The Grand X-Periment Day 23

10/23/11

61 & 62) Sein und Zeit & Closure- Season 7, Episode 10 & 11- Leaping way forward, this is a sort-of mythology two-parter that is meant to put Mulder's quest for his sister to rest once and for all.

The first part (Sein und Zeit) was pretty awesome. It calmed me after the letdown of the premiere. A little girl goes missing and her parents (one of whom was played by the cult leader from the Red Museum ep, I am almost positive) are the obvious suspects. Mulder finds a connection between their case and a similar missing child case from 1987. It all leads to a super creepy scene where Mulder, Skinner and Scully bust into a Santa Land amusement park and find videos of missing children and then a garden of little graves. Chilling stuff. Add in Mulder's mother killing herself and you have scary mixed with dramatic in that way good X-Files pull off.

Even though the writing team stayed the same for the second episode (Closure), the treacle to awesome balance tipped way in favor of overly cheesy mysticism. I feel bad because I didn't judge Lost when it embraced hokey mystical ideas but the resolution presented here just bothered me to the core. Mulder is cool about his sister now because she is made of starlight and frolicking with the walk-ins? Whatevs. Lame. It just seems like adding jolly ranchers to a cupcake covered in sprinkles already...excessive and confusing. I liked it better when I thought Cancer Man raised her.

63) En Ami- Season 7, Episode 15- Written by Cancer Man himself this turned out to be a pretty good episode (except for a weird character choice at the end). Big SPOILERS if you haven't seen this one. You've been warned.

The whole thing is an elaborate con job Cancer Man plays on Scully in order to obtain a disc that contains a panacea for all human illness. Scully keeps Mulder out of the loop and Cancer Man has the pock-marked hitman from the X-Files movie following them around. I love a good con story and this one has all the right beats. From the "oops, my office no longer exists" moment to the revelation of the deft switch off of the discs. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

At the very end, Cancer Man chooses to destroy the disc with the panacea. I know what they were going for, Cancer Man was choosing not to cure himself with his ill-gotten gains. He was also screwing over everyone who is sick in the whole world. So, not entirely noble.

There was a good episode in the second season where Mulder busts in on Cancer Man in his home, alone, watching TV and smoking. CM says something like, "Look at my life, no wife, no family, nothing to show for my existence." That really added a nice dimension to the character. Slowly, during all the revelations that CM banged Mulder's mom and fathered Jeffrey Spender with Cassandra, it seemed like the show was disproving that loneliness and that CM was only isolated because he wanted to be. This one brought the pathos back and made CM more of a tragic figure who pushes away chances at happiness to advance a greater scheme. Good stuff.

64) Requiem- Season 7, Episode 22- How time flies. Just yesterday I started Season 7 and now it is over. In a nice bit of symmetry, the case this episode brings our heroes back to the small town in Oregon that was their first mission together. This time, another freaking UFO crashes (worst. drivers. ever) and the alien bounty hunter works overtime to clean up the mess. This includes the surviving kids from the pilot episode (now older and moved into their adult lives).

It was neat to check in on characters that seemed incidental at the time. There was so much about that pilot that was mysterious when first watched (Ray Soomes tiny alien corpse, the missing time, the implants) that now make sense. Those lingering mysteries look kind of lame when compared with how people choose to move on after being involved in Scully and Mulder's weirdness. Some of them try to block it out, others used it to change their lives for the better.

Cancer Man (dying from the, sigh, DNA graft Mulder gave him back at the beginning of the season) is left for dead once again. Krycek messes up CM's hopes of restarting the conspiracy with just the two of them and Marita C. The bigger news is that Mulder gets abducted because of his special status. All of this blatantly orchestrated to write Duchovny off the show with the back door of bringing him back later if needed.

The whole thing has totally lost momentum. Without the human face of the conspiracy on the threat of the aliens, it seems aimless. We don't know the stakes or the conditions that must be met for the aliens to invade. We don't know if the rebels are still around. We do know that most of the creepiest aspects of the conspiracy are dead (the experiments, the hybrid clones, etc.). These eps were all new to me but I am super curious to see where things go from here. Terminator 2, here we come!