Season 3: Queequeg, Cockroaches and Cerulean Blue

[eleanorofaquitaine]

7 hours ago, Sharna Pax said:

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.)

IMO, Mulder is capable of incredible depths of vulnerability when he feels the stakes are low for him. He connects really well with women in jeopardy (Lucy Householder in Oubliette, Marty in Mind's Eye, Scully in the pilot episode) because he gains their trust by being vulnerable but he's not doing it for himself, he's doing it for them. If he were a different person, he'd be really dangerous because he is capable of gaining women's trust so easily, but since he does genuinely care about people getting hurt, it just makes him a decent investigator (despite what David Duchovney says ☺).

But when it comes to someone he actually cares about, he needs to deflect, likely because he has lost so many people he cares about. So he respects Scully in the pilot, as he should, but he doesn't really care about her yet. By the time Quagmire has come about, he's already dealt with being separated from Scully professionally and her abduction. He knows he cares about her, so the stakes for him showing vulnerability are much higher and he just can't deal with it.

[Sharna Pax]

Just watched a couple from Season 3: Nisei/731 and Wetwired.

The Nisei two-parter was one I didn't remember much - not being one for the mythology - and I thought it was great. The dialogue is sparkly and zingy and fun, which is rare for a mythology ep - I think it must be the Spotnitz influence. I particularly like all the goofiness about Mulder's $29.95 alien autopsy video, and Scully saying, "This is even hokier than the one they showed on the Fox network!" It's the rare Scully line that would work equally well for Lisa Simpson. And I like the moment when Skinner shows up and Mulder goes, "Oh, look, a beacon in the night!"

But good Lord, if I were Scully this is the episode where I would quit. First there's the creepy, creepy scene where she walks up to a house she's never been to and it's full of women who claim to know her from her abduction. Then they all creepily, silently hold up alien implants identical to hers, and then they tell her she's dying. To which Mulder's reaction is, "Well, that's disturbing, but let's hold that thought until I'm done jumping onto a moving train." And then, as if it weren't enough that she's probably dying of cancer and her partner just jumped onto a train that's about to explode, she meets a bunch of people with late-stage leprosy who take her to a massive pit full of dead bodies. At that point, I would be DONE. Cancer + leprosy + death pits + partner trapped on an exploding train? Sorry, but I am OUT.

Wetwired is an interesting one. I've always liked it, but I forgot how much of it happens after Scully's mom talks her down. I thought it would end with Scully in her hospital bed and nothing solved or answered. But there's that whole coda where X kills the men responsible, and Mulder almost kills X, and then you see X getting in a car with the Smoking Man and you get the sense he's not long for this world. I hadn't realized how much this episode is here to set up everything that's coming at the beginning of Season 4.

Mulder nerving himself to go identify Scully's body always kills me. And the look on his face as he watches Mrs. Scully do what he can't do and talk Scully down. I see some anxiety, and some frustration with himself that he can't get through to her after all, but mostly just admiration for Mrs. Scully's courage and presence of mind.

Mulder is totally not red-green colorblind, though. I don't care what he says. He knows Scully's a redhead.

[Bastet]

13 minutes ago, Sharna Pax said:

Then they all creepily, silently hold up alien implants identical to hers, and then they tell her she's dying. To which Mulder's reaction is, "Well, that's disturbing, but let's hold that thought until I'm done jumping onto a moving train."

Right?  He's more interested in his incoming fax.

13 minutes ago, Sharna Pax said:

Mulder nerving himself to go identify Scully's body always kills me.

That Mulder moment, though, I love.  Also before that, when he gets the call.

Mulder:  Maryland State Police think they've found Scully.
Frohike:  Is she okay?
Mulder: No, uh [trails off briefly] They think maybe I should come down and ID the body.

And after that, his reaction when the medical examiner is describing how the police found the body - nude, shot in the forehead - and the way he stops the ME from opening the blinds, insisting on doing it himself.

[Sharna Pax]

1 minute ago, Bastet said:

Also before that, when he gets the call.

Mulder:  Maryland State Police think they've found Scully.
Frohike:  Is she okay?
Mulder: No, uh [trails off briefly] They think maybe I should come down and ID the body.

Yes, I love that. The sort of absent way he says it, as if he's barely aware of who he's talking to.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I like Nisei/731 a lot and am always a little surprised that those episodes don't get more fan love.  They work as both mytharc eps but also as self-contained episodes, and they set up the next few seasons really well when it comes to the mytharc.  The only thing I don't really like is that I wish Scully actually did save Mulder from the train bomb, as opposed to X.

I really enjoy Wetwired, mostly for the insights it gives us into Mulder's attachment to Scully but also for the scene with Mulder, Scully, and Mrs. Scully. I think at the end of the day, it's scenes like that that help us to understand why Mrs. Scully is not judgmental of Mulder when she has every reason to be. She knows what her daughter means to Mulder and vice versa.