X-Files Episode Reviews

By The Plaid Adder

Comments: plaidder@mindspring.com

Caveats:

All of these reviews contain spoilers. To avoid being spoiled it's best just to click on the links below and go to the episode you want rather than scrolling through the whole page. Also, I never am able to find out what the actual titles are, so I make up my own. However, the made up titles usually have something to do with the plot. If the title makes no sense whatsoever, that means you probably haven't seen that episode and if you read it you will probably be spoiled.

Week One: The Alien Within
Week Two: Westward Ho!
Week Three: Bobbing for Mulder
Week Four: Dreamland, part 1
Week Six: The Ghosts Who Stole Christmas
Week Seven: Demon Babies
Week Eight: Rain Man
Week Nine: The Truth Is In Skinner
Week Ten: Death and the Maiden
Week Eleven: Full Disclosure, Part 1
Week Twelve: Full Disclosure, Part 2
Week Thirteen: Water, Water Everywhere
Week Fourteen: Monday
Week Fifteen: Arcadia
Week Sixteen: Bad Dog
Week Seventeen: Trevor
Week Eighteen: Milagro
Week Nineteen: Baseball, Aliens, and Apple Pie
Week Twenty: The Manchurian Candidate
Week Twenty-One: Deep Shiitake
Week Twenty-Two: In The Beginning

The Alien Within

Short story: Eeeenh.

 It didn't suck, but I felt that after the movie it was sort of a letdown. The character interactions were more or less predictable, and the Mulder/Scully conflict seemed sort of old and rehashed. Not that it didn't have its moments...

PHOENIX, ARIZONA: Well, as far as I can see the move to L.A. hasn't made any difference, except for the fact that there are going to be a lot more episodes set in the American southwest. The interior scenes all look exactly the same--in fact, if anything, they're *darker.* There were many scenes in which we literally could not see a goddamn thing and had no idea what was going on, especially in that power plant.

HEY, HOMER!: And the guy was asleep in his chair with his feet on the desk just like Homer on the Simpsons...I'm sure I'm one of only about 3 million people who got that joke. It was begging to be made, but still, I'm glad they decided to go for the gusto, although I think it would have been better if Homer had had some donuts handy. Maybe he could have used them to fend off the clawed slashy thing.

I'M JUST TRYING TO GET THIS STRAIGHT: Well, irritating as it was at least Pissed-Off Brunette (or P.O.B) laid the alien theory out for us: the virus is bred into the pollen which is carried by bees which then deliver it to the human host where it germinates, gestates, and busts out of the human body. Then, according to what we now know from this episode, it continues evolving. Which we had sort of figured, since when newborn these things are definitely not something you could parley with. The new wrinkle Scully discovered is that there is a little alien in all of us--which perhaps puts a new spin on things. We have been assuming all along that the "virus" was something akin to alien sperm--in other words, it is itself the organism that eventually becomes the alien baby. With Scully's discovery, maybe it makes more sense to think of the virus not as an actual alien parasite looking for a host, but something that triggers that junk DNA. Maybe the virus just wakes up the alien part of us and what busted out of poor Rousch Technologies guy is actually him, as an alien. Which would make all of this a lot more interesting.

Let us remember, we still don't know what the deal is with the shapeshifters--I suppose they might be a further stage in the alien's development, perhaps what happens to them when they reach maturity. But I said it before, I'll say it again: THE SMALLPOX! WHAT OF THE SMALLPOX?

Sorry...

ARE YOU ASKING ME TO CHOOSE?: Well, DUH. ALl right, those of you who are with me on this raise your hands: Diana Fowler is Up To No Good. *At best,* she's trying to play both sides against the middle in order to further her personal ambition. And I think even that is giving her too much credit. She's just plain bad news, and Mulder oughta get wise and stop trusting anyone who asks him to. That's what I think. And, of course, I think Spender needs to be road kill, but perhaps they'll take care of that during their high-speed chase next week.

So, all in all, not much has changed: Cancer Man is still inept, Spender is still a pain in everyone's ass, Diana Fowler is Not to be Trusted, Skinner is continuing to get himself in big trouble over them, everyone at the Bureau thinks Mulder is a lunatic, and Gibson the chess-playing wunderkind continues not to be terribly interesting to me. Even the whole not-reassigned-to-the-X-files move is a repeat of what happened after Scully's abduction. I hate to say it, but I fear this opener does not promise a whole raft of tasty delights to come.

On the other hand, it looks like Well-Manicured Man may still be alive. That white-haired guy in the shadows seemed to have a voice sort of like his, and I have hopes that they will be bringing him back, horribly disfigured and with a serious axe to grind, perhaps with Krychek on a leash slavering for vengeance behind him.

Next week: I dunno what the hell this is supposed to be, but at least it looks like there will be enough lighting.

C ya,

 The Plaid Adder

Westward Ho

Short story: You know what, it held my interest better than many an X-Files has of late, so maybe this move to L.A. is worth something after all. Onward to spoilage:

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM: The opening *almost* got me. Almost. I had seen the "video" footage in the teaser last week so I was prepared for a simulated news broadcast. I'm not sure whether I think it would have been more effective without intercutting footage from the "real" perspective--it destroyed the illusion, but it also gave you a better idea of what was actually going on. Still, it was different, and when a show's been going for this long, different is good.

I THINK I SAW THIS MOVIE: If the whole episode had been about the *Speed* premise, it would have sucked pretty bad, seeing as it's already been done, twice. But I thought they did a good job maintaining tension and balancing the Scully and Mulder story lines. I especially liked the use of the cell phone. It provided many of the most interesting moments, to wit:

* Scully rattling on with that Scullylike intense-yet-calm delivery about the risk of contamination and the need for quarantine without pausing for input while Mulder is being held hostage on the other end. In fact, if I might be permitted to expand on this moment for a minute, there are many things that make it great:

1) Dramatic Irony. This falls into the "Well, DUH!" category, but it's still neat: because we already know that Crump has taken Mulder hostage, we get extra humor value out of his "yeah, yeah, uh huh" responses, knowing that they carry an extra little tang of sarcasm that Scully, in her earnestness, doesn't pick up on.

2) Other Kinds of Irony. Which include: the fact that Mulder might have responded that way anyhow, just because of how he is, independent of having a gun to his head; the fact that Scully, who has just been splattered on by the original victim, is telling *Mulder* to be careful while she's obviously in a lot more danger than he is, and so forth.

Well, I guess that's really only one thing--irony. But I really like irony. Much more than goldy and bronzey.

* Crump tossing the cell phone out onto the road and Mulder freaking out--partly because, if you're in a hostage situation, it helps to have a line to the outside world, and partly because Mulder just doesn't like having that imaginary Mulder-Scully umbilical cord snapped.

* The cop on the motorcycle brandishing the cell phone at Mulder, with that little "Looky what I got for you!" wave, as if he were trying to entice a kid with a lollipop. [Raise your hand if you think there should have been a CHiPs reference worked into that scene somehow.]

WE BETTER GET A BLOOD SAMPLE: Scully always gets the hard job. Scully, autopsy the corpse. Scully, quarantine the affected area. Scully, get a blood sample from a crazed and homicidal German shepherd. CinderScully, CinderSCully, night and day it's CinderScully...I see a golden opportunity for a parody here, but I'm too busy to take advantage.

ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL JEWISH CONSPIRACY: It's true that the whole Mulder-Bonds-With-The-Antisemite aspect of the plot could have been somewhat less canned (although I did like it that Mulder remained pissed off by Crump even as he also got very invested in trying to save his life). So I guess we've established that Mulder either is Jewish, or just has a real low tolerance for racist bullshit, or perhaps both. And of course CC must still feel some pressure to distance himself from the more unpleasant segment of hte paranoid-American community--especially now that people like that woman from the Chicago Tribune are starting to blame the X-Files for destroying our faith in American institutions of government (my rebuttal would be twofold: 1) lighten up and 2) what faith?) and whatnot.

THAT'S CLASSIFIED ALSO, MA'AM: Liza suggested that perhaps this ELF stuff was a giant expermient designed to see if they could turn people into lemmings (after all, had Crump been at the wheel, they probably would have just driven right into the ocean--or perhaps comandeered a boat and reenacted Speed 2 as well as Speed 1). I like it that Scully is starting to get sneakier, and not as afraid to lie, mislead and hornswoggle other government representatives.

BIG PILES OF MANURE: Correct me if I'm wrong: ammonium nitrate fertilizer isn't actually manure, is it? Or is it? I wasn't raised on a farm, I don't know from dung. Anyhow, Kirsch sure is a pain in the patookus. It appears that the writing team has really taken this "who gave them an unlimited expense account" problem to heart; that's twice now we've seen people complain about the amount of money these guys are costing the Bureau. It will be interesting to see if they follow it through; how are they going to get their job done if Kirsch pulls the plug on their funding?

Next week: Doin' the Time Warp in the Bermuda Triangle. And once *again* they're gonna yank our chain with the M/S kiss. My money says that he's kissing a Scully from a different quantum universe (or however they plan to explain it).

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Well, that was interesting. For a moment I will forgo the review in the interest of weighing in on the greater question, which is:

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

This is harder for me to answer than it might have been for some of y'all because the combination of poor TV reception and a shitbox VCR means that during the many, many scenes shot in partial or near-total darkness I often can't even tell who's in the shot. But I'll take a stab at it. Obviously the big question is, "How much of this is real, and what do we mean by "real"?" Way I see it, there are four possible theories:

Mulder really *was* sucked back into 1939 on the Queen Anne, all of that stuff really happened, and Scully really did save the world by getting them to turn the ship around. The fact that the 1939 universe was peopled almost exclusively by people he knows can be explained by the psychological distortion time travelers must undoubtedly experience and his mind's attempt to deal with temporal dissonance.

Evidence in Favor: In that very final second, when Mulder is lying down on the hospital bed, he picks his head up again and fingers his temple, and then starts smiling. I finally figured out what this is supposed to mean after watching it twice. His head hurt when he lay down because that's where "Scully" hit him in 1939, and he's smiling because the fact that it still hurts has convinced him that it all did really happen, which means that he really did get to plant one on Scully. And when I say plant one, I mean "suck face." He really made the most of that opportunity, didn't he?

Evidence Against: There's a lot of it:

• The sailors bothering to take Mulder out of the water, down to the captain and interrogate him while their boat was being boarded by Nazis.
• The scene down in the steam room, where out of nowhere the "swobbos" start yelling, "We're taking this boat to Jamaica!" Only the subconscious is this random.
• The many other surprising rescues, sudden shifts in setting and mood, weird juxtapositions, and whatnot. Also the claustrophobic camera work, which spent so much time tracking Mulder through all those corridors and small rooms.

Evidence in favor: The WoOf and the nightmare qualities cited above suggest that the Mulder plot line is all in his head. The final scene, in which Mulder wakes up with Scully, Skinner, and the Lone Gunmen by his bedside, argues that the Scully plot was real, since they're the ones who must have fished him out of the water. Scully mentions the Queen Anne as a "ghost ship," which could be taken to mean that they did in fact find her drifting and deserted, board and search her, adn then haul Mulder out of the water. And as we know, Scully is usually real.

Evidence Against: The scenes with Scully trying to get Mulder's coordinates (or whatever it was she was trying to get) seemed mighty fishy to us. We know Scully and Mulder are close, but given the fact that he pulls shit like this all the time, her alarm seemed both too sudden and too intense. There were also nightmare-type qualities in that part of the story, including:

• The camera work. I noticed early that the camera tracks Scully the same way it tracks Mulder, and that shespends just as much time running up and down corridors and in and out of small claustrophobic rooms as he does.
• The same sudden shifts, jumps, and juxtapositions. Having Cancer Man pop up suddenly in Kirsch's office; the fact that once when she gets on the elevator it's crowded, but the second time it's totally empty, etc.
• The frustration factor. I dunno about you, but my dreams are all about trying to find something out that no one will tell you. The part about her trying to talk to Skinner on the cell phone and not being able to hear him was particularly nightmarish.
• The other kiss. This is not a Scully thing to do. For her to plant one on Skinner--on the lips, I point out--she'd sure have to be in a pretty agitated emotional state. Which, again, is out of character for her given the relative non-seriousness of the situation (I mean, it's just the Bermuda Triangle. It's not like he's on fire in a buried boxcar, or something).

This theory can explain a lot of the Scully anomalies in the first part of the story. If we accept the theory that Mulder is starting to realize that he has had the hots for Scully for a way long time, then it makes sense that in his fantasy Scully would also be so attached to him that she is willing to threaten to kill Spender, hyperventilate in elevators, and kiss Assistant Director Skinner full on the lips in order to get to him. The fact that Skinner reacts grumpily to the kiss because he reads it as being more about Mulder than about him supports the view that Mulder is really writing this story--not only does he have Scully rushing to his rescue, but he gets to beat out his rival for her affections.

It also makes sense of the Mulder plot line, for the same reasons. Scully is the only one who believes him; he gets to make out with her; and he gets to be a hero in front of her even though she gets to save the world. This is exactly the kind o fthing I can see his subconscious organizing.

Also, in the final scene, Skinner appears to have no problem both turning up at Mulder's bedside and threatening to kick his butt just like in the good old days. This is inconsistent with the extreme reluctance to get involved and desire to cover his ass that he manifests in those early conversations, but if that was all a dream then there's no contradiction.

Under this reading, Scully's "ghost ship" comment would mean that it was a radar ghost--i.e., there was a hiccup in the instruments and they showed a ship at that location but it didn't physically appear. They just went out and all they saw was him floating face down in the Carribbean.

Evidence Against: See Theory #4.

Evidence For: Most of this relates to that final scene after Mulder "wakes up" in the hospital:

1) The characterization is still a little off. As mentioned in #3, Skinner's appearance at his bedside doesn't make sense given the current situation. I can buy him helping from the sidelines, but not his coming to visit him in the hospital and threatening to discipline a guy who no longer works under him. Scully's "Oh brother" reaction is something I could see Mulder *imagining,* but given what we've seen from her lately it's too flippant. I would expect her to at least register some shock or startlement before trying to brush it off.

2) Meta stuff. Aside from the Wizard of Oz references, which push this scene into meta territory, the cinematic tactics that were used in the rest of the dream stuff bleed into this scene:

• The picture is still letterboxed. As far as I remember, that wasn't true for the other two episodes, although I might not have noticed. If this is the only episode they letterboxed, then I would say it's a deliberate attempt to make us see this as a fiction--a little movie that Mulder is showing himself, perhaps after seeing *Titanic* one too many times.
• During the dream sequences where there are split screens with the two different realities, the shift from one temporality to another is indicated by a moving horizontal line that wipes the other universe off the screen while the other expands. The moving line means "we are now sweeping this universe under the rug, and entering the universe that's scrolling across to take its place." At the end of that final scene, the horizontal line moves across the image of Mulder smiling, wiping it out and replacing it with the credits. If we apply that logic, that moving line means, "we are now leaving the dream and moving into the 'real' universe of the X-Files, which is what these credits belong to." In other words, what that moving line says is that only the credits are 'real' (in the sense that, say, Mulder and Scully are 'real'). The rest of it belongs to this universe-within-a-universe, or if you will dream-within-a-dream.

Evidence Against: This may well be just a little too meta for the folks down at Ten Thirteen.

Well, those are my theories. I incline, personally, to #4, even though it's a shame to think that not only the kiss but the "I love you" 'really' happened. And it's a shame to lose all those good lines ("I need a favor. You either do it, or I kill you."/"We've got some trouble in our White House, but it'll blow over...so to speak."/"That little rat bastard!") But if we see this as Mulder's dream, then at least we know he's started working on getting that repressed passion up to the surface.

It's not really a review, I guess--but then the fact that this is the first X-Files in a long time that has made me want to put this much effort into thinking about what happened therein really says it all.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Dreamland, Part I

The Ghosts Who Stole Christmas

Demon Babies

The Truth Is In Skinner

Short Story: To parahprase Senator Bentsen, I knew Clyde Bruckman, I worked with Clyde Bruckman, and let me tell you, pal, you are *no* Clyde Bruckman.

I mean, is it me, or did we do this already? Aside from all this crap about taking a photograph of death (more on this later), this is the exact same plot: M&S investigate a man who is suspected of being a murderer because he has the uncanny ability to predict when and where and how a corpse will turn up. They find out that through some kind of uncanny affinity, the guy is able to tell when (or in Clyde's case, how) someone will die. He bonds with Scully, who initially doesn't believe him but is eventually drawn into it, and who is very troubled by the guy's desire to rid himself of this "gift" by dying. Eventually, the guy dies, but not before leaving Scully some memento of his passage.

As far as viewer-experience goes, the reasons this episode doesn't work as well as *Clyde Bruckman's Last Repose* are manifold. I will list just a few:

• Clyde Bruckman was done first.
• Clyde Bruckan was a real character, with a personality, a sardonic sense of humor, and an emotional investment in the people he dealt with. Figgis was just a sad-looking old guy who didn't talk much.
• In CBLR Mulder and Scully got to work together, which provided a lot of good character interplay both between them and between them and Bruckman. In this one she was stuck with that little asshole Ritter, and even if it was gratifying to watch Mulder actually *doing* the shit work he's been assigned, sticking her with Ritter just went nowhere in terms of helping the viewers care what was happening.
• While there is something creepily convincing about a guy who has a very limited gift for predicting the future and has been trying to live with it in the real world, the stuff relating to Figgis came straight out of the most cliched, anthropomorphized, death-in-a-black-cape-with-a-scythe stuff that might have worked in an original Twilight Zone episode 30 years ago but just doesn't fly now. I mean, c'mon. Death takes someone else instead of you? Death shows up in pictures? How come this guy can't also see Famine, Strife, and Pestilence?
• Even the hooker-hit-by-a-bus thing was stolen off *City on the Edge of Forever.*

I mean, it's not like it really stank. It's about on the level of other X-Files serial-killer type eps like "Oubliette" (even though there is no serial killer here, it felt very similar). But it's just there--it does nothing to develop any of the main arcs, either in terms of plot or characterization. And it suffers greatly by comparison with *Clyde Bruckman,* which was also a stand-alone episode but was a lot more inventive and thought-provoking.

There is, however, one good thing about this episode, which is that Scully is now immortal, and that means some good X-Files/Highlander crossover fiction must surely be in the wings.

Don't tell me you don't believe me? Look at the evidence:

1) Accordign to Figgis's story, which we must theoretically accept as true, he became immortal when death took someone else in his place. This is exactly what just happened with Scully.

2) Scully is making "the fastest recovery" the doctor's ever seen, much like Figgis recovering from his stabbing wounds.

3) I remind folks that when Scully gave in and asked Clyde Bruckman how she dies, he said, "You don't."

So you guys who like Duncan and Methos and all that whatnot, get crackin'.

In two weeks: Full Disclosure. I guess they're starting to realize abotu the conspiracy fatigue...although I tell ya, I don't trust 'em.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Short story: It's all led up to *this*?

 Chris Carter has been making it up as he goes along for more than five years, and now it's time for him to pay the piper. And he owes the piper *big time.* This week and next week, we watch the writing team scramble to figure out how to link the various bits and pieces and hints and herrings CC has been scattering blithely through the "mythology" episodes into some kind of coherent whole. And I'll tell you, it's not a pretty sight.

For one thing, this was not so much disclosure as confirmation. Most of the "answers" this episode provided were not new information; they simply give authority to what until now has been mostly conjecture. For instance:

• The Consortium has been working with our future alien overlords to facilitate their eventual colonization of earth for the past 50 years. [We've suspected this pretty much since the beginning of the aliens storyline.]
• Mulder's father was involved with Cancer Man and everyone else. [We've known this since Anasazi/Blessings Way.]
• Samantha is being experimented on by the aliens. [We've known this from way back.]
• The Consortium has been working on developing a race of human/alien hybrids. [We've known this since the episode with the Samantha clones.]
• The NAC, or black oil, is the aliens' "lifeforce," through which they plan to conquer all of earth and wipe us out. [Aside from the "lifeforce" detail, we've known this since Tunguska/Terma, and had it laid out very clearly for us in the movie and in the season premiere.]
• The Consortium has been working in secret on a vaccine that would protect us from the effects of the black oil. [We've known this since Tunguska/Terma.]
• Spender is Cancer Man's son; Cassandra is Cancer Man's ex-wife. [We've known this since he was introduced.]
• Diana Fowler is Up To No Good. [We've suspected this since she was introduced.]
• There is a race of rebel aliens with sewn-up faces trying to frustrate the designs of the other aliens by destroying all the subjects they've been experimenting on. [We've known this since "The Red and the Black."]
• Cassandra has been experimented on by aliens for a real long time now. [We've known this since she was introduced.]
• Our doctors like to do their secret experiments in train cars. [We've known this since Anasazi/Blessings Way.]
• Krychek wields a mean ice pick. [OK, that was new information.]

So as revelation, this episode is pretty much a dud. If anyone can point out a major new piece of information we got out of this episode, I will cheerfully revise that statement, but as far as I can see all this does is recap for people who either haven't been watching that long or didn't see the movie. We do learn some interesting tidbits: that Cassandra is a hybrid, for instance; that the Samantha CM showed Mulder wasn't the real Samantha [again, we didn't know, but we could guess]; that Cancer Man has a direct connection with Diana Fowler; that the black oil is the aliens' "lifeforce." But none of that really impacts the big picture too much.

In addition, there are a lot of things left unexplained, and my guess is that's because nobody could craft a coherent explanation for 'em. For instance:

• It's still unclear what the aliens need the human/alien hybrids for. It would seem that they are very important to the project, since this is what the Consortium folks have spent so much time on, and since CM was very disturbed to find out they'd succeeded (the implication being, I think, that once they get the hybrids up and running the aliens will be able to proceed with colonization). There is the suggestion that the important thing about the hybrids is that they'll be immune to the "virus," a.k.a. "the purity," a.k.a. "the black oil"; but if that's true, it's odd that the aliens want to create a race that has immunity to them. The general idea is that they'll be "slaves"; but to my mind, it's shortsighted to create a race of slave beings that are immune to the major weapon in your arsenal.
• The one thing that was made clear early in the Ugly Guy's appearances is that green alien blood is *really* bad for humans. The scene with Cassandra's final operation appears to bear this out, in that the doctors are all decked out in their best containment gear, presumably to prevent themselves from being affected by the toxic blood they were incising out of Cassandra. However, when Krychek icepicks the rebel infiltrator and his green blood starts leaking everywhere, neither of them gets so much as a nosebleed.

• Who the hell is Krychek working for? Last we saw he was working with Well-Manicured Man to help out the resistance. Now he's ice-picking the resistance's agents. Plus, after having tried to kill him more times than you've had hot dinners, the Consortium is now letting him run the slide projector at their meetings. Is he sleeping with *all* of them, or what? And how come he needs to have Skinner's balls in a sling? (Don't answer that question.)
• How come Cassandra now knows all, whereas before she was a flake who had no clear idea of what was really happening to her?

Now, I realize I have been pretty grumpy lately, so I'm going to move on to the good points now. But as far as I'm concerned, unless they really pull out some amazing shit in Part II, this is just more proof that CC never really knew where he was heading with all this.

However, the episode did provide some moments. I really disliked most of the Mulder/Scully stuff, actually; not only was the whole "Mulder plays B-Ball with the jive-talking black guys" scene grating on my nerves, but I was very irritated by Cassandra's insistence that she meet with Mulder. What's Scully, chopped liver? However, there were some good moments connected to some of the minor characters, to wit:

• Krychek's "watch where you point that thing." Are we to assume that Krychek is an alien resistance fighter too now? Who knows, maybe he always was...otherwise, why is he so worried about ice picks? Hmmm?
• Cassandra foretells the future, but nobody believes her. (This is exactly the problem the original Cassandra had, in the *Iliad.*)
• My hatred of Diana Fowler is vindicated.
• So is my contempt for Spender, who in this episode gives new meaning to the epithet "tool." "What experiments?" Duh...I dunno, rabbit.
• They're finally firing Mulder and Scully.

I'll wait and see what happens next week...but I'm not hopeful.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Short Story: I got three words: They killed Spender.

WOOHOO! I've been waiting for that little ratbastard to be wiped off the face of the TV for a long time, and so any episode where that happens, I'm happy. And the rest of the episode was pretty good too; at least it had more action. There is much left to be explained (or, as I firmly believed, swept under the rug as if it never existed), and a lot of nagging inconsistencies. But something happened. That's key.

AGENT SCULLY, MAKE SOME SENSE: Poor A.D. Kirsch. You can't blame him for being impatient with Mulder's metaphorical ramblings. Nor can you blame the viewers for being impatient with an episode that hangs together only after a whole lotta work with the rewind button. Here is what we could piece together:

*THE ORIGINAL PLAN*

1) Liza was right; the consortium guys handed over their relatives as test subjects for the aliens in order to be given the go-ahead to do the hybrid project.

2) While working on the hybrid project, another arm of the consortium was secretly developing a vaccine. Mulder's dad was in charge of this, or at least it was his idea.

3) The hybrids, I guess because of their alien DNA, will be able to survive the mass black oil infection. They will live on as a slave race, destined I suppose to wax the aliens' cars and peel their grapes.

4) Everyone else will die horribly when the bees from Tunisia infect the entire world with the "virus."

5) However, the consortium guys and their near and dear will be all right, because they will have already become hybrids.

6) They will then be reunited with the hostages, who I guess will be hybrids too.

*THE FACELESS REBELS' PLAN*

1) They spend a fair amount of time destroying all the experimented-on humans they can find.

2) They infiltrate the consortium with their "amazing powers of disguise" (more on this later).

3) They destroy the doctors working on Cassandra as soon as she's finished.

Now this takes some thinking about. The consortium folks assume that the faceless rebels deliberately left Cassandra alive so that the aliens would start colonization and wipe out the human race. Why they should think this I have no idea, because clearly the rebels don't want the colonization to take place, that's the whole reason they're there in the first place. The reason they did that was to force the consortium to turn over Cassandra (thinking that now the rebels are moving in, they better get their friends into power pronto before the rebels take over and carbonize all the collaborators) and start the process of colonization. This then allows them to set the trap at El Rico.

4) A faceless rebel infiltrator swipes the alien fetus, which the aliens and collaborators need in order to turn all the consortium folks into hybrids (and propagate the slave race, I suppose).

5) Then they ambush the consortium at El Rico and burn the whole pack of 'em--with the exception of Cancer Man and Diana, who have the wit to flee, and possibly Cassandra (more on that later).

THE FINAL OUTCOME:

1) The colonization schedule is now shot to hell because the dominant aliens don't have their hybrid, or their human collaborators.

2) The only people left who really know what's going on are Krychek, Cancer Man, and Diana.

3) The faceless rebels have the alien fetus, and may have Cassandra.

4) As Mulder says, all bets are off.

So there we have it. And that is a fair amount of revelation, even though as said before most of this is really confirmation rather than surprise. However, there are several unanswered questions, some of which are intentional and some of which are the result of sloppiness and/or wilful denial of loose ends.

INTENTIONALLY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:

1) What's going to happen to the poor Unablonder? Boy, that sure was a different look for her, wasn't it? And how mean of Krychek to just leave her there, after all they've been through...

2) What happened to Cassandra? We watched that final scene a few times on the tape, and determined that when the faceless rebels surround the consortium people, Cassandra is outside the circle on her gurney, being watched over by the infiltrator. So she doesn't necessarily go up with the rest of them. It's true that Kirsch commisserates with Spender on the death of his mother, but with all those carbonized bodies it'd be easy to screw up the head count.

3) So is Cancer Man Mulder's father, or what?

UNINTENTIONALLY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:

1) Related to IUQ #1, what's going on with the "vaccine" (antidote, dammit!)? If it works, how come the Unablonder looks like hell? And if it doesn't work, how come Mulder is alive? If it works, why doesn't the consortium put *that* in the bees and release it? If it doesn't, how come Scully survived? And if it works, how come...you get the picture.

2) What is the deal with the faceless rebels and shapeshifting? It appears at first that the faceless rebels can't shapeshift, because when they disguise themselves they always stick on a fake face over the sewn-up-orifices face, which their strangling victim then is able to claw off in his final convulsive moments. However, there are a lot of problems with that proposition, the main ones being: 1) Where do they get the fake faces from? They can't just rip 'em off like Hannibal did, or they wouldn't have moving eyeballs 2) How do they attach them? 3) How do they change their hairdos to match?

So, the other suggestion is the one made at the end of this episode: the faceless rebels have the ability to shape-shift, and the faceless thing is just a convenient disguise they adopt in order to keep themselves safe from the black oil. Fine. But if that's true, then what about all those face-being-ripped-off scenes?

This is not just a continuity quibble-it affects the whole meaning of the resolution. Because if the faceless rebels can shape-shift, then not only do they have the alien fetus and Cassandra, but they may also be the people who brought us Jeremiah Smith and, perhaps, Ugly Guy. On the other hand, if they can't, then the "infiltrator" is actually a dominant shape-shifty alien *infiltrating* the faceless rebel resistance, which means that it's now the dominant aliens who have Cassandra and the fetus. Then there is a third explanation, which is that the faceless rebels are really just the dominant shape-shifty aliens in faceless drag, although why they would go to all the trouble to create a fake resistance force is another question.

The far more reasonable explanation is that the writers are just being sloppy about how the faceless aliens do what they do. Which is annoying.

3) Again I ask, what the hell is up with Krychek? Why is he sitting around in the dark after all the consortium guys have left? Why does he go down to the containment facility? Why is he constantly slinging exposition at Spender? I know it's all part of his "international man of mystery" thing, but I think they should stop using him as a Jack-of-all-plot-twists.

4) Where the hell is Mulder's mother?

Is she dead? Because otherwise, the lack of Mommy Mulder in this episode is a BIG problem. Cancer Man is still in love with her; so, presumably, is Mulder, although in a different way. How come neither one of them got her onto the runway with the other future hybrids?

5) Why does Cancer Man shoot Spender? I mean, not that I'm complaining, but it's not like he's a threat to anything, dumb-ass that he is. Seemed to me like he just was peeved at him, which is not really a valid justification for son-icide.

And now that all that's over with, I'm gonna hand out the post-conspiracy

X-FILES HALL OF SHAME AWARDS!

The LEAF IN THE WIND AWARD for most easily impressionable goes to...Fox Mulder!

Man, I wanted to kill him this week. He finds Cancer Man in Diana's apartment and that doesn't make him suspicious? "I was looking for my son..." Well try *Spender's* apartment, pal. Here's a woman who lives in the Watergate complex, for crying out loud, and you're gonna take her word over Scully's? What are you, nuts?

Then, once Cancer Man spills the beans, does Mulder say, "Now is my moment to save all of humanity like I've always been trying to do?" No. His response is to grab Diana and head for West Virginia. C'MON! The least you can do at thsi point is to save Scully *first!* What a useless sack of crap he is--crumpling like a squashed roach under the weight of responsibility. He's almost...Clintonesque.

*Then,* after giving it all up and deciding to throw his lot in with the conspiracy, he gets one call from Scully on his beloved cell phone and suddenly he's a freedom fighter again. Which is nice, since i have to watch him for the rest of the season, but he's still deeply, deeply disappointed me.

The HOMER SIMPSON MEMORIAL I GET DUMBER EVERY SECOND YOU LOOK AT ME AWARD goes to...Jeffrey Spender.

Right up to the point where he gets shot, Spender has no fucking clue and no way of getting one. It was truly sad to watch. Cancer Man's bullet is probably the only thing that's ever gotten through that thick skull.

And the Lythril Memorial I Am Evil, Hear Me Roar Award goes to...Diana Fowley.

I dunno how she does it, but you just cannot look at the woman without going, "Whoa, that's some serious evil." Obviously they're setting her up as the next major thorn in our team's side...but Mulder better get wise to her soon, or I'm gonna lose patience. How dumb can a guy with an Oxford degree be?

Next week: sea worms from the deep. Yee ha.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder 

Water, Water Everywhere

Short story: Well, for a Monster of the Week, it wasn't half bad. It sure was gross, though.

ZERO VISIBILITY: I need to get a bigger TV. I think this is the only way that I will ever understand what the hell is going on during 100% of an X-Files episode. OK, the power's out...but during the opening sequence I had no idea not just of what was happening, but of where they were--I thought they were on a houseboat. Once they got into the condo complex things got a little bit better.

ALL THE NUTS ARE DOWN IN FLORIDA: Well, of course you realize Mulder that wherever you go, you raise the nut population by one. I am assuming that the guy who called them down there is the same guy Mulder was interviewing during that episode set a couple years before the series started where he was wearing the wedding ring just to yank everyone's chain. As I recall, that episode also featured guys with spider creatures sewn into their throats during a Nazi experiment...but I digress. Anyhow, I suppose that you wouldn't stay behind in a shitty apartment complex during a nasty hurricane unless you were a nut, so it makes sense that Mulder and Scully were working with a motley crew. The gun nut was patently a device to get Mulder and Scully separated (more on that later), although he certainly is believable. I'm undecided as to the Suarez/Villarreal couple. On the one hand, it is a refreshing break from the stereotypical Latino macho image to have a henpecked (pseudo) husband and a bitchy, domineering (pseudo) wife. And the wife was pretty funny. On the other, the accents got to me after a while. And the looter was sure a pain in the ass. I'm not sure why the creature waited so long to eat the poor deputy either...but then as in so many MOTWs, the precise nature and M.O. of this creature was left murky and unclear.

IT'S THE WATER: As I understand it, the life cycle of this creature goes something like this:

1) It lashes out and nails a human victim, laying its little larvae through the stings in the neck.

2) The larvae gestate in there somehow, which causes great discomfort to the victim.

3) Then, if the victim is in close proximity to salt water, the larvae eventually swim out, become a huge multitentacled organism, and suck down the host's carcass. Then the huge multitentacled organism reverts back to water and drips down the drain to kill again.

Fresh water apparently kills the larvae, which I guess stops the reproductive cycle. This must have been the epiphany Scully had during the birth, although how she managed to communicate that to Mulder out in the hallway is another question. Matter of fact, let's just get to that right now:

THAT'S MY PARTNER OUT THERE: Is it me, or does Scully usually try a little harder to get to Mulder when he's just had a potentially fatal accident? I mean, OK, gun nut is holding her hostage, but surely at some point she could have tackled him. Again, that struck me as kind of a weak device put in to engineer the separation, but because it wasn't particularly convincing ont he character level it didn't really work for me. It was sort of as if Scully looked at him and said, "OK, well, clearly the plot requires me to stay in here and deliver the baby, so that's what I'm going to do." Never mind the fact that if that baby *really* was 10 pounds and 10 ounces, that delivery should have taken a lot longer. Ouch.

YOU OWE HER YOUR LIFE: How, exactly? I mean, Mulder *does* owe Scully his life about 300 times over, but why for this particular escape? How is she supposed to have transmitted to him the information that fresh water kills these things? She did observe that the larva she put in the jar full of water had died; but when she had her epiphany Mulder was already at the doorway looking at the cat. Much as I normally support making Mulder aware of his crushing debt to Scully, I think the X-Files guy was pushing it in this one.

Overall, there were some good things; I thought they handled the "revelation of Mulder's sting wounds" scene pretty well, and in general the Mulder/Scully stuff was up to par if not necessarily award-winning. And Scully got to do a lot, which is nice. You gotta love a woman who can do an emergency tracheotomy in the dark during a hurricane with a Swiss Army knife and a ballpoint pen.

Next week: You've seen it on *Xena,* you've seen it on *Next Generation*, now the Amazing Repeating Time Loop makes its appearance on *The X-Files.*

You knew it had to happen...

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Monday

Short story: There was a sort of deja-vu quality to this episode, but it was still pretty interesting.

YOUR CELLPHONE'S NOT WORKING: Since the plot has been done ( Groundhog Day) and done (TNG's "Cause and Effect") and done ( Xena's "Been There, Done That") before, the only thing this episode really had going for it was characterization. Which I thought was better in this episode than it has been in a long time. They did a good job in terms of what they could change and what they couldn't, regarding the major plot and their interplay. For instance:

• Mulder's deja vu being triggered by Scully's "Your cellphone's not working," since this is something she would no doubt say every damn time that day came around
• The different little conversations about fate, in both of which they both take characteristic positions even though the content is different
• The fact that no matter how hard they both tried they would always end up at the bank because one always went looking for the other one after a certain point
• The fact that Skinner was always consistent

Of course the main reason they did this episode was the same reason TNG and Xena did it--when you have the rewind button you can do things you can never do in a "real" episode, the main one being kill off one, some, or all of the regulars. I liked the Scully-and-Mulder death scene at the beginning, although I wasn't sure what she thought she was going to be helping by massaging his pectorals. It was also interesting in that although the final scenario played out differently depending on who got to the bank first, there were always common elements--and there was always the same missing piece that forced the ending, which was that neither of them realized to start with that Bernard had a bomb. It was sort of like playing one of those CD-rom games, where you spend 2 weeks getting eaten by the Vogons every time you get to hyperspace because you don't realize that you had to pick up the magic rabbit foot when you left the tavern on Ceta 3. It would be interesting to do a little study of how interactive computer games have affected our view of the world including our understanding of predestination....but I digress.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO END THIS WAY: Now, why Pam could not have made this all stop by telling Mulder, "Look. My boyfriend has just gone into that bank and is planning to rob it. He is wearing a large explosive device. Please call the police but make sure you proceed with caution" is beyond me. I realize that if this had occurred to her there would have been no episode, but...

We had both figured out early that the real variable was Pam--that probably fate was waiting to kill her off, and the reason the day kept repeating was that she wasn't in the bank with him. You can't blame her for wanting to stay alive, I guess. So the episode's final take on fate, I suppose, lines up with that folk tale about the guy who runs into death on a bridge in Syria...OK, so this guy runs into death in Damascus and Death looks right at him, but seems a little surprised. Guy decides, "Shit, death is after me, I better get the hell out of Dodge." Guy flees to Aleppo or someplace, congratulates himself on his foresight, and is about to crack open a brewski when there's a knock on the door. It's Death. Death says, "Oh, there you are. Geez, you know, I was kinda surprised when I ran into you yesterday in Damascus, because I knew I was supposed to come pick you up in Aleppo tonight."

The moral being you can't change your time/place/date of death, no matter what happens. This, actually, is a moral that is repeated in other prognostication episodes--"Clyde Bruckman," the banshee episode with "She is Me" and the bowling alley, and the episode with the death photographer from Week 10. In the X-Files universe death seems to be something forseeable and fixed whereas other variables are not. This makes sense given the show's reliance on serial killers, where (paradoxically) suspense has to be created by a sense of foreshadowing an inevitability--being able to predict or otherwise envision death makes a character handy in an X-Files episode, since murder and the occult have to keep being yoked together.

IT'S FATE: What's interesting about this from a cultural-studies perspective is that the one person who is most consistent is Bernard, which suggests that he has the least amount of control over his own destiny. Would be interesting to explore this in terms of the argument this episode makes about crime, but I've got work to do.

Next week: Liza points out that Bob and Laura Petrie are the names from the Dick Van Dyke show.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Arcadia

Short Story: You know what, I liked this one. It had its drawbacks, but overall it was a satisfying viewing experience.

NOTHIN' WEIRD GOING ON AROUND HERE, SCULLY: My favorite thing about this episode is the premise--and it's surprising how infrequently one can say that about a Monster Of The Week. I have some problems with this "Tibetan thought form" bullshit, which I will get to later, but aside from that I love the setup. The Falls at Arcadia is after all a perfect metaphor for AmericaTM: a shiny happy perfect (and, appropriately, all-white) community where everyone is wealthy, married and cheerful--built on a festering landfill concealing a giant slavering monster of their own creation that will ultimately consume them all. In that sense it was really more like a Twilight Zone episode than an X-File, in that Mulder and Scully didn't have a whole lot to *do* other than witness the insanity and try not to get sucked in by it. But then I like the Twilight Zone.

The premise itself isn't original; aside from the Twilight Zone there are plenty of other sources, including *Poltergeist* and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," the one dealing with the whole "building over our own rotting waste" theme and the other dealing with the "happy community with huge dark secret" theme. But you can never repeat this puppy too often, I think, and the whole "planned community" thing gave it a very 90s twist. (The details were great--you notice of course that every damn family in that development drove a sport utility vehicle.) The Falls at Arcadia was probably inspired by Disney's Celebration, which has everything but the monster. (Celebration is a real town, lived in by real people, planned owned and operated by Disney. It is governed by just as many rules as The Falls and the authorities enforce them with just as much fascist zeal.) However, I've been into a lot of these planned communities and they are some scary shit. The worst was probably Circle C outside Austin, which tried to actually secede from Austin in order that their tax money should not go to fund anything that would benefit non-Circle C-ans. We spent about half an hour trying to find the faculty member who was hosting the annual Christmas party. Finally, driving around in the wrong section of the subdivision and despairing of ever finding the place, I said, "Well, we may as well just ask for directions...after all, we're white." Because if we hadn't been, I'm pretty sure we'd have been arrested before we got to that stage.

So as I said at the beginning of the episode, "Anyone who lives in a gated community deserves what he gets." They did a good job with the villagers, I thought--telegraphing the weirdness without getting too over-the-top. I especially liked Big Mike...poor Big Mike.

YOU FIT RIGHT IN HERE: Aside from the premise, the most fun thing about this episode was watching Mulder pretend to be normal. It was a performance almost worthy of the term "camp." I love it that they put him in a Lacoste shirt in that first scene, even if it is a little anachronistic. It's just as well that their undercover investigation required them to break the rules, though, because I doubt he could have stuck it long. My favorite moment in this episode was probably the shot of him sticking the pink flamingo up in his yard and going, "Bring it on!"

THE THRILL IS GONE: Actually, I think there was a lot less sexual tension in this episode than in some others we've seen this season. I suppose this is a commentary on bourgeois marriage--just sucks the excitement right out of a relationship. I was amused by all of that stuff but found some of it inconsistent. Their public married act I thought was right in character--Mulder taking the opportunity to needle Scully, and Scully getting him back without jeopardizing the investigation. "That's right, Poopy-head..." I was also highly amused by the playing-house banter ("Woman, get back in here and get me a sandwich!") But all the stuff about the toothpaste tube and the toilet seat, well, it's cute, but how many hotel rooms have these guys had to share together? Surely they already know all that stuff. Anyhow, in this episode it was all at the surface in the self-conscious ironic flirtatious banter, without much suggestion of anything real underneath. Except of course for that one moment where Mulder says, "Let's get it on!" and they both start snapping on the latex...OK, so it's gloves, but we know sublimation when we see it.

IN OTHER WORDS, GARBAGE: Well, that's pretty much what I thought of the "Tibetan thought form" explanation. Obviously the writers were not interested in actually getting into how this paranormal thing worked--they figured it would be enough to slap it on at the end and say nothing about it. "Of course he's got paranormal powers--he's been to Tibet!" The subtext, of course, is that the paranormal and weird lives elsewhere, and the way to make a giant garbage monster make sense to Americans is to explain it as having exotic origins. Just as in the Sherlock Holmes stories poison always comes from some exotic foreign clime, here as in the Chaco Chicken episode of a few years ago the monster is imported from some exotic "primitive" culture. (For those who might otherwise have missed this, Mike is watching a documentary on conformity in "primitive" societies right before he gets slimed by Garbage Man.) This, I think, is a cop-out. Because the whole point of this episode otherwise is that this monster is made in America. So why do we have to go to Tibet for the explanation? (Well, Chinua Achebe has a 20-page article about *Heart of Darkness* that answers this question, but never mind.)

Aside from that, as I said, I really liked this episode. Good characterization, good writing, and a premise that doesn't suck. What more can you ask for, really?

Next week: Dreamland Redux.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

Bad Dog

SHORT STORY: It's gonna take more than Andrew Robinson to save this dog.

Ye gods. Did they learn *nothing* from Teso Dos Bichos? Evi freakin' dently not. From the first sight of those red glowing eyeballs in the cargo hold to the final wrap-up in Mulder's office, this thing stank like a fresh pile of dog poop. Since the folks at Ten Thirteen appear to need it, I hereby offer a handy checklist of

TEN WAYS TO MAKE AN X-FILE EPISODE THAT DOESN'T SUCK

10. DON'T base the whole episode around a killer pet.

9. If you *must* base the whole episode around a killer pet, for God's sake NEVER show this killer pet on camera.

8. If you cannot stop yourself from showing the killer pet on camera, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES give the killer pet bright glowing red eyeballs and fangs.

7. A lame premise can be effectively compensated for with self-conscious irony and good characterization.

6. Having Scully immediately jump to the conclusion that Mulder's contact is romantically interested in him just because she is both female and weird, and then spend the rest of the episode warning him against her crafty wiles, does not count as good characterization.

5. Peppering your script with lame dog jokes does not count as self-conscious irony.

4. Under no circumstances, in any context, should anyone tell Scully she has "feminine wiles," unless that person then immediately receives a smack upside the head.

3. A lame premise does not stop being lame just because you slap an exotic mythical origin on it and repeat the words "trickster figure" a lot.

2. Concealing the actual killer pet via dark lighting and creative camera angles is a good idea.

1. Making the actual killer pet the *only goddamn thing* you can ever see clearly via overuse of dark lighting is a really BAD idea.

ARGH! The one moment of interest/amusement/pleasure I had during this episode was when I recognized Dettweiler as Garak without the makeup. After that, it was nothin' but suck. Robinson needs a better agent. Why not hold out for a role as one of the replacement conspiracy figures? (Oh, you better believe there's gonna be a replacement conspiracy...) Now *that* would be a call. Instead, he gets to be a werewolf. I can hear his agent calling him up now..."Hey Andy, guess what? I got you a spot on the X-Files! Yeah, you play a creepy guy...I know, I know, but get this: he's also a *killer dog*! How's that for range?...Hello? Hello?"

Let us never speak of it again,

The Plaid Adder

Milagro

Since this episode is all about metanarratives, I'm gonna do a meta review.

PLAIDDER: Good evening, Terrorists, and welcome to "Women On." Today we're going to be discussing last night's metafictional X-Files episode. Here to give us her insights on the fanfiction angle is Ophidia Varegia...

OPHIDIA: Good evening.

PLAIDDER: And here to articulate Liza's viewpoint is her partner Altaria...Tarey, thank you for coming.

ALTARIA: I'm delighted to be here.

PLAIDDER: And please welcome to the program our special guest Theamh ni hUlnach, all the way from Women on Fire...(OPHIDIA and ALTARIA clap encouragingly; THEAMH looks around at the cameras and crew with some suspicion) Theamh, thanks for coming.

THEAMH: Who are these people, and what am I doing here?

PLAIDDER: I figure since you practice a religion based on the power of language to change reality, you should weigh in on this...

THEAMH: All right, that's half the answer, now--

PLAIDDER: Ladies, let's start with the premise. Good idea? Big mistake?

OPHIDIA: What is this, a rhetorical question? We all know how you love this meta stuff, don't we, ladies? (Nods and murmurs from the other panelists) And especially since they have recently done a pretty good job with episodes that play around with narrative and the distinction between reality and fiction--

ALTARIA: Like the one on the boat, and the Smoking Man's memoirs episode, and "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"--

OPHIDIA: --so I think the premise has big time potential, especially given the fact that these writers and producers *know* there are hundreds of viewers out there trying to do the exact same thing to Mulder and Scully that Paget was doing.

PLAIDDER: Well, not *exactly* the same thing.

OPHIDIA: No, but you can see the entire premise as a commentary on fanfiction. Here is this guy who's trying to write a novel based on Scully and Mulder, and thinking that he can control both of them--especially, that he can manipulate Scully into having sex with who he wants her to have sex with, which in this case is the Stranger, a.k.a. Mary Sue. And on that level there are some nice touches. For instance, he invents a gruesome serial murderer, not because he's really that interested in serial killing but because he wants to meet Scully--just as fanfiction writers invent these paranormal murder plots partly because they're interested but mostly to get the chance to work with her. In fact, the apparent motivelessness of the murders aligns this plot with a lot of X-Files fanfiction, where the only point of the murder plot is to bring Scully and Mulder together.

THEAMH: Does she always talk this much?

OPHIDIA: Hey, I don't want to hear it from you. I would kill to be a first-person narrator.

PLAIDDER: Returning to the topic--

OPHIDIA: And the other nice thing is the balance between the power of "real life" and the power of the story, as regards Scully's character. He can't write the end he wants because it involves what fanfiction writers call "character rape"--making Scully do things that she would never in a million years do.

ALTARIA: If I might get a word in--

OPHIDIA: Of course.

ALTARIA: This right there is my entire problem. I think the whole episode was about character rape from start to finish.

OPHIDIA: But you only watched the first ten minutes.

ALTARIA: That is because I cannot stand watching Scully get stalked, and that's obviously all that this episode was about. The entire thing was nothing but an excuse to put her in danger and expose her to this sexualized and objectifying violence. That's why it sucked.

OPHIDIA: Don't you think "sucked" is going a little far? I mean, you gotta like the premise--

ALTARIA: Premise, schmemise. I'm sorry, but this isn't a serious attempt to explore all those meta issues that Plaidder finds so interesting--it's not about writing at all, it's just about sexploitation.

PLAIDDER: Would you want to elaborate on that--

THEAMH: Well of course it's not about writing.

PLAIDDER: Come again?

THEAMH: I can see why you expected me to like this episode, seeing as the thing is based on the central premise of shri--which is that if you can describe something in a way that tells the truth about it, you can make it happen. But you see in order to have this power you have to actually be a *good* writer, not just some creepy guy with no furniture. (Applause from the other side of the set)

OPHIDIA: You go, girl!

THEAMH: Thank you. I think that what--Altaria? (ALTARIA nods) is saying about it being sexploitation has to do with the quality of the writing. This man is not a dementedly intense genius--he's a hack. "She brushed an errant strand of Titian hair behind her ear"?

OPHIDIA: (chiming in) Yeah, somewhere in L.A. there's a drug store that's all out of Harlequin romances.

PLAIDDER: Oh come on, Theamh, you brush your hair behind your ears all the time--

THEAMH: My hair gets in my face, what can I tell you. (As PLAIDDER is about to interrupt) Oh, I know it's a convention to indicate that I'm pausing before answering or paying attention to something else--and frankly, if you could use it less often I don't think anyone would complain--

OPHIDIA: But "Titian"?

THEAMH: What is that, some synonym for "dyed"?

OPHIDIA: No--Titian was an Italian painter who apparently liked paiting redheaded women.

THEAMH: So he's seen too many of this guy's paintings?

OPHIDIA: That or he's read too many romance novels. "Titian" is one of those cliches--women in books like that have Titian hair like they have lithe, slim bodies or full, soft lips.

ALTARIA: It goes with all that bullshit about how Scully's hard and cold on the outside but underneath she's just a smoldering fire of passion and surrender waiting to be lit by the first guy who takes an interest. That's what I mean about character rape. If a man comes up to you in a church and starts telling you he's been obsessed with you for a way long time now, that's *not* a turn-on. That does not say "at last, the man has come who can make me a complete woman," it says, "I need to talk to someone about a temporary restraining order."

PLAIDDER: OK, I'll give you that--but wasn't some of the point of this that this guy had limited power to alter reality? Not enough to get her to actually have sex with him, but enough to make her talk to him twice?

ALTARIA: It's still character rape, and I still hate it.

OPHIDIA: And then Mulder--"a Hegelian act of self-justification"? Does this guy even know who Hegel is?

PLAIDDER: PRobably he's remembering back to Philosophy 117--

OPHIDIA: "Expeditiously violating the fourth amendment"? This is one of those people who thinks that the way to be a good writer is to prove that your vocabulary is bigger than everyone else's. He's a self-important pain in the ass who thinks affectation is equivalent to talent.

THEAMH: Exactly.

PLAIDDER: What affectation?

OPHIDIA: Who composes on a typewriter any more?

PLAIDDER: Well, if he can't afford furniture, probably he can't afford a laptop.

OPHIDIA: That's bullshit. If he's that into writing he pays for that first--before he plunks down a deposit for that apartment, which has gotta be in one of the DC area's pricier buildings. The typewriter is just there because it's part of this lingering romantic idea of the Genius Writer Up in his Garret banging away on his portable typewriter and living on coffee and bourbon. He doesn't think he can be a Real Writer unless he's typing out a manuscript on real paper--it's like Jack Kerouac and his friggin' scrolls, or that asshole quoted in your "Writer's Guide" about how he only uses rag paper and a fountain pen because he thinks it's the only way--

PLAIDDER: It's true, the episode perpetuates those myths about creativity, including the one that people who write have no real life, which frankly I get sick of seeing repeated--

ALTARIA: Especially that now instead of thinking of the Genius Writer Up in his Garret as merely self-destructive and suicidal, he's outer-directed. We've now merged the whole Shelley/Keats/Poe/Hemingway myth of the brilliant, doomed, loner writer with the "quiet loner" serial killer, and the result is this mess. A starving writer who's homicidal as well as suicidal.

PLAIDDER: Yes, well, speaking of homicide, what about this Stranger guy?

OPHIDIA: Oh PLEASE.

PLAIDDER: You gotta admit, they did work on the symbolism with the whole ripping-out-the-heart thing, and bringing in all the Sacred Heart religious imagery--

LYTHRIL: Well, I'm not letting *that* go by.

THEAMH: Who let her in here?

PLAIDDER: Not me.

LYTHRIL: You call this gleachinai a villain? What is this moron *doing* with all of those hearts?

PLAIDDER: I don't think that's what the writers were really interested--

LYTHRIL: Motiveless malignancy is boring as hell. It gives us all a bad name. This guy rips out three young, strong, healthy hearts and just *throws them out?*

PLAIDDER: Well, see, I think the point is that this guy is more interested in the act of heart-ripping than in the actual hearts themselves--

LYTHRIL: See, this is why the Dark One won't let men do magic. Murder is expensive. You don't go around ripping people's hearts out unless you plan to *do* something with them.

THEAMH: You don't go around ripping people's hearts out, period.

LYTHRIL: Says you.

PLAIDDER: But they do address that at the end, with that conversation between him and the Stranger--

LYTHRIL: Which is another sign that this man is nothing but a pathetic amateur.

PLAIDDER: The Stranger or Paget?

LYTHRIL: Both. He murders people without knowing why he does it? That's weak. Power comes from knowing who you are and *choosing* what you do. Sure, I'm evil, but that's because I know evil is going to get me what I want.

THEAMH: You're evil because you were made that way, Lythril.

LYTHRIL: Tarbhfnaa. Characters choose their authors, isn't that right?

PLAIDDER: No, that's a crock of pseudo-Freudian bullshit.

LYTHRIL: Of course you're going to say that. You wouldn't like to think it's me actually driving the story, would you?

OPHIDIA: (who has had her hand up for a long time) Hel-loooo...

PLAIDDER: All right, you're next. Listen, Lythril, it's true enough that there are elements of your character that go way back with me. And it's also true that I probably don't have a lot of control over that stuff or where it comes from. But it was my choice to make you, specifically, out of all that. Just like it was my choice to put you into a universe where there are a lot of women powerful enough to take you on.

THEAMH: Damn right.

OPHIDIA: Whereas this guy obviously is nothing *but* the Stranger. And that's just creepy.

ALTARIA: It's all just another male fantasy about taking a strong woman and turning her into a pile of mush, either by firing up her sexual boiler--

OPHIDIA: --figured oh so subtly by the basement incinerator, which as I remember made another appearance in the *other* episode where Scully is inexplicably attracted to a creepy stranger who's clearly bad news--

ALTARIA:--or by reducing her to a murder victim. Which is what happens at the end of the episode. OK, Scully gets to not have sex with him, and to get off a few gunshots off at the Stranger. But she still ends up lying there bloody on the floor, and she still ends up crying hysterically into Mulder's blazer at the end.

OPHIDIA: Yeah, I don't like the message, really. Because what it says is, "OK, we need to get them together, but hte only way to do it is to make Scully realize that she really *is* vulnerable, and she really *is* womanly." Bleeeeeeeeeeech.

THEAMH: But vulnerability *is* part of love.

LYTHRIL: Well, you would know about that, wouldn't you.

THEAMH: Shut up, Lythril.

ALTARIA: I understand what you're saying, Theamh, but you come out of a story written by a woman for women. This is a whole different deal.

PLAIDDER: Which brings me back to the character rape question. See, I think you may be being too hard on the writers here. Scully doesn't often act like this, granted. But Scully isn't like you guys. She's a corporate character, created by a whole slew of writers, producers, and actors. You can't expect her to be as coherent as you are.

ALTARIA: No, but I think we might reasonably expect that she would know a stalker when she sees one.

OPHIDIA: And not use him as an excuse to get to Mulder.

PLAIDDER: Well, folks, we're out of time. Thanks to everyone for coming. Tune in next week, where our topic will be "David Duchovny, Writer/Director: Should He Keep The Day Job?"

[credits]

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

The Manchurian Candidate

Deep Shiitake

In The Beginning

SHORT STORY: Here we go again.

WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY HOPE TO FIND?: Well, clearly they're trying to fire up a new conspiracy story along slightly different lines. This thing seemed to me kind of like tuna casserole--a bunch of stuff you happened to have lying around mixed together and reheated. It's not that it's not tasty...but it's also not that exciting. Here's how you make it:

Ingredients:

3 cups abandoned loose ends from previous seasons

1 cup inexplicable Krychek recurrence

2 pints primordial soup

1/3 cup character development

2 tablespoons Diana Fowley

1/4 teaspoon Cancer Man

1 cup grated Voiceover Cheese

Directions:

Cover bottom of baking dish with 1/2 cup Voiceover Cheese. This is available in most grocery chains but not everyone carries Scully Voiceover. You can use the cheaper and more widely available Mulder Voiceover but the taste is bland in comparison. (We advise against using Byers Voiceover, which in any case is available only in specialty stores.)

Drop the abandoned loose ends in large dollops on top of the cheese, leaving some space between them for commercials and other ingredients. Which ends you select will determine the flavor and consistency of your dish. For this example we're mainly using the telepathic-wunderkind plot line, but we're adding a dash of Anasazi for consistency and taste (Gibson, himself, is a little dry).

Mix the Krychek, character development, Diana Fowley, and Cancer Man together and sift. Drop this mixture into the dish between the dollops of loose end. Swirl together with a knife to give the illusion of coherence. Sprinkle remaining Voiceover Cheese over the top.

Bake at 350 for 50 minutes, basting every 10 minutes with the primordial soup. Serves 6.

YOU'RE BOTH LIARS: Well, as they say, to read some things you don't need telepathy. The one sort of neat thing about this episode was the way they constructed Scully and Mulder's trajectories. Both come to the same conclusions but through different avenues. Mulder is now working off his newfound telepathy, which is associated with the rubbing of the artifact (when Scully shows it to Barnes in the lab, Mulder has an episode, during which he evidently reads what it was that Barnes did with the body; when she flashes it to Skinner he has another episode and finds out that Skinner is colluding with Krychek, etc...). Scully is just working off her regular brain, but she still manages to find Sandos and determine that Skinner and Diana Fowley are Up To No Good. OK, she may never buy the aliens theory, but she does get herself out to the Ivory Coast to find whatever that damn thing is.

My favorite moment in the episode, probably, was that shot where she's listening to something and you hear the ringing in the background, and they make you think for a few minutes that she's starting to hear the same "message from the beyond" that Mulder is but it turns out she's hearing the alarm bell going off in the exit Sandos is trying to run out of. Someone put some thought into that. That makes me happy.

A PASSAGE FROM GENESIS: OK, is it me, or is anyone else a little impatient with this whole part of the plot? I wasn't able to get much of a look at Elbert's translation, but I was heard to observe, "That better not be the King James version." So how does it come to happen that it's the *Judeo-Christian* cosmology that was handed to us on a platter from the alien forefathers? How conveeeeeeeeenient.

You want to talk about fundamentalism--what we're seeing here is the ultimate fetishization of the text itself, letter over spirit and medium over message. The configuration of these symbols, and the rock into which they're carved, is supposed to be what holds the magic, not what these things actually mean or say. Witness the way the pieces start flying around of their own accord, and the fact that the rock itself is imbued with this cosmic radiation, which baffles the airport X-ray machines and drives Mulder nuts. This is a plot, bascially, about magic--but the magic has been materialized as a form of radiation. So I guess since it's magic, it shouldn't surprise me that it doesn't make any sense. Just for starters:

• Given that this text eventually became the foundation of Judeo-Christian cosmology, why is it written in Navaho? Since it's the Navaho who ended up preserving the "alien" language (so faithfully that Elbert can still produce a meaningful translation of a text many millions of years old), why didn't their culture preserve the story?
• I know the whole point of having the message be in Navajo and found on the Ivory Coast is supposed to bring us all together by indicating that all of our diversity springs from the same original source. That's touching. However, follow through with the implications of this. Once we get back to the source, what we find is Genesis. Given the rest of the plot, it would make a lot more sense for that thing to be a version of the Navajo cosmogeny. But the audience wouldn't recognize that story as important, so the writers put ours on the slab. Which says, basically, "The Judeo-Christian tradition got it right." Somehow everyone else ended up playing a multicentury game of telephone and got it all garbled. I find this, well, sort of pukeworthy.
• This whole plot line, incidentally, is lifted from the TNG episode "The Chase," in which Picard discovers a piece of a message that a Cardassian, a Klingon and a Romulan are also looking for; when they all finally cooperate and put it together, it becomes a holographic message from our ancestors about why the universe is lousy with humanoids. But in that plot--cheesy as it finally became--at least the "message from the beyond" thing was rendered plausible because the message was not written in a human language but in something mroe "universal" (it's fuzzy, but I know it involved either computer language or genetic coding--the point is, it was something that any culture that had developed scientific technology would recognize and be able to interpret). Here...we have magic squares and radiation.

WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN HIS APARTMENT?: God, we can only hope he was too wacked out from the effects of the telepathy radiation to be taken advantage of by Diana "Whole Lotta Evil" Fowley.

I FOUND HIM IN THE STAIRWELL: Well, no, Krychek found him. Krychek finds everything.

I mean, I'm sure you guys are happy, and that's something. I notice he is back to being the Angel of Death. Again, I ask, who is he working for?

Of course, since Diana is lying through her teeth about what happened, you all will be writing all kinds of fanfiction about exactly how Mulder got back to that apartment. We saw Krychek walk past him, so it was probably Krychek who got him back there. Whether he was really the one who brought him home and so tenderly tucked the covers under his chin is an open question. And in Mulder's hyperviolent super-toadally-strong state I'm sure they could have had a lot of fun together...but I don't wanna go there. That's y'all's job.

So, it was sort of a letdown, although I wouldn't call it a giant black hole of suckiness. But I don't have very high hopes for this whole line. It just reeks of the MSU approach (Making Shit Up).