We may need more of Sestra Pro’s pro-ness than usual for the episode titled "Millennium." It ties into another Chris Carter series that ran on the FOX network for three years until May 1999. I haven’t watched that show, Millennium (don’t start getting confused already!), except for one episode that was linked to The X-Files ep "Jose Chung’s From Outer Space" (Season 3, Episode 20). To give you some perspective, "From Outer Space" is a funny, self-mocking tongue-in-cheek episode; the darker, more apocalyptic ep on Millennium – "Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense" – was none of those things, but in the show’s defense (no pun intended), it probably wasn’t supposed to be. So Chris Carter brought his show’s main character, Frank Black, to The X-Files to give him some closure. This episode opens at a Tallahassee funeral on Dec. 21, 1999, with 11 days left until Y2K. The grieving widow doesn’t know why her husband committed suicide, but an attendee named Mr. Johnson has an idea. When he’s alone with the body, Johnson starts stripping the both of them and chanting. He leaves an activated phone in the casket and closes the lid. Eight days later, Johnson receives a call from the man’s grave. Eerie, yes, but unless we’re dealing with the miracle of Chanukah, I don’t think that phone’s battery life would have lasted eight days.
A major upside to this: Sculder get out of the blistering northeast winter for a day to handle this Florida investigation. By the time Scully arrives, Mulder is already inside the coffin, which shows evidence of someone trying to claw his way out. The “dead” man, retired FBI Agent Raymond Crouch, left prints outside the coffin. There’s also a circle of blood which clearly should not have come from an embalmed Crouch. Meanwhile, Johnson is chanting and driving north through Georgia with Crouch’s barely animated body.With the fun in Florida completed, Sculder head back to FBI headquarters to update assistant director Skinner. There’s a group meeting for this one, probably because it involved one of their own. Mulder’s theory is necromancy, the raising of the dead. The grave robber (Johnson) wore Crouch’s clothes to create a bond with him. Too bad no one knows why yet.
After the meeting, Skinner takes Sculder aside and mentions a link to the Millennium Group and their blood circle symbol -- the uroboros. (What is an uroboros, you ask? It’s an image of a snake swallowing its own tail to indicate infinity. Wait a minute, didn't Dana get that same tattoo in "Never Again" (S4E13)? She doesn’t even mention it! Maybe Scully’s secretly a member of the Millennium Group! She probably had it removed by the next episode.) Turns out, Walter has evidence that the same ritual performed at Crouch’s grave occurred after three other recent suicides across the country and all three involved former FBI agents. Good luck keeping that low profile, Fox.Sculder head to the Hartwell Psychiatric Hospital in Virginia where Frank Black, the “greatest criminal profiler that Quantico ever produced” has voluntarily checked himself in for observation. Frank politely declines to assist on the case and goes back to watching college football. Meanwhile, Johnson is changing a flat tire when a deputy checks on his welfare and notices the decaying stench coming from the backseat. Johnson protects himself as Crouch’s corpse kills the deputy.
The agents and local police later find the deputy’s buried body (how long did dispatch go without checking on his welfare?!) Inside the deputy’s mouth is a quote from the Book of Revelation, a warning Frank Black subtly tried to tell Mulder. They return to the institution and learn Frank is fighting for custody of his daughter, so Black can’t let the conspiracy theories take over his life again. He agrees to unofficially help Sculder. The four dead former FBI agents believe themselves to be the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse needed to bring about Armageddon. The grave robber (Johnson) thinks he is doing God’s work. Profiler Frank Black gives a spot-on description of Johnson, who is unnerved because the deputy’s body has already been discovered. Luckily, Scully is on hand to point out the true beginning of the new millennium is 2001. (Mulder’s response will probably be one of Sestra Pro’s paragraph titles.) Fox heads off to chase a lead, but tells Dana not to let anyone remove the staples from the deputy’s mouth. Scully doesn’t reach the morgue in time to warn the coroner, who is jumped by the resurrected deputy. Dana arrives and finds the unconscious coroner. And Johnson. And the zombie cop. Three bullets to the chest don’t slow the animated corpse one bit and he attacks Scully.
Skinner arrives at the morgue. Dana is alive, but scratched up. She agrees with Mulder’s necromancy assertions and claims Johnson stopped the deputy from killing her by shooting him in the head. Fox has arrived at Johnson’s compound in Maryland and tries to call Scully but he has no cell-phone service. (Amazing, this is the only episode in which our intrepid heroes actually try to use their cell phones. Too bad it still doesn’t work in their favor.) Mulder finds an empty bag of kosher salt in Johnson’s garbage and is convinced he found his man. (Side note: I know I made that “blistering winter” comment at the beginning of this review, but none of the characters are acting like they’re in the northeast in December. Fox is picking through a garbage can outside with no winter coat or gloves and no one is even acting cold! So I checked the Baltimore weather for 12/31/99: high of 54 degrees, low of 30. Oh, and Los Angeles around the time this episode was filmed? Highs in the 70s-80s. Vancouver was way more convincing as the northeast United States.) Johnson returns home and sees Mulder’s car outside the gate. Fox goes into Johnson’s basement (without a warrant) and accidentally wakes the sleeping horsemen. Johnson locks him in, so Mulder has no choice but to shoot the corpses.
Dana, who can’t reach Fox, returns to Frank. Even after hearing about what happened to her at the morgue, Black refuses to help her. But he decides it’s time to leave the hospital and checks himself out. In the basement, Mulder is protected by a ring of salt but out of ammunition. (Wouldn’t an X-Files/Supernatural crossover episode have been entertaining?) Frank arrives at Johnson’s compound. Johnson is relieved to see him because Fox took out one of the horsemen with a bullet to the head. Now Frank can take his place (the horseman, not Mulder). But Black gets the better of him and duct-tapes Johnson to a chair. While Frank tries to save an injured Fox, Skinner calls Scully with a lead to Johnson’s place. Black is physically fighting a horseman when Dana arrives. Fox takes out one and she gets the other. No wonder Mulder loves her, she’s always there right when he needs her. Later at the hospital, Scully arranges a reunion with Frank and his daughter, Jordan. Then Sculder watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV and share a Happy New Year kiss. By the way, the low temperature in Times Square that night was 35 degrees and I’m sure everyone there felt it.
Sestra Professional:
Understandably every episode of The X-Files can't be a classic. There are good eps, there are bad eps, ones to watch over and over and ones that I only see upon a full rewatch, but I rarely label any of them disappointing. "Millennium" is that and much less for me on a variety of fronts. I consider it the most disappointing episode in the original run this side of the ninth-season finale.
On paper, it must have seemed like a good idea. Chris Carter and company created a whole canvas for Frank Black on Millennium, and when that show was canceled before the actual turn of the millennium, that in itself was disappointing. So Black was shifted over to Sculderland to close out his story. And somehow, all the momentum built up in three tumultuous seasons of that show came down to some zombies in a basement and Frank Black firing a weapon in this one. It's not up to the level of Season 3 of Millennium, and if you're familiar with the fan base, you know the level to which I have just sunk. Single-minded ... sounds like someone I know: I hope this episode didn't keep people who might have given Millennium a go from doing so. "Millennium" is not representative of that series, even in the latter's most maddening moments. And, strange to admit this in an X-Files blog, but Frank Black is probably my favorite character created by Chris Carter. He was truly an intriguing invention, written -- and thusly perfect -- for Lance Henriksen. Frank was a man who loved his family and needed his time with them because he had the amazing and frightening ability to see into the minds of people doing bad things. Was it supernatural or was he just that good? I tend to think it was the second one, but with Carter's track record, the first always seemed to lurking in the mix.
When the series was still kicking, I would have loved a crossover that brought Black into Mulder and Scully's universe. But judging from this "Millennium," it's a trickier feat than it might have appeared. Vince Gilligan and Frank Spotnitz gave it a go for Carter. Spotnitz had various producer credits in Seasons 1 and 3 and was credited with penning five episodes over that span, but not the second season that best defined the group's millenniumistic tendencies. Gilligan hadn't had any experience writing for the sister show.So Gillnitz's idea was to disband the Millennium Group -- really, mere months before Y2K? -- and focus on four former group members who went their own way. That's why this doesn't work out so hot, although I'm strangely comforted by Frank profiling again. He's just so good at it.
Nobody likes a math geek, Scully: But maybe someone does like a math geek, because the Necromancer dude saves Dana. These are the things about the episode that don't hold together. Why did he save Scully and then leave Mulder there to an expected untimely demise? She doesn't know why, and neither do I, frankly. The fan fiction writers among us could definitely come up with reasoning for that, I'm sure. And although there is an interesting Dana reaction shot when the uroboros comes up, I would have liked a reference to her tattoo myself, removed though it may have been.Scully does pose an interesting question to Frank, namely is the Millennium Group -- I'm not sure if she means just the Return of the Living Dead quartet or the group overall -- able to bring about the end of days? And if so, which would prevail -- good or evil? That's the question the series could have continued to address if it had been given more time and space by FOX. In fact, there are those among us still looking for a revival after all these years.
But "Millennium" the episode is just such a hot mess. I can buy the Necromancer thinking Frank Black could serve as a perfect fill-in as one of the Four Horsemen. And the spouting of lines like "There's no justice in this world, but there will be in the next" is something Millennium fans got used to. But the whole business with the flares and Frank, Fox and Dana battling zombies in a veritable basement shooting gallery, ugh. That's not Millennium nor The X-Files to me, nevermind both, and it never will be.
It's a solitary existence: Now to that kiss. And unpopular opinion time ... I'll admit that even as a no-romo, when this originally aired, I had a certain yet faint hankering for them to kiss. But the awkward, tentative nature of this one from two beings whose blood boils regularly boils over on the show and who have been through so much together felt downright cringe-worthy to me. Mulder's kiss with alternate-reality '30s Scully in "Triangle" (S6E3) had more going for it than this. Hell, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson's outtake kiss in the hallway while filming Fight the Future beats this one too. It confirmed my choice to never see that part of the relationship, preferring that to be all of an off-camera nature.If you ask me the classic moment of the episode was actually Jordan hugging her dad and their genuine smiles. Now that's what actually gave me all the feels. Y'all can have your Sculder kiss, I just want Frank and Jordan holding hands and walking off together as the clock ticks down to 2000. Because if they're together and it's the end of the world as we know it, then I feel fine.
Meta millennials: Henriksen expressed his displeasure with the end of Frank's story in Impact magazine in May 2009. "It's a reasonable X-File, but it's not Millennium," he said. Spotnitz backed up that assertion in the production notes for the episode on his Big Light website: "This was a terrible headache to devise -- we only realized after we'd committed to the idea how difficult it was going to be to meld the worlds of Millennium and The X-Files. It was not completely successful, I suppose, but still seems worth it for having brought back Lance Henriksen." ... Here's one from the "Before They Were Stars" files, future Academy Award winner (and three-time nominee) Octavia Spencer plays the nurse named ... aptly, Octavia! ... And, of course, because we're in a Gilligan episode, the morgue was located in Rice County.
Guest star of the week: Lance Henriksen, of course. On his show, Frank Black was the focal point of the universe. In less-than-ideal circumstances here and despite his unhappiness with the tale, Henriksen gives a performance true to the character that is as easily believed as the complete overhauls he dealt with at the start of each Millennium season. He still conveys looks that mean so much more than what's on the page, and deftly swings from the clinical nature of Black's gift to Frank's total love for his daughter.
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