X-Files S6E9: Skinner won't die in vein

Sestra Amateur: 

Sorry folks, this episode has nothing to do with State Road 819 in Mount Pleasant Township, Pennsylvania, so I hope you didn’t get your hopes up. State Road was the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw the title. 

Assistant Director Walter Skinner is dying in D. C. General Hospital. His visibly veiny body is pulsating and he flatlines while trying to tell the doctor something. She chooses to let him die. Man, I’ll bet that upset a lot of fans during the first run. But let’s go back a day to see how poor Walter got to this point. 

There’s some heavy-handed narration post credits, but since it’s Skinner’s voice, I’ll allow it. Walter experiences some hallucinations while boxing in a gym. After getting knocked out, he wakes up in a hospital and take a cryptic robo-voiced phone call telling him he has 24 hours to live. Just like Dennis Quaid in D.O.A.! Maybe he’ll find a nice Meg Ryan-type to glue to his hand so they can run around town together trying to solve the mystery. Skinner has a very noticeable bruise on his ribs and assumes it’s from the boxing. It ain’t.

Later that night, Walter goes back to the office. Mulder sees something is not quite right with his former boss and calls Dr. Scully to the scene. Sculder question Skinner to determine whether he may have been poisoned and he recalls a gloved man in the FBI building asking Walter for the time. They review the surveillance footage and Dana recognizes the possible assailant as Dr. Kenneth Orgel, a well-known physicist. 

Skinner and Mulder (Skinder?) visit Orgel and he tries to blow them off. They force their way inside, but get shot at by men holding the doctor hostage. Unfortunately, the kidnappers have Orgel … and diplomatic plates. Luckily, Fox catches one of the men, but whatever is killing Walter has progressed to the blue veiny stage. Mulder drags the kidnapper back to Skinner, who learns the man is Tunisian attaché Alexander Lazreg. He has diplomatic papers.

Meanwhile, Scully obtains Walter’s untested blood samples from Dr. Plant and notices something is off. Turns out there is pure carbon in Skinner’s blood, and something unidentifiable is multiplying. Fox combs through Orgel’s files trying to find something, anything. He sees a recent picture of the doctor with Senator Richard Matheson. Long time, no see, Senator -- specifically Season 3, Episode 9 ("Nisei"). Turns out, S.R. 819 is a Senate Resolution funding bill for the World Health Organization. Matheson explains this to Mulder, then promptly throws him out of his mansion. Our tax dollars at work…

Skinner enters the Embassy Row garage and finds the car which took Orgel. Lazreg is there, decides 24 hours is too long for Walter to live and shoots at him. He misses. A weakened Skinner goes after the Tunisian, who gets mowed down by an unknown driver/hero/murderer. (Sestra Pro knows who it is.) Dana continues analyzing Walter’s blood and realizes the carbon is creating a matrix that eventually will cause a heart attack. They learn Skinner is being taken to D.C. General, where surgeons are about to amputate his arms due to the “extreme vascular event." Scully and Plant (Scant?) arrive in time to prevent the surgery.

Fox tears apart Walter's office trying to find information on S.R. 819, which he does, in plain sight, on his secretary’s desk. Turns out, the fate of the bill depends on the results of Skinner’s security check review and Dr. Orgel’s analysis. Mulder thinks Orgel intended to tell Skinner there was a violation of export laws involving new technology, which means the doctor didn’t poison Walter. 

Robo-voice calls Skinner’s cell phone again and Fox searches the hospital for the source. Mulder spots a long-haired man who runs from him. The suspect drives away, crashes the car in the hospital garage and still manages to elude Fox. (I know who he is now, but since the story proceeds like we’re not supposed to know yet, let’s just play along.) The next morning, the long-haired man calls Matheson to warn him the bill is in danger and claims he will tell the senator where to find Orgel. 

Mulder's crime scene tech goes above and beyond the call of duty to develop evidence that leads him directly to the suspect’s hideout in an old power plant. Senator Matheson finds poor Dr. Orgel at the plant. He’s been afflicted with Walter Skinner Syndrome. The long-haired bearded man watches from above and increases Orgel’s pain level until it kills him. (Boy, Palm Pilots had a lot of sinister uses back in 1999 -- threatening robo calls, torture devices…) 

Back in the hospital, Skinner is in deathbed confession mode and regretting his life choices. Scully touches his hand and Walter remembers the long-haired man being at FBI headquarters, the gym and the hospital. He recalls that it's the same man ran over the Tunisian. Dana checks the surveillance tapes while Fox arrives at the power plant and confronts Matheson about the nanotechnology inside Skinner. The senator claims to be a victim in this scenario. (Hey, if he wants to be a victim, let’s just inject him with some of that tech.) So we’re back where the episode began. Walter Skinner is declared dead, but the Palm Pilot Bandit brings him back to life. You can clearly see his face now. It’s Alex Krycek!

Three weeks later, Skinner is back at work. Sculder are “epiloguing” their way through the last few minutes of the episode and show him pictures of the long-haired man. Walter claims not to recognize him. Mulder says their suspect did everything to save Skinner’s life. Walter then effectively ends the investigation and redirects them back to A.D. Kersh for their regular assignments. (At least the 24 hours of overtime pay will come in handy for our heroes.) Skinner later finds Krycek in his car. Alex claims he can kill Walter at any time. Clearly he’s keeping Skinner on a very short leash. Sestra Pro probably doesn’t care, she’s just glad to have Alex back. And no more voiceovers! Everybody wins.

Sestra Professional: 

This is the episode I remember watching the most during the original series run. How can this be in a non-Sculder-centric show? Well, this was before texting and instant messaging. Not long into "S.R. 819," my friend called me on the phone. "It's Krycek, it's Krycek!" Jenna exclaimed. "I know! I know!" I yelled back. After meeting Nicholas Lea the previous April at The X-Files Expo near Miami, we were bonafide Ratgirls. So we were pretty much on the phone every commercial break during this one. To this day, it's still a thrill for me to watch this one. 

John Shiban's script does owe a lot to D.O.A. It reminds me more of the 1950 film in which Edmond O'Brien is trying to solve his murder before he dies than the Dennis Quaid remake in 1988. Maybe that's why no one got glued to anyone else's hand.

Stevie Wonder would see that one coming: Speaking of appendages, bet that line about Skinner not having his ear bitten off goes right over the heads of the next wave of X-Files fans who picked up the show years later. No need to Google, those are references to Mike Tyson chomping down on part of Evander Holyfield's hearing orifice in 1997. 

It's tough to bid director Daniel Sackheim farewell with the last of his five episodes for he imbued it with a lot of visual style. The flashback sequences utilize a whirling camera which juxtaposes well with Skinner's blurry vision sequences and the little glimpses we get of Krycek. In the latter's case, bits and pieces are strewn throughout the episode. And maybe you don't see him the first or second or third time, but by the fourth or fifth, you probably do. But if you still haven't focused in on him, Alex's voice on the phone call probably clues you in before you see the silhouette shot at the phone booth. 

It's ... in ... you: We haven't seen a lot of Skinner this year, he didn't even have that much to do in Fight the Future, so it's a treat to have him back as the focal point, particularly for more dramatic purposes. His function in "Triangle" was primarily for comedic purposes. This is one of the best representations of Walter we get during the series run. He's down for the count, quite literally, but he's very determined to figure this out. He goes so far as to say he'd put a gun to the head of the man who may have poisoned him.

But there still is a lot of opportunity for Scully and Mulder to limber up in their trademark styles. Dana can spot a renowned physicist with relative ease, but more importantly, recognizes Walter doesn't need his arms amputated because the problem is in his blood. (By the way, if she missed a couple of lights on the way to D.C. General, Skinner would have been armless by the time she arrived.) If only O'Brien or Quaid had her kind of help. And Mulder gets to be as paranoid as ever, get shot at a bunch of times and propose theories that turn out to be true.

If I die now, I die in vain: Actually, it would be lots of veins. Skinner's apology to Scully about playing it safe and not taking Sculder's side enough is touching in a nicely played scene between Mitch Pileggi and Gillian Anderson. Dana lets Walter off the hook for being their ally many times over. So that makes it all the more heartbreaking when Skinner sort of reneges on the promise of those words days later -- not only declining to identify Krycek but preventing Mulder from continuing the investigation.

It's a fine swing for the series, though. Since Skinner is considered an ally for Sculder, the only way to swing him loose to heighten dramatic tension is through some sort of threat by the conspiracy. Rather than blackmail him through another person, his own life remains at stake. Now Alex can flip his nanobot switch at any time. He should have Walter at his beck and call. I'll wait until a later date to complain that the show didn't utilize this potential to the utmost of its ability.

The nanobots are a neat little plot device. It's intriguing and slightly scary that their existence was tied into the idea of medical technology, and how easily something like that could slip through political legislation.

Metabots: Shiban's original idea was for Mulder to get infected, but show creator Chris Carter knew fans wouldn't believe he was in that much danger, so they decided on Skinner. ... In the official episode guide, the writer deemed neither of the movies to be particularly good, he just utilized the plot twist they both hinged on. ... Pileggi enjoyed the storyline, but not so much the makeup involved. "It looked good, but it was a real pain to deal with," he said in The Complete X-Files. "After a couple episodes of that, I went to them and I said, 'Can we please resolve this nano thing?'" ... Pileggi did not have a stunt double for the boxing sequences, according to the episode guide. ... Remember "Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful?" That's another reference that might be lost to first-time viewers. It was an advertising slogan for Pantene hair care products a couple of decades ago. 

Guest star of the week: I'm giving it to Krycek's "Jesus wig." Between you and me, Sestra Am privately made fun of the "high-end" wig, but I thought the Jesus Christ Hair Superstar disguise suited the episode perfectly. The Sestras joked about it a couple of times with Lea at conventions, saying he should include photos of him in the long-haired man's getup among those available for signing. I found one on my own, though, and Nick autographed it at a later con.