80) Jump the Shark- Season 9, Episode 15- By this time, the show knew it was over. Duchovny was gone and the series just wasn't going to survive without him. Finally watching the "Threads of the Mythology" documentary that was spread throughout the DVDs, I learned two interesting things: everyone hated Duchovny for making them leave Canada and that, if the show had gone on, it would have been without Mulder or Scully and not been about aliens anymore. How is that even the same show?
The actual story is about bio-terrorism and men with shark body parts grafted into them. For a final Monster of the Week (at least for me) it was pretty odd. Timmy (the character clearly killed in the Three of a Kind episode) pops back up with no explanation. The Gunmen apparently had an "intern" on their show who filled the "classic handsome guy" requirement and he comes back.
The weird thing about the entire episode is that, like most Lone Gunmen eps, this one is mostly light-hearted and whimsical. When it comes time to kill off all three of them, it hits a really sour note and seems needlessly cruel. These are the comic relief characters and the exposition providers...not vital cogs in the war against alien invasion. This just seemed like an instance of breaking one's toys so that they can't be used again.
81) William- Season 9, Episode 16- This one was co-written and directed by Duchovny and features a nice fake out. A scarred man is caught breaking into the X-Files office to steal Samantha Mulder's file. Doggett believes the man is Fox Mulder feigning a new identity to avoid getting killed by the powers that be. Scully does not believe it is Fox. In the middle of all this, William (Scully and Mulder's baby) is thrown into the spotlight.
Spender injects William with that same metal that kills Super Soldiers, thus robbing him of his powers somehow. No longer able to be the keystone in the prophecies, William is still in danger because no one will believe he is no longer special. At the end, Scully sends the baby to live with another family in order to protect him. Man, two downers in a row...I'm sure the finale will be all rainbows and sunshine.
82) The Truth- Season 9, Episode 19 or 19 and 20 depending on who you believe- This is it, the double sized last episode. The show has been very careful to close up loose threads and resolve long standing plotlines. This one is all about Mulder.
Mulder comes into conflict with...sigh...Knowle Rohrer and seemingly murders him in front of a whole mess of government employees. Mulder is arrested, tortured and put on trial in a military court for his very life. Skinner is the defense attorney and Kersh (along with Charles Widmore) is one of the five FBI judges listening to his case.
Throughout the trial, Scully, Spender, Marita C., Gibson and every other living supporting character is marched through to basically recap the entire series and explain what everything has to do with everything else. The move from Shapeshifters to Super Soldiers is still never really explained but most everything is as I had figured...
All throughout the trial, Mulder gets helped by the ghosts of X, Krycek and the Lone Gunmen. X even provides information to Mulder that he otherwise would not have been able to get. This continues the show's spiritualism and the idea that the invasion can be defeated by a higher power. If the story is ever concluded, it will end up with love conquering all, I promise.
Scully finds out that the body the military has produced isn't even Rohrer. Without the alleged victim, it would seem Mulder should go free. However, he is railroaded and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Skinner, Doggett and Kersh break him out and tell him to take Scully and skip the country. Instead, he goes to New Mexico and confronts the "wise man of the hills" who sent him to the secret base where he fought with Rohrer. Of course, it turns out to be Cancer Man (his family is hard to kill). He forces Mulder to admit in front of Scully that Mulder has seen the date the alien invasion is to begin...December 22, 2012. Sound familiar? It would be super sweet to get the last movie released on that day.
Doggett and Reyes get to kill Rohrer once and for all. Black helicopters blow up Cancer Man (and we see the flesh being melted off his skull just to prove that this time he is really dead). Apparently on the lam, Mulder and Scully recreate their hotel room scene from the Pilot but end this time in an embrace, with Mulder agreeing that there is hope out there.
All told, this story did not get resolved. The aliens are out there. Charles Widmore is deep in the FBI. Kersh, Skinner, Doggett and Reyes are in danger from having aided Mulder and Scully. Mulder and Scully are on the run. Apparently, the next movie picked up with them being brought in to consult with the FBI on a monster of the week case and none of the mythology plot is resolved. Oh well.
It was a fun trip. For a show with lots of explosions and murders, it never felt like an action-oriented show. Perhaps because all the kills were so dispassionate and felt like housekeeping. For a horror show, it did produce some genuinely creepy moments. When the show delved into comedy, it was pure gold. As science fiction, of course, that was where it shined. In the documentary I watched, the writers talked about how ridiculous a show can sound if the characters are just babbling about aliens. They tried to keep things in the shadows and obscure. It was nice of them to lay everything out before they went off the air. With only three months lead time, they crafted a slightly more satisfying finale than Lost (and they knew where they were going for three years). Major conflicts were resolved, all the big name villains were done away with and the characters ended up in a mostly believable place. I ended up liking Doggett a lot. Reyes never really grew on me. The always endangered supporting cast was tons of fun. Altogether, this was a very entertaining show that got a little too convoluted for its own good. Once Mulder left, everything should have been pointed towards an end game.
Will we ever see a full-on attempt to stop the invasion? I kind of hope so. I think these characters still have some life in them.
Thanks for joining me on this grand experiment. It was mostly fun. There was some slogging to get through and, as I worked my way through the seasons, I realized there were other great episodes I was neglecting to focus on the mythology. Season Six remains the one with the highest number of episodes I love. Home was still the best standalone episode and Two Fathers, One Son remains my favorite mythology eps.
Join me next year for 12 months of such shenanigans.
Josh
You totally hide your blogs man, but I just found your list. :-) Bwa ha ha ha ha! I'm reading as I type. I hate that I missed the Haunted Road Trip, but I'll catch up.
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