X-Files S9E16: Scarred for life

Sestra Amateur: 

Have you healed from last week’s brutal ending to the Lone Gunmen saga? Hope so, because there’s not a lot of downtime this week. Based on this episode’s title, the heartbreak continues, although “heartbreak” may depend on your perspective. A childless couple have adopted William. Yes, Special Agent Dana Scully’s baby boy. I hope the adoption agency was required to provide full disclosure, like when you buy a house. After all, can’t that kid move things with his mind?!

Flash back to one week earlier: Dana still has the best parking spot of anyone in her apartment building as she removes William from his car seat. And Special Agent John Doggett gets viciously attacked by a man who was searching the X-files office. Doggett catches up to him and learns the man’s face is severely burned. John and Special Agent Monica Reyes call in Agent Scully because the burglar claims he will only talk to her. The man –- played by Chris Owens, which is either inspired stunt casting or a major spoiler -- claims his name is Daniel Miller. Despite his disfigured face, he does look familiar to us. He says Fox Mulder gave him a card key to get into the FBI building. He also says his burns are part of a government conspiracy. Miller, who was stealing files related to Samantha Mulder, lets Scully inspect his scars. She confirms they aren’t chemical burns. He claims to have been injected with something that burned his body from the inside out.

Doggett is trying to confirm Miller’s identity and thinks Daniel is actually Fox. Scully knows he’s not Mulder (maybe she’s too embarrassed to admit she confirmed that during the physical inspection), but seems irked when this unknown stranger mentions her abduction. Miller claims people at the FBI would kill him –- and Mulder -– if they knew Miller was there. They let him continue to root through the X-files filing cabinet, but he isn’t finding what he wants. That’s because Dana hid a stash of files in her bedroom closet. Clearly, by “trusting” this lying stranger, she’s violating Mulder’s mantra: Trust No One. Maybe she’d rather prove she’s right to Doggett; after all, she and Fox agreed to conceal those files. But Dana changes her mind and her demeanor when Miller checks on a crying William. Now she’s a mother who is royally pissed at her baby’s absentee father. Miller claims Mulder is in pain and she cannot help. Scully actually lets this stranger hold William, who remains calm in this weepy man’s arms.

John meets with Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who plays the common-sense role by pointing out the physical discrepancies between Mulder and Miller. (Thank you, Walter!) Then the lab calls back with rushed PCR test results. (Boy, does that have a different meaning in this day and age.) When Dana confronts Miller, he claims Scully was used to create and raise William, who is part alien. Reyes interrupts the interrogation and kicks Miller out of the room. Doggett claims the DNA test confirms it is Fox Mulder. Dana still refuses to believe it. Miller chooses that time to leave, running away in a very non-Mulderesque fashion. (It reminded me of Phoebe running with Rachel through the park on Friends. Yep, that bad.)

John runs Miller down and claims they will protect him. Scully and Team Johnica give Miller medication and put him to sleep, then awkwardly wait for him to wake up. Miller creeps back into William’s bedroom, takes the kid’s pacifier and puts an unknown substance on the baby’s lips. He injects him with something, which causes William to cry. Dana and Monica rush the baby to the emergency room while John interrogates Miller. Doggett searches the bedroom and finds the syringe under the mattress. The doctor finishes examining William but finds nothing more than an elevated iron level. Scully realizes she’s been played yet again.

Back at FBI headquarters, everyone learns the truth: Miller is the presumed-dead Jeffrey Spender, who was shot by his own father, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, way back in "One Son" (Season 6, Episode 12.) I guess this confirms he and Mulder really were half-brothers, although in 2002, would their DNA have been considered that close a match? Dana learns he intentionally tried to win their trust so he could get close to William and inject him with something. Spender claims it’s a form of magnetite that makes William useless to the aliens for colonization.

Scully does a 180 and almost seems grateful to Jeffrey. Unfortunately, Spender claims she’ll never able to truly protect William, who may end up just like him someday. (In retrospect, the reboot reveal of William’s parentage really does make this seem like a revenge plan Jeffrey could appreciate even more if he knew the truth.) Why wouldn’t Dana consider witness protection for both of them so she could stay with her son? It’s not like she’s expecting Fox to show up at her door, nor would she be bound by contract since the series would end the following month.

Since Jeffrey wasn’t really in contact with Mulder, we still have no legit reason why Fox is still hiding from Dana and did not attend the Lone Gunmen’s funeral. I wrote a whole paragraph griping about how David Duchovny was available to not only co-write but direct this episode, yet didn't put in an appearance in the previous one in which Mulder’s presence should have been mandatory. And to show I’m not always about the negative when it comes to The X-Files, good for them putting Chris Owens’ name in the credits at the end of the show to protect that reveal. And William’s UFO onesie is just adorable too.

Sestra Professional: 

I'm deeming this the beginning of the "Be Careful What You Wish For" series. It doesn't see us just through the regular run of the show but everything up to the current point on The X-Files landscape.

This dubious distinction starts off with the aforementioned return of David Duchovny to the fold, not as Mulder, but co-writer of the story for "William" with creator Chris Carter and executive producer Frank Spotnitz. Since Duchovny hasn't been with us all season, he obviously can't do much to further the transformation of the show and the advancement of John Doggett and Monica Reyes' characters. So we're back to plot largely sidelined in Season 9 -- which, in my mind, was for the greater good. We've hardly mentioned Mulder this year. I wasn't bothered by that, and I knew Sestra Am 100 percent wasn't either.

After literally fading out on The Lone Gunmen last week, we open with Scully giving up the precious bundle of joy that we've spent a couple seasons toting around. It feels like the worst kind of fire sale. Even if you didn't read sci-fi publications or watch Entertainment Tonight, you could tell in the span of these two eps (and next week's "Release") that the proverbial house seemed to be being boarded up by snowbirds heading to Florida for the winter.

Following the opening teaser, we see -- or rather hear -- Scully reprising her fondness for singing "Joy to the World" for William. You might recall Dana first warbled that tune in "Detour" (S5E4). It's the kind of light moment we've come to expect from Duchovny since the non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicle scene in his directorial debut, "The Unnatural" (S619).

What is true and what we want to be true isn't always the same: So in Duchovny and company's hands, Doggett takes the kind of beating that used to be reserved for Alex Krycek. Not sure how John was able to recover enough to then apprehend the intruder, that's some super-soldier-like bounce-back ability he's got there. Then again, since Doggett so doggedly insists a shorter, lighter dude is Mulder, maybe he did suffer one blow too many.

Actually this part of the story does work, and even more importantly, it gives Gillian Anderson the meatiest material she's gotten all season. Unlike, say, "Trust No 1" (S9E6), in which Scully and the unseen Mulder were turned into revolting Hallmark movie versions of themselves. (That would have worked in the hands of Vince Gilligan, by the way.) So if we have to delve back into what was, I don't really mind the wee wedge put between our main characters by the mysterious scarred man -- who more closely resembles Chris Owens in his first X-Files incarnation as the Great Mutato in "The Post-Modern Prometheus" (S5E5).

You are as false as your face: In fact, Scully is written as strongly here as she has been in quite some time, and I'm not just talking about Season 9. Dana's complete confidence that the mystery man -- for all his similarities to Fox -- is not Mulder is heartening. The same holds true for Skinner. But at the same time, on some level, we can get behind Doggett's doubt. John's character isn't tarnished by a theory that we might have believed to be true if we did not have Scully and Skinner's leads to follow.

It takes Dana the requisite amount of time to put all the pieces together -- and by pieces, yes, I mean all the scaly bits of Jeffrey's visage. Welcome back, Scully! It's so good to see you again. I didn't know how much I missed you until the moment when you confronted Spender in the interrogation room.

And yet it's come to this. After following Dana through her pregnancy ... and all its various scares ... the birth ... and its inherent danger ... and avenging angels masking as nannies and right thinkers, now Scully gives him up. Can I just add that the use of "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore" seems overly aggrandizing? Perhaps the same singers voicing "Joy to the World" might have put a better bow on the William story.

As Sestra Am alluded to, if you're scoring at home, that's two major exits Mulder missed out on. We can feel his return nearing -- this show has given us all supernatural powers!! -- and it feels like a supreme letdown that these moments were lost to pivotal characters, and us by extension.

Guest star of the week: I would say Chris Owens qualifies for these kudos, since he wasn't part of the cast for a few years. And because I do feel bad for being one of those who did Jeffrey Spender dirty since he started mucking up the works in Season 5. In addition to the mythology refresher course Owens provides, he gets to do a lot of Mulderesque quipping in this one, guess it's just in the jeans.