Sestra Amateur:
Greetings Virtua Fighter. You have been recruited by the FBI to defend The Frontier against Darin Peter Oswald and his moronic friend, Zero. In Connorville, Oklahoma, a pizza delivery boy is playing Virtua Fighter 2 at the local arcade. That was my go-to fighting game in the '90s, preferred over Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Giovanni Ribisi’s Darin and Jack Black’s Zero want to play too, but clearly haven’t learned to wait their turn. Considering Zero works there, he should have just invoked the “we have the right to refuse service to anyone” rule. Darin takes a different tack, because he has X-File-worthy abilities. After Pizza Boy refuses, the lights go out and the jukebox starts by itself. Pizza Boy tries to drive away, but his car is clearly not under his control. He convulses and dies while Darin looks on.
Sculder arrive in the Sooner State – sooner rather than later – and Scully performs the autopsy on Jack Hammond, the pizza boy. Scully determines it was death by electrocution, but cannot find a point of contact on Jack’s body. Turns out, Sculder are involved because Pizza Boy is the sixth known victim of lightning strikes in the area, which is unusual, to say the least. Local Sheriff John Teller interrupts and tries to school Scully regarding the reasons behind the lightning frequency in their small hamlet. Dana holds her own, but it’s not enough. At least Mulder concedes it’s not UFOs fairly easily. Turns out the victims are all 17- to 21-year-old males. Guess serial lightning has a preferred type.
The agents meet with Zero at the arcade. Because of the front counter’s location, he should have had a clear view of Jack’s last moments in the parking lot. However, Zero plays stupid. Now that I think about it, he’s probably not playing. Mulder focuses on the Virtua Fighter 2 machine out of all of the games in the arcade. Sonic the Hedgehog is making the most noise, so I’m surprised that didn’t draw his attention. I can’t get its sound effects out of my head now.
Mulder sees the top 10 and notices all of the scores belong to D.P.O. (Reggie from Night of the Comet needs to work at that arcade so she can knock D.P.O. off his pedestal. “That’s the end of you, D.P.O.”) It’s very convenient that the top 10 lists the dates and times of the wins, and of course, they place D.P.O. there just before Jack’s death. Zero claims it was too noisy to notice anything, but we know the three of them were alone in the arcade. Mulder learns D.P.O. is Darin Peter Oswald, one of the previous lightning-strike victims. Clearly he survived.
At work at a garage, Darin awkwardly tries to hit on his boss’s wife, Sharon Kiveat. Her husband, Frank, returns and warns Darin the feds are looking for him. While Sculder talk to Darin, Mulder’s phone melts. Guess he won’t get much use out of it in this episode either. We then get a glimpse into Darin’s home life. His mother isn’t much of a prize, and Darin tortures her by screwing up the cable television while she’s watching her reality show. He’s pure evil incarnate. D.P.O. later gets struck by lightning in a cow pasture and it essentially recharges his abilities.
The next morning, Sculder find the dead cows but no Darin. Mulder spots a footprint and they preserve it. In the meantime, D.P.O. is using is powers to try and cause car accidents at a local intersection. Zero joins him and has to listen to his buddy moon over Sharon. Darin finally causes a crash, but Zero doesn’t seem impressed anymore. Funny how he was cool with it when D.P.O. killed someone over a video game. Frank arrives at the crash scene with his tow truck to clear the road, but Darin uses his powers to cause his boss to have a heart attack. The on-scene paramedics can’t get their defibrillator to work, so D.P.O. uses his hands and shocks Frank back to life. When you’re the one who stops a person’s heart, you don’t get credit for saving his life.
Sculder go to Darin’s house and Mulder finds a yearbook photo of Sharon hidden in a men’s magazine. Dana figures out D.P.O.'s shoes are the same size as the footprint Fox found in the cow pasture. The agents go to the hospital and ask Sharon about their suspect. She shows them Frank’s EKG and verifies his jump-started heart wasn’t caused by a defibrillator. Scully learns Darin suffered from a severe chemical imbalance when he was struck by lightning, he had high sodium and low potassium levels. So if he cut out the salt and ate a banana or two he wouldn’t have become Lightning Boy?
Our heroes catch up to D.P.O. and take him to the local jail. Sharon admits she knows about Darin’s crush on her and his special powers. She’s understandably scared of him. Sculder say they’ll protect her and her husband, but the sheriff lets D.P.O. out of jail. Darin thinks Zero ratted him out and stalks his buddy while music by Filter blasts in the background. Zero takes a lightning bolt to the back. “Hey man, nice shot” indeed.
Everyone converges on the hospital, which is more deserted than the one in Halloween II. I think they only showed three staff members in that movie. Wouldn’t an ER be busy on Halloween night, even in a small town like Haddonfield? Anyway, Dana tries to keep Darin from Sharon, but the frightened woman agrees to leave with him. (If they became a couple their shipper name could be ... Daron? Sharin?) They walk outside, but she bolts when Sheriff Teller confronts D.P.O. Guess how the sheriff dies. I guess he shouldn’t have been so condescending to Scully. Darin then gets knocked out by a lightning bolt and ends up incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. Well, that was a pretty undramatic resolution, considering the last lightning bolt empowered him. Presumably, the Kiveats live happily ever after. I’m off to play a little Sonic the Hedgehog so I can get rid of the earworm.
Sestra Professional:
After the glut of information we took in over a two-parter to start the third season, it's kind of nice to slow down the pace a bit for a stand-alone episode. And this one proves to be very simple. It doesn't even take our heroes that long to figure out what's going on with the human lightning rod.
Darin Peter Oswald is a different type of character for the show at this point. Not really a monster, he's just a jerk using his powers for his own purposes. He doesn't come off as a victim, so we don't feel a lot of sympathy for him and we don't need Sculder to save him. Anyone else find it peculiar that his first name is Darin and it's spelled the exact same way as one of the writers on the show? Even the character's couch-potato mom gets to talk down at him.
Feel free to jump in any time: As penned by series stalwart Howard Gordon, that confrontation between Dana and the sheriff is certainly off-putting. Teller isn't completely off the mark about them at least needing to know lightning strikes are frequent in his area. But it's more than a little strange that Fox lets him get in quite a lot of shots with no reaction when that powder keg is known to go off for the slightest of irritations. But at least he's not considering conspiracy or aliens this time around.
Now when Sculder do get their research in -- the lightning shows a preference for males aged 17-21 and there was one survival in five strikes -- maybe the sheriff should have agreed there's cause for concern a lot sooner. Then he wouldn't have had to become Teller Fricassee.
Manners don't cost, they're free: The more we get to know about D.P.O., the less we like him. And it goes way beyond his pronunciation of nuclear as "nucular." We might worry about him being somewhere on the autism spectrum if he doesn't come off as such a pus bucket. Killing Mulder's innocent mobile phone, sheesh. In a rare maternal moment, his mom says he wouldn't hurt a soul. That's really not the vibe we've been getting.
Darin does keep his crush's husband busy. Frank picked up a lot of business because of D.P.O.'s electrical impulses. But he's just so scuzzy. One example: he originally got interested in Karen just because he could see through her dress when his former teacher stood in front of a window.
With Sculder onto this creep early on, what plays out is a rather pedestrian set of sequences in which Mrs. Kiveat goes with Darin to avoid him charbroiling her hubby. The sheriff gets it, as Sestra Am points out, he really shouldn't have taken that tone with Scully. But the final image of D.P.O.'s overcooked brain zipping through TV channels before the final credit appears in his reflection proves to be the most interesting thing in the episode. Maybe that kind of imagination spliced throughout the show could have made this one more compelling and resonant.
Another nod to Sestra Am for earlier monikering Darin as "Lightning Boy," because the meta from the third-season episode guide on this show was that those were the precise words used on a concept card tacked to the board in executive producer Chris Carter's office since the first season. Some more little tidbits: Photos of "D.P.O." director Kim Manners and X-Files prop master Ken Hawryliw are among those on the same yearbook page as Mrs. Kiveat, Darin's homestead has been seen in such films as Jumanji and Jennifer 8, and in The Complete X-Files, Gordon said he spent an off day playing video games with Giovanni Ribisi and Jack Black. Oh, and for those noting the sheriff's name Teller, the episode guide confirms comic magicians Penn and Teller wanted to be on the show. Although that didn't happen, the moniker was meant a nod to them. And Filter? Their lead singer, Richard Patrick, is the younger brother of actor Robert -- a future lead on the show.
Guest star of the week: Ribisi ... Black ... Ribisi ... Black ... It should be Ribisi's showcase 'cause he does the heavy lifting, but Jack just stole every scene he was in with him. It is pretty cool seeing this episode again after both -- particularly Black -- have been known for other things on the big screen and in pop culture. They were just a geek and a freak when this one originally aired.
Sestra Amateur:
Albert Hosteen is back in voiceover mode. I know I should be paying attention to what he’s saying because it probably relates to what is happening in the episode but I’m impatient and want to get back to the Scully/Skinner standoff. There’s really no good “shipper” name for them: Skully? Scinner? Wally? It’s like you have to root for Sculder.
Anyway, Mulder shows up and joins the standoff. It becomes two against one, so Skinner wisely gives up his gun. Walter shows them the tape. Fox claims he and his father, William, died because of the information on that disk. Skinner tries to convince them he’s on their side, and this time, they decide to trust him. Hopefully they won’t get written up for insubordination ... or aggravated assault.
Margaret Scully arrives at the hospital thinking Dana’s been shot, not Melissa. The doctors have induced a coma but it’s not looking good for Scully’s sis. Mulder shows the Lone Gunmen a photo of his father and some Syndicate men from 1973. Byers tells them about a post-World War II project called Operation Paper Clip. This may be the quickest explanation of an episode’s title yet. Some Nazi scientists escaped the Nuremberg Trials in exchange for their scientific knowledge. Victor Klemper, one of the scientists, conveniently lives locally. Frohike arrives, thrilled to see Fox is still alive. He tells Dana about her sister but Mulder convinces her it’s not safe to see Melissa yet.
In New York City, Syndicate members are annoyed Cancer Man’s assassin botched the Scully shooting. They also doubt CSM has the recovered disk and say mean things about Dana’s would-be assassin – Alex Krycek. I wonder if Scully thinks Krycek is the one who shot Melissa. She hasn’t mentioned him since she shot Mulder and let Alex get away last season. Guess she’ll blame herself when it finally hits her.
Sculder meet with Klemper to find out about Bill Mulder’s involvement with Operation Paper Clip. Klemper gives Dana a vague clue and points them in the direction of West Virginia. He then lets the Well-Manicured Man know Mulder is still alive. Lucky Cancer Man already left or they might have killed him then and there. Meanwhile, Albert arrives at the hospital to help Melissa and tries to comfort Margaret. Back at FBI headquarters, Skinner meets with Cancer Man about the tape. CSM starts getting frantic again when Skinner continues to play the game. Can you imagine how tense he’d be without his nicotine fix?
Sculder arrive at a mountain vault in West Virginia, and using Klemper’s clue, open a door that leads to miles of medical records and tissue samples dating back to the 1950’s. Mulder finds files on his sister, Samantha, and Scully. He thinks it’s because they were both victims of alien abduction. Fox sees bright lights and feels a weird vibration. He goes outside and sees an unidentified flying object. Back underground, Dana spies a swarm of humanoid creatures. Men in unmarked vehicles show up and start shooting at Mulder. He dodges them and gets back to Scully. They go deeper into the records vault and manage to escape from the other end. If only they remembered to take Dana and Samantha’s files with them…
The next morning, Skinner meets with Sculder at a diner in Maryland. He discusses trading the tape for their lives. Dana tries to rein in Fox and take the deal. She wants them to get back in the government’s good graces so they can investigate within the law, not outside of it. And she’d like to see her sister too. Mulder lets Scully make the call on the deal and they all leave together.
Albert continues to try and save Melissa, to no avail. Skinner talks to Margaret about Dana, then notices someone watching the family with interest and chases him down. Unfortunately, he gets jumped by three of the Syndicate’s muscle – including Krycek, who steals the tape from Walter and leaves him in a heap on the floor. (Sestra Pro, who were you rooting for in that fight? It’s not like it was a fair one.) The two extras then try to kill Alex with a car bomb, but Krycek gets away, and he ... is … pissed. He later calls CSM who lies to the Syndicate that Scully’s would-be assassin is dead and the tape has been destroyed.
Sculder go back to Kemper’s place, but he’s dead from alleged heart failure. Well-Manicured Man is there instead and tells them about a body recovered from the 1947 Roswell crash. Mulder realizes the alien-human hybrids he found in the train car in New Mexico (at the end of Season 2) were created during experimentation by Klemper. WMM claims the mountain vault’s medical files – which were documented as smallpox vaccinations -- existed for ID purposes in case of nuclear war. Scully believes the Well-Manicured Man’s explanations are science fiction, not fact, and he is just telling Fox what he wants to hear. Mulder still believes the files document alien abductees. WMM says Samantha was taken to keep William Mulder in line. Fox visits his mother and asks whether his father ever made her choose between their children. Teena says she refused to choose, so Bill made the choice and she hated him for it. Jeez, no wonder she divorced him. Talk about irreconcilable differences.
Skinner and Cancer Man meet at FBI headquarters again. Walter tries to trade Sculder's safety for the tape. CSM knows Skinner doesn’t have the disk anymore and calls his bluff. Turns out, it wasn’t technically a bluff. Albert, one of the original Navajo code talkers, and 20 other men will spill the tape’s contents to anyone who will listen unless Cancer Man takes the deal. Get ‘em, Skinner! Fox meets Dana at the hospital and learns Melissa died during surgery. On the upside, Sculder are reinstated and will be back to work next week – probably in a bottle episode.
Sestra Professional:
We sure do cover a lot of ground in this one. We see aliens and a spaceship. Skinner finally gets off the fence, Alex leaves the syndicate the hard way, Mulder finds out how and why Samantha was chosen for abduction, Scully's sister dies. Also, the government is involved in genetic engineering involving an alien-human hybrid. And the Cigarette Smoking Man doesn't seem quite as untouchable as he once did.
But backing up to the beginning of this ep, voiceover might be my least favorite aspect of The X-Files. I once heard that it's the least creative way to deliver exposition. Add to that insult that it's always pretentious on this show and cue the eye rolling. Just like Sestra Am, all I really wanna do is get to the resolution of the Wana standoff. Albert would most certainly preach patience, but I'm not gonna listen to someone who irks me at every turn. And I really don't need that analogy to understand that Melissa took a bullet meant for Dana.
But then all is right with the world again, cause not only are Scully and Skinner holding guns on each other, but then Mulder joins the fray. That's downright hot! We finally get to see whose side Walter is on. And he may not see things the same way as his agents, but he's not with the Syndicate for sure.
Mulder gets to use what will become a trademark phrase about the
global conspiracy of silence about the existence of extraterrestrial life. It kinda makes me groan now since I've heard it so much, but back then, it really hit the mark. A lot more than a line like "I was a dead man, now I'm back," which we also get from Fox -- and executive producer Chris Carter, who wrote this one.
When Sculder leave Skinner behind to find truths that aren't on the tape, we think we're gonna get a sentimental moment with hugs and declarations of love. What we actually get is Dana telling Fox she went to his father's funeral and told his mother that she knew her partner would be fine. Oh, and a callback to first-season episode "Eve," when Mulder asked her how she knew that. "I just knew."
Carter gets to shoehorn in some knowledge about Operation Paperclip, and it really does work for the show. I'm not quite sure why the bit about Klemper helping the United States win the space race was added, but I'm more certain the Klemper character was named after the actor on Hogan's Heroes.
As stated earlier, this isn't a great episode for CSM. Well-Manicured Man berates him for believing he can fix anything with enough bullets. The rest of the syndicate elders say CSM's profession is not one for men who make mistakes. Yet they continuously make many of them, thankfully since the show's mythology virtually hangs on their every miscue.
While the episode's initial Sculder reunion didn't pack the punch shippers wanted, perhaps they were more pleased with Scully's concern for Mulder at the mountain vault. She knows he hasn't processed his father's death, and she's pretty concerned about him finding out something that would irrevocably change his opinion of Bill. Which, of course, is exactly what happens. This Scully is psychic, she's an X-File unto herself.
Love the mountain vault set piece. "Paper Clip" as a whole is representative of Rob Bowman's directorial strengths. There's the gun standoff,
the rising UFO and subsequent chase and a car bomb detonation, but he still gives Mulder and Scully some room to breathe and relate to each other.
We also get good advancement on the conspiracy front with the discovery of the medical files. What would they have found behind one of the other locked vault doors? Finding Dana's recent tissue sample -- and the supposition that smallpox vaccination would be used for post-apocalypse identification -- show the power of the conspiracy at its best, heightening our paranoia. Who wants to do any kind of medical tests or get shots after noting the tabs being kept on Scully?
I do have some questions. I'll let go the part in which Fox's name is under Samantha's label in her file. But this building with pretty crucial information is left unprotected but for a few number locks? It seems abandoned and rather dilapidated. If this is the case, why are spaceships still visiting there? If Dana is seeing aliens in the building, why did the craft leave without them? And do the aliens have these numerical codes?
We have turned ourselves into outsiders: We get some more juicy Sculder stuff when Fox tells Dana that she gets to decide about Walter's deal to ensure their safety. He wants to know why they killed his father, what happened to his sister and what they did to Scully. But she knows they've been operating outside the law and just wants to see her sister while she can. (Unlike the fan base, who gladly accept the Missy sacrifice on Dana's behalf.)
Forgive me for not shedding a tear at the death of Klemper, but there seem to be many others willing to take up the slack and make Joseph Mengele's dream of a super race through genetic engineering a reality. With humans and aliens. And speaking of knocking people off, if CSM eliminates Alex for botching Melissa's death, then he has to take out the two guys who botched Alex's death. Everyone should be gone before an alien invasion can take place.
This is where you pucker up and kiss my ass: But best of all, Skinner and Krycek gain some traction in this ep. The assistant director had been so wishy-washy to this point. His resolution of having Albert and other Navajo code talkers memorize the tape was bizarre, but effective. And spinning Krycek away from the Syndicate was a master stroke. Now he's a gun for hire.
But in the end, it's Scully who gets to set up the show's new premise -- "I've heard the truth, now what I want are the answers." Judging by this episode, it should be fun trying to get them.
Sestra Amateur:
It’s a new season of The X-Files, but mere minutes have passed since the events of the Season 2 finale. Albert Hosteen is doing a lot of voiceover work in this one. I’m trying to figure out whether the show thought it was an easier way to explain things to the viewers instead of generating forced exposition conversation with other characters. Unfortunately, it becomes somewhat jarring because of frequent cuts between the action in New Mexico and Washington, D.C.
But here’s something different: We start with a frantic Cancer Man. Sure, he’ll be his calm, cool and collected self later in the ep, but here he’s actually panicky. CSM and his military men storm into Albert’s home. They beat up the elderly Native American and his grandson, but end up leaving empty-handed.
Scully soon arrives and sees Cancer Man’s handiwork. She heads to the still smoldering train car, but doesn’t find Mulder. Later that night, Dana gets stopped by the military men in their helicopter. They take Fox’s files, but can't find the digital cassette because she doesn't have it.
Scully returns to the FBI supervisory firing squad, setting off the security alarm when she walks in. Since what happens in New Mexico (and Massachusetts) doesn’t stay in New Mexico (and Massachusetts), Dana does not leave unscathed. She’s stripped of her badge and gun by the nameless superiors. Skinner tries to convince her there will be a thorough investigation involving all of the events from last episode, but Scully starts playing the Mulder role and calls the assistant director on his lack of authority. She’s going to exhibit more of Fox's traits as the episode goes on. She tries to retrieve the DAT copy from Mulder’s desk, but it’s gone. Upset about everything that has happened, Dana heads to her mother’s house.
Meanwhile, the Syndicate is exercising its right to second-hand smoke exposure in enclosed environments. CSM tries to convince the other members that Mulder is really dead. Of course, he is not dead. Albert and his family find him unconscious and buried under the rocks in the quarry. The wise old man explains the Blessing Way chant, which is Fox’s only chance at not dying. I guess it was between that or actual medical assistance in a hospital. The Blessing Way chant turns into a "This is Your Life" scenario for Mulder, who gets spiritual visits from Deep Throat and his father, William. Deep Throat quotes Nietzsche and Fox’s dad is cryptic.
Frohike drunkenly shows up at Scully’s place. She learns about Kenneth Soona (aka The Thinker) and his relation to the sought-after digital cassette. Dana tries to talk with Skinner about it, but he refuses to try and link Soona’s and Bill Mulder’s shootings via ballistics testing. The assistant director also has a few choice words for Scully before she leaves. Yeah, Walter, anybody can have a good comeback when they have a day to think of one. Cancer Man appears and the tape is discussed.
On her way out of FBI headquarters, Dana realizes how she set off the metal detector. A teeny tiny computer chip seems to be embedded in her neck. Her doctor removes it and Scully takes it home. She tells Melissa about it and her sister encourages – more like browbeats – Dana to go to a shrink to uncover lost memories from her abduction. During the regression session Scully panics and bolts. Is she scared of the unknown or did she actually remember something that spooked her? When she gets home, Dana sees Skinner leaving her apartment but doesn’t approach him.
Mulder is conscious after three days of the chant. Knowing "the FBI man" is going to leave, Albert tells him how to complete the ritual. Can you imagine he’s not allowed to bathe for at least four days? That’s going to be one ripe Fox. The ceremony ends rather unceremoniously with Mulder alone with his bag of sunflower seeds.
Back home, Scully calls Skinner while he’s in the presence of Cancer Man, so he denies going to her apartment. Fox pops up in Dana’s dream, convincing her he’s still alive. Scully attends Bill Mulder’s funeral in Boston and finally meets Fox’s mother, Teena. Scully tells her Mulder is probably alive. The Well-Manicured Man -- a member of CSM’s “smoking club” -- meets with Scully and privately warns her she is in danger. He also feeds her paranoia, which leads her further down the Mulder behavioral path.
When Teena returns home, Fox is there waiting for her. He wastes no time interrogating her trying to get answers to his father’s activities in the 1970s. Dana and Melissa arrange a late-night meeting at Scully’s apartment to talk about the visit to the hypnotherapist. Dana remembers WMM’s warning and decides to meet her sister at her place instead. Of course, Melissa doesn’t get the phone message.
Scully gets intercepted by Skinner, who drives her to Mulder’s apartment. Maybe Dana should use her cell phone to update Melissa again. I swear, they only have those phones for plot purposes. When I worked, it was never turned off and it went with me everywhere. Melissa enters Scully’s place and promptly gets shot by Krycek. Clearly, his target was Dana, who’s now holding Skinner at gunpoint in Mulder’s place. Walter admits to taking the digital tape and is about to show Scully when she gets distracted by someone outside. The assistant director then pulls his gun and he and Dana are in a standoff. This could get messy.
Sestra Professional:
I'd like to change this episode title to "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." It is a very polarizing episode. But I would upgrade "The Good" to great. After an amazing cliffhanger, "The Blessing Way" ends with, in some ways, an even better cliffhanger. Cigarette-Smoking Man sold the train car-full-of-aliens conflagration with "burn it," but Scully and Skinner holding guns on each other? That's an even more emotional kick. Way to up the ante, Chris Carter.
Not sure if this goes under "The Bad" or "The Ugly," but the show's proclivity for the most pretentious voiceover passes from justified to overcooked in this season opener. I think it's a lot like Sestra Am said, Albert Hosteen had to provide the exposition about "the FBI man." (That description wears thin after about 10 uses of it.) But even if Native Americans go about their business the way it's laid out here, it still comes off as very heavy-handed.
"Memory like fire is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it," Albert says in a very even tone. Yeah, 'cause no one ever remembered things inaccurately. "Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth," he continues. Cue eye rolling. No kudos this time, Chris Carter.
Gillian Anderson can sure do a great call for Mulder across vast areas. But it isn't her penchant for projecting that makes this a great Scully episode. Director R.W. Goodwin gets the credit for the nice set piece in which Dana is stopped on a dark desert highway with a cool wind in her hair. The rest of the ep is a showcase for Gillian as the show's acting powerhouse.
What they're doing is putting an official stamp on the perpetuation of a lie: Scully has to justify herself in front of a whole new group of superiors, but at least none of them are as stiff as a certain show creator in the previous ep. Tough cop looks good on Dana. She knows the score, she knows that Mulder's dad's murderer is not meant to be found.
Everything I know about buzzards, I learned from The X-Files. They're not actually preying on the flesh they tear apart. They're just flying around in wait for something to die. Hold on, here's Albert with some more platitudes -- "The desert takes no mercy and can kill a man in less than a day." And the most egregious offender of them all, Mulder wouldn't have had a chance if he hadn't stayed underground, "protected like the jack rabbit or the fox." That last one is way too on the nose.
We get some fleshing out of the supporting characters, Frohike takes to the bottle due to the perceived loss of Mulder (and probably that of The Thinker, who was three times more of a counterculture patriot than The Lone Gunmen have proved to be so far). Meanwhile, in New Mexico, the healing ritual continues -- songs and prayers for Mulder that have to be performed the way they had been for centuries. But at some point, those scenes seem more like Fox is hanging out at a planetarium laser-light show. He's just naked and lying under shrubbery instead of smoking the shrubbery.
The dull clarity of the dead: Deep Throat encourages him to hold on because he's found truth, but no justice or judgment. Do not look into the abyss. (I wish I could avoid doing so during this sequence.) There's a downer of a flashback of what happened to those aliens that Mulder found in the train car. The pretensions continue with Dad's visit. "The lies I told you were a pox and poison to my soul. I stand here ashamed of the choices I made so long ago." No one talks like that, even in the afterlife. (I hope.)
But Dana's story really makes up for it. It kicks into gear when she sets off an alarm while walking through FBI security. She tries to aid the investigation by calling for a comparison of the bullets that killed The Thinker and Bill Mulder. And although Walter doesn't appear very helpful, Goodwin and/or Mitch Pileggi wordlessly (no self-important babble!) conveys the antipathy the assistant director has for CSM.
We go back to the land of affectation with hippie sister Melissa on Dana's case about accessing her own memory with professional help, but she won't be bothering her (or the fans) much longer. Back in the day, Missy was truly detested by X-Philes, not really sure if it was because of her new-age ways or some perceived threat to a possible Sculder romance. I get a good chuckle out of the initial insinuation that Krycek was the trigger man, since at the time, actors Nicholas Lea and Melinda McGraw were involved.
The sanctity of this ep's Scully story gets decimated further when she dreams of Mulder and gets her own view of the laser-light show. Somewhat uncharacteristically, she then clings to the belief that Mulder is alive. But maybe she needs to pay heed to that thought in much the same way Frohike utilized the alcohol.
Motives are rarely unselfish: We start getting a look at the consortium that CSM is a part of. The Well-Manicured Man proves to be an interesting component. He gives that group an air of authority and dignity when it otherwise might come off as two-dimensional. In many ways, he comes off as the mirror image of Deep Throat. We don't really know Deep Throat's relationship to the consortium, we just recognize that he knew a lot about their dealings. But he could have been in much the same position as the Well-Manicured Man.
When Skinner shows up at Scully's apartment, he's basically fulfilling each and every one of the prophecies WMM gave Scully under the guise of not being thrilled with the consortium's modus operandi. Finally, something more for him to do. Welcome to the party, Walter!
Greetings Virtua Fighter. You have been recruited by the FBI to defend The Frontier against Darin Peter Oswald and his moronic friend, Zero. In Connorville, Oklahoma, a pizza delivery boy is playing Virtua Fighter 2 at the local arcade. That was my go-to fighting game in the '90s, preferred over Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Giovanni Ribisi’s Darin and Jack Black’s Zero want to play too, but clearly haven’t learned to wait their turn. Considering Zero works there, he should have just invoked the “we have the right to refuse service to anyone” rule. Darin takes a different tack, because he has X-File-worthy abilities. After Pizza Boy refuses, the lights go out and the jukebox starts by itself. Pizza Boy tries to drive away, but his car is clearly not under his control. He convulses and dies while Darin looks on.
Mulder sees the top 10 and notices all of the scores belong to D.P.O. (Reggie from Night of the Comet needs to work at that arcade so she can knock D.P.O. off his pedestal. “That’s the end of you, D.P.O.”) It’s very convenient that the top 10 lists the dates and times of the wins, and of course, they place D.P.O. there just before Jack’s death. Zero claims it was too noisy to notice anything, but we know the three of them were alone in the arcade. Mulder learns D.P.O. is Darin Peter Oswald, one of the previous lightning-strike victims. Clearly he survived. 
The next morning, Sculder find the dead cows but no Darin. Mulder spots a footprint and they preserve it. In the meantime, D.P.O. is using is powers to try and cause car accidents at a local intersection. Zero joins him and has to listen to his buddy moon over Sharon. Darin finally causes a crash, but Zero doesn’t seem impressed anymore. Funny how he was cool with it when D.P.O. killed someone over a video game. Frank arrives at the crash scene with his tow truck to clear the road, but Darin uses his powers to cause his boss to have a heart attack. The on-scene paramedics can’t get their defibrillator to work, so D.P.O. uses his hands and shocks Frank back to life. When you’re the one who stops a person’s heart, you don’t get credit for saving his life. 
Now when Sculder do get their research in -- the lightning shows a preference for males aged 17-21 and there was one survival in five strikes -- maybe the sheriff should have agreed there's cause for concern a lot sooner. Then he wouldn't have had to become Teller Fricassee. 
