X-Files S4E17: Looking for the plane truth

Sestra Amateur: 

Here's your Latin Lesson du jour: Tempus Fugit when you’re having Amet -- time flies when you're having fun. Remember Max Fenig from "Fallen Angel" (Season 1, Episode 10)? I didn't, but luckily Sibling Cinema has these informational blogs to jog your memory. 

Max is back, still paranoid and quite the squeamish airline passenger on Flight 549. But he has good reason to be paranoid, another passenger has one of those non-metallic John Malkovich guns from In the Line of Fire that can get through security. He pieces it together in the bathroom, but before the would-be hitman can use it, the plane is attacked by … turbulence and bright light?

Back in Washington, D.C., Sculder are celebrating Dana’s birthday. I would love to find a restaurant that serves Hostess Sno Balls with a sparkler candle. Mulder seems unusually giddy as he gives Scully her birthday gift. They are interrupted by Max’s sister, Sharon Graffia, who says Fenig was delivering something important but his plane went down. The agents attend the National Transportation Safety Board meeting on the crash, and the last radio transmission implies the plane may have been forced down. Lead investigator Mike Millar, played by Joe Spano -- who has made a career out of playing respectable law enforcement characters -- is this episode’s mandatory non-believer. He belittles Fox's theories in front of the crash investigators because of the seriousness of the situation -- everyone on board is presumed dead. I’m sure Millar will see the light, so to speak, before the last act. 

Sculder arrive at the horrific crash site and Dana lists all of the possible weather-related causes of the crash. Half of the hitman is found by "investigators" who knew to look for his gun. They remove it discreetly and just as subtly burn away his fingerprints and facial features with some type of acid in an aerosol can. Can you imagine if their significant others mistook that for their Aquanet hair spray? Mulder and Scully find watches which stopped at 8:01, even though the crash supposedly occurred at 7:52. The man sitting next to Max is found alive, but barely. Dana claims his burns are from radiation, not from a fire. 

Sharon gives Scully additional information about Max, who used one of his aliases to book his flight, and another to work in a facility where plutonium is stored. Fox stands by his belief that Fenig was abducted before the crash and will return. Dana breaks the news to Mulder that Max’s body was found near the crash site. Back in her hotel room, Sharon gets a visit from the turbulence and bright light. Not quite sure what that means when there’s no plane involved.

Mulder looks at Fenig's partial remains. Luckily (or unluckily) it’s the top part, so Fox can clearly see his face, as well as the Fox Mulder business card in Max’s shirt pocket. Amusing how Scott Bellis keeps showing signs of life when he's not supposed to be alive. Maybe he’s ticklish. And was it just me or did Mulder’s speech to Scully about the ignorance of facts as fact seem just as relevant in this day and age as it was during the original airing 21 years ago? Fox still sees conspiracy, especially since the other passengers are missing their wristwatches. Of course, if the crash occurred now, maybe only a handful of the passengers would be wearing them because watches have become pretty obsolete.

Sculder interview Sgt. Louis Frisch, one of the Von Drehle Air Force base air traffic controllers who saw Flight 549 drop altitude at 1952 hours (7:52 p.m. in civilian speak). He claims they notified Albany’s air traffic controllers when they couldn’t reach the plane. He doesn’t give Mulder any answers about the missing nine minutes. After the agents depart, we learn Sgt. Frisch told them what he was supposed to tell them, not the truth. His partner, Sgt. Gonzales, is ready to crack under the pressure.

Sharon’s motel room has been trashed with no sign of her, so Fox claims alien abduction. Can you imagine if that was your default setting? Newspaper didn’t arrive? Aliens stole it. Blind date stood you up? Must have been alien abduction. Dana tells the motel manager the government will pay for the room damages. Investigator Millar is warming up to Mulder’s theories, especially when he finds evidence of unexplained tampering on the emergency door by Max’s seat. 

When Frisch returns to the Air Force base, it looks like Gonzales shot himself in the head. Although a suicide shot would make more sense if it was to the temple or in the mouth, not the middle of the forehead. So it’s probably not suicide. Armed men, including the one who took the would-be hitman’s gun at the crash site, arrive for Frisch, but he hides on the roof.

Mulder recognizes the air traffic controller’s voice on the black box recording. He wakes Scully and tells her to come over and listen to it. It’s a portable tape player, Fox. Get off your lazy ass and walk to her room! On the way, Dana gets grabbed by Frisch, who takes responsibility for the crash. Louis admits to Sculder and Millar he was under orders by his commanding officer to monitor Flight 549. Frisch also claims the military shot down the civilian plane. Mulder thinks a third aircraft, possibly a stealth one, was also involved. Apparently Fox would still rather think it’s an alien conspiracy instead of a simple government conspiracy. 

Millar suggests they go look for the second crash site. Shadowy government agents try to intercept Sculder and Frisch's car, chasing them down a runway at the airport. Fox outruns a landing plane, which forces the chasers off the runway. Mike arrives at the crash site and sees a stealth UFO scanning the ground with a bright light. It stops briefly above Millar before it disappears. Then Sharon shows up out of nowhere, begging Mike not to let it take her again.

Back at the airport, Mulder raises the theory that the secondary crash site is in the nearby lake. Fox sends Dana off to D.C. to safely deliver Frisch while he checks out Great Sacandaga Lake, where some type of search and rescue is indeed in effect. Scully decides to swing by her apartment to pick up a few things before delivering Louis to a safe house. Frisch asks to make a personal phone call. Get the feeling that was a bad idea? You should know better, Dana. 

Back on the lake, a somewhat inexperienced Mulder is going scuba diving. Scully takes Frisch to the birthday restaurant, where a buzzed Agent Pendrell is at the bar and very happy to see Dana. Hey Louis, you might feel more comfortable if you changed out of clothing that clearly identifies you as Sgt. Frisch with the United States Air Force. Alas, these words will have no impact upon him because the shadowy hitman has found them. He shoots Pendrell as he unintentionally blocks Louis and Scully shoots the killer. Back at the lake, Mulder finds UFO wreckage and what seems to be a small, gray alien inside. Before he can investigate further, a bright light appears behind him. Are you more concerned about Mulder’s fate (which is pretty safe, Duchovny being under contract and all) or non-contract Brendan Beiser and lovestruck Pendrell’s possibly lethal chest wound? You’ll have to wait until next week go find out how it gets resolved...

Sestra Professional:

...unless you watch ahead on your streaming device or pull out the DVDs ... or just remember what happens from seeing it before. I think you were right about that Duchovny dude, though.

You didn't remember Max, Sestra Am? He's my favorite non-Lone Gunmen Lone Gunman. In fact, pause for unpopular opinion effect ... I might actually like him more than our lovable trio of misfits, probably because he's kind of like all three rolled up into one person. The aliens seem to like him even more than I do. But it was a treat to see him again and very disheartening when he was so swiftly taken away. It was particularly painful when it felt like maybe Max had been saved by something otherworldly, only to find out in the least dramatic way possible that he hadn't been. 

Perhaps you were more invested in poor Agent Pendrell, who has been passive passively (as opposed to passive aggressively) pining away for our brilliant doctor, Sestra? He's pretty drunk at the bar, maybe he had been waiting and drinking since Dana's actual birthday. Apparently that gave him license to be pretty pushy when it came to Scully and what we thought was her date. That shot sure sobered him up, though. Does no one actually understand what the words "Get down" mean? I thought Dana's intention was pretty clear.

Speaking of Scully's birthday, this is where the telltale Apollo 11 keychain comes into play. That's a prop we will see again in the later years when it's regifted ... a couple of times. Although I gotta admit Mulder's joke of a couple of alien implants made into earrings might have made a great marketing gimmick.

It's pretty jarring to go from that to the crash investigation, but maybe that's the point of the script co-written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz and vividly depicted on the screen by director Rob Bowman. There were 134 passengers and crew members on the manifest of the flight, and it's really brought home when we see all the yellow body bags, charred pieces of airplane wreckage and the scorched earth. 

Do you remember the last time you were missing nine minutes? The same is true of the later scene in which Mulder confirms that Max has been killed. All of it is delivered with gravity and sensitivity we might not expect from a weekly television show. Even when Millar dresses down Fox in front of the NTSB meeting, it's not done with malice. It's done with respect and regard for the investigators of the crash -- at least the ones not erasing faces and fingertips while stealing wristwatches. I'm not really understanding why the nine minutes was such a big deal it required taking items off victims, wouldn't it have been easier for the report to be altered to nine minutes earlier? They're giving Fox more to work with by playing it that way.

I'm not going to have no blood on me: The other thing that I don't really understand is that Dana provided proof of radiation burns. Max was carrying plutonium and Scully thinks that could have caused the crash. Why is that rationale not investigated? Fox keeps saying there was no reason for the plane to have come down, but it sounds like a reason to me. And I have no idea how he even comes up with the idea of a third craft taking out the second one that was messing with Max on the first plane. Frisch eventually backs his hypothesis up, but it would have been nice to have gotten that information from Lewis or some other less jarring manner that didn't sound so out of the blue.

The chase on the tarmac with the landing jet is another great set piece in an episode chock full of them. Seeing is believing in this one for sure, just ask Millar, who did indeed see the light. He sure had to take in quite a lot of information over the course of one episode -- some of his hard-working investigators are stealing and changing evidence, he's seeing UFOs, he's comforting returning abduction victims. I think he'll be taking early retirement.

The plot points work a lot better than the dialogue in this episode. Consider it sour grapes for the way Scully delivers the news of Fenig's death -- "Max is returned" -- in response to Mulder's belief that Max wasn't one of the crash victims and eventually would be returned by the aliens. Although I give Carter and Spotnitz credit for Frisch's turnaround. Once the "dots on his screen" turned into palpable carnage, Louis certainly realized the error of his ways and lies. Having some shadowy figures on your tail also help in that regard.

Once I got a quarter off the deep end at the Y pool: It's pretty hilarious that Mulder makes a 50-foot dive with no experience, and in minutes, finds what it took advanced stealth UFO technology longer to do. By the way, our writers didn't give Fox scuba experience in the name of making the YMCA joke ... but he probably wouldn't have survived without knowing how to operate his gear. Still, the combination of the underwater bright lights -- it's not The Abyss, is it? -- and Pendrell's pending health woes made for one crackling cliffhanger.

Multiple metas: The show's postproduction crew won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Sound Editing for "Tempus Fugit." It is pretty outstanding. ... The show tapped an NTSB official as tech adviser and Carter said in The Complete X-Files that the crash site set was deemed absolutely believable, except for the smell. ... According to the official fourth-season episode guide, Scott Bellis had auditioned for another small part on the show a couple of seasons after "Fallen Angel" aired, but Carter said memories of Bellis' other role were too strong. (He shoulda consulted Sestra Am.) ... Mulder's business card actually reads "United States Bureau of Investigation" because making fake cards is against the law. 

Guest star of the week: Sestra was right on the mark about Joe Spano as Millar, best known for his detective work on Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. He totally suits the role of Millar, providing more conviction and less of the one-note characterization that often befalls the disbelieving nature of officials on the show.