REVIEWED BY: Jennifer J. Chen ON: March 20, 1999
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: November 3, 1996
It has taken me a long while to even begin to write this review. First I had to get through watching this episode without feeling nauseous. That never really happened, so most of my introspection came after watching it (when normally ideas will come to me all through an episode). I was too busy trying to hold my stomach contents in and trying to look for holes in Mulder and Melissa’s stories to get much by way of critique. I kept wondering how I was going to write an objective review and try to be as fair as possible to the episode, but then I realized—why should I? All of my other reviews are blatantly Shipperesque, why should this one be any different? I suppose I thought that if I were to trash it from an objective standpoint, instead of just being the mad ravings of a Shipper, it would bring more credibility to what I’m saying. But it can’t be done. If you want to read an objective review of this episode, hear how it was so well directed, so incredibly well-acted, how well the music went with the scenes, turn elsewhere, because you’re not going to find that here. All you’re going to find here is one Shipper’s incensed reaction to an episode that should never have been made in the first place. That claim in itself tells you where this is going.
The Field Where I Died and Never Again were Glen Morgan and James Wong’s last contributions to The X-Files. I don’t believe it’s coincidence that each episode focused on one of the two partners, or that both created a lot of strife within the partnership. Never Again was great; The X-Files as a show needed it in order to continue because Scully needed it to continue. But The Field Where I Died, in my opinion, was completely self-serving, a way to slap Shippers in the face, to “prove” that what we believed, what we wanted to believe, was wrong. In spite of all of Chris Carter’s declaration of no-romance, we continued to retain hope. Well, this was their way of dashing that hope, because the episode plot-wise served no other purpose. Never Again rounded out Scully’s character, it served to show that Scully was still a person outside of Mulder’s sphere; it realistically dealt with the fact that Scully needed to stay with the X-Files out of choice and not because she had no other option and had lost herself along the way. But The Field Where I Died did no such thing. Instead of rounding out Mulder’s character, it went completely against the grain. What did giving Mulder a star-crossed lover do for the show? Absolutely nothing. Unless the purpose was simply to say, he and Scully are not meant to be. If that was the intention, then this episode satisfied it. All around the world, Shipper hearts broke, people lost interest in the show, people felt betrayed. And I don’t blame them. I felt as if I had devoted so much of my time and effort on characters that, as it turned out, I didn’t really know. Who were these strangers on the screen? Who is that insane, selfish man that I would never introduce to my worst enemy, much less a strong and beautiful woman like Scully? Why in the world would I be sympathetic to any of his causes and watch him every week? But the beauty of it is, the rest of the X-Files staff must regret it almost as much as Shippers do (but they can never match how much!), because they’ve been taking it back ever since.
This episode was a big mistake in that I don’t think they fully appreciated how much the viewers wanted to believe that Mulder and Scully should be together, that they were meant to be together. I have no doubt that they got a lot of hate mail for this episode. But more than that, this episode was an insult to intelligence, something that X-Files viewers have plenty of. We are supposed to just accept that this one woman who shows up in Mulder’s life for what, three days, is the equivalent of a true love? That their souls are always trying to be together, lifetime after lifetime? I’m sorry, but real life does not work that way. Why doesn't Mulder just abandon his work and Scully in order to move on to the next life so he can try again to be with Melissa Riedel’s soul? If it affected him that much, if he truly believed that they were some romantic star-crossed lovers (and can we say cheese?), wouldn’t he have taken a long time to get over it, if not the rest of his life? Has Mulder even mentioned—no, even referred to her again just in passing? It’s really quite ridiculous. And for a show that prides itself on being subtle and as non-cheesy as possible, this whole idea of souls being fated to always be apart makes me want to gag. Then why doesn’t he make the best of the souls he is meant to be with? After all, how does he know what he’s missing if, by all accounts, he’s never had it in the first place?
But that’s already going off the mark and giving the episode more credit than it deserves. It doesn’t even deserve to be questioned by these reasonable thoughts, because the episode itself was completely unreasonable. Besides the fact that Melissa was barely a *blip* in Mulder’s life, a life he has shared with Scully for six years (and we’re supposed to believe that if Melissa were alive he would give up Scully to be with her?), the entire hypnotic regression therapy was so contrived as to be insulting. If the same souls were to meet again and again every lifetime, then where was Scully’s “true love”? What, she doesn’t have one? Well, if Mulder’s soul is connected to Scully’s, and Scully has a true love, then Mulder would also know that person. But either she doesn’t have one (which is not only sad, but also a little too convenient, don’t you think?) or he conveniently omits it (or maybe they plan to have a sequel for Scully...The Ocean Where I Died). And by that connection, why didn’t Mulder ever mention Melissa’s husband? He must have some kind of connection to her soul, and thereby Mulder’s. Yet he too, is conveniently left out of the mix.
Added on 3-26-99: Recently, I have come across a review of this episode that is more objective than mine can ever be (as my utterings are helplessly fueled more by emotion than anything else), by Sarah Stegall. Her review really stood out for me amongst other reviews that I have read on The Field Where I Died, and I would like to share it with you here. Please note that the following excerpt is copyrighted by the author, Sarah Stegall, and I have no rights or claim to it whatsoever. If you enjoy it you can read her other reviews at her website, The Munchkyn's X-Files Page.
Sarah Stegall: "Writers Glen Morgan and James Wong pull out all the stops in a sweeps-month story of thwarted lovers and past lives. It's gripping, highly emotional, and a showcase for the actors. But in the context of more than seventy episodes, it stands out like a cockroach on a wedding cake...
More disturbing to me is the emasculation of Dana Scully. So our faithful skeptic is doomed to go through all eternity as Tonto? Always the sidekick, but never the soul mate? I don't think so. You cannot stand seventy-seven prior episodes on their heads with one brief scene with a tripped-out Fox Mulder. Mulder has risked his life for Dana Scully, traded his sister for Dana Scully, and abandoned his own revenge to sit by her side as she died--for the sake of friendship? Nope. To portray Dana Scully as the repressed but smoldering beauty tantalizingly out of reach for her partner, the instigator of more angst in his life than any female since Samantha, and then in one fell swoop reduce her to everlasting second banana is ridiculous. Morgan can write it, Wong can edit it, Duchovny can act it, and Chris Carter can shout it from the rooftops, but I don't believe it. If I thought the implications of this episode would be played out in future shows, this would really alarm me. But by now, I know better. This is a stand-alone episode that will have no reference beyond itself, and as such I can appreciate the irony of Scully as Mulder's former sergeant, former father, former comrade in arms." End of addition.
Even though I’d like more than anything to pretend that The Field Where I Died never happened and in my mind purge it from The X-Files compilation, I don’t have the temerity to dismiss it like that. I don’t have the right or the authority, and if I am a true X-Phile then I will have to accept every episode, whether I love it or despise it. While The X-Files incorporates a lot of subtlety and many things are left up to the viewer to infer, I believe that we are supposed to believe that everything we are shown does, in fact, happen. I don’t have the arrogance to pronounce otherwise. I don’t understand all the discussion out there about whether Triangle actually “happened” or not. Why wouldn’t it? Sure, it’s implausible but not impossible. If those are the standards, then half the episodes aren’t “real.” It’s not up to you or I to decide these things, unreasonable as they may seem. If it were up to me, I could say that The Field Where I Died never happened, and spout out some justifications. And many of you would be up in arms about it. So unless it is explicitly stated or shown that events did not occur (such as the two Dreamlands and Monday where we know things did happen but the characters don’t know it), I just have to accept that they did. Anyway, I’m giving the same benefit of the doubt to The Field Where I Died, galling though it is, even though so many things about it are also implausible and contrived.
None of the “wisdom” that The X-Files normally spouts spoke to me in this episode. In fact, none of it made sense to me, or else I didn’t agree with it at all. For instance, Mulder’s claim that if what he said under hypnotic suggestion was true, that souls meet again and again (and by association, that he and Melissa were destined to always strive to be together but never achieve that end), then “no life is pointless.” Can I even stress enough how much I disagree? Mulder is not only completely out of character, but contradicts himself two years down the line, in Monday! In that episode, he berates Scully for suggesting that there is no such thing as free will, that we are all fated toward one end and no matter what we do we cannot change this. Mulder apparently (in Monday) believes that free will is something positive and good, the only thing that really makes life worth living. Yet in The Field Where I Died, he’s saying that this fate is what makes life not pointless. That meeting the same souls again and again, even in futility, makes life worthwhile. I’m sorry, but knowing that I will never, no matter what I do, get to be with my true love though we try in futility lifetime after lifetime to be together is supposed to make my life worth living? What? If I knew that my soul was going to return over and over and I could never be with my true love, that I could do NOTHING to change this, then life would most certainly be pointless. I don’t see how Mulder can say otherwise. It would be nothing but a cruel and cold hell. Instead of depending on this, then, and focusing on what I can’t have, why wouldn’t I turn my attentions to someone that I knew would be there, lifetime after lifetime, like Scully? Free will, as Mulder relays in not so many words (and much more in character) in Monday, is what gives a point to life--that somehow through our own personal intervention and device we can make a difference.
Plus, I am not entirely convinced that Melissa was Sarah Kavannaugh. Sure, she had that really bad Southern accent, but she never says her name. Mulder’s past lives could have been real, but it’s possible that the power of suggestion made him think of Melissa (I think we are supposed to believe that Mulder’s telling the truth, when he couldn’t reasonably have known about the existence of one Simon Biddle and one Sarah Kavannaugh) because he obviously wanted to believe it so badly. So what I’m saying is that while I believe that Mulder went through this therapy, I don’t necessarily believe that everything that came out of his mouth was the be-all end-all of truth.
That is why I find The Field Where I Died to be a completely self-serving, manipulative, malicious episode, created and broadcast only as a way to punish those who would dare to persist in believing in something that the almighty (dripping with sarcasm) Chris Carter had already proclaimed as impossible. They didn’t really care how they did it, as long as they got that point across. And if they hadn’t been reversing it ever since, I don’t think that I’d be a viewer now. Let’s get onto the examples of this, shall we? (Oh, and if you know of more, PLEASE share with me, since I am always looking for ways to debunk the validity of this episode.) I have already covered one example: Monday with Mulder’s more in-character view of life being rightfully decided by free will and not fate. Also, Melissa cannot be Mulder's soulmate due to a few discrepancies that is found in the episode itself. First, Melissa. We know that her past life as "Sidney" occurred in the late 1940's/early 1950's because she mentions President Truman and McCarthyism. "Sidney" as Melissa portrays is obviously an adult, which makes it impossible for Melissa's soul to have been in a man in Poland during the Holocaust. Second, Mulder. He claims to have been a Jewish woman in Poland getting taken by the Gestapo, of which Cigarette-Smoking Man is an officer. Well, Poland wasn't invaded by the Nazis until 1939, and by then, C.G.B. Spender would have already been born (he was an adult in 1953, as we learn in 731), so his soul couldn't have been in this Gestapo officer. As for C.G.B. Spender, he would have been way too young (and not to mention of the wrong nationality) to have been a Gestapo officer, either. So since Mulder has to be wrong about this, he's probably wrong on all the other facts as well. So even though Chris Carter tries to neatly make it all fit together in Triangle (CSM is a Nazi, he could have been in Poland to round up Mulder-as-a-Jewish-woman and her husband, and then gone aboard the Queen Anne the same year and disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle) and fit together facts suggested by other episodes, he based it on inherently faulty information and cannot work. Because no matter how to try to twist it, the real CSM had already been born by 1939 (or else he would have been 13 years old in 731, and you can see plain as day that he's a full grown man). But I am sure that Triangle did in fact, happen. To hear my justifications/rationalizations/excuses about that, go to my review of Triangle. Demons I believe is also part of the agenda to undo The Field Where I Died, when the validity of the practice of suggestion to the brain is called into question, whether it be hypnosis or the kind of electro-shock treatment Mulder was receiving. Lastly, Fight the Future, when Mulder and Scully almost kiss in the hallway. That is an event that cannot be taken back, or misconstrued, or explained away. It leaves without question the platonic side of the fence behind forever. They were both willing and prepared to go through with what was obviously an intense sexual and emotional moment until they were stopped (and not by their actions or intentions). It doesn’t matter that the kiss never actually happened. What matters is the attempt, which cannot be undone. Cheers and cheers again!
I have also thought of Vince Gilligan, who I believe to be a Shipper. I can just see him holding the script to The Field Where I Died, mortified, wondering, “How am I going to undo this? How am I going to fix this?” Coincidence or not, the second solo effort we see from him that season (he needed time to write it!) is Small Potatoes, an episode that reveals Scully’s willingness to pursue a more-than-platonic relationship with Mulder, and Mulder’s apparent bitterness that he could not win Scully over as Eddie Van Blundht is able to do.
Also, I always comfort myself by thinking of what David Duchovny says about his character, that if Mulder cares about what anyone thinks, it's Scully. He also calls her Mulder’s “human credential.” If that’s how he plays Mulder, then that’s how Mulder is. Because all the gestures that DD makes, all the facial expressions, is formulated with that mentality. That makes Mulder’s mindset also of that same mentality. So I can forgive Mulder for briefly believing in something that may not be true, that some woman now dead is supposed to be his “soulmate.” But the person that he truly cares about, the person who he believes to be his “human credential” (very powerful meaning), is still Scully.
My last thought: who says that Melissa and Mulder’s souls always have to be lovers, just because the past has always brought them together that way? All right, so maybe they’re always destined to try to be together and can’t be, but why does it have to have a romantic association? Why can’t they be mother-child, brother-sister? Maybe it was explicit in the episode and I just chose not to hear it. Or maybe I missed it. Since I don’t plan on watching it ever again, someone tell me if they did indeed say in no uncertain terms that they had to be star-crossed lovers. Perhaps in this lifetime, they’re not meant to be lovers...maybe it’s Scully’s turn...
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1999 by Jennifer J. Chen