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.