X-Files S8E4: Meep, meep

Sestra Amateur: 

Don’t let the title fool you; there are no Wile E. Coyotes in today’s episode "Roadrunners." In Utah’s Sevier Desert, a bus stops for a pill-popping Walkman-playing hitchhiker. He’s not very grateful to the driver but takes the ride anyway. He’s then annoyed when the bus stops and everyone exits. No one will tell him what’s going on, especially when the bus driver bludgeons a handicapped man to death and the passengers swarm him. And that’s why you shouldn’t hitchhike.

One week later, Scully is on the case. She’s lead investigator and crime-scene evidence collector rolled into one, although I doubt she strung up the yellow tape. That was probably the local popo. There’s no cell phone service for her basic Nokia, but luckily there’s a phone booth in the middle of nowhere so she can call Doggett. Turns out the dead handicapped man was perfectly healthy a mere six months earlier. Glycoproteins -- you know, mucus -- are the common link between this case and a recent similar one, but Dana needs John to locate the X-file for her. Wouldn’t the mucus have dried up if left in the Utah desert for a whole week?

The bus passes the phone booth, capturing Scully's attention for some reason. While searching for it, Dana meets Gas Station Man (the show doesn’t give him a name and neither does IMDb). He has no gas to sell her, but generously fills her tank – that is not a euphemism – after he learns she’s a medical doctor. After Scully's gone, he meets with Bus Driver (another nameless character) and the recently picked up hitchhiker to tell them “help is coming." 

Dana's car stalls down the road and she returns to the gas station utterly ticked off. (And that’s why you shouldn’t take free gas from a stranger.) GSM directs her to a house down the road that has a working phone. Mr. Milsap, the homeowner, claims his phone is temporarily dead and offers Scully a room for the night. She tries to get assistance from a nearby bible group but they ignore her. Dana caves and takes the room while the townsfolk mass outside the house. This episode is really not helping to promote Utah’s tourism. 

Mr. Milsap – Ronnie, is that you? – asks Scully to tend to the stranger in his house since he's seizing. (Wow, Milsap's song "Stranger in My House" is really stuck in my head now.) Doctor Dana notices he has a spinal injury and demands they take him to a hospital, but that’s not going to happen. Meanwhile, Doggett calls the sheriff in charge of the murder investigation and learns Scully is missing. He tells Sheriff Ciolino to send deputies to look for Dana while John arranges to get the phone number from the booth she used to call him. I’m sure he’ll find her … "Any Day Now." 

The stranger regains consciousness but has no recollection of the murder, what happened to him or even his own name. He thinks the townsfolk are taking good care of him while Scully views it as more of a worship situation. She realizes the injury to his back is actually a burrowing parasite and tries to pull it out. She’s … partially successful. And Doggett learns the last person who used the pay phone before Scully was Hank Gulatarski, the hitchhiker-turned-parasite host reported missing by his family. Dana leaves her gun with Hank and escapes to find transportation. Milsap and Bus Driver immediately enter the room and Hank – who is no longer Hank – tells them he needs a new body.

John meets with Sheriff Ciolino and FBI agent Mayfield in Utah and shows them the related unsolved case files dating back to 1991. (Shouldn’t most of them have been lost to the office fire of ’98?) Meanwhile, Scully finds the bus, but everyone finds Dana and she realizes she’s in a heap of trouble as they forcibly restrain her. They bludgeon Hank to death and Bus Driver approaches Scully while holding the squirming wormlike parasite. Dana plays the baby card, but these zealots ignore her and complete the ritual. I guess they "Wouldn’t Have Missed It For The World." 

Milsap, Bus Driver and GSM try to convince Scully she will be the appropriate host for “Him." Jeez, guess "There Ain’t No Getting Over (That)." Luckily, Doggett soon shows up asking questions. He doesn’t believe Milsap and Bus Driver, so John tips off the sheriff, enters the house, punches GSM and saves Scully. They try to hotwire the bus, but get sidetracked because Doggett has to cut into Scully’s back to remove the parasite before it gets to her brain. The zealots force their way onto the bus as John yanks out the creature and shoots it dead. 

Stunned by the death of their … whatever that was, the townsfolk let Doggett carry Dana to safety while local police arrive to arrest everyone. One week later, Scully is well enough to leave the Utah hospital where she was recuperating. John tells her the 47 cult members are all claiming a religious persecution defense. Dana admits she was wrong to pursue a case without Doggett, who is pleased when Scully says she won’t do it again. When it comes to his new partner, Doggett is clearly a "Stand by (My Woman) Man." 

Sestra Professional: 

There's not a lot of meat on the bones of this one. In fact, the slug the cult worships probably doesn't have any bones at all. But it does provide the next logical step in Doggett's progression -- namely getting to save Scully. Don't fear, John, there are only millions of fans watching your every step and examining your every word when it comes to the care of our only lead left standing. In other words, Doggett, you gotta get it right.

Fortunately Vince Gilligan lets him do so and then some within the confines of this script. This is one of the highlights of Season 8 for me. "Roadrunners" easily could have fit into the old context of the show, but slots in appropriately into our Mulder-less transformation. 

I don't have a great memory for mucus: That'll learn ya, Dana, going on the road without your new partner, even for a simple consultation. She winds up in a town that apparently belongs in the Deliverance hall of fame. So she never really had much of a chance, even though she's keenly aware things are definitely not right there. 

Nevertheless, despite the fact that Scully doesn't believe what the residents are telling her for a second, she winds up handing her gun over to the guy she believes is the victim. You can't even trust people going through grand mal seizures any more. But it's a nice twist in the proceedings to be sure.

Meanwhile John doggedly (pun intended) tries to locate her. He shows local law enforcement a photo of a John Doe, we should put a pin in that sucker because we'll need it next season. Thank goodness he's so thorough that he was able zip through the case files, maybe he got the ones destroyed from the fire from Skinner's office. Now he has memory for mucus after all!

That thing in my spine is a him?: Hey, Scully doesn't need a creature inside her to be adored. Mulder may not be around to gaze at her, but she's got legions of Dana devotees at her beck and call. And now there's John too. The Scullyacs probably didn't appreciate her having to apologize to him in the final scene, but it really was the only mature thing to do.

But back to the desert town, for Dana's deliverance really gave Gillian Anderson a chance to cut loose as Scully curses at and threatens the townspeople from hell. Really, are you people just so bored that you're willing to worship a slug? 

Kudos to John for his keen insight, not only for nothing that Milsap was packing, but for calling for backup so that the same thing didn't happen to him. Dana, you probably could call him John instead of Agent Doggett when you're tied to a bedpost with a creature squirming around your spine. 

That was a fairly gross denouement -- in The Complete X-Files, producer Paul Rabwin recalled some cameramen "started to lose it" over the gruesome effects. But it was a nice way for John to literally carve out his niche in our story. And then he carries Scully to safety. Come on, X-Philes, you've gotta be growing attached to him by now, another pun intended. 

Meta mollusks: Either way, that's exactly what Gilligan intended. "I wanted to have this gangbusters episode, one that showed how Doggett was a good guy; someone to be counted on and who could be trusted by Scully," he said in The Complete X-Files. And Robert Patrick added that fans who didn't appreciate Dana having to apologize could look at it a different way. "The whole essence of the scene was, 'Look, I'm here for you. I've got your back. We're partners now.' And you give that the weight of a Marine saying to someone, 'I'll jump on a grenade for you, so you can trust me.'" It was meant to reassure fans, not to irk them. 

Guest star of the week: Going with Lawrence Pressman as Mr. Milsap, whom I know best as Jane Fonda's bit-of-a-dick husband, Dick, in 9 to 5. The other townspeople ... and their "victim" ... and the local police seem kind of cardboardy, but Pressman makes more out of Mr. Milsap. It's no small feat. The veteran actor makes his character stand up and stand out, providing a reason why a group of backwoodsers would follow him in the first place. Other than the fact that they have nothing else to do with themselves, that is. 

X-Files S8E3: He's ... wait for it ... Man-Bat

Sestra Amateur: 

The opening credits no longer include David Duchovny’s name and now his only presence is Mulder’s falling, flailing body. Hope that didn’t end up becoming a metaphor for David’s movie career. In Los Angeles’ version of Burley, Idaho (I really prefer using Vancouver’s versions to Cali’s), undertaker George accidentally wakes up his wife, Tahoma, in the middle of the night. She soon sees him get attacked by a bat-like creature which then comes after her.

Back in the X-files’ office at FBI headquarters, Special Agent John Doggett shows how different he is from Mulder, especially when it comes to the other agents. This guy actually has work friends. Hopefully they won’t turn on him, because it’s been a while since we’ve seen Scully with any work-related comrades. That’ll probably be a side effect of her new role as the “believer.” She even presents the new cases now, slide projector and all. 

They head to Burley and meet with Detective Abbott, a burly man himself, who shows Team Sculett an unusual footprint. Dana is in the awkward position of having to train another agent to be open to any possibilities in their investigations. John finds more weird footprints inside the house and assumes they’re looking for a human killer with a deformed foot. He's a student of Occam’s Razor, which theorizes that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Scully points out the deformed foot killer leaves a print every 25 feet. That’s quite a ... feat. Sculett check the open attic crawlspace in the victims’ bedroom. Doggett and his trusty pocket flashlight find two of George’s fingers while Scully reveals they’ve been regurgitated. And both agents observe claw marks in the beams of the victims’ house.

At the nearby McKesson residence, an old lady is attacked by the “Man-Bat.” (Of course this is not the same Man-Bat created 40 years ago for DC Comics by Frank Robbins and Neal Adams, although an X-Files/DC crossover could have been very interesting.) Dana finishes the autopsies on the first victims and her conclusions lean toward animal/inhuman, especially because of enzymes she’s identified that exist only in bats. Wow, she’s on the right track only 15 minutes into the episode. John's research supports her conclusion. He somehow found a 1956 article about a bat-like creature who killed five people in Montana. 

Det. Abbott calls our intrepid heroes over to the McKesson home, which resembles the first crime scene. Scully finds a connection between McKesson’s recently deceased daughter and the two cases. Doggett runs interference after Abbott gets fed up with Dana's wildly speculative conclusions. Abbott obtains a court order, but the daughter’s grave has already been exhumed and her coffin shows evidence of scratch marks. He sees Man-Bat with his own eyes and that’s the last of Detective Abbott. Do you think his last thought was “Damn feds were right?”

The late detective’s anger is passed on to the sheriff’s deputies, who want Team Sculett off the case. But Scully’s results of the daughter’s autopsy show she died of natural causes and was burned afterward. There’s only one person still alive who had contact with the woman’s dead body: Myron Stefaniuk, who is related to one of the men, Ernie Stefaniuk, in Doggett’s 1956 story. They find Myron and learn Ernie is his missing brother. While staking out Myron’s house, Dana and John learn a little more about each other, at least on a professional level. They don’t realize Man-Bat is just hanging around -- literally -- in Myron’s garage. 

The agents locate Ernie on Bird Island late at night. Luckily, Scully now has her own pocket flashlight. It’s actually surprising she “never” had one before. Ernie claims he and his wife, Ariel -- the dead burned body in question -- hid on the island for decades, with Myron’s help. When his wife died, she wanted to be buried in consecrated ground so he accommodated her dying wish, which triggered the Man-Bat. Ernie points out the creature only attacks at night, so Doggett leaves to check on Myron and gets attacked for his trouble. Do we need another new co-star already?

Ernie is berating Dana for endangering herself and John when his radar warns them of Man-Bat’s presence. After shooting several holes in Ernie’s roof, Scully investigates outside the house. Meanwhile, Ernie gets attacked by Man-Bat inside the home. Dana shoots at it, as does Doggett, who is alive but injured. He’ll learn very quickly how lucky he is to have a medical doctor as his partner. They don’t capture or kill the creature but manage to scare it away. So would William of Ockham agree the simplest solution is that Man-Bats exist?

Two weeks later, John gets a message from Ernie, who’s gone back into hiding. Doggett's concerned because the brass doesn’t like how the X-files unit closes their cases. Scully, who’s clearly used to it, agrees to let him use Mulder’s office space. After all, even Occam’s Razor supports the theory that an agent assigned to the X-files unit should have a desk in the X-files office.

Sestra Professional: 

My resolve is to have more patience with this episode than I've had in previous rewatches. Truth be told, I've often fallen asleep during the latter third of "Patience." That will be kind of hard to do while working the rewatch blog on it.

The Doggett indoctronation continues. In the season opener, he learned how not to be liked be his co-workers. Last week, he found out that the higher-ups don't really like it when phrases like "aliens" or "shape-shifters" are used. And now he gets to test his mettle in one of those supernatural cases that don't appeal to other FBI agents.

The first thing that actually caught my attention in this episode was victim Tahoma's accent in the teaser. Didn't even have to look up at the screen to recognize that as belonging to actress Annie O'Donnell, or as I better know her "Yugoslavian recidivist knucklehead" June Wheeler -- Brent Spiner's spouse on their recurring episodes of Night Court. Something worse befell her than the "usual" stories of woe told by Bob and June Wheeler. It seems so unfair, that woman deserves a win.

I say that assumption is the problem here: John went over every X-file in the cabinet in the wee hours of the morning. How is that possible? Oh, that must be the post-fire cases, aka after the Vancouver years. OK, I can believe that.

I'm very much enjoying Scully's new dynamic. She's still got her base of science to work from, but at the same time, she's got a wealth of confidence from taking over as veteran leadership on the X-files. We feel Mulder alive and kicking inside of her -- not a baby reference, just a nod to the fact that she's no longer adverse to "Occam's Principle of Limited Information." And she's kind of enjoying the fact that someone else is in the position of "WTF" agent. Probably reminds her of some early shapelessly dressed days.

'V' for victory: We're also getting a sense of what John Doggett can bring to the proceedings. And that's why I've long considered The X-Files a malleable concept. As much as we thrill to the adventures of Fox and Dana, there are other ways of looking at investigating cases beyond wild theories and autopsies. Doggett gives us that, not just because he's apparently able to sift through newspaper archives very quickly, but due to his deeper attention to that kind of documented detail.

Detective Abbott is a mystery to me, well, as long as he was alive anyway. I'm not sure any answer would have satisfied him. He doesn't appreciate Scully saying the suspect was a man, nor does he later like the determination that the two cases are connected -- by the way, wouldn't that be proof of Occam's Razor, the simplest answer would be the correct one? My Hulu feed froze on the eye of the Man-Bat as he was about to attack Detective You-Were-Cruising-for-It. And that was pretty creepy. I won't be falling asleep any time soon.

The law enforcement in this episode clearly leaves something to be desired. It's the only thing making me lose my patience for this one. But at least it's not a far reach for us to back the new guy against the lynch mob with his reasoning that the only person/thing responsible for the murders is the person/thing that did it. So the supposition that Det. Burly's death falls on Dana feels as hollow as a pecked-out eye socket. I can buy Ernie Stefaniuk finding it ridiculous, but not peacekeepers who don't have any other explanations.

I'm no Fox Mulder, but I can tell when a man's hiding something: The car scene is a nice advancement of our storyline. For all her newfound strength, it's good to see Scully unsure of her foothold at this juncture. And John shows us something too. His whole world is based on facts, and if the facts back up Dana's supposition, he's not going to close his eyes to that fact. All that from one little scene in a car, not bad for a couple minutes' work.

Doggett getting attacked in the lake doesn't work quite as well. I kind of was hoping for Big Blue from "Quagmire" (Season 3, Episode 22) to surface and have some kind of battle akin to King Kong and the giant snake in the former's movie. But at least we got John's feet wet ... and the rest of him as well. Talk about jumping right in. 

Guest star of the week: As much as I wanted to give a nod to Annie O'Donnell or Brent Sexton for his quick cameo as the gravedigger, television veteran Gene Dynarski gives a heartfelt performance as the loner Ernie Stefaniuk. No, he doesn't earn it just because he played Ike in my favorite movie of all time, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Dynarski gave Burley's story some emotional weight. But Ike did go into hiding in Wyoming, home of Devils Tower. That means something, that is important.

X-Files S8E2: Without or within you

Sestra Amateur: 

We left off last week in the season opener "Within" with our intrepid hero, Fox Mulder, appearing to kidnap young Gibson Praise. And as much as I’m looking forward to Gillian Anderson assume the lead role, was it really necessary to have her take over Mulder’s opening voiceovers? They can’t really be of any help; ongoing fans don’t want to be patronized and new viewers won’t care. This voiceover seems to be about aliens. I’m assuming that because there’s a huge UFO cloaking itself in a desert while Scully rambles. 

So John Doggett has “Mulder” at gunpoint and convinces him to let Gibson go. I use quotes because this guy may look like Fox, but he isn’t physically acting like him. He also doesn’t talk or comply with Doggett’s demands. Instead, he walks off a high cliff and plummets to his apparent death. Don’t worry, he’s not dead, he just has a broken arm. And he’s gone before the FBI can get to his body. Yep, he did just get up and run away. What I find interesting is how after seven years, Assistant Director Walter Skinner still uses words like “impossible” when it comes to X-files-related situations. Dana knows the score immediately, that “Mulder” was the alien bounty hunter. And with that line, Scully officially becomes the new Mulder.

Doggett accidentally tracks the bounty hunter back to the school, but since he’s impersonating a teacher now, John doesn’t “see” him. And Gibson Praise is still missing. Team Sculner want to follow Gibson’s friend, but one of Deputy Director Kersh’s lackeys catches them. Walter runs interference so Dana can follow her to Gibson’s location, which is in an underground bunker. Praise is scared because Fox was taken and he doesn’t want to be abducted too. Scully makes promises to an injured Gibson that she may not be able to keep.

Kersh micromanages John from D.C., but Skinner clarifies the career collateral damage situation for Doggett, who finally appears to be on board when he realizes Dana is in two places at once. It looks like John and Walter have the real Scully because the other one has a harsh musical score attached to her/its presence. “Scully” attacks the agent who tries to restrain her, but Dana gets a glimpse of her/it before she/it runs away and morphs into someone else. Too bad Doggett has “I don’t know what I saw” face. Meanwhile, Gibson is also having dreams of Mulder being tortured by aliens. 

Scully tries to leave, but Skinner has the car keys. She thinks he’s the bounty hunter, so Dana pulls her weapon on him. Walter responds as he should and points his gun at Scully. He proves his identity by lowering his gun, turning his back and talking about her secret. Team Sculner regain their mutual levels of trust and leave together to rescue Gibson, who is burning up with fever. Skinner takes the boy to the hospital while Scully remains in the desert. Praise awakens but is terrified when his deaf friend appears with the appropriate bounty hunter musical cues. And Dana sees a bright light in the sky while wandering around the desert. Despite the mystical music, it’s pretty obvious it’s just a helicopter. 

Scully is annoyed because Doggett continues to follow her but, as he so eloquently puts it, “You’re where the action is.” Dana is livid when she realizes John’s men followed Walter to the hospital because the alien bounty hunter is probably hiding with them in plain sight. They fly to the hospital, never realizing how close they were to the cloaked alien ship … and to a tortured Mulder crying out for Scully.

Team Sculett (Doggy? Doggly? Sculett, it is.) arrive at the hospital and realize all of the FBI agents are idiots. They desperately search the hospital. Dana finds Skinner, but this time it isn’t the real Walter, who’s left unconscious and possibly blinded up in the ceiling. Gibson warns Scully, who struggles with the bounty hunter before shooting him in the throat. Of course, the body disintegrates into a puddle of green ooze before Doggett can see it. I don’t think a green stain is going to convince the deputy director of anything. But John clearly sees the writing on the wall during his debriefing. 

Afterward, Doggett meets with Dana in the hospital to tell her Skinner and Agent Landau (the one she/it attacked) are both in stable condition. Gibson is also safe and will be under state protection. And John breaks the news that he has been assigned to the X-files. With Scully’s facial reaction, you’d think he just told her his dog died. Maybe she should give him back the get-well card he just gave to her. And it’s a good news/bad news situation for Brian Thompson fans: There are several alien bounty hunters who look like him still alive on the ship with Mulder (good), but this is the last X-Files episode credit for Thompson (bad). 

Sestra Professional: 

Last week, the show set up John Doggett's entrance as well as it could have possibly been done. Now it's time for him to get initiated into the supernatural. That too is handled with aplomb, this has been a fairly smart two-parter penned by showrunner Chris Carter. Sestra Am's right, though, Scully's opening voiceover was not necessary in the slightest. It just comes off as annoying and pretentious. I'm wondering whether that drove off more people than the idea of replacing the male lead. I know it really didn't, just hypothesizing a more valid reason for not giving the new normal a chance.

Don't turn this into a movie: So back to the top of the Arizona cliff we go. And this faux Mulder is showing more personality than our real-life one did on occasion during the run of the series to this point. Kidding ... sorta. But question, if the shape shifter Doggett encountered was not Fox, then why is that guy falling utilized in the new opening of our show? We're supposed to be reminded of a shape shifter every week until we see David Duchovny again?

It's a pretty jaw-dropping initiation into the proceedings for John. We know he's seen an array of unfathomable circumstances during his years as a New York City detective. But certainly nothing like a man falling off the top of a cliff ... and then running away from the scene before anyone can get down to the point of impact.

I'll have to put a pin in that for now, because, boy Gillian Anderson looks incredible in the desert. Taking over the outright lead of the show really becomes her. Dana gets to spout all the dialogue formerly attributed to Fox, as Sestra Am pointed out. Including the clunky "Wherever Mulder is right now, he better damn well be smiling." Yep, we know it's a Carter script without even looking at the credits.

The only other flaw I find with this episode is that Doggett falls as silent as faux Mulder when he's asked what he does believe if he won't buy Scully's arguments. Not a peep. He's sharp, though, he knows that Fox -- faux or not -- went back to the deaf school, even if he won't admit it's not the real Mulder. He can't wrap his head around the idea of the shape shifter yet. And I'll buy that, although I'd like to him to proffer his own theory. Maybe I'm just used to when Dana at least made an attempt to do that in the days when she filled the skeptic role.

Scully, for god's sake, stay hydrated. Even if you didn't have a bun in the oven, you must take care of yourself. You're almost all we've got. Dana's ability to take up Fox's slack apparently has become even more finely honed, she figures out Gibson's hiding space with very few clues and by leaning heavily on guesswork.

You painted me a picture, now put it in a frame: Conversely, Deputy Director Kersh continues to be the most frustrating guy. There's seemingly no answer John can give to satisfy him. So we're lucky to have Skinner around more than usual. And Walter tries to give John the lowdown about being a pawn in a rigged game. Doggett's been set up to fail. It's the only reason people wind up on the X-files. Skinner says it's been Kersh's plan all along. Not sure why he would want one of his best in such a no-win situation, but so be it since that benefits us.

It's fun to see Gillian play the shape-shifted version of herself. She's the Terminator here. The subtleties she provides, even in the characters' different ways of running are magnificent. We don't need Mark Snow's score or dialogue to know which one is which. Meanwhile, the Tormenting of David Duchovny continues on the ship. I mean, the Mulder torment. I can't get past the fact that it feels like Carter might be doing that to David deliberately as some small measure of retaliation for him bargaining his way into getting half the season off.

It hasn't gone far enough: But if that proves disappointing, we always have Skinner and Scully pulling guns on each other. We have seen that before, of course, at the beginning of the third season -- "The Blessing Way"/"Paper Clip." That can either be seen as a bracing development or a needless retread. I lean toward the former. It's a scene that carries emotional weight, playing nicely against the thriller aspect of the storyline. For a second or two, we don't actually know if one or the other really are the shape shifters, so it keeps us on our toes as well.

But then something else familiar at the hospital is less welcome. Yep, Walter's gonna take another beatdown at the hands of someone who looks like she shouldn't be strong enough to take him down, à la Holly in "Pusher" (S3E17). Of course, in this case, it's the shape shifter all dressed up, or rather dressed down to half his size as Gibson's deaf friend, Thea. And speaking of familiar, that helicopter that initially appears to be an alien ship is right out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Maybe that's why it was so easy for Sestra Am to figure it out.

If something tries to rip your throat out, I got you covered: So Doggett makes a mistake sending the agents he's working with to the hospital. But he is bright enough to figure out the ceiling escape. It's kind of a shame that soon after the earlier trust sequence Dana's confronted with the fake Walter. And she is veeeeeery lucky that the green ooze emanating from the shape shifter isn't as toxic as it was in the early seasons.

And we wrap up with more disappointment from Kersh. He doesn't like the pot-boiled science fiction -- as though there was any other way to report what happened. There's really nothing Doggett can do about that. As Walter predicted, it's the kiss of death for John -- assignment to the X-files. I do hope Doggett comes up with better platitudes than "It's not who wins or loses, it's who takes the worst beating that counts," That doesn't really seem like it should be the case, although we've stuck by our heroes when they suffer all manner of beatdowns, so maybe it's not so bad after all. Kind of like John Doggett?

Guest star of the week: Jeff Gulka didn't get to do much besides look scared in his return to the show for the season opener. He figures more into the proceedings in the conclusion of the two-parter, and it may not be much more, but there's something about his portrayal that conveys the drama of Gibson's story. He does seem wise beyond his years. With our mythology so out of whack at this point, it's clutch for a young guest star to be able to provide that.

X-Files S8E1: Terminating the old methodology

Sestra Amateur: 

New season, new opening, new name in the credits. Robert Patrick has joined the main cast as Special Agent John Doggett and you know what that means, right? Yep, less Mulder. There are pros and cons to this development. Viewers during the original run must have been livid to learn he knocked up Scully, and because of behind-the-scenes reasons, Fox would not be there when Dana needs him most. Of course, I would have liked for Scully to turn to Walter Skinner for solace, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. My other preferred option would be seeing the show embrace the comedic aspect of Four Men and a Baby (Skinner and the Lone Gunmen, of course) but I don’t think that would be appreciated by fans tuning in to watch a sci-fi/mystery series.

Anyway, Scully wakes up abruptly after having a dream about Mulder being imprisoned by aliens. Or is Fox actually a prisoner and the Chris Carter/Kim Manners dynamic duo wrote/directed the scene that way to create ambiguity? Your call. Dana returns to work the day after Mulder’s abduction. She’s a wee bit more frustrated and angry than usual, and not just because she’s been abandoned by her baby daddy. Fox's office is being ransacked for clues to his location and Assistant Director Skinner has no control over it. Turns out, there’s a new sheriff – er, Deputy Director – in town. Actually, he’s a familiar face: Alvin Kersh is back in control at the FBI and wants Team Sculner to give their sworn statements to Agent Doggett, head of the Where’s Mulder Task Force, ASAP. Kersh also insists there should be no mention of alien involvement. Walter claims he’ll tell the truth, even though Dana tries to sway him for Fox's sake. Doggett’s a slick one; he interviews Scully without her realizing it, at first. Their meeting ends with Dana throwing a cup of water in his face.

Back at home, Scully learns more about her new enemy – I mean, future partner: former Marine, former NYPD detective, respectable resume. After a bout of morning sickness (at night), an emotional Dana realizes her phone is tapped and someone is watching her apartment. Uh oh, Scully is in full, Mulder-esque "trust no one" mode. She calls John and reams him out for spying on her, which he denies. Armed with her gun, Dana chases her landlord through the apartment building, not realizing it’s him. He claims Fox was outside her apartment. 

Scully goes back upstairs and realizes someone stole her laptop. She then heads to Mulder’s apartment. Wow, his place is uncharacteristically dusty. I think we would have realized his computer was missing even without the clean spot. Dana curls up with one of Fox’s shirts and takes a nap. And now it appears Mulder is undergoing some horrifying torture at the hands of his unseen captors. His facial skin is stretched in a way that’s reminiscent of Katherine Helmond in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and/or X-Files alum Andrew Robinson in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Let’s just say it would be the worst time for Fox to sneeze. And if you thought the dentist scene in John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man was hard to sit through then you’ll want to skip the 18:00- to 19:00-minute mark of this episode.

By the way, my Four Men and a Baby wish seems to be gaining traction. Walter is working with the Lone Gunmen to track Fox's location based on data our trio obtained through questionable means. Season 1 Skinner would never have allowed that. Meanwhile, because of Scully’s livid-but-paranoid phone call, Doggett touches base with Kersh and realizes there’s more going on than he’s been told. John’s a sharp one. He finds Dana at Mulder’s apartment and they briefly have it out before he confronts her with car rental receipts in Fox's name. She claims not to know where Mulder was going on his weekends. 

But we’ll have to put a pin in this for now, because someone using Fox's ID card entered the FBI office and stole some relevant files. I thought that place had cameras. Back in the office, Walter gets ambushed by Kersh, John and an extra who all seem to think Skinner is either helping Mulder or involved with the theft. Scully reveals to Doggett that Fox was visiting his family’s gravesite on the weekends. For some reason, the Mulder family headstone has been brought to the task force headquarters and now includes Fox's death year.

John reveals to Dana and Walter that Mulder was terminally ill. Remember Fox's “extremely high brain function” diagnosis in "Biogenesis" (Season 6, Episode 22) and "The Sixth Extinction" (S7E1)? Apparently, Mulder did not make a full recovery after all. Doggett’s theory? A dying Fox staged his abduction to validate his obsession. Skinner is convinced he knows what he saw. Scully tries to support Walter while quietly begging John not to close his file with that conclusion. 

Team Sculner meet with the Lone Gunmen (Four Men and a Little Lady?) to review current data to locate Mulder. Dana realizes the information is leading them to chess-playing savant/psychic Gibson Praise, who we first met two years earlier in "The End" (S520). John is almost on the same page because an unknown person slipped Gibson’s file under his door. He thinks Fox wants to hurt the boy, assuming Mulder considers him “evidence” of alien existence. And now everyone is converging on Arizona, looking for Gibson.

Meanwhile, Mulder is back in the alien dentist’s chair. Now he’s naked and bolted to it through his arms and legs. Have you noticed Fox’s “alien abduction” situation keeps getting worse and worse? Now there’s a bone saw cutting through his chest! Luckily, Scully wakes up, which supports the theory that Mulder’s torture scenario exists only in her nightmares. Dana and Walter are driving through Arizona while Doggett and his task force head directly to Gibson’s school. John has the advantage; he’s in a helicopter. You gotta love those government resources. Scully sees a mirage but shrugs it off, she and Skinner are too close. Doggett arrives first but Gibson bails through the window when he sees John. Team Sculner arrive in solid second place while Doggett’s lackeys take third. A white male who dresses like casual Mulder finds Gibson and walks away with him. Doggett tracks them up one of the hills and points his gun at … Mulder! How did my Four Men and a Little Lady turn into Clint Eastwood’s A Perfect World?? 

Sestra Professional: 

In seven seasons, The X-Files understandably became "The Mulder and Scully Show," but I always thought the concept could be more malleable than that. And the introduction of Robert Patrick as John Doggett backs that up nicely.

Nice to meet you, Agent Doggett: Series creator Chris Carter started the attack on Doggett's person before the fan base could even get a real crack at it, but shippers probably would have preferred a vat of acid to a mere Dixie cup of water. Still, it gives John -- and us -- a starting point for the new beginning. This is actually rejuvenating for Gillian Anderson, although the pregnancy will surely slow Scully down. This soapy development ranks as one of my least favorite, maybe because it comes complete with the obtrusive "Scully's Theme" which Mark Snow meant to convey Dana's inner turmoil. To be truthful, it gives me morning sickness too ... at night as well. Oh well, at least Scully's hair looks better.

Moving the pieces around on the proverbial board also gives Skinner much more than he's had to do in recent seasons. Thank goodness. Walter seems to have dropped a rung in status with AD Kersh back in the fold, but he did see what he saw at the end of last season. And his reaction to that puts him in as much of a different place as it did Mulder. Well, almost, anyway, he's not naked with tubes coming out of different orifices.

Even with an open mind, it took me a while to come to terms with David Duchovny's reduced role in Season 8. But looking at "Within" from a distance, it's a splendid introduction to the new co-lead. And for proof, look at Kersh. Through no fault of portrayer James Pickens Jr., Alvin's as two-dimensional as they come. Luckily he chose his underling wisely, because from the get-go, John's got much more going for him (although surely neither of Kersh's dimensions will appreciate that). As we repilot, it's easy to get psyched up about taking the trip with Doggett. And coming off a lackluster season, that is most welcome indeed.

I'm probably not supposed to be giggling at Fox's fate ... or Dana's depiction of it. It makes me think about what that must have been like filming this on the set. After all, David did put the show behind the proverbial 8-ball by bowing out of the series. It feels like some kind of on-screen retribution. Is it revenge when Duchovny gets to utilize the completely dead-pan look that made him famous as "casual Mulder" at the end of the episode?

Give a little, get a little: Doggett does show us all that he's an ace. Maybe Kersh shouldn't have made the head of his task force someone smart enough to wade through the bull. He probably needed someone more like Jeffrey Spender who sits around waiting for his superiors to tell him what to look for and what to avoid. What John wants to do is find Fox, he's laser focused on that task. He's dogged in that pursuit, so his name might be a wee bit on the nose.

The Mulder sightings in and around his usual haunts are quite intriguing. They're disorienting, we don't know what to think about any of it. We know what we saw, the same as what Skinner saw. But that doesn't explain the VISA receipts nor the grave marker in the slightest. Even Dana doesn't know what to think, and we know she's the one who knows him best. But his partner in and out of the office didn't know that he was suffering from a recurrence of that Season 7 opener brain thingy. That makes for the most interesting development on the show in years.

Doggett's supposition doesn't seem too far off base, logically speaking. If we didn't know Fox as well as Dana does, we could buy that Mulder staged his disappearance. On a regular procedural, we might presume a character backed into a corner would be doing something like this to create doubt. That a man whose life had been threatened, whose work had been denigrated to the point that his premise no longer held water had just one play left to make. John's a smart man, it didn't take me too long to join his team.

It may seem like a tried-and-true X-Files scenario now with Scully in Fox's believer role and Doggett in Scullyville. And it is, to some extent, but John's giving us a new wrinkle on that old chestnut. He can't come around via autopsies and science, like Dana once did, but his brain absorbs police reports like nobody's business. He doesn't need Lone Gunmen and a bunch of UFO reports to point him toward Gibson Praise, especially when a well-timed folder is slipped under a door. Doggett may just be an asset to Dana, to the X-files as a department and to The X-Files, the show, after all.

Major props to Carter and Kim Manners for getting all this accomplished over the course of the first episode of Season 8. The literal cliffhanger is -- again -- the best one in quite a while. Everything, especially Gillian, looks great. Seemingly on fumes for large portions of the previous season, the tank is full once again.

Meta-morphosis: Want to know who some of the other names under consideration for the role of Doggett were? According to The Complete X-Files, that list included Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Lou Diamond Phillips, D.B. Sweeney, Dominic Purcell, Bruce Campbell, Hart Bochner, Esai Morales and Craig Sheffer. ... "When Robert walked in the door, I think we all just said, 'This is him. This is John Doggett," co-executive producer John Shiban said in the book. ... "The character was me, and there was just no way I wasn't going to do it," Patrick added. I say, thank goodness. ... Oh, and we all know Dana was named after legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. Well, Vinman's partner just happened to be named Jerry Doggett. 

X-Files S7E22: Mulder's dream comes true

Sestra Amateur: 

To prepare for this episode, I thought it would be a good idea to reread the blog from the very first X-Files episode because I have seem to have near-zero retention. A few things I’ve learned -- my writing style and font preference have changed since 2016 and I’ve broken that habit of double-spacing in between sentences. If your brain is leaky like mine, then I suggest rereading the blog for "Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1) before starting this one. 

In present day Bellefleur, Oregon, Detective Miles is rushing to back up a deputy when his car experiences electronic interference. The vehicle loses power and digital clock goes wonky (I’m plagiarizing myself again). Miles crashes into Ray’s car but the poor deputy appears to have injuries unrelated to a traffic crash. Then Miles really steps in it, literally. It’s that green ooze we’ve seen before. Ray is no longer Ray, he’s an alien bounty hunter! (No, not a bounty hunter that hunts aliens, he is alien!)

The scariest thing in the world is happening to Sculder right now: The X-Files Division is being audited! They sent a “Scully” to examine the FBI’s most costly unit. Dana tries to make an impression by explaining to the auditor how one of the related investigations left her unable to have children and nearly killed her. (Maybe that’s why she and Mulder didn’t use a condom all those weeks ago.) The evaluator is convinced Fox could be more cost-effective if he conducted more investigations from the office computer. 

Meanwhile, in a Tunisian prison, Marita Covarrubias is arranging Alex Krycek’s release. Even he is stunned to see she’s still alive. Apparently, the Cigarette Smoking Man is in need of his services. And back in Oregon, two young men, Gary and Richie, head toward the woods to check out reports of a crashed UFO. Det. Miles runs interference and sends the boys away. The detective's son, Billy, calls Mulder who confirms -- once again, “It’s happening again.”

Krycek and Marita meet with a terminally ill and wheelchair-bound Cancer Man and he reveals an alien ship collided with a military aircraft in Oregon. He sends Alex to the scene for damage control. Probably a good idea because those two young men weren’t deterred by Det. Miles and are creeping around the woods after dark. Gary walks over an area that lifts him in the air and thrashes him about. Meanwhile, Richie’s flashlight becomes too hot to handle. He drops it and leaves.

By the way, Billy is now Deputy Bill Miles, divorcee. Sculder meet with him at his father’s home in Oregon and he reveals a Navy pilot hit an unidentified aircraft that has not yet been recovered. And Deputy Ray is still missing, as far as Bill knows. His father returns home and gets reacquainted with our heroes. They head to the scene from the agents' first investigation together, which still bears the orange X that Fox spray-painted on the road to mark the location of their electrical disturbance. (That’s some industrial-strength spray paint to not get weathered or washed away after seven years. Florida DOT sure needs it on all of their road construction sites.) By the way, it’s the same location where Det. Miles’ car died. Scully finds evidence that Deputy Ray shot his gun three times, but at whom was he shooting? That’s almost unimportant once we realize Det. Miles is hiding the missing deputy’s dead body in the trunk of his patrol vehicle. And to make it worse, he upsets the chain of custody with Dana's shell casings.

Mulder and Scully visit Ray’s wife, Theresa Nemman Hoese, and learn she’s the same Theresa from their original investigation. She reveals Ray was also an abductee and claims to have proof in his medical history documents. Theresa hands her baby to Dana while she retrieves the documents and Fox is transfixed by her maternal side. Later that night, a sick Scully goes to Mulder’s room. She’s chilly so Fox tries to warm her up. He decides this case is too much for her to handle emotionally and tells her to head home. Mulder’s right about a few things; their personal costs are too high and there is more Dana needs to do with her life.

Meanwhile, the impossible has happened: Cancer Man doesn’t know everything. He’s genuinely shocked to hear Sculder are in Oregon looking for the missing deputy, who, according to CSM, will be with the missing spaceship. Good news: Ray returns home. Bad news: it’s not Ray. Theresa stabs her “husband,” who oozes green acidic liquid before dragging the poor woman away from her screaming baby. If only she had one of those silver ice-pick-like weapons handy. The next morning, the agents inspect the baby’s room and find the same scorch marks on the carpet they saw on the road. Scully experiences another dizzy spell. Looks like she’s ignoring Fox's suggestion to go home.

Cancer Man and Marita have a discussion about how much they do (or don’t) trust Krycek. Very Sick Man is convinced the person who possesses the crashed alien ship will “possess the answer to all things” blah, blah, blah. He even has a psychotic look in his eye as he denounces God and worships the alien race’s knowledge. He’s so far from being the puppet master of Season 7, Episode 15 (En Ami) only two months earlier that it feels truly unbelievable. But we’ll suspend our disbelief – once again -- for the sake of the story.

Outside the Hoese residence, Mulder confronts a suspicious-looking Richie who claims Gary was taken and Det. Miles is a part of it. While looking for Gary in the woods, Dana finds the same pocket and gets thrashed. At the same time, Richie and Fox locate Richie’s burned-out flashlight. Mulder finds Scully but assumes she just had another fainting spell, not an alien spacecraft-induced epileptic fit. Billy confronts his father at gunpoint, but the detective gently disarms his son before morphing into the most familiar alien bounty hunter form, Brian Thompson. Of course, Sculder pick that exact moment to arrive at the Miles residence. But when they enter the house, it’s empty.

Two days later, Fox is back in his FBI office and Assistant Director Walter Skinner has a frank discussion with him before letting Krycek and Covarrubias into the room. Alex claims the ship is still cloaked in the woods while the alien bounty hunter cleans up the evidence. Marita insists Cancer Man is really dying, but Krycek is willing to assist the FBI because he wants payback against his former handler. A perplexed Dana arrives late to the party. And now it’s time for the Lone Gunmen to work their magic and find the ship. During the powwow, Scully gets frustrated and leaves the room. Fox tells her she’s not going back to Oregon because the bounty hunter’s mission is to take care of abductees like Dana. He won’t risk losing her, but she won’t let him go alone. Skinner goes on the Oregon snipe hunt in her place (snipe, snipe).

Back in D.C., Scully is reviewing the Miles and Hoese medical files when she realizes Mulder is the one in danger, not her. She then has another ill-timed fainting spell. And in Oregon, Team Skinder (Mulner?) use laser light beams to locate the cloaked ship. It obscures Fox, who has found all of the recent abductees. Mulder walks among them and stares at the alien ship hovering above the group. The alien bounty hunter joins them and the ship leaves with its precious cargo while poor Walter watches helplessly. 

Team Krybias (Covacek?) return to Cancer Man, who is understandably disappointed. Krycek responds by throwing CSM down the stairs. It would have been more definitive to just break his neck with your bare hands, Alex. Snipeless Skinner visits Scully in a D.C. hospital, but she already knows Mulder is gone. Walter claims he can’t – and won’t – deny what he saw in Oregon. Dana resolves they’ll find Fox together (Team Sculner! No, Team Skinly!), then breaks the stunning secret news that she’s pregnant. OK, now that I’ve patiently watched “The Duchovny Show” for four years and six months, may I please have some Robert Patrick?

Sestra Professional: 

The takeaway from last week's episode, "Je Souhaite," was to be careful what you wish for because it just might come true. For seven seasons, Fox Mulder wanted to unlock the mysteries of the X-files. Well, that idea had sort of been tamped down this year, especially after the mystery of Samantha was resolved, but it still rang true. Now he knows.

What exactly is left to investigate? So we go back to the very beginning to wrap up this season. It's kind of nice to return to garden-variety X-Files, the stuff that got us hooked with shape shifters and green goo. Cigarette Smoking Man's in ... Skinner's in ... Alex's in ... the Lone Gunmen are in ... it's even great to see Marita again. I didn't really how much they were missed until this exact moment. Well, except for maybe the Krycek part.

Since we're at that point ... and the script is by series creator Chris Carter ... we get a bit of a clunky recap of our seven years with Sculder by virtue of an auditor who has just realized they're spending more than the FBI's other agents. (That's government efficiency for ya.) Scully counters with the standard line about not being able to measure their work in regular terms. She reminds us that she blames her Season 2 abduction not on aliens, but on a conspiracy of men who subjected her to medical tests that left her barren. But ultimately it gives the non-believer a reason to say she has seen things she can't deny. 

Cancer Man, still smoking despite having a trachea tube, sets the stage for what's to come -- "I'm hoping we can all move forward, put the past behind us." But there's a lot of water under that bridge. It makes logical sense in terms of our canvas for CGB Spender to depend on Krycek and Covarrubias to get him back in the middle of this. After all, how reasonable was it to think the alien takeover just ended after The Syndicate was taken down? So CSM turns to the people who understand -- as much as they can -- what it all means. 

Seeing Billy Miles again is strange, not because of what's come before, but because of what I know comes after. Like Mulder quoting the legendary Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again. Being crack law enforcement professionals, I wonder if Billy and his pops noticed how much better Dana dresses now. Scully's clothing choices when they first met were downright dowdy, now she's all sleek and tailored.

There's so much more than this: A certain parallel is evident between the former Teresa Nemman and her missing husband, Ray Hoese, and our leads. Particularly when Teresa points out that his experiences were even worse than her own. They had a connection that was deeper and different than with everyone else they knew too. So after our heroes see her again, it's rather effective to see Dana and Fox snuggling in bed, even if it's because she's feeling under the weather. Then the return of fake Ray provides some sharp shadowing of what we're in store for in the future. 

The shippers finally have something to cheer about. They're past having to cling to looks or brief touches between Mulder and Scully. There's genuine caring, Fox won't let her go back out in the field after a couple of spells -- the jostling of Dana by the magnetic field is literally one of the more jarring things we've seen in some time. Particularly after the big reveal at the end, something that the fans were so ecstatic about at the time that revival history really put a damper on.

Luckily, we get Skinner back soon after to point out that if Fox brought an alien to shake hands with the president the bureau's impression of him wouldn't change. That point might have seemed more valid if he didn't follow that up by bringing Alex and Marita into Fox's office. Does it feel a little like they're throwing everything into a pot and hoping for a savory stew when the Gunmen are called in too? Maybe, but again, having these cornerstones of the franchise make for at least a more absorbing episode than we've had for great stretches of Season 7.

Sending the old devil back to hell: The Smoking Man allegedly may be dying, but as we know well, true evil doesn't seem to ever die. So throwing him down the stairs -- while kinda cool -- doesn't seem like it would get the job done. I enjoy Krycek and think the canvas is more interesting when he's on it, but his job success rate is even lower than the one Mulder and Scully got raked over the coals for by the auditor. 

Speaking of people who aren't up to the tasks they're given, you just knew sending Walter back to Oregon with Fox wouldn't pan out as planned. Having Mulder see things in the magnetic field that Skinner couldn't was a fine touch, though. All credit here to Kim Manners stepping in for Carter to direct the season finale. And it's not like Skinner could have done anything to save him under those conditions, even a completely healthy Dana would have had a problem doing that. 

For a large portion of Season 7, the powers-that-be at The X-Files thought it might mark the end of the series. David Duchovny wanted out, but Gillian Anderson was still under contract for another year. The final decision on an eighth season hadn't been made at the time "Requiem" was written and filmed. That's when the creative team decided to go back to the pilot to bring everything full circle, according to the official episode guide. Shortly before it aired, FOX announced the renewal, with David agreeing to be in about half the episodes. The series could have easily ended here and continued on just in movies, but as we'll see, there is more left in the tank.

Guest star of the week: Apologies to Zachary Ansley as Billy Miles, but ... he'll be back. Anyway, I was more touched by Sarah Koskoff as Theresa Nemman Hoese, who retained so much of her character's appeal from the pilot, with glimmers of hope amid much confusion. It's that dimension and glow that later sets her apart when Mulder ultimately gets pulled into the group taken by the UFO. 

X-Files S7E21: Be careful what you 'souhaite' for

Sestra Amateur: 

Let’s break out the Google Translate for the last time this season. Sestra Pro doesn’t need such a device because she speaks French. Je Souhaite means "I Wish" which is pretty much how I feel about this episode. I wish this bottle ep will be better than last week’s bottle ep. Luckily, the bar is set low, Vince Gilligan is in control and Mark Snow’s opening score sounds whimsical. 

In a Creve Coeur, Missouri self-storage facility (I feel like I should be translating that city name too), slacker employee Anson Stokes -- played by familiar face Kevin Weisman -- is dreaming of a better life. Hounded by his boss Jay Gilmore, Anson is cleaning out a storage locker when he finds a woman wearing a black leather jacket wrapped up in a rug. (Where’s Storage Wars when you need it?) Anson’s boss won’t shut up, but it’s no longer a problem; poor Jay no longer has a mouth. 

One month later, after seeking medical attention (at least I hope he didn’t “fix” the problem himself), Gilmore ends up in Sculder’s office, accusing Stokes of making him “shut up.” Scully has medical explanations for Gilmore’s affliction, but Mulder doesn’t buy them. They travel to Anson’s trailer in Missouri to interview him and find a yacht in the adjacent lot. Anson’s wheelchair-bound brother and roommate Leslie Stokes – played by the suddenly everywhere Will Sasso – claims they’re just holding it for a friend. Fox spots the woman in black but a panicky Leslie abruptly ends the interview.

The agents check out the storage unit, which still hasn’t been emptied. Are Jay and Anson the only two employees in the place? Mulder finds a photograph inside which implies the woman in black is a lot older than she looks. Back in the Stokes trailer, Anson is debating how to use his last wish. How about wishing your brother doesn’t have to be in a wheelchair, you selfish jerk? Apparently, the woman in black is a genie who thinks like I do. Anson goes with invisibility instead. Her job complete, the genie has vanished. And stupid Anson gets flattened by a truck that couldn’t see him. 

Dana inherits the challenge of autopsying an invisible man. He should probably smell horribly, based on the number of flies that were swarming his unseen carcass. But Scully gets creative and giddy as she brushes powder on Anson’s face. I wonder how many jars it took to cover his whole body. Finally, Dana is a believer. By the way, Anson’s body should have been way more mangled since he was hit by a semi. Meanwhile, Fox reinterviews Leslie to ask about the “jinniyah” – a female genie – but Leslie outsmarts Mulder and retrieves the genie from the storage unit, where she is wrapped in her rug again.

Thanks to facial recognition software, Fox finds the genie in archival footage with Benito Mussolini and Richard Nixon. Jinniyah gets around. Leslie now has three wishes but, surprisingly, it doesn’t cross his mind either to wish for his body to be healed. He thinks he has a better plan for his first wish; to get his brother back. Too bad it makes Scully look like a crackpot to the medical community she was hoping to impress. But Leslie wasn’t specific enough because this is post-hit-by-a-truck Anson, animated but rotting and smelly. (I wonder if Gilligan was influenced by The Monkey’s Paw, one of the creepiest short stories I’ve ever read, but chose to give it a humorous spin.) 

Leslie wastes another wish to get his brother to talk again and a suffering Anson blows up the trailer before Leslie could make his third wish. Hopefully the yacht’s OK. Mulder finally gets to talk to Jenn (his nickname for Jinniyah) who relays her origin story to Sculder. Because Fox “unrolled” her, he’s earned three wishes, so he takes Jenn home with him. His first wish -- peace on Earth. Too bad the only way to achieve that (at least with this particular genie) is to erase all humans from the world. Mulder wastes his second wish by undoing his first wish at a very inopportune moment, during an FBI staff meeting led by Assistant Director Walter Skinner. Fox starts treating his third wish like a legal document until Dana arrives and talks some sense into him. 

Mulder wishes for Jenn’s freedom, then enjoys movie night with Scully. Maybe his post-genie thought was for a sense of normalcy because Sculder seem to have it for one night. But it won’t last long. Next week is the season finale and we all know how those affect our intrepid heroes. As the French say, “je veux croire.”

Sestra Professional: 

Thank goodness Vince Gilligan is here to remind us how a comedy episode of The X-Files should be done. It might have otherwise been wiped from our minds with a flashy thing that the Tobacco Dragging Guy always uses to make Jackal Muldoon forget what he's seen. Wait, what? That object is from Men in Black? Not that "Je Souhaite" ranks among my favorites, just that it feels much more righter. Last week's dud, "Fight Club" apparently really took a toll on my recall ... and my grammar. 

The teaser was concerning, though, the characters seemed cardboardy (still working on getting my words back from the brain degradation) and that mouth gag seemed a little much. But then again, we're talking about a writer who has crafted tails on babies and a teen vampire to start off previously highly regarded episodes.

Scully's reaction to seeing the state of the "mouth thing" provides the first clue that everything is going to be OK in The X-Files universe for them and us. Gilligan writes with a lighter touch, one that leaves room for Gillian Anderson to react in a way that's natural for Dana. Sufficeth to say, Vince really knows how to write for Gillian, and in his first directorial effort, he shows he can shoot her in the best light as well.

How many centuries now has disco been dead? But Mulder isn't left out in the cold. This season had a lot of light-hearted offerings early on that allowed Fox to quip, then it got rather serious until the 19th ep, Duchovny's "Hollywood A.D." Here, Fox gets to investigate "Mr. Saturday Night Fever" and he realizes the mystery woman is the spiritual link. He's on to the fact that the previous wishers got all the power they ever wanted and lost it, including Mussolini and Nixon. OK, it's not the most subtle thing Gilligan's ever penned. 

The non-centuries-old bottle-ep characters are pretty one-dimensional. Even the most narrow-minded individuals should have realized the genie was gesturing to Leslie's wheelchair. But if they had, that would have left us without the singular death of Anson and the ensuing autopsy scene -- the funniest one this side of the second tourist one in "Bad Blood" (Season 5, Episode 12), also written by Gilligan. Unless you count the elephant in "Fearful Symmetry" (S2E18), decidly not penned by Vince.

This takes the cake: In my favorite scene of Season 7, Scully gets a sense of how gaga all the conspiracy stuff used to make her partner, bringing Anson into view brush stroke by brush stroke. She doesn't want to leave the late Stokes alone for fear of him disappearing like so many their leads have before, even saying a quick "bye" to him when closing the door on him in the morgue. It's almost heartbreaking when she opens it again and Anson's no longer there.

So we watch the travails of the two worst wishers in the history of wishing. Did Leslie take a mailbox to the head while hitting the postal objects with a bat? Considering a solid gold wheelchair over asking her to fix his legs seems rather misguided. Then again, if he hadn't gotten all blowed up (residual, I can't just been instantly cured), Leslie probably would have wound up with Secretariat's gams or something like that.

It's like giving a chimpanzee a revolver: Eventually Mulder has to get a hold of Jenn to show he's so much better at wishing than everyone else. There's a protracted sequence in which Fox realizes he can't just say "peace on Earth" without ramifications. We get hit over the head with the "people are cursed with stupidity" sentiment, lest we not have figured out that Jenn spent 500 years listening to people ask for the wrong things. The greed, the shallowness, the propensity for self-destruction. We get it, even without a prison tattoo. 

The larger point is taken, though. Even without a jinniyah around, we should say what we mean and mean what we say. So wishing for more Gilligan-scripted episodes should be good, just stipulating that they are Vince Gilligan episodes and not ones featuring the first mate of the S.S. Minnow.

Guest star of the week: With respect to Will Sasso, effective in spite of Leslie, the nod goes to Paula Sorge. Gilligan wrote the part for Janeane Garofalo, who was unavailable. Sorge does a remarkable job in her stead. Initially, she gets to react comedically to the abject ridiculousness around her, but as we find out what Jenn's been through, Sorge gives a more resonant look at a thankless job. The genie, not the role. Specificity is indeed important.