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.