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.