Aw, man, Mulder’s voiceover opens the episode and I’ve already lost interest. On Oct. 13, 1973, which was a Saturday, according to my handy-dandy Google search, the much-younger Syndicate members have a close encounter with an alien race in an unknown hangar. Young Cancer Man (would he be called Pre-Cancer Man?) honors them with a folded American flag. Back in the present in Mulder’s apartment, Fox doesn’t get the chance to shoot Cassandra Spender. Biohazard soldiers from the Center for Disease Control break down the door, spray Sculder and Cassandra into submission, then treat the room like they are preventing an outbreak. (I’ll bet Mulder’s neighbors just hate him.) Agent Diana Fowley claims the trio is being treated for an unknown contagion.
Some fans were probably thrilled at the concept of Fox and Dana showering “together,” but hopefully they kept in mind it’s not a romantic shower, more like a decontamination one. Clearly it rattled whoever spelled the cast member names because the role of Langly is being played by “Dean Haglung” instead of Haglund. Scully deduces their location, she’s a smart one. Agent Fowley actually makes some sense when she explains why they raided Mulder’s apartment the way they did. Of course, she won’t divulge Cassandra’s current location because of her “Patient Zero” status. Dana isn’t buying it because Cassandra was a patient in a normal hospital for several days without infecting anyone. Diana blames Agent Spender for the CDC activation. Alex Krycek is reading Cassandra’s medical records to a small group of Syndicate members. Cancer Man wants to give Cassandra to the rebels for their own preservation. Back at Fort Marlene, apparently our heroes are no longer prisoners -- Mulder is able to talk to Assistant Director Skinner by phone, and a nurse ignores him while Fox literally runs around the place looking for a woman in a white hospital gown who bolted when she saw him. (Maybe his thrift-store attire repulsed her.) He finds her hiding from him. It’s Marita Covarrubias and she looks like hell. (Does Alex even know she’s there? Does he care?) Marita admits Cassandra is part of a hybrid program that’s been running for 25 years. Covarrubias became part of the vaccine protocol, but Cassandra truly was the first successful alien/human hybrid. And knowledge of her existence will result in the colonization of aliens on Earth.
Fowley brings Jeffrey Spender to Cassandra. He thinks he’s keeping her safe from Cigarette Smoking Man. Cassandra continues to tell him he doesn’t understand. Just give it up, Cassandra. He’ll never understand because he’s always a step behind, even when he’s on the wrong side. Maybe if you showed him your green blood, he’ll start to see the possibilities. Meanwhile, Sculder separately make their way to The Lone Gunmen, who -- along with Scully -- try to convince Fox that he cannot trust Diana. Why is Mulder only a conspiracy believer when it suits him? His denial during every step of their investigation’s results is extremely frustrating. Why wouldn’t he think it’s important to know Fowley was ordered to covertly obtain information on every female abductee in Western Europe? Victims just like Scully. And why would a man whose credo is “trust no one” trust someone like Diana so blindly? If anyone has earned Fox’s trust, it’s Dana. Scully’s puzzle pieces fit, Mulder. You just don’t want to put them together.
Or maybe he does … Fox goes to Fowley’s place at the Watergate Apartments. He picks the lock and starts rooting through her things. Cancer Man also shows up, claiming he is looking for his son. Mulder confronts him about experimenting on women and trying to save his own butt. CSM claims Bill Mulder was the lone dissenting vote at first, but he came around and gave up his daughter, Samantha. Cancer Man claims they saved billions of lives by postponing the alien invasion. In return, Cassandra Spender and several children were given to the aliens. The Syndicate received an alien fetus so they could use the DNA in future experiments. The vaccine was Bill Mulder’s idea. The faceless rebels have forced their hand and CSM claims they have to turn over Cassandra. He also continues to dangle the Samantha carrot to get Fox to cooperate. Jeffrey Spender goes to the Syndicate hangout in New York City looking for Cancer Man, but Krycek claims they’re gone and not coming back. And CSM is on his way to retrieve Cassandra. Jeffrey naively thinks that’s not possible. The doctors drug Cassandra and the spouses have a private conversation in which he claims he’s been trying to save her and their son. She says Jeffrey can only be saved if Cancer Man kills her. The coward leaves, of course.
When Diana returns home, Fox confronts her with what he learned from CSM. Fowley kisses him. Jeffrey gets back to Fort Marlene, but his mother (and father) are already gone. Marita begs for help and claims to know where they’re taking his mother. And remember the nurse who ignored Mulder? Turns out she’s a faceless rebel who kills the lead doctor and assumes his identity. Fox calls Dana, who says she is going to get Cassandra at the Potomac Yards. Mulder sends Fowley to the El Rico Air Force Base – the location he got from Cancer Man -- without him. Sculder arrive at the yards and shoot at the front of the train. The faceless rebel doctor and Cassandra are on board. At the same time, the older-but-not-wiser (it’s really your call) Syndicate members are back in the Air Force base hangar with a new crop of “volunteers.” Skinner arrives at the train yard to take his former agents to the hangar. (I guess they couldn’t stop a train after all with a car on the tracks and bullets. I also assume showing an actual train crashing into a car was outside of this episode’s budget.)
Cassandra, the faceless rebel doctor and CSM arrive at the hangar, but Cancer Man claims not to know who was shooting at the train. Alex is supposed to be there too, but he’s at Fort Marlene. He realizes the doctor is dead and the alien fetus is gone. Spender stops Krycek and asks for help getting Marita past security, but clearly Alex has zero interest in helping his ex-girlfriend. He’s focused on the big picture and looking out for number one. Diana arrives at the hangar, but things aren’t happening the way they were supposed to. CSM and Fowley get out of there while the Syndicate, their new sacrifices and Cassandra are swarmed by faceless rebels. There’s fire, there’s screaming, there’s fade to black.Back at FBI headquarters, it’s daytime and Assistant Director Kersh, who is so far out of this loop that he can’t even see the loop, is looking at photos of the charred remains of the people from the hangar. Skinner and Agents Spender, Mulder and Scully are present. Officially, Cassandra is among the dead. Officially, Jeffrey is also taking responsibility for his screwups and pleads Sculder’s case in putting them back on the X-Files. Kersh still doesn’t get the clear-cut answers he wants, but apparently it’s enough. Spender confronts Cancer Man in his office. CSM continues to hold Fox in higher regard than his own son, who he shoots at point blank range! He also steals back the old photo of himself and Bill Mulder. Murder and petty theft? That’s just evil.
Sestra Professional:
So after twisting and turning for six-plus years, the Syndicate portion of the mythology program has come to a close. And not with a bang, but a whimper. Or actually a bunch of screams from people we don't care about. Sestra Am is definitely right about that opening monologue. My issue with it is the condensation of our six-plus years of watching and the five decades the show's Elders were working their plan, sacrificing loved ones like Samantha, coming to a conclusion like that. And the sanctimonious dialogue ... blah, blah, blah ... "A 50-years war, its killing fields lying in wait for the inevitable global holocaust" ... "unwitting spectators to the hurly-burly of the decades-long struggle between heaven and Earth" ... yadda, yadda, yadda. Who talks like that? And who wants to listen to someone who does?
This would be our tragic mistake: When it comes to the now-time-honored tradition of deciding when a show "jumped the shark," this is the episode I point to. Not that there's still not enjoyment to be had, it's more like the turning point when I lost my ability to buy into the scenario and started watching more for characters than the desire to get to the end game. Maybe this is when fans' incredible need to see Fox and Dana getting it on really took hold. The suspense was gone, and watching Sculder go through their paces every week meant more when their relationship hung in the balance instead of the fabled conspiracy.
In The Complete X-Files, the show's most prolific director, Kim Manners, offered up an explanation to the capping of this part of the story. "The whole storyline of The Syndicate and the bees and the aliens and the chips in the neck, that all seemed to just accidentally fall in place and create an intriguing, mysterious storyline that eventually got so mysterious and intriguing that [creator Chris Carter] had to blow it all up, because he couldn't deal with it anymore," Manners said. What choice have we if we want to see our families survive? Pretty much the opposite happened. It's not that I don't appreciate them blowing it all up, because I really do. I just thought it was going someplace it never actually got. Carter and team often declared there was no show bible pointing the way to the end of the road. Well, it kind of showed with plot twists left open and a Syndicate gameplan that showed an incredible lack of foresight from people who had been able to keep their secrets for 50 years. It was a terribly disappointing conclusion to the early string of conspiracy episodes that literally kept me on the edge of my seat.
Jeffrey Spender never had a chance. Certainly not from Carter and his writing team, and as a result, not at all from the fan base. Jeffrey certainly didn't inherit any of the genes Cancer Man possessed that made us interested in such a diabolical character. Spender was running the X-files for half a season, but we didn't see him do anything but whine in the occasional conspiracy episode. During the regular run, it's true, I was all, yay, that's the end of him. But the fact is he could have been used better. It would have been a nice seeing him try to come to terms with an X-file. A disservice was done to him and actor Chris Owens.
Also in the never-had-a-chance department, I present the case of Marita Covarrubias. Even looking like a rehabbing drug addict, she still coughs up useful information. It's interesting that she's been used as lab rat in the secret development of a vaccine against the black oil. Well, Mulder was infected with the black oil too, but he seems fine and dandy. Guess it's all who you know. Marita was supposed to know the right people, but guess not. As for Diana Fowley, well, frankly, I don't want her to have a chance. She's not interesting. She's a walking, talking monologue. She meanders through scenarios with the greatest of ease, even though she wasn't part of the mythology for almost five years and a movie. Plus she's making Fox look ridiculous, Dana appear jealous and CSM incapable of doing anything for himself.
Because without the FBI, personal interest is all that I have: There are some things I like about "One Son." As Sestra Am said, not sure why Mulder would take Fowley's word over Scully's, maybe Fox was thinking with his anatomy and he hadn't yet done the deed with Dana, so... But the discussion our leads have in The Lone Gunmen's environs is a solid status check on their relationship, which later heightens the almost-thrown-away nature in which Mulder later sends Fowley ahead to follow up on Scully's instinct.
And we get another Cancer Man-Mulder confrontation. They cover the same terrain of episodes like "One Breath" (Season 2, Episode 8). At least Fox is smart enough to point out The Syndicate's been using women as human/alien hybrids to save his ass. He still won't use his gun on CBG, he'll probably regret that later. But Cigarette Smoking Man claims they saved billions of lives with their painful decisions. So the aliens insisted Mulder's dad "contribute" by giving up Samantha. Did they have a checklist? What's alien for, "Uh, we're missing one here." And if it was Bill Mulder's idea to develop the vaccine, a human hybrid that could survive colonization, that kind of confirms the conspiracy had no intention of saving billions of lives, they were just trying to save their own. It's all gone to hell: It was nice to see Jeffrey finally coming around, particularly when he was confronted by Marita. Putting the two never-had-a-chances in the same space gave both a jolt. Then Krycek (still seeming a lot smarter than CSM would ever give him credit for being) winds up in the very same place Marita and Jeffrey are in. I'll give that a pass, because it added another charge to the scene. Spender later summons up the intestinal fortitude to declare he was wrong about everything and Mulder and Scully should be put back on the X-Files.
I zone out when I watch the final scenes. Scully parks the company car in front of the train Cassandra's on and our heroes shoot at it, but don't stop it. I guess Mulder didn't learn much from trying to blast out the tires on a runaway RV ("Bad Blood," S5E12). Then they call their favorite Uber driver Walter (before it exists, of course) so they can go to the air field. Meanwhile, Diana and CBG are smart enough to realize the rebels are gonna torch everyone, so they make a run for it. None of the others apparently have such keen insight. What about Strughold and the Jiffy Poppers in Tunisia from Fight the Future? Is the insinuation that they were taken out too by rebels not smart enough to block all the exits to this particular hangar?"The loss of life here is, it is beyond words," Kersh says in his office. Well, I've got some -- boring, nonsensical, ineffectual. And why Cigarette Smoking Man shot his son, I still don't understand. CBG respects the choices Bill Mulder and his son made, even when they were in opposition to his own. But apparently Jeffrey is afforded no such latitude. Just when he was getting interesting.
Guest star of the week: Cartwright's a great screamer. That's almost all she has to do here, but it's been a joy to have her, even for four episodes. You need someone capable of standing on the same playing field as Cancer Man to be CBG Spender's wife, and Cartwright was more than up to that task.
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