X-philes have been waiting for this episode for 17 years: the reunion of Scully and Mulder with their son William! What a set up! If the search for Samantha was The X-Files‘ longest-running storyline, resolved after 7 years, William returned after twice as long, and with twice as many expectations. The return of William is something anyone could have expected despite him being given up for adoption in 9X17: William, with much of Scully and Mulder’s characterization being centered around him since the beginning of this revival — notably in James Wong’s semi-mythology episode 10X2: Founder’s Mutation. And fittingly it is with a James Wong episode that the William story becomes front and center again, with a stand-alone investigation that morphs into a mythology episode — something reminiscent of the Samantha resolution two-parter, 7X10: Sein und Zeit / 7X11: Closure.

James Wong writes and directs. He is a veteran director and that shows: he is able to instill tension and create scares in the teaser and the hospital chase scenes; he makes use of silence and long takes to maximize the emotional impact of Scully’s monologue in the morgue; he gives us the show’s first drone shot, in that zoom out from the boat; the episode flows smoothly and the tension is managed expertly, without the excessive speed which was one of the negatives of Founder’s Mutation.

The script seems to have developed in a similar way as the episode develops. The starting point would have been Wong’s interest in doing a scary story based around creepypasta, the internet’s version of urban legends (and not “fanfiction” really): the Ghouli monster and the ghouli.net website are based around the Slender Man story, an internet legend around which two teens attempted murder using knives. However, for an episode called “Ghouli” there’s surprisingly little about it, and the episode quickly turns towards the Scully-William connection — one could think that Carter contributed with some ideas here in order to make this of one piece with his My Struggle mythology, but very little evidence of that has appeared in interviews.

Meet Jackson Van de Kamp

After so many years of absence, William is an actual character on the show! The season gradually builds towards a reunion of the whole family, with glimpses in 11X01: My Struggle III, a proper introduction but no real meeting here, and we suppose much more in the finale. Ghouli is built around the mere (re)introduction of William as a character; this would be fine if this were one episode in an on-going story with a long future, if we still had many seasons ahead of us, but everything points to this being the final season! Any real character development that might take place for William might be limited to the duration of the season/series finale. Although Ghouli is a good episode in and of itself, in the context of the show’s history and what is left of it, what we get is frustratingly little.

And so we meet Jackson Van de Kamp, i.e. William. With so many Biblical parallels, prophecies and messianic promises, much could have been expected of his character. He could have been a Jesus-like immaculate being living far away from the spotlight in rural America; he could have turned out cynical and prone to evil, full of wrath at the world (something that Joe Harris’ comics could have explored had Carter specifically told Harris not to go there, which could have been a hint at Carter’s plans for William). What we get is more mundane.

What is most surprising about him is not the casting — he is portrayed by Miles Robbins, a 25 year old that somewhat could pass for a 16/17 year old, and we still need more scenes with him to judge his acting skills — nor his physical appearance — a Bobby Briggs / young John Connor / angel from Millennium‘s 1×18: Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions. What is most surprising is that he is sort of a jerk, one could even say he has signs of an emotionless psychopath. He has two girlfriends and reads about how to be a good pickup artist. He thinks that using his powers for a prank involving knives is a good idea. He shows absolutely no emotion regarding his foster parents’ death. He waits patiently playing dead while Scully cries her guts out.

Scully finds evidence that he seemed to have lived a normal childhood, or so it would appear to her; after all, she wants to believe that her choice to give him up for adoption was the right one. How would a normal life be possible given his developing abilities? He also has an interest in astronomy (ties well with his would-be memories with Mulder in Founder’s Mutation), snow globes and Malcolm X. He holds a diary, which Scully reads with a similar passion as Mulder read Samantha’s diary in 7X11: Closure. He is internet savvy enough to hold a website, and to find and collect secret information about Project Crossroads. That he would search for Project Crossroads is proof enough that he knows more about his nature than it first appears, and that he must not be in the best of psychological conditions.

The Van de Kamps are here a rich suburban family in Virginia — at complete odds with the God-fearing humble farmers in Wyoming of 9X17: William, and it is difficult to imagine anything that could have happened in the meantime to justify these changes. Could it be that they somehow profited financially from having their child be part of secret medical experiments? (as was apparently the case with the Sims in 5X05: Christmas Carol / 5X07: Emily, who also end up dead) Hopefully we will get some more background in My Struggle IV.

Project Crossroads

The CSM, hanging out and smoking in Skinner’s office as if it were 1995 once more and saying things like “Mulder is close“, provides some exposition: “We’ll be able to find what we’ve been looking for.” The CSM is looking for William and uses the X-Files unit to find him. Evidently the Department of Defense agents that are tracking William to kill him are not on the same side as the CSM. Would any government agency with surveillance powers like the ones exhibited in 9X08:Trust No 1 have trouble finding William despite the adoption? — but let’s accept that for the sake of the narrative. One would expect though that the CSM, the self-described most powerful man on the world, would have been able to use the DOD’s resources to track William down.

Skinner provides exposition to Mulder about what experiments William is the result of. The entire dialogue is worth analyzing here: “After the crash at Roswell, our government’s interest in alien technology exploded in all directions. And finally, in the ’70s, our science caught up to our ambition. A eugenics program was initiated by a Dr. Masao Matsumoto using components of alien technology, hybrid DNA. Project Crossroads. It was ultimately deemed a failure because they couldn’t predict what attributes the test subjects would get from the hybrid DNA. The project was defunded 15 years ago. Dr. Matsumoto burned all the files pertaining to the subjects to save their lives, and then… he disappeared. The DoD has tried to track them down ever since.” And later Mulder: “Scully, I believe that, through the Smoking Man, you were an unwitting participant in a eugenics program called Project Crossroads. It was spearheaded by Dr. Masao Matsumoto. He disappeared two years after William was born. I believe our son was one of his test subjects.”

This description of events is really a very simplified version of the mythology for the purposes of the revival. There is talk of hybridization, of eugenics (to create a “superhuman“, as per the CSM in My Struggle III), of defunding due to scarce results, but nothing about alien colonization and the time pressure this created on anyone working on hybridization, nor is there anything about the hybrids created before the 1970s or about all the different purposes hybrids were created for.

Dr. Matsumoto was never referenced before (a previous Japanese connection is explored in the hybridization experiments of Dr. Ishimaru / Shiro Zama in 3X09: Nisei / 3X10: 731). William’s conception and early years were involved in many different experiments (Zeus Genetics, Valor Victor chloramine project, apparently the CSM’s own impregnation with science), however the show never quite made it clear if William was special from his conception and surprised the scientists in all these projects or if a combination of all these projects made him special. Matsumoto’s Crossroads feels like a generic umbrella term that encompasses everything in the past, without going too much into the details.

The use of “Project Crossroads” here is interesting: a crossroads between a before and an after, a crossing between human and alien (also, the ship’s name “Chimera” calls back to the hybrids in 4X24: Gethsemane / 5X02: Redux), and reminiscent of Operation Crossroads, the US military project that fine-tuned nuclear bombs in 1946 in the Pacific atolls. Is William a sort of weapon, the result of a DOD experiment? The children of 10X2: Founder’s Mutation were also part of a hybridization project that was of interest to the DOD, are they of the same kind? Was Matsumoto’s disappearance after William’s birth a coincidence, or could Matsumoto consider William a success and be keeping tabs on him?

Where do we go from here?

The developments in this episode render some weighty scenes from 11X01: My Struggle III useless. What was the point in Jeffrey Spender telling Scully about the name of William’s foster family if Scully was to find William through her visions anyway? The name Van de Kamp does raise Scully’s attention in Ghouli, but it’s really William’s visions and the investigations that leads her to him, not Jeffrey’s information. What is certain is that Jeffrey’s magnetite injection in 9X17: William was of no use — William did develop superhuman abilities, and the adoption did not protect him more than what Scully could have.

The viral apocalypse itself is put into question here: “What if I didn’t get a glimpse of the future? What if I was just a receptacle for his message to me?” What if the visions of a viral apocalypse are the result of William’s mind trying to make sense of this world and his place in it as a lab rat in hybridization experiments, and 10X6: My Struggle II was these visions as seen from the point of view of Scully? Season 11 could very well not be leading us to a realization of the My Struggle II future after all.

William’s powers are to convince those around him that things are not like they really are, as if the shapeshifter ability of the hybrids in the 1990s has been updated to mind manipulation (a la 3X17: Pusher!). As the tagline says, “I see what I want you to see” (4 out of 5 tagline changes in season 11, a weird record!). He seems to be partly in control of his powers, at time trying very hard for a result and at time easily slipping in and out of it. When Scully receives William’s vision, she is in a hypnagogic state or sleep paralysis, shot in an intense way similar to the strident sounds experiences in Founder’s Mutation, reminiscent of many alien abductees’ accounts — and Mulder’s memories of Samantha’s abduction. (The episode kicks off on a bad note with a Scully voiceover about her dreams — an inspiration from My Struggle III?)

William/Jackson assumes the appearance of Peter Wong, and that actor (Francois Chau, of Lost and The Expanse fame) portrays William as a much more caring and warm individual. Given that this actor is relatively well-known, could he be returning in the future?

Oddly enough, Scully describes William’s ability as creating an “alternate reality“, although we are certainly far from anything like an alternate universe here. An alternate theory, reinforced by all the dream-man “This Man” sightings in nearly all the episodes this season, would be that the apcalypse is indeed coming in the future, and future William is creating an alternate reality where it is not happening, i.e. all of season 11. We are heading towards the events of My Struggle II but William’s future powers switch us to a different outcome. This might be too far-out science-fiction for the show to attempt. And yet, Jackson/William’s handle on his ghouli.net site is “rever“, i.e. “to dream” in French; in a Twin Peaks fashion, we can wonder, “We are like the dreamer who dreams and lives inside the dream, but who is the dreamer?”

A mother’s pain

However, everything written above is not really what the episode is about. Ghouli is really about Scully and her anguish and pain.

Mulder does feel pain but it is much more internalized — which is arguably not that characteristic of him, but between this episode and 10X4: Home Again it seems Mulder/Duchovny is shown as much more introverted, if not relegated to a supportive role for Scully’s drama. And while Mulder was running a DNA test to find out if Jackson is Scully’s son, he could have saved everyone a lot of worries if he also ran a comparison with his own DNA! “Our son” is mentioned several times, but the question of who William’s father is hovers over the episode, and seems to be torturing Skinner (oddly enough, Wong had no idea about the games Carter would play in My Struggle III when writing Ghouli!). If Mulder did not, it would evidently be because he is convinced he is the father? Incidentally, William’s new name “Jackson” could be “Jacob’s son”, i.e. the son of Jacob and Rachel, continuing a Jacob/Mulder and Rachel/Scully parallel introduced in 11X03: Plus One!

Just when Scully feels she will find her son again, here he is lying dead. “This is torture, Mulder“, and indeed it is! Scully found a daughter of hers, Emily, only to see her die; she later had a vision of her on a morgue slab (5X17: All Souls). This is repeated here, in the most harsh manner possible. Just when she might have met him, Jackson/William chooses to postpone their true meeting, perhaps wary of them being FBI, and assumes a different identity. This is high drama, giving Anderson plenty of opportunities to showcase her talent. The ending scene of the realization of what happened at the gas station could very well be this season’s most powerful image. Ghouli might be problematic in the way it is part of a larger continuity, but as an episode it is very effective.

Despite all expectations, My Struggle III had ended not with a re-energized Scully & Mulder searching for William, but with Scully saying that William will find them — despite an impending viral apocalypse. Ghouli ends with us certain that William is not actively searching for Scully & Mulder, he is mildly intrigued but nothing more (“This woman…I don’t know, she’s maybe my birth mother“). Nobody is too worried of the viral apocalypse it seems. And it might be a given that My Struggle IV will focus on him, but actually if we were not to see William anymore it would not be surprising either: we know he is alive, out exploring the world, with some special powers that could be one more X-File, and that’s that.

The X-Files Season 11 / Event Series 2: Introduction | 11X01: My Stuggle III | 11X02: This | 11X03: Plus One

Written & directed by Darin Morgan, who once more enjoys the complete freedom given to him by executive producers Carter & Glen Morgan to do a very personal episode full of his trademark quirks — such as multiple narratives, intellectual monologues about the nature of truth, mise en abyme (Mengele effect: a Mandela effect about the Mandela effect), recurring phrases (“wait, what?”). His most recent effort was 10X3: Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, however Forehead Sweat has more in common with some of his best post-modern work, 3X20: Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’ and its Millennium sequel 2×09: Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense.

“Oh, that’s so po-co.”

Reggie Something, in the classic (!) modernist approach, is another stand-in for the author, an insecure man making fun of the male lead’s all-American features and who manages to seduce the female lead. Forehead Sweat is a thematic sequel of the post-modern From Outer Space, for which countless academic analyses have been written. We are presented with stories that are accounts of what happened according to a point of view, but it is difficult to get to an objective truth. What happened here? Was Dr. They’s conspiracy so far-reaching that it convinced everyone of its non-existence? Was Reggie Mulder & Scully’s partner, making Scully’s findings of Reggie’s career planted information by Dr. They? Was Reggie and his sudden disappearances evidence of parallel universes? Was Reggie a disillusioned ex-NSA agent who was trying to find like minds? Was Reggie truly a mad individual, or just a good shaggy dog storyteller? If so, what to make of Skinner knowing him, with a final line “Where the hell are they taking Reggie?” that turns everything on its head once more? (reminiscent of From Outer Space‘s “Who, Lord Kinbote?“) We do not know what the truth is (although the crazy theory sounds more plausible).

This post-modern approach is reinforced with layers and layers of meta. The episode revisits The X-Files‘ past with alternative facts on its opening credits and best hits (all from the first four seasons, when Morgan was more or less close to the series), and has a very clear breaking the fourth wall modernist moment when the creation kills the author, with that alternate scene from 4X20: Small Potatoes! And with the excellent casting of Brian Huskey, who can’t think that the Reggie-Mulder-Scully partership wouldn’t work?

“Well, believe what you want to believe… that’s what everybody does nowadays anyway.”

Morgan built the Dr. They/Mandela effect conspiracy around his critique of the “alternative facts” phenomenon, taking multiple jabs at Trump’s administration and Trump himself, yet never naming him directly — too many jabs in fact, one wonders how this episode will be read in a few years in post-Trump years (certain details, like the alien’s absurd “bing bong” when he’s going up the stairs to his UFO is also a reference to Trump, something which is already receding in the wastebin of history given the man’s many absurdities since). This could be quite gratuitous, but the entire episode is thematically solid with extension of these ideas, from Dr. They’s 1984-like conspiracy to control the future by controlling the past to Mulder’s memories of the Twilight Zone.

Were-Monster already included reasons as to why The X-Files is passé today — mobile phones everywhere, exposed pranks that would have populated tabloid news as paranormal sightings. Forehead Sweat presents more socio-political reasons about why The X-Files‘ mythology, specifically, is irrelevant today: secrets hardly remain secret anymore and people are hardly interested in truth when they would rather have opinions. The X-Files‘ gold time was in that moment between the end of the Cold War and pre-9/11; conspiracy theories today are not cool, they are either legitimate social concerns or far-right agit-prop lunacies. Conspiracies cannot sustain themselves, conspirators would rather accuse the accusers (This tagline). Mulder’s chivalric and quixotic search for The Truth is just not that interesting or relevant anymore, people would just laugh at him like these peculiar Vancouver statues do — now, everybody knows their own truth and what everybody is asking for today is justice. Instead, today’s situation is more complex and wilder than in the 1990s. As even the Twilight Zone teaser says, “the world’s gone mad“!

Where the My Struggle episodes try very hard to continue the mythology to its bare-bones caricature villain extremes, Forehead Sweat pulls the rug under any fan of the mythology with an inconvenient version of the truth. Reggie-Mulder-Scully’s last case presents the reason why the aliens are more of a 90s phenomenon and “Why aren’t people getting probed by aliens anymore“. The aliens, that symbol of the unexplained, both menacing and fascinating, are presented as pretentious parrots of Trump’s hate speech and put Earth in quarantine — in a scene that turns on its head the optimistic offer of the aliens in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). They even present what Mulder, and by extension the show, actually fears most, “All the answers“, and suddenly life is not worth living. Having answers, especially answers one doesn’t like, really is the end of the X-Files.

“It’s time to face the facts, guys. This is the end of the X-Files.”

Because the other thing that Forehead Sweat manages to do is to make its own existence irrelevant. This is not just about Trump or post-truth, it is about post-X-Files: when Mulder frustratedly shouts “I was fighting the power and breaking conspiracies before you saw your first chemtrail, you punks” to younger FBI agents disappointed with this “legend“, one realizes how much time has passed. “The world’s gone mad” all right, but that’s also what an older person would say about the younger generation too.

When it presents us with a Twilight Zone teaser (shot where a memorable scene from From Outer Space was shot!), we reflect on The X-Files‘ place in history and popular culture. The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) and The X-Files (1993-2002) are separated by a bit over one generation, and we are approaching that moment as much time will separate us from The X-Files‘ heyday, a moment when The X-Files will be fondly regarded as a memory of the past, remembered by many but seen by few. It is aware of the whole revival’s status as just icing on the cake.

When the episode shows young Mulder’s awe at discovering a Twilight Zone episode and then shows Mulder’s obsessiveness about it, it is of course the audience and its relationship with The X-Files that is mirrored here.

“It can’t be that good of an episode.” “It-It’s-it’s not about the episode, Scully. It’s about my memory of seeing my first Twilight Zone. It changed me. You don’t forget that.”

Any fan can relate. Like Reggie, we have lived the past quarter of a century in company with these characters. Our memories of the show are very important to who we are — and the more time passes, the more this nostalgia becomes valuable and a fundamental part of ourselves. When these memories are either altered (Dr. They) or when we revisit them to find out they are not as we remembered them, it is our relationship with and understanding of the world that is changed. Scully’s solution is simple: let the past be the past. Don’t eat that goop-O/jell-O/madeleine de Proust.

“I want to remember how it was. I want to remember how it all was.”

In short, let the memories of the show intact and move on with your life. Darin Morgan is aware that it would be trivial to attempt to recapture lightning twice — either because he aware that the revival is not as good as the old series, or because our memories of the old series are such that we cannot be objective viewers to anything the revival might present to us. And so, The X-Files is just a TV show, remember it fondly, don’t try to tamper too much with it. It is an odd message to have while the showrunner says there are always more stories to tell, but Darin Morgan seems to be aware that this is the end. It is the kind of episode about memory and about the series itself that is only appropriate at the end, or in retrospect. Building sentimental ties to a TV show to make sense of the world is also the theme of 9X18: Sunshine Days — which was also, appropriately, a farewell to the series. However, this episode is, once more, an episode about the series instead of the series just trying to do a good episode, a self-awareness that was very noticeable and annoying in season 10; such episodes work only when they are exceptional, and season 11 as a whole might flow better after all, with its more numerous episodes.

The episode surely is not devoid of shortcomings. Most noticeably compared to masterworks like From Outer Space, once more there is no investigation, the “case” comes to them. There is not even an X-File or plot, arguably, just the musings of a mad man, and it would make little difference if the scene with Dr. They or the scene with the “last case” would come at any point in the episode. Some of the dialogue or jokes could have been trimmed (the Mandela effect explanations, the redacted letter), some/much of the Trump jokes could have been condensed or made more universal than direct Trump quotes (the wall speech). But most importantly, the enjoyment of this episode depends a lot on one’s taste of humor and tolerance for camp; the campiness is much, much more present in Darin Morgan-directed episodes than the one he just wrote for. He goes wild here, reusing 1950s/1960s pulp scifi aesthetics extensively, much, much more than with the references to Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion in From Outer Space; this can be justified by this just being Reggie’s Twilight Zone-filled fantasies, but it is a lot to digest.

It might not be Darin Morgan’s best episode, but it is a very good one, and it is a thematically and emotionally appropriate episode for The X-Files final hurrah of a season.

Miscellaneous

• Mulder did have a partner named Reggie in his first years at the FBI! Reggie Purdue met with his death in 1X15: Young at Heart and was named again only twice, in 4X08: Paper Hearts and 5X01: Unusual Suspects (the source of the clip here). Interestingly, Reggie Purdue does look a bit like Reggie Murgatroid!
• The directing and the music editing has fun with setting up another conspiracy adventure, with rising tension and underground parking meetings, then cutting it short!
• “There are companies who are willing to pay anything […] Companies like G–” censored! A meta-joke similar to the cockroach crawling in front of the screen in 3X12: War of the Coprophages! Did Reggie mean GM? This would make it a Mandela effect on the Ford Pinto scandal in the late 1970s, about a cost-benefit analysis of replacing a fuel tank catching fire versus the social cost of injuries and deaths!
• References: Shazaam/Kazaam and other Mandela effects; the US invasion of Grenada in 1983; Soy Bomb in a Bob Dylan concert in 1998 (on video!); safety ban of lawn darts; Grenada UFO stamps and the prime minister’s interest in the UFO phenomenon making its way to the UN.
• The sequence of Reggie’s series of public sector jobs, with its similar cubicles and its gradual improvement of technology, will strike a chord with anybody that has an office job. Morgan uses the opportunity to drop jabs at the US’s awful foreign policy record, with torture of prisoners and gratuitous “collateral damage” drone strikes!
• Dr. They’s crazy video and hidden past life in show business is very akin to Dr. Oonan Goopta from Doomsday Defense!
• Is the ambulance from Ghostbusters (why?) from the same “Spotnitz Sanatorium” from Doomsday Defense? (and of course to Frank Spotnitz)
• Darin Morgan seems to be making fun of or siding with the accusations of sexism in The X-Files: Reggie tells Pilot Scully “Move along, sugar boobs. This is the X-Files. No women allowed.” and present-day Scully, very relaxed, occupies Mulder‘s desk.
• The aliens return the Voyager space probe with its gold record — see the teaser to 2X01: Little Green Men for the description of that historic mission!

• No Darin Morgan is complete without an Alex Diakun appearance! (here the excellent Twilight Zone bartender/devil) We also have a cameo from Dan Zukovic, who was in Darin Morgan’s other Millennium episode, 2×21: Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me! (the Standards & Practices guy; here the no less excellent Twilight Zone bar client) We also see Bill Dow (the memorabilia store clerk), who we know better as Chuck Burks (introduced in 2X21: The Calusari, last seen in 8X12: Badlaa).
• Some real Twilight Zone references: revealing who the alien is in a diner is the plot of Will The Real Martial Please Stand Up?; telepathic aliens giving humans a book with secrets (with a twist!) is the plot of To Serve Man.
• “This Man” sighting: on Mulder’s “everything is connected” board.
• Mark Snow is again recycling himself — but this time he goes along with Darin Morgan’s self-awareness that this is the end: the music at the end of the “last case” scene is from the end of I Want To Believe (track “Home Again”).

The X-Files Event Series 2 / Season 11: Introduction | 11X01: My Struggle III | 11X02: This

Chris Carter writes, but probably due to workload lets directing duties to veteran but XF newcomer Kevin Hooks. This is the conventional stand-alone investigation case that has been missing throughout this revival, “our bread and butter” as Mulder says, as if season 11 is rebooting season 10 itself. The directing is perfectly competent, the writing of the dialogue for the guest star(s) and the Mulder-Scully banter is excellent. We get scenes we’ve been waiting to see for a while, like our agents interrogating victims and suspects and testing their theories against each other. Some quips aside, this would be a good episode. But some specific bits dedicated to the Mulder-Scully relationship manage to poison the whole.

The X-File

Doubles are a favorite theme of Carter’s: 3X13: Syzygy, 7X20: Fight Club, 10X5: Babylon, with the latter two found in many “worst of” lists. Doppelgangers specifically were the subject of Fight Club and one could fear repetition, but in Plus One the subject is treated in a non-humorous way and with a truly amazing quadruple performance of female and male parts by Karin Konoval (Madame Zelma in 3X04: Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and the Peacock mother in 4X03: Home). Konoval is Judy and Chucky (and their evil schizophrenic counterparts), twins that play a kind of telepathic hangman/Death Note game, something that they have been doing since they were children and murdered their parents, and which by now has grown into a massive local phenomenon. Carter explains:

“Recently I was interested in the idea of doubles, doppelgängers, and so I watched some movies about doppelgängers, and then I thought how would I want to approach doppelgängers as it relates to The X-Files, and I started thinking about things about The X-Files that I’ve never explored. One of the things I never explored is a kind of symmetry this show has. The name Mulder has six letters, and the name Scully has six letters, and I started thinking about what the similarities were between those characters, their names, what if they saw their own doubles? The idea kind of took shape as a result of all my thinking about those things.”

Mulder and Scully are on the case. Interestingly, for the sake of the skeptic/believer exchanges, Scully once more says she doesn’t believe in ghosts (how about anything from 1X12: Beyond the Sea to “we believe the same thing” in 9X19/20: The Truth?) nor evil (how about Donnie Pfaster?), while at the same time being open to Mulder’s ideas and ultimately swallowing these (disgusting!) bread pills that work their magic.

One could say there is little they do here apart from receiving news of murder and repeatedly pressuring the twins until they give in (there’s even some foreshadowing with Mulder saying “And that’s the Chucky who’s eventually gonna hang himself“) — but that has been true of several past investigations. Some additional criticism to the case could be that they come across Judy purely by chance, just one random hospital room of many, and that we are given no real motivation as to why the twins do these murders or how they got their powers. Twins doubled by schizophrenia doubled by doppelgangers are more vulnerable to evil?

All these aspects could be corrected with a slightly longer running time than the one available. Carter and his team are accustomed to the episode format of 1990s television, with 45 minutes and four acts, while today’s constraints are 42 minutes and five acts; it doesn’t look like much but it is about 6% less, and forces a more rapid pace more cliffhangers for commercial breaks! The situation is of course much, much better than for My Struggle III, and one could even say Carter is glad to get some time off the exhausting mythology to write a scary story that he likes; if one discounts the experimental 9X14: Improbable and 10X5: Babylon, this is Carter’s first serious stand-alone since 8X04: Patience, which set the tone for what season 8 should look like. This should bode well for the rest of the season. However, the episode had also had to make space for the Mulder-Scully relationship aspect.

These odd Mulder & Scully scenes

The episode appears to show the rekindling of Mulder and Scully’s physical relationship, after their distance during season 10 and their apparent reconciliation in 10X5: Babylon. As 10X1: My Struggle seemed to imply, the breakup was not mutual but rather Scully’s decision in the face of Mulder’s depression. As the very last scene summarizes, Scully took her time to reconsider things and progressively made her mind up, while Mulder was waiting for the relationship to start again all along. All of which is in apparent contradiction with the harmonious way they seemed to be together in 11X02: This, which was obviously the work of a different writer.

The handling of the Mulder-Scully relationship has been one of the most controversial aspects of the series as a whole, and there are as many opinions on it as there are fans, especially after all these years of expectations. While episodes have used investigations to force us and the characters to reflect on their relationship (6X18: Milagro) and while the relationship came to be a central part of the show (7X17: all things), each episode’s central story never suffered from it or was never displaced by it — except in less-than-stellar times (9X08: Trust No 1). Plus One progressively builds towards these Mulder-Scully scenes and ultimately completely does away with the investigation to focus on them, with the connection with the casework only being a comment by evil Judy on Scully’s age.

Some bed conversations follow, reminiscent of 7X22: Requiem and I Want To Believe, but here they are extremely awkwardly written. What is striking is the disconnect between the acknowledgement of the passage of time, with Scully’s worries, and everything else about these scenes, which act as if Scully and Mulder are still in their thirties and discovering each other for the first time. Why would Scully express her desire for a second child 17 years after having her first? Why wouldn’t they have had a discussion about that during the approximately 10-14 years they were together? Why on Earth would Scully fear Mulder would find somebody younger than her and right after complain she doesn’t have anyone to have a child with, right in Mulder’s arms? Why would Mulder suggest another child when he knows her history of fertility issues? Why would Scully feel at all insecure because of Judy’s comments, when she already is a mother and knows she is otherwise barren for the last 22 years? Why do they behave like “friends with benefits” as if they didn’t have a long history together before? Why would they care about this when their son might be the key to the global viral apocalypse? Why would Scully feel so insecure for that but then be so self-assured when fighting off her doppelganger, while Mulder panics? “End of that journey“: and can’t Carter conceive of a woman outside of her ability to have children? When character motivations are so obscure, it is difficult to empathize with what the show is attempting to do. By comparison, 7X22: Requiem was much more subtle: Mulder watching Scully playing with a child was enough for us to understand.

The whole discussion is mind-boggingly misplaced and does not do this long-standing relationship justice. Season 11 pretends we are once more in 1998 and we can watch up close these characters getting back together again, complete with gratuitous nudity — only that the characters are now in their fifties and should act like it, something that 11X02: This pulled off without drawing attention to it. The centerpiece of the episode, in the way both writing and directing point to it, is the double intimation of sex, which is also uncharacteristically explicit for this chaste of a show — while the fact that they had sex should absolutely be no revelation to anyone that watched seasons 7-9 and I Want To Believe! It is almost as if Carter took all the cues from fanfic and is over-compensating for the conscientious lack of Mulder-Scully physicality all these years, season 10 in particular. This is more fan-servicey and more soap-operatic than whatever the show has previously done — all of which, to the eyes of this viewer, does nothing but cheapen The X-Files.

Mythology elements

No mythology at all in this episode. Unless…

The callback to the motel scene in 7X22: Requiem, right before Scully got pregnant, might not be fortuitous. Carter is known to use historical and religious/mythological references relevant to the story in places names (e.g. Dominic Savio hospital in 7X11: Closure). In Plus One, the motel is named “Saint Rachel”. In the Old Testament, Jacob fell in love with Rachel and had to work for her father for seven years in order to win her hand in marriage; Rachel was unable to conceive, while Jacob had children with Rachel’s older sister Leah; eventually Rachel miraculously gave birth to Joseph, destined to be the leader of Israel’s twelve tribes; later Rachel died in childbirth of her second son, Benjamin.

The obvious similarities with Scully’s history and William are striking. Is Scully headed to being a mother for a second time? (Emily excluded!) The pillow talk in this episode would have more significance if it is foreshadowing of a second pregnancy later in the season. Not to mention that the sex scenes would then be in keeping with Carter’s apparent conception of sex as only for reproductive reasons. The decision to have a fiftysomething year old character pregnant out of perhaps love just because her first child is revealed to have been a deception is of course as crazy as just described, but Carter might just go there.

Miscellaneous

• The tagline is changed once more, it is doubled, reminiscent of the mirrored tagline in 9X05: 4-D. This is the fourth episode in a row, too much of a habit!
• Mark Snow’s music continues to be odd, with a lot of music from 10X1: My Struggle recycled here (even an entire cue repeated when Mulder and Scully first meet Judy), and with far too frequent uses of The X-Files theme.
• At one point Judy is watching on her television The Patty Duke Show (1963-1966), which also deal with doubles: two cousins identical in appearance but completely different in character!
• Doppelgangers are also a staple of The X-Files‘ twin show, Twin Peaks (1990-1991; 2017). What’s more surprising is that the revivals of both shows share a character or entity named Judy that generates these evil doppelgangers!
• Episode names spotted in Judy and Chucky’s hangman games: Firewalker, Closure!
• Fit tanks and unbuttoned shirts: some wardrobe choices felt out of place for this show, which prided itself on the fact that its stars and guest stars are purposefully not the paragon of Hollywood beauty and rather used everyday faces to reinforce a sense of realism.
• “You’re a woman of science“, again: it sounds “science” has become an all-purpose magic word that can easily solve anything from infertility to alien apocalypses.
• Interesting connection: Karin Konoval’s Peacock mother to Scully in 4X03: Home: “I can tell you don’t have no children. Maybe one day you’ll learn the pride, the love, when you know your boy will do anything for his mother.“
• Another “This Man” sighting, this time on the drum in the beginning of the episode. Along with the changed opening credits and the visions theme and the changed dialogue from En Ami in My Struggle III, and the virtual reality theme of This, this was enough to continue feeding theories that this is all an alternate reality. Perhaps, but it would really be odd to “waste” that many episodes on something that would prove unreal, and it would be unfairly lenient to assign anything we find odd in this revival to this being an alternate reality. Let’s see how this unfolds next week.

Season 11: Introduction | 11X01: My Struggle III

“This” is more like it! Glen Morgan writes and directs an episode that is light on plot but strong on Mulder-Scully interactions, making full use of that infamous chemistry that gained such a longevity to this show!

The episode is an action-packed techno-thriller like never before in the history of the series; yet even if Morgan is not an expert at this kind of content, it suffers of none of the drawbacks of the premiere. The photography is much closer to the characteristic X-Files feel (even too dark at times, like in Morgan’s 10X4: Home Again), despite the same director of photography working on both episodes. Morgan was going for Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, although modern audiences will say it is more like 24 meets Black Mirror!

The draw of the episode is Mulder and Scully, who are together on screen for nearly the entire episode, a conscious decision on behalf of Morgan after having them apart in Home Again (and Carter in his episodes). Despite the seriousness of the themes of the central X-File, the plot here is really secondary and the multiple touches of humor give the overall episode a feel of a reunion show where we are watching more for the joy of seeing these actors after all these years rather than be troubled by the plot: an encore.

Levity abounds, from the shootout accompanied by rock music in the opening, to the ease with which they infiltrate a top security facility in the end (by flirting?). Morgan even left in several jokes that were improvised by Anderson and Duchovny — some of which could have been cut (“alien’s butt“? Mulder clearing his throat to break the silence after one of his jokes?) — increasing that impression that we are watching as much the actors as their characters.

The A-story: The Mulder & Scully show

Despite these many drawbacks, Morgan spends his episode to show us that Mulder and Scully are two fifty-year-olds who have been the most important person in each other’s life for about half their lives. This is obvious in every single aspect of their interaction of This: their coordination with almost no words spoken when the strike team attacks them; their quick understanding of each other when they have to be separated; their casual banter when eating together or traveling together or sleeping together; most importantly, how comfortable they are with each other’s presence, as they should after so many years. The episode opens and ends with us seeing them casually sleeping or resting on their couch (recalling the beginning of the romantic phase of their relationship in 7X17: all things and 7X21: Je Souhaite). Morgan gives the audience what they could expect from a revival, in an episode competently directed, and given this revival’s track record this is already enough.

They could be romantically involved or some odd version of ex-couple-turned-just-best-friends who happened to sleep while doing work at home, but they are certainly living together once more, there is no confusion or two ways around this. Although it’s “Agent Mulder’s residence“, there are references to “our home” and “our office“. The presentation of Mulder & Scully throughout this episode is very different from that of Carter — it almost feels like a jab at the decision to separate them romantically and have them so much distant for the greater part of season 10, in the same way that the line about treating William like trash was like a jab at Carter and co’s treatment of that whole storyline. While the sexual tension that was building up during years in seasons 1-7 was part of the attraction of the show for a certain share of the audience, in this revival the back and forth and mystery about the status of their relationship has damaged the dynamic and liveliness of the show instead of giving birth to something interesting.

The B-story: The X-File

This episode does not take its central plot too seriously, which makes it less of a classic than it could be if it had checked all the boxes.

Transhumanism, the position that we can use technology to transcend our mortal human coils, has seen somewhat a resurgence lately, with big Silicon Valley figures like Jeff “Amazon” Bezos and Peter “PayPal” Thiel declaring their interest. In media it is Black Mirror that comes to mind, and its episode “San Junipero“, one of those landmark episodes of television that immediately become popular culture references — Glen Morgan confessed that the reference to Black Mirror is by design. The use of your phone to gather information to build the virtual you was something explored in Caprica (2009, the modern Battlestar Galactica‘s prequel series), which was already commenting on our addiction to social media, their use being so extensive that the information gathered from there would be solid basis for predicting behavior. Suffice to say that our use of technology has not decreased since then; when Erika Price offers a way out by not using your phone, anyone’s reaction goes a long way to prove that “The System” is so over-reaching and deeply entrenched that it is nearly impossible to imagine a life without it (although the CSM managed in 9X19/20: The Truth…).

Price’s group is using the simulated personas of intelligent thinkers to advance their research on space colonization: “We’re digital slaves. They take our uploaded minds to develop science that only the elite will use to leave your world.” The second step will be the transition of human society to that simulated reality: “When we leave this planet, this life will have evolved into that.” Logistically, it would actually make sense to find a way for immortality in the form of consciousness uploaded in the digital world, which would be much easier to command machines and colonize space with: no need for oxygen, food, waste disposal, safety, so many of the costly features of antiquated biological systems — us — that presently prohibit space colonization at a large scale. Mulder sees (or pretends to see) the significance of this collective evolution towards the next phase of life: “I would just like to…to see it. It’s the closest I’ll get to seeing God. In this life, or that.”

The episode could have benefitted from a rewrite and some technical advice in the way it handles all these issues; however several problems are just necessary for making a point or advancing the plot. The idea that mere phone calls are a large part of this process to recreate something as complex as human intelligence and individual personality is preposterous. There’s no reason why the simulated person would start existing only after the real person dies. The ending twist, dark and spooky as it may be, of the existence of back-up servers with copies of everything, is something that would be quite obvious for anyone working with digital files.

Glen Morgan uses this science fictional concept for the return of at least one of the Lone Gunmen, characters that he created with James Wong back in season 1 (1X16: E.B.E.) — Langly thus becomes the only character of the show to have appeared in all seasons with the two leads and Skinner and the CSM! This is some reward for Dean Haglund, who has been an active proponent for the return of the Lone Gunmen for years, even frequently offering his own take on why they had faked their deaths (the size of the coffins in 9X15: Jump the Shark). Langly was chosen by the new Syndicate to help them in their research (his kung fu was the best!), along with other great minds (Apple founder Steve Jobs, Jurassic Park writer-turned-climate-denialist Michael Crichton, AI researcher Marvin Minsky). We meet Karah Hamby, professor of mathematics at Bethesda, who was either Langly’s intellectual soulmate or his actual girlfriend, and who frankly says “We wanted a life eternal together“; after she was assassinated they might just get that. Morgan had to find a way to bring Langly back — although it is weird to imagine him, one of the most paranoid and anti-power people one could imagine, willingly collaborating with them; there was a similar issue in Joe Harris’ comics, where the Lone Gunmen had cut a deal to collaborate with the FBI out of their secret lair under those graves.

The political situation: The X-Files in the late 2010s

The tagline is once again changed (third episode in a row! it becomes a habit!): “Accuse your enemies of that which you are guilty” (not My Struggle III‘s tagline as I previously thought) This Goebbels-like propaganda haiku is an obvious attack to the current political climate, dominated by President Trump’s tweets that use such a strategy; it does not however jive with the rest of the episode that well and feels gratuitous.

The scenes with Skinner not only act as an easy political commentary of the current situation in the USA but also as a jarring reminder of how many years have passed since The X-Files was last on the air, and how much geopolitics have changed since then. “The world is different, Mulder. […] Now there’s 17 US intelligence agencies.” (Skinner’s juxtaposition of ISIS and Al-Qaeda in there is very odd though.) US intelligence agencies and their secret financing has indeed ballooned since 9/11 and the War of Terror, started by G.W.Bush and all but continued by presidents since then, as has the privatization of areas previously serviced by public entities, the most worrying of which being private security and private military firms. Erika Price is named after Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, one of the biggest private security firms around, notorious for killing civilians in Iraq and rebranded since then as Academi.

Mulder and Scully are the target of a commando of “Purlieu Services, an American [private] security contractor with its headquarters in Moscow“, that has “ascendancy over the FBI” “under a classified security directive from the Executive Branch“. Trump and his Russian soap opera is referenced in everything but name here! “The Bureau’s not in good standing with the White House these days“. In a twist mixing the privatization trend, technology advances towards a paperless society, the Freedom of Information Act (also referenced in the Joe Harris comics) and society’s tendency towards complexity, it seems Purlieu also benefitted from all the hard work of Mulder and Scully all these years by being the ones that digitized the X-Files as contractors for the FBI, under lobbying of the NSA, in order for everyone to re-discover the secret programs of the government conducted in the past (“telekinesis, MK-Ultra, remote viewing“)!

So many current series have explored all these themes already. While The X-Files does not pretend to be so much in advance of its time like it used to be in the 1990s, Glen Morgan makes every effort to imagine these characters in their fifties and how they would behave in the world of today — and does a much better job at that than either My Struggle I or III, or the whole of season 10 for that matter.

Mythology elements

This episode unexpectedly proves to be a mix of a stand-alone and mythology, with the presence of Erika Price and more detail offered on that new Syndicate’s plans; it seems her character was first conceived for this episode, and Carter retro-actively included her in his own episode.

Interestingly, the urgency of Price’s plans to colonize space is defined by a threat: “Life on this Earth, all human life, most animal life, is about to be crushed. Burned to the ground.” Would that refer to the CSM’s plan to exterminate all humans with the Spartan virus, or the threat of nuclear war? Does she consider the CSM’s plan such an inevitability? Again, how are these two conspiracies’ plans incompatible?

We see some character development in Price when we learn she initially thought poorly of Mulder and is now reconsidering her position. Mulder, playing with her, offers to accept to kill his father the CSM (it is still difficult to deal with the CSM being so openly and explicitly referred to as his father!), and once more it seems like there is strong significance in it being Mulder that would kill the CSM — as if he were the only one able to achieve that (a missile couldn’t!), as if there was a mythological prophecy surrounding it. It does seem like the season is headed towards a confrontation between Mulder and the CSM, and towards Scully being offered a choice between William and Mulder.

Miscellaneous

• Why “This“?
• The X-Files has had previous episodes that have examined artificial intelligence, all of which have aged badly in their depiction of technology — 1X06: Ghost in the Machine, 5X11: Kill Switch, 7X13: First Person Shooter — and it is Kill Switch that is closest to This episode, with its central story of two lovers uploading themselves on the internet. “Kill switch” is even mentioned in This episode, when Mulder’s phone shuts down in the hands of the Russian squad leader.
• The weight of time passing is also obvious in that beautiful Arlington cemetery sequence. References to past Morgan & Wong episodes and past continuity in general abound: “I watched his funeral from 1,000 yards away, over there, through binoculars” is a direct lift of the same dialogue from 2X01: Little Green Men; Deep Throat’s first name was given as Ronald in 4X07: Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man; we learn here Deep Throat’s full name, Ronald Pakula, this being a reference to director Alan J. Pakula, who directed among other things All the President’s Men (1976), about the real Deep Throat and the Watergate scandal, which was such a huge influence on The X-Files’ look and feel.
• Over Ronald’s tomb, Mark Snow subtly quotes his own Deep Throat theme from 1X01: Deep Throat in a slower rendition, mixed with a piano rendition of The X-Files theme!

• The infiltration in the NSA building is reminiscent of the infiltration in the power plant at the end of 1X16: E.B.E. too.
• The Russian team mention “Price“; but how does Mulder known her full name by the end of the episode?
• Mulder & Scully haven’t talked to Skinner “in a couple weeks” and there’s a lot of mistrust between them since the events of My Struggle III. The series is going through this phase of mistrusting Skinner for yet another iteration. And after Scully’s call to him, that was some coincidence with him happening on them in the woods close to Mulder’s house.
• Lots of Ramones, of course, with their “California Sun” opening the episode and a Rivieras cover in the diner. Mulder and Scully were watching the Ramones’ concert at the San Francisco Civic Center in 1979 on their TV. Frohike’s folder is named after the Ramones song “53rd & 3rd“.
• Lots of meta references in the tombstones, like in Were-Monster, with Gillian Anderson’s children in the bus, with a Hannibal Lecter joke.
• We get the address of the Unremarkable House: “Farrs Corner, 227700 Wallis Road“. Farrs Corner is not a joke on how rural the place looks, it is a real location in Virginia, about an hour’s drive from Washington DC!
• In the digitized X-Files (apart from the file for 4X03: Home, Pennsylvania) we get a fleeting glimpse at who we know to be the guest star in Darin Morgan’s upcoming episode. I wonder what more foreshadowing of upcoming episodes there is.
• Speaking of which, the inclusion of “This Man” in the photo of the Lone Gunmen at the stat of the episode got fans going on wild theories, which are entertaining but probably amount to nothing! “This Man” appears to be a made-up urban legend that this face is often seen by people in their dreams. What can this subliminal insertion of This man in our memories of This episode mean? Could the whole episode take place in a dream? And does Mulder have access to The Lone Gunmen promotional photos?
• The QR code on Deep Throat’s “memory medallion” leads to…the website of the Magic Bullet Newsletter, the semi-in-universe promotional website of The Lone Gunmen series (2001), which is still online!
• Mulder knows phreaking and algorithms? That is a surprise! Phreaking was also referenced in the Joe Harris comics!
• The long-haired last gunman that hunts Mulder & Scully for most of the episode (shouldn’t he have died in the cemetery?) is none other than Dean Friss, camera assistant and occasional actor in most if not all of Morgan’s post-X-Files work and in season 10! Glen Morgan must have found he has an interesting face. A casting story worthy of set decorator Frank Silva’s casting as the main villain in Twin Peaks!
• Although the John Gillnitz virus that killed the Lone Gunmen in 9X15: Jump the Shark (Mulder, meaning Morgan & Wong, “was gone back then“!) was not named, Scully mentions here “They were exposed to a weaponized strain of the Marburg virus“. This is a clear reference to the virus outbreak that closed Morgan & Wong’s Millennium season 2.
• A reference to Snowden couldn’t miss from all this: “Edward Snowden documents indicated the building, code named ‘Titanpointe’, was used as an NSA mass surveillance station in a program code named ‘Blarney’. It was started in the ’70s and expanded after 9/11.” For more on this very real building, see this article. and this one.
• The simulation servers can be shut down with a flat-blade screwdriver and then lights turn red: all references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Oddly enough, one of the most iconic shots of the promotional videos, where Scully breathes into a numeric pad perhaps in order to find the access code, is missing in the final cut.)