X-Files S5E16: Look into my father's eyes

Sestra Amateur: 

This episode has one of Sestra Pro’s favorite actresses, Lili Taylor, which guarantees she’ll be Guest Star of the Week. I know her best from Say Anything (John Cusack’s songwriting best friend) and Mystic Pizza (Vincent D’Onofrio’s hesitant bride-to-be). This week’s bottle episode is very reminiscent of The Eyes of Laura Mars, but without the disco music and (hopefully) the stunningly disappointing ending. 

In Wilmington, Delaware, Marty Glenn is sitting in her apartment watching television, smoking a cigarette and seeing visions of a drug dealer in a motel room – you know, like any normal person. The police arrive at the motel and find Marty hiding in the dead dude’s shower. She’s covered in blood and blind as a bat. That’s probably why the caper falls into Sculder’s lap. They’re reviewing the facts of the case with Detective Pennock -- played by character actor Blu Mankuma, who I know best from The Stepfather, not from his previous X-Files appearance -- and learn Marty took a cab directly to the motel. The detective thinks Glenn has a sixth sense and can see in the dark, like a … bat. (Hey, my description was dead on!) He’s got 48 hours to prove his case.

Sculder and Pennock meet with Marty, who is clearly perceptive, but not quite at a supernatural level. But Glenn's no pushover; she’s pretty ballsy during the interrogation. So the detectives try their luck with technology. A polygraph test shows Marty lied about not “seeing” the murder. At the same time, Scully finds hidden bloody gloves at the crime scene. Alone in her cell, Glenn has a vision of a red-headed woman being harassed at a bar. She panics and asks to contact a lawyer, but calls the Blarney Stone Bar instead. A bartender sees the incident Marty describes and gives the phone to the man. Glenn threatens him to leave his target alone and the woman gets away. The man from the bar later makes a cryptic phone call and stashes a briefcase in a bus station locker.

The detective and Dana confront Marty with the gloves, which fit so they cannot acquit. Or can they? Mulder is impressed because Glenn never applied for disability benefits. Scully thinks she’s not really blind and it’s all in Marty’s head. Glenn undergoes a visual exam, but the doctor is convinced she is truly blind. While still hooked up to the equipment, Marty experiences a vision of the Blarney Stone which causes her pupils to dilate. District Attorney Costa shows up, but drops the case because it’s a weak one. 

Marty is released and promptly has another vision of the man and woman from the bar. She panics and runs into traffic while trying to find them. Glenn lets a stranger help her to the area then searches alone for the woman. Marty finds her corpse in the dumpster then returns to the police department to turn herself in. Fox calls B.S. on Glenn's confession because she’s taking the blame for not getting to the scene fast enough. The killer is back on the phone with his peeps, who have been getting warnings from Marty not to do business with him. Now the guy is really pissed. After all, she’s messing with his livelihood. Glenn also directs Pennock to the briefcase of drugs in the bus station locker. The killer is watching, but they don’t see him. Mulder still isn’t buying it, and for the first time ever, someone refers to Fox as “skeptical.” Meanwhile, Scully calls with some good news: Marty didn’t do it. We know, Dana. Please try to keep up.

Fox confronts Glenn with some family history -- her pregnant mother was stabbed to death. Marty was born during the surgery to save her mother’s life and the procedure caused her blindness. Somehow, Mulder thinks she is seeing through the eyes of her mother’s killer. While doing the perp walk to the detention center, Marty “sees” the killer staring down at her. He’s really there, but no one else happens to look up to see him, even though she’s clearly experiencing a reaction. That doesn’t say much about Delaware police officers.

Fox gives Glenn the “happy” news of her impending release from custody. And after processing the briefcase and gloves they identified the killer as Charles Wesley Gotts, who actually was her dad. So yes, her father stabbed her pregnant mother to death. The detective wants Marty to help catch Gotts, then stupidly guarantees her safety (effectively not guaranteeing his own). Sculder stake out the Blarney Stone while Pennock takes Glenn home to pack. Marty knocks out the good detective then confronts Gotts. Mulder realizes what’s up and they head to Glenn's apartment building, but they’re too late. Marty kills Gotts and gets arrested for murder. It’s a bittersweet ending, Glenn seems OK with a prison sentencee, maybe because now she's found peace. I guess that does make this a happier ending than Eyes of Laura Mars.

Sestra Professional:

I, personally, love "Mind's Eye." It's an episode I've always considered one of my favorites -- no small wonder, since as Sestra Am pointed out, it has one of my favorite guest stars, and also was helmed by my favorite TV director, Kim Manners. But I can see why other X-Philes might not gravitate to it as much. There really isn’t a lot of Mulder and Scully content, other than Fox doing his traditional “trying to protect a young woman who doesn’t have control over what’s happening to her” thing. Meanwhile, Dana gets to do so-called normal stuff like find evidence the police overlooked and reveal blood-test results.

I'm watching you: This episode marked Tim Minear’s second and final script for the show after "Kitsunegari" (Season 5, Episode 8). He went on to write and produce for Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse and American Horror Story among others (a bunch of shows that probably attract a lot of attention from our fan base.) And he wanted Lili to play Marty Glenn right away. Sestra Am mentioned Mystic Pizza and Say Anything. (My other favorites of hers include Dogfight and I Shot Andy Warhol.) She was independent films' "It Girl" for quite a while, including at the time of this episode. So Taylor was thought to not be interested in TV guest star roles, but she was a fan of the show, going so far as to contact the show's Los Angeles casting director. In the show's official episode guide, Rick Millikan said two or three weeks before the script was finished, her management called to express her interest in doing the show. And so when "Mind’s Eye" was written and submitted, it sounded like the perfect fit. 

The look of this episode proves to be as striking as its Emmy-nominated guest performance. Manners’ opening shot, in which we see Marty from overhead, is from the viewpoint of a mirror in her rundown apartment building. That shot later is mirrored when her dad comes after her, entering the building and climbing the same stairs. Another fine set piece comes later when Glenn is being transported -- in chains and leg irons -- out of the police station. She can see her father watching her. Creepy as all get out. And the final scene is stunning as well. The lights go out in the jail and Marty backs away so the viewers are left in the same kind of darkness as the woman we've watched for 45 minutes.

She doesn't exactly fit the description "blind girl": But back to those disorienting visions. They’re so stilted that it takes a few seconds, as a viewer, to work out what we’re actually seeing. A lot of people can take credit for that. Manners, of course, and visual effects supervisor Laurie Kallsen-George, who created the staccato nature of the images. Editor Casey Rohrs scored an Emmy nomination for this episode, the visions undoubtedly factored into that.

One of the cooler aspects of Marty is the fact she isn’t your typical X-Files victim. She’s got a smart mouth, she smokes. Yet Mulder still likes her. The police officers certainly don't -- one flipping her off and the other smart-mouthing changing the $20 bills in her wallet to $50s because she's so sweet.

But yet, her concern for mankind remains very palpable. When we meet her, she's doing the "Formula 409" -- superbly fantastic way of describing cleaning to those of us who remember the product in the United States -- after taking a $60 cab ride to the place where Paco Ordonez died. Marty uses her one phone call to ring the bar and try to prevent Gotts' advances on poor Susan Forrester, and off camera, she makes another to the unseen other element of the drug deal to effect a different outcome. The one that really got to me was when she reaches inside the trash bin and finds what she didn't want to -- Forrester's dead, bloodied body. 

Innocent people don't act like that: Mulder and Scully get involved through Pennock, who is spiritedly portrayed by Blu Mankuma. As Sestra Am alluded to, we’ve previously seen him as a computer expert (Claude Peterson) in "Ghost in the Machine" (S1E6).  He did deem Mulder "one skeptical guy" -- possibly the funniest misnomer we will ever hear for Fox -- and gets a major assist from Scully -- they swept the motel room inside and out and never found gloves in a little box in the wall? 

The moments we do get between our leads in this episode hearken back to their early working relationship. Mulder is sure, without any doubt, that Marty is innocent. And Scully is sure, without evidence to the contrary, that she's guilty. When Dana starts to get some of that proof, she changes her tune. So no real progress made on that front, but we get more of concerned Fox -- and outside the traditional Samantha purview -- so that's welcome. And I'm all in favor of stretching the series beyond the Sculder relationship (which seems to put me in the minority, in my experience).

The chemistry was so strong between David Duchovny and Lili Taylor that they made a movie together a few years later. The film, The Secret, was released in 2007 and didn’t take full advantage of their bond. There wasn’t a moment like her gently cupping Mulder's hand as he offered Marty a lit match or the final scene of the episode that resonated nearly as well. 

Marty meta: Lili Taylor's got a bunch of X-Files connections. She starred in the previously mentioned Mystic Pizza with Annabeth Gish, the future Special Agent Monica Reyes. Just mentioned The Secret with Duchovny, and way back when, Taylor and Gillian Anderson were drama-school classmates. ... The bloody glove element of the story gave the show opportunity to comment on the infamous O.J. Simpson case, and comment it did. Marty says "somewhere Marcia Clark weeps" when induced to try on gloves that fit and Duchovny later told Vanity Fair he ad-libbed "If the glove fits, you can still acquit" on the set. My "Mind's Eye" scripts back this assertion up. ... Anderson appears in every single X-Files episode from here on out.

Guest star of the week: Sestra Am saw this one coming. It was a pretty demanding role to take on. Marty probably would be considered very unlikable if you ran across her in the real world. But in Mulder's eyes, she's innocent, and it's easy to empathize about what it might be like for a blind woman to be seeing such disturbing visions all her life. Lili helps us do this. I can't picture anyone else getting the job done as well.