X-Files S9E12: Be wary of what lurks 'Underneath'

Sestra Amateur: 

On a rain-soaked street in Brooklyn, New York in 1989, a gravel-voiced man orders a cable repairman to “do your damn job.” The timid man complies, clutches his rosary and heads toward the house. A teenager inside is on the phone talking about Milli Vanilli (because it’s 1989). She lets the cable guy into the house but Dad claims their cable is working just fine. Our friendly neighborhood repairman goes into a fugue state, during which someone butchers Mom, Dad and the teens. The cops arrive and take him into custody. One of the responding patrolmen is future Special Agent John Doggett.

Back in the present (at least as far as this episode is concerned), Doggett learns DNA has exonerated Screwdriver Killer Robert Fassl. (Why would anyone want to harm a screwdriver?) John describes the scene to his current partner, Special Agent Monica Reyes. She plays devil’s advocate and points out John didn’t catch Robert in the act of committing murder. Special Agent Dana Scully uses her medical training to confirm it was not Fassl’s DNA found at the crime scene. Doggett asks for their help to prove Robert is a murderer.

Fassl gets released from the Ossining Correctional Facility. He seems happy to be holding his rosary again. During a press conference with his attorney, Jana Fain, Robert sees a creepy bearded man across the street. Team Sculett talk with Assistant D.A. Damon Kaylor, who stands by the decision to release Fassl. Jana Fain arranges for Robert to stay in her mansion. He kisses his rosary and begins to pray. Too bad that evil presence wants Fassl to kill Fain. Doggett tracks down his former beat partner, the now-retired Duke Tomasick, who seems OK with the knowledge they arrested the wrong man. But all the praying in the world isn’t helping Robert. The bearded man punches him and presumably goes after Jana.

The next morning, John is still relentlessly poring through the case file when Dana again confirms it wasn’t Fassl’s hair at the scene. She does have some good news; the DNA sample from the hair is genetically linked to Robert. Jana confronts Fassl because she thinks he went through her drawers while she was working all night. Things don’t work out as well for Fain’s housekeeper. Robert finds her body and cleans up the crime scene. (The use of the word “clean” is truly inaccurate.) Reyes helps Doggett by conducting follow-up at Sing Sing. The warden tells Monica about a murder committed in the prison which was attributed to Fassl. Turns out, they have a shot of Robert’s blood-spattered bearded tormenter on camera but guards never found the flesh-and-blood version.

A.D.A. Kaylor confronts John about the DNA retests and tries to put an end to Doggett's dogged pursuit. Reyes arrives with the bearded man theory. Scully learns the original DNA evidence that convicted Fassl was planted after the murders. (Based on the characters we’ve seen, we really only have one suspect for that.) Kaylor goes to Fain’s house to talk about the case. Robert begs to go back to prison but the bearded man murders the A.D.A. too. 

Doggett confronts Duke about the frame job and he freely admits what he did. Dana tells John about the missing Kaylor. Robert hides this body as well, in an area that already has a weathered skeleton or two. Then he gets cleaned up and meets with his attorney and Team Reyly (Scules?) Monica wants more information on the bearded man. Fassl is stunned to see photographic evidence of his evil entity’s existence. Dana tries to bond with him, Catholic to Catholic. He’s about to talk but Jana ends the interview. Reyes thinks the bearded man manifested into a second personality for Robert because he could not face his own sins. Back at the Fain residence, Robert’s evil side again tries to push him into committing murder. While helping an injured Fassl, Jana sees the evil one with her own eyes.

Team Johnica are on a stakeout when Doggett sees the bearded man run out Jana’s front door. Reyes checks on Fain, who is uninjured. John and Monica chase their suspect underground by the cable access trap door. The bearded man startles Reyes, hits her and gets away. While searching for him, she falls down a grate and lands in the sewer water. She discovers lots of skeletons and calls out for Doggett. He’s about to head her way when the bearded man stabs John with a screwdriver. Monica finds them and tries to get Robert’s personality to emerge. She’s able to anger him enough to shoot the bearded man without hurting Doggett. The evil entity lands in the water, but when John pulls him out, it’s a dead Robert Fassl. So Officer Doggett was right all along. Fain isn’t able to admit it to herself yet. Actually, neither is Special Agent Doggett.

Sestra Professional: 

(Hey, Sestra Am, I could murder a screwdriver right now! Oh, you're talking about the tool not the drink. My bad. )

You know how there are episodes you once loved that you don't appreciate as much now as you did in years past? My best example of that, far and away, is "Arcadia" (Season 6, Episode 15). But "Underneath" is like that to a lesser degree. It used to pack a bigger punch for me, but my ability to buy into it seems to have ebbed away. Oh well, people change (although generally not as much as Fassl).

Having written for the show since the third season -- often as part of a three-headed team with Vince Gilligan and Frank Spotnitz -- and producing since year five John Shiban finally got his chance to take the reins behind the camera. He both penned and directed this one.

Materialized how, like Casper the Friendly Ghost? You can almost see the wheels turning in Shiban's head from the original germ of an idea to completion. Let's put a Charles Manson-esque killer into The X-Files grind. He will supernaturally get frumpy Robert Fassl to do his bidding. The killings started years ago, providing a chance for a look back at Doggett's pre-FBI days. (Don'tcha just love how Shiban signals it's 1989? By talking about then-heartthrobs Milli Vanilli. Yeah, it definitely couldn't be any other time period.)

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly where the show was heading at this point in time. Over the past few episodes, stories seem to have been written to advance our two newer leads. On the other hand, the stage might have been being set for the grand finale of the regular run. Maybe it was up in the air at this point with the show just covering its bets.

In a way, it's comforting to see some of Doggett's old habits coming back to the surface. He used to go about completing his cases in a certain way -- with structure built on the facts in front of him. That's what he does again here, or at least, that's what he wants to do again. The fact that his partner planted evidence hits him as deeply as anything he's run across during his time with the X-files.

 

Comfort in times of tribulation: Reyes does her level best to help out, seeing things the way she often does through an open prism. But it's Scully who gets the proceedings pointed in the right direction. She's the one who realizes the 1989 evidence is unusable. Dana can tell Fassl's religious by the way he fidgets with his rosary. She's been there and she's done that. So it's that rare case in which each of our Season 9 trio really contributes, but one in which a lot of effort is somewhat clunkily expended putting these pieces together.

 

The next episode of the show is "Improbable," but that could have been the title for this one too. I don't think Doggett's the only one who can't really buy into this sentiment at the end of the day. We've had shapeshifters turn into other people, and yeah, well, I believed that. But ultimate evil with a side course of religion? Not so easy for me to buy that anymore. 

Guest star of the week: I'm tempted to give the kudos to Alan Davidson, truly creepy as our bearded killer variant, but W. Earl Brown does his pay his dues as Fassl. There aren't a lot of subtleties involved in the performance, but we genuinely feel for the character for living with his burden since Milli Vanilli blamed it on the rain.

X-Files S9E11: We are in the 'Zone'

Sestra Amateur: 

In Falls Church, Virginia, Agents Monica Reyes and John Doggett have ended their workday, but the scene has more of an “end of date” vibe. Too bad John doesn’t take the hint, Monica unbuckled her seat belt while dropping him at his place. Also too bad, she doesn’t get to muse about it for long. While heading home, her car gets T-boned by a speeding driver who blew the stop sign. (That’s not the kind of impact she was hoping to make.)

When Reyes wakes up in the hospital, it’s not a normal one. Heck, it’s not even normal for an X-Files hospital. Monica is trapped in limbo but she’s not alone, a man named Stephen Murdoch is with her. He says he had a heart attack before arriving there. Stephen then introduces Monica to Val Barreiro, another trapped soul who suffered a head injury at a construction site.

Doggett is at Reyes' bedside when Special Agent/Dr. Dana Scully breaks the news that Monica is brain dead. ER doctor Jack Preijers confirms Reyes had a living will and wanted to be an organ donor. Monica goes into investigative mode to figure out where she is. She chases a woman through Limbo Memorial but loses her at a dead end. Meanwhile, Mr. Barreiro dies and disappears in front of Monica. 

In the real world, the woman Reyes chased is a patient aide. We see her outside the deceased Mr. Barreiro’s hospital room. John is trying to find answers before the doctors send Monica’s organs across the country. Scully isn’t being supportive on the “anything can happen” X-files level and is once again referring to John as Agent Doggett. Doggett finds the patient aide sitting with Reyes. She can see John cares for Monica and says her soul is not gone. Doggett wishes he could talk to her again and tell her things. The woman heads toward the basement where there is a model of the hospital. Inside the model, the aide, Audrey, talks to Reyes and Murdoch. She passes along the message that John loves her very much. Monica asks Audrey to tell Doggett he’s a dog person to remind him of the last conversation the two of them had.

In the real hospital, a nurse calls out Dr. Preijers for not including an injection in his notes on Reyes’ treatment. He responds by injecting her with the same drug. Jeez, is he killing people for the organs or the thrill of it? Meanwhile, John thinks back to his last chat with Monica, but when he remembers it, it ends with an almost-kiss. The nurse’s death pulls Doggett out of his memory/fantasy. John is thinking conspiracy and Dana agrees to do an autopsy. Afterward, Audrey passes along Reyes' message to Doggett and it grabs his attention. 

Inside Limbo Hospital, poor Stephen becomes Dr. Death’s next victim. Audrey takes John downstairs and shows him the model. She said she used to relax in there but people started to show up, like Murdoch and Barreiro. Doggett learns about the two recently deceased men from Audrey and does his research. He gives their medical files to Scully so they can find a way to revive Monica. Team Sculett are present when Murdoch officially flatlines. His “soul” disappears from Reyes' arms.

John begs Audrey to convince Monica to show them a sign she’s still in there. For a moment, he truly lets it be known how he feels about Reyes. Then stoic Agent Doggett is back in control. Audrey passes along the message but Monica thinks she can do more. Audrey breaks down and reveals she’s illiterate. That’s the clue Reyes needs to convince Audrey she created the world inside the model so she has control over it. Too bad Dr. Death knows where Audrey is and threatens her with an injection. 

Audrey convinces Monica to jump into the abyss. She does … and Reyes wakes up. Her first word is, “Audrey.” John detains Dr. Death and finds Audrey’s dead body. Considering how many people he killed while feds were in the hospital actively investigating Monica’s case, Dr. Preijers must have wanted to get caught. Three days later, it’s Doggett’s turn to drive Reyes home. They say good night. The feelings are there but no one acts on them. I wonder how John’s memory/fantasy will play it out later.

Sestra Professional: 

I've been making references all this season to how The X-Files found a way to reinvent itself in Season 9 by meshing its style with The Twilight Zone. I think "Audrey Pauley" gives us the best of both of these worlds. This is what the show could have been going forward, if it had gone right into a 10th season. The collective fan base had different opinions, though, and those didn't stretch much further than the Mulder and Scully dimension. 

You are a dog person, John: But I am glad that there still are episodes like this one that give us a taste of what could have been. For my money, it's got a lot more juice than a lot of what we saw in the previous two seasons. The biggest selling point in the advancing Reyes-Doggett relationship has been not trying to recapture lightning in a bottle (yep, talking about Fox and Dana again.) The only thing these couples have in common is the fact they're not high on talking about their feelings, but we get a pretty good sense of what they are in moments of stress.

So Monica is floating off in the strange hospital void while John bemoans her fate. And true to form, that's when we get our best look at how tight that bond has become. After the credit sequence, we find out Reyes isn't so alone there, but man, that place is still pretty eerie. There aren't a lot of times when Doggett goes against the grain with supernatural facts right there before him, but thank goodness this is one of them.

This seem like heaven to you -- a big, deserted Catholic hospital? The episode was penned by Steven Maeda, who also wrote the season's other strong Monica-John show, "4-D" (the fourth ep). I would have liked to have had even more from him, he showed some nice insight into these characters as more than just backups for our original leads. And I'm guessing he would have been able to marry the X-Files/Twilight Zone concept even further, and not in a traditional "marry" wedding scenario. I think his stylistic vision for "Audrey Pauley" could only have been brought to full effect by one of the show's directors, Kim Manners, so thankfully he was tabbed to do this one.

The setup doesn't do much for Scully, though, and she's sort of shifted into the Doggett role for this episode. Dana just looks at the diagnosis and accepts that as the reality. Although having seen all she has over the years, and particularly this season, maybe she should be a bit hesitant since the absence of other medical factors doesn't completely back up the brain-dead conclusion.

This place is all you: "Audrey Pauley" gives us stronger guest work than we've had in a few episodes. We have some one-note performances resulting from one-note scripting. But here there's nice work across the supporting platform. Tracey Ellis, our Guest Star of the Week in "Oubliette" way back in Season 2's Episode 8, gives us the troubled and very sympathetic title character, and she loosens up both Robert Patrick and his character. Familiar TV and movie face Stan Shaw is completely fabulous as Stephen Murdoch, in a way he kind of serves as John's voice in Monica's alternate universe. His opinions give Reyes something to work off of. And Jack Blessing stands out too in the thankless role of the villain of the piece, the veteran TV actor's reactions say as much or more about what the bad doctor is up to than his actual words.

 

So how does one go about seamlessly meshing The X-Files with The Twilight Zone? By giving our heroes the opportunity to suss out the situation. The fantastical happens at the start to get them into the story, but how they resolve it hinges more on our characters being the people we've come to know them to be. (Cue revival warning lights starting to flash in my head.) Monica figures out what Stephen can't, that the confusing paperwork documents aren't just jibberish, they mean something in Audrey's world. Meanwhile, Doggett takes his glimmer of hope and runs with it the same way he would in a "normal" FBI investigation.

 

Guest star of the week: I mentioned the glut of strong supporting roles this week, but it's Tracey Ellis' moment again, for sure. This was the last credit in IMDb for Ellis, which is such a shame. She created two of the most indelible -- and underrated -- guest characters in The X-Files universe. Over the course of single episodes, she fully fleshed out both Audrey and Lucy, making us care for both of these characters by tapping into our leads' emotions at their respective cores.

To be Con-tinued

It was the revenge of ... no, the return of New York Comic Con, after obviously going a year without due to the pandemic. The return meant a few things were done a little differently (wearing masks and showing proof of vaccination now de rigeur across most of the land), but it was sure good to have it back any which way but loose. 

When tickets went on sale, there were individual day passes instead of the four-day variants. We were told overall crowd numbers would be down and availability thusly lower, but we scored the two days we wanted -- Friday and Saturday. It did seem like there were fewer people in attendance when we jumped through the hoops and entered the event Friday. On Saturday, the numbers seemed to pick up, but that could just have been a result of us being in certain areas of the Javits Center at certain times. We got many chances to marvel at the new building during the weekend.

As always, buying tickets in advance of the lion's share of guest announcements winds up being something of a gamble, but year after year, we've found it's more about the experience for the Sestras. Something we were reallly interested in did pop up in the panels -- Ghostbusters: Afterlife -- with director Jason Reitman and cast members in attendance.

I was excited about the chance for a photo op with Adam Savage, so I signed on for that before there were designated times. With the release of the panels list came a new system for getting those reservations on a first-come, first-served basis. The thing that was a bit of a struggle was that each adult had to log onto the system -- a really buggy one that did not work the way it was supposed to -- with a code sent to that person's email. So I couldn't get two for me and Sestra at the same time, I had to get one and then she had to get one.

But we did score the Ghostbusters reservations, and I added the Adam Savage panel and a couple of others for future consideration. There were two other panels I was interested in -- NASA's space technology and MTV's 40th anniversary -- but those were in smaller rooms and didn't require using the needlessly complex system.

For the first time ever, the signings and other photo ops didn't call much to either of us, this was the first NYCC in which I only did one celeb photo and no signings. We might have done more if there wasn't a plexiglass separation between the stars and the fans that made it seem like we were in different zip codes. (The Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell combo op springs immediately to mind.)

But that's not really a complaint, because there was still much fun to be had. My con began with the Savage panel, which started with a slide show of how he spent his quarantine time in San Francisco. He declared himself to be not a good enough machinist to do some of the building he did, although he was good enough to get his projects across the finish line. His favorite (and mine) was a spacesuit, complete with cooling systems.

In the slide show was a photo of Adam at a different convention with Robert Patrick. He recounted the experience of our favorite replacement X-Files agent yelling to him, "Come over here! What's that hat?" In their slide show photo, Robert's wearing the hat. Savage has an affinity for quick stories. When asked about his death scene in The Expanse, he said, "I want this whole career in television where I die on people's TV sets."

So many young people who have been influenced by Adam and his work went to the microphones during the Q&A period. He made sure to ask of them, "Your childhood home is still standing?" All the answers came in the affirmative. And Savage got understandably emotional when asked how people could best pay tribute to his late Mythbusters co-host Grant Imahara. Adam recommended parents giving teachers $20 or whatever they could afford since teachers are buying school supplies with their own money, and also just to put the tools of interest in front of children.

That was a recurring theme in my second panel of the day too, NASA's Explore Space Tech with astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, roboticist Zaykia Tomlinson, space technologist Lindsay Aitchison and moderator Aubree Hill. It may have seemed like it was a "women in space" panel, but Moghbeli hit the proverbial nail on the head when she said they were there because they were four experts in their fields and not because they were four women.

All of them recalled dreaming of working for NASA from very early ages. Jasmin did a book report on Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, in the sixth grade. Zaykia wanted to be an aerospace engineer even though she didn't know what that meant, and having toured Johnson Space Center at age 4, Lindsay was fascinated by the prospect of catching up to the M&M's she saw floating in space in an exhibit.

What came next was figuring out where each of them fit into the puzzle. Aitchison's work focuses on designing spacesuits to work better. "It really is a personal spacecraft," she said. I truly had never thought of it that way. Moghbeli, considered the potential future face of space exploration, appreciates how every day in the life of an astronaut is different. Her future moon mission will help set the stage for the eventual trek to Mars. And Tomlinson eventually did realize the perfect field for her was robotics.

The panel was asked what representations of space in movies or TV make them shake their heads. Lindsay offered up spacewalks, when people return without even breaking a sweat. Jasmin pointed out something similar when people push off of a ship and heroically grab onto something. (The Martian and Gravity sprung immediately to mind for me.) And Zaykia made the packed house laugh by simply saying, "I usually just tell myself orbital mechanics is a tough subject. I just let it go."

So conversely, what movies or TV series have gotten it right? Moghbeli immediately thought of Apollo 13 and related it to life at the International Space Station. She thought the movie drives home the point of dealing with challenges constantly in space, and how the team on the ground is every bit as involved in the process and the problem solving. Tomlinson picked From the Earth to the Moon for its attention to detail, and Aitchison specifically noted that mini-series' episode "Spider" about the development of the lunar module.

As I previously mentioned, the panelists were asked about engaging young minds -- and the discussion was capped specifically with a 4-year-old dressed as a fairy whose dream is to ride a rocket to the moon. Zaykia recommended Legos, Jasmin pointed out that anything hands-on helps children learn math and physics because they see it in action, and Lindsay added parents can play a big part by trying things out, taking things apart and putting them back together. In that situation, failure is an option because it's about discovering what makes things tick.

Not all panels got me as fired up. MTV's 40th anniversary panel joined my collection of yawners (MegaCon's Smallville and NYCC's Elementary have been the other two most notable entries to date.) As someone who watched the channel day and night the moment I found out we had it, I was looking forward to that discussion with co-creator John Sykes, director Tim Newman (Randy's cousin whose projects included the famed ZZ Top videos), former veejay Karen Duffy and Naughty by Nature's Vin Rock. The sparsely attended panel didn't provide nearly as much insight as the average episode of Pop-Up Video (also created by Sykes).

While I was in one of the panels, Sestra ran across the Shark Angels' table in the vendor room. The conservationist group came up with a unique idea of donations through stuffed shark adoptions. They had a trivia contest later in the day, although it was less about the things I might have known -- actual sharks and Jaws -- and more about Sharknado-type movies. We finished out of the prizes on Friday. I was incredulous, but not bummed, because I'm kind of glad I don't know how many insert-number-here-shark-headed movies have been made.

After walking the vendor room for a couple hours, it was finally time for the Ghostbusters: Afterlife panel. They had a full house on stage and off. Director Jason Reitman, Ivan Reitman (Jason's father, the director of the original movies and producer of this one), co-writer Gil Kenan, Mckenna Grace (Phoebe), Finn Wolfhard (Trevor), Carrie Coon (Callie), Logan Kim (Podcast) and Celeste O'Connor (Lucky) were on hand to talk about the experience.

Jason Reitman recalled initially having a couple of ideas in mind -- a girl in a field putting on a proton pack and a boy driving the Ecto through those fields. He didn't know who they were until beloved Harold Ramis passed and he knew those characters were the Spenglers. 

Mckenna, who played the girl in the field, laughed that her own grandmother didn't recognize her in the movie trailer. And Finn recounted knowing he was auditioning for a Jason Reitman movie, but without any idea it was Ghostbusters. He marveled at Logan, the newcomer who apparently showed up on the set like it was his 70th movie. 

Life on the set was interesting for the Reitmans. "On the set, you can't say, "Daaaaaad!" Jason said of his more animated discussions with Ivan during production. "It's like having your dad coming to work with you and commenting on everything you do."

The pandemic delayed the release of the long-awaited film and the cast marveled at the changes following in that wake. Grace noted the change in Kim's voice and Coon -- one of our favorites from The Leftovers -- recalled her baby was just learning to talk during filming. Now that child is 3 1/2 years old and she has a new 13-week-old baby.

Even before the release of the movie, people have been curious about whether Jason Reitman will be making another one. He had his answer at the ready. "We wanted to make a movie that opened the universe up to all kinds of stories," Jason said, who added he'd rather see more Ghostbusters films developed by his favorite directors.

And then the big surprise. They were going to show us the new movie about six weeks in advance of its official release. Everyone went wild! When we signed up for the panel, the reservation blocked out a long period of time and we wondered whether we would be getting to see it. But the next day, a time correction was made to an hour-long panel. So the screening obviously had been in the works. We were all sworn to secrecy about details of the film, but sufficeth to say, it lives up to sky-high expectations. The Reitmans and company did right by the originals. I can't wait to see it again.

After releasing reservations on two panels, we didn't have anything on the boards Saturday except visiting the NASA booth again (we found it too late the first day), my Savage photo op and another attempt at the shark trivia. That left us time to people watch, and we ran into my favorite cosplayer of the con -- a sad Jaws shark, although its portrayer was an ebullient young woman somehow maneuvering around on an injured fin. One of the unexpectedly funny moments was watching people pluck lanyards from the bin near the entrance way. Some took great care with picking them up like a game of Pick-Up Sticks. And some ... not so much, there were wayward lanyards on the ground nearby. It might not sound as funny as it looked.

I did a lot better at the NASA booth on Day 2, getting the first edition of the new interactive comic "First Woman," an enamel Artemis pin and various pieces of ephemera. Walking through Artist Alley was a lot of fun, because we can go down an aisle filled with an array of bright and interesting images on both sides, and with laser-like precision, Sestra can focus right in on an object I invariably want (for example, a teeny tiny pin celebrating the defunct Universal Studios' Jaws ride). She also found my new favorite booth, Monkey Minion, featuring an ever-increasing collection of pins and magnets for every astronaut. And it's not NYCC if I don't visit with (and pick up a few things from) famed X-Files comic book artist Joe Harris.

The Adam Savage photo op was set to wrap up our con, and while I was doing that, Sestra was going to give the shark trivia another shot. We bet a lot of the celebs weren't too displeased with the plastic barrier, it pretty much prevented anyone talking to them, asking silly questions, etc. during the taking of the pro photos. Basically my moment with Adam amounted to me tapping to him on the plastic and waving. Meanwhile, Sestra finished third in the contest (we had done some prep on the train) and won me some shark pogs.

And with that, our return to New York Comic Con was complete. It wasn't what we had become accustomed to after eight previous events, but it was still chock full of some surprises, great new items for my collection and the much-treasured quality time with my Sestra.