The X-Files: Scully’s Journey (Season Three-part one)
It’s Fall 1995! Babe is the rare hybrid of giant hit/enduring classic (just going from my completely unbiased gauge of watched it recently/still cried). Michael Jackson is reaching the end of a comeback and is about to dovetail into being the hardest thing to watch without cringing. Maxi skirts make a brief splash in fashion and, like every time that happens, I ask, “why?”. Also, the scrunchie is on its way out and I ask, “WHHHYYYYYYY?”.
I’m a scrunchie loyalist and I always will be.
In a nutshell…
I’m not going to lie, people. I started this rewatch way later than the rest of the world, so it’s going to be a sprint to catch up before the show airs again in January, especially with recapping as well. To wit, my nutshells are going to be sooooo tiny and containing only the most important things!
Extremely flirty glances count!
When we last left off, Mulder was possibly blown up in the desert when Old Smoky and his cronies came to destroy that train car, but Scully is having dreams about him so he must be just mostly dead.
And, in the afterlife, Mulder is hosting a cosmos documentary of some kind.
Anyway, Scully’s been interrogated and chased down, those Department of Mysteries bastards get her transcriptions of that damned tape, and then she’s suspended from duty.
As for Mulder, Hosteen and pals rescue his mostly-dead self for the “blessing way” (title drop!) ritual. It involves sweat lodges and leaves and dead friends and family coming to say hello.
Hi, Deep Throat. Hi, Dad. Hi… Nameless others. No Sam, I notice. Is she the STARLIGHT in the background?
In other news, Frohike is not taking Mulder’s death well.
Scully is either in denial or too distracted by the fact that her neck is setting off sensors when she has to go in through the civilian entrance at work. Or both.
Turns out, there’s a weensy piece of metal in her neck. Shrapnel, the doctor thinks. Well, Scully’s not so sure and has what “looks like a computer chip” removed. Melissa wants her to dig into her buried memories of her abduction. Scully tries hypnosis, but freaks out in the middle and bails. She then attends Bill Mulder’s funeral and tells Teena Mulder that she thinks the man they love is alive. Later, she’s approached by the Well-Manicured Man, who says Mulder is dead and she’s soon to join him, possibly at the hands of someone she trusts.
She’s not hearing pretty much any of it. Meanwhile, a very alive Mulder meets with his mom and asks for more intel about his dad and those pals he used to hang around with, but she doesn’t (or claims not to) remember anything. Meanwhile, Melissa calls to check on Scully and insists on coming over. But Scully still feels creeped out by WMM’s warning and decides to go meet Melissa last minute, all “I’ll find you on the way” and we all know what’s coming. As WMM warned, Krycek and an as-yet-unnamed cronie were coming to off Scully, only they get Melissa instead…
…unbeknownst to Scully, who ends up getting waylaid by Skinner. He takes her to Mulder’s place, where she uses her key (as per usual, by now), then pulls her gun on Skinner, thinking he’s the one who’s going to kill her. Skinner says he’s not there to kill her and that he has the tape. She doesn’t believe him and there’s some tense gun-pulling when someone else tries the door.
Turns out that special someone at the door is Mulder!
Before we get there, Albert Hosteen narrates about white buffalo and prophecies, and if you think this is important or will be visited again in any significant way in the show’s nine seasons, think again. Why have continuity when you can just add more STUFF! Anyway, that stand-off…
Somewhere in the middle of Mulder and Scully devouring each other with their eyes, kind of like what happens between me and the foamy head of a flat white from Starbucks, Skinner finds time to show them that tape. Mulder’s all “Whatever, keep it safe. We’re off to flirt about my near-death.”
They also go visit the Gunmen for a happy reunion and to untangle Bill Mulder’s part in the Department of Mysteries, where Scully learns Melissa is in critical condition. She’s ready to go to her, but since she’s a target, she reluctantly continues the search with Mulder.
They find some old Nazi scientist who was pardoned under Operation Paperclip (title drop!) to keep up his dastardly experiments, but he barely tells them a thing, except where to go next. It involves miles of files.
There, they find files on, besides everyone, Scully and Samantha. He also finds his name pasted under Sam’s label before the lights go out, something spaceshippy passes outside, and some tiny, grey somethings rush past Scully! For just a second, Mulder gets all the spaceship porn he ever wanted.
Unfortunately, those DoM bastards show up to chase our duo off. Meanwhile, Old Smoky is under fire with his pals for having inept hitmen (with our duo still kicking) and still not getting the tape. Skinner wants to make a deal for our duo’s lives with that tape.
Hosteen has been visiting with Maggie Scully and Melissa in the hospital, so does Skinner, where he’s beat up by Krycek and his pal, who steals the tape.
Can’t wait for that douche to have one less arm! Krycek’s pal does almost blow him up, though, prompting a pissed-off Krycek to call Old Smoky and tell him, sadly, he’s just fine and so is the tape. Smoky lies to his DoM pals and says the tape is destroyed.
Anyway, our duo go to see that Nazi jerk and find the WMM there instead, who infers that the work was all about making an alien/human hybrid. Scully isn’t buying it, but Mulder is. WMM further tells Mulder that Sam was taken as insurance when his father threatened to expose the project and that he may have been the first pick. Mulder sees his mother, who confirms his father chose Samantha being taken over Mulder and she’s hated him for it since.
Skinner super needs a win after that beating, and he gets one. He meets with Old Smoky with a deal in place. He doesn’t have the tape, but he has something else.
This man’s name is Albert Hosteen. You should remember that. Because if Agents Mulder and Scully come down with so much as a case of the flu, Albert is prepared to recite, chapter and verse, file for file, everything on your precious tape… I’m sure you’re thinking Albert is an old man and there are plenty of ways you might kill him too. Which is why, in the ancient oral tradition of his people, he’s told twenty other men the information on those files.
Mulder finds Scully at the hospital, where Melissa has passed. :( He promises her they’ll find the truth, but she doesn’t find it super comforting.
Next, our duo deal with a lightning struck idiot (Giovanni Ribisi — sadly, a Scientologist and I hope he pulls a Remini next and grabs his sister and Beck on his way out). There’s also his even dumber friend played by Jack Black, who I’ve always had a wee crush on.
It’s not a game-changer or big on character development, but “D.P.O.” is a pretty solid episode as far as filming, lighting, casting, and use of music. And Scully does hand a cop his ass on questioning her autopsy findings. Also, there’s flirtiness.
There always is.
Next is one of the best episodes ever. No surprise, it’s a Darin Morgan ep. I don’t know what to say about “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” that hasn’t been said.
I love the offbeat energy, I love our duo’s dynamic being lampshaded. I love, love, love Peter Boyle’s Emmy-winning performance.
The chemistry between Clyde and Mulder is amazing…
The chemistry between Clyde and Scully is amazing…
The chemistry between Mulder and Scully is, as always, top drawer…
It even has this freaking brilliant callback to “Beyond The Sea”…
How can I describe it?
Also, Scully gets a puppy and… let’s not get too attached. She also saves Mulder’s life again, putting our rescue tally at 13/8.5
Wow. It’s super hard to be nutshelly about the awesome ones. Okay. We’re gonna pick up the pace… starting… now!
So this prisoner has a list (title drop!) of people he wants posthumous revenge on and he goes about getting it while our duo struggle to keep up as the bodies pile up. It’s a good enough episode.
“Imagine if you could come back and take out five people that have caused you to suffer. Who would they be?”
There’s a fat-sucking vampire (Hey, Smallville! When you decided to rip off X-Files, couldn’t you have picked something better? Why waste future award-winning Amy Adams on that?) who goes by the name of 2Shy (title drop!) and preys on overweight women. Mulder is especially touchy with Scully, like that’s new, and Scully does not have time for Detective “I’m not sexist, but…” and his bullshit.
It, too, is pretty solid. Then we have The Walk, where an angry quadriplegic veteran wreaks unholy revenge on his superiors through astral projection. He kills their entire families (kids and probably dogs included), then refuses to let them kill themselves. It’s twisty and creepy. Honestly, this season is pretty solid.
Then we get to Oubliette, which rises above the previous two, at least for me, due to some especially moving performances from a pre-Kaylee Frye Jewel Staite and Tracy Ellis, who’d be used again in season nine’s “Audrey Pauley,” and also some believable acting from Duchovny, who really starts coming into his own in season 3.
Anything involving young girls gone missing tends to hit Mulder right in the feels.
The gist is that Tracy Ellis is taking on the kidnapped Jewel Staite’s injuries, having been kidnapped by the same man when she was young. It’s a pretty solid and damned moving episode with a gut punch of an ending.
Next, we get into a solid pair of mythos episodes in “Nisei” and “731.” I feel like I keep using that word. It’s just a damned solid season and, arguably, the show’s best.
First, let’s just talk about Agent Pendrell. He’s what I’ve been waiting for. Our duo finally have a friend at work! I mean, they have Skinner, but he’s more on the gruff, daddy side. They have someone to sit with at lunch! Someone who probably wants to carry their books… especially Scully’s.
His adorably obvious, moony crush on Scully might even be more overt than Mulder’s.
Anyway, there’s this alien autopsy tape. You can guess how our duo feels about it, respectively.
Either way, they trace things backward and find this tape is a little surrounded by dead guys. Scully goes to meet what she thinks are UFO nut pals of one dead guy and finds a bunch of nice ladies and they’re all, “OMG, Dana! Remember me? I sat behind you in implantation and nasal violation!” She doesn’t believe them till they show her their implants (not the titillating kind). Also they all have cancer. Yeah. We should have known this was coming, but it was still a wet slap in the face by the time “Leonard Betts” rolled around. :(
Mulder checks out some ships and nearly gets himself drowned and shot because this is what happens when Scully is not around to save his bacon. He does get to see some hazy possible autopsy action. Then a visit with his senator friend (I totally forgot about him) gives him intel on the traveling hybrid autopsy shenanigans and how trains are the new ships.
Our duo briefly check-in before pursuing their own angles again, with Scully having Pendrell look at her chip and realizes that autopsy vid might be legit; that little MUFON meeting triggered some memories of a doctor on the tape.
Mulder’s tracking a train that holds another shady doctor and The Red-Haired Man, yet another hastily described assassin. I shall call him Ginger Death because it requires less effort.
Meanwhile, Scully breaks out the dusty duct tape to summon X to Mulder’s place and he has Scully warn Mulder away from that train.
But this is Mulder so, of course, he jumps right on top of it.
“Scully, let me tell you, you haven’t seen America ’til you’ve seen it from a train.”
So… Mulder is trapped on a train with Ginger Death and Doctor Shady and he lost his cell phone. Scully is left with no choice but to keep investigating till that thoughtless doofus can be tracked again. She gets some results from Agent/Puppy Pendrell about her chip and apparently it’s super invasive and was made in Virginia. Off she goes!
She finds a bunch of “lepers” there, the last of a group who were mostly exterminated that very day. She ends up captured and brought to the Department of Mysteries’ very own… Mafia-esque Man? I don’t know what to call him. Anyway, he puts her on the phone with Mulder by calling his old pal, Ginger Death. Yeah. Mulder has gotten himself locked in a car with Ginger Death, a possible alien, and a bomb by now.
Scully’s in that same autopsy train car from the video and has been given a plausible story involving human test subjects with the alien stuff being just a red herring. They kind of agree to disagree on the nature of the conspiracy because, you know, bomb.
They manage to get the car disconnected and left in the middle of nowhere while Scully helps Mulder figure out that coded lock and get out. But Ginger Death knocks him out, ready to leave him for dead, but wait just a minute…
Yes, out of nowhere, X shows up and shoots the bastard and fireman-carries Mulder to safety. Excuse me while I roll around in a puddle of feelings. Later, our agents are left to keep disagreeing on whether the conspiracy is earthly or alien. So… same as ever, I guess.
Next, we have a believer!Scully episode in “Revelations.” Basically, there’s a demonic serial killer going after stigmatics, both the real and the fake. This poor kid gets caught up in it and you know how Scully loves kids and things that might appeal to her hidden Catholic side.
Special guest star: HITG specialty player Michael Berryman, who’s turned his unique look into a career in horror and sci-fi. Strangely, his unique look didn’t apply here as this part could have been played by someone more conventional looking.
Apparently, the man himself said that it’s his favorite role as he finally got to play a man instead of a monster.
Also, Mulder is very gazey, solicitous, and hair-sniffy in this one, not that that’s new or anything.
In the end, Scully goes to confession and picks up her faith again… kind of.
Finally (for now, at least), we have another Darin Morgan treat in “War of the Coprophages” and, while it’s not as masterful as his previous two outings or the one to come (OMG, can’t wait for “Jose Chung”!), it’s got all the Morgan hallmarks: quirky characters, strange behavior, deep monologues out of nowhere, and excellent timing.
So Mulder goes on a weekend trip to a small town, presumably with his alien-hunting playset, but he doesn’t find any aliens. Just lots of deaths and cockroaches. At first, it looks like we’re dealing with murderous cockroaches, but it becomes clear it’s just normal old deaths tinged with cockroach-panic. Scully attempts to have a weekend of reading, dog-bathing, and healthy cuisine, except for how Mulder won’t stop calling. It’s so cute.
Mulder meets and subsequently drools over a sexy entomologist.
For some unknown reason, Scully, who has been content to debunk his killer cockroach theories over the phone, suddenly has to rush there and load her gun in front of Bambi, all “This is no place for an entomologist.”
…and witness Mulder’s mortification as Bambi walks off with a Hawkings-esque scientist.
Then we have a well-done, if uneven episode. Our duo investigate what seems like a series of satanic ritual killings in a small town, but Scully finds the satanic part suspect, considering the lone witnesses keep talking about baby sacrifice when there are no missing babies or mass graves. It doesn’t matter, though, the town and even the detective are in the grip of satanic panic! As for those lone witnesses, it’s a pair of teenage besties who are actually doing all the killings through telekenesis and trickery while under the influence of an alignment of the sun, moon, and earth or syzygy (title drop!).
The besties in question are well-played by Wendy Benson and Lisa Robin Kelly (who seriously had the best resting bitch face in the business and I think could have ridden that face to a better future if drugs hadn’t hijacked her life. RIP) in a dynamic mildly reminiscent of Heathers, which is probably why I still kind of like this one, even if it received mixed reviews. I think it would have done better placed after anything except a Darin Morgan episode. And oh, hey, Ryan Reynolds is in this, too!
Anyway, the most interesting part of the episode are, as always, our duo’s dynamic under that syzygy. Scully becomes intensely angry, bitter, and kind of badass.
Mulder becomes… I don’t even know. Id-driven?
This culminates in them having several fights which may have been brewing for years.
They do come back to their state of perfect unison by the end.
Scully’s Journey…
Scully has not changed much over this leg of the series. She’s still frustratingly unwilling to dig into her abduction and committed to science providing the answers. It’s not till “Revelations” that we see something different. Scully doesn’t believe in little green or grey men, though she does believe there are people in our government capable of playing alien dress-up for their ends, but she does believe in God and in the existence or possibility of miracles. It’s not so much a change as an insight into her that we didn’t have before. She doesn’t see the need to explain it or gather evidence for it the way Mulder would. It’s just faith to her.
I’m going to give my fave spot to Dr. Bambi Berenbaum. Mulder was very obviously crushing on her (since he can’t have that other brainy beauty), but she is all about bugs and quietly defying objectification.
Hair check-in…
We have not yet arrived at The Scully. It’s pretty much the same hair as the latter half of season 2, but they are growing out those bangs, which is a step in the right direction.
Ship check-in…
Mulder is rarely jealous except in a minor, pouty way. Scully’s definitely more overt, in her dealings with both Bambi (that gun load!) and Detective White. It all feeds into my headcanon as to how Scully and Mulder deal with their obvious undying love for each other. Mulder flirts shamelessly and Scully represses constantly until it all spills out in jealous mini-rages.
Other Notes…
As I said above, Duchovny is definitely coming into his own as an actor in season 3. He just seems to show more emotion… Well, for Mulder.
I’m looking forward to the rest of this season, “Jose Chung” in particular. But even without the three-and-a-half Darin Morgan episodes, this is a damned good season with mostly well-done and interesting episodes. The show had fully found its legs by now and the ratings were consistent. Not gonna lie, though, the Darin Morgan episodes push it to a higher level than it might have reached otherwise.
Next up: Season Three (part two — a complete look)
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All images from The X-Files are property of 20th Century Fox Television and Ten-Thirteen Productions. I can’t even begin to catalog the ways I rabidly hunt down gifs, but I get a large number of screencaps here.
