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.