REVIEWED BY: Jennifer J. Chen ON: April 24, 1999
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: March 1, 1998
"One more anal-probing, gyro-pyro levitating-ecoplasm alien anti-matter story, and I'm gonna take out my gun and shoot somebody."
"Well. I guess I'm done here. You seem to have invalidated your own work. Have a nice life."
I have to say--Krycek is looking mighty good. I don't know if I've ever understood his motives beyond Duane Barry/Ascension when he was the typical double agent, but does it really matter? And how can I not love the fact that he and Marita Covarrubias are together? There's no way she can be a possible Mulder-babe now. Granted, it looks as though Marita was only sleeping with Krycek in order to get that kid Dmitri and to call Mulder, but let's face it--they'd never let Mulder be interested in someone who's been with Krycek. I've never feared Marita the way other people have, but it's still nice to know they're not going to go there with her. In fact, watching Marita and Krycek together, their passion igniting the screen, makes me wistfully wonder if they'll EVER let us see Mulder and Scully (the ones we really love) doing the same thing...of course, they ignite the same kind of passion with just the touch of one's hand on the other...I don't know if the world is ready for Mulder and Scully to really get together!
And speaking of that poor boy Dmitri, what in the world is the point of what Krycek had done to him? A living vessel for the black oil? Or maybe the point was merely to horrify and gross the viewers out. Mission accomplished.
My heart was breaking for Mulder for most of the episode (I say most--some parts I just wanted to slug him). At the Massachusetts Institute Visiting Lecturers' Forum, I heard him say things that I never expected to come out of his mouth, and it made me inexplicably sad. Mulder is invalidating his life's work...his life's beliefs and pursuits. Everything he once believed in now thought to be lies. Can a person be brought more low? To know that what you have devoted your entire life to was nothing more than an elaborate lie conceived of by men who depended upon your blind faith to further their own villainous ends. "I think that if you prepare people well enough to believe a lie, they will believe it as if it were true. And if you tell them a really big lie, like there are aliens from outer space, much more than a small one, they will believe in it. And if you suggest to them these aliens are doing bad things to them, the...the power of the suggestion will be to make people believe that certain psychopathologies and neuroses that they're suffering from can now be attributed to that." Outwardly, Mulder is speaking about abductees in general, but we can associate his words with his own experiences, and how he sees himself to have been a fool, duped, roped in to the lie. And this picture that Mulder paints of himself is painful--to him, to us.
His meeting with Cassandra Spender goes much the same way--where there would have been interest and enthusiasm once on his part, there is now only doubt and skepticism. Unfortunately, Mulder does not wear that quality as well as Scully does; he seems just as willing to blindly disbelieve as he once would have blindly accepted. There is no in between for him...he is such an extremist! Yet I continue to feel for him. Why? Because of the reason why he has made this sudden about-face. He has believed since he was a teenager in the existence of extraterrestrial life...his entire adult life has been in the pursuit and discovery of this truth. Nothing has thwarted his absolute faith in these beliefs...until Scully. The very idea that much of the harm done to her was all part of an effort to make him continue his quest to further a lie has shaken him...and makes him turn to a "truth" that he has previously never been willing to even consider. There is considerable evidence presented to him, but not entirely conclusive--still, if it is true, and the mere if is enough, then the risk of further harming Scully is not worth it. This comes most to the surface when Cassandra speaks of Duane Barry and Mulder's belief that he was an alien abductee when no one else would believe. Mulder is obviously uncomfortable and pained--yet another example of when he was the cause of harm done to Scully. Because of his belief in Duane Barry, that man had kidnapped Scully, led her to become abducted herself...and was the start of all the other agony in her life--and his--not the least of which was her recent bout with cancer. Mulder feels himself at fault for all these things, and it was the last thing Cassandra Spender should have brought up if she wanted Mulder to listen to her.
I found Cassandra and Jeffrey Spender to be annoying in different ways...she was just too eager and enthusiastic, precisely the kind of blind "nut" that people look upon with amusement and condescension, but never belief. Mulder, no matter how much we may call him on his "blind" beliefs, nevertheless always had some kind of evidence, some historical fact, some theory, to back up his beliefs. His was a belief out of an educated background; he acknowledges and caters to a world that find his experiences and beliefs to be bizarre, while Cassandra Spender simply expects the world to cater to her and her experiences. She is an extreme Mulder. Jeffrey Spender, on the other hand, is an extreme Scully. A complete skeptic--not out of science or educated reason, like Scully, but out of the blind belief that anything that sounds crazy is crazy; no other explanation need present itself. He is the product of societal norm, tunnel-visioned and narrow-minded. Scully may seem to be the latter two at times, but she is willing to accept if there is evidence or even strong conjecture. She isn't held back so much by societal norms as she is by her scientific background, which arguably, I suppose, is a societal norm of sorts. But the biggest difference between Scully and Jeffrey Spender is that she is willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone she loves and respects--Mulder, whereas Jeffrey Spender is not willing to lend any kind of support to someone he should love and respect--his mother.
Mulder and Scully switching places of the Believer and the Skeptic was kind of amusing at the same time that it was irritating--when Mulder questions Scully about what she believed happened at Skyland Mountain ("Do you have any evidence of that?") I was pretty irked with him. How many times has she asked him the very same question and he responded with irritation, and now he's acting like he's right? He is just so incredibly arrogant at times that it's a wonder Scully just doesn't slap him. Oh, so now that he's a skeptic he's as correct as he's always been? Argh!
The one explicitly Shippy moment that I found was when Mulder was briefing Scully about the metal implants found in the bodies of the victims acting like some sort of homing device. While she looks at the paperwork, his gaze simply stays on her face...staring and staring out of worry and concern, because she too has one of those devices in her. Scully is susceptible to whatever brought those people together and got them killed, and that's really Mulder's only real investment in Cassandra Spender and this case...the fact that it could concern Scully. When Marita calls, Scully walks out (too bad it's only because she's starting to feel the effects of the "homing mechanism") and Mulder seems utterly at a loss to find her gone. When he isn't able to locate her he starts looking for her everywhere, including Cassandra Spender's...it is just so cute how he can't just leave a message on her machine like everyone else...no, he has to really track her down.
This episode shows nothing if not Mulder's utter concern and loyalty to his partner. At least, that's what I'm going to say since I don't really know what the heck is going on with the mytharc...burning bodies...Krycek and Marita lovers...young boys used as Black Oil containers...
"This is no good. I don't like being kept in the dark on this."
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1999 by Jennifer J. Chen