Cassie's "Invocation" Review
December 4, 2000
5/5
This is by far the best episode of the season (heck of the past 2 seasons! Season 7 and 8). David Amann succeeded in weaving character development and a great paranormal x file case into one hour of great television. Mark Snow's score for the episode was perfect, calming, haunting and innocent... worked very well with the tone of the episode. Those that scouted the locations for filming chose the perfect places... almost Vancouver-esque! And what really made the episode was the fact that they filmed on days when it was cloudy!
Once again I did not spoile the episode and I'm so glad that I didn't. I had no clue what happened to Billy until the very end of the episode! Who would have thought revenge from beyond the grave what was really going on?! Considering that Billy returned exactly the way he was when he disappeared (flesh and bone). I was actually expecting the truth to be something like a time warp... I was pleasantly surprised when it was nothing like that.
All of my favorite moments of the episode revolve around John Doggett. Obviously there is more to his character than meets the eye. We are introduced to that in this episode. After asking Ronnie if he know anything about Billy, Doggett pulls out his wallet and looks at a picture of a boy. Later when the psychic is with the Underwoods, Doggett, Scully and Billy, she says that Doggett has lost someone just like this. I'm guessing that this boy is Doggett's son, and that is why Doggett is determined to find out what is going on and to catch the man that took Billy, to prevent him from doing it to other little boys. The scene where Doggett interrogates Ronnie is very well done... Robert Patrick does not cease to amaze me! The last scene when Doggett and Scully find Billy's brother, Josh (after he had been taken), hiden underneath boards is great. The man that took Billy and Josh and abused Ronnie tries to run away from them, but Doggett chases after him eventually passing him and draws his gun (very very cool). Then Billy shows up behind
Doggett and once Doggett has other officers handcuff the man (whose name I haven't caught even after viewing the ep 4 times), Billy disappears... he got what he wanted... his revenge. Doggett walks over to where Billy was standing and finds his skeleton. The next day when they bring Billy's parents to the skeleton, Scully tells Doggett that he did not fail, that he succeeded, even though he may not understand what happened to Billy, that Doggett caught the man who took him and put him away so he can't hurt other children. She tells him that he doesn't need to explain Billy's return. As she walks off, Doggett gets this look on his face... that made me wonder if he was thinking of the boy who's picture we saw in his wallet. Very great moment and me, Kristi, and Ally all got tears in our eyes... wonderfully acted by Robert and the actors who portrayed the Underwoods.
I love the Scully and Doggett moments in this episode. The way Scully delivered her lines, shows just how much she has learned in the past 7 years working with Mulder on the x-files. The tension between the characters works very well. His skepticism and her willingness to accept the unimaginable. In the scene where Doggett has the juvenile records of Ronnie that are sealed by the court, Scully tells Doggett that he is breaking the law by having them (would she have gotten so mad if Mulder had done this? I don't think so!). Doggett tells her: "Look I wanna catch this guy, Agent Scully, whatever it takes." I think at this point Scully realizes that in his own way Doggett is like Mulder, cares for the work, cares for the case, cares for the people involved and will do what it takes to solve it, and she shuts up.
This is the first episode in a very long time that gave me goosebumps. Thank you, thank you, thank you David Amann! The way I see it, the episode couldn't have been done any better.
~Cassie
"You know, these words: "anomalous"... "supernatural"... "paranormal", they purport to explain something by not explaining it. It's lazy." -John Doggett
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