X-Files S3E23: Scully, is there something wrong?

Sestra Amateur: 

According to Urban Dictionary, wet-wire refers to “new neural connections being created within the brain.” Its best pop-culture example is Johnny Mnemonic, a movie I recommend only when I want to torture people who enjoy Keanu Reeves’ action movies. (Oh, you enjoyed The Matrix and Speed? Then I’m sure you’ll love Johnny Mnemonic…) This is Mat Beck’s one writing contribution to The X-Files, but he handled visual effects on over 100 X-Files episodes as well as other projects that span 30 years of my TV and movie time: The Abyss, Titanic, The Vampire Diaries, Game of Thrones. Can you imagine being the go-to effects guy for Chris Carter, Kevin Williamson and James Cameron? Too bad the closest thing he has to a Star Wars credit is Spaceballs. OK, let’s get wetwired. 

It’s late at night in Maryland and Joseph Patnik is digging a grave. He drags an unconscious man into the hole and starts to bury him. While Joe is cleaning up afterward at home, the unconscious man – now conscious and very clean considering he should be covered with blood and dirt – walks right up to an astonished Joe. Patnik kills the man again, but before he can rebury the body the police arrive. Unfortunately, both officers look exactly like the man so Joe attacks them too. One of the officers subdues him with a Taser and now Joe can see the officer looks nothing like the man. It turns out the man Patnik just killed in the kitchen is actually his wife Sarah.

Two days later, Mulder is having a clandestine meeting with the Plain-Clothed Man. He tells him to investigate Patnik but won’t say who sent him. Turns out, Joe killed five people before he was stopped. Concerned by the man’s assertion that the deaths will continue, Fox contacts Scully and they meet at the psychiatric hospital the next morning. The agents are talking with Dr. Stroman about the case when Joe freaks out while watching TV and has to be restrained. Why would they allow him to watch cable news about a man wanted for war crimes in Yugoslavia instead of a nice, soothing program like Barney and Friends?  

Sculder continue the investigation at the Patnik residence, where they find a couple of truant burglars who have good taste in snacks and movies. (Hey Sestra – “We’re gonna need more FBI guys.”) The TV loses cable and Mulder notices a cable guy working on the lines outside. Scully finds a cabinet filled with meticulously organized VHS tapes of recorded cable news. She and Fox take the tapes back to their hotel rooms and zip through them to see whether there is a connection. Dana finds one – of course – between dates of Lladoslav Miriskovic footage and Joe’s known murders. Did I mention that the man Joe saw during each murder was Miriskovic? Some would consider that an important piece of information.

Sculder debate the link between violence on TV and violent behavior. Fox even throws in a “Must-See TV” dis, which when this episode aired during Spring 1996 consisted of Friends (must-see), Boston Common (must-not-see), Seinfeld (must-see), Caroline in the City (must-not-see) and ER (for me, must-see on DVD). Scully keeps watching the tapes late into the night and listens to Mulder’s half of a phone conversation through the motel-room wall. She goes out for ice and sees Fox having a delightful conversation in his car with the Cigarette-Smoking Man. Dana watches Mulder hand him one of the videotapes. Maybe it was just a copy of The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington.

The next day, Helene Riddock is washing dishes and watching a game show when she starts seeing weird glitchy images in the dish soap, then the kitchen, no doubt Mat Beck’s visual handiwork. She looks out the window and gets perturbed when she sees a woman straddling Helene’s husband on a hammock. Helene takes a shotgun and … boom! Sculder head to the new crime scene. Scully notes there’s no ashes in their car’s ashtray, but she’s still suspicious because the car was moved. 

The agents learn the blonde with the victim was actually their golden retriever. You know, even if it was a woman, that’s not enough incentive to shoot him with a shotgun. Sculder also note that Helene was a big fan of the Home Shopping Network; she lives in tchotchke hell. Her videotape collection is not nearly as well organized as Joe’s. Mulder sees cable guy working on the Riddock’s lines and tries to stop him, the man gets away. Fox then climbs the pole and removes a piece of equipment that doesn’t match the others. Mulder thinks it’s a cable trapper scrambler. Scully wants to take it to their lab for analysis but Fox says he’ll do it. Instead, he takes it to The Lone Gunmen who verify it’s emitting some type of signal. Subliminal? 

Dana gets more paranoid after a phone call with Mulder. It doesn’t help that Fox claims he had the evidence analyzed when Scully knows their lab guy never saw it. Dana hears clicks on her phone and hangs up. She also tears apart her room looking for bugs. The listening devices, not the little critters we expect to see in every motel room. Mulder finally returns and knocks on her door, but Scully is so far gone that she shoots several times. Luckily she’s a bad shot today. It’s just like you always say, Fox: Trust no one.

Mulder calls Dana’s mother and tattles that she ran away. Considering Dana was abducted for several months and Melissa was murdered, you’d think Fox would have found a better way of relaying that information. Skinner arrives at the scene and Mulder tries to explain how Scully is suffering from paranoid psychosis brought on by the signals embedded in the videotapes. Walter wants proof, even though you’d think her shooting at Fox supports his theory. Skinner convinces Mulder to find her first so Fox reaches out to Mr. X. The Lone Gunmen tell him the device is a form of mind control. Turns out Mulder might be immune because he is red/green color-blind. Man, so Freddy Krueger’s sweater is just one bland grey garment to Mulder? And what about traffic lights? 

Fox gets a call that State Police may have found Scully’s body. Plain-Clothed Man intercepts Mulder at the coroner’s office to berate him for letting evidence get destroyed while he searches for his partner. Luckily, the body is not Dana's – Gillian was still under contract so we knew it was unlikely. Fox figures Scully is at her mom’s house and goes to see her, but Dana holds him at gunpoint and blames him for everything that has happened to her since she joined the X-Files. Mulder tries to convince her she is the only person he trusts. But Margaret is the one who is finally able to reach Dana.

At the hospital, after Scully gets de-paranoid (OK, it’s not a word but I like the sound of it), she and Fox discuss the triggers for all of the victims. Mulder learns Dana had high serotonin levels in her system that could have led to her manic behavior. Fox calls Dr. Stroman at Joe’s hospital, but he’s already gone. Mulder checks his empty hotel room and learns Cancer Man may have been there. He traces Stroman's phone number and watches the doctor meet with the cable guy. Fox hears shots inside the house and finds both men dead. 

Mr. X has cleaned up the loose ends, provides a teeny bit of exposition and leaves even though Mulder’s pointing a gun at him. As X said, Fox made his choice. Clearly, he won’t pull the trigger. One week later, Sculder give their final report to the assistant director. It's not complete ... and Skinner knows it. Meanwhile, X meets with Cancer Man to give his own wrapup. It’s not complete … and CSM knows it. 

Sestra Professional:

X-Philes cling to Mulder telling Scully she's the only one he trusts with every thing they have, but the way he asks her if something's wrong has infinite charm as well. How can anything so wrong be so right?

This is no Johnny Mnemonic and I give major props to Mat Beck for that. Usually he gets those for providing incredible visual effects under TV constraints, but here he's crafted a crackling stand-alone show. It doesn't seem to get mentioned often on best-of lists, but rest assured, it fits securely in The X-Files wheelhouse and really deserves more due. 

The teaser is outta sight and the episode doesn't let up much from there. The message about our over-reliance on television really hits home. Nowadays, we can probably extend that analogy to the internet and YouTube. And now my paranoia is reaching Mulder proportions.

I appreciated the little conversation between Fox and Plain-Clothed Man. Since Deep Throat bit the dust, sources just aren't willing to go on the record with Mulder anymore. PCM's very cavalier about inducing Mulder to make a choice -- even though he's just there at X's request. And the agent is understandably tired of being jerked around without ever getting all the information he needs to do his job. Even so, we know Day Player's attitude won't keep him from meeting the fate he's determined to avoid.

Not even must-see TV could do that to you: The ante gets upped very quickly for our heroes. Usually, we watch guest stars go through those paces, and then at the end maybe Sculder finds themselves in peril for a similar reason. But Scully quickly discerns that television reports on Bosnia triggered the teaser guy's behavior, and in trying to prove her own theory, she unwittingly becomes a victim. How could the stakes be raised higher than her thinking she sees Mulder handing over evidence to the Cancer Man? Well, Dana shooting at Fox would certainly be one way.

Gillian Anderson's performance is right on target in this episode. Love the way she's showing us Scully's doubts about Mulder when she actually doesn't get to voice them for most of the episode. She hits some notes she doesn't usually get to play on the show. In fact, she's kind of taking on David Duchovny's role on an even more heightened level. Anderson just feasts upon the opportunity.

Fifty-seven channels of mind control: "Wetwired" also provides a perfect scenario for The Lone Gunman to figure into the mix, distilling all that information to Mulder -- and us, in turn -- about what subliminal information might be inserted between still pictures of television transmissions. In fact, it's making me even more suspicious. I'll try to focus on the cool distorted static effect the episode uses to delineate the alternate reality instead.

I'm not sure making Mulder red-green color blind to distinguish why he doesn't get affected is the way to go -- how has he been delineating blood at crime scenes all these years if he can't tell for sure? Couldn't the reason he wasn't overwhelmed just have been that he was fast-forwarding tapes while Scully watched them all the way through?

Scully, you are the only one I trust: But back to Fox uttering the words that show how far our leads have come in three years. Dana's holding him at gunpoint and blaming him for everything that's gone wrong, yet Mulder doesn't even flinch. He will do absolutely anything he can to convince her that she's the most trusted person in his life. It's a well-earned moment.

Lest this episode just give Anderson juicy material to feast upon, Duchovny also gets a robust scene with X near the end. Mulder ponders whether the lost evidence will be used to influence a great God-fearing nation's commerce and politics. X retorts that it probably wouldn't stop there. And that's when Fox gets to mouth off and voice everyone's concerns. Why is it that X continues to feed him scraps, risking Sculder's lives when he never will do likewise with his own?

And then an episode resplendent with clandestine meetings ends with one between Cigarette Smoking Man and X, which feels like a treat since it's something we don't get to see often. If I was X, I probably would have just gone with "that person has been eliminated" and not pointed out another source remains unknown. X isn't doing himself any favors, even in the shadows. 

This day in meta: Wait? All the Plain-Clothed Man's scenes were supposed to be X's? According to the official third-season episode guide, Steven Williams was filming his other series, L.A. Heat, and unavailable to handle the earlier scenes of the ep. ... Speaking of Williams, he really enjoyed the final "Wetwired" scene. "These two guys; you don't where they stand with each other. Who is the subordinate in that duo?" he pondered in The Complete X-Files. ... Continuity error alert! Scully fires six rounds at the hotel-room door, but Skinner later says it's four. Maybe he's just gotten another incomplete report. 

Guest star of the week: Zinaid Memisevic sells the teaser so well as variations of the war criminal that we are at a fever-pitch level before Sculder even get on the scene. Or was it merely conveyed to me in the transmission that Memisevic wasn't listed in the end credits and I needed to remedy the situation? Well, either way, he really set the pace in a supercharged episode.