tracey's appendages. Visual effects producer Mat Beck and special effects coordinator David Gauthier's big moment came in the fantastic set piece in which the captain was drowned. (Eh, she wasn't adding much to the quality of the story, not being able to come off anywhere near as stalwart and true as Scully always does effortlessly.)

In fact, Dana gets to do most of the heavy lifting in the episode, between dressing down the captain and the general and running the FBI team handling Roach's arrest. Fox's big contribution -- besides projecting quickly to astral projection -- is discovering the masking of Callahan's messages. Why exactly would Trimble's warnings be played backwards on the general's answering machine? He wasn't smart enough to figure that out, so without the agents, Leonard's added touch would have been meaningless. 

And, furthermore, Rappo's penchant for astral projection certainly enables him to have powers mere mortals don't, like playing tape recorders after the power gets disconnected and putting elevators out of service.

I wouldn't call this a repeat-viewing episode, but there are some good scares throughout. I find it very unsettling when Callahan tries to shoot himself in the head in front of Stans. When the general doesn't succeed, the episode's first victim enlightens him about who has been doing this to everyone. That might have been too little too late had Callahan been able to finish what he started.

I'll also credit Shiban for bringing "The Walk" full circle. The lieutenant colonel apparently has cojones that the general doesn't when it comes to finishing the job. And doesn't that just sound a lot like what Leonard was bothered by in the first place? The underlings are counted on to do the tough work when the chips are down.
 

Guest star of the week: It's not the greatest stand-alone nor does it boast the most memorable villain, but Ian Tracey certainly does underrated work as Rappo. When he does have that scene which Shiban based his whole premise on, he stays right on target, decrying the agents for watching the war on TV and building to the gut-punching line, "What did I get? Nobody knows how I feel. They took my life away."