Season 4: I'm Sorry, But You've Got Something I Need...

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I started fanwanking two or three rewatches ago that Teena Mulder was actually the one heavily involved with the Consortium, and Bill Mulder was the one who reluctantly went along with it, rather than the other way around.  I really think that makes more sense with everything we are shown throughout the series.  Fortunately for Mulder, he never had reason to suspect the truth about his mother, and so he was able to remain blissfully ignorant about the level of her involvement with Samantha's disappearance and everything else that happened.

 

 

Now that would have been quite the plot point - I would have totally loved it if Teena Mulder was the one really pulling all of the Syndicate's strings.  And I could see where you could make the argument, since we know that Bill Mulder was only a reluctant member of The Syndicate and most of Teena Mulder's life is kept off screen.  But I suspect that she wasn't that involved with The Syndicate as a whole... just with CSM.  And boy, if I were her, I would hate both of those guys for making me choose between my children.  Honestly, if they were going to do a spin off, the life and times of Bill and Teena Mulder and CSM during the 1960s (Mad Men Meets The X-Files) would be an interesting, if depressing, one.

 

Honestly, though, the rewatch has revealed some timeline wonkiness with CSM's relationship with both Mulders.  We see in Piper Maru/Apocrypha that CSM and Bill Mulder interviewed the Zeus Faber survivor in 1947.  But then they are both in the army together in 1962 in Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man, and Bill mentions his wife and infant son like CSM hasn't met them yet (of course, he does creepily keep the picture of Teena and Mulder, like they are his family).  Are we supposed to think they are in the military in 1947? I had assumed they were both in the State Department, but they've never quite delineated how Bill Mulder and CSM met.  Plus, when CSM talks about all of those summers at the RI summer house, you'd think that Mulder would have had some memory of him prior to Demons, but I guess I can understand Mulder basically blocking all of that out because of the trauma of Samantha's abduction.

[baileythedog]

Probably because it's Memorial Day, but for some reason this episode popped into my mind today. It isn't my favorite episode of all time, but I like it quite a bit and it is certainly unique in The X-Files canon. A lot of people seem to really hate this episode and I confess, I don't fully understand why. (Full disclosure: I don't have a problem with the acting by anyone in any scene.) 

This is an episode definitely influenced by events in the 90s that maybe aren't so apparent today. 

Topically, it's a throw back to some of the stories that had resurfaced about the Civil War thanks in part to the runaway success of the Ken Burns "Civil War" series on PBS. (For those that are younger, Burns' "The Civil War" was really the first project that put him on the map and although his style of using photographs and music and voiceover with talking head interviews was the first of its kind in documentary form, he very much popularized it. For awhile, Apple's iMovie had a feature called "The Burns Effect" to use when you wanted a photo to move in slow motion during video editing.) 

The names "Sullivan" and "Sarah" for Mulder and Melissa's past lives came straight from the Rhode Island lawyer / politician / officer Sullivan Ballou whose wonderful letter to his wife Sarah right before the Battle of Bull Run was recreated in Burns' film. Ballou was mortally wounded in that battle but suggested that he might someday see his wife again. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0C-euAyCTU&feature=youtu.be

Also, we haven't had a good religious cult mass death experience lately but the 90s were rife with them. The compound at Waco obviously influenced this episode and the following year the Hale-Bopp group also managed to mass exterminate themselves. The Jonestown massacre of the late 70s obviously popularized the idea of "drinking the koolaid." We live now in an age of terrorism where the religious extremists are pushing violence and death to unaffiliated populations rather than just doing themselves in. 

I really like how The X-Files tried to bridge all these ideas together and depict it not only from a law enforcement perspective but from someone who is willing to believe in past lives and encapsulate the spirit of the Ballou battlefield letter. In my mind, this episode would be the flip side to what "Babylon" was trying to convey in S10. 

[Taryn74]

I am making the assumption you're talking about TFWID, heh.  

The cult part of the episode I find really interesting (I'm endlessly fascinated by all the ways people can twist scripture around) and really don't even mind the past life regression, I just despise the "soulmate" aspect.

I do find it really interesting that Scully always seems to be in a position of authority over Mulder in their past lives.  I wish they would have explored that more during the episode.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

I posted about TFWID on the previous page. I ended up liking it a lot more than I did previously.  It still doesn't entirely work, IMO - as I said, it's hard to buy Melissa and Mulder as soulmates throughout time just because the chemistry between DD and GA really eclipses any other relationship on the show.  But I think that the episode actually does capture the dynamic between Mulder and Scully as trusted confidantes through time.  And the general air of sadness and melancholy - of Mulder once again not being able to protect a vulnerable women with whom he feels a connection - did work for me.

[baileythedog]

14 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

I am making the assumption you're talking about TFWID, heh.  

The cult part of the episode I find really interesting (I'm endlessly fascinated by all the ways people can twist scripture around) and really don't even mind the past life regression, I just despise the "soulmate" aspect.

I do find it really interesting that Scully always seems to be in a position of authority over Mulder in their past lives.  I wish they would have explored that more during the episode.

Uh, yeah, I guess I should have put a title on that one....heh. 

[Smad]

Realistically Mulder should have been out of a job after 'Paper Hearts'. His damn obsession with his sister almost cost another child their life. There is no way the girl came out of that unscaved and if I were the mother I would have sued the FBI's ass like there is no tomorrow. Someone has to pay the bills for the shrink she is going to need. And Skinner deserved several kicks in the jewels for his treatment of Scully.

[Bastet]

Why is that hybrid-killing stiletto thing so important?  Cancerman is sitting around waiting for it so he can kill Jeremiah Smith, X wants his hands on it so he's ready when colonization begins, etc.  But couldn't these folks just open their kitchen drawers and get an ice pick?  You have to kill the hybrids by piercing the skull at the base of the neck.  Okay, so anything pointy and sharp enough will do, right?  (Plus, this fancy tool isn't all that great, obviously, since it didn't even kill the Alien Bounty Hunter even though Mulder stabbed him in the right spot.)

And why is the green blood suddenly not toxic?  It used to instantly zap anyone nearby, but Mulder stabs ABH and everyone's fine despite the bubbling green goo.  Are they both already immune?

And, jeez, that ditch in Herrenvolk!  It was the only thing I'd remembered about the episode, because the white hot rage was seared into my brain.  And his phone call the next morning is basically, "And, Scully, thankfully the most-important thing is true: I'm fine."  Well, goody for you, Special Agent Jackass, but she's spent the night with a special order ice pick stuck to her head by some mutant thing that previously tossed her through a glass table, because you took off on a boat and ignored her.

Y'all, Teliko is worse than any of us remembered.  All I remembered was Scully looking really hot while crawling through duct work to reach incapacitated, drooling Mulder.  (I'd even forgotten Carl Lumbly - Petrie from Cagney & Lacey - was in it!)  So I'd always figured I hated it because it was a snooze-fest.  And it is, but it's also actively awful.  It opens with "ethnic" music as the score (at one point the music sounds very much like what was used in Fresh Bones, and why not - Haiti, Burkina Faso, same thing) and a plane full of people in garb to match the music, and I said to my cat, "Oh gods, it's going to be one of those."  Whenever one of these white dudes writing for the show picks a folk tale from anywhere outside Western European culture, it's a mess.  

Beyond the "I couldn't identify the country I'm writing crap about on a map" ignorance and boredom, it has two major flaws:

- They get this case because Scully is requested; it's believed to be a public health issue, and they want her medical expertise in determining what's killing these men so they can stop it before it spreads further.  And instead of Mulder just toddling along - like Scully does every time they get a case because of his expertise - and then as things progress, coming up with an alternate theory, he just stands there on minute one and, based on nothing, scoffs that this must be something else.  Why?  What?  He doesn't know, but certainly it can't be legitimate that original investigators believed what at first looked like kidnapping was actually a contagion of some sort and thus they asked for Scully.

- I don't think they ever explain how Aboah is able to fit himself into tiny places.  He's not Tooms, yo - if he can fit inside the drawer of a food cart, you kind of need to mention why that is.  Hell, they don't even bother to get specific on how killing these people the way he does allows him to drain their hormones.

Awful episode.

Moving on, Home originally opened with the baby crying through the whole burial.  It is pretty horrible to listen to, and I'm not surprised that's one of the changes the network required.

And Unruhe originally opened with Mulder hanging up with his mom's doctor, and telling Scully they're going to continue to keep her, but she's improving.  I always thought it was funny that Herrenvolk ended with the ABH healing her on Cancerman's orders, and then we never heard anything more about whether she was affected by the stroke or whether he was able to put her back to normal.  Apparently, three episodes later, someone thought they should mention that, and then it got deleted.

[Bastet]

"I will be right there."

Oh, Mulder.  This is why I can't quit you despite you being such a fucking punk most of the time.

I listened to the commentary by Frank Spotnitz on Memento Mori, and while they had decided over the summer to give Scully cancer (some had argued it must be done, since they'd set up the fact all the other women abducted with her got cancer, while others had argued it was too melodramatic for the tone of the show; obviously the first group one), they hadn't intended to do it this early in the season.  But as they were writing Leonard Betts, they found out Darin Morgan's script - which was supposed to be the next episode - wasn't going to materialize.  Since they were writing about a cancer-eating guy, they decided to scramble: tack on the "I'm sorry, but you've got something I need" and nose bleed to imply that Scully has cancer and then quickly write the story of Scully being diagnosed.  That's why MM has four writers -- they had to come up with the story very quickly.  (Not in only a week, though - Christmas vacation provided time for CC to turn the draft done by the other three into a final script.)

The only thing other than the horrible CC-penned opening VO I don't like about the episode is that stupid "Vegreville" snow globe password thing, so I laughed out loud at learning CC was responsible for that, too. 

Since this was the first time in eons I'd seen Unrequited, I had forgotten it featured another appearance by Larry Musser (Detective Manners/Jack Bonsaint/the sheriff in DHDV).

[Taryn74]

55 minutes ago, Bastet said:

"I will be right there."

Oh, Mulder.  This is why I can't quit you despite you being such a fucking punk most of the time.

*cries all the tears*

That line gets me every time.  Every time.  His voice catches every so slightly *sob* and then he just slams the drawer shut and gets up and leaves without a word to Kurt.

*still crying*

[Bastet]

Aw, according to Kim Manners' commentary on Max, the actor who played Pendrell absolutely loved working on the show (and had his own little crush on Gillian), and was really sad to get killed off. 

I cannot listen to CC do commentary; he drones on in a way that makes me stabby.  The others have been hit and miss, but listening to Manners was easy - he hardly speaks.  It was kind of funny.  But he's to the point; when Gillian delivers Scully's Apollo 11 monologue, he says, "John Kennedy couldn't have done it better."

I listened to Vince Gilligan's commentary on Small Potatoes, and there were times his sympathy for Eddie was bugging me, but when it got to the scene where Skinner and Scully clearly identify Eddie as a rapist, Gilligan redeemed himself by saying something like it was important to include, that while he sympathizes with Eddie in several respects, the guy belongs in jail and it's good that the episode ends with him locked up.

He also wishes he'd stolen one of the Superstar hats, which amuses me greatly. 

[Bastet]

I realized the reason I don't like Gethsemane is I hate pretty much everyone in it.  Bill Jr., obviously, Mulder is being an obstinate jerk who isn't listening, Scully is being snippy rather than explaining (plus looking like the illogical dope she always looks like when religion comes up), and Ma Scully is completely out of line asking the priest to come badger Scully when she's just trying to have dinner in peace.  And let's add the priest to my list, because he acknowledges this is totally awkward and seems to maybe even understand it's inappropriate, but then plows right ahead.  No wonder Scully got the hell out of Dodge when Mulder called instead of telling him to put a sock in it and she'd see him in the morning.

But, through all this, what stood out to me is how Mrs. Scully's house and dinner party look like something Mrs. Mulder would be hosting instead.  Complete with throwback maid costumed servant. 

[eleanorofaquitaine]

On 10/27/2017 at 2:27 PM, Bastet said:

"I will be right there."

Oh, Mulder.  This is why I can't quit you despite you being such a fucking punk most of the time.

I listened to the commentary by Frank Spotnitz on Memento Mori, and while they had decided over the summer to give Scully cancer (some had argued it must be done, since they'd set up the fact all the other women abducted with her got cancer, while others had argued it was too melodramatic for the tone of the show; obviously the first group one), they hadn't intended to do it this early in the season.  But as they were writing Leonard Betts, they found out Darin Morgan's script - which was supposed to be the next episode - wasn't going to materialize.  Since they were writing about a cancer-eating guy, they decided to scramble: tack on the "I'm sorry, but you've got something I need" and nose bleed to imply that Scully has cancer and then quickly write the story of Scully being diagnosed.  That's why MM has four writers -- they had to come up with the story very quickly.  (Not in only a week, though - Christmas vacation provided time for CC to turn the draft done by the other three into a final script.)

The only thing other than the horrible CC-penned opening VO I don't like about the episode is that stupid "Vegreville" snow globe password thing, so I laughed out loud at learning CC was responsible for that, too. 

Since this was the first time in eons I'd seen Unrequited, I had forgotten it featured another appearance by Larry Musser (Detective Manners/Jack Bonsaint/the sheriff in DHDV).

What has floored me so much about Memento Mori, as I mentioned somewhere (a few times!) in this thread is that Scully asks him to tell her mother that she has cancer - and apparently he does it, because by the time Mrs. Scully shows up at the hospital, she knows.  If anyone had any doubts about their relationship, they should have ended it right there.  The notion that she relies on Mulder to convey this information to her mother says something about her faith in his empathetic nature. 

And that's why I can't hate Mulder, even when he is a sarcastic pain in the ass - because all of that arrogance masks an incredibly sensitive, compassionate soul. 

[eleanorofaquitaine]

One of our local stations plays two old episodes every Tuesday, and this week, they showed Never Again and Leonard Betts, in that order. 

It was interesting to watch Never Again in the wake of the #MeToo movement because, in retrospect, Ed Jerse is such a perfect example of toxic masculinity.  He's a guy who thinks he's owed everything in terms of both his personal and professional life, and who blames the women in his life for all of his failures.  He's terrifying in the same way that Donnie Pfaster is terrifying because they are the kind of real, terrible people that are out there.

So it was interesting to watch these eps in this order because it allowed me to think about Scully's actions independent of the cancer diagnosis. They still don't make much sense to me except that Glen Morgan wrote Mulder and Scully's interactions like two married people going through a really rough patch.  Scully's willingness to hook up with Jerse, without the cancer underlying her thinking, read like her needing to feel like an independent person. It's still strange to me that she'd go for a sketchy guyshe met in a sketchy tattoo parlor but I still think part of the point there is that she knows she's acting really recklessly, to prove something to herself and Mulder. But IMO, I think Mulder is right to be shocked by her recklessness at the end of the episode, even though he acts like a jerk throughout the rest of the ep.

Anyway, it's still a good episode but I wonder if Morgan really understood how toxic Jerse truly is? I am still left to wonder if Morgan thought we were supposed to have sympathy for him, especially because Scully hooked up with him? At least with Pfaster, we know we aren't meant to see him as anything other than an awful person. And I am not comfortable seeing Jerse as anything other than a violent killer.

[Sharna Pax]

On 2/24/2018 at 7:43 AM, eleanorofaquitaine said:

One of our local stations plays two old episodes every Tuesday, and this week, they showed Never Again and Leonard Betts, in that order. 

It was interesting to watch Never Again in the wake of the #MeToo movement because, in retrospect, Ed Jerse is such a perfect example of toxic masculinity.  He's a guy who thinks he's owed everything in terms of both his personal and professional life, and who blames the women in his life for all of his failures.  He's terrifying in the same way that Donnie Pfaster is terrifying because they are the kind of real, terrible people that are out there.

So it was interesting to watch these eps in this order because it allowed me to think about Scully's actions independent of the cancer diagnosis. They still don't make much sense to me except that Glen Morgan wrote Mulder and Scully's interactions like two married people going through a really rough patch.  Scully's willingness to hook up with Jerse, without the cancer underlying her thinking, read like her needing to feel like an independent person. It's still strange to me that she'd go for a sketchy guyshe met in a sketchy tattoo parlor but I still think part of the point there is that she knows she's acting really recklessly, to prove something to herself and Mulder. But IMO, I think Mulder is right to be shocked by her recklessness at the end of the episode, even though he acts like a jerk throughout the rest of the ep.

Anyway, it's still a good episode but I wonder if Morgan really understood how toxic Jerse truly is? I am still left to wonder if Morgan thought we were supposed to have sympathy for him, especially because Scully hooked up with him? At least with Pfaster, we know we aren't meant to see him as anything other than an awful person. And I am not comfortable seeing Jerse as anything other than a violent killer.

I must have the same station, because I turned on the TV Tuesday and caught the last two minutes of Never Again (two minutes of TV that I absolutely love, although I have deeply mixed feelings about the episode as a whole), followed by Leonard Betts.

Not having rewatched Never Again, I'm not sure, but I don't think we're supposed to have any sympathy for Jerse? For most of the episode, I'm not even sure we're supposed to have any sympathy for Mulder. I mean, this is basically two poles of the patriarchy, right? On the one hand, the low-key, patronizing sexism inherent in Mulder's assumption that Scully doesn't want or need the kind of workspace he does, and on the other hand, the kind of outright hate that makes Jerse want to kill women. Obviously, given the choice, anyone would rather be in Mulder's office feeling sidelined, but what a choice! It's like Tess of the D'Urbervilles, where there are only two men in this poor woman's life and they're both awful.

I love many things about this episode, but I hardly ever watch it. I find all of Scully's issues with Mulder plausible, even inevitable, and it's refreshing to see the show directly addressing the inequality in their working relationship and the effect that it would have over time. The desk thing is perfect as a trigger for everything that happens, and I really, really like the idea of Scully going out and having a one-night stand and knocking some holes in Mulder's image of her. And those last two or three minutes are gold. I don't much like Mulder, in that moment, but I do feel for him almost as much as I feel for Scully. It's like he doesn't want to be a dick to Scully but can't stop himself from lashing out at her because he feels like he's lost something. But I have trouble actually watching the episode. It's partly that it's disturbing to watch Scully ignore so many obvious red flags, partly that I don't like the recurring thing about Scully being attracted to powerful father figure types, and partly the feeling of intense claustrophobia that I get from seeing Scully caught between her increasingly frustrating relationship with Mulder and this guy who's literally trying to kill her.

I should add, by the way, that I don't think this episode represents Mulder and Scully's relationship as a whole, so much as it represents the way Scully sees it at this particular moment. I think Mulder mostly does think of Scully as an equal partner, but as Duchovny says in some interview, he's the engine and she's the brake. He decides where they go and what they investigate, because he's the one who's interested in digging up these cases and investigating them in the first place. That leaves Scully trailing along after him a lot of the time, and I can see how that wouldn't always feel like an equal partnership. (I also think that Scully would be willing to give dating Mulder a try at pretty much any time in the course of the show, and that it's Mulder who keeps things platonic because he knows he's too screwed up to handle a serious relationship. Which would also be frustrating. But I don't have much textual evidence for that one.)

I have thoughts about Leonard Betts, the episode I actually watched, but I'll save them for another post because this is getting way too long.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Sharna Pax

[Sharna Pax]

And on to Leonard Betts. This is one I never rewatch, because the idea of someone eating cancer makes me feel physically ill. But having just seen the end of Never Again, I forced myself to watch it to see if any of that uncomfortable vibe between Mulder and Scully carried over.

I’m not totally sure, but it does seem like there’s something subtly off between Mulder and Scully here. At the end, Mulder can tell Scully’s upset, but instead of asking her what’s wrong, he tells her she did a good job and should be proud. It’s well-meant, but it also makes me want to shake him, because there is NO REASON why Scully would think she did a bad job, and Mulder should know that. Scully doesn’t start spiraling into a panic attack because she needs your approval, Mulder! Not everything is about you! But I don’t blame Mulder, because the sense I get is that the lines of communication are down in both directions. Mulder is just making the kind of wildly wrong guess you make when you’re no longer on the same wavelength with someone and you know they won’t give you a straight answer if you ask what’s wrong. It’s going to take Memento Mori to get Mulder and Scully communicating again, and I’m very proud of this show for doing an actual character-driven arc that carries over from one episode to another.

[Sharna Pax]

I've realized I don't know Season 4 very well at all, and watching Leonard Betts and Memento Mori got me interested in it, so I think I'm going to rewatch the season from the beginning. I've seen a few comments here and there about Mulder getting less likable/ turning into a jerk as the show goes on, and I was just watching some Season 1, so I'll be keeping an eye out for any changes in his personality. I hope nobody minds if I pop in here fairly often to comment on the episodes as I watch them.

Starting with Herrenvolk: I rarely watch mytharc, so I didn't remember this one at all. Peacing out on a boat with Jeremiah Smith and leaving Scully with the not-dead ABH - and then not answering her calls - is not Mulder's best hour, but I can't find it in my heart to criticize him. I can retroactively forgive Mulder for anything he did in the last few episodes, and preemptively forgive him for anything he does in the next few, just for the sake of the scene where tells Marita, "I've suffered some very personal losses recently," and has to stop halfway through the sentence and start again because his voice isn't working. And the scene where he comes back to the hospital and Scully runs to meet him and he just says, "I can't...there's nothing," and kind of blunders toward the wrong door and Scully has to steer him to his mother's room. Poor sad puppy. I just want to give him a hug.

The ABH magically healing Mulder's mom would be really silly, except for how clear they make it that the CSM's motives here are entirely personal. I'm guessing the Alien Bounty Hunter figures that one out, too, because he straight-up rolls his eyes before he heals her. I watched it twice just to make sure.

Agent Pendrell is so cute here with his crush on Scully. Poor guy.

[Taryn74]

1 hour ago, Sharna Pax said:

I hope nobody minds if I pop in here fairly often to comment on the episodes as I watch them.

Goodness no!  I think we pretty much live for an excuse to discuss XF.  Heh.

[Sharna Pax]

On 2/26/2018 at 2:56 PM, Taryn74 said:

Goodness no!  I think we pretty much live for an excuse to discuss XF.  Heh.

Awesome! I can't believe it took me so long to figure out this site existed. I've been in TWOP withdrawal since it closed down, so this is great.

Okay, next up is "Home." Pray for me.

[Taryn74]

2 hours ago, Sharna Pax said:

Okay, next up is "Home." Pray for me.

I think that may be the one episode I simply cannot handle.

[festivus]

Home used to make regular appearances in the TV shows that scarred you for life thread at TWoP. I miss that thread.

[Sharna Pax]

Ok, here we go. Home again, home again, jiggety jog. Sigh.

This is one I wasn’t terribly eager to re-watch. I read a fairly recent interview with Morgan and Wong where they talked about this episode, and it seems like they still don't understand why it was so controversial - to them it's just a MOTW episode. Which just confirms me in my belief that writers really have no idea what they create. The X-Files has always had these moments of really icky body horror and graphic violence, but this episode does it with a kind of sadistic glee that really sets it apart from the rest. This isn’t the echoey, atmospheric, flashlights-in-the-dark horror that we expect from the X-Files; it’s bright, sunny, technicolor, comic horror. I don't know exactly why that should be so much more disturbing, but it really is.

The thing that makes it weirdest to me, I think, is Mulder and Scully. Up to maybe the halfway mark, I'm really enjoying all their interactions, even if his goofy idealism and her constant snark makes them seem more like Jimmy Stewart and Ruth Hussey in The Philadelphia Story than like normal Mulder and Scully. Mulder’s Proustian moment with the baseball is cute, and I seriously relate to his whole self-deluding fantasy about moving to the country, though I don't actually buy that someone whose sister got abducted would be waxing nostalgic about the days of not locking your front door. And Scully's little snicker when Mulder is fiddling with the TV antenna is magic. She doesn't even have to say, "Still planning on moving here?" The smirk on her face says it all. The only conversation that feels like it's played totally straight is the one on the bench, where they’re talking about whether they want kids. That one feels like it could belong to any episode from this era of the show. The rest seems like Comedy Mulder and Scully rather than the real thing - like they've wandered over from a Darin Morgan episode, or maybe traveled back in time from the sixth season.

And for the first half of the episode I don't mind that at all. It's all good fun. But then the sheriff and his wife get beaten to death, and the deputy is crying, and the tone of Mulder and Scully's interactions does not change one iota. Pretty soon Mulder and Scully are watching as the Peacocks kill the deputy and mutilate his corpse, and Mulder, in his blandest monotone, is narrating the whole thing exactly like a nature documentary, right down to the wording. And look, I don’t expect Mulder and Scully to cry over every dead body, but a man they were talking to ten minutes ago just died a horrible, violent death right in front of them, and Mulder’s air of detached fascination is incredibly creepy. And then a minute later they’re in the pigpen and Scully is quoting Babe and Mulder is joking about being turned on by the pigs, and I’m like, “Who are these two sociopaths and why am I watching a show about them?” I think they might as well have left that deleted bathroom scene in, as Mulder and Scully making dick jokes while dissecting a baby seems entirely consistent with where the episode is going.

So that, as far as I’m concerned, is what makes “Home” so truly horrific: it implicates Mulder and Scully in the horror, and even their terrific chemistry becomes creepy. That scene where the sheriff and his wife are bludgeoned to death while “Wonderful, Wonderful” plays? That’s basically the entire episode. Something unbearably awful juxtaposed against something bright and peppy – and the something bright and peppy is Mulder and Scully standing in a sunny field bantering about where they want to live.

[Taryn74]

Nailed it.  I understand that someone who faces "human monsters" day in and day out has to have a certain degree of detachedness or they'd never be able to get through a work day, but there comes a time when cracking jokes and making light is inappropriate, and dealing with the Peacock family is one of those times.  They didn't joke their way through Pusher or Irresistible, they shouldn't have joked their way through Home.

 

Quote

But then the sheriff and his wife get beaten to death

That's the scene that makes this episode un-rewatchable for me.  The wife hiding in terror underneath the bed while her husband is being literally beaten to death right in front of her . . . I cannot handle that.

[festivus]

3 minutes ago, Taryn74 said:

That's the scene that makes this episode un-rewatchable for me.  The wife hiding in terror underneath the bed while her husband is being literally beaten to death right in front of her . . . I cannot handle that.

Yeah, me either. The rest, I'm like, incest horror family? Yeah, whatever. I think I was disturbed the first time I saw this episode but since then I've seen worse. So much worse.  

[Taryn74]

Coming back to add more -

It occurs to me that another reason I can't handle Home is because it hits too close to home (no pun intended).  I live in the south.  Not the genteel "sugar pie honey bunch" South, but the redneck south.  The south where people still brew their own moonshine and everyone knows who to go see if they want some.  The south of Winter's Bone (if you've ever seen that movie).  Thankfully I grew up in a family that was above all that, but there's still an uncomfortable twinge of 'There, but for the grace of God, go I' when I watch stuff like this, you know?

We even have a small community nearby of families who have been intermarrying for generations.  Thankfully there's no homicidal maniacs among them, but otherwise in many ways they could be the Peacocks (once you dial down the grossly over-exaggerated physical flaws).  Everyone just kind of leaves them to their own devices, and they are happy to be left alone.

So, yeah.  I can't handle Home.  I can't handle it at all.

[festivus]

Yeah, I live in the South too, but in a big city. I know some rednecks but nothing on the scale of the Peacock family. That would be scary.

[Sharna Pax]

6 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

That's the scene that makes this episode un-rewatchable for me.  The wife hiding in terror underneath the bed while her husband is being literally beaten to death right in front of her . . . I cannot handle that.

Same here. And again, I know we've seen a lot of violent deaths on this show. But most of them are supernatural in some way, so we don't have to take them too seriously, and usually there's a lot more implied than shown. Making us watch a brutal beating, in real time, without cutting away, and then the additional touch of the wife hiding under the bed, almost escaping, and then being found - that's realistic violence on a whole other scale, and I don't see what there is about this episode in particular that justifies that. This scene reminds me a lot of

Spoiler

Maddy's death

on Twin Peaks, which is even more horrifying because it involves characters we know well. But there's no suggestion that the Twin Peaks scene is gratuitous. It's a turning point in the show, a moment where evil triumphs and Cooper can't stop it. It has to be that horrific, because it's a bomb that goes off in the center of the show, and it affects everyone and everything. Who or what does this scene affect? Not Mulder and Scully; they don't care at all. What purpose does extreme violence serve when your show is missing its moral center? (Other than, obviously, pushing the boundaries of network television and giving viewers something to talk about for the next twenty years.)

[Sharna Pax]

Next up are Teliko, Unruhe, and The Field Where I Died. And thank goodness Unruhe is in there, because this stretch of the show is rough going. I think I’m going to go ahead and skip Sanguinarium, which I remember as having absolutely nothing to recommend it.

Teliko: Who exactly thought this one was a good idea? Here’s a show so lily-white that their idea of diversity is having people think Mulder is Jewish when he’s not, and they think they can respectfully and responsibly handle a story about an African immigrant skin-pigment vampire? Ooookay, you guys keep telling yourselves that.

Just as one instance of this episode being tone-deaf, could we not have Mulder arguing that Aboah must be guilty just because he ran from the police? Could we not have him dismissing the social worker’s excellent point about what a history of police brutality will do to people? And – this is the most important part – could we not have him turn out to be right?

Leaving all that aside, and leaving aside all the weird unexplained stuff about how Aboah’s power even works, this is actually a more watchable episode than I was expecting. It’s certainly suspenseful, especially the ending, with Mulder paralyzed and looking absolutely terrified, and Scully having to protect him and try to catch Aboah at the same time. Given that the next episode is going to put Scully in danger and have Mulder save her, I like that here it’s Scully who’s having to lug Mulder’s dead weight out of a window. And I like how gently she says, “It’s okay, Mulder. I’m here,” like she’s comforting a scared kid.

Final thought: Mulder punking Pendrell by telling him Scully’s on a date is pretty rich, considering how Mulder himself would react if Scully ever went on a date. Scully should probably have a torrid affair with Pendrell, just to serve Mulder right for being so complacent.

[Sharna Pax]

Unruhe! Finally (I know it’s only been three episodes, but it feels like forever) the kind of X-Files episode that keeps me watching the show. No mytharc, no experimenting with the formula, no shocking twists – just a good, solid, suspenseful Monster of the Week. The screaming photos are super cool and creepy, the villain is both terrifying and pathetic, and the suspense is real – a botched icepick lobotomy is about the worst fate I could imagine for anyone, and seeing it about to happen to our brilliant Scully is genuinely scary. Mulder seems pretty much like his Season 1 self here – yes, he just laughs at Scully’s attempts to explain the photos as the result of heat warping, but it comes off as friendly ribbing rather than dismissiveness. And I just never get tired of seeing Mulder react to the threat of losing Scully. I realize that the show probably went to that well too often, and it would be nice if Mulder paid a little more attention to Scully when she wasn’t kidnapped or dying. But man, Duchovny is good at playing depressed, desperate, barely-holding-it-together-but-still-competent Mulder. I like how people keep asking Mulder what they should do next – it’s a nice way of underlining that Mulder has no idea whether anything they’re doing is going to work.

I also like that Mulder and Scully actually catch the bad guy halfway through the episode, and not only that, they interrogate him and get a confession. (I think Vince Gilligan harbored secret fantasies of writing for Homicide, Life on the Street, and I always enjoy it when he puts Mulder and Scully in the box.) They're both very competent and efficient here, in their different ways. Scully works out the connection to the construction site, which of course is something that doesn't need any paranormal investigating, just observation and common sense, and Mulder is able to use his profiling skills on the evidence he pulls from the photos. I love how the perfectly the two avenues of inquiry come together, with Mulder calling to tell Scully about the killer's long legs just as she's talking to Schnauz. I also like that Scully doesn't question him at all; she may have her doubts about psychic photography, but she trusts Mulder enough to pull out her gun and arrest Schauz without a moment's hesitation.

One question:  why does Schnauz feel the need to speak to his kidnap victims in German, when English seems to be his native language? I also kind of wonder whether he even speaks German, apart from a few prepared phrases, because he uses the same script on all the victims, and when Scully speaks to him in German he immediately switches into English.

[Taryn74]

1 hour ago, Sharna Pax said:

One question:  why does Schnauz feel the need to speak to his kidnap victims in German, when English seems to be his native language? I also kind of wonder whether he even speaks German, apart from a few prepared phrases, because he uses the same script on all the victims, and when Scully speaks to him in German he immediately switches into English.

I just assumed it had something to do with his father.  Never really thought about it too much.  Hmm.

 

1 hour ago, Sharna Pax said:

Unruhe! Finally (I know it’s only been three episodes, but it feels like forever) the kind of X-Files episode that keeps me watching the show. No mytharc, no experimenting with the formula, no shocking twists – just a good, solid, suspenseful Monster of the Week.

Unruhe is definitely one of the better early-series episodes.  I legitimately get chills when Mulder is working out what the symbols on the picture mean, trying to figure out where Scully has been taken.  Also when Scully looks at Gerry on his stilts and realizes he's the one she's after.  Gak!

[Bastet]

I always babble about how one of the many things I love about Unruhe is Scully as an investigator, but I love it so much I'm happy to see someone else note that aspect of the episode.  I love the arrest, the interrogation, and how fucking pissed she is that they didn't get him in time to save the second victim.

[Sharna Pax]

The Field Where I Died: Oh, dear God. I tried to watch this episode all the way through. I honestly tried. And actually, I saw every minute of it. I just didn’t hear all of it, because whenever the prose got purple I was irresistibly impelled to yank my earbuds out and watch the episode in blessed silence.

This isn’t the worst episode of TV I’ve ever seen, by a long shot. But it is the episode where I feel the most embarrassed for everyone involved, because it’s incredibly ambitious and almost none of it works, and you’re just watching four talented people – Morgan and Wong and Duchovny and Cloke – try to do more than they can handle and fail spectacularly.

And honestly, I don’t know that anyone could handle what’s asked of Duchovny here. It’s not just that he has to spend the entire episode looking straight into the camera and ugly-crying, it’s also that there’s no way to make all that crying believable, no matter how well he does it. Why would Mulder, who took all of “One Breath” to break down and cry over Scully’s impending death, be so instantly weepy about recalling his past lives? And even if we could buy that, how can we possibly enter into the emotion, when it doesn’t connect to anyone or anything we actually know?

There’s no point in going over everything about this episode, but a few stray things:

So Scully was Mulder’s father in a past life, huh? And in “Never Again,” Scully is going to claim that she sees Mulder as a father figure, and look, I realize that not everyone sees Mulder and Scully as a romantic pairing, and that’s totally valid, but they are 100% not each other’s dads! I don’t even know how that would work. Also, Mulder already has two fathers, does he really need a third? Mulder as Samantha’s father, though – that I can believe. We only really know Samantha as a child, and the age difference between her and Mulder is so great that in some ways he seems more like a grieving parent than like a brother looking for his sister.

Wow, Mulder is really a dick here, and Scully is not a fan. I listened to Kumail Nanjiani’s commentary on “Never Again,” and he says that Morgan and Wong were planning a big blow-up fight between Mulder and Scully that would put a rift between them by the end of the fourth season. I can totally see that starting to happen here, and I think it’s too bad it never got fully dealt with. I like that Scully has no problem yelling at Mulder for being self-centered and lying to Skinner and using the lives of fifty people as a pretext to dick around with hypnosis. What I can’t tell, though, since the episode is so weird, is whether this is normal Mulder behavior or not. I think by the end we’re supposed to put it all down to past-life influences and the emotional impact of suddenly finding your long-lost soulmate in a poison bunker, but it definitely leaves a bad impression.

“I wouldn’t change a day.” Now that is a nice moment. Almost worth suffering through this episode to get. The Flukeman line is great, too. A touch of humor that the episode sorely needs. Though wasn’t Scully in Quantico wearing huge coats for that particular episode? I guess the Flukeman was just so gross that dealing with him even at a distance stands out in Scully’s mind as worse than getting abducted by aliens.

Edited to add that one thing I do think works about this episode is the character of the cult leader. He's very plausible as a leader so charismatic that he could get people to commit mass suicide. He has an air of calm rationality, even when he's spouting apocalyptic nonsense, that's weirdly compelling.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Sharna Pax

[Taryn74]

14 minutes ago, Sharna Pax said:

Edited to add that one thing I do think works about this episode is the character of the cult leader. He's very plausible as a leader so charismatic that he could get people to commit mass suicide. He has an air of calm rationality, even when he's spouting apocalyptic nonsense, that's weirdly compelling.

I seriously have a love/hate relationship with this episode.  All the Melissa/soulmate stuff I want to toss out the window and run over with a backhoe, but the cult stuff?  I eat that with a spoon.  I'm always fascinated with the ways people can twist the Bible to say whatever they want it to say, and make it sound so reasonable.

 

17 minutes ago, Sharna Pax said:

Why would Mulder, who took all of “One Breath” to break down and cry over Scully’s impending death, be so instantly weepy about recalling his past lives? And even if we could buy that, how can we possibly enter into the emotion, when it doesn’t connect to anyone or anything we actually know?

You know, it occured to me reading your post, instead of making Melissa Mulder's soulmate reincarnated, they should have made her Samantha reincarnated.  Now bear with me (spoilers for S7) -- 

Spoiler

I know that at this point we didn't know Samantha was actually dead, but this is the X-Files for pete's sake.  They could have found a way to explain that her soul was searching for Mulder without admitting she was dead -- maybe that she had been searching for him spiritually all these years in contrast to the way he's been searching for her physically, or something at least semi-plausible, and that?  That would have resonated with us.  For Mulder to stumble across his sister in the middle of a random case, to be able to communicate with her literally only long enough to know she was still "out there" in some way, and then lose her again?  To some wacked out cult leader who convinced her to commit suicide, of all things?  That would have been a blow to the viewer as much as to Mulder, and would have given the viewer a reason to actually care about Melissa and be rooting for Mulder to be able to get through to her.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

5 hours ago, Sharna Pax said:

The Field Where I Died: Oh, dear God. I tried to watch this episode all the way through. I honestly tried. And actually, I saw every minute of it. I just didn’t hear all of it, because whenever the prose got purple I was irresistibly impelled to yank my earbuds out and watch the episode in blessed silence.

This isn’t the worst episode of TV I’ve ever seen, by a long shot. But it is the episode where I feel the most embarrassed for everyone involved, because it’s incredibly ambitious and almost none of it works, and you’re just watching four talented people – Morgan and Wong and Duchovny and Cloke – try to do more than they can handle and fail spectacularly.

And honestly, I don’t know that anyone could handle what’s asked of Duchovny here. It’s not just that he has to spend the entire episode looking straight into the camera and ugly-crying, it’s also that there’s no way to make all that crying believable, no matter how well he does it. Why would Mulder, who took all of “One Breath” to break down and cry over Scully’s impending death, be so instantly weepy about recalling his past lives? And even if we could buy that, how can we possibly enter into the emotion, when it doesn’t connect to anyone or anything we actually know?

There’s no point in going over everything about this episode, but a few stray things:

So Scully was Mulder’s father in a past life, huh? And in “Never Again,” Scully is going to claim that she sees Mulder as a father figure, and look, I realize that not everyone sees Mulder and Scully as a romantic pairing, and that’s totally valid, but they are 100% not each other’s dads! I don’t even know how that would work. Also, Mulder already has two fathers, does he really need a third? Mulder as Samantha’s father, though – that I can believe. We only really know Samantha as a child, and the age difference between her and Mulder is so great that in some ways he seems more like a grieving parent than like a brother looking for his sister.

Wow, Mulder is really a dick here, and Scully is not a fan. I listened to Kumail Nanjiani’s commentary on “Never Again,” and he says that Morgan and Wong were planning a big blow-up fight between Mulder and Scully that would put a rift between them by the end of the fourth season. I can totally see that starting to happen here, and I think it’s too bad it never got fully dealt with. I like that Scully has no problem yelling at Mulder for being self-centered and lying to Skinner and using the lives of fifty people as a pretext to dick around with hypnosis. What I can’t tell, though, since the episode is so weird, is whether this is normal Mulder behavior or not. I think by the end we’re supposed to put it all down to past-life influences and the emotional impact of suddenly finding your long-lost soulmate in a poison bunker, but it definitely leaves a bad impression.

“I wouldn’t change a day.” Now that is a nice moment. Almost worth suffering through this episode to get. The Flukeman line is great, too. A touch of humor that the episode sorely needs. Though wasn’t Scully in Quantico wearing huge coats for that particular episode? I guess the Flukeman was just so gross that dealing with him even at a distance stands out in Scully’s mind as worse than getting abducted by aliens.

Edited to add that one thing I do think works about this episode is the character of the cult leader. He's very plausible as a leader so charismatic that he could get people to commit mass suicide. He has an air of calm rationality, even when he's spouting apocalyptic nonsense, that's weirdly compelling.

I watched TFWID in my rewatch a few years ago and I ended up liking it a lot more than I did when it first came on 20 years ago.  For one, I like those episodes where Mulder is trying to save some lost woman because I think it gives us the most insight into who, deep down, Fox Mulder truly is.  And I liked the notion that Mulder and Scully's lives are intertwined throughout the ages.  To me, it is a meditation on friendship through life, and I like the fact that it tries to take on that question in a serious way.

That being said, the Melissa-as-a-soulmate is always going to be kind of a silly non-starter, mostly because (as I've said before) no one is ever going to compete with Mulder and Scully's chemistry.  Plus, the whole concept of soul mates is just in general, kind of dumb, IMO.  So it is flawed, but not the disaster that so many seem to think it was, IMO.

[Sharna Pax]

7 hours ago, Taryn74 said:

You know, it occured to me reading your post, instead of making Melissa Mulder's soulmate reincarnated, they should have made her Samantha reincarnated.  Now bear with me (spoilers for S7) -- 

  Hide contents

I know that at this point we didn't know Samantha was actually dead, but this is the X-Files for pete's sake.  They could have found a way to explain that her soul was searching for Mulder without admitting she was dead -- maybe that she had been searching for him spiritually all these years in contrast to the way he's been searching for her physically, or something at least semi-plausible, and that?  That would have resonated with us.  For Mulder to stumble across his sister in the middle of a random case, to be able to communicate with her literally only long enough to know she was still "out there" in some way, and then lose her again?  To some wacked out cult leader who convinced her to commit suicide, of all things?  That would have been a blow to the viewer as much as to Mulder, and would have given the viewer a reason to actually care about Melissa and be rooting for Mulder to be able to get through to her.

I like this! I can't figure out exactly how it would work, but that's why I'm not a writer. I think they could have found a way, and it would have had a lot more emotional resonance.  And if there was enough ambiguity attached to it where we didn't know if it was real or not, but there was a possibility that Samantha was dead and this was really her trying to reach out to Mulder, that would help explain Mulder's behavior later on in "Paper Hearts."

Even with the premise as it stands, I think this episode could do with a lot more ambiguity. (And that's something I never thought I'd say about any X-Files episode.) It would be so easy for the episode to suggest that maybe Melissa is just delusional and Mulder is unstable enough to buy into her delusions. Scully does argue that at first, but by the end it seems like we're just supposed to believe that all this is real and Mulder and Melissa are really soulmates across the centuries. Wouldn't it be more interesting if we honestly didn't know? If we were left wondering whether Mulder's memories under hypnosis were real or false?

2 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

I like those episodes where Mulder is trying to save some lost woman because I think it gives us the most insight into who, deep down, Fox Mulder truly is.

I agree. Mulder gets so incredibly vulnerable whenever he comes across these women who are so damaged and traumatized that they can't lead normal lives anymore - I think he's got to realize that if he ever finds Samantha as an adult, there's a good chance she's going to be in that kind of a state. He keeps being drawn to women who are too far gone to be saved, and he keeps trying to save them, and he keeps failing. It's like he's deliberately reliving Samantha's abduction, every time. And that's a big part of why I want more ambiguity. I would find this episode more meaningful if it had more of a suggestion that Mulder could be doing this to himself as part of his pattern, rather than just being uncontrollably drawn to Melissa because she's definitely his Civil War soulmate. I think the way Scully figures into Mulder's hypnosis-memories would benefit from more ambiguity as well. I mean, if Mulder and Scully have been close to one another for centuries, that's already interesting, and I like it just fine. But if there's a possibility that Mulder is imagining past lives for himself and putting Scully in all of them, that tells us something very different but equally interesting.

2 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

Melissa-as-a-soulmate is always going to be kind of a silly non-starter, mostly because (as I've said before) no one is ever going to compete with Mulder and Scully's chemistry.  Plus, the whole concept of soul mates is just in general, kind of dumb, IMO.

I find the concept of soulmates dumb as well, and I also think it's pretty destructive to storytelling. If two characters have an instant bond, the way we're supposed to think Mulder and Melissa do, there's no way to get the audience invested in the relationship, because you can't show it developing. I mean, it's interesting to think that maybe Mulder and Scully have been connected in other lives, but that's not why we're invested in their partnership here and now. We care about their partnership because we saw Mulder decide to open up to Scully in the pilot, and we saw Scully take a leap of faith and side with Mulder in "Squeeze," and we saw them having to trust each other completely in "Ice," and so on. If the pilot had had Mulder and Scully instantly love and trust one another because they'd fought side by side in the Civil War, it would never have been picked up.

[Taryn74]

46 minutes ago, Sharna Pax said:

Mulder gets so incredibly vulnerable whenever he comes across these women who are so damaged and traumatized that they can't lead normal lives anymore - I think he's got to realize that if he ever finds Samantha as an adult, there's a good chance she's going to be in that kind of a state. He keeps being drawn to women who are too far gone to be saved, and he keeps trying to save them, and he keeps failing.

It's amazing how this show - even just talking about this show - can affect me so much emotionally 25 years after the fact.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

On 3/6/2018 at 4:19 PM, Sharna Pax said:

I agree. Mulder gets so incredibly vulnerable whenever he comes across these women who are so damaged and traumatized that they can't lead normal lives anymore - I think he's got to realize that if he ever finds Samantha as an adult, there's a good chance she's going to be in that kind of a state. He keeps being drawn to women who are too far gone to be saved, and he keeps trying to save them, and he keeps failing. It's like he's deliberately reliving Samantha's abduction, every time. And that's a big part of why I want more ambiguity. I would find this episode more meaningful if it had more of a suggestion that Mulder could be doing this to himself as part of his pattern, rather than just being uncontrollably drawn to Melissa because she's definitely his Civil War soulmate. I think the way Scully figures into Mulder's hypnosis-memories would benefit from more ambiguity as well. I mean, if Mulder and Scully have been close to one another for centuries, that's already interesting, and I like it just fine. But if there's a possibility that Mulder is imagining past lives for himself and putting Scully in all of them, that tells us something very different but equally interesting.

I find the concept of soulmates dumb as well, and I also think it's pretty destructive to storytelling. If two characters have an instant bond, the way we're supposed to think Mulder and Melissa do, there's no way to get the audience invested in the relationship, because you can't show it developing. I mean, it's interesting to think that maybe Mulder and Scully have been connected in other lives, but that's not why we're invested in their partnership here and now. We care about their partnership because we saw Mulder decide to open up to Scully in the pilot, and we saw Scully take a leap of faith and side with Mulder in "Squeeze," and we saw them having to trust each other completely in "Ice," and so on. If the pilot had had Mulder and Scully instantly love and trust one another because they'd fought side by side in the Civil War, it would never have been picked up.

Re Mulder's attitude towards vulnerable women - it's funny because I think it is one of his more consistent character traits, but I sometimes think that the writers themselves didn't actually recognize that they had established that pattern going back to "Conduit," which is like the third episode of the series.  So I think maybe they missed the opportunity to explicitly discuss that pattern and to bring some ambiguity to TFWID because it wasn't something they themselves recognized.  But of course it stands to reason that Mulder is going to relive this traumatic episode of his youth over and over again, and that he's consistently going to put himself in a situation where he can save some vulnerable woman so that he can go back in time to save his sister.  IMO, the only time that is ever really explicitly acknowledged that this is something that Mulder does is earlier in the season in Paper Hearts, which is why I love that episode so much.

But putting aside what TFWID isn't, I do like some of what it is.  Ultimately, I feel like it ends up truly being about Mulder and Scully's friendship, masquerading as an episode about Mulder's alleged soul mate.  And we don't actually get a lot of episodes that is purely just about M&S's friendship, as opposed to their ambiguity of their romantic relationship.  This episode ends up just really about Mulder and Scully being connected throughout time and how they are intertwined in each other's lives. And ultimately, I like that it is meditative about those questions of friendships. 

I completely agree with you about why the "soul mate" concept, which for some reason became a thing in tv during the late 1990s.  For one thing, yes, the whole idea that you can just latch on to a soul mate belies what made Mulder and Scully's ever-evolving relationship so engrossing to watch.  But for another, it's just so unrealistic.  People are flawed, and relationships are hard work.  The idea of some kind of a soul mate ignores the reality that making relationships work beyond the first blush of a relationship is HARD. And that is also a part of why M&S are so fascinating - we actually get to see the hard work that goes into their relationship, and how often do we see that on tv?

[Sharna Pax]

So despite my plans for an orderly rewatch, I ended up skipping ahead today and watching "Tempus Fugit" because it was on TV. This was one I did not remember at all - possibly I never saw it when I first watched the show. Despite my general meh-ness about mytharc, I pretty much loved it. I can't believe that for all these years I've been denying myself the scene of Mulder and Scully and the birthday keychain.

I love that scene so, so much. It's so rare, especially in the earlier seasons, to get a scene of Mulder and Scully just hanging out, living their lives. This scene raises all sorts of intriguing questions: do Mulder and Scully regularly go out for drinks after work? It doesn't seem like they're out specifically for her birthday, more like she thinks they're just getting a drink and then Mulder surprises her with the birthday cake. Is this bar some kind of FBI hangout, since we see Pendrell there later? I like it when we get these little snapshots to remind us that Mulder and Scully's lives go beyond what we see on the screen.

And the dynamic between the two of them is just so perfectly judged. She's all "Oh, HELL no," as soon as he pulls out the gift box, and he's got a drink stirrer between his teeth and is grinning at her like a maniac, and I could watch this scene a million times. I think even if I didn't know about Scully's cancer, I'd get that something was wrong and Mulder was overcompensating. He's just a little too manic. But it's all very subtle. These are two people who have adjusted to the reality of one of them having cancer, and they don't have to talk about it all the time, but it's always going to be there as subtext. Scully points out that Mulder never remembers her birthday, and he makes a joke about liking to celebrate every four years - "like dog years" - and Scully pretends to take offense, and neither of them mentions what they're both thinking, which is that Scully might not have another birthday. 

Is it just me, or are they both halfway to their "Bad Blood" personas (personae?) in this episode? He's all manic energy and telling everyone he meets about aliens, and she's all eye-rolling irritation and vicarious embarrassment. But not in a way where she's actually mad at him, more like, "Oookay, Mulder's extra crazy this week, guess I'll be apologizing for him a lot." That scene where Mulder's telling the NTSB people about Fenig being an abductee and Scully is slowly sinking into the ground? And the scene where Mulder calls Scully in the middle of the night and she's like, "Mulder, we've been up for 36 hours," and he's like, "I know I know I know, I just need you to come over and listen to something." Mulder, I think it is you who need to work on listening. But he's not deliberately being a jerk this week; he's just slightly nuts. I think that first scene with the keychain shows that he's trying to do better and pay more attention to Scully, it's just that being Mulder he overdoes it a little.

RIP Pendrell. Poor guy, he never had a chance.

[Taryn74]

6 hours ago, Sharna Pax said:

And the dynamic between the two of them is just so perfectly judged. She's all "Oh, HELL no," as soon as he pulls out the gift box, and he's got a drink stirrer between his teeth and is grinning at her like a maniac, and I could watch this scene a million times.

You and me both.

[eleanorofaquitaine]

21 hours ago, Sharna Pax said:

So despite my plans for an orderly rewatch, I ended up skipping ahead today and watching "Tempus Fugit" because it was on TV. This was one I did not remember at all - possibly I never saw it when I first watched the show. Despite my general meh-ness about mytharc, I pretty much loved it. I can't believe that for all these years I've been denying myself the scene of Mulder and Scully and the birthday keychain.

I love that scene so, so much. It's so rare, especially in the earlier seasons, to get a scene of Mulder and Scully just hanging out, living their lives. This scene raises all sorts of intriguing questions: do Mulder and Scully regularly go out for drinks after work? It doesn't seem like they're out specifically for her birthday, more like she thinks they're just getting a drink and then Mulder surprises her with the birthday cake. Is this bar some kind of FBI hangout, since we see Pendrell there later? I like it when we get these little snapshots to remind us that Mulder and Scully's lives go beyond what we see on the screen.

And the dynamic between the two of them is just so perfectly judged. She's all "Oh, HELL no," as soon as he pulls out the gift box, and he's got a drink stirrer between his teeth and is grinning at her like a maniac, and I could watch this scene a million times. I think even if I didn't know about Scully's cancer, I'd get that something was wrong and Mulder was overcompensating. He's just a little too manic. But it's all very subtle. These are two people who have adjusted to the reality of one of them having cancer, and they don't have to talk about it all the time, but it's always going to be there as subtext. Scully points out that Mulder never remembers her birthday, and he makes a joke about liking to celebrate every four years - "like dog years" - and Scully pretends to take offense, and neither of them mentions what they're both thinking, which is that Scully might not have another birthday. 

Is it just me, or are they both halfway to their "Bad Blood" personas (personae?) in this episode? He's all manic energy and telling everyone he meets about aliens, and she's all eye-rolling irritation and vicarious embarrassment. But not in a way where she's actually mad at him, more like, "Oookay, Mulder's extra crazy this week, guess I'll be apologizing for him a lot." That scene where Mulder's telling the NTSB people about Fenig being an abductee and Scully is slowly sinking into the ground? And the scene where Mulder calls Scully in the middle of the night and she's like, "Mulder, we've been up for 36 hours," and he's like, "I know I know I know, I just need you to come over and listen to something." Mulder, I think it is you who need to work on listening. But he's not deliberately being a jerk this week; he's just slightly nuts. I think that first scene with the keychain shows that he's trying to do better and pay more attention to Scully, it's just that being Mulder he overdoes it a little.

RIP Pendrell. Poor guy, he never had a chance.

What strikes me as interesting about that scene is how genuinely happy Mulder seems just to be entertaining Scully and getting her a gift. I mean, yes, clearly, the subtext is that they know she has cancer and this could be her last birthday. But Mulder seems so light and happy, which is really unusual for him - most of his moments of humor have a sarcastic edge to them, but this one doesn't.  

I have wondered what the Apollo 11 key chain really meant to Mulder. I mean, I love the message about team work that Scully takes from it, and I don't for one second believe that Mulder really thought it was just "a really cool key chain."  But I don't think he was really sending a message about not getting there alone, and it's interesting to me that Max - who is a loner, who Scully recognizes is a loner and then compares to Mulder - inspires Scully to believe it is about team work.  In typical Scully fashion, I wonder if she is actually trying to comfort Mulder in talking about the message of team work wrt the key chain.

The one thing that bugs me about Pendrell's death is that Scully tells him he's going to be fine and then suddenly, he's dead, and we don't even see it. They should have at least given him a good death scene, rather than have it all happen off screen. 

[Sharna Pax]

3 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

What strikes me as interesting about that scene is how genuinely happy Mulder seems just to be entertaining Scully and getting her a gift. I mean, yes, clearly, the subtext is that they know she has cancer and this could be her last birthday. But Mulder seems so light and happy, which is really unusual for him - most of his moments of humor have a sarcastic edge to them, but this one doesn't.  

Yes, absolutely. This is a side of Mulder that we never see, but that still seems completely in character, which is why I love this scene so much. He's bringing the same energy to everyday human interaction that he normally reserves for chasing aliens, and it's mesmerizing. I knew Mulder gave Scully that keychain at some point, but I was expecting him to be sort of casual and embarrassed about it - not to gift-wrap it and present it to her and seem so happy and confident that she'll like it. He's enjoying the hell out of himself, and he doesn't care how much she rolls her eyes, he's just going to keep grinning at her and flipping that straw around and making dumb jokes. It's hilarious how suspicious she is - clearly Scully hasn't seen this side of Mulder much either. She thinks he's just doing this to embarrass her, and he's letting her think that because he's more comfortable with jokes than with sincerity, but really he just wants to give her a present and hang out with her on her birthday.

4 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:

The one thing that bugs me about Pendrell's death is that Scully tells him he's going to be fine and then suddenly, he's dead, and we don't even see it. They should have at least given him a good death scene, rather than have it all happen off screen. 

The thing that bugs me about Pendrell's death is why does Scully take the very important witness who she's trying to protect to a bar in the first place, and why does she choose her regular bar instead of some place where no one knows her? I don't know how often she and Mulder go there, but Fenig's sister managed to track them down there just a couple of days ago, so you'd think she'd go somewhere more anonymous. I love the scene of drunk Pendrell trying to buy Scully a birthday drink (poor Pendrell, forever thinking Scully's on a date when she's not), but the whole setup makes Scully look pretty sloppy at her job.

I don't really know what I think the keychain means to Mulder, but haven't had a chance to watch Max yet, so I'll see if I have any ideas after I watch it. 

[eleanorofaquitaine]

5 hours ago, Sharna Pax said:

Yes, absolutely. This is a side of Mulder that we never see, but that still seems completely in character, which is why I love this scene so much. He's bringing the same energy to everyday human interaction that he normally reserves for chasing aliens, and it's mesmerizing. I knew Mulder gave Scully that keychain at some point, but I was expecting him to be sort of casual and embarrassed about it - not to gift-wrap it and present it to her and seem so happy and confident that she'll like it. He's enjoying the hell out of himself, and he doesn't care how much she rolls her eyes, he's just going to keep grinning at her and flipping that straw around and making dumb jokes. It's hilarious how suspicious she is - clearly Scully hasn't seen this side of Mulder much either. She thinks he's just doing this to embarrass her, and he's letting her think that because he's more comfortable with jokes than with sincerity, but really he just wants to give her a present and hang out with her on her birthday.

The thing that bugs me about Pendrell's death is why does Scully take the very important witness who she's trying to protect to a bar in the first place, and why does she choose her regular bar instead of some place where no one knows her? I don't know how often she and Mulder go there, but Fenig's sister managed to track them down there just a couple of days ago, so you'd think she'd go somewhere more anonymous. I love the scene of drunk Pendrell trying to buy Scully a birthday drink (poor Pendrell, forever thinking Scully's on a date when she's not), but the whole setup makes Scully look pretty sloppy at her job.

I don't really know what I think the keychain means to Mulder, but haven't had a chance to watch Max yet, so I'll see if I have any ideas after I watch it. 

My favorite thing about the birthday scene is that Mulder and Scully just casually joke about the alien implant - I love how he says, "two actually, I made them into earrings."  I mean, the two of them know that the alien implant is what caused Scully's cancer and yet there is such a moment of genuine friendship and levity in that.

Yeah, I was also wondering why Scully took him to the bar, especially because it is one that they allegedly frequent (to be fair, these episodes are the only time we see them at this bar, I think).  

I will be interested to see what you think of "Max" and Scully's thoughts about the key chain. One thing I very much like about this episode is how M&S turn the investigator played by Joe Spano around (he's one of the few non-recurring characters throughout the series who I think can be thought of as an ally to Mulder and Scully).  I wish that they did that more often, have some of the other law enforcement characters not always be so antagonistic towards M&S, and TF/Max's case, it's particularly well done. You can understand both why he's suspicious but also why he accepts that maybe M&S aren't so crazy after all AND that he is constrained by his job to do more. 

[Bastet]

That NTSB investigator is one of the main reasons I like TF/Max.  He's such a normal, grounded character and a solid investigator that I find him sort of soothing, and highly believable.  Good casting in those episodes, because I think the actor playing Sgt. Whatever (the witness Scully takes to the bar) is a similar presence.

Poor Pendrell, though; I liked having the little doof around.

[Sharna Pax]

On 3/13/2018 at 5:13 AM, eleanorofaquitaine said:

One thing I very much like about this episode is how M&S turn the investigator played by Joe Spano around (he's one of the few non-recurring characters throughout the series who I think can be thought of as an ally to Mulder and Scully).  I wish that they did that more often, have some of the other law enforcement characters not always be so antagonistic towards M&S, and TF/Max's case, it's particularly well done. You can understand both why he's suspicious but also why he accepts that maybe M&S aren't so crazy after all AND that he is constrained by his job to do more. 

I watched Max almost a week ago, but I haven’t had time to post about it because I had to fly all over the place for some work-related stuff – and boy, was it fun to fly four times in four days right after watching the plane-crash scene.

I do like the investigator a lot. Even in his first appearance in Tempus Fugit, when he has no patience for Mulder's UFO theories, his basic decency really shines through. I like how that scene makes us sympathize with three points of view at once - Mulder, who knows he's right and knows this needs to be said, Scully, who's painfully conscious of how humiliating this all is, and the investigator, who can't help thinking that Mulder is making light of a tragedy. And because we know that his antagonism toward Mulder comes from a place of really caring about his job, it makes sense that he would do his job well enough to eventually stop being an antagonist and become an ally. I feel so sorry for him - he spends days wading through a field of dead bodies, does his work as best he can, and still has to accept the official story, knowing that it's wrong and that the people who made that field of dead bodies are going to get away with it.

The rest of the episode - well, it's a lot. A few fragmented thoughts, in no particular order:

Man, Mulder exposes himself to radiation a lot. I hope he carries potassium iodide with him wherever he goes.

Only Mulder could nap on an airplane while holding a bag of radioactive McGuffin.

Hey, did you know that in French, Close Encounters of the Third Kind translates to Rencontres du Troisième Type? And "type" in French also means "guy" or "dude?" So that in French you can mash up Close Encounters of the Third Kind with The Third Man and have it work as a pun. I'm sure that dialogue from The Third Man was supposed to be clever, but it pulled me right out of the episode. I kept expecting Mulder to say, "You know, I've seen that movie."

On 3/12/2018 at 7:07 PM, eleanorofaquitaine said:

I have wondered what the Apollo 11 key chain really meant to Mulder. I mean, I love the message about team work that Scully takes from it, and I don't for one second believe that Mulder really thought it was just "a really cool key chain."  But I don't think he was really sending a message about not getting there alone, and it's interesting to me that Max - who is a loner, who Scully recognizes is a loner and then compares to Mulder - inspires Scully to believe it is about team work.  In typical Scully fashion, I wonder if she is actually trying to comfort Mulder in talking about the message of team work wrt the key chain.

I don't actually think the medallion just means teamwork to Scully, though that's certainly one of the meanings she assigns to it. She starts out talking about the "extraordinary men and women" who make history, and then she talks about teamwork, and then sacrifice - all the people who made sacrifices so that the work could go forward. And it's all framed as part of this question about the lives that have been lost and what it's all for: what meaning does Pendrell's death have? What meaning can Mulder and Scully give it? 

In the past few episodes, we've seen how frustrated Scully is by the feeling that her life has been swallowed up in Mulder's quest. But we've also seen how important her work is to her - it's what she turns to in times of fear or grief; it's what gives her life meaning when she doesn't know how much time she has left. So she's prepared, I think, to devote herself to the work, even if it was originally Mulder's, even if she doesn't know where this is all going or if it will ever get there. But she needs to know that Mulder recognizes her choice and her part in the work, and that he sees her as an equal partner.

And that, I think, is what the medallion ends up meaning to her. The joke about the alien implant is fun, but it also strikes me as a little pointed – it’s Scully ribbing Mulder about seeing everything in terms of the X-Files, including her. The medallion is pretty much the opposite of an alien implant. It’s about the work, the end goal, but it’s also a recognition of every single person who worked toward that goal, and at a time when Scully is terribly afraid of disappearing and leaving no trace, I think it makes her feel seen and validated – as a human being, as a member of a team, and as someone who has struggled and made sacrifices for a greater good.

Now, as for what it means to Mulder – Mulder is a more emotional thinker than Scully, and my guess is that whatever he saw in the medallion that made him think of Scully, it’s not something that he ever bothered to parse out logically or put into words. My best guess is that the Moon landing impresses the hell out of him, and so does Scully, and that this is as far as he got. When he thinks of brilliant, bad-ass people doing impossible things, he thinks of Scully, so he got her a cool keychain to tell her he thinks she’s cool.

I have more thoughts about the comparison between Mulder and Max, but I will save them for another post because this is already too long.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Sharna Pax

[Sharna Pax]

On 3/12/2018 at 7:07 PM, eleanorofaquitaine said:

But I don't think he was really sending a message about not getting there alone, and it's interesting to me that Max - who is a loner, who Scully recognizes is a loner and then compares to Mulder - inspires Scully to believe it is about team work.

I was thinking about this - the fact that Scully explicitly compares Max to Mulder - and I think it goes beyond Max's being a loner. Mulder is less of a loner than Max, I think - he at least has Scully, and I think he would be more social if he had ever had a chance to live a normal life. But he's just as obsessive as Max, and it's not often that we get to see how deep that obsession goes.

There's a Shaw play where he introduces a character, tells you at great length how attractive and disreputable he looks, and then ends the description, "But his eyes are the eyes of a fanatic." I feel like any description of Mulder ought to end the same way. He's chill, and he's goofy, and he's sardonic and whatever, but underneath all that is the guy we saw in the pilot, who said "Nothing else matters to me," and meant it. That's what Mulder shares with Max, and what Scully notices - their single-minded, self-denying devotion to a cause. And that kind of single-mindedness is frightening. It leads Max to give himself radiation burns, get himself murdered, and take an entire passenger plane with him. And it leads Mulder to do the exact same thing that Max does, with the minor difference that Mulder is luckier and no one gets killed. It's even crazier when Mulder does it, though, because he's just seen what happened to Max's flight. And yet he picks up that radioactive McGuffin, not even knowing what it is or why he wants it, and walks straight onto a passenger plane with it. That is insane. I think it's the most insane thing I've ever seen Mulder do.

Like, there are three people in this episode who are nuts enough to give themselves radiation burns, steal an unidentified radioactive McGuffin, and risk being abducted by aliens and/or shot down by the military in order to hold onto it. One is Max, who is obviously mentally unstable, and who ends up dead. Another is a woman who is so mentally ill that she is actually in an institution. And the third one is Mulder.

This episode confuses me, actually, because I think it goes farther than it meant to in showing how dangerous Mulder's obsessions are. When the Harry Lime character (if he has a name, I don't know it) gives Mulder his little points-of-light speech on the plane, I think we're supposed to understand that the difference between Mulder and Harry Lime is that Harry Lime thinks the McGuffin is worth sacrificing human lives for and Mulder doesn't. But Mulder certainly seems to think it's worth risking human lives for, or he wouldn't be on the plane at all.

Anyway, like I said, I'm confused. The episode is definitely inviting us to make a lot of connections - between Mulder and Max, between Mulder and Harry Lime - but I'm not sure what it all adds up to. The sense I got from this episode was that Mulder might be a saint, or he might be a terrorist, or he might just be a guy under a lot of strain who's gradually sliding into a nervous breakdown. I don't know what to make of it all, but it's certainly interesting.

On 3/13/2018 at 12:08 PM, Bastet said:

Poor Pendrell, though; I liked having the little doof around.

What I liked about Pendrell was how real he seemed. Is there anyone else on the show who's human enough to say something dumb like "Keep it up yourself!" and then kick himself for it? He probably had a family he was close to, and one or two good friends outside the Bureau, and he probably went hiking down by the Potomac on the weekends. His presence made everything seem more plausible. I'll miss him.

[Sharna Pax]

Finally went back and made it through Tunguska and Terma. Man, these are the kind of episodes that make me avoid the mytharc. It's not that I think they're bad, it's just that I have zero interest in the black oil and old men speaking Russian to each other in darkened rooms. 

Tunguska: This one is at least enlivened by everyone in it punching Krycek and having mad sexual tension with each other. Except for Scully, who doesn't get to do anything, punch anyone or have sexual tension with anyone, even Mulder. Unfair! She should at least get to punch Krycek once.

Mulder and Krycek have such an entertainingly Buffy-and-Spike vibe. That scene in the prison cell where they lock eyes and just breathe at each other? Out of control. I can't believe Mulder actually says "Stupid-ass haircut" while shoving Krycek. Mulder, "You have stupid hair" is a Spike line, and you are clearly Buffy.

I briefly thought that the Mulder/Marita scene ended with them having offscreen sex, not because this would be at all in character for Mulder or justified by the plot, but because the scene uses all the conventions that would normally imply that sex is about to happen. Like, Marita is standing there in her robe delivering every single line like she's Eva Marie Saint seducing Cary Grant in North By Northwest, and then she offers to help Mulder and he's like, "How long will it take?" and she says, "How long do you have?' and walks into what's presumably the bedroom. And then it cuts to Mulder walking back to the car and Krycek asking, "Where've you been?" and Mulder says, "Making travel arrangements." Which is probably what he was in fact doing, but is also exactly what he'd say if he'd been having sex with Marita Covarrubias.

Terma: I just finished watching this episode, and I already remember nothing about it except Mulder and Scully reuniting in the courtroom. Talk about out of control. If I saw only this scene, out of context, I would definitely assume these two were already sleeping together. The way Scully looks at Mulder when he walks in? And then his line about getting to put his arms around her, which is a very intimate thing to say to anyone, regardless of the whole black oil context which she doesn't know about anyway. Even with the context, it's pretty intense - it pretty much implies that the only reason for having arms in the first place is to be able to put them around Scully. I can't believe Skinner puts up with these two.

[Bastet]

2 minutes ago, Sharna Pax said:

I briefly thought that the Mulder/Marita scene ended with them having offscreen sex, not because this would be at all in character for Mulder or justified by the plot, but because the scene uses all the conventions that would normally imply that sex is about to happen. Like, Marita is standing there in her robe delivering every single line like she's Eva Marie Saint seducing Cary Grant in North By Northwest, and then she offers to help Mulder and he's like, "How long will it take?" and she says, "How long do you have?' and walks into what's presumably the bedroom. And then it cuts to Mulder walking back to the car and Krycek asking, "Where've you been?" and Mulder says, "Making travel arrangements." Which is probably what he was in fact doing, but is also exactly what he'd say if he'd been having sex with Marita Covarrubias.

Don't they make a point of establishing how much time passes, so we know either a) they did not have sex despite the tone of the scene or b) Mulder is a frighteningly fast fuck?  Something like Mulder looks at his watch in her apartment and then we see the clock when he gets in the car with Krycek?  I have a vague memory of discussion about it upon original airing.

[Sharna Pax]

2 minutes ago, Bastet said:

Don't they make a point of establishing how much time passes, so we know either a) they did not have sex despite the tone of the scene or b) Mulder is a frighteningly fast fuck?  Something like Mulder looks at his watch in her apartment and then we see the clock when he gets in the car with Krycek?  I have a vague memory of discussion about it upon original airing.

Oh, you're probably right. I started watching the X-Files in reruns when it was already going into the 8th season, so I missed all the original discussions. I noticed Mulder looking at his watch but didn't see the clock in the car. It's weird, though, because Krycek's delivery of "Where've you been?" seems to suggest that Mulder was gone a long time. But I didn't actually think they had sex, just that the X-Files for some reason used all the conventions that, say, a Hitchcock film would use to imply that they did.

[Bastet]

I remember the watch and the clock (or at least something very close to that), but for how much time actually passed, I only remember the discussion, not the number.  It seemed like a deliberate (almost clunky) touch, precisely because they had used so many classic allusions to sex - they noted the short passage of time to establish that it didn't actually happen.  I meant to make note of the math during my re-watch last year, but didn't.  Oh, maybe I couldn't make out the time on the watch because I was watching in bed and my eyesight is terrible.  So is my memory, obviously, because I can't even clearly remember the scenario.

[Taryn74]

X-Files transcript site to the rescue!

 

Quote

 

(Marita unchains door. Door shuts, Mulder goes in. )

LATER ON

(Mulder is asleep on a chair in Marita's living room.)

MARITA (on phone): Do you have its destination? And its routing directories? Thank you.

(Marita comes in, kneels by sleeping Mulder.)

MARITA: Agent Mulder?

(Mulder awakes)

.....

MULDER: How long will it take?

MARITA: How long do you have?

(Mulder checks his watch. It's 3:12. Marita slinks off. Mulder waits.)

SCENE 15 
(Outside Marita's apartment building. Krycek is in the passenger seat of Mulder's car, sleeping with his left wrist chained to the steering wheel. Mulder walks up to the car. Krycek wakes up when Mulder opens the car door.)

KRYCEK: Where have you been?

MULDER: Making travel arrangements. (He puts key in ignition. The car clock comes on as the engine starts; it's 3:15.)

 

 

So obviously it took a while for Marita to find the info when Mulder first got there, which is why Krycek asked where he'd been, but they made a point of showing the time on Mulder's watch and then the car clock so we wouldn't suspect he and Marita had sex.

(And I remember laughing at that scene at the time, too.  It was like the show was deliberately showing us that for all of Mulder's porn addiction, he is completely oblivious to sexy vibes put off by actual women.)

Edited March 27, 2018 by Taryn74

[Bastet]

14 minutes ago, Taryn74 said:

It was like the show was deliberately showing us that for all of Mulder's porn addiction, he is completely oblivious to sexy vibes put off by actual women.)

Which makes sense - if you watch that much porn, odds are it's a substitute, not a supplement.