We’re at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. where Assistant Director Walter Skinner is leading a manhunt with his agents searching a large crowd for Nathaniel Teager, played by Peter LaCroix. If Teager looks familiar, it’s because he’s been on the show twice before but not as the same character. Scully sees him first but loses him. Skinner is in rare panic mode as each agent finds the suspect then loses him again. But it’s not the agents’ fault. The guy, who happens to be armed with a handgun, disappears into thin air. So why is Walter so frantic? Let’s backtrack a bit to answer that question.
Twelve hours earlier, Lt. General MacDougal finds a king of hearts card in his limo. He looks up and sees Teager pointing a gun at him. Of course, Nathaniel wasn’t in the car when the Lt. General first entered, so that’s quite a trick. Teager shoots MacDougal and the limo driver, a private, has a lot of explaining to do. While debriefing his field agents, Skinner identifies the king of hearts as a “death card” used by soldiers during the Vietnam War. He’s worried someone will be targeted at the War Memorial’s rededication ceremony. It doesn’t help hapless Private Gus Burkholder that he’s on a mailing list for a militant group called the Right Hand.
Sculder meet with Right Hand man Denny Markham, who sics his dogs on the slow running agents. They barely get back to the safety of the fence when Markham comes out to meet them. Denny denies knowing the private and recites his own anti-government beliefs, but gets rattled when Mulder shows him the death card.
Markham identifies Lt. General MacDougal’s murderer as Sergeant Nathaniel Teager, a killing machine created and abandoned in Vietnam by the U.S. government. Denny claims his organization liberated the prisoner of war and later disappeared. Markham gave up a lot of information pretty easily so Scully is convinced it’s fake news -- I mean false data -- to continue the conspiracy.Back at the Vietnam Wall, Teager approaches the wife of Green Beret Gary Davenport and tells her Gary is still alive and a prisoner of war. He gives her Davenport’s dog tags – both of them -- then disappears. Sculder show Renee Davenport the recent picture of Nathaniel and she claims it’s the same man. Renee starts bleeding from her eye and Fox thinks it’s because of Teager, the disappearing man. Dana thinks she just burst a capillary from being so upset.
Mulder has Nathaniel's remains -- a few teeth -- analyzed, then learns Teager’s death investigation was pretty half-assed and signed off by General John Steffan. He calls the general to warn him his life is in danger and assigns two agents to protect him at the Pentagon, which is probably the most secure building in the United States. Of course, Nathaniel gets inside undetected and leaves the king of diamonds death card on the general’s desk.
Scully tells Mulder that Renee suffered from a scotoma -- a “blind spot.” General Steffan calls Fox at the same time about the death card. Mulder, who is in the Pentagon and on his way to Steffan’s office, hears the general get shot and killed. Too bad Mulder also has a blind spot because he can’t see Teager standing above him. Skinner reviews the video, which shows Nathaniel going through the metal detector at the Pentagon entrance. Fox claims Teager is able to manipulate people’s vision but does not have that capability with video technology. Walter is beyond pissed that Nathaniel just waltzed right in. If he could, he probably would have fired the entire security staff at the Pentagon.Major General Benjamin Bloch gets nothing useful out of Markham in the military prison. He should have let Scully or Mulder take another run at Denny. Fox somehow arranges a meeting at the Lincoln Memorial with New York-based Marita Covarrubias. Maybe she was also conveniently attending the rededication ceremony. She confirms MacDougal and Steffan’s connection and admits there’s a third man. Gee, I wonder who it’s going to be.
Scully and Skinner try to protect the major general but Dana loses sight of Teager after she pulls her gun and causes a minor panic among the spectators. But the show must go on, so everyone continues with the ceremony preparations. Fox claims Walter was assigned this detail because the U.S. government meant for them to fail. That really says a lot about how the government sees Skinner, especially since this isn’t even a Cancer Man episode. Bloch has every intention of delivering his speech so the assistant director joins him on the stage. Nathaniel gets recognized by Leo Danzinger, a veteran who served with him. Teager gives Danzinger a list of the POWs who are still alive.The major general is about to begin his speech when he finds his death card -- the ace of clubs -- on the podium. And now we’re all caught up. Agents are searching for Nathaniel, Walter is panicking, Dana gets spotted, Fox suffers from scotoma. Skinner removes Bloch from the scene, but Mulder realizes Teager is in the car. The fact that Nathaniel starts shooting at them backs up that theory. He wings Skinner in the arm, but gets shot to death by one of the agents.
Too bad the government managed to cover it all up and the major general is going to get away without even a demotion. I don’t even know why the writers had Teager give Danzinger the list of imprisoned soldiers, then do nothing with it. There are no happy endings with this one. And how does the title "Unrequited" relate to the episode? Unrequited refers to feelings of love not returned or rewarded. Need some help here, Sestra Pro. Maybe Leo was Nathaniel’s unrequited love? Nah. Although a scotoma might go a long way to explaining the second shooter on the grassy knoll in Dallas.Sestra Professional:
The dictionary defines "unrequited" as "not returned or reciprocated," but also "not avenged or retaliated" and "not repaid or satisfied." So Teager probably had the latter two definitions in mind. And my impression of that list is that those names will get out. So maybe it's not as over as the CID -- who took over the investigation from Skinner -- would like it to be.
I think unrequited is an apt description for how fans feel about this episode. It's not mentioned a lot when people talk of favorite shows or guest stars or plots. But I feel it scores on all three fronts. It might be considered bleak, sure, but it's intense and delves pretty deeply into Sculder's area of expertise. Although I admit I'm a wee bit at a loss to explain how it is that Teager can create the transient scotomas. Mulder describes it's similar to soldiers seeing guerrillas appear and disappear before their eyes, but that doesn't really explain the science. Scully, that's your cue. And shouldn't everyone who saw Nathaniel (and then didn't see him) have damaged retinas now? Shouldn't all their capillaries be bursting? Maybe it's just my blind spot and they're treated for them after the credits.I've already seen more dead soldiers than I ever want to see: The story, written by Howard Gordon, certainly has a lot to say on the subject and it's woven into the fabric of our story pretty seamlessly thanks to Skinner's military past. In the end, when Walter is telling Mulder the case has been reassigned, Fox points out that Skinner could have been Teager. It hits home, and not with as a heavy a thud as one might expect.
The Teager teaser's a pretty exciting one even though it's not much more than Scully, Mulder and another agent trying to get a glimpse of Nate during the rededication ceremony. Good thing I liked it so much, since we got to see it twice over the course of the episode.
You mean there's no procedure outlined for an invisible assassin?: We have a pretty good split between Mulder and Scully's theories of what's happening in this one. Dana clings steadfastly to the idea of Markham masterminding the deaths -- or at least knowing about them -- by distracting the agents with a "phantom POW." She won't even cop to the idea when she sees Teager and draws her gun en route to the ceremony. But Fox is seeing clearly, well as much as he can until he gets scotoma-ed.Denny's played by Larry Musser, another actor we've seen a couple times before on the show, most notably as the foul-mouthed Detective Manners in Season 3's "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." Musser and LaCroix (who stood out as Ranheim in Season 1's "E.B.E.") help ground the episode. They feel familiar and so, as viewers, we don't really need to adjust to their presence.
Maybe the war ain't over, Scully: Renee Davenport probably shouldn't have been so quick to believe the government's assertion that her husband was dead if they provided the type of evidence used to declare Teager deceased. It took Fox about a minute to declare the two bicuspids and molar found at the crash site as presumptive and inconclusive.
I actually thought this was one of the cleaner uses of Marita Covarrubias. She added something to the mix that wasn't going to be otherwise gleaned so it's organic in terms of plot, if not in terms of location at the Lincoln Memorial. Skinner's detail was asked to protect the three-man commission responsible for leaving Nathaniel and other soldiers behind. I don't think it's a black mark against Walter, it's more of a two-birds-with-one-stone thing, since those powers-that-be (even less of a physical presence in this episode than Teager) knew he'd bring the agents they're always looking to discredit into the mix. You did your job. So did Nathaniel Teager: At its very heart, Gordon's story reminds us that though war may be in the rearview mirror, it really isn't for those involved. An extreme example here to be sure, but probably a message we shouldn't soon forget all the same. I'd really like to give Gordon and/or Chris Carter (who helped smooth the edges of the script, according to the fourth-season episode guide) credit for giving another agent the kill shot that finally got Teager.
Meta you can see: In The Complete X-Files, Gordon explained the science beyond the plot. "If you move your finger, you will see that you do have a blind spot because that's where the cortical nerves wind up bundling," said the writer, whose brother is an ophthamologist. ... Gordon came up with the idea after seeing a 60 Minutes story about CIA agents abandoned in Vietnam, according to the official fourth-season episode guide. ... For legal reasons, actual names couldn't be used on the memorial. The show's art assistant Kristina Lyne tapped her sister to make up 2,000 imaginary names. Although two of them seem familiar -- sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison and infamous Jessica Hahn were combined to Jesse R. Ellison and Harlan L. Hahn, the guide said.
Guest stars of the week: LaCroix also got this nod back in the first season for his key role in "E.B.E." He's actually even finer here. He doesn't have an overwhelming amount of dialogue, but I believed and even felt for the character, particularly when he got to show the human being Nathaniel must have been before he turned into Teager with 26 confirmed kills.
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