Spoiler alerts: Darth Vader is Luke’s father, the Planet of the Apes is actually Earth and Queequeg dies. Most of you may not even remember Queequeg, considering how infrequently we saw the dog after Scully inherited him during "Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose" (Season 3, Episode 4). He made a brief cameo in "War of the Coprophages: (Season 3, Episode 12) but that’s about it. The lesson to be learned here: if you hang on to your dog’s leash, he may live through the episode.Dr. Paul Farraday, a biologist working at Heuvelmans Lake in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia, is fighting for the survival of a soon-to-be-extinct breed of frog. His cohort Dr. William Bailey pooh-poohs Paul’s theory of frog depopulation and tries to leave but gets dragged into the lake and dies. Guess Bill Bailey won’t be coming home. ... Sculder -- with Queequeg in tow -- head to Georgia to investigate Dr. Bailey’s “disappearance.” Allegedly, Dana exhausted all other options for doggy day care except actual doggy day care.
Meanwhile, a fisherman has caught something big. It’s probably not a shark and not just because we don’t hear John Williams’s memorable two-note score. It’s the second missing person, Scott Moosley. More accurately, it’s half of him. Dana tries to convince Fox that fish probably ate Scott’s other half. It seems like a ludicrous theory when you see what’s left of Moosley. For all they know, it could have been a boating accident, with a propeller blade cutting him right in half. (Say Hooper’s line from Jaws, Sestra. You know you want to.)
Back at the lake, a stoner and a chick -- the same pair from "War of the Coprophages" -- are talking about the hallucinatory effects of toad licking when they see a snorkeler get attacked in the lake. He comes up for air … but it’s just his head, so I don’t think air is going to help at this point. Still didn’t hear the Jaws theme so maybe it’s Orca instead. Did she have her own score? Scully thinks this body suffered damage from the propeller of a motorboat. Right logical idea, wrong time, Dana.
Mulder determines Big Blue has been moving closer to shore, thanks to Dr. Farraday’s frog repopulation. Sculder go back to mimicking the original Jaws story by going out on a boat a la Brody and Hooper to look for the creature. Modern technology alerts them to its presence. Jaws rams the boat and it springs a leak. Scully gets on the radio to call for help and I half-expected Mulder to smash it with a bat, like Quint does near the end of Jaws.
Sculder’s deep discussion while trapped on the rock could have been interesting insight into Brody and Hooper’s never-heard conversation after Brody killed the shark and they paddled on the barrels back to land. But this isn’t the ocean, it’s just a lake. And the agents get “rescued” by Farraday, who just walks over to their rock. Turns out they’re right next to the shoreline.
Sestra Professional:
I can't even summon the energy to say "This was no boating accident" or hum an increasing ominous Jaws theme. I'm stuck in this "Quagmire."
Oh, tell me you're not serious: It seems a little on the silly side for Mulder and Scully to be on this case. I'll have to agree with the one-note biologist who thinks Big Blue only serves as "fodder for pseudo-scientists to chase fairy tales." And really, no one considers the possibility of an alligator? Cause they're not known for being able to inflict that kind of damage in and out of lakes. At least posit a reason why it couldn't be that.
Has anyone ever told you two you have a great problem coming to the point? This particular line sounds like the work of Darin Morgan. He's credited here as "story editor," but is known to have penned Sculder's famed "Conversation on the Rock." I consider it the least of his achievements on the series to date (although the way the agents are eventually found just feet from shore sounds more like his wheelhouse). But the shipper fan base was so mesmerized by that scene that there are COTR T-shirts ... and Gillian Anderson donned one at a comic con.Barring the entertainment value of Queequeg's demise -- that was seriously funny, I'm still not sure whether that was intentional or not -- the Convo on the Grotto proves to be the most interesting part of the episode, giving David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson a chance to stretch the Sculder relationship. Up until this point, it was all about Fox shooting down Dana's theories with ease. It's just a folk tale, Scully says. To which Mulder retorts, how many folk tales do you know that can eat a Boy Scout and a biologist? Then Dana explains we eat fish and fish eat us, which leads Fox to question whether fish are also known for eating half and saving half for later.
We do get the return of the stoner couple -- and that again seems to herald Morgan's handiwork in the episode since, as Sestra Am pointed out, they were originally in the roach episode earlier this season. While it's fun to see them again, they're basically just sucking up air time like it was airplane glue. The truth or a white whale, what difference does it make? And that's what the Prattle on the Pebble ultimately feels like too. Dana extends more Moby Dick-isms, deeming Fox to be Ahab for going too far to trying to prove his theories. But Mulder considers himself the antithesis of Ahab, backing that up by revealing his latent desire to have a pegleg since childhood. It all seems as glossy as the moon on the lake surface. I dunno, maybe COTR ultimately is just a litmus test of whether or not you're a shipper. I already knew my answer, but thanks for backing that up.
If it knows how to do anything, it knows how to hide: So after going through all that and admittedly a bit of a terrifying life-or-death scramble at the end, Fox admits that he wanted Big Blue to be real because he sees hope in that possibility. Does Scully concede that "people want to believe" because she wants to soothe him after he almost became the full course to the Queequeg appetizer? Because Newton's line is in direct opposition to Morgan's dialogue for her during Cold Shoulder on the Boulder. And to either add insult to injury or make it better -- I'm not sure which -- the monster of Mulder's dreams surfaces at the end.
To extend Sestra Am's various Jaws analogies, the meta on "Quagmire" also harkens back to the filming of the original movie. In the official third-season guide, visual effects producer Mat Beck admitted that the lake monster looked like "a rubber thing" in the water. "When we saw the actual footage it was like, 'Uh, that's not gonna work," he said. Spielberg thankfully didn't have the technology to solve his problem the way the show was able to, with a computer-generated Big Blue.And the show had to walk a fine line with the death of Queequeg since audiences are known for having adverse reactions to such occurrences. According to the episode guide, the writers had been looking for a way to take out the canine all season. "You can kill a legion of men and women, but no dogs," creative consultant Vince Gilligan said. "People go nuts." So no offense intended from laughter at his demise, I love doggos. Just ask my husky, Cody.
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