The X-Files writers did our intrepid heroes a disservice in Season 7 by not writing another Christmas episode for them. I know the December holiday isn’t very “important” in The X-Files universe and the less-than-one-handful of holiday eps throughout the series proves it (Season 5 cheated by turning that one into a two-parter), but after the previous season’s amusingly disturbing "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" (Season 6, Episode 6), how could they not at least try? In Chicago, Illinois, nebbishly nervous Henry Weems is embroiled in a high-stakes poker game. His main competition is holding four kings. Henry, played by Sex and the City’s Willie Garson, is so naïve you wonder how he made it into this private game in the first place, with his plaid shirt and Members Only jacket. Henry wins $100,000 on a straight flush he obtained with five fresh cards and ends up thrown off the building for his trouble. But he lands in a construction shaft, gets up and walks away.
Scully arrives in “Chicago” wearing just her business suit. She meets Mulder, who is also not dressed for winter in the Windy City. They learn the poker party was hosted by mobster Jimmy Cutrona and witnesses saw the attempted murder, but Henry got away before police could identify him. Scully gives a scientific explanation that actually results in a condescending response from Mulder about luck. He really is in no position to talk down to Dana. Scully thinks Weems landed on a damaged laundry cart in the shaft. Fox searches the cart and finds Henry’s eye. It’s a prosthetic eye so don’t get squeamish. Sculder use the eye to track Weems to his apartment. They get sidelined by a plumbing problem in the apartment of Maggie Lupone -- played by character actress Alyson Reed -- and her sickly son, Richie -- Shia LaBeouf four years before he got “discovered” in Holes. Mulder makes the leak worse and falls through the flooded floor but manages to find Henry. Cinderella’s eye fits perfectly, but Henry refuses to testify against Cutrona.
Fox is mesmerized by Henry’s creativity with cause-and-effect machines. (Think of the Hasbro board game Mouse Trap created in the 1960s.) Weems won’t budge, so Scully convinces Mulder they should hand off the investigation to the local feds. They leave and a hitman arrives to kill Henry. Of course, it doesn’t play out that way and by the time Sculder get upstairs to Henry’s apartment, he’s caught the “mouse” in a deadly trap. And Weems is in the wind again.Dana tucks Richie into bed. The kid has a cause-and-effect machine in his bedroom that Weems made for him, so Henry clearly cares about the boy. After Scully leaves, Henry checks on Richie, who has liver issues. Dana hits a dead end on Henry’s background check while Fox somehow obtains newspaper clippings from a 1989 plane crash in which Weems was the lone survivor. Henry follows Scully’s unintentional suggestion and gets a winning scratch-off lottery ticket. But it doesn’t go the way he hoped and the new greedy winner gets hit by a truck instead. The convenience store owner came out the winner in that one.
Back in the apartment building, Hitman No. 2 shows up to kill Weems. but Mulder finds him first. Fox gets to witness Henry’s luck firsthand when this “mouse” shoots Henry but ends up killing himself and wounding Mulder. (I found it amusing that The X-Files produced an episode about dumb luck when FOX created a TV series around that premise but had trouble maintaining it for a full season. See Strange Luck starring D.B. Sweeney, 1995-96.)
At the hospital, Fox tests Henry’s luck with a deck of cards and Weems wins each time. He admits he’s trying to get money for B-Negative Richie’s experimental treatment program and decides to go after Cutrona himself. By the way, after Henry left the room, Scully had the higher card. Thinking the tide has turned, Mulder runs outside and sees Henry get hit by a truck. He lives and is taken to the hospital. Meanwhile, Richie becomes jaundiced and is also hospital-bound. His mother is on her way when Hitman No. 3 shows up at the apartment and kidnaps her. Fox poses an interesting theory that everyone in Henry’s world (including Sculder) become part of his cause-and-effect life. Richie manages to save Maggie, kill B-Negative organ donor Cutrona … and nearly cause a citywide blackout. And that's where the writer lost credibility with me. Who would ever believe that a murderous, greedy mobster like Cutrona – one who had no qualms about throwing someone off a roof over money -- would be humane enough to give the gift of life to strangers?
Sestra Professional:
Maybe we had a Season 7 Christmas tale after all, if not the kind that announces itself in a traditional manner via eggnog and mistletoe. "The Goldberg Variation" originally aired on Dec. 12, 1999, and The X-Files didn't air again until after the calendar turned over 2000. We did reference Y2K a few episodes back with "Millennium" -- complete with a quick nod to Christmas from Mulder and Scully at a crime scene.
Still ... we do have a kid in this one and we have a kindly benefactor. All the trademarks of a Hallmark movie spun through The X-Files grinder. I'm going to consider this a holiday episode from here on out. Especially since it took waaaaay longer than usual for Sestra Am to lose faith, that's a gift right there.We're starting to see a Season 7 vibe and it's kind of a painfully obvious, sensible one I hadn't picked up on before. There have been a few stories about people who have powers or abilities trying to deal with that in down-to-earth ways for mundane reasons. Frank Black in "Millennium" (S7E4) just wanted to be with his daughter; Tony Reed in "Rush" (S7E5) wanted some friends; Rob Roberts in "Hungry" (S7E3) just wanted his craving for brains to go away, and even went to an overeaters' support group to try and make that happen.
Straight through, nothing but net: At the same time, these stories aren't progressing the Mulder and Scully story very much. Our heroes are taking their standard stances and having their standard reactions, pretty much the same ones since the pilot. Even I have to admit "maybe he got really, really lucky" doesn't appear to be the most sound reasoning. Even though I tend to start from Scully's rational vantage point, I'll have to lean Mulder's way on this one.
Loved the set piece of Fox rising up from under the streets of "Chicago," although I have to think at some point Dana might just turn around, hearing a noise of that nature directly behind her. It's even more ridiculous to see Mulder pressed into plumbing duty and his literal fall from grace when that didn't work out so well. But then again, it's part of the episode's cause-and-effect, like literally putting my X-Files action figures into the game of Mouse Trap. Something good happens to me and everybody else has to take it in the keister: So Scully liked the case when they were looking for Wile E. Coyote, she's less interested in backing up Fox's supposition that it has to do with the fortuitous guy with one eyeball. How she can not be interested when Mulder's making the case come alive? For example, the animated way in which he re-enacts Animal's demise, particularly the kicking in of the door, should be enough to do the trick.
It's an interesting notion. The single survivor of an airplane crash finds that the incident set off a swell of good luck for him ... and that unfortunate things happen to other people in his wake. Sickly Richie is pretty lucky Henry took a shine to him, so his luck isn't quite as bad as it might have seemed on the surface. (And it appears to have benefited LaBeouf too!)I don't doubt the lucky streak would eventually end, I do sort of have a problem with the timing of it. Weems has been going strong since the plane crash in 1989, buuuut at this moment a decade later, he's petering out? With any luck, we'll be back focusing on our lead characters and leaving the one-off -- albeit interesting -- characters to flesh out the Life and Times of Sculder.
Meta mechanisms: Willie Garson also played Quinton "Roach" Freely in S3E7's "The Walk." ... The Complete X-Files points out Weems' contraptions were inspired by wacky machine designs created by Rube Goldberg. ... Bell's original concept featured a teaser of a guy falling 30,000 feet out of an airplane and walking away unharmed, according to the official episode guide. ... As executive producer Frank Spotnitz pointed out in the guide, ultimately there is nothing paranormal about the episode. "... Coincidences in life may not be coincidences at all but rather hidden forces ... luck may have a design all its own," he said.
Guest star of the week: In his second appearance on the show, Garson gives a tidy performance as the luckiest man in the world. The White Collar/Hawaii Five-O veteran has more than karma, he has the skill to put us in Weems' place and make us consider what we'd do if we crash-landed into a similar circumstance. 
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