X-Files S8E5: Billy, don't be a hero

Sestra Amateur: 

According to the onthisday.com website, on Sept. 21, 1990, almost nothing significant happened in history. The price of crude oil started to rise, three “famous” people I’ve never heard of celebrated birthdays, no one “famous” died, and since it was a Friday, I was probably in a movie theater watching Gene Wilder’s Funny about Love or Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Meanwhile, in fictional Dexter, Oklahoma, on 9/21/90, a mother neglects her 7-year-old son while he plays on the swing and he gets kidnapped. Luckily, she is very pregnant, so she can just replace her lost little Billy with the new baby. 

When the woman, Lisa Underwood, picks up son Josh at school 10 years later, she learns Billy is there, on the swings, looking exactly as he did the day he disappeared. This sounds like a case for the X-files, so Scully and Doggett head to Oklahoma. County Sheriff Sanchez confirms Billy’s identity through fingerprints. Dana conducts the medical exam while John interviews the boy like it’s a typical kidnapping case. He veers from the traditional forensic interview formula by trying to trick Billy into giving up the name of his abductor. The parents object and take their son home. Scully reminds Doggett this is not a typical kidnap case.

Things are not going well in the Underwood home. The family dog wants to attack Billy but can’t get through the door. Josh also knows something is wrong with his younger -- older -- brother. Later that night, Scully compares Billy’s medical records from 10 years earlier and learns his physiology has not changed at all. Doggett accuses Scully of using “lazy” adjectives like supernatural and paranormal because she can’t yet explain what happened to Billy. He continues to cross the lines of legal investigation by opening sealed juvenile records for Ronald Purnell, a young man who was interviewed at the kidnapping scene and released. Too bad responding law enforcement didn’t see Ronnie holding Billy’s backpack immediately after the abduction. 

That night, Billy eavesdrops on his parents while they argue about him. Then he takes a knife and enters Josh’s bedroom. The next morning, Doggett goes to the Purnell trailer to interview Ronald, who tells the agent to leave him alone. While alone in his car, John pulls out a photo of a little boy about Billy’s age … his son, perhaps? And good news on the Josh front: Billy stabbed Josh’s mattress, not Josh. But somehow it has Billy’s blood on it, even though he doesn’t have visible injuries. Scully suggests Billy be removed from the Underwood home until they have more information. Doggett notices a stick-man symbol carved into the knife and learns from the sheriff that a psychic described the same symbol 10 years earlier. It’s also what Billy was drawing over and over again on paper when Doggett interviewed him, so John’s observation skills are somewhat hit-and-miss. Luckily, Scully remembered. And right about now, Sestra Pro is probably thinking the Blair Witch was Billy’s kidnapper.

Mama Underwood sounds obsessed as she prepares Billy for his next doctor appointment. Papa Underwood is more concerned about Josh’s well-being. Billy disappears from the car and appears in Josh’s room to terrorize him. And speaking of terrorizing, Ronald’s trashy mother’s trashy boyfriend, Cal, does some taunting of his own. Ronnie escapes him, heads into the woods and unearths a human skull. Meanwhile, Team Sculett bring psychic Sharon Pearl to the Underwood home, where Billy’s blank stare immediately elicits a reaction. She’s also genuine enough to read Doggett’s loss involving his own son before suffering a psychic attack that results in her being marked with the stick-man symbol on her forehead. And back at the trailer, Cal cuts Ronnie and threatens to tell the police about the boy’s body Ronnie buried in the woods. 

Doggett is in full denial mode about the psychic’s revelations, until Scully reverse-plays a recording of Sharon Pearl’s perceived gibberish. It’s a lullaby John clearly recognizes. Unfortunately (luckily?) they are distracted when Ronald arrives at the Underwood home and Doggett spies Billy in Purnell’s front seat. The chase is on until they force Ronnie to stop his car, but now Billy is gone again. Josh gets into some trouble on his own because he’s mesmerized by a show pony near the gas station and he winds up trapped. Did I mention the Cal’s Pony Ride Along company logo has the stick-man symbol? You’d think local law enforcement would have made the connection since Cal’s ponies were at the abduction scene and their hired psychic drew the same symbol back in 1990. 

Team Sculett are dealing with Ronnie at the police station when they learn Josh is missing too. During Ronald’s interrogation, he flashes back to his time with Billy, but his statements sound like he’s confessing to a typical kidnapping. Scully, Doggett and the local police raid the Purnell property, where Cal’s horse trailer is parked. They find Josh tied up in a narrow cage in the ground. Doggett chases down Cal, who doesn’t get far, but Billy continues to be the most annoyingly uncooperative victim, disappearing yet again. Then John finds Billy’s skull where Ronald unearthed it earlier. The next morning, Billy’s body, which had been buried for the past 10 years, is recovered and Doggett can’t explain how they all saw, examined and interviewed what is essentially a ghost. John watches Billy’s grieving parents and clearly can relate to them. Looking forward to watching more about his backstory.

Sestra Professional: 

It is background o'clock on our Doggett integration meter. And truth be told, it's not a bad way to get into his history. "Invocation" feels like one of those old-timey X-Files stories that used to be told in the Vancouver years. It's also pretty suspenseful, you don't know where it's going until it gets there.

There's a lot of emotional resonance in this episode. Missing children always have been a frighteningly regular occurrence in society. And if it seemed as though the show pretty thoroughly covered that in wrapping up the Samantha saga last season with episodes 10 and 11 "Sein und Zeit" and "Closure," it's also important to remember that the FBI routinely is called upon to make sense of a multitude of such senseless and horrific cases.

Failure to thrive: It's very eerie when an older Lisa Underwood is reunited with her missing son. And it's pretty evident the kid's not the same. Indulge me for a minute with a story about my late cat, Frankie. The once-beautiful, well-adjusted house feline jumped out a window one day, and we didn't find her despite canvassing the neighborhood every day and night until about a month later. Even though she was happy to be home, fed and sheltered, there was something amiss after her return. Like Billy here.

I'm not fully on Scully's side in regards to rebuking Doggett for his technique in questioning the returned child. The veteran of many a child abduction task force didn't appear to be pushing particularly hard, in fact, he was handling his job in as sensitive a manner as he could. And although Billy's state may be a biological impossibility, it didn't seem like something that John needed to delve into in order to try and catch the captor.

Call the exorcist: Then again, Doggett's job is to help Dana discern the "how" rather than the "who." John, if you consider "anomalous," "supernatural" and "paranormal" to be lackadaisical explanations, for all intents and purposes, then you're working on the Lazy Files. That doesn't necessarily preclude catching the person who did it, so Scully's point taken -- understanding what's going on internally could help accomplish that.

What's encouraging about the burgeoning partnership is that even when Dana and Doggett disagree, they're thinking along similar lines. John doesn't agree with Scully's suggestion that the boy should be taken away from his family -- and a lot of that obviously has to do with his own history -- but he recognizes Billy might be trying to communicate something with his strange and frightening knife usage. Then Scully draws the line to the stick figures -- and yep, I'm thinking Blair Witch now like Sestra Am presupposed. It certainly explains why the little tyke's state was akin to Michael at the end of the original Project.

As "Invocation" continues to play out, parallels can be drawn back to "Oubliette" (Season 3, Episode 8) with Ronald having a connection to the ongoing situation that he -- and the audience, in turn -- can't really understand. Without the details, we can sense he's been through something similar, or at the very least, something harrowing. The same holds true for John Doggett regarding his son, Lucas. 

For the first time this season, we don't have a mention of the missing Fox Mulder, but Scully certainly pulls something out of his bag of tricks by saying they should play the tape of the psychic backward. Way to go, Dana, that is some Fox-like sussing out.

Don't ask me to believe that this is some kind of justice from beyond the grave: Despite a strong scene between Gillian Anderson and Robert Patrick discussing what constitutes case success, David Amann's script loses traction with the denouement. That'll be a recurring occurrence in Season 8. There isn't much of an explanation for Billy -- particularly his creepiness if he's there to help -- and Josh curiously getting out of the car when he already seemed very upset was rather weak. Cue the self-fulfilling prophecy, it is a little lazy to just determine something supernatural when you can't offer up other explanation. Where "Oubliette" and "Sein und Zeit" once handled it more smoothly, "Invocation" ultimately feels more clunky.

Guest star of the week: Thanks to Rodney Eastman, Ronald's fear is very palpable. We know he is absolutely not the bad guy. Sestra and I get a strong Nightmare on Elm Street vibe off him. Maybe it's because he was in the third and fourth incarnations of that franchise ... and maybe not. Well, probably yeah.