Up until last night, I would have sworn that I had watched every last episode of The X-Files. I thought I knew every last bit of trivia, all the funny lines, and all of the critically important shifts Scully and Mulder's characters had taken.
LAst night, All Things was on the SciFi channel, and it was almost like I was watching an entirely different series. Suddenly, the forever stoic, consistently skeptical Scully was a home-wrecker, and shaky about her faith in science. Maybe this is the pivotal episode that started all the "I believe in extreme possibilities" rants from Scully later in the series. Maybe this is the one point that I missed over the years, when I watched the episodes out of chronological order, and couldn't understand how Scully began taking over Mulder's mission for herself.
At any rate, let's go over the reasons why I shouldn't like this episode. One, Scully, through a weird twist of happenstance, finds that the man she once had an affair with is in the hospital with serious heart problems, and his daughter makes it blatantly obvious that she blames Scully for the emotional devastation the affair caused the family.
For as far back as I can remember Scully has always been the one with the high moral barometer in any situation, so it's a little difficult to digest that she would be so judgmental of, say, Skinner in Avatar.
Two, Scully learns that this man has spent the last ten years of his life living in D.C., in order to be near her again. How could she have not known about this before? She's an FBI agent, for crying out loud. She has access to all kinds of information an just about anyone she chooses, but she never figures this out before? And he never tried to contact her before? A little unbelievable.
Three, at one point, Scully finds herself wandering into a Buddist Temple, and having a big vision of her personal choices and circumstances. Now, remember, this is Scully, who's trademark is a golden cross pendant became a big symbol for her over the years. And God only knows how many times she's talked about her faith in miracles and Catholic mythology. So how can she so easily drop a lifelong faith in Christianity to suddenly be in awe of Taoist mysticism? This leads to the fourth point...Scully, after having this big epiphany, brings in a mystic healer to help her former boyfriend, and then tells him that this ritual may have saved his life. Wh-wh-what?? Seriously? Our Scully???? But now that I've explained why I shouldn't like this episode, I need to explain why I liked it so much.
It's beautifully directed, there are great, deep moments of clarity for Scully, that probably had never really been explored before, and, despite my personal love of the fact that she is the moralist of the show, it makes Scully seem more human.
There were some moments in the show that made me think I was watching Six Feet Under, and maybe that tone drew me into this installment. Yes, there's liberal use of music, and there's the recurring theme of one of the characters chasing someone who seems to be leading them to a place of significance. However, I do think it adds to the story, rather than being distracting. I'm not a huge fan of Scully or Mulder's voiceovers in episodes, but this one is short, and more to the point.
(For those who aren't familiar with X-Files and Gillian Anderson history, there was a HUGE following for Anderson after she recorded an erotic poem underscored by some electronica artist, and I think a lot of the episodes that used Scully in voice-over banked on that end of the fan spectrum.) Sure, it's not typical X-Files, and there are a lot of moments that are hard for X-Files junkies to buy into, but it's a nice diversion from some of the other installments that had become so predictable that you could set your watch for whenever certain moments would happen.
LAst night, All Things was on the SciFi channel, and it was almost like I was watching an entirely different series. Suddenly, the forever stoic, consistently skeptical Scully was a home-wrecker, and shaky about her faith in science. Maybe this is the pivotal episode that started all the "I believe in extreme possibilities" rants from Scully later in the series. Maybe this is the one point that I missed over the years, when I watched the episodes out of chronological order, and couldn't understand how Scully began taking over Mulder's mission for herself.
At any rate, let's go over the reasons why I shouldn't like this episode. One, Scully, through a weird twist of happenstance, finds that the man she once had an affair with is in the hospital with serious heart problems, and his daughter makes it blatantly obvious that she blames Scully for the emotional devastation the affair caused the family.
For as far back as I can remember Scully has always been the one with the high moral barometer in any situation, so it's a little difficult to digest that she would be so judgmental of, say, Skinner in Avatar.
Two, Scully learns that this man has spent the last ten years of his life living in D.C., in order to be near her again. How could she have not known about this before? She's an FBI agent, for crying out loud. She has access to all kinds of information an just about anyone she chooses, but she never figures this out before? And he never tried to contact her before? A little unbelievable.
Three, at one point, Scully finds herself wandering into a Buddist Temple, and having a big vision of her personal choices and circumstances. Now, remember, this is Scully, who's trademark is a golden cross pendant became a big symbol for her over the years. And God only knows how many times she's talked about her faith in miracles and Catholic mythology. So how can she so easily drop a lifelong faith in Christianity to suddenly be in awe of Taoist mysticism? This leads to the fourth point...Scully, after having this big epiphany, brings in a mystic healer to help her former boyfriend, and then tells him that this ritual may have saved his life. Wh-wh-what?? Seriously? Our Scully???? But now that I've explained why I shouldn't like this episode, I need to explain why I liked it so much.
It's beautifully directed, there are great, deep moments of clarity for Scully, that probably had never really been explored before, and, despite my personal love of the fact that she is the moralist of the show, it makes Scully seem more human.
There were some moments in the show that made me think I was watching Six Feet Under, and maybe that tone drew me into this installment. Yes, there's liberal use of music, and there's the recurring theme of one of the characters chasing someone who seems to be leading them to a place of significance. However, I do think it adds to the story, rather than being distracting. I'm not a huge fan of Scully or Mulder's voiceovers in episodes, but this one is short, and more to the point.
(For those who aren't familiar with X-Files and Gillian Anderson history, there was a HUGE following for Anderson after she recorded an erotic poem underscored by some electronica artist, and I think a lot of the episodes that used Scully in voice-over banked on that end of the fan spectrum.) Sure, it's not typical X-Files, and there are a lot of moments that are hard for X-Files junkies to buy into, but it's a nice diversion from some of the other installments that had become so predictable that you could set your watch for whenever certain moments would happen.