X-Files S11E9: Death does not become her

Sestra Amateur: 

If you enjoy watching Surgery TV, then this is the episode for you. It’s starts with a close-up shot of a patient being cut open by his surgeon. (Hope you’re not eating while watching this.) At the same time, there’s a girl on a rooftop in the Bronx listening to a conspiracy theorist radio program and spouting religious phrases. The surgeon removes the heart; hope it’s for a legitimate transplant. A second surgeon removes the pancreas, licks it (yeah, you should’ve stopped eating by now) and gives it to his partner for bagging. Did I mention they’re not actually in a hospital? Meanwhile, the girl breaks into the – warehouse? – and takes out the person carrying a cooler of human organs. One of the surgeons shoots at her. She stabs one doctor to death while the other escapes with some of the organs. The girl leaves the recovered cooler outside of a hospital with “I will repay” written in flawless cursive.

Special Agent Dana Scully is taking communion in a D.C. Catholic church when she gets the call about a new case. She and Special Agent Fox Mulder respond quickly to the Bronx warehouse, where they learn their reputations precede them. They also learn the “donor” was perfectly healthy before these surgeons decided to commandeer his vital organs. Scully notes the unusual weapon of choice used to kill two of the suspects: metal dowels. Mulder scares away the local detectives by implying they were killed vampire-style. Since a liver and pancreas are still missing, Dana searches for local hospitals performing recent liver transplants. She and Fox also realize whoever brought the organs to the hospital did not do it for material gain. Meanwhile, someone is feeding liquified human remains to communal residents in a group home. Elsewhere in the house, a conjoined couple and another female are watching a sitcom rerun. The female, Barbara Beaumont, seems to be the actress in the comedic episode but she hasn’t aged. Probably because she is also drinking that nasty-looking red concoction.

Scully lights a prayer candle in a Bronx church before discussing the case with Mulder. She thinks it’s mob-related, not an X-file, so she wants to turn it over to NYPD. She picked the right church, the girl from the beginning of the episode – Juliet Bocanegra – wanders in to talk with Father Hardy. Meanwhile, Barbara Beaumont is livid because she did not get all of the organs she expected. She’s a quasi-cult leader for a commune that has taken up residence in a local apartment building. Dr. Randolph Luvenis (Dear John's Jere Burns) lives there too. (His last name means "youth," so we now know what’s going on.) 

Back in the church, Juliet lets her priest know she’s doing more than praying for things to change, especially in regards to her missing sister, Olivia. And Mulder – not Scully – notes the daily prayer contains the same verbiage as the words on the cooler. Dana confesses to Fox she doesn’t really believe in miracles but she does believe in the power of faith. Outside the church, Mulder notices three metal dowels missing from the church’s fence. Well, we know where two of them are.

Barbara is concerned because she’s starting to look older than 33. Dr. Luvenis is apparently 85 years old. He doesn’t look that old because he’s currently conjoined to a young woman named Kayla. I guess he’s siphoning Kayla’s vitality and using it to prevent his own aging. They trick the young men and women into cooperating by promising them some type of ascension right before killing them. Barbara murders Kayla and severs the dead girl from Dr. Luvenis because she refuses to reward the bad doctor for failing her. Unfortunately, Kayla had no nutritional value for Barbara, kind of like Cheez Doodles or Kool-Aid.

Team Sculder ends up at Juliet’s house looking into Olivia’s disappearance. (Father Hardy pointed them to the Bocanegra house because Juliet’s words and possible actions unnerved him.) Juliet claims Olivia left willingly to join a cult and change who she is. Mulder is already on the right page with Juliet, but she slams the door in their faces. Dr. Luvenis leaves to track down the organs left outside the hospital. 

Somehow, Barbara has convinced her cult members they are happy. They’re willing to die just to keep her looking youthful. She sings "The Morning After" while one disciple commits suicide. (I guess that’s one way to stop listening to her.) Olivia prepares a human organ smoothie for Barbara while the others devour the dead disciple directly from the source. (Yeah, I think I’ll stick with pasta for dinner tonight. With white sauce, not red.) Dr. Luvenis returns with the recovered organs. Barbara “rewards” Olivia by choosing her to be conjoined with Randolph. 

Luckily, our intrepid heroes tagged the heart with a tracker and arrive at Barbara’s apartment building. Scully has trouble believing the super has never seen Ms. Beaumont in the seven years he has worked there. It’s not that far-fetched; after all, it’s New York. And frankly, it’s less likely a tenant would pay the rent early every month for seven years. With his new “progressive” glasses, Mulder reads Barbara’s Wikipedia-style webpage and learns she’s married to Dr. Luvenis and joined a life extension commune. (Red flags everywhere!)

Team Sculder meets Barbara and she feels slighted because they don’t recognize her. The cult members attack Fox and Dana, then throw Scully down the garbage chute. Luckily, Juliet bursts in and stabs Barbara with the third metal dowel. As Mulder searches for his partner, he finds Dr. Luvenis and Olivia downstairs and is understandably disgusted. Randolph claims he developed a cure for aging. Olivia starts seizing and Dr. Luvenis threatens to cut her if Fox intervenes. Juliet swoops in and clocks the bad doctor in the back of the head. Mulder finds Scully and she is relatively unhurt after landing on years of trash. Then Juliet turns herself in for the crimes she committed.

Dana and Fox return to the church. They lament Scully's poor career choice of staying with the X-files, but take their equivalent of a step forward, relationship-wise. I wonder if most fans wished this episode was the season (and de facto series) finale. But nooooo, Chris Carter will make us endure yet another "My Struggle" episode.

Sestra Professional:   

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

We're up to the penultimate show of the series (at least as we currently know it), so it seems only fitting that "Nothing Lasts Forever" hearkens back to the spiritual elements that have been a through line on the show. Not expecting to find any evidence of that in the finale.

Sure, this ep is a particularly gory one, but first-time writer Karen Nielsen makes it congeal with the ongoing thread of Scully's faith. Despite everything she's seen, everything she's been through, she still has it.

Staked through the heart, you mean: It's a little disheartening to see the alleged best and brightest up-and-comers in law enforcement don't consider Mulder a folk hero. They're still considering Fox and Dana to be interlopers who turn cases upside down, just like way back in Season 1. It's no small wonder that the show couldn't continue, there's no one at the bureau with the slightest interest in discovering why grizzly crime scenes happen, they just want facts that can be discerned in a garden-variety game of Clue. 

But Mulder has certainly grown, he knows how to dispatch agents quickly so he and Scully can have time and space to assess situations. Dana's come up with a few new plays as well, putting a tracker into an organ so they can bait a suspect is a different spin. But Fox definitely loses points for not noticing his partner's haircut until now -- the rest of us noticed it two episodes ago in "Rm9sbG93ZXJz." 

Scully's more detail-oriented. She picks up on Mulder's bifocals, er, progressive lenses right away. (I still haven't learned how to deal with my own, but at least they don't look like the oversized glasses that seemed to take over half your face in the '70s. And I'm thinking of my all-time show guest star Charles Nelson Reilly (Season 3, Episode 20) donning them on Match Game now.)

I do it just for kicks: Speaking of the '70s, our villainess -- I guess she can be classified as our final Monster of the Week, 'cause an 85-year-old woman who looks as young as she does isn't a garden-variety baddie. She indeed comes off as both beauty and light and ugliness and pain. We haven't had a cult episode in quite some time, if we put aside the aforementioned hipsters who seem to follow the FBI playbook chapter and verse. 

As has occurred several times in the revival, there's a bit of revisionist history with another Charlie story. The sibling we didn't know about had rheumatic fever at age 4, and Dana was "forced" to pray every night for his recovery. That gets us back to Scully's faith, and we're reminded that when she needs strength, Mulder is always there to provide it -- no matter which way or how hard the wind is blowing against him. He reminds her that all we have are the results of the choices we have made. And, yes, at the end of the day, we just hope we made the right ones.

Let's keep on looking for the light: Meanwhile, "The Scientist and the Showgirl" cult continues on its merry way, but its plan will go down faster than a felled cruise ship. A fitting analogy considering Barbara's penchant for singing "The Morning After" from The Poseidon Adventure. I seriously don't blame the guy who stabbed himself while she was singing, I could wind up on the precipice if that continues to be my earworm.

But attaching themselves back-to-back, how does that even work? Beyond basic biological functions, it doesn't work on a basic comfort level -- what do you do if you have to scratch an itch or want to brush your hair? And don't any of those other young 'uns, who look more like disenchanted runaways than people who society may have forgotten about, have friends or family looking for them?

No matter, because when in doubt, you always have your sestra! Thank goodness for Juliet, because our myopic agents -- talking about their strategy, not Fox's naturally deteriorating eyes -- were very short-sighted about calling for backup, not to mention forsaking the ol' flashlights in favor of flipping an electrical switch when they entered the commune.

I always wondered how this was going to end: With the cult vanquished, Dana is free to ruminate about the candle that she lit going out, and Mulder can show how he's really grown over the course of these many years. He may not believe in God, but he believes in Scully. He's prepared to relight her candle, extending her prayer conversation through his own. They both finally seem to be in the right place for the leap forward together.

Guest star of the week: Vroom, Vroom! That's Fiona Vroom seamlessly capturing the essence of an 85-year-old woman (?!?!) with a visage that easily appeals to the element of society looking for someone to cling to, but makes the rest of the world go, "uh, no."