Saturday, August 25, 2018

X-Files S5E1: The best or worst drinking-game episode?

Sestra Amateur: 

First and foremost, all of the supporting characters who should have been in the Season 4 finale pop up in the Season 5 premiere. Second and … secondmost, I wonder whether anyone has access to the TV Guide that contains the first-run information for this episode, which aired 11/2/97. If it’s anything like Hulu’s description – “Mulder accesses a secret research facility…” – then the drama of his supposed suicide was just ignored altogether. So, big surprise, Fox isn’t dead. 

Time to flash back to Mulder crying and watching the NASA panel on his television set. The impact of a devastated Fox is muted by a Mulder voiceover. I think my attention span trails off every time they do that. Michael Kritschgau calls Mulder, who realizes someone is spying on him from the upstairs apartment. Fox struggles with the man who is his approximate height, weight and physical description. And now we know where the dead body in Fox's apartment came from.

Scully returns to her own home, where Mulder is waiting patiently for her. He identifies his voyeur as Department of Defense employee Scott Ostelhoff from the previous episode. Sculder review Ostelhoff’s phone records and realize he had frequent F.B.I. contact, but with whom? Fox's annoying voiceover carries over to Dana's identification of his body. Assistant Director Skinner intercepts Scully as she leaves and she again lies about dead Fox. Skinner claims it was a shotgun blast, which negates the suicide theory or at least makes it less plausible. I remember Mulder having a handgun, so I don’t know if Walter lied to test Dana.


Useless voiceover continues. Mulder accesses the Department of Defense building using Ostelhoff’s I.D. while Skinner and Scully (Skilly? … I am not calling them Skinny) meet with Section Chief Scott Blevins and two additional F.B.I. higher-ups. Dana admits to contact with Kritschgau, who approaches Fox in the D.O.D. building. He tells Mulder that Ostelhoff had Level 4 clearance so Fox can get, you know, the truth. Back in Mulder’s apartment, the maid hasn’t arrived to remove the blood stain from the carpet yet. Cigarette Smoking Man lets himself in, sees the surveillance hole in the ceiling and quickly puts two and two together. Scully learns Ostelhoff’s F.B.I. contact’s extension is Walter Skinner’s line, but shouldn’t she already know his number?

Kritschgau tells Fox how war motivates the United States and covers 50 years of history in about 60 seconds. Michael claims the line between science and science fiction doesn’t exist anymore. That’s a chilling thought. Kritschgau and Mulder are motivated by each wanting to save the life of someone close to them. Fox enters Level 4 but Michael gets detained by the military.


Outside, it’s a lovely day for a horse race. Cancer Man meets with “The Elder,” who claims Mulder is dead. CSM is perturbed because the Syndicate left him out of the loop regarding Fox's surveillance. Dana is back with Dr. Vitagliano, the scientist who analyzed the ice sample in the last episode. (I’m all for tributes and dedications, but Chris Carter is not making it easy with all of these non-traditional surnames!) Turns out, the cells are creating a new life form. 

And we’re back to the voiceover. I get the feeling Chris Carter includes them for himself because they don’t really add anything to the action, they don’t make the scenes more interesting and they seem rather self-serving. I’m OK with watching Mulder sneak around the D.O.D. with just Mark Snow’s score in the background because I’ve paid attention enough to know why Fox is there and what he’s doing. Although the one time they should have had Mulder’s voiceover say, “holy s***” -- when he sees a room filled with hundreds of possible alien life form corpses, he’s just speechless. And just as Fox inspects one of the possible corpses, it’s time for a Scully voiceover. Inside another room with strobes and reverberating sound effects, Mulder sees table after table of women who are displayed just like Dana when she was abducted.

Dr. Vitagliano takes a sample of Scully’s blood and she pushes him to get her results that same night (before her 7 p.m. appearance with the joint panel). Skinner spies on her and Dana calls him on it. They argue but Walter has the upper hand because he knows Scully lied about Fox's suicide during the official investigation. Maybe she can save herself without the “conspiracy, genetic evidence, blah blah blah” narrative. She doesn’t have to speculate about what Mulder has learned. He’s not really dead, Dana, pick up the phone! 

Fox makes his way into the Pentagon hidden archives, which resemble the world’s largest card catalog. Cancer Man is notified of “Ostelhoff’s” access to Level 4 and heads to the Pentagon while Scully continues performing genetic tests and finds a link. Mulder continues his walk through Level 4 and possibly finds a cure for Dana’s cancer. Scully prepares to blow open a conspiracy of global consequence, but it’s time for her joint panel appearance. Flash back to "Gethsemane" (Season 4, Episode 24)  and Dana's prior testimony. 

Meanwhile, Mulder is trying to get out of the Pentagon but Ostelhoff’s I.D. card has been deactivated. However, Cancer Man lets Fox escape without arresting him. Scully gets worked up as she tells the panel about Mulder’s suicide and claims to have proof of a link between her illness and the alien hoax. And just when she is about to reveal what she learned … she’s too weak to continue and falls into Skinner’s arms. At the same time, Mulder brings the “cure” to The Lone Gunmen, but it’s only deionized water. Here’s hoping next week’s episode will contain less pandering to the viewers. Voiceovers, be gone! By the way, I’ve decided the excessively expositional voiceovers were a necessary tool Carter used to reach and update a larger audience for the series as well as the upcoming movie. Sestra, does that theory hold (de-ionized) water? 

Sestra Professional:

Asked and answered ... the TV Guide description for the premiere was a close-up that more than gave away the details. "A Lie to Find the Truth: The fifth-season opener reveals events up to last season's cliffhanger, in which Scully (Gillian Anderson) announced that Mulder (David Duchovny) committed suicide. In fact, her report was a ploy to buy time." 

So good day and welcome to Season 5. I have to agree straight off with Sestra Am on a couple of fronts. The voiceover thing always gets my goat. Maybe because it's just considered lazy, or maybe because they're inherently verbose, prone to pontification and downright hokey. It just makes me roll my eyes. There's no better way to get this information across? Well, all right. Maybe it was indeed to clue in the growing legion of X-Files fans, but it's so heavy-handed.

That makes "Redux" tailor-made for a drinking game. Another "Scully originally assigned to the X-Files to debunk Mulder" reference, drink! A gulp for every voiceover, and it wouldn't take long to get completely crocked during this episode. A Dana narrative leads right into a Fox one? Down the bottle. It's way too much, particularly when Mulder explains how and why he's in the bowels of the Pentagon and his plans for getting out of there. This couldn't have been written by anyone but the show's creator/executive producer. 

My beliefs seem more and more improbable: When we rewatched "Gethsemane," I found myself, if not disappointed, then not particularly engaged. On a rewatch, we obviously knew Fox wasn't going to die, and there wasn't terribly much to keep us engrossed beyond that. "Redux" might have gone that way too, if a lot of the regulars hadn't been worked back into the mix. But how did Section Chief Blevins -- the guy who originally assigned Scully to the X-Files -- become such a major player? He's been kinda out of the loop for a while.

Dana's not kidding, folks. She's reallllly not happy to find Fox in her apartment. There go all the shippers' Season 1-4 pipe dreams. Mulder convinces Scully to lie to find the truth, as the quote TV Guide commandeered attests and the voiceover mentions again. No need to recap things we've just heard, even a brand-new viewer can hopefully retain information that long.

But it was strangely affecting to see Smoking Man weeping at what he initially thought was the loss of his son. However bizarre it was to have the series' greatest villain not in the Season 4 finale is more than made up for by his return in the Season 5 opener.

The business of America isn't business ... it's war: Kritschgau seems to be doing a take on Oliver Stone with his fully detailed look at how the conspiracy and covert operations progressed to this point. The Cold War got particularly frosty because the country was scarred by the McCarthy hearings and the government used Roswell UFO sightings to take attention away from the global concerns and further its covert cause. It continued on with the use of biochemicals in the Gulf War and unsuspecting citizens have been abducted -- and tested -- by the government, not aliens.

Love the introduction of Mark Snow's incidental theme music for our lead characters. We'll be hearing a lot of it in the upcoming seasons and it fits perfectly into the mix. He's proven as deft in the quiet moments as he has been with underscoring suspense. 

The American appetite for bogus revelation: The Skinner-Scully confrontations aren't working for me here, aside from the fact that Mitch Pileggi and Anderson are rocking them, performance-wise. That could just be a byproduct of knowing what happens in the future, but I thought the connection between those two -- and the agents, in general -- had progressed past this point. The business with the extension doesn't seem like proof, if it's not Walter's number (which Dana should know) then it's a bunch of digits that seemingly anyone could access. Scully herself has certainly seen Cancer Man in Skinner's office.

So Scully reports to the joint panel that her partner was a victim of his own false hopes and his belief in the biggest of lies and the plot was designed and executed to bring about both their demises. At its heart, that provides a great jump-start for the premise and the fifth season. Mulder no longer believes and the alleged proof the dynamic duo has been shown -- well, mostly Fox cause we know Dana usually doesn't get to see anything definitive -- was at the behest of the conspiracy. And if he finds the cure for her, that would seem to negate so much of his quest.

In The Complete X-Files, Kim Manners hypothesized that Mulder was Carter's alter ego. "I think David understood that because David played Mulder as Chris plays Chris. Mulder stayed very calm, cool and collected and that's very much how Chris Carter is in real life," the director said.

Guest star of the week: What a nifty way to get to see the lovely countenance of Julia Arkos once again. It's nice to renew ties with the little woman who kicked Skinner's ass in "Pusher" (S3E17). Holly's still a federal employee and she's utilized in the perfect way too, being tapped to access phone records for Scully. I just wish she was able to pop in again for similar assistance in future episodes as well.

Saturday, August 18, 2018

X-Files S4E24: Bunk or debunk, that is the question

Sestra Amateur: 

Chris Carter gets the final word as another season comes to an end with "Gethsemane" (common spelling). The episode opens with a televised NASA symposium about alien life from Nov. 20, 1972. (Imagine 5-year-old Sestra Pro sitting intently in front of the family TV, just like teen-aged Chris Carter probably was.) Fast forward to May 1997 – when this episode aired – and Scully is at a crime scene identifying a dead body. She later appears before an FBI committee to tell the tale of how she joined the X-Files and how Fox Mulder came to “believe the lie."

Dana is at a family dinner and the family priest is trying to save Scully's soul before the cancer kills her. Luckily, Mulder calls her away to meet a forensic anthropologist named Arlinsky, who unearthed a frozen body deep in the Yukon Territory. Arlinsky claims the “extraterrestrial biological entity” is at least 200 years old and insists the samples were not faked. Clearly he doesn’t know the government. And why not just call the episode "E.B.E. Part 2"? (Part 1 was Season 1, Episode 17.) That is so much easier to spell – and say – than "Gethsemane." Sculder veer into a philosophical discussion about God and belief. Meanwhile, Dana's cancer has metastasized and clearly she needs a season-finale miracle.

Back on the mountain, Babcock arms himself because he has trust issues with the other men. There’s evidence of possible tampering with the ice, which ruins Arlinsky’s theory. Another man, Rolston, heads back down on foot. Scully gets a breakdown of the ice from a different scientist. He finds something unusual and wants to look into it further. The crew members are executed on the mountain. Mulder and Arlinsky arrive at the deserted site the following morning. They take a walk and find Rolston’s dead body. Fox and Arlinsky push on, following footprints in the snow. It’s so much easier to track people in snow, isn’t it?


Dana interrupts a burglary and theft at the lab, but doesn’t realize it until it’s too late. An unidentified man steals the ice sample and pushes Scully down the stairs when she pursues him. Mulder and Arlinsky find the crew’s dead bodies in the tents at the peak. Not only that, the E.B.E. is missing from the ice. Fox seems more affected by the missing alien than the poor murder victims. Makes you wonder how much time has passed for him between the last episode (in which he put his brain through hell trying to recover his memories) and this episode. Maybe apathy is a side effect of ketamine treatments and electroconvulsive therapy. Babcock is still alive, but he’s seriously injured. Somehow he managed to hide the E.B.E. from the hit squad.

Dana’s brother, Bill, meets her at the hospital and admits he knows about her cancer diagnosis. He’s pissed because she won’t stop working and because Mulder isn’t there for her, emotionally or physically. Luckily for Fox, Dana doesn’t tell Bill that Mulder is searching for aliens on a Canadian mountaintop. Continuity error: Sestra Pro, can you explain how Scully had several blood-stained blotches on the back of her shirt even though we didn’t see any visible cuts from her fall there? Her facial bruises don’t explain it and even if she had one of her frequent nosebleeds, she would have had to take off her shirt to use it as a big-ass tissue.


FBI Agent Hedin is tasked with doing the analysis work Agent Pendrell would have handled had he not been stupidly murdered six episodes ago ("Max," S4E18) . Based on Scully’s suggestion, her assailant is identified as government employee Michael Kritschgau (again, common spelling). Arlinsky is beginning the E.B.E.’s autopsy while Mulder watches and Babcock records with a video camera. Inside the creature’s body, the doctor finds evidence that it is not human. Dana confronts Kritschgau in the parking garage at the Pentagon and stops short of actually mowing him down. He runs away from her and takes off in his own car. She takes a shortcut and gets him out of the car at gunpoint. He claims he’ll be killed by the same people who gave her cancer. That’s enough to get Scully to stop yelling at him.

Dana learns Fox is back in Virginia with the E.B.E. She believes Kritschgau and brings him to Mulder to show they've both been set up. He just has an answer for everything, but Fox doesn’t believe. Ironic, huh? At the same time, an assassin working with Babcock kills Arlinsky. Sculder return to the warehouse and find Arlinsky’s body … as well as Babcock’s. No loss there, you can double-cross only so many times before it bites you in the butt. 


Scully explains to Mulder why she believed Kritschgau, but her partner doesn’t want to hear it. Fox waits until he is alone in his apartment, watching that same NASA panel, before showing signs of emotion and despair. Dana tells the FBI committee Fox Mulder died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to wait an entire summer to find out how Fox gets out of this one?

Sestra Professional:

I put forth that no episode of The X-Files loses more impact upon rewatch than "Gethsemane." We obviously know that Mulder isn't dead. And we spend the entire show watching Sculder document things that have already happened. Fox treks to the peak of a mountain to find a crew murdered, except one guy who saved the alleged alien body that everyone else was supposedly killed for. Meanwhile, Scully -- her health still in decline -- tries to get an ice sample documented. Dana gets knocked down the stairs for her trouble, but recovers enough to nab the guy who did it.

Even worse, our dynamic duo spend very little time together. At the beginning, they have a clunky stairway discussion in which Mulder's belief in aliens is juxtaposed with Scully's faith in God. And at the end, they listen to Dana's attacker -- who claims he was doing the conspiracy's bidding to save his son -- systematically explain almost every part of the mythology in less than five minutes.

Now contrast that with "Anasazi," the incredible second-season closer in which the tension is kept at a fever pitch. Yeah, we didn't expect Fox to be a goner after Cigarette-Smoking Man ordered the boxcar he's hiding in to be burned, but at least it was Mulder at the center of the action. Also, this one has no CSM ... or Skinner ... or Krycek ... or even X to propel the story.

But back to the start of the episode. Had I known the space symposium with Carl Sagan was on in 1972, I probably would have been crossed-legged in front of the TV in anticipation. As I actually was on May 18, 1997 when "Gethsamene" aired with the big cliffhanger -- Mulder dead, What??? No!!! Not sure I was aware they were making the first feature film during the summer, I was actually concerned about Fox's welfare and David Duchovny's future on the show. 

A victim of his own false hopes and his belief in the biggest of lies: Another season is coming to an end, so I suppose it was time for another round of "Scully was assigned to the X-Files to debunk Mulder's work." OK, I can take that. What I never have been able to abide are the blanket statements about the work. Just because the alien investigation takes a turn, that doesn't negate all the work they have done. Was Season 1's Tooms (Episodes 3, 21) bogus? Did Season 3's Pusher (Episode 17) not push? Everything isn't every-thing.

The Yukon territory was certainly picturesque, though. I could have watched 45 minutes of the helicopter flying around and the guys trucking to the peak. I would have used that time to work on the pronunciation of "Gethsemane." Looked pretty frosty on location, I felt for the actors. I'm glad I can reflect on calling it "Geth-us-mon" before the light bulb went on from the warmth of my own home.

We get a proper look at Dana's brother ... Bill. Another Bill. Could they come up with no other name? And the guy's a tool and he's rather two-dimensional, but maybe he's a tool with a point. Scully's health is worsening and Fox is out getting his toes frozen in the name of his quest. 

There is some interesting character development with Dana, and as we've been accustomed to, Gillian Anderson just rocks it. She gets pulled into an awkward discussion with Father McCue, explaining she does have strength and feels it's hypocritical to ask God for help when she hadn't been attending church when she was well. But nope, Sestra Am, I didn't see any reason for Scully to have cuts after she fell down the stairwell from what aired. Something might have been cut ... out. (According to the fourth-season episode guide, 12 minutes had to be edited out of the show.)

Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to make Fox believe as though a complete corpse of an extraterrestrial biological entity that is over 200 years old was stuffed into a crevasse at high altitude. It's the ultimate punk job. And the question is actually raised in the episode. If this were a hoax, why were there six dead men up on the mountain? I still don't have the answer for that.

This is your holy grail, not mine: We're reminded that Scully's just been tagging along  on Mulder's ride when she tells him it's not her last dying wish to find out whether the aliens exist or not. He's knocked down another peg when she later tells him that the people involved in the conspiracy are the ones who gave her cancer.

So Kritschgau knocks down every one of Fox's presumptions -- after the guy who shoved Dana down the stairs is invited to Mulder's apartment. He starts with a great Chris Carter supposition, these people gained power and momentum during the Cold War. There's lots of Carter-esque bunk in his dialogue with words such as "unbridled and unchecked" and "confabulating," but the main point is crystal clear -- "Their lies are so deep, the only way to cover them is to create something even more incredible."

After a line about the lies they fed Mulder's father -- a blatant attempt to get him off the hook -- Kritschgau talks about the above-top-secret military aircraft that feeds the hysteria, the naturally occurring biologic anomalies that will eventually be explained by science frozen into place and that Fox was only meant to see the E.B.E. -- not to test it. What took four years to build up was deconstructed by Kritschgau (and Carter) in over five minutes. 

Freezing our meta off: I was worried when the credits started at the beginning of the episode, because I never had fallen victim to "So-and-so was on The X-Files?" I thought I had when I saw the name John Oliver in the credits, though. I didn't remember The Daily Show alum/star of his own show was in this one at all. But IMDb revealed that the John Oliver who played Rolston is also known as actor Gerry Bean. ... The episode was filmed a week before David's wedding to Téa Leoni. ... The cavern set built in a warehouse near Vancouver registered 21 degrees below Fahrenheit, according to the fourth-season episode guide. "I think I left a couple of toes on that soundstage," Duchovny quipped. ... The other outdoor scenes were filmed at Mount Seymour. ... The guide said Michael Kritschgau was named for a former drama teacher of Anderson's.

Guest star of the week: John Finn must have had a really big impact on me as Kritschgau. I never again bought into the story the way I did before his spiel (although "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" (S3E20) already had me questioning it). Heaps of credit to Finn for delivering Carter's bombastic morasses so succinctly.

Saturday, August 11, 2018

X-Files S4E23: Getting some exorcise

Sestra Amateur: 

Here’s some useless trivia: On May 11, 1997, the same day FOX aired this show, NBC ran a 3rd Rock from the Sun episode which contained an X-Files subplot. (For those not familiar with it, the comedy was about four aliens masquerading as a human family to study earthlings.) Harry -- the not-too-bright one -- throws out a prediction about The X-Files episode they’re watching; “I bet they break the genetic code and realize Scully’s been implanted by the smoking guy.” Good insight by writers Mark Brazill and Christine Zander, considering Scully’s pregnancy with William doesn’t occur until Season 7 and Cancer Man’s icky revelation in Season 11. Anyway, back to this week’s episode.

Adult Fox is dreaming about his young sister, Samantha, who shows him a forgotten memory involving their parents. Mulder wakes up sweaty and covered in blood in a Providence, Rhode Island motel room and, of course, calls Scully for help. Interesting how Fox of all people doesn’t lock the motel room door or the bathroom door when he takes a shower. We know he’s paranoid and has major trust issues, but seriously, has he never seen Psycho? 

Dana examines Mulder, who has no memory of the past couple of days. She asks some pretty good questions and learns at least two bullets were fired from his gun … but was Fox the one who pulled the trigger? Scully assumes he’s suffering from a medical issue; Mulder has yet to offer one of his otherworldly explanations. There’s a set of keys in the room which belong to “Amy.” At this point, you’re probably asking, “Who is Amy?” Well, join the club. Meanwhile, an unknown man is cutting his own face out of every … single … picture. There’s blood dripping from the guy’s head, so that can’t be good.

Amy’s keys work on the car outside Fox’s motel room. Sculder try to locate the owner – David Cassandra – and/or Amy at the registered address. The housekeeper seems suspicious, but still lets them into the house. Amy has a weird painting fetish, she only paints images of her old house. But Mulder recognizes the home from when his family summered on Rhode Island. 


The dynamic duo goes there and Fox gets hit with violent memories about his family and Cancer Man. Inside the abandoned, cobwebby home, Sculder find the Cassandras … each dead from a single gunshot wound. Gee, with all this circumstantial evidence, Fox should just turn himself in and plead guilty … didn’t we already see this plot with Walter Skinner (S3E21)? It would be more intriguing if Mulder had a threesome with the older Cassandra couple before assassinating them…

Detective Curtis clearly doesn’t buy Fox's seizure story. Dana attends the autopsy -- a major conflict of interest. After all, she told Mulder not to say anything else while he rode with detectives to the hospital. She notices a small puncture wound on Cassandra’s head and requests a craniotomy be performed. The detective claims he has evidence contradicting Fox's limited statement. Curtis reveals Mulder's bloody shirt and arrests him. Fox appears to be an autumn because the orange prison jumpsuit is a flattering color on him. 


Scully arrives with pertinent medical evidence -- the Cassandras and Mulder both had ketamine in their systems. That isn't good enough for the detective, so Mulder stays in jail. Curiously, one of the police officers is Michael Fazekas, the bleeding man cutting up photographs earlier in the episode. Without any provocation, he shoots himself in the head with his own handgun. Dana notices a puncture mark on his head and drags Curtis back into the investigation. The detective says Fazekas was reassigned because of anger issues with his partner. The officer also believed he had been abducted by aliens. While sifting through Fazekas’ property, Scully finds an Abductee magazine with Cassandra on the cover. I’m seeing a pattern here.

Mulder is back in dreamland. His parents are arguing about Samantha while a young Cancer Man looks on. He disturbs the whole cell block all night long. I wonder why they haven’t contacted Skinner about Fox being a murder suspect. That must be Dana's doing. Scully arrives the next morning and updates Mulder on her investigation. Turns out Amy Cassandra and Officer Fazekas were receiving radical psychiatric treatment. The case appears to be murder-suicide.


Fox's car is located outside the office of Dr. Charles Goldstein. (I’m guessing Dana and Curtis did not put out an A.P.B. on the missing car. These episodes where Scully is equally good and bad at her job are extremely frustrating.)  The doctor claims he has not met Mulder before. Goldstein takes the rare position of not stalling the investigation by claiming doctor-patient confidentiality; he’s pretty much an open book. But Dana thinks he administered the ketamine and Fox knows he’s met the doctor before. They leave the office and Mulder continues to suffer from memory attacks, which he wants to encourage so he can get answers. After all, the truth is “in there.”

At his mother's house, Fox confronts her and she slaps him. They have such a healthy relationship. Instead of asking about Samantha’s abduction, he hounds her about the possibility that Cancer Man is his real father. Mulder, who is bleeding from his head like Fazekas, takes off without Scully. That’s gonna be a long walk back, hope she’s wearing sensible shoes.

Fox returns to Dr. Goldstein, who admits to drilling the hole in Mulder’s head to trigger memories via electrical stimulation. He tells the doctor to treat him again and they begin another round of “therapy.” Fox revisits the past in his mind, but Curtis and his backup arrive a little too late -- Mulder is already gone. At least they arrest Goldstein. Scully finally shows up and interrogates the doctor. Tired of being manhandled by the tiny female agent, Goldstein caves and tells her about Fox's plan to “exorcise his demons.” 


Local police set up outside the Mulder summer home in Rhode Island. Dana enters and Fox -- suffering from memory overload -- points his gun at her. She tries to convince him to trust her. He fires several shots – not at Scully, of course. You didn’t really think he would shoot her, right? Then he loses consciousness. Dana actually writes up a report related to Fox's little adventure so at least it’s officially documented. I hope Skinner gave him at least a month’s suspension without pay for conduct unbecoming an agent. Too bad Mulder can’t just ask Harry from 3rd Rock about aliens.

Sestra Professional:

I'll just state this outright. Maybe "Demons" should have been used as the basis for the first feature film.

The episode starts with a blood-covered Mulder not remembering anything about the previous couple of days. The intensity only gets ratcheted up as those occurrences become clear and the mythology gets propelled with heightened flashbacks of the childhood incident that scarred him for life. The vivid imagery and emotional toll really won't be matched again, even on the big screen.

It's all ... falling into place: This one seemed to be under the radar during the show's original run, but it has started to garner more recognition -- and rightfully so for David Duchovny's performance -- in the ensuing years.

Chris Carter and Bob Goodwin powerfully advance the story in an atypical direction. And David makes the most of his chance to expand upon Fox's character. He's not just "Spooky" any longer. We've seen him willing to pay any price to find out the truth for four years, but the stakes seemed perilously lethal in this particular one. "Demons" sets the stage for Mulder's fifth-season arc, but almost at too high a cost. 

The rest of the narrative is far too convenient and suspect: Down the road, we're going to see some standard genre tropes -- particularly in Fight the Future (filmed after this season and released following the next one) and some downright insulting conceits. It'll never feel this real or severe again. Mulder using an aggressive method to access his buried memories, we can definitely buy that one. Putting his fate in the hands of a doctor he knows has lied? That's a fearsome proposition.

Give much credit to Kim Manners, who completely unbalances us in the flashback scenes. From his off-kilter perspective and through grainy heightened color, we don't get a clear sense of what's going on -- a lot like Mulder's point of view. And it's also reminiscent of our own nightmares -- not really clear, not making a lot of sense. We want to figure it out, not just for him, but for our own peace of mind.

This is not the way to the truth: We're brought back down to Earth some by Scully's supposition that they aren't true memories, just in the way our own dreams don't truly reflect what's going on in them. It isn't reality. If you've ever been so tired that you've had those "electrical storm in the brain" moments, that'll make a lot of sense to you. It's another mark in the plus column that Dana knows Fox didn't commit the murders before he figures it out himself.

Of course, Scully should have stopped his attempt at an investigation from the start. Mulder needed to be checked out more than perfunctorily. Say it was an aneurysm and Fox dropped dead during one of his seizures. How would Dana live with that? And who would make the outlandish hypotheses that usually end up solving X-Files cases?

The truth is in there, recorded: I've never been an advocate of having Cigarette Smoking Man turn out to be Mulder's father. But it's certainly utilized to its full potential here. Why does Teena vehemently deny she ever betrayed the man Fox knew as his dad? Maybe she got a dose of that ketamine herself.

On a much less serious front, did you enjoy that Scully's idea of casual wear includes a blazer? I was much less appreciative of Mulder's orange prison wear than Sestra Am. 

Mulder, it's meta: Early on in the fourth year, Goodwin -- who directed the first and last episodes of the first five seasons -- proposed the idea of Mulder waking up in a strange place and not knowing how he got there. According to the fourth-season episode guide, before Goodwin knew it, he was penned in on the writing schedule. ... The guide detailed how Fox's flashbacks were filmed by continuously stopping the camera's shutter mechanism, but co-producer Paul Rabwin's team did much in post-production on the color, used strobe lights and filtered the dialogue and background noise. ... Chris Owens played the young Smoking Man for the second time and the first time under Manners' direction. "Kim is very dynamic, and he loves to get right in there; he's very passionate," Owens said in The Complete X-Files. "So the set would naturally be a little more boisterous that day."

Guest star of the week: It's a bit of a thankless role for veteran stage actor Mike Nussbaum as Dr. Goldstein. (We also know him from the likes of Men in Black and Fatal Attraction.) But he's eminently believable when first interviewed by Sculder, and even though he doesn't exactly twirl a mustache later, we can feel the bad doctor's pulse increase when Mulder tells him he wants to be treated again. He fit the landscape perfectly.

Saturday, August 4, 2018

X-Files S4E22: Put on your your your your bowling shoes

Sestra Amateur: 

This may be my favorite solo episode so far penned by John Shiban, who has written for and produced several of my favorite shows (Torchwood, Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries). This week we’re not in alien land or monster-of-the-week mode, it’s unintentionally disturbing apparitions that up the creep factor to the point in which you wish it wasn’t a bottle episode.

It’s bowling night in Washington, D.C. More accurately, it’s the end of bowling night. Dedicated alley employee Harold Spuller is putting away the shoes but his boss, Angelo Pintero, is in a wee bit of a hurry and does a sloppy job after taking over. Harold doesn’t take this too well, but Angelo gives Harold an “attaboy” speech then sends him home. When he’s alone, Pintero hears one of the lane rigs activated. He investigates and finds a puddle of blood, then a poor bleeding girl staring at him from atop the pinsetter. He runs outside to tell a nearby policeman and ends up seeing the same girl outside with her throat slashed.


Sculder are called to the scene and – after they switch into the appropriate footwear – inspect the pinsetter. Mulder notes the damage to the machinery is consistent with someone lying on top of it. Of course, the body and the blood are gone from the lane because that would just make things too easy. Pintero tries to convince the agents he isn’t crazy. Fox bowls as he explains to Scully that this is the third recently reported incident of a murder victim trying to communicate after her death. (I wonder if David got his strike on the first take.) Mulder somehow knows to pour soda onto the alley lane to uncover the phrase, “She is me.”

Then Sculder attend a local law enforcement debriefing complete with a possible psychological evaluation of the serial killer. Detective Hudak is the non-believer du jour because he calls out Fox, who insists they shouldn’t follow the traditional profile model to find this suspect. The detective shows he’s not the brightest bulb in the pack because he gives a lot of pertinent case information to the group, then asks who Mulder and Scully are. What if Fox was your killer, genius? 


Sculder learn “she is me” were the last words spoken by one of the murder victims and were repeated during a 911 call. They follow the phone lead to Spuller and New Horizons, the group home where he lives. They get assistance from Martin Alpert, who gathers the patients in a room so the agents can talk to them. Harold’s roommate, Chuck Forsch, claims he made the phone call but later admits he lied. Spuller is clearly upset but not owning up to anything.

While inspecting the crime-scene photos, Dana notices the murder victims’ rings were switched from their left hands to their right. She blames Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Mulder leans toward mental illness and believes Harold made the phone call. So Fox confronts him and asks him about ghosts. Spuller, who is autistic and suffers from OCD, loses control and starts rattling off bowling scores frame by frame. Nurse Innes tries to calm him down. 


While showing Mulder that Harold is an employee at the bowling alley, Scully gets a nosebleed and retreats to the bathroom. While there she sees the words “She is me” written in blood on the mirror and observes a black-and-white apparition of a woman with her throat cut trying to tell her something. Fox interrupts to tell Dana there’s another murder victim. Scully taps out and goes to the hospital for a checkup. Mulder looks for Spuller, who snuck out of his room. Poor Harold is gluing bowling scores to the wall while the four murder victims hover around and try to communicate with him.

Dana confides to a shrink about her concerns about the case and her condition. Fox returns to the bowling alley to find Spuller. This time Mulder doesn’t change his shoes when he runs onto the alley lane. Harold leads Fox to his secret hiding place but can’t stop muttering, “She is me.” Spuller gets taken to the police station for an interview. Harold’s attorney is present when he starts reciting each murder victims’ bowling scores and shoe sizes. Hudak thinks it’s a confession. Luckily, we already know the dick is a … well … you know. Spuller leads them back to his wall of bowling scores and then is stunned to see Pintero’s apparition. Harold runs back through the alley and finds paramedics trying to save Angelo, who apparently died of a heart attack.

Fox asks Dana whether Harold is able to see the apparitions because of his condition and they plan to meet back at the resident home. Nurse Ratched – I mean Nurse Innes – waits until she’s alone with Spuller, then insults and taunts him. After an alleged attack, she blames Harold, who runs away. Scully talks to his roommate and realizes the road leads back to Nurse Innes. Here I thought it was going to be Alpert, he seemed too helpful to be an actual good guy. 


The nurse attacks Dana with a scalpel, but the idiot brought a knife to a gunfight so Scully takes her down. Nice work, Dana. Mulder, who was right about the killer not matching the stereotypical profile, arrives after Scully handles the situation and tells her Harold died. Dana finally admits to Fox she saw the last victim’s apparition. Mulder, of course, acts like she didn’t tell him sooner to hurt him and babbles about trust. Considering she’s already facing her mortality, seeing a ghost probably felt like unwillingly taking another leap closer to her own death. John Shiban didn’t do Fox any favors here by writing Mulder in such a selfish and unlikable way. And Scully’s emotional reaction while alone in her car would have had way more impact if it didn’t look like she had just applied a fresh coat of a different shade of lipstick. 

Sestra Professional:

It's a little eerie watching this episode after spending some time the past two weeks watching "Celebrity Bowling" on YouTube. Some of the '70s movie and television stars' bowling scores were as dead on arrival as anyone in this ep.

I agree with Sestra Am about this being the strongest Shiban stand-alone to this point. But "Elegy" will be supplanted when we get to Season 6. And speaking of X-Files Lite (the unfavorable nickname bestowed by fans), let's put a pin in the fact that Mulder has asked her point blank if she believes in ghosts. I'd be more up in arms about it if she actually answered his question.

Does anybody recognize this man? This episode would be worth its weight in strikes just to watch Scully put on bowling shoes. Although as Sestra Am pointed out, it kind of dilutes the effect later to see Mulder and other guest actors streaming up and down one of the lanes without the bowling shoes on. Maybe that's what killed the alley owner. Also love seeing David Duchovny seemingly effortlessly knock down all 10 pins -- the real X-File there, though, is that a ball perfectly suited to his fingers was sitting right there in the lane well.

So this is the episode in the fourth season that centers around someone with autism having a connection with the paranormal. I'm really not sure it was all that necessary, although Shiban's stroke of having Spuller spew the bowling scores constantly was a nice touch. I think it took me longer than Sestra Am to initially pick up on what he was doing with the numbers.

I just want to be left alone: Steven M. Porter makes for a very sympathetic Harold, though he comes off a little too overwrought. I kind of wish director James Charleston had reined him back a notch on the crying and twitching front. Nope, he's not going to be garnering guest star of the week honors. But Harold isn't enjoying his gift and Porter carries enough weight in the role that it's a sad moment when we realize the character won't make it to the end credits alive.

Even though this is a stand-alone, we get some serious progression on the Scully front, and as we've become accustomed to, Gillian Anderson is up to the task. In addition to worrying about Dana on the bloody-nose front, we also get to see her literally face down a supernatural occurrence. Really, Scullbags, you gotta believe in ghosts now. You can't tell us in Season 6 that you don't after this.

What is a death omen if not a vision of our own mortality? Sure, Shiban gives the hard sell on the fact Dana has cancer. Everyone who saw an apparition was close to death -- emphysema, cancer, heart attack, respiratory failure. But it really is a nifty reminder of her status as the fourth season gets close to wrapping up. I do wish her ability continued in subsequent episodes.

The scene at the therapist's office feels a little odd amid all the bloody murder. And for Dana to admit how much of a source of a strength Fox has been for her only to have him at the end deride her for not telling him sooner that she saw the fourth victim's ghost kind of felt awkward. But then upon reflecting on that, isn't that just a microcosm of their relationship to this point? Scully was just being Scully, trying to figure out if she saw the apparition because of stress, because it had been suggested or because of her own fears -- of failing Fox. 

Meta scoring: The episode was filmed at the Thunderbird Bowling Center, which insisted the production crew wearing bowling shoes or paper booties to preserve the lane surfaces, according to the fourth-season episode guide. Wonder how they felt about that last alley scene. ... In the guide, Shiban said he was inspired to write this episode by his late father-in-law, who apparently had visions in his hospital room while dying of lung cancer. ... Shiban had a card with "haunted bowling alley" on his bulletin board all year before fitting that together with the ongoing Scully cancer saga, the guide said. ... Don't know if Duchovny got the strike on his first try, but he and Charleston wagered while playing games between setups, according to the guide.

Guest star of the week: This is where playing it over the top does pay off. Nancy Fish, who also was in Beethoven with Duchovny, was under the radar for most of the episode as Nurse Innes, but she really took advantage of the late big scenes she got. Her manic nature certainly worked for a character who quipped "working with these people starts to drive you crazy" due to the fact that the meds she had been stealing from Harold were known to cause violent impulses.