X-Files S6E11: Someone's got Mommy and Daddy issues

Sestra Amateur: 

Chris Carter decided it was time to get back to his years-long mythology arc. You know the one, it always involves Cigarette Smoking Man, old Syndicate guys and Fox Mulder’s convoluted personal history. 

This time, doctors in protective gear are operating on a green-blooded body in a train car. Well, they’re trying to operate. The patient’s incision keeps healing before they can do anything, but apparently that’s a good thing. An old white man in a dark sedan (doesn’t that just scream Syndicate?) arrives to accolades from the others, but a facially featureless assassin – just like the one on the bridge in "Patient X" (Season 5, Episode 13) -- burns them all to death. He (it?) checks on the patient. It’s Cassandra Spender! So where has she been? If I remember correctly, she may or may not have been beamed aboard some type of flying object (like an unidentified one) back in "The Red and the Black" (S5E14).

Cigarette Smoking Man is summarizing (to an unknown person) what Carter has led up to for over six years -- humans have been preparing for an alien invasion and trying to create a race of alien/human hybrids since Roswell. Assistant Director Skinner and Agent Spender arrive at the train car where Jeffrey and his mother reunite. He bombards her with questions, but Cassandra will only talk to Fox Mulder. Spender fights Skinner on this one, but Mulder is hard to reach anyway because he’s playing hooky in a gymnasium. Scully intervenes (while wearing hard shoes on a gym floor, tsk tsk) and of course, is able to motivate Fox into going back to work. I think he also likes the chance to stick it to Agent Spender.

By the way, the assassin didn’t kill everyone. Dr. Eugene Openshaw, the late arrival at the train car, is severely burned and recuperating in a hyperbaric chamber. Cancer Man visits him and learns Cassandra is their success story. Does that mean she’s the alien/human hybrid? Either way, the doctor insists she be terminated and wants CSM to kill him too. And just to show the crackerjack medical and security staff situation at St. Mark’s Medical Center in Arlington, the machines beep for over 30 seconds and no one shows up to help the “good” doctor. If I were a member of Dr. Openshaw’s family, I’d give that hospital the worst Yelp review. Cancer Man calls the Elders to arrange a Syndicate meeting to discuss the Rebels. But a rebel assassin poses as Openshaw and kills an Elder.

Scully is surprised that Mulder isn’t working the X-File. He thinks he’s being set up for failure. Dana sees similarities between the crime-scene photos from the train car situation and the bridge incident. Scully goes to the hospital to visit Cassandra, who is now able to walk. Dana covertly brings her to Mulder, who is hiding in another room. Ms. Spender tells Fox he did not see the real Samantha Mulder the previous year -- I think she’s referring to "Redux II" (S5E2).

Cassandra also claims the aliens are not there to help them. They are infecting everything with “Purity,” a rather peaceful, pretty name for the black oil we’ve seen spreading through humans in previous episodes and the Fight the Future movie. She’s concerned because Jeffrey is working with her ex-husband, his father. Cancer Man, still narrating to an unknown person, admits he couldn’t kill Cassandra. Not because he loved her, because he didn’t. Not because it was wrong to kill, because it isn’t. It’s only because she’s the mother of his son.

Krycek is hosting the Syndicate meeting in New York. It's a good thing he gave up the Jesus wig because it would be hard to take him seriously in that. The Elder's assassin, in his victim's form, tries to turn the vote in a different direction. Alex stands up to him until Cancer Man yanks on Krycek’s leash. Meanwhile back at FBI Headquarters, Sculder use Agent Spender’s computer to research the case and learn Cassandra’s ex-husband, C.G.B. Spender, is Cancer Man! Skinner interrupts to try and save their hides, but Spender and his lackeys arrive too quickly. Jeffrey reports to CSM that Agents Mulder and Scully are going to be fired and demands to know the truth about Cassandra. Cancer Man, who is doing what most fans probably wanted to do during the original run, slaps Jeffrey around and shows how clearly he prefers Fox to Jeffy.

Scully finds Mulder playing basketball in the gym again. Even though they’re on “administrative leave,” she managed to compile a box filled with CMS sightings and files over the decades, including one picture with Fox’s father, William Mulder. And she found out Cassandra’s first “abduction” occurred on the same night as Samantha Mulder. And she found a decades-old link to Dr. Openshaw. (Funny how Dana is more productive when she shouldn't have full access to the files.) 

Spender gets a new assignment from Cancer Man: Kill the rebel impersonating the dead Elder. CSM arms Jeffy with an ice pick-like weapon, you know, like the one from "Colony" (S2E16). (You have to love Microsoft Word; I do a search for “icepick” in my X-Files folder and it pops right up.) Krycek drives Spender to the Elder’s home, but Jeffrey botches the job. Alex, of course, gets it done.

Sculder try to bring Skinner up to speed on the theories of alien/human hybrids and an upcoming alien invasion, but the only thing that piques his interest is the revelation that Cancer Man is Jeffrey Spender’s father. Fox is worried for Cassandra’s safety, so Walter goes to the hospital to check on her. Krycek and Spender (Kryder? Spencek?) bond over their first rebel kill together until Alex accidentally triggers Jeffy’s Mommy and Daddy issues. Spender still isn’t ready to drink the Kool-Aid because helping the Syndicate means not helping his mother. 

Cancer Man, who has been narrating this whole time to Spender’s partner, Agent Diana Fowley, reveals he doesn’t trust Jeffrey. Clearly no one should trust Diana. Skinner and Spender can’t find Cassandra, who makes her way to Mulder’s apartment. Too bad she was followed by the most patient (and non-verbal) person in the world who just knocks incessantly. (Rebel assassin? If so, why not just pretend to be someone she -- or Fox -- knew and trusted?) Cassandra frantically insists that Mulder kill her because “it all starts” if he doesn’t. Of course Fox points his gun at her head. So what is supposed to start? The alien invasion? The destruction of Earth? The decline of civilization? The rise of reality television? Maybe Fox should pull the trigger.


Sestra Professional: 

Once upon a time, conspiracy episodes were something to look forward to -- we yearned to know what the government was up to and how Sculder would find some desperately sought truth. The mythology shows have become convoluted and actually kind of dull. That's clearly the adverse effect of not utilizing a "show bible" that maintains continuity and points the way to the end game.

So we start off "Two Fathers" in another train yard with another surgery done by another crop of nameless, faceless doctors -- not faceless in same way as the rebel aliens, but faceless cause they're covered head to toe in garb that doesn't look like it would prevent mosquito bites, much less protect them from toxic green blood. 

Cancer Man's one-way discussion drones on and on. He talked about putting his life into an allegedly perfect conspiracy he deemed "good" and "right." Your gig was to secretly prepare for an alien race to reclaim the planet. What was good about it? You thought you and the aging Syndicate would be allowed to live? What was right about it? That humans would have been eradicated before they knew enough about what was going on to try to at least put up a fight?

You pale to Fox Mulder: There's finally an inkling of some backbone to Jeffrey Spender. It's too bad we haven't seen him working any X-files, that's a nice, easy paycheck he's been drawing there. And hey, there's Fox in a gym again shooting hoops. Twice. At the moment, Cancer Man's claims that Mulder is twice the man his son could ever be doesn't hold much water. Fox has been sticking his nose into business that wasn't his all season, now the best he can do for Spender is tell him to find the truth for himself. 

Dana's the one doing all the heavy lifting in this one. Granted, it's mostly because she's wondering whether Cassandra could expose what happened to Scully back in Season 2. So Dana wasn't abducted by aliens, it was just the government testing on her. And she was chosen in the much the same way as Fox's sister, because it served a purpose to get her away from a man named Mulder. But at least Fox puts the pieces together for Skinner like a true hero in the end.

I got game, Scully: I appreciate Cassandra laying out exactly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are now. But she's done a 180 since being so eager to be abducted in last season's two-parter. Apparently while she was unconscious for copious amounts of time and being cured of whatever landed her in the wheelchair, she realized what the Syndicate was up to. The faceless rebels may not have eyes, noses and mouths, but they're the ones that actually have game. 

Krycek made good points, he apparently has become the brains of the conspiracy. Even a hired hand realizes that if the plan was to pretend to work with the aliens and then fight that fabled future with alien-human hybrids and vaccines than an alliance with the rebels might be a better option than dealing with aliens who want to ... again ... expunge the human race. As formidable as the Syndicate once seemed, its members now seem to be completely ineffectual now. Resistance, in their hands, indeed is futile.

The green blood the doctors were "protecting" themselves from with their flimsy gear doesn't seem quite so toxic when unprotected Alex and Jeffrey come in direct contact from it. I guess we're not supposed to notice that since it's the light-bulb moment for Spender. Hey, aliens exist, Jeffrey! They do, they do, they do, they do. (That was a reference to the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. This season's made a couple of allusions to that film, so why not in the rewatch blog too?) And a second light-bulb moment: Your dad made a test subject of your mom for 25 years. Talk about keeping it all in the family.

I'll help you, it's not too late: Oh yes, it is. So the "big" reveal is that Cigarette Smoking Man was talking to Diana Fowley. It's faaaar too late. This character -- even in the persona of Mimi Rogers -- has been more weakly sketched out than Jeffrey Spender, if that's possible. Oooh, we're supposed to see her as a threat to Dana for Fox. Yeah, no. Oooh, we're supposed to think she can handle the crumbling conspiracy. Yeah, no.

Like Sestra Am, I don't quite understand how Mulder shooting Cassandra could prevent the worst from happening or avert anything from changing in the slightest. But at least it's the most suspenseful moment we've had for some time. Hey, maybe that's how the Syndicate thinks too. It's not the best-case scenario, but it is, for all intents and purposes, a scenario.

Guest star of the week: For all the drawbacks and eye-rolling of the ramshackle remnants of the once-captivating conspiracy, at least Veronica Cartwright returns to inject some life into the proceedings. Nominated for an Emmy for last season's two-parter, the veteran actress again was deservedly recognized on that front in the sixth season for her work in "Two Fathers" and "One Son." And with us too.