WRITTEN BY: Jeffrey Bell
REVIEWED BY: Jennifer J. Chen ON: March 29, 1999
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: March 28, 1999
Well, having written two episodes, Jeffrey Bell already seems to have an MO--in both Rain King and Alpha, we get to see a woman infatuated with Mulder while Scully sets her straight and we also get a scene where Scully speaks in the third person in terms that may well describe her own feelings for Mulder. It's not necessarily bad, but if he doesn't find a new formula soon, future episodes may well be tedious. I did enjoy how different the feel was from Rain King--and I thought the whole killer dog thing could have been really bad, but it rose above my expectations, thank goodness. Although, while some episodes tell too much (see my review of Kitsunegari), this one could have used more elaboration on some parts for me. I like to consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but I wasn't familiar with the disease (?) that Karin was suffering from. If Scully was Mulder I would have thought that she was implying Karin was some sort of werewolf, but knowing Scully she was talking about a medical condition.
Anyway, I am getting pretty sick of all these women throwing themselves at Mulder, while Scully has to stand back and get no lovin' from a member of the opposite sex. Which makes no sense--in real life, Scully is more likely to get come-ons from men than Mulder from women, but we never see any of the law enforcement officers that she and Mulder constantly work with give her any lascivious glances. It's pretty unrealistic in the first place, but then Mulder gets all these women after him...a wolf-woman lures him out to California after meeting him online? Come on! And while I stick to the claims I made in my review of Never Again, that it is more dangerous to introduce a male factor to Scully than a female factor to Mulder, that doesn't count harmless flirtations that Scully could handle easily. Yet we never see any. How long as it been since Frohike last made a pass at her, or commented on her desirability? And poor Agent Pendrell, who had the cutest puppy-dog crush on her, is dead. It's a wonder that Karin can even talk about Scully's "feminine wiles" and not have Scully look at her with amazement--what feminine wiles? The writers haven't seen fit to write any incidents into the scripts...any wiles that Agent Scully has comes from Gillian Anderson's presence. Although, it did make me wonder if wolf-woman was trying to imply that she sensed some kind of pull that Scully has on Mulder, but they didn't give enough evidence of that to make me state it with much confidence.
We get to see Scully's protective vibe in this episode. I didn't get very shippery feelings from her actions--I felt that they were more like from a best friend to a best friend (though there were arguably signs of jealousy). The wolf-woman wasn't much of a threat, since Mulder didn't seem inclined to believe Scully at all on that point--or if he did, he didn't care. Personally, I didn't get any vibes from Karin at all that she was interested in Mulder until Scully told Mulder that Karin was "enamoured" of him. I was like, what? I could tell that Scully was disturbed--possibly jealous, when she got that pained looked on her face as Mulder held Karin's hand to guide the mouse on the computer, but it seemed it was because she was concerned about what Karin would think of Mulder's gesture. She didn't want Karin to think that Mulder was saying things by his body language that he wasn't and didn't know he was saying. You could either take that as Scully trying to protect a woman naive in these matters from being hurt (I think it's safe to say that this is not the case), or that Scully didn't really think that Mulder was interested in Karin--she just didn't even want the other woman to even consider for a moment that Mulder might have designs on anyone but Scully.
I was saying that I hadn't even noticed Karin's "interest" in Mulder (I'd only noticed Scully's reaction to Karin)--Karin had barely looked at him when they first met, and then when he touched her hand to guide the mouse she looked more like I-don't-like-being-touched than anything, but I guess Scully's got the vibes out on her man. Scully knows when some other female has an eye on Mulder. But that's the shippiest aspect I can give to it--even her confrontation with Karin was more like a woman protecting a best friend, not a lover.
Still, from past episodes I know that Scully loves Mulder in a more than platonic way (even though she doesn't think he feels the same about her), and it must be pretty irking to give up so much to be with him, and then to see him get hit on by some other woman...who figures him out "to a T," and with whom he had developed a rapport without even having met Berquist yet. Scully must have been hurt at what this could mean--was she not enough for him, that he would go looking for companionship and intellectual challenge elsewhere?
Karin is, in this way, a bigger threat than Bambi Berenbaum was, because ultimately the woman who catches Mulder will appeal to his intellect more than his hormones (and while Bambi was definitely intelligent, it was certainly not what attracted Mulder to her). Still, why would anyone pose such a threat to Scully, who knows Mulder better than anyone and who has been his partner for six years? I think it stems from the fact that since none of the sexual tension between Scully and Mulder has ever been resolved or even really alluded to (they talk about love and show love, but they never speak about any physical attraction), they are constantly in a heightened state of awareness. In the Romantic Moment of the Week Clinic, Kelly Youse observes, "The real truth lies in the explosive nature of the Mulder/Scully bond; they've teased, tested and flirted with one another for six years with no release. At this point, with their mutual desires at a climax, any outside interference is a threat, and such a threat increases emotional reaction, no matter how unfounded the reaction may be."
Karin, coming in between almost any other relationship, would not have been a threat at all--but the Scully/Mulder relationship is at such a crux right now that any threat (or perceived threat) to it is necessarily a great cause of angst.
The theme of "animal instinct" throughout this episode also made me more aware of Scully's actions as protective and instinctive. While not necessarily stemming from sexual possessiveness, it is as Paula Graves states in her review of "Alpha": "Scully's reaction to her growing suspicions that Dr. Berquist is
lying to Mulder is primal and protective---and based in large part on the many years of battles Scully has fought for supremacy
in his heart and his life. Indeed, she displays territorial behavior
befitting an alpha female defending her turf."
Also, in typical Bell fashion (it's sad that after only two episodes there is such a thing), we get an ending scene where Scully tells Mulder about Karin, "She admired you. She may not have been able to tell you that," and Scully could have been speaking about herself, just like in Rain King when she has that discussion with Sheila about how the best relationships are often rooted in friendship.
I saw Shippy behavior from Mulder, though I wish he had had more response to the things that Scully was claiming, rather than just letting her talk at him. How familiar and sweet was that two-hand touch on her body when they first entered the room where they were going to meet Karin? And though he never says that he's not interested in Karin the way Scully thinks Karin's interested in him, he doesn't really have to. First of all, he doesn't believe it. Second of all, when he finds out where Detweiler (Rotweiler?) is going to be, he gets up from where he was talking to Karin to call Scully (you could tell that Karin wasn't pleased by this), and then he goes to the hospital to be with Scully (though I'm sure Karin would have been willing to talk to him longer) and I really got the feeling that he really wanted to be there with her, not just because they were staking the place out. Wouldn't it have made more sense if Scully had kept her eye on Detweiler while Mulder went to stake out the hospital? They could have been doubly cautious that way...except that then, they wouldn't have gotten to be together.
I do have to say that I love Bell's humor. I loved it throughout Rain King, and I loved the few times we got to see it in Alpha. Mulder is kind of goofy, and Scully's pretty quick to make fun of him. Mulder citing a list of mythical creatures, including the "...Sasquatch and the Ogopogo and the Abominable Snowman and--" then interrupted by Scully's, "Don't mind him. He'll go on forever," was pretty funny. Of course, that's because it has Shipper connotations (a wife brushing off her rambling husband). Another such example is when they meet Stacy Muir putting up Karin's fence and she asks them if they're having behavioral problems (with their pet, of course), and Scully gestures to Mulder and says, "He doesn't listen and he chews on the furniture." And then, of course, Scully's miffed reaction to Mulder dragging her away from the suspect to stake out the hospital, grabbing her magazine out from Mulder's hands.
I like how they got Mulder his poster back (but it was a little obvious what it was when Scully handed it to him--it would have been sweeter if she had been the one to procure it for him), but I don't think I like the idea of another woman figuring him out so well. And "kindred spirits" should only apply to Mulder and Scully.
Two observations: One, where did Detweiler's clothes go in the sewer when he changed into the dog? Clothes just conveniently melt into thin air when one changes from a human to an animal? He was naked in the end, I'll give them that, but how did Karin avoid getting speared when she was the one to fall first, with the dog against her? Two, both times that we see Scully ask Mulder if he's going home yet, she's walking from somewhere. Where? Does she have her own office now? Does she sit in the bullpen while he gets his own office? Why don't they share? I suppose it's possible that she just stepped out and then returned, but it certainly doesn't look that way. It looks like they work separately, which depresses and saddens me. Even if she never had her name on the door before, at least it was their office--now it's not even that anymore.
Oh, and Karin gets to call Mulder "Fox"? He introduces himself as "Fox," as if that is the name she would recognize, which means that that is how she knew him online. What happened to "I even made my parents call me Mulder"? This is really starting to piss me off. Or maybe he's trying to get Scully to call him Fox again? Or maybe they were just trying to slam home that animal theme. One of those two reasons better be why every female on the planet is allowed to call him Fox but Scully.
"I think she saw in you a kindred spirit, Mulder.
She may not have been able to express that to you."
Please feel free to
"Dog gone. Dog-gone. Doggone."
"Yeah, I got it."
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me at jenu1bruin@centropolis.org
1999 by Jennifer J. Chen