The X-Files - "Beyond the Sea" (season 1, episode 13)

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 January 7, 1994/written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, directed by David Nutter): Yesterday I wondered when we'd finally get to Scully's backstory; "Beyond the Sea" provides an answer in the first few seconds as her father Captain William Scully (Don Davis) jovially pokes his head into a Christmas tree composition, before bidding his daughter goodnight. There's an awkward moment as he departs, a sense that in this mostly contented family some tensions and doubts go unspoken. That night, Scully awakens from the couch where she's dozed off to see that her father is still in the room, sitting across from her and silently mouthing something. When the phone rings he's gone, and her mother is on the line with bad news: William has passed away. Throughout episode 13, images of William will flicker through Scully's consciousness: the vision of him in that chair, a glimpse of his voice or face, and most chillingly, his unusually devious head atop an orange-jumpsuited death row convict. The convict is Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif), a psychopathic murderer whose psychic claims even the usually credulous Mulder discounts...but Scully does not.

Mulder is convinced that Boggs has orchestrated a recent kidnapping and that an accomplice is holding two hostages somewhere until Boggs - offering clues via manufactured visions (based on evidence he already knows) - gets his imminent death sentence commuted into life imprisonment. Alternately manipulative and haunted, a clever fox and a terrified rabbit, Boggs cuts quite a figure. When he begins channeling Scully's dad, she keys into his frequency and follows some of his enigmatic hints (a waterfall and angel appear before her not in nature but as a neon sign and urban statue near the killer's lair in Raleigh). The FBI learns that Lucas Jackson Henry (Lawrence King-Phillips) is the culprit and one victim is rescued before he escapes with the other, but Mulder remains wary even after William predicts the circumstances of Mulder's near-death experience. Scully, on the other hand, begins to travel down Boggs' rabbit hole in an effort not only to save the serial killer's next victims but to commune with her father from "beyond the sea." Boggs dangles this reward in front of her twice.

First he teases and then withholds a message while pressuring Scully to petition the governor for his life (she tries and fails, but Boggs appreciates the effort, and even offers a warning which will save her own life in a few hours). Later, after Scully has successfully saved the remaining hostage and chased down the killer, Boggs invites her to his execution, saying that he'll finally facilitate William's voice in his final moments. But as the witnesses are revealed, the gas is released, and the ghosts of Boggs' victims gather around him, Scully is not present. She's at Mulder's bedside, drawn to the living warmth between her and her partner rather than the dying agony of a man who can use his own demons to assuage hers. When Mulder asks her why she doesn't want to know if her father was proud of her, she says she does know. When Mulder asks how, Scully smiles and echoes her mother Margaret (Sheila Larkin) at the funeral, answering, "Because he was my father."

My Response:

The X-Files - "Fire" (season 1, episode 12)

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 December 17, 1993/written by Chris Carter; directed by Larry Shaw): "Fire" is both a literal and figurative title for this episode, as Mulder contemplates re-igniting a passionate romance with Phoebe Green (Amanda Pays) while they both track down a mysterious arsonist. Phoebe is an old flame from his Oxford days, now working for Scotland Yard and alongside the Marsdens (Dan Lett and Laurie Paton), an aristocratic family that has been threatened by the killer before. As is often the case with The X-Files, mystery is eschewed in the opening minutes. We meet our villain (Mark Sheppard) as he's impersonating a gardener, apparently using a combination of telekinesis and rocket fuel-doused clothing to light a man on fire in the driveway of his own country estate. Later, this young man insinuates himself into the Marsdens' milieu by posing as the caretaker of the Cape Cod estate where they'll be staying. This also doubles as a clever way for him to "paint" their entire home - in rocket fuel. When the Marsdens attend a soiree in Boston, their childrens' hotel room goes up in flames and "Bob" the caretaker (stepping in for a driver he himself has killed) is on hand to rescue them and make himself a hero. His goal seems to be impressing Mrs. Marsden, an echo of Mulder's own struggle to navigate Phoebe's overtures and manage his own desires...but, also, it turns out, an echo of Phoebe's own behavior (Mulder discovers she's been carrying on an affair with Mr. Marsden). Heartache gives way to a hotter sensation as Mulder and Scully finally figure out who "Bob" is (a Brit named Cecil L'Ively), and race to save the Marsden boys and capture Cecil after he torches himself and, miraculously, survives (and even begins to regenerate his skin). Kept in a high-security isolation chamber, the human flamethrower is last seen in "Fire"'s closing minutes, severely burnt but still able to grin as he asks for a cigarette.

My Response:

The X-Files - "Eve" (season 1, episode 11)

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 December 10, 1993/written by Kenneth Biller & Chris Brancato, directed by Fred Gerber): Teena Simmons' (Sabrina Krievens') father has been killed in Greenwich, Connecticut; two puncture wounds on his neck suggest exsanguination, or slow draining of blood. He's found sitting on a swingset. So is Mr. Reardon in Marin County, California whose time of death matches Mr. Simmons'. Mulder and Scully visit the west coast crime scene after Teena has been kidnapped and they're shocked to see a girl who looks identical to her open the Reardons' door. This is Cindy Reardon (Erika Krievins), the product of in vitro fertilization supervised by Dr. Sally Kendrick (Harriet Harris), a disgraced fertility clinic supervisor who apparently tampered with her patients' ova in eugenic experiments. Deep Throat fills in some gaps for Mulder, noting a Cold War program called "the Litchfield experiments" in which U.S. intelligence tried to manufacture supersoldiers with extra chromosomes that lead to abnormally high intelligence, strength...and psychosis. The boys are called Adam, the girls are called Eve (interestingly, we never meet any Adams in Episode 11 - is a follow-up in store?).

At an institution for the criminally insane, Mulder and Scully meet Eve-6 (also Harris, leading them to understand that Dr. Kendrick, or Eve-7, was one of these original clones). It turns out that Eve-8 is the one kidnapping the two girls created by Eve-7; squirreling them away at a motel in Port Reyes, she explains her purpose. She knows that they killed their fathers, which the girls readily admit (asked how they knew that one another existed, Teena and Cindy - or rather, Eve-9 and Eve-10 - explain, "We just knew"). Eve-8 hopes to cure them of their unstable homicidal tendencies, but they've outsmarted her, poisoning her drink and leading her to die just before the FBI agents burst in to "rescue" the two children. Playing their new guardians for fools as they share conspiratorial smirks, the two Eves request a rest stop where one of them poisons Mulder's and Scully's sodas. Only when Mulder accidentally spots the residue of the same extract that killed Eve-8 does he realize who the culprits have been all along. Following a chase through a truck stop, the girls are captured and sent to the same institution as Eve-8. As the episode closes, Dr. Kendrick/Eve-7 arrives to rescue her progeny/siblings; curious, she wonders how they knew she'd come get them. Smiling as ominously as ever, the latest Eves - having apparently orchestrated all of their actions through this episode to lead to this point - answer, once again, "We just knew."

My Response:

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: