Three things come to mind when I hear the title "The Gift." First, of course, is my favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In that episode, Buffy learns death is her “gift” before she bites the dust at the end of Season 5. Then there is the Sam Raimi movie from 2000; Cate Blanchett’s gift -- clairvoyance -- almost gets her killed. Finally, there is the 2015 Jason Bateman thriller in which the gift can be literal (a basinet filled with disturbing presents) or figurative (the truth). I never gave it much thought either way. But in this episode, in true X-Files fashion, the gift is amazing yet nauseating.
It’s a stormy night in Squamash Township, Pennsylvania. A man with a gun enters a family home marked with blood (or red paint), shoots someone in front of the terrified residents and leaves. It’s Mulder! Do his alien captors give him furlough time to indulge in his X-file obsessions?
Doggett is driving to Squamash on a much calmer, sunnier day. He’s thinking about Fox's disappearance and bleak medical outlook. John meets with Sheriff Frey, who claims he met Mulder on a bogus missing person case prior to his disappearance. The phone records show Fox returned to Squamash the week before the events of "Within"/"Without," the first two episodes of Season 8. Doggett interviews Paul and Marie Hangemuhl, the couple Mulder helped. Flashbacks show Fox interviewing them as well. Paul lies to John by claiming Mulder never returned to the house. He admits Fox believed a story about an Indian folk legend coming to eat Marie alive. John silently takes note of the sloppy bullet hole patchwork on a wall in the house.
Doggett then searches Mulder’s apartment and feeds his fish. Whoever’s keeping them alive has gotten pretty lazy with the dusting. And who’s paying Fox’s rent these days? Mulder never struck me as the type who would (or could) pay for months upfront. The porn channel, sure. During his search, John finds a Walther PPK, which may have been the gun Fox used to shoot someone/something in Squamash.
Sheriff Frey oversees an exhumation of an area in the cemetery marked by stones while Doggett inspects the gun at the FBI office. He updates Skinner, who knew about Mulder’s second weapon but naively believes Fox would have filed a report if he fired his weapon three times during a case. (I had the best laugh of the season after hearing that line. There is no way Walter truly believes Mulder told him everything.) John's main problem is he proved Fox lied about an official investigation and Scully is complicit because she signed the same falsified reports as Mulder. At least Doggett would rather go through Skinner to get answers than file an official complaint with the FBI.
Things are escalating in Squamash again. Several men and their dogs chase and catch a shirtless man from a cabin. There’s clearly something wrong with the guy, whom they treat like an animal. Team Skinett confront Sheriff Frey after learning he signed a death certificate for a shooting victim found outside a woman’s cabin the day after Fox met with the Hangemuhls. John and Walter find the man’s open grave at the cemetery. Skinner takes note of the stone markings, while Paul goes back to painting symbols on his front door. The vigilantes bring their -- I don’t know ... zompire Indian? -- to the Hangemuhl’s house, where Marie allows it to take a bite out of her while Paul prays quietly. Team Skinett arrive after the cleanup, but Paul missed a spot. Meanwhile, the man/creature is underground, vomiting up something in human form. It’s a really good thing I don’t eat while watching these episodes.
Agent Doggett has put most of the pieces together and Skinner shows him the now-erased mark on the front door, courtesy of Luminol. They reach out to the Lone Gunman, who identify the mark as a medicine wheel, which summons a soul eater to use its gift to remove the illness. You know, for a trio of men who believe in all sorts of conspiracies, they sure got on board with Team Skinett very quickly. John goes to the cabin to interview the woman who lives there. She believes in the soul eater and is still protecting him. Doggett follows a tunnel under the cabin and locates a probably-now-healthy Marie covered in slime and mucus. He thinks he’s rescuing her, but she’s already been saved.
Things are escalating in Squamash again. Several men and their dogs chase and catch a shirtless man from a cabin. There’s clearly something wrong with the guy, whom they treat like an animal. Team Skinett confront Sheriff Frey after learning he signed a death certificate for a shooting victim found outside a woman’s cabin the day after Fox met with the Hangemuhls. John and Walter find the man’s open grave at the cemetery. Skinner takes note of the stone markings, while Paul goes back to painting symbols on his front door. The vigilantes bring their -- I don’t know ... zompire Indian? -- to the Hangemuhl’s house, where Marie allows it to take a bite out of her while Paul prays quietly. Team Skinett arrive after the cleanup, but Paul missed a spot. Meanwhile, the man/creature is underground, vomiting up something in human form. It’s a really good thing I don’t eat while watching these episodes.
Agent Doggett has put most of the pieces together and Skinner shows him the now-erased mark on the front door, courtesy of Luminol. They reach out to the Lone Gunman, who identify the mark as a medicine wheel, which summons a soul eater to use its gift to remove the illness. You know, for a trio of men who believe in all sorts of conspiracies, they sure got on board with Team Skinett very quickly. John goes to the cabin to interview the woman who lives there. She believes in the soul eater and is still protecting him. Doggett follows a tunnel under the cabin and locates a probably-now-healthy Marie covered in slime and mucus. He thinks he’s rescuing her, but she’s already been saved.
John sees the rejuvenated Marie in the hospital and surprisingly is on board with the soul eater’s power. He thinks Mulder went to the cabin to save himself but couldn’t go through with it. The woman says Fox tried to put the creature out of its misery instead, but it couldn't die. Doggett sees the creature crying and plans to take him away from Squamash. The vigilantes return to claim it and the sheriff shoots John dead. The soul eater escapes and the men bury the dead Doggett in the woods. The end.
Nah, just kidding. John wakes up covered in slime and mucus in the same place he found Marie. The soul eater saved his life by taking away death. Now the creature is at peace and Doggett has no idea how to write up his case report. Walter unofficially encourages John not to. Your X-files initiation is complete, Agent Doggett.
Nah, just kidding. John wakes up covered in slime and mucus in the same place he found Marie. The soul eater saved his life by taking away death. Now the creature is at peace and Doggett has no idea how to write up his case report. Walter unofficially encourages John not to. Your X-files initiation is complete, Agent Doggett.
Sestra Professional:
Initiation in half a year, that's even quicker than Scully's at the start of the series! Well, I guess the show's under something of a time crunch, Doggett needs to have been put through the ringer and come out the other side before we pick up steam for the resolution of Mulder's story and the end run to the season finale.
Initiation in half a year, that's even quicker than Scully's at the start of the series! Well, I guess the show's under something of a time crunch, Doggett needs to have been put through the ringer and come out the other side before we pick up steam for the resolution of Mulder's story and the end run to the season finale.
It's a little unsettling to carry on with the plot device of Fox keeping Scully unaware of all he was going through and what he was doing. For that reason, I can't appreciate "The Gift" as much as I might have, even though it's a story that feels more in the X-Files wheelhouse than the three that preceded it. The way our longtime leads depended on each other, such an unwieldy secret feels unnecessary and misguided. "How well did you really know him?" continues to feel like a hollow question to Dana and those of us who have been on their journey all these years.
Are you calling Mulder a liar? On the other hand, we've got Skinner and Doggett working the case together. That's a definite plus. The Mulder flashbacks are welcome as well. For as much as John has been the proverbial shot in the arm this year, we've been in Fox limbo land way too long. The show certainly made sure we couldn't forget him either with his inclusion -- or at least the shape-shifter version of him -- in the opening credits of the episodes he hasn't been in.
Giving Mulder a pass on the "not letting anyone else know he was dying" front, this story trades on an intriguing concept. Of course, Fox would be interested in a soul muncher that takes the acrid badness out and leaves the yummy goodness behind. That's so Mulder, so Frank Spotnitz's script is certainly right on the mark in this regard.
Good thing Walter remembers what he saw at the end of last season. He's a little rough on Doggett, though. The guy wouldn't be out of line in pointing out Mulder fired his weapon in Pennsylvania when reports confirmed by Scully stated conclusively that Fox was in D.C. Skinner's depending a lot on the bond John's been creating with Dana. It would be pretty easy for Doggett to give the FBI the narrative it's looking for and earn his way off the X-files while endangering Scully's job in the process. And Walter calls John the one on shaky ground?
This theory's even nuttier than the one Agent Mulder came to town with: But Doggett's quest for the truth persists. And it's not a truth like the one Mulder searched for all these years. It's that quantifiable kind that seems closer to Scully's early ilk. Dude still loves looking for the paper trails and taking every single fact and figure as an absolute truth.
Director Kim Manners gorges on this one the way he traditionally handles the grossest of X-Files offerings. He feasts on the really gross stuff. The way the story plays out doesn't do much for the guest actors -- there won't be a Guest Star of the Week as a result -- but all we really are called on to care about for this story's purposes are our regulars. So while we gaze upon cured Marie and take in the latest exercise in exposition from the Lone Gunmen, the success of "The Gift" depends on John getting something out of the experience that he'll be able to hang his moral code on going forward.
As Sestra Am mentioned, this looks to be the case that evens the playing field. All it took was a taste of the soul eater's medicine -- a slight case of death followed by restoration on a plot of dirt and regurgitation. After that, Skinner's spoonful of advice can have the proper medicinal effect on Doggett. And if disillusioned fans remain whose minds are as open as John's has become still don't consider him a valued member of the team, they probably never will.
That sentiment was backed up by Spotnitz in The Complete X-Files. "If you're going to depart from literal reality as most of us know it, if you're going to go into the supernatural -- as a writer, you have you ask yourself, 'Why? What's the purpose? What's the reason? And if you don't really have a point or a reason, your story's probably not going to very good." Spotnitz does have one here, and if it's perhaps not delivered as cleanly as we might have liked it to be, the fact remains that it does keep the show in line with where it needs to be at this juncture.
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