The X-Files - "Fallen Angel" (season 1, episode 10)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on November 19, 1993/written by Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa, directed by Larry Shaw): Meet Max Fenig (Scott Bellis). It takes the episode eleven minutes to put him onscreen inside a detention pen, following a mysterious crash in Wisconsin, a fatal attack on a sheriff's deputy by some unseen creature, and Mulder's rogue infiltration of the crash site before he's captured. As Mulder's temporary cellmate, the shaggy-haired, conspiracy-minded Max seems like he might just be a one-scene character, indicative of the wider alien obsession that possessed America at this time, the flip-side of Mulder's more official investigations. Instead, Max keeps showing up, parking his silver trailer - full of high-tech spy equipment - in the lot outside the FBI's motel room (Scully shows up to scold and then reluctantly collaborate with Mulder). Mulder notices some strange markings behind Max's ear, matching several alien abductees in his files. He takes a protective, even tender, stance toward the young epileptic - and possibly schizophrenic - man, believing that he may inadvertently help them discover the invisible extraterrestrial force terrorizing the area, burning several soldiers to death as Col. Calvin Henderson (Marshall Bell) tries to track it down. Sure enough, Mulder and Max are attacked by this being in a warehouse, with Max eventually raised in the air, glowing and convulsing before both he and the other life form disappear. Mulder is harshly reprimanded, and an expulsion from the FBI is imminent. Instead, a powerful force intervenes on his behalf: Deep Throat. This intervention is not due to a rugged insider/outsider's affinity for the rebellious agent but to a more pernicious calculation. Not a secret turncoat at all, Deep Throat has been using Mulder, believing that it's safer to feed him some limited information and keep him working for the Bureau than to have him on the outside. "Keep your friends close," he tells another frustrated official, "and your enemies closer."

My Response:

The X-Files - "Space" (season 1, episode 9)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on November 12, 1993/written by Chris Carter; directed by William Graham): Lt. Col. Marcus Aurelius Belt (Ed Lauter) has been all over the space program: one of its earliest pilots, an astronaut who conducted an iconic space walk, a NASA official who parried press inquiries about a Mars mission in the seventies, and finally head of the shuttle program trying to troubleshoot some technical mishaps and PR risks. Mulder, an astronaut aficianado, has followed Belt's career since childhood but there's something he doesn't know about his hero. As he floated outside his craft years earlier, Belt encountered a kind of interstellar phantom whose face resembles a tectonic feature on Mars' landscape. For decades afterwards he's been haunted by nighttime transformations in which his face becomes grayish and stretched out, a physical expression of his consciousness becoming agonizingly subsumed in another being. As a shuttle launch is aborted and a follow-up encounters grave breakdowns in orbit, Mulder and Scully must figure out what Belt is hiding from them, or rather what the monster within is hiding from him: repeated sabotage of shuttle parts leading to various setbacks or disasters, including the Challenger explosion. Mission Control communications commander Michelle Generoo (Susanna Thompson), concerned for her fiance on the present shuttle mission, is the one who set the FBI agents on this path. As a consequence, she experiences a violent car accident in which the space creature's face swoops in on her during a nighttime drive. Later, as Belt fights through his possession right before their eyes, struggling to help them despite his agony, the team finally discovers how the astronauts can make it back safely to earth. Later that night, Belt leaps to his death from a hospital room, guided by the phantom that has tormented him for decades. Mulder and Scully honor Belt at his star-draped graveside: he was a hero and villain trapped in the same body, tormented by what he encountered when he charged forward into the unknown.

My Response:

The X-Files - "Ice" (season 1, episode 8)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on November 5, 1993/written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, directed by David Nutter): "Ice" opens like a conventional nineties action film, with the buff bare-chested combatants (Ken Kirzinger, a stunt coordinator for the series, and Sonny Surowiec) facing off in an iconic gun-to-each-other's head pose, against a classic generic-science-station backdrop straight out of Goldeneye (the video game, anyway). Then, a twist: in mutual, silent agreement, they each place the guns to their own temples and pull the triggers. Prior to this suicide pact, one of the men, the last of a geophysicist group stationed way out on the Alaskan frontier to drill deep into a glacier, records an ominous message which the FBI eventually watches in the safe, cozy confines of Washington, D.C. As static envelops the frame, the soon-to-be-dead man mutters, "We are not...who we are." Scully and Mulder join three scientists and burly pilot Bear (Jeff Kober) to form a dirty half-dozen investigating the source of the transmission. The scientists are physician Dr. Hodge (Xander Berkeley, quintessential "suspicious official"/professional prick character actor in the nineties and zeroes),  the goofy, geeky he's-gonna-die-isn't-he? geologist Dr. Murphy (Steve Hytner, who played Bania on Seinfeld - "Gold, Jerry, gold!"), and toxicologist Dr. De Silva (Felicity Huffman, whom I dimly recognized but was still surprised to see credited).

At the site, they are attacked by a dog and discover a parasitical worm moving under its skin. Studying the strange creatures, which may derive from a wayward asteroid frozen many millennia ago, the team realizes that this parasite ends up controlling the victim's behavior and forcing them into violent, eventually homicidal confrontations. Bear is the first to be taken over and eventually killed when the worm is removed, meaning that the others are stuck there until rescue can arrive. Studying the creature and eyeing each other suspiciously, the team descends into further infighting when Murphy is discovered with his throat slit. A solution is discovered: if a second worm is introduced into the host, the two parasites will kill each other and then be flushed out of the host's body. De Silva and Hodge try to force this treatment on Mulder, convinced that he is the host/killer. (Scully is initially convinced as well, but after an intense heart-to-heart, one of the most dramatic moments between these two partners in the young show, she believes his innocence). At the last moment, everyone realizes that in fact De Silva is the host, and they are able to force the second worm into her ear, saving her, them, and possibly the human race.

My Response:

Patreon update #23: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Part 5 / film in focus: The Wrestler (+ my 2016 video essays, Anna Karina & more)

From now until the finale, my Twin Peaks rewatch will deal with one episode at a time. Nonetheless, this podcast is still packed with analysis and reflection. Part 5 was a favorite at the time, and it still seems really rich and underrated to me. I also revisit The Wrestler for the first time in years (I think this was my second viewing) - now it feels almost like a period piece, in addition to its other qualities. Further topics include my earliest experiences with The X-Files (or what I thought was X-Files), the last batch of political podcast recommendations, feedback on The Devil Rides Out and the two-hour premiere of Twin Peaks' third season, video essays I created during a particularly active period in 2016, and (related to that last subject) the onscreen relationship of Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard.

Episode 23: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Part 5 / film in focus: The Wrestler (+ my 2016 video essays, Anna Karina & more)

Line-up for Episode 23

INTRO

WEEKLY UPDATE/recent posts: finished Veronica Mars series, started X-Files series (memory of trying to watch an X-Files episode as a kid)

TWIN PEAKS REFLECTIONS Return Rewatch Pt. 5

The feel & structure of the episode

Buenos Aires

Twin Peaks - Cooper investigation/Becky/Double R franchise/Frank's family/Jacoby/Roadhouse/Drugs

FBI in South Dakota - Yankton/Buckhorn

Mr. C

Las Vegas - Dougie's home life/Dougie's debt/Dougie at work/Assassination plot/Mitchums/Jade & the key

Spirit World - Red Room

Character introductions & re-introductions/screentime rankings/ timeline of events

Coffee, pie, and donuts

Lodge lore

Laura Palmer

FILM IN FOCUS: The Wrestler

OTHER TOPICS: Political podcast recommendations

LISTENER FEEDBACK: The Devil Rides Out, Twin Peaks Pt. 1 & 2

OPENING THE ARCHIVE: "Paris, Portmeirion, and Other Planets" (December 2015 - April 2016), this week's highlight: The Passion of Anna K. video essay

OUTRO

BECOME A PATRON

The X-Files - "Ghost in the Machine" (season 1, episode 7)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on October 29, 1993/written by Alex Gansa & Howard Gordon, directed by Jerrold Freedman): In the executive suite of Eurisco Software, three shocking (in at least one case, literally!) events occur. CEO Benjamin Drake (Tom Butler) fires the company's founder Brad Wilczek (Rob LaBelle), who threatens him in fairly unambiguous terms on his way out the door. Benjamin then writes a memo advising the shutdown of the Central Operating System, Brad's controversial pet program. And finally the big boss is killed when the building itself, run by the COS, turns against him. After being trapped in the restroom, he is electrocuted by the card-reader and there the FBI case begins. Mulder and Scully are invited to join the investigation by Jerry Lamana (Wayne Duvall), Mulder's old partner who needs the exiled agent's expertise but also wants to take credit for his work. Jerry becomes a martyr rather than a nuisance when he follows Brad back to Eurisco headquarters and is murdered by a rogue elevator. Brad is sitting at the computer's controls when all this unfolds, leading to both his arrest and his blackmail by the Defense Department, who wants to use his AI program as a high-risk weapon. When Mulder and Scully return to the office with specific instructions from Brad as to how they can destroy his life's work (which potentially threatens human society with obliteration), they are confronted by Claude Peterson (Blu Mankuma), yet another bureaucratic rival of the FBI with his own organization's interests at heart (in this case, his apparently working on behalf of the Pentagon). After climbing through a Jurassic Park-like air duct - and narrowly avoiding being sliced and diced by an industrial fan - Scully is able to hold off Claude while Mulder destroys the machine and, with it, whatever ghostly intelligence operates inside. Mulder also meets again with Deep Throat, who cavalierly (and cynically) suggests that Brad will sell out to the U.S. government, and then disappear off the face of the earth. More disconcerting is what reappears. We see a blinking light on the mainframe flare up again as Peterson mutters that he'll get the computer working again "even if it kills me." Be careful what you wish for.

My Response:

The X-Files - "Shadows" (season 1, episode 6)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on October 22, 1993/written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, directed by Michael Katleman): This may be less a story of Mulder and Scully than a story of Lauren Kyte (Lisa Waltz), secretary to a Philadelphia businessman who has recently committed suicide. Lauren was very close to Howard Grave (actor - or simply archive photo - unknown), more like a daughter than an employee. This is probably due to the fact that Howard lost a daughter twenty-five years earlier, forgetting to lock the door to a swimming pool in which the toddler drowned. She would have been the same age as Lauren, and so Howard - even from beyond the grave - is determined not to let such tragedy strike again. Lauren is haunted by a protective spirit that uses psychokinetic energy to kill several would-be murderers, wreak vengeance on anyone who threatens her, and expose a treasonous plot involving an Iranian terrorist group's connection to Howard's business (which fulfilled defense contracts until it lost a Pentagon deal and turned toward other sources of revenue). Scully is, as always, skeptical that this national-security intrigue has a supernatural element, but Mulder is present for several poltergeist assaults, including the climactic confrontation with Howard's successor Robert Dorlund (Barry Primus), which reveals the telltale floppy disk hidden behind the executive office's wallpaper and will presumably confirm that Robert actually had Howard killed. Lauren, meanwhile, flees to the Midwest in the hope that Howard's presence won't follow her. When a supervisor's coffee cup trembles on her desk after she's snippy with Lauren, the relocated young woman has to wonder if her old boss has followed her to a new job...and whether she really minds after all.

My Response:

The X-Files - "The Jersey Devil" (season 1, episode 5)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on October 8, 1993/written by Chris Carter, directed by Joe Napolitano): Here's an episode that splits the difference between the show's penchant for urban intrigue, with human monsters haunting a decaying metropolis, and rural menace, with dangerous creatures lurking in the eerie woods. By setting itself in southern New Jersey, "The Jersey Devil" can shuttle Mulder and Scully (when she's not racing back to D.C. for a godson's birthday or a date with a divorced dad) between the radically different locales of Atlantic City and the Pine Barrens. In the city, which infamously fronts its Gotham City sprawl with a shiny Disneyland boardwalk, Mulder clashes with the hostile, sneaky Detective Thompson (Wayne Tippit) and goes undercover in a homeless community to spot a mysterious nighttime predator. In the woods, the isolated setting of perhaps the most celebrated episode of The Sopranos, Mulder converses with the helpful if vaguely sinister Ranger Pete Boulle (Michael MacRae) about the human-yet-not-human creature(s?) accused of attacking several victims over a long span of years. The object of this diverse investigation is, yes "the Jersey devil" - as it turns out, a naked woman prowling around both her natural habitat and the back alleys of Atlantic City (how she travels, unseen, from the Barrens to AC is never really explained, unless I missed something). Is she a woman born in civilization who wandered into the woods and regressed to a more animal-like state? Or, given that another cannibal was killed in Pinewood National Park many years earlier (we witness this via flashback at the start of episode 5), is she part of an unbroken chain, a quasi-human cannibal species that can trace its roots back to the supposedly extinct Neanderthal clan? Incidentally, even though archaeological excavations have suggested that Neanderthals were in fact cannibals, some historians believe that homo sapiens systematically hunted and devoured Neanderthals themselves - a dark secret history that lends additional weight to the fate of this Jersey devil, and corresponds with the many ominous ruminations of Dr. Diamond (Gregory Sierra), Scully's old Anthropology professor who eagerly helps the FBI in their hunt for a missing link.

My Response:

The X-Files - "Conduit" (season 1, episode 4)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on October 1, 1993/written by Alex Gansa & Howard Gordon, directed by Daniel Sackheim): After an excursion into the city for a series of mutant murders, we're back on familiar ground for the series: small towns and UFOs. There is a possible alien abduction during a camping trip at a Midwestern national park, and Mulder is obsessed with pursuing the case. The reason is obvious, as Division Chief Scott Blevins (Charles Cioffi) explains to Scully: Mulder's sister disappeared under similar circumstances and the missing girl, Ruby Morris (Taunya Dee), has a little brother Kevin (Joel Palmer) who is left behind and haunted by her absence. Indeed, when Mulder and Scully arrive at the Morris home near Sioux City, Kevin is staring at the television and jotting down the 1's and 0's transmitted to him by the seemingly random static. Mulder has his own explanation for the case's importance, despite its obvious emotional resonance - Ruby's mother (Carrie Snodgress, who played one of the commune members in Easy Rider) had her own close encounter at the lake with a Girl Scout troop many years ago, and the site is apparently a notorious hotbed of UFO activity. Continuing the show's theme of spy/defense bureaucratic rivalry, NSA agents threaten Mulder and seize the boy's drawing as evidence. But it's Mulder and Scully who discover what the 1's and 0's add up to: a gigantic sketch of Ruby's face. They return to the lake just in time for Ruby's mysterious return, but her memory is foggy and her mother repels the agent's inquiry (rather rudely, given the fact that Mulder saved her little boy's life from a gang of bikers). As the episode ends, Scully listens to a recording of a therapeutic session where Mulder's psychiatrist asks him if he believes that his sister is still alive. There's a long pause as the screen cuts to black, and while it might seem poetically appropriate for us to never hear the ambivalent agent's reply, his final line is even better: "I want to believe."

My Response:

The X-Files - "Squeeze" (season 1, episode 3)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on September 24, 1993/written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, directed by Harry Longstreet): I mentioned last time that eventually the series would need to look for different locations than quiet all-American towns where danger lurks and sure enough, "Squeeze" re-directs us into a very urban milieu. Scully and (reluctantly) Mulder are brought on board an investigation by a Baltimore FBI office, led by the smarmy, nakedly ambitious Tom Colton (Donal Logue), an old colleague of Scully's. This is a good way to demonstrate her loyalty to her new "spooky" partner, as she takes Mulder's side against friends and higher-ups who mock his paranormal inclinations. This case gives them plenty of fodder as attention focuses on Eugene Victor Tooms (Doug Hutchinson), a calm, quiet young man whose polygraph checks out - except that two particular questions make him nervous. Those questions revolve around the commission of earlier crimes...decades earlier in fact, some as old as the early twentieth century, long before Eugene should have been born. Using long, eerily stretched-out fingerprints and old newspaper clippings, Mulder becomes convinced that Tooms is an ageless mutant who can extend his body to squeeze through narrow spaces. While the other agents laugh, we in the audience are given a privileged glimpse of him extending down chimneys and through ducts, ripping out the livers of innocent people; eventually Mulder and Scully will discover his lair in a derelict old building and battle him when he sneaks into Scully's own apartment. The episode ends with Tooms "safely" imprisoned inside a walled cell but when a guard delivers his meal and leaves the tiny trap door open, Tooms stares intently at that impossibly narrow little space...and displays a chilling smile.

My Response:

The X-Files - "Deep Throat" (season 1, episode 2)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on September 17, 1993/written by Chris Carter, directed by Daniel Sackheim): Another week with the X-Files investigating team, another trip to a slice of quiet Americana, where ordinary people are experiencing extraordinary, inexplicable occurrences. This time Mulder and Scully are investigating the mental breakdowns of several test pilots near a top secret Air Force base. The latest, Col. Robert Budahas (Andrew Johnston), was taken into custody after hijacking a vehicle, locking himself inside his home, and breaking out into strange rashes. When he returns, his wife (Gabrielle Rose) is horrified - he looks the same, but something fundamental is missing. "That's not my husband!" she screams, and sure enough he can't remember much of anything about his piloting experience. Sneaking onto the base with the help of a couple of goofy stoner teens (Monica Parker and Seth Green, who seems even more 90s here than he usually does), our agents witness strange flight patterns; Mulder begins to believe that the Air Force has been developing advanced technology using pieces from the downed spacecraft at Roswell. However, nobody wants the FBI around and eventually Mulder is snatched and Scully is forced to hold an undercover military operative at gunpoint in order to discover where he went. A befuddled Mulder is released to her, his memory erased like the pilots', and the agents return to headquarters even more uncertain about what they've seen than they were in the last episode. Meanwhile, the episode takes its title from a minor, foreboding character who tries to warn Mulder off the case. At the end of the episode, he reappears, cryptically confirming "they have been here for a long, long time."

My Response:

Patreon update #22: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Parts 3 & 4 / film in focus: Swing Time (& more) and preview of New Mexico Townspeople character study

What a cheerful bunch! This was a fun image to compile. After a series of somber and/or surreal films in focus, a Hollywood musical comedy swoops in to lighten the mood. Likewise, this week's Twin Peaks pair (the last time two episodes will be conjoined until the finale) has a fairly comedic flair - alongside some genuinely trippy material, of course. The Return Rewatch continues with Parts 3 and 4, followed by my reflections on Swing Time, some more podcast recommendations, and a tour through a Neon Genesis Evangelion-heavy archive period. By the way, if you're wondering why I haven't yet shared your comments on the last episode (or previous ones), worry not; I wasn't able to incorporate them into listener feedback this week, but they'll definitely be read next time around. Also, apologies for the rough quality of the "podcast recommendations" section once again. See you again next week for more Twin Peaks, and a bit of Mickey Rourke.

The New Mexico Townspeople (May "See the Future" Preview #3 - 2nd tier reward)

Episode 22: Twin Peaks season 3 rewatch - Parts 3 & 4 / film in focus: Swing Time (& more)

Line-up for Episode 22

INTRO

WEEKLY UPDATE/recent posts: Veronica Mars series

WEEKLY UPDATE/Patreon: 2nd tier biweekly preview - New Mexico townspeople

 TWIN PEAKS REFLECTIONS Return Rewatch Pt. 3 & 4
The feel & structure of the episode
New York
Twin Peaks -Cooper investigation/Jacoby/Roadhouse/Drugs/standalone scenes
FBI in South Dakota - Philadelphia/Yankton/Buckhorn
Mr. C
Las Vegas - assassination plot/meeting Dougie/Dougie at home/Mitchums
Spirit World - Red Room/Purple World Tower
Character introductions & re-introductions/screentime rankings/timeline of events
Coffee, pie, and donuts 
Lodge lore 
Laura Palmer

FILM IN FOCUS: Swing Time

OTHER TOPICS: Political podcast recommendations

OPENING THE ARCHIVE: "A World Without Uncertainty" (August - December 2015), this week's highlight: Side by Side video essay on Neon Genesis Evangelion & Twin Peaks

OUTRO

BECOME A PATRON

The X-Files - "Pilot" (season 1, episode 1)

Welcome to my viewing diary for The X-Files. Every day, except Saturday, I will offer a short review of another episode until I finish the first season. Future entries will cover the remaining seasons, breaking to review the feature films where chronologically appropriate, and eventually reach the recent miniseries. I have seen very few X-Files episodes, though I was utterly fascinated with the concept as a child, so for the most part this will be a first-timer's perspective. There will be NO spoilers.

Story (aired on September 10, 1993/written by Chris Carter, directed by Robert Mandel): Naturally, it begins with aliens. Or so it seems. Actually, we're not sure of the exact nature of the phenomenon onscreen although the bright light and the victim's upward gaze scream extraterrestrial. More than anything, the X-Files cold open recalls the 1990 TV series Twin Peaks (as the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast has pointed out), specifically the seventeenth regular episode in which a character is consumed by a bright light at night in the middle of the woods, with a mysterious figure silhouetted in the glare. The second scene recalls the Twin Peaks pilot, with a dead girl discovered in a Pacific Northwest landscape by local authorities who knew her personally; as the FBI is eventually called in, we suspect that something more than mortal foul play may be at work. The final scene of The X-Files, however, calls back to another source: Raiders of the Lost Ark. In this shot a government official, who will come to be known as the Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis), places some crucial evidence in a filing system tucked away in the bowels of the Pentagon. As he walks toward the exit, we pull back to observe the vast space, assuming that many other mysterious, possibly supernatural fragments are stored in this secret room...and how many others are there like it? Between that first sequence - an uncanny visitation out in the middle of Nowhere, America - and that second - a whisper of conspiratorial intrigue at the heart of power - we have the full flavor of The X-Files. The most important elements are, of course, absent from these rather impersonal images, though they're onscreen most of the rest of the time. Skeptical Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and eager-to-believe Agent "Spooky" Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) are united for the first time early in the episode, as the FBI assigns them on their first mission. Right away we feel the friction, camaraderie, and chemistry that will make them a compulsively watchable duo for the subsequent seasons.

In Bellefleur, Oregon, they discover an orangutan-like cadaver in the victim's coffin, with an unidentifiable object up its nose (this is what's hidden away in that warehouse-like room in the final shot). The agents learn that a mini-Bermuda Triangle exists on a small patch of highway near town; nine-minute gaps cannot be accounted for and a bright light descends upon them at the disorienting moment of time-loss. Mulder and Scully realize that four members of a 1989 high school class have died in this strange environment, while Billy Miles (Zachary Ansley), a seemingly comatose classmate, is their probable killer. The frightened, nose-bleeding Theresa Newman (Sarah Koskoff) provides dramatic tension as his next likely victim. Somehow both are saved, though the climax was a bit muddy to me. Did the light cease because it was "caught in the act" by Mulder and Billy's detective dad (Leon Russom)? Or was their presence a mere coincidence? (The final info dump has Billy explaining that "the tests didn't work.") Specific answers remain vague, and even with what we ourselves have witnessed, we can't be sure Billy's outlandish explanation is correct. The episode also teases pieces of a larger mythology, through the Smoking Man and Mulder's memory of his own sister's alien abduction. For the moment, we remain on the outer fringe of the paranormal.

My Response: