REVIEWED BY: Jennifer J. Chen ON: May 11, 1999
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: May 9, 1999
"Look, something else is going on here. Am I the only one who thinks that?"
I have always found discourse on the concept of reality fascinating. What is reality but our own perceptions of what we experience in our day to day lives? Yet there is also a level of objectivity that we associate with the term reality. No matter how we debate and muse over the idea of reality as a complex construct, there is nevertheless a grounded feeling that naturally inhibits us when we speak of "reality." For a few brief moments of clarity, we see what our lives may be...but we can't hold onto the thought for long, because the groundedness of what we know claims us as we go about our everyday lives. Anyhow, Field Trip provides us with those few moments of clarity. We are made to examine the possibilities of realities that we do not normally consider. The one constant in The X-Files has always been that it makes you think, and it is why I love it. No other show on television makes me use my brain the way this show does.
Field Trip is not one of Vince Gilligan's more tightly woven efforts, but in comparison to other episodes in general, it definitely warrants significant merit. Perhaps working against this script is its unfortunate chronological place in airtime; this play on the concept of reality most recently demonstrated itself quite well in the form of the movie The Matrix. That film provided a very powerful depiction of what an alternate reality could be, yet feel as "real" and grounded as the lives we live out day to day.
Yet the focus of Field Trip was not as much on this concept of reality, as I had originally thought. Delightfully, upon closer inspection, the focus is the Mulder/Scully dynamic.
Mulder and Scully's first exchange made me nervous. There was way too much tension and touchiness involved. Mulder's defensive, "In six years, how often have I been wrong? Every time I bring you a new case we go through this perfunctory dance—you tell me I'm not being scientifically rigorous, that I'm off my nut. And in the end, who turns out to be right like 98.9 percent of the time? I just think I've earned the benefit of the doubt, here," to Scully's attempts at the "simplest explanation" caught me a little off guard. Yet I've often admired Gilligan's knack of bringing to the forefront the conflicts that plague Mulder and Scully's relationship, understood but never spoken. X-Philes have discoursed about exactly this—Mulder always seems to be right yet Scully insists on sticking to her skeptical guns. The answer to the question why that is, is the point of this entire episode.
My greatest fear was that I would find that either Scully or Mulder or both would reveal any sign that what they really wanted was not each other. The events that unfolded in Field Trip gave most concern to the distasteful notion that Scully says and does what she says and does only because it's what Mulder wants. While at first glance this may sound shippy, it is in fact quite the opposite—at least, for me. What I find so engaging about the Mulder/Scully dynamic is that they are such strong individuals with separate ways of approaching their work—and yet their mutual love and respect allows this to work with them instead of against them. Now, if it turns out that Scully has merely been playing the strong individual while subconsciously capitulating to Mulder's need, then Scully is not the woman that we all know and love and admire. And if Mulder either a) doesn't know this, or b) suspects it and that's the way he likes it, then he's not the man we know and love and admire, either. Perhaps if it worked vice versa, it would take the sting out of this possibility, but we all know that Mulder's beliefs and suggestions of paranormal phenomena are definitely not for Scully's subconscious benefit. I introduce this to acknowledge that it ran through my mind, but luckily the episode itself put my mind at ease. Field Trip is not about how their differences create strife; it is about how their individual strengths are relied on by the other more than they have ever realized before. Well, they know it now.
Let's begin with Mulder's hallucination. Knowing that it is a hallucination of his, the events that occur seem pretty typical, and quite within his character. The skeletons turning out to be "fakes," generated by the same alien technology that makes it possible to clone human beings and to, say, have a chip implanted in someone's neck and when removed causes terminal cancer. Mulder finds that he is right, after all; Scully's "simple" rational explanation has been debunked, once again.
When Mulder summons Scully to his apartment, she is incredulous to find the Schiffs still alive...and even more incredulous to see what Mulder is hiding in his bedroom (get your minds out of the gutter, people!)--a cute little alien Gray. Gratuitous detail: wasn't it cute how Mulder stretches his arm out against the door when letting Scully in and she obligingly walks under it? But before I go on, let me just say that I found the scene where Scully sits down on a chair with Mulder kneeling by her side, explaining in this soft voice, full of wonder of what he has discovered, extremely touching and rather shippy. With the married couple watching them, their discussion is given an even more intimate undertone.
When "introducing" Scully to the Gray, Mulder has his hands on her the whole time, as if to comfort her from what he knows could potentially be very distressing for her, as well as wanting to share the experience, the moment, with her. Mulder then apparently leaves Scully alone to converse telepathically with the Gray (though I got the feeling that he wanted to stay). When she returns to the living room, she has a stunned look on her face, and immediately launches into a dialogue about how Mulder was right all along, about alien civilization, UFOs, the skeletons, etc. Mulder is a little surprised, to say the least. He starts getting a headache—something doesn't sit right. "That doesn't sound like you, Scully," he says quietly, suspiciously, holding a hand to his closed eyes. Once he realizes that his Scully is not behaving like his Scully, everything else becomes more clarified to him as well. He sees that something doesn't sit right with the couple and their explanations of what happened to them in the cave. He then throws some of her original conjectures back at her, which she quickly dismisses. I find it rather humorous that his real headache begins when Scully says, "I'm admitting that I was wrong, Mulder." The idea of her saying these words to him is so strange that it immediately triggers warning signs, even though a few moments before he was looking rather smug.
When it seemed that the writers were suggesting that Scully only gave her rational, scientific explanations because it's what she thinks Mulder wants (and by his hallucination, this would appear to be true), I was a little unnerved. Because that would mean that she wasn't really being herself; she was being somebody Mulder wanted her to be, and his hallucination being "broken" because she wasn't acting like her usual rational self seemed to support that conclusion. Even Scully's hallucination, showing that she is a lot more open to paranormal possibilities than she has ever shown to Mulder, supports it. As a Shipper, I balked at the mere suggestion that Mulder should want anything but who Scully truly is, and as a Scullyist, I shuddered at the suggestion that she should spout her rationalizations just because it's what she thinks Mulder wants to hear, and not because she believes them.
However, Scully's hallucination, when taken in context of the rest of the plot, dispels those fears. Her hallucinations show that she needs Mulder to be his alien-chasing, believer in the paranormal self. With Mulder, Scully doesn't need to consider the paranormal possibilities, because she knows that he'll come up with them. Likewise, Mulder doesn't need to consider "rational" alternatives, because he knows that Scully will contribute those. They are both excellent investigators; in the absence of one (Mulder's death) or the out-of-characterness of the other (Scully agreeing with Mulder) they are able to run the gamut of all possibilities. But that's not how they prefer to operate. They each need to have the other there to complete the circle of thinking. They complete each other; and none has made that as obvious as this episode. Sure, it's true that Mulder needs Scully to be a certain way, but no more than she needs him in the complementary way. This is what makes their partnership work so well; they are two halves of a whole. Yet they are not being false to their true natures: Mulder is naturally inclined to believe in paranormal causation, while Scully is more inclined to believe in the simplest, most scientific explanation. They are able to indulge themselves in their respective inclinations without sacrificing their investigative prowess; they each depend on his/her partner to fill the gaps. Again, we see that Mulder and Scully give the term partners the absolute spectrum of all its possible definitions.
Scully's hallucination begins with what amounts to her greatest fear—the loss of her life partner. She fairly grabs the dental records out of the other pathologist's hands, desperate to know that the skeleton in front of her does not belong to her Mulder. When the match cannot be denied, her absolute shock—more than grief—was beautifully nuanced by Gillian Anderson. The other pathologist makes condolences, but they are almost insulting coming from a stranger who cannot possibly understand the depth of her loss. Scully looks as if she has been slapped in the face when he repeats the very scenario explaining Mulder's death that she herself painted for Mulder regarding the Schiff skeletons.
Scully's grief reveals itself later; her unspeakable loss evidencing itself in a single tear that escapes in front of AD Skinner. She is disbelieving when Skinner is satisfied with her report; she wants more done. The pat answers are not acceptable when it comes to Mulder. Posturing and screaming would not have been believable; Scully holds her loss within herself, as she is wont to do. This loss is unutterably personal—and it shows how deeply Mulder has touched her heart and her soul, that her brave facade should crack in front of her professional superior, that the loss she has endured is so great that it spills over to the surface. I shed tears with her as well, even though I knew that Mulder was alive in reality. But he wasn't in Scully's reality, and my tears were a result of seeing Scully so broken by her enormous loss. Her teary, "It's what Agent Mulder would have thought" was truly lump-in-one's-throat inspiring. Knowing Scully, knowing how much she prides and depends on her own strength, we see again the depth of her pain when Skinner suggests that she take some time off and she doesn't deny or contend it in any way. This from the woman who wanted to continue to work once she discovered she had terminal cancer. In her own words from One Breath, she had told Mulder, "I had the strength of your beliefs," and we see that she has relied on that strength like a rock--it is what grounds her. She now feels alone in the world, with a huge hole left in a soul that Mulder's presence used to occupy. I am reminded of lines from Milagro, Scully's voice narrating: "Grief squeezed at her eggshell heart like it might break into a thousand pieces, its contents running like broken promises into the hollow places his love used to fill. How could she know this pain would end, that love, unlike matter or energy, was an endless supply in the universe, a germ which grows from nothingness, which cannot be eradicated, even from the darkest of hearts...to have love was to carry a vessel that could be lost or stolen." Or broken.
Scully's disappointment when arriving at Mulder's apartment for his wake to find the door opened by Frohike is almost palpable. She had desperately wanted it to be Mulder; she had needed it to be Mulder. She looks almost defensive as people stare at her; she does not need their false condolences, nor their sympathy. Still, we get the feeling that she would have broken down again when staring into the room where Mulder's casket lay, except that The Lone Gunmen spark her interest in saying that they have been pursuing Mulder's case on their own. She is eager to hear all the suggestions that they have—the more along the lines of what Mulder would have thought, the more she welcomes it. When even they concur with her rational and "least plausible" scenario, the flame ignites. Scully veritably flips out—she feels betrayed by these three. In concurring with her findings, she feels that they have betrayed Mulder, and in so doing, betrayed her. Finally, wildly, she becomes Mulder, paranoid, certain that he is not dead so much as that something has been done to him, to her. Just as Mulder did not want to be told that he was completely right, it turns out that that is not what Scully wants, either. When everyone agrees with her theories, she starts getting a headache, just as Mulder did when Scully agreed with him. We see that in the absence of her other half, she is completely open to the possibilities of the paranormal. She now has to play both roles if she wants to uncover what is going on, and she embraces it with the fervor of someone protecting the last important shred of hope that she has.
Now here's where things really start to get interesting. Now, Mulder and Scully seem to share their hallucinations. In my mind, you've got to be pretty in tune with another person to be able to do that.
Scully's hallucination seems to continue with the people in Mulder's apartment evaporating into thin air as she answers the knock at his door...to find Mulder standing there. What is interesting is that it has now become Mulder's hallucination when we eventually see the yellow slime melt away the surroundings, including Scully. Since what we are shown is reality through Mulder's mind, we see that it is Scully who brings Mulder clarity with her logic and rational discourse. Mulder's hallucination of Scully is of a person who brings lucidity when he has none. She is the clear thinker while he maintains his irrational beliefs of abductions and UFOs. She saves him--it is his real Scully that makes him see the truth.
This joint hallucination continues as they escape from underground, and next find themselves in AD Skinner's office recounting the events. In this, Scully's hallucination, Mulder is the one who brings her clarity. "Scully, how could we simply will ourselves out of a chemical hallucination?" he rightly points out. "How come our bodies don't show any effects of being burned by the digestive fluids? We were covered in hydrochloric acid yet look at our skin—nothing." Mulder repeatedly thwarts Skinner's attempts to get Scully's attention—Mulder completely focuses on her. He ignores Skinner and makes her focus on the facts at hand, pointing out details that she as a scientist would deem important. Scully's hallucination of Mulder finally proves his point by shooting Skinner, who oozes yellow slime instead of blood. Mulder has saved them using his ability to look beneath the surface. Scully imbues her Mulder with the strength of intellect and sheer force of will that she so admires in her partner. In her mind, her Mulder saves them.
Let's ignore pesky little details like how Skinner and the Rescue Squad knew what to look for. What frightened me the most this episode was this horrible notion that this was how they were going to end the series. After all the different realities that we were just subjected to, who knows if they really did make it out alive, or if it was another hallucination? Wouldn't it be just like The X-Files to leave the series as completely unresolved as per its trademark? This kind of ep is exactly how they'd love to leave the series hanging (so did Mulder and Scully really make it out alive?). I positively felt my stomach churn at the thought. But it wasn't the end of the series, and if they want to make movies after the network run ends, they can't end it like this. That's what I kept repeating to myself, like a mantra.
Now, for that precious hand-holding in the ambulance. Sure, it was shippy in a romantic sense...but I found it much more touching and profound to think of it in a partner sense. A best friend reaching out to a best friend, realizing that they made it out alive because of their teamwork. Somehow, in some psychic connection, they had been able to delve into each other's thoughts and brain waves, and conduct an investigation as they always did—giving and taking—relying on each other's strengths and weaknesses, and they meet with success in the end. Their teamwork, their partnership, their visceral and spiritual connection to each other is made so beautifully clear. 
They escape alive because they worked together, and that final physical fusion in the ambulance is the physical act of what they had been doing all along in their minds...sharing each other's strength, relying on the other's unconditional support.
This episode started out with a conflict over who was right. It ended with the knowledge that it doesn't matter--they are both always right because as this episode as clearly detailed, no conclusion is drawn without the other's insight. Ultimately, what they are is a team, partners. Scully depends on Mulder as much as Mulder depends on Scully. The only thing they need in this world is each other...and I hope they won't be forgetting it any time soon.
"It's what Agent Mulder would have thought."
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1999 by Jennifer J. Chen