This episode has Skinner and Mulder and bees, oh my… #10wordepisodereview. No Scully in this one, it’s a Mulder/Skinner ep. What do their shippers call them? Mulder? Skinner? Mulskin? Sounds like a bad name for beer or a primitive name for condoms. However, the title of this episode is pretty telling. "Zero Sum" essentially means one side wins, the other side loses. Wonder which side will apply to our boys.In Desmond, Virginia, postal employee Jane Brody violates the Virginia Clean Indoor Air Act (which didn’t exist until 2009, so we’ll give her some leeway) by smoking a cigarette in the ladies room stall of the processing center. Thousands of bees inexplicably enter the bathroom and attack Jane. Co-worker Misty Nagata checks on Jane and finds her friend’s bee stung corpse in the stall.
Assistant Director Walter Skinner – who is in full puppet mode – snoops through Mulder’s computer and deletes photographs of Jane’s dead body. He also cleans up the crime scene, complete with flushing Jane’s cigarette and vacuuming up evidence. I think Walter missed his true calling. Maybe he’ll come to my house and clean my grout too. Skinner then heads to the local morgue and removes Jane’s corpse. He burns her in an off-site furnace and director Kim Manners finally gets some great reflective shots from Skinner’s glasses. Mulder – actually Walter masquerading as Fox – arrives at the Desmond Police Department and tampers with the evidence. He replaces a (probably tainted) vial of blood with a (probably normal) one. Seems like Desmond PD’s coroner is more on the ball than their crime-scene techs, who hadn’t even processed the bathroom that Skinner cleaned.
Detective Ray Thomas catches up to “Mulder” before Skinner can get away. Walter tells the detective the case is not an X-File and there will be no further FBI involvement. Back at home, Skinner strips down to his tighty whities and is about to throw away his clothing when Mulder shows up at the front door ... at 4 a.m. Fox printed out Jane’s photographs before Walter deleted the files, but he is still livid someone hacked his computer. To make matters worse, Det. Thomas has been shot and killed, and the time of death coincides with Skinner’s evidence-tampering visit to the precinct. Walter heads to his underground garage and gets a visit from a man smoking a cigarette. He confronts Cancer Man about the cop’s murder while the latter just smokes and talks cryptically. (I don’t mean he was smoking cryptically, but is that even a thing?)
The next morning, Mulder calls Skinner to report the theft of Jane’s body and the tampering of her blood evidence. And, of course, the gun used to kill the detective is Walter's since he’s being set up. Skinner calls CSM, who continues to turn the screws. Walter claims he’ll turn state’s evidence but Cancer Man dangles the "heal Scully" carrot to keep him in line. Skinner returns to the original crime scene and looks for evidence he overlooked that he can use to get out of this mess. He breaks through the bathroom wall and finds an abandoned honeycomb, then brings a sample to forensic entomologist Dr. Valedespino in a Maryland lab to determine what type of bees created it. Skinner’s continued research into weaponized bees leads him to Fox's contact, Marita Covarrubias. Walter is still in Mulder’s office when Fox returns with grainy surveillance photographs of Det. Thomas’ killer, “Fox Mulder”. Meanwhile, the weaponized bees attack and kill Dr. Valedespino. Luckily, Fox gets to the new corpse before Walter and learns the scientist died of smallpox carried by the bees. Skinner goes back to the post office processing center and interviews Misty about her friend as Skinner, not Mulder. She’s worried about losing her job and tells Walter that men visited her, told her not to talk and asked about damaged packages.
The FBI’s photo technician enhances the surveillance photograph and the unknown suspect clearly becomes Walter Skinner. Cancer Man meets with his Syndicate in New York City and updates them on the situation. Without naming names, CSM indicates Skinner has taken care of things and their project is under way. Then we get to watch the weaponized bees attack and sting children on a playground in South Carolina. One of the teachers gets stung hundreds of times. Wow, those Syndicate guys are real jerks. Skinner shows up at the hospital and tells the ER doctor to treat the victims for smallpox. Dr. Linzer isn’t buying it, but Marita does because she shows up to help Skinner. She wants to track down those missing packages and expects answers. Walter tells her about the “experiment,” but is reluctant to reveal his own duplicity. Wow, Skinner hasn’t been this screwed since "Avatar" (Season 3, Episode 21).
An armed and pissed Mulder is waiting for Skinner … and some answers at the assistant director's abode. (I don’t think this gets addressed, but did Dr. Linzer eventually believe the smallpox story and finally treat the children? Or were they all dying while Mulder and Skinner yelled at each other?) Surprisingly, Fox doesn’t want to believe Walter is being set up. It should have been the conspiracy buff’s first thought. Skinner surrenders his gun and ballistics tests show it is the same one used to kill the detective. But Mulder doesn’t disclose that it’s Walter’s. (They filed off the serial number so no one can trace it back to him.) Skinner confronts Cancer Man with a different handgun, but CSM keeps playing the save Scully card. Skinner shoots at CSM three times but intentionally misses – at least we hope it was intentional. Otherwise, Walter is a really, really bad shot. Skinner leaves and Cancer Man takes a phone call from Marita, who seems to be playing ball with the Syndicate. Boy, Mulder was right, trustno1. By the way, if you use that as a password, mix it up a little bit: tRu$tN01!
Sestra Professional:
At first glance, there's doesn't seem to be too much meat on the bones of this one, since it's mostly action and little talk, but it gives us a good look at Cigarette-Smoking Man's new hold on Skinner. Jane could have avoided certain death if she just went outside for her smoke break, though. Howard Gordon (his final work for the show) and Frank Spotnitz's script depends upon director Kim Manners handling the initial array of scenes without dialogue. And he really pulls it off. Everything from the scary bathroom death to the reflections of Skinner's glasses lend a lot of atmosphere before the enticing two-person scenes get underway.
A man digs a hole, he risks falling into it: "Zero Sum" gives Mitch Pileggi a lot of wiggle room, and not just in the tighty whities. Walter's obviously walking a fine line now. He's compromised, but we can remain firmly on his side because he's doing it all for our beloved -- and absent -- Scully, who seems to be getting worse off camera. And because he really doesn't look happy while he's doing it.
I agree with Sestra Am, Skinner does a nice job of cleaning up and he's pretty buff too, being able to tote the "180-pound victim" around. I guess that's how he ascended to the Assistant Director position. (Clue flashback: "Why do you think it's run by a man called Hoover?") But wouldn't the Spic and Span restroom raise the eyebrows of technicians processing the crime scene?Thank goodness Mulder's around to open Walter's eyes to the larger picture. (He hasn't been doing this long enough to jump to conclusions.) It's left to Fox to explain how the technician can contract a disease that doesn't exist anymore -- through the dreaded bee stings. Mulder hypothesizes that someone's experimenting with a method of delivery for smallpox -- with a reminder about that illness killing more people in history than any other before the cure was discovered. It could make a rather devastating comeback.
So there's a bee hive in the walls of the post office. That's kind of a dramatic way to make adhesive for stamps. Remember when we used to have to lick them? Maybe that would have been a better way of transmitting smallpox than the bees.
I'm a little disappointed by another quick reveal of someone in CSM's corner. Marita Covarrubias seemed to be very interested in justice when talking with Skinner at the hospital, but just minutes later, we find out she's reporting to him. The X-Files never held off on imparting that kind of information. With so many episodes and seasons to play with, I kind of wish they had. I'm starting to get used to my own advice: We get quite a few conversations between two characters in "Zero Sum." There's Mulder holding Skinner at gunpoint -- again? But I do appreciate how he quickly jumps to the conclusion that Walter had knowledge of the death of Fox's father. It's a great gut response. Skinner makes a nice callback to "Memento Mori" (S4E15), when he talked Mulder out of making a deal with the devil.
And that's followed by another scene wrought with tension when Walter pulls his new gun on Cancer Man. He thinks he's being strung along, but CSM counters that he'll never know if Dana can be cured if he wastes him. Manners utilizes a great set of beats before revealing that the three shots whizzed by CSM's head, and we're left with the realization that Skinner could very well do the job if the mood strikes him.
Meta-stizing: The episode came about because Gillian Anderson was away for a week filming The Mighty. In the fourth-season official guide, Spotnitz recounted that they didn't want to work David Duchovny too hard, so they made use of the annual tradition of writing a Skinner episode. "After all, Skinner had already made his Faustian bargain with the Cigarette-Smoking Man in 'Memento Mori.' This was a logical time to see it played out. It was also a good place to bring back the bees, where were introduced at the beginning of the season in 'Herrenvolk' (S4E1), but which had never been explained." ... Pileggi had only a few days notice that he'd be appearing before the cameras in his underwear. The guide reported he immediately hit the weight room. ... Manners was thrilled that he got his first chance to work with Pileggi on an episode that the actor really sank his teeth into, according to the guide. ... One of Mulder's folders halfway through the show is labeled "Foo Fighters." ... The episode was dedicated to Pileggi's late father, Vito.Filming the schoolyard scene proved to be quite a chore, with thousands of bees really liberated around the children. "They released the bees, and we had paramedics standing by on the off chance that someone got stung and then would go into anaphylactic shock," Manners said in The Complete X-Files. "I'd say, 'Cut it, print it' and a kid would come running out crying, and the mother would say, 'Get back in there, you're working on The X-Files!'"
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