Sharna Pax

That's a really good point, and it's classic Mulder to be unable to say that without making a joke out of it. And I agree with you, comparing Mulder to Ahab is totally feeding his ego. I think that's part of why I feel for Scully so much in that scene. She's admitting a lot about how she sees Mulder, and she's talking about a book that Mulder already knows has deep meaning for her, and all of that is potentially humiliating. I feel like she deserves more, in return for that, than a flippant comment about Mulder wishing he had a peg leg. I can certainly believe that Mulder doesn't mean for it to be flippant, that he genuinely feels his life would be easier if he could replace the mental wound of Samantha's loss with a physical disability, but it comes out sounding insensitive on a number of levels. The opposite of this scene, I think, would be the one in the pilot where Scully freaks out about the mosquito bites and takes off her clothes in front of Mulder. That's also an embarrassing, vulnerable moment for Scully, and Mulder's response is perfect. Instead of just reassuring her and sending her back to her motel room, he reciprocates that moment of vulnerability. He tells her about Samantha, he makes a gift to her of this deeply personal story, and by the time she leaves his room they're friends. Knowing that Mulder is capable of that level of sensitivity, it always bugs me all the more when he's a jerk. Anyway, I do think it's a wonderful scene. I love scenes where the characters just get to talk like human beings, even if they're not at their most likable. (That's why my favorite show ever is Homicide, Life on the Street, which is nothing but conversations strung together with a little bit of plot.)

I'm sad that I'm so late to this discussion, but I agree with every single one of your unpopular opinions. I should probably pop over to the S7 thread at some point, because I have lots of thoughts about why I like it so much. Basically, I see it as the only season to engage with the idea that there might be a life for Mulder and Scully outside of the X-Files, and I like that. Mulder and Scully kiss and the world doesn't end, Mulder finally accepts his sister's death and allows himself to stop looking for her, and there's a general sense that both Mulder and Scully are slowly turning away from the X-Files and toward each other. I adore the scene in Requiem where Mulder tells Scully that the costs are too high and there has to be an end. In a way (another unpopular opinion, maybe) I wish the X-Files had just ended there. It would have been such a realistic, human, adult way to end the show, to have Mulder and Scully decide to cut their losses and live a life together while they still have the chance. Related unpopular opinion: I like Sein und Zeit/ Closure, largely because of Duchovny's acting, which I think turns a nonsensical storyline into something transcendent. Which brings me to unpopular opinion #3: Although I find Duchovny to be a more uneven actor than Anderson, I also think that Duchovny at his best is better than Anderson at her best. This may be just because Mulder gets better writing and more consistent characterization than Scully does. But when I think of the moments in the X-Files that I find particularly moving, it's often because of the subtleties of Duchovny's performance. In the bed scene in "Plus One," for instance, I think both actors do a great job with pretty terrible writing, but the moment that really sticks in my mind is the way Mulder's voice goes flat on "That's what you mean." Opinion #4: I know I'm not alone in this, because someone upthread mentioned it, but I find Mulder much more interesting than Scully. (Again, I think that's because the writing for Mulder is generally better. It's Mulder's obsessions that drive the narrative forward, and I think the writers have a hard time figuring out what to do with Scully when she's not reacting to Mulder.) I will watch Mulder-centric episodes till the cows come home (I even enjoy 3, because I'm a sucker for grief-stricken, self-destructive Mulder), but I find most Scully-centric episodes to be merely depressing without really being interesting.

Going back to the whole Conversation on the Rock/ peg leg issue, I've always found Mulder completely infuriating in that scene, and it always puzzles me that people seem to think of it as romantic. Here's Scully, for once in her life, allowing herself to voice some genuine anger with Mulder for getting her dog killed, and you can see how hard she's trying to get through to him about what his actions cost her. And what does he do? Assure her that he's not being flippant, and then make the most flippant, shallow, Mulder-centric joke possible. I know this is the way Mulder and Scully do important conversations - he deflects with humor, and she keeps pushing the conversation into serious territory until he's forced to quit it with the jokes and just talk to her. But he's not usually this insensitive. I actually like the scene a lot. But what I like about it is how beautifully it portrays Scully's frustration with Mulder and with her own inability to just write him off. When Mulder comes out with that peg leg comment, you can tell Scully's just emotionally done with this whole conversation. She'd walk away if they weren't stuck on a rock together. And then Mulder turns out to have a favorite line from Moby Dick, and Scully repeats it along with him, and the look on her face says that in spite of herself she's just been pulled right back into Mulder's orbit.