X-Files S11E1: Where there's smoke, there's hellfire

Sestra Amateur: 

The “Struggle” continues, whether you want it to or not. Am I referring to Chris Carter’s continuing storyline in Seasons 10 and 11 of the X-Files revival? Am I referring to Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully’s quest for “the truth?” Nope, I’m referring to my never-ending annoyance with voiceovers on this show. 

The current perpetrator is the Cigarette Smoking Man. (Should I have been hyphenating his nickname all this time?) He sums up his entire existence in a couple of minutes. At some point, you almost want a superior alien race to show up on Earth, meet with CSM and smite him like an insignificant pest. And I can’t even imagine how Sestra Pro felt when it was implied that Cancer Man faked the moon landing. But enough about that evil, narcissistic string-puller; for some reason, Scully’s unconscious.

I should probably point out she and Mulder are not still on the bridge looking up at the UFO at the end of Season 10. They’re back in the basement office at FBI headquarters. Fox looks so much healthier than he did at the end of the previous episode. Dana’s rushed to the hospital and undergoes a battery of tests which reveal she’s suffering from abnormal brain activity. Luckily, her neurologist, Dr. Joyet, shows Mulder and Assistant Director Walter Skinner her live brain scan, which is dot-dashing a message Walter is able to translate: “Find him.” Skinner thinks “him” means Sculder’s son, William. Jeez, and now we have to endure a Fox voiceover? (Yep, and it’s throughout the episode.) 

Scully wakes up and, if I’m actually paying attention, reveals the events of the Season 10 finale haven’t happened yet: no Spartan virus, no exposition by former agent Monica Reyes, no confrontation between Mulder and Cancer Man. But Dana tries to convince Fox that CSM is still alive. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Spender (Cancer Man’s less-preferred son and Mulder’s half-brother) is taking out the garbage when someone tries to run him over. The would-be killer wants “the boy.”

Back in Scully’s hospital room, Dr. Joyet suggests Dana may have been subjected to experimentation. Scully denies it even though it’s all she talked about last season with her sequenced DNA, yada, yada, yada. But Dana’s now experiencing the world’s worst headache. Fox leaves the hospital and hears a warning voicemail from his half-bro. Of course Cancer Man is listening … and Monica is still lighting his cigarettes. 

Why does Chris Carter not trust his audience to know what’s going on without those wretched voiceovers?! Mulder’s being chased by Jeffrey’s attempted killer and putting innocent civilians at risk instead of dealing with the threat. (Just because they don’t show the crash victims doesn’t mean they’re OK.) Spender shows up at Scully’s bedside and she asks for her son’s location. He gives her the adopted parents’ last name, Van de Kamp, but has trouble believing his own father is still alive. (Did we know Spender knew who adopted baby William? Sestra Pro, I need a Season 9 refresher course!) Dana leaves the hospital against medical advice. Doctors truly are the worst patients.

Cancer Man is concerned, why are people after Sculder’s kid now? Probably because of you, you power-hungry madman! Meanwhile, Fox is driving to South Carolina when Scully calls with an update. She’s convinced her germ warfare vision is coming true so she’s more desperate than ever to find William. Too bad she seized her way back into unconsciousness. Back to Smoking Man and Monica, whose discussion borders on creepy; Reyes accuses him of being in love with Scully. 

Mulder follows his pursuer onto an estate. He enters without a warrant and finds – nope, not Cancer Man and Monica – but a different old man and brunette woman. Back in the X-files office, Skinner finds Scully’s cell phone. A clearly not-well Dana is on the move. Walter leaves to find her and encounters a gun-toting Reyes instead. He easily disarms her but clearly isn’t prepared for Cancer Man’s arrival. And Scully, just like Fox, selfishly puts other drivers at risk and crashes her car. She had so many safer options: Uber, Lyft, D.C. Cab.

So the other man smoking cigarettes (Mr. Y, according to closed captioning) offers some exposition for Mulder -- it’s Cancer Man’s house and they’re part of the Syndicate, but Mr. Y’s female counterpart wants to stop CSM from exterminating humanity. (Guess they’re not part of the protected elite.) Smoking Man explains the virus to Walter, who is stunned that Monica would be part of it. (So are we; so was Annabeth Gish probably.) Mr. Y and Price (really glad I use captions) are trying to use William’s safety as leverage for Fox to kill his father, as if he needed any other motivation. Cancer Man offers Skinner immunity from the Spartan virus in exchange for William. Mr. Y and Price are focused on the colonization of space. That’s pretty much where they lose Mulder. He races back home but tries to call Skinner on the way. Too bad Walter’s still busy with CSM.

Dana’s back in the hospital. Agents Miller and Einstein were the ones who rescued her from the wrecked car. Dr. Joyet calls Fox with Scully’s current location. Unfortunately, Mulder’s would-be killer finds her first. He tries to smother Dana with a pillow then choke the life out of her. Luckily, Fox arrives and slits his throat! 

Scully knows it wasn’t Cancer Man’s doing, because she thinks he would never harm her. She also believes her visions are messages from William, who will find her and Mulder. Skinner arrives at the hospital but refuses to answer Fox’s questions. Oh, and he also smells like smoke. What isn’t Walter telling him? Oh nothing, just the fact that Smoking Man, not Mulder, is William’s father. Meanwhile, poor William seems to be suffering from an awful headache. At this point, aren’t we all?

Sestra Professional: 

Another "Struggle," another voiceover. The only one I want to hear for "My Struggle IV" would be Sestra Am's. She's right on a couple of fronts. If an alien race was bent on taking over this planet, it surely would take out the most self-serving, back-stabbing being along the way. Technically, yes, we should have been hyphenating Cigarette Smoking Man all along. But since the show doesn't, we haven't been. And, yeah, the way to get me feeling good about the revival again is not in insinuating the moon landings were faked. I had a tough enough time getting behind the goings-on in "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" (Season 4, Episode 7).

I want to lie: The road to wellness isn't in pretending "My Struggle II" never happened. What is this, Dallas? It's such a cruddy way out of Season 10's cliffhanger, and we had come to expect more from this show than the X-Files' variation of Bobby Ewing in the shower. Then again, they did take the most forthright character and turn her into a stoolie for the series' biggest villain, so what do I know? So Dana Scully has become Pam Ewing. If that doesn't clue us in to what Scully is in for this season, nothing will.

It's a good thing Skinner was on hand to read the Morse code and tell us the message in Dana's brain. Uh oh, another bad sign, someone tells Mulder something outrageously paranormal and he doesn't glom onto it like a proverbial chupacabra. Fox is taking advice from Walter in the usual way, so at least something is resembling the show we all know and love and have been increasingly frustrated by.

The only one who the years have been good to is Jeffrey Spender. Remember how one-note he was when he was introduced, how much we all detested him until his father allegedly did away with him? We thought nothing would ever open his eyes. Nothing like a little filicide to do the job. He does seem to have gone to some lengths to find out where William ended up. (Nope, Sestra Am, that wasn't expressly laid out in Season 9.) We clearly can't expect miracles, though, as he's a doubting Spender about the prospect of his murderous dad being alive.

I was just talking about lazy writing and cheap tactics when we're hit with more of them in the form of Fox's voiceovers. Someone once said that using voiceovers is the laziest way of telling your story. Remember the Blade Runner debacle? It really feels egregious here. Yeah, we're used to a pretentious pre-teaser voiceover, but threading it through the entire episode, it's more than distracting, it's downright irritating.  

The beauty of a planet returned to its savage state: It's all too easy for the Cigarette Smoking Man to go off on a diatribe because what he's saying sounds like it could be true. He's saying it with all big words and pat phrases, but his central thesis that civilization seems like a joke and his plan could be the punchline passes muster. He should have come up with the idea of fake news distracting America decades ago.  

So our only saving grace is Scully. And although it feels like we're getting back into the Mulder mind-meld territory from the end of Season 6 and the start of Season 7, it's turning me around a wee bit on the use of "My Struggle II" as a glimpse at what the future could have been. I still can't get into the decimation of Monica's character, it just feels completely wrong. She's not Marita Covarrubias, if there was a polar opposite to the UNblonde during the regular run, it was Reyes.

We've got some new Syndicate members in the fold -- Mr. Y (A.C. Peterson) and Price (Barbara Hershey) -- and that's not a bad thing. Well, they're clearly bad but it's not bad in and of itself. The story they're telling is something we understand all too well about a simple pathogen killing billions and billions. The aliens won't be coming after all, for they have no interest in a warming planet with vanishing resources. That makes sense too.

The renegade Syndicate members tell Fox they want to colonize space, and Mulder realizes that only a select few -- the few they select -- will be able to take advantage. That's not their only play though, they also want the son of Scully and Mulder. Everyone wants that kid. There's clearly more at stake than the mere colonization of space.

You smell like smoke: Even after all she's been through in this episode alone, Dana realizes her visions are coming from William. As she and Fox come to grips with that fact, in comes Walter. And he's acting just like he has many times over the years when he doesn't want to tell the people he cares about the most what he knows, ostensibly because he's trying to protect them.

Then just when it seems like we've gotten back on some kind of viable track, "My Struggle III" veers into terrain that no one can conceivably get behind. Conceivably being the operative word. Look, as watchers of a long-running TV program we understand that we may not always get what we want when we want it. The shippers dealt with that fact for years as they fawned over Mulder and Scully's every look, every touch. It seemed like they finally got what they wanted at the end of Season 8. Does creator Chris Carter think we're entertained in the slightest by the revolting revisionist history? Because I have to say, even as an avid no-romo, that going back to "En Ami" (S7E15) and revealing the utterly disgusting details of what we allegedly did not see the first time around truly is the ultimate fan smackdown. Only the teaser tagline change from "I Want To Believe" to "I Want To Lie" provides the slightest comfort.

Guest star of the week: Barbara Hershey doesn't have a lot to do beyond set the framework for this previously untapped faction of the Syndicate, but it's refreshing to see her in this role. As the Beaches actress showed in The Portrait of a Lady and in glimpses here, she can play villainous mind games when called upon to do so.