Finally, a Latin phrase I can understand without Google Translate: Amor Fati = Love of Fate. David Duchovny’s fingerprints are all over this one. He really does love when Fox Mulder is the center of attention. Mrs. Mulder is finally on the scene. Unfortunately, Fox can only read her thoughts, not communicate with her telepathically. Cancer Man is bedside too. He is able to communicate with his mind and injects something into Mulder’s temple. CSM also gives him a reality check – and the ability to walk out of the hospital room. Of course he also throws a Vader-esque caveat at Luke … I mean Fox.Kritschgau wakes up Scully and gives a recap that’ll surely catch up the non-regular viewers. Sculgau don’t work very well together, but Dana gets called to Fox’s bedside by assistant director Skinner. She’s put in charge of locating Fox because Walter is still compromised. Meanwhile, Mulder and Cancer Man are road-tripping to an unknown location. Since it’s raining, the windows are up. So shouldn’t the car be filled with smoke due to that incessant chain-smoking? CSM drops off Fox at his new home in Suburbia, which includes a fridge fully stocked with sunflower seeds.
His first houseguest is Deep Throat, who was presumably shot and killed way back in the Season 1 finale (Episode 24: "The Erlenmeyer Flask"). For once, Deep Throat agrees with Cancer Man: Mulder is not the center of the universe. DT claims to have a happy life in the neighborhood with his wife and daughters. Mulder’s next houseguest is Diana Fowley. It’s pretty telling that he envisions himself in bed wearing handcuffs while Diana strolls in wearing a black nightgown and sporting a handcuff key. I think Duchovny took a little too much inspiration from his Red Shoe Diaries days.Dana has a houseguest too, but she thinks it’s a burglar. Luckily for her, it’s Albert Hosteen, who was last seen attending a healing ceremony two episodes ago (S6E22: "Biogenesis"). While Scully reviews the video surveillance of Mulder’s departure, she sees Teena Mulder talking with Cancer Man. Dana still can’t reach Mrs. Mulder, but she receives an anonymous gift at FBI headquarters -- a textbook called Native American Beliefs & Practices. Crackerjack security in that place, knowing an unmarked package can be hand-delivered to a basement office without any screening. Did I mention the “alien” language from the alien spaceship last seen on the Ivory Coast is on the book’s cover?
Scully flips to Chapter 3: The Anasazi, which was last addressed in the Season 2 finale bearing that name. Apparently, there is a link between the Anasazi (“the ancient aliens” – an Indian tribe that disappeared 600 years ago) and the Sixth Extinction. Dana thinks it came from Walter and spills her guts. But he has an office guest who causes a diversion and escapes. (It has to be Krycek … no one else would wear a wig that awful.)Back in Suburbia, Mulder realizes domestic bliss isn’t for him and he wants to confront Cancer Man. Luckily, CSM is also a neighbor. Fox and Diana walk to his house and Mulder finally sees his sister, Samantha, who lives across the street. Finally, he has a perfect existence. Of course, it’s only in his mind. The real Fox Mulder is unconscious and strapped down in a lab somewhere while CSM and Fowley observe him. The newfound abilities killing Mulder may also keep him safe from the upcoming viral apocalypse. (Insert ill-timed coronavirus joke here.)
Scully confronts Kritschgau and is livid that he sent her alien ship photos to the National Institute of Health. She deletes them from his computer but fails to delete them from the recycle bin. Document Recovery 101, Dana. Scully confronts Fowley at FBI headquarters but gets nowhere. Dream-world Mulder’s life has taken a dark turn: He married Diana, got older and attended her funeral. Cancer Man connects with Fox’s dream world, where Duchovny is sporting the worst “old man” makeup job since Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands. Cancer Man wants to see what a little boy on the beach has been trying to show Mulder. Turns out, this boy (little Fox?) made a sand replica of the spaceship found on the Ivory Coast. Dana confronts Albert at her house when she is unable to locate Mulder. (Scully has a whole lotta confrontin’ going on in this episode.) Since science has led her nowhere, he suggests she pray. The surgeons work on Fox, who refuses to stay under. He looks pleadingly at Diana and she leaves the operating room. In the dream world, Cancer Man is at Old Man Mulder’s deathbed. Everyone Fox loves is dead and CSM tries to convince him to let go. Too bad dream-world Mulder doesn’t realize Cancer Man never aged a day.
Outside dream-world Fox's room, the alien apocalypse has taken place and everything is destroyed. (Keep a happy thought, Mulder.) And let’s not forget about Krycek, who has been a busy little soldier boy. He shot and killed Kritschgau, burned the files, and thankfully, torched that horrible wig. He also stole Michael's laptop and had zero regard for the other occupants of Kritschgau’s apartment building by setting the fire. There’s no redeeming that one.Scully wakes from her prayer-induced nap and finds a Department of Defense security card slid under her door. She now knows where Mulder is. Thank you, Diana. Dream-world Fox finally gets to see Dana, who tears him a new one. That’s just what he needed to hear. Real-world Scully finds Mulder post-op. Everyone who participated in the surgery just left him abandoned on the operating table. (Does that mean the surgery to remove the cranial tissue from Fox and transplant it into CSM was a success?)
One week later Scully, who’s sporting a new 'do, checks on a now-normal Mulder. He tells Dana that Albert Hosteen died two weeks earlier. So if Albert visited her, he was there spiritually, not physically, to help Sculder. Diana Fowley is also dead, but there’s no way she died as peacefully as Albert. Our heroes have a touching moment in which they refer to each other as constants and touchstones. All of this in the front doorway of Mulder’s apartment. Invite her in, Fox! She’s not a “vampire” like Cancer Man. And did anyone ever reach Teena Mulder?? Maybe someone should check on her welfare too. Sestra Professional:
I have many problems with "Amor Fati," but before I start pointing them out, may I first remind the jury that I am not a shipper. I'm not particularly a no-romo either, just not someone who wants the love relationship to be front and center when viewing The X-Files.
As Sestra Am pointed out, David Duchovny's handiwork is evident in the script for the sequel to the seventh-season opener. He's got some interesting ideas about the character he's played for more than six years and a movie. In "The Sixth Extinction," we only saw the outside of Mulder and what he's going through. Now we get a look at the inside, and it's a hot mess.The child is father to the man: Fox is hearing the inner-most thoughts of those around him. They're not big shocks. Mom just wants him to come out of his catatonia and Cigarette Smoking Man wants him to die ... or does he? Well, he just wants Mulder's martyr component to go away. It's not shocking that new dad Duchovny would work parental dynamics into the mix. Oh, the long-awaited confirmation that CSM is his dad. Well, we all suspected it, so that's the latest remnant of the mythology show creator Chris Carter's been hawking since the beginning to be taken care of.
Teena Mulder and Krycek are totally wasted in this episode. Mama comes in to fret over her son, we don't find out a lot more because of the convenient excuse that she can't be found. Fox doesn't mention her in his dream world. Meanwhile, Krycek attacks Skinner with his hand-held bot machine and seemingly kills Kritschgau. Rebecca Toolan and Nicholas Lea were misused here more than Mitch Pileggi has been for quite a while, and that's saying something.
Before Kritschgau gets fast-tracked to the great beyond, he pulls some of the pieces of our story together, harkening back to the black oil that Mulder was infected with in "Tunguska" and "Terma" (S4E7-8). That's as slick as the oil itself and a deft touch in an episode that could have used more of them. He tacks on that Fox has become biologically alien. That's probably not what Mulder was striving for when he started his quest. Extraordinary men are always most tempted by the most ordinary things: Cancer Man claims he knows what's going on in Fox's dream world -- the subconscious "witness protection program" -- and he explains it to a tee. Calling Mulder "a man without a name" just like himself is a pretty good dig, even as the nemesis urges Fox to love life's simple pleasures. This is where I think the script could have taken a little more care with the story. It's about halfway through the episode before the reveal that Fox Mulder is strapped down on a table -- that pose is a little too Jesus-like, don't you think? -- with CSM and Fowley moralizing around him. If we knew that earlier, it might be easier to stomach their dominating presences in his alternate world.
I'm always thinking: I would have liked a bigger and better confrontation scene between Fowley and Scully. Interesting that Diana blames Dana, but Scully telling her just to think of what Fox was like when they first met doesn't seem like a real impetus for her chucking it all and fighting for Mulder. Nor does her contention that Fox should have been given a choice to come to the dark side.
There were some cool snippets in the dream world -- the quick cuts from wedding to baby to aging to Diana's death with Cancer Man looking the same as everyone ages around him. That last part seems like an apt Fox fear. Totally agree with Sestra Am that the aging makeup was god-awful. I'll draw my analogy within our X-Files universe to "Dod Kalm" (S2E19) with Sculder's health and welfare declining on a crumbling ship. Traitor. Deserter. Coward: So where has Scully been the whole time in the dream world? Mulder goes through a list of people before he mentions Dana. Again, if we had a catalyst for that -- here's where cutaways to CSM and Diana again could have been used to great effect -- it might have had more of an impact. Eventually she does get to make her appearance and pull Fox back from the brink. That's why he couldn't ask for her sooner, but it doesn't make it any more reasonable.
Guest star of the week: Giving it to Jerry Hardin, who offers us a variation on Deep Throat different than the man we've come to know and love. As Sestra Am said, he was only around in body for one season, but he's recurred a couple of times in spirit after that to help Mulder get his groove back. Here he's tapped to do the opposite, to get Fox to buy into the dreamworld myth. Hardin's subtle shift in performance does the trick.
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