X-Files S8E4: Meep, meep

Sestra Amateur: 

Don’t let the title fool you; there are no Wile E. Coyotes in today’s episode "Roadrunners." In Utah’s Sevier Desert, a bus stops for a pill-popping Walkman-playing hitchhiker. He’s not very grateful to the driver but takes the ride anyway. He’s then annoyed when the bus stops and everyone exits. No one will tell him what’s going on, especially when the bus driver bludgeons a handicapped man to death and the passengers swarm him. And that’s why you shouldn’t hitchhike.

One week later, Scully is on the case. She’s lead investigator and crime-scene evidence collector rolled into one, although I doubt she strung up the yellow tape. That was probably the local popo. There’s no cell phone service for her basic Nokia, but luckily there’s a phone booth in the middle of nowhere so she can call Doggett. Turns out the dead handicapped man was perfectly healthy a mere six months earlier. Glycoproteins -- you know, mucus -- are the common link between this case and a recent similar one, but Dana needs John to locate the X-file for her. Wouldn’t the mucus have dried up if left in the Utah desert for a whole week?

The bus passes the phone booth, capturing Scully's attention for some reason. While searching for it, Dana meets Gas Station Man (the show doesn’t give him a name and neither does IMDb). He has no gas to sell her, but generously fills her tank – that is not a euphemism – after he learns she’s a medical doctor. After Scully's gone, he meets with Bus Driver (another nameless character) and the recently picked up hitchhiker to tell them “help is coming." 

Dana's car stalls down the road and she returns to the gas station utterly ticked off. (And that’s why you shouldn’t take free gas from a stranger.) GSM directs her to a house down the road that has a working phone. Mr. Milsap, the homeowner, claims his phone is temporarily dead and offers Scully a room for the night. She tries to get assistance from a nearby bible group but they ignore her. Dana caves and takes the room while the townsfolk mass outside the house. This episode is really not helping to promote Utah’s tourism. 

Mr. Milsap – Ronnie, is that you? – asks Scully to tend to the stranger in his house since he's seizing. (Wow, Milsap's song "Stranger in My House" is really stuck in my head now.) Doctor Dana notices he has a spinal injury and demands they take him to a hospital, but that’s not going to happen. Meanwhile, Doggett calls the sheriff in charge of the murder investigation and learns Scully is missing. He tells Sheriff Ciolino to send deputies to look for Dana while John arranges to get the phone number from the booth she used to call him. I’m sure he’ll find her … "Any Day Now." 

The stranger regains consciousness but has no recollection of the murder, what happened to him or even his own name. He thinks the townsfolk are taking good care of him while Scully views it as more of a worship situation. She realizes the injury to his back is actually a burrowing parasite and tries to pull it out. She’s … partially successful. And Doggett learns the last person who used the pay phone before Scully was Hank Gulatarski, the hitchhiker-turned-parasite host reported missing by his family. Dana leaves her gun with Hank and escapes to find transportation. Milsap and Bus Driver immediately enter the room and Hank – who is no longer Hank – tells them he needs a new body.

John meets with Sheriff Ciolino and FBI agent Mayfield in Utah and shows them the related unsolved case files dating back to 1991. (Shouldn’t most of them have been lost to the office fire of ’98?) Meanwhile, Scully finds the bus, but everyone finds Dana and she realizes she’s in a heap of trouble as they forcibly restrain her. They bludgeon Hank to death and Bus Driver approaches Scully while holding the squirming wormlike parasite. Dana plays the baby card, but these zealots ignore her and complete the ritual. I guess they "Wouldn’t Have Missed It For The World." 

Milsap, Bus Driver and GSM try to convince Scully she will be the appropriate host for “Him." Jeez, guess "There Ain’t No Getting Over (That)." Luckily, Doggett soon shows up asking questions. He doesn’t believe Milsap and Bus Driver, so John tips off the sheriff, enters the house, punches GSM and saves Scully. They try to hotwire the bus, but get sidetracked because Doggett has to cut into Scully’s back to remove the parasite before it gets to her brain. The zealots force their way onto the bus as John yanks out the creature and shoots it dead. 

Stunned by the death of their … whatever that was, the townsfolk let Doggett carry Dana to safety while local police arrive to arrest everyone. One week later, Scully is well enough to leave the Utah hospital where she was recuperating. John tells her the 47 cult members are all claiming a religious persecution defense. Dana admits she was wrong to pursue a case without Doggett, who is pleased when Scully says she won’t do it again. When it comes to his new partner, Doggett is clearly a "Stand by (My Woman) Man." 

Sestra Professional: 

There's not a lot of meat on the bones of this one. In fact, the slug the cult worships probably doesn't have any bones at all. But it does provide the next logical step in Doggett's progression -- namely getting to save Scully. Don't fear, John, there are only millions of fans watching your every step and examining your every word when it comes to the care of our only lead left standing. In other words, Doggett, you gotta get it right.

Fortunately Vince Gilligan lets him do so and then some within the confines of this script. This is one of the highlights of Season 8 for me. "Roadrunners" easily could have fit into the old context of the show, but slots in appropriately into our Mulder-less transformation. 

I don't have a great memory for mucus: That'll learn ya, Dana, going on the road without your new partner, even for a simple consultation. She winds up in a town that apparently belongs in the Deliverance hall of fame. So she never really had much of a chance, even though she's keenly aware things are definitely not right there. 

Nevertheless, despite the fact that Scully doesn't believe what the residents are telling her for a second, she winds up handing her gun over to the guy she believes is the victim. You can't even trust people going through grand mal seizures any more. But it's a nice twist in the proceedings to be sure.

Meanwhile John doggedly (pun intended) tries to locate her. He shows local law enforcement a photo of a John Doe, we should put a pin in that sucker because we'll need it next season. Thank goodness he's so thorough that he was able zip through the case files, maybe he got the ones destroyed from the fire from Skinner's office. Now he has memory for mucus after all!

That thing in my spine is a him?: Hey, Scully doesn't need a creature inside her to be adored. Mulder may not be around to gaze at her, but she's got legions of Dana devotees at her beck and call. And now there's John too. The Scullyacs probably didn't appreciate her having to apologize to him in the final scene, but it really was the only mature thing to do.

But back to the desert town, for Dana's deliverance really gave Gillian Anderson a chance to cut loose as Scully curses at and threatens the townspeople from hell. Really, are you people just so bored that you're willing to worship a slug? 

Kudos to John for his keen insight, not only for nothing that Milsap was packing, but for calling for backup so that the same thing didn't happen to him. Dana, you probably could call him John instead of Agent Doggett when you're tied to a bedpost with a creature squirming around your spine. 

That was a fairly gross denouement -- in The Complete X-Files, producer Paul Rabwin recalled some cameramen "started to lose it" over the gruesome effects. But it was a nice way for John to literally carve out his niche in our story. And then he carries Scully to safety. Come on, X-Philes, you've gotta be growing attached to him by now, another pun intended. 

Meta mollusks: Either way, that's exactly what Gilligan intended. "I wanted to have this gangbusters episode, one that showed how Doggett was a good guy; someone to be counted on and who could be trusted by Scully," he said in The Complete X-Files. And Robert Patrick added that fans who didn't appreciate Dana having to apologize could look at it a different way. "The whole essence of the scene was, 'Look, I'm here for you. I've got your back. We're partners now.' And you give that the weight of a Marine saying to someone, 'I'll jump on a grenade for you, so you can trust me.'" It was meant to reassure fans, not to irk them. 

Guest star of the week: Going with Lawrence Pressman as Mr. Milsap, whom I know best as Jane Fonda's bit-of-a-dick husband, Dick, in 9 to 5. The other townspeople ... and their "victim" ... and the local police seem kind of cardboardy, but Pressman makes more out of Mr. Milsap. It's no small feat. The veteran actor makes his character stand up and stand out, providing a reason why a group of backwoodsers would follow him in the first place. Other than the fact that they have nothing else to do with themselves, that is. 

X-Files S8E3: He's ... wait for it ... Man-Bat

Sestra Amateur: 

The opening credits no longer include David Duchovny’s name and now his only presence is Mulder’s falling, flailing body. Hope that didn’t end up becoming a metaphor for David’s movie career. In Los Angeles’ version of Burley, Idaho (I really prefer using Vancouver’s versions to Cali’s), undertaker George accidentally wakes up his wife, Tahoma, in the middle of the night. She soon sees him get attacked by a bat-like creature which then comes after her.

Back in the X-files’ office at FBI headquarters, Special Agent John Doggett shows how different he is from Mulder, especially when it comes to the other agents. This guy actually has work friends. Hopefully they won’t turn on him, because it’s been a while since we’ve seen Scully with any work-related comrades. That’ll probably be a side effect of her new role as the “believer.” She even presents the new cases now, slide projector and all. 

They head to Burley and meet with Detective Abbott, a burly man himself, who shows Team Sculett an unusual footprint. Dana is in the awkward position of having to train another agent to be open to any possibilities in their investigations. John finds more weird footprints inside the house and assumes they’re looking for a human killer with a deformed foot. He's a student of Occam’s Razor, which theorizes that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Scully points out the deformed foot killer leaves a print every 25 feet. That’s quite a ... feat. Sculett check the open attic crawlspace in the victims’ bedroom. Doggett and his trusty pocket flashlight find two of George’s fingers while Scully reveals they’ve been regurgitated. And both agents observe claw marks in the beams of the victims’ house.

At the nearby McKesson residence, an old lady is attacked by the “Man-Bat.” (Of course this is not the same Man-Bat created 40 years ago for DC Comics by Frank Robbins and Neal Adams, although an X-Files/DC crossover could have been very interesting.) Dana finishes the autopsies on the first victims and her conclusions lean toward animal/inhuman, especially because of enzymes she’s identified that exist only in bats. Wow, she’s on the right track only 15 minutes into the episode. John's research supports her conclusion. He somehow found a 1956 article about a bat-like creature who killed five people in Montana. 

Det. Abbott calls our intrepid heroes over to the McKesson home, which resembles the first crime scene. Scully finds a connection between McKesson’s recently deceased daughter and the two cases. Doggett runs interference after Abbott gets fed up with Dana's wildly speculative conclusions. Abbott obtains a court order, but the daughter’s grave has already been exhumed and her coffin shows evidence of scratch marks. He sees Man-Bat with his own eyes and that’s the last of Detective Abbott. Do you think his last thought was “Damn feds were right?”

The late detective’s anger is passed on to the sheriff’s deputies, who want Team Sculett off the case. But Scully’s results of the daughter’s autopsy show she died of natural causes and was burned afterward. There’s only one person still alive who had contact with the woman’s dead body: Myron Stefaniuk, who is related to one of the men, Ernie Stefaniuk, in Doggett’s 1956 story. They find Myron and learn Ernie is his missing brother. While staking out Myron’s house, Dana and John learn a little more about each other, at least on a professional level. They don’t realize Man-Bat is just hanging around -- literally -- in Myron’s garage. 

The agents locate Ernie on Bird Island late at night. Luckily, Scully now has her own pocket flashlight. It’s actually surprising she “never” had one before. Ernie claims he and his wife, Ariel -- the dead burned body in question -- hid on the island for decades, with Myron’s help. When his wife died, she wanted to be buried in consecrated ground so he accommodated her dying wish, which triggered the Man-Bat. Ernie points out the creature only attacks at night, so Doggett leaves to check on Myron and gets attacked for his trouble. Do we need another new co-star already?

Ernie is berating Dana for endangering herself and John when his radar warns them of Man-Bat’s presence. After shooting several holes in Ernie’s roof, Scully investigates outside the house. Meanwhile, Ernie gets attacked by Man-Bat inside the home. Dana shoots at it, as does Doggett, who is alive but injured. He’ll learn very quickly how lucky he is to have a medical doctor as his partner. They don’t capture or kill the creature but manage to scare it away. So would William of Ockham agree the simplest solution is that Man-Bats exist?

Two weeks later, John gets a message from Ernie, who’s gone back into hiding. Doggett's concerned because the brass doesn’t like how the X-files unit closes their cases. Scully, who’s clearly used to it, agrees to let him use Mulder’s office space. After all, even Occam’s Razor supports the theory that an agent assigned to the X-files unit should have a desk in the X-files office.

Sestra Professional: 

My resolve is to have more patience with this episode than I've had in previous rewatches. Truth be told, I've often fallen asleep during the latter third of "Patience." That will be kind of hard to do while working the rewatch blog on it.

The Doggett indoctronation continues. In the season opener, he learned how not to be liked be his co-workers. Last week, he found out that the higher-ups don't really like it when phrases like "aliens" or "shape-shifters" are used. And now he gets to test his mettle in one of those supernatural cases that don't appeal to other FBI agents.

The first thing that actually caught my attention in this episode was victim Tahoma's accent in the teaser. Didn't even have to look up at the screen to recognize that as belonging to actress Annie O'Donnell, or as I better know her "Yugoslavian recidivist knucklehead" June Wheeler -- Brent Spiner's spouse on their recurring episodes of Night Court. Something worse befell her than the "usual" stories of woe told by Bob and June Wheeler. It seems so unfair, that woman deserves a win.

I say that assumption is the problem here: John went over every X-file in the cabinet in the wee hours of the morning. How is that possible? Oh, that must be the post-fire cases, aka after the Vancouver years. OK, I can believe that.

I'm very much enjoying Scully's new dynamic. She's still got her base of science to work from, but at the same time, she's got a wealth of confidence from taking over as veteran leadership on the X-files. We feel Mulder alive and kicking inside of her -- not a baby reference, just a nod to the fact that she's no longer adverse to "Occam's Principle of Limited Information." And she's kind of enjoying the fact that someone else is in the position of "WTF" agent. Probably reminds her of some early shapelessly dressed days.

'V' for victory: We're also getting a sense of what John Doggett can bring to the proceedings. And that's why I've long considered The X-Files a malleable concept. As much as we thrill to the adventures of Fox and Dana, there are other ways of looking at investigating cases beyond wild theories and autopsies. Doggett gives us that, not just because he's apparently able to sift through newspaper archives very quickly, but due to his deeper attention to that kind of documented detail.

Detective Abbott is a mystery to me, well, as long as he was alive anyway. I'm not sure any answer would have satisfied him. He doesn't appreciate Scully saying the suspect was a man, nor does he later like the determination that the two cases are connected -- by the way, wouldn't that be proof of Occam's Razor, the simplest answer would be the correct one? My Hulu feed froze on the eye of the Man-Bat as he was about to attack Detective You-Were-Cruising-for-It. And that was pretty creepy. I won't be falling asleep any time soon.

The law enforcement in this episode clearly leaves something to be desired. It's the only thing making me lose my patience for this one. But at least it's not a far reach for us to back the new guy against the lynch mob with his reasoning that the only person/thing responsible for the murders is the person/thing that did it. So the supposition that Det. Burly's death falls on Dana feels as hollow as a pecked-out eye socket. I can buy Ernie Stefaniuk finding it ridiculous, but not peacekeepers who don't have any other explanations.

I'm no Fox Mulder, but I can tell when a man's hiding something: The car scene is a nice advancement of our storyline. For all her newfound strength, it's good to see Scully unsure of her foothold at this juncture. And John shows us something too. His whole world is based on facts, and if the facts back up Dana's supposition, he's not going to close his eyes to that fact. All that from one little scene in a car, not bad for a couple minutes' work.

Doggett getting attacked in the lake doesn't work quite as well. I kind of was hoping for Big Blue from "Quagmire" (Season 3, Episode 22) to surface and have some kind of battle akin to King Kong and the giant snake in the former's movie. But at least we got John's feet wet ... and the rest of him as well. Talk about jumping right in. 

Guest star of the week: As much as I wanted to give a nod to Annie O'Donnell or Brent Sexton for his quick cameo as the gravedigger, television veteran Gene Dynarski gives a heartfelt performance as the loner Ernie Stefaniuk. No, he doesn't earn it just because he played Ike in my favorite movie of all time, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Dynarski gave Burley's story some emotional weight. But Ike did go into hiding in Wyoming, home of Devils Tower. That means something, that is important.

X-Files S8E2: Without or within you

Sestra Amateur: 

We left off last week in the season opener "Within" with our intrepid hero, Fox Mulder, appearing to kidnap young Gibson Praise. And as much as I’m looking forward to Gillian Anderson assume the lead role, was it really necessary to have her take over Mulder’s opening voiceovers? They can’t really be of any help; ongoing fans don’t want to be patronized and new viewers won’t care. This voiceover seems to be about aliens. I’m assuming that because there’s a huge UFO cloaking itself in a desert while Scully rambles. 

So John Doggett has “Mulder” at gunpoint and convinces him to let Gibson go. I use quotes because this guy may look like Fox, but he isn’t physically acting like him. He also doesn’t talk or comply with Doggett’s demands. Instead, he walks off a high cliff and plummets to his apparent death. Don’t worry, he’s not dead, he just has a broken arm. And he’s gone before the FBI can get to his body. Yep, he did just get up and run away. What I find interesting is how after seven years, Assistant Director Walter Skinner still uses words like “impossible” when it comes to X-files-related situations. Dana knows the score immediately, that “Mulder” was the alien bounty hunter. And with that line, Scully officially becomes the new Mulder.

Doggett accidentally tracks the bounty hunter back to the school, but since he’s impersonating a teacher now, John doesn’t “see” him. And Gibson Praise is still missing. Team Sculner want to follow Gibson’s friend, but one of Deputy Director Kersh’s lackeys catches them. Walter runs interference so Dana can follow her to Gibson’s location, which is in an underground bunker. Praise is scared because Fox was taken and he doesn’t want to be abducted too. Scully makes promises to an injured Gibson that she may not be able to keep.

Kersh micromanages John from D.C., but Skinner clarifies the career collateral damage situation for Doggett, who finally appears to be on board when he realizes Dana is in two places at once. It looks like John and Walter have the real Scully because the other one has a harsh musical score attached to her/its presence. “Scully” attacks the agent who tries to restrain her, but Dana gets a glimpse of her/it before she/it runs away and morphs into someone else. Too bad Doggett has “I don’t know what I saw” face. Meanwhile, Gibson is also having dreams of Mulder being tortured by aliens. 

Scully tries to leave, but Skinner has the car keys. She thinks he’s the bounty hunter, so Dana pulls her weapon on him. Walter responds as he should and points his gun at Scully. He proves his identity by lowering his gun, turning his back and talking about her secret. Team Sculner regain their mutual levels of trust and leave together to rescue Gibson, who is burning up with fever. Skinner takes the boy to the hospital while Scully remains in the desert. Praise awakens but is terrified when his deaf friend appears with the appropriate bounty hunter musical cues. And Dana sees a bright light in the sky while wandering around the desert. Despite the mystical music, it’s pretty obvious it’s just a helicopter. 

Scully is annoyed because Doggett continues to follow her but, as he so eloquently puts it, “You’re where the action is.” Dana is livid when she realizes John’s men followed Walter to the hospital because the alien bounty hunter is probably hiding with them in plain sight. They fly to the hospital, never realizing how close they were to the cloaked alien ship … and to a tortured Mulder crying out for Scully.

Team Sculett (Doggy? Doggly? Sculett, it is.) arrive at the hospital and realize all of the FBI agents are idiots. They desperately search the hospital. Dana finds Skinner, but this time it isn’t the real Walter, who’s left unconscious and possibly blinded up in the ceiling. Gibson warns Scully, who struggles with the bounty hunter before shooting him in the throat. Of course, the body disintegrates into a puddle of green ooze before Doggett can see it. I don’t think a green stain is going to convince the deputy director of anything. But John clearly sees the writing on the wall during his debriefing. 

Afterward, Doggett meets with Dana in the hospital to tell her Skinner and Agent Landau (the one she/it attacked) are both in stable condition. Gibson is also safe and will be under state protection. And John breaks the news that he has been assigned to the X-files. With Scully’s facial reaction, you’d think he just told her his dog died. Maybe she should give him back the get-well card he just gave to her. And it’s a good news/bad news situation for Brian Thompson fans: There are several alien bounty hunters who look like him still alive on the ship with Mulder (good), but this is the last X-Files episode credit for Thompson (bad). 

Sestra Professional: 

Last week, the show set up John Doggett's entrance as well as it could have possibly been done. Now it's time for him to get initiated into the supernatural. That too is handled with aplomb, this has been a fairly smart two-parter penned by showrunner Chris Carter. Sestra Am's right, though, Scully's opening voiceover was not necessary in the slightest. It just comes off as annoying and pretentious. I'm wondering whether that drove off more people than the idea of replacing the male lead. I know it really didn't, just hypothesizing a more valid reason for not giving the new normal a chance.

Don't turn this into a movie: So back to the top of the Arizona cliff we go. And this faux Mulder is showing more personality than our real-life one did on occasion during the run of the series to this point. Kidding ... sorta. But question, if the shape shifter Doggett encountered was not Fox, then why is that guy falling utilized in the new opening of our show? We're supposed to be reminded of a shape shifter every week until we see David Duchovny again?

It's a pretty jaw-dropping initiation into the proceedings for John. We know he's seen an array of unfathomable circumstances during his years as a New York City detective. But certainly nothing like a man falling off the top of a cliff ... and then running away from the scene before anyone can get down to the point of impact.

I'll have to put a pin in that for now, because, boy Gillian Anderson looks incredible in the desert. Taking over the outright lead of the show really becomes her. Dana gets to spout all the dialogue formerly attributed to Fox, as Sestra Am pointed out. Including the clunky "Wherever Mulder is right now, he better damn well be smiling." Yep, we know it's a Carter script without even looking at the credits.

The only other flaw I find with this episode is that Doggett falls as silent as faux Mulder when he's asked what he does believe if he won't buy Scully's arguments. Not a peep. He's sharp, though, he knows that Fox -- faux or not -- went back to the deaf school, even if he won't admit it's not the real Mulder. He can't wrap his head around the idea of the shape shifter yet. And I'll buy that, although I'd like to him to proffer his own theory. Maybe I'm just used to when Dana at least made an attempt to do that in the days when she filled the skeptic role.

Scully, for god's sake, stay hydrated. Even if you didn't have a bun in the oven, you must take care of yourself. You're almost all we've got. Dana's ability to take up Fox's slack apparently has become even more finely honed, she figures out Gibson's hiding space with very few clues and by leaning heavily on guesswork.

You painted me a picture, now put it in a frame: Conversely, Deputy Director Kersh continues to be the most frustrating guy. There's seemingly no answer John can give to satisfy him. So we're lucky to have Skinner around more than usual. And Walter tries to give John the lowdown about being a pawn in a rigged game. Doggett's been set up to fail. It's the only reason people wind up on the X-files. Skinner says it's been Kersh's plan all along. Not sure why he would want one of his best in such a no-win situation, but so be it since that benefits us.

It's fun to see Gillian play the shape-shifted version of herself. She's the Terminator here. The subtleties she provides, even in the characters' different ways of running are magnificent. We don't need Mark Snow's score or dialogue to know which one is which. Meanwhile, the Tormenting of David Duchovny continues on the ship. I mean, the Mulder torment. I can't get past the fact that it feels like Carter might be doing that to David deliberately as some small measure of retaliation for him bargaining his way into getting half the season off.

It hasn't gone far enough: But if that proves disappointing, we always have Skinner and Scully pulling guns on each other. We have seen that before, of course, at the beginning of the third season -- "The Blessing Way"/"Paper Clip." That can either be seen as a bracing development or a needless retread. I lean toward the former. It's a scene that carries emotional weight, playing nicely against the thriller aspect of the storyline. For a second or two, we don't actually know if one or the other really are the shape shifters, so it keeps us on our toes as well.

But then something else familiar at the hospital is less welcome. Yep, Walter's gonna take another beatdown at the hands of someone who looks like she shouldn't be strong enough to take him down, à la Holly in "Pusher" (S3E17). Of course, in this case, it's the shape shifter all dressed up, or rather dressed down to half his size as Gibson's deaf friend, Thea. And speaking of familiar, that helicopter that initially appears to be an alien ship is right out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Maybe that's why it was so easy for Sestra Am to figure it out.

If something tries to rip your throat out, I got you covered: So Doggett makes a mistake sending the agents he's working with to the hospital. But he is bright enough to figure out the ceiling escape. It's kind of a shame that soon after the earlier trust sequence Dana's confronted with the fake Walter. And she is veeeeeery lucky that the green ooze emanating from the shape shifter isn't as toxic as it was in the early seasons.

And we wrap up with more disappointment from Kersh. He doesn't like the pot-boiled science fiction -- as though there was any other way to report what happened. There's really nothing Doggett can do about that. As Walter predicted, it's the kiss of death for John -- assignment to the X-files. I do hope Doggett comes up with better platitudes than "It's not who wins or loses, it's who takes the worst beating that counts," That doesn't really seem like it should be the case, although we've stuck by our heroes when they suffer all manner of beatdowns, so maybe it's not so bad after all. Kind of like John Doggett?

Guest star of the week: Jeff Gulka didn't get to do much besides look scared in his return to the show for the season opener. He figures more into the proceedings in the conclusion of the two-parter, and it may not be much more, but there's something about his portrayal that conveys the drama of Gibson's story. He does seem wise beyond his years. With our mythology so out of whack at this point, it's clutch for a young guest star to be able to provide that.