"The Truth Is Out There" Re-Watch: "Memento Mori," "Kaddish" & "Unrequited"

 The X-Files

We've got three episodes to cover in this post. The agents are dealing with Scully's newfound diagnosis and a couple of stand alones. Let's get to it.

"Memento Mori"

Dana Scully: "For the first time, I feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning, the numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of a truth not entertained in youth but only in its passage. I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me knowing that you will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other. That you should know my hear, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort to me now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions if not for which I might never have been so strong now as I cross to face you and look at you, incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you."

Mythology or Monster of the Week: Mythology

X-File of the Week: Special Agent Dana Scully has been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor between her nasal passage and her cerebrum. The survival rate is not good. Rather than begin treatment immediately, Scully and her partner, Fox Mulder, investigate the MUFON group that Scully visited last year with similar abductions to hers. It turns out that almost all of them have passed aside from one from the same type of cancer.

Swoon.

This is the first episode that really confronts Scully's cancer diagnosis. It's revealed that she has a nasopharyngeal tumor that is located in her sinus cavity between her cerebrum. There is a strong chance that the tumor could push into her brain and kill her immediately. 

I really love how this episode begins. Scully is standing at the end of a long hallway and the shot begins far away. The hallway is bathed in white light. The camera comes down the hallway until it stops directly behind Scully and we look over her shoulder. She's in a hospital gown staring at the X-Ray that shows the tumor. It's a great opening scene. Somber. Serious. It really sets the tone for the episode to come.

I've talked ad nauseam about how Gillian Anderson is the star of this show and I won't be stopping anytime soon. So, if you're sick of that, you should maybe skip down to the next recap. Anderson kills it in this episode. Scully is going through a lot and you see her working through these many stages. Instead of taking a leave, she decides to investigate and goes to the MUFON group that she visited in the season three episode "Nisei." She only tells Mulder about her diagnosis. She seems to be unwilling at first to even acknowledge that she is sick or that this will completely impact and change her life, which feels very on point for a type-A personality like Scully's especially as a medical doctor herself.

Scully has some great scenes with her mother and Penny Northern. Penny is the woman who claims to have been with Scully during her abduction when she was being experimented on, something Scully has no memory of. Even though she doesn't, Penny is with Scully when she's being treated even though she is going through her own treatments. These two women bonding over their shared experiences was lovely And Scully's heartbreak after Penny's death was palpable. The scene with Scully and her mother, Margaret, was also very affecting. Margaret is upset that Scully didn't come to her until she was already in the hospital. She's angry and she has a right to be. I appreciated that Scully didn't try to disregard her mother's feelings. She knows she messed up and she owns it.

The episode is filled with really beautiful narration from Scully as she writes to Mulder in a journal that she isn't sure if she'll give to him. Monologuing like this doesn't always work but Anderson's beautiful voice along with the strong writing makes it flow really well.

Mulder deals with Scully's diagnosis the only way he knows how. He rages. He demands Skinner set up a meeting with him and the Cigarette Smoking Man to try to make a deal to help Scully. Skinner talks Mulder down but makes a deal with devil himself. Meanwhile, Mulder works with alien/human hybrids who are the offspring of the women from the MUFON group. They were made using ova that was extracted during their abductions and it was these procedures that gave these women including Scully their cancer. I did kind of love that in the midst of these super serious things happening we get a break-in caper with Mulder and the Lone Gunmen featuring the Gray Haired Man going after Mulder.

The episode ends with Scully deciding to fight the cancer and working at the same time. We are in for a lot in the back half of this season.

Grade: A

"Kaddish"

Dana Scully: "You haven't heard the rumors?"

Curt Brunjes: "What rumors?"

Dana Scully: "That Luria is back from the dead -- that he's risen from his grave?"

Curt Brunjes: "What kind of Jew trick is this?"

Fox Mulder: "A Jew pulled it off two thousand years ago."

Mythology or Monster of the Week: MotW

X-File of the Week: Isaac Luria, a Jewish store owner, is beaten and shot to death by three teenagers in a hate crime in Brooklyn, New York. Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully get involved when one of the murderers is found strangled and fingerprints point to the culprit being Isaac Luria, the deceased. As they investigate and the other perps keep turning up dead, Mulder begins to believe that the murderer is a golem, a creature from Jewish mysticism.

This fucking guy.

"The X-Files" has a checkered track record when it comes to telling stories that feature other cultures, religions, etc. It's not necessarily always offensive but sometimes it feels like it is riding the line of that. "Kaddish" is probably the most respectful that the show has been when it is dealing with this kind of subject matter.

The episode is really respectful of the Jewish mysticism that it employs. When Mulder goes back to talk to the expert about the book that was found and get more information on the golem, it is clear that Mulder has done his homework. He may not speak or read Hebrew, but he is able to talk intelligently about it. It feels like a lot of times when the show deals with this kind of stuff, they are like can you believe these people believe this woo woo nonsense? But that isn't what we get in this episode and it's great especially in the context of what else is going on.

The other thing that I think elevates this episode over some of the other is that the characters that the agents encounter are likable and you feel for. Ariel and her father, Jacob, are understandably upset. The system has failed them multiple times and here are FBI agents showing up seemingly more concerned with the hateful men who killed their loved ones than the hate crime the perpetrated. It's interesting watching the agents sort of grapple with their feelings about this. It's clear that they don't have empathy for the boys who are now being targeted. Scully is firm on the side of revenge isn't justice, while Mulder seems to be a bit more flexible on the issue.

The actress who plays Ariel Luria, Justine Micelli, is really great in this episode. You feel her pain and anguish each time she speaks to the agents. I love her telling the story about the ring. It draws you in and again, it is what elevates this episode over similar episodes. You know that Ariel is the one that created the golem, but that doesn't really matter. Ariel didn't think that any of this would happen. That it would work. The final scene between Ariel and the golem that looks just like Isaac is really moving. In the synagogue. On what would have been their wedding day. It's really heartbreaking and gives you kind of Frankenstein's monster vibes which I appreciated it.

The anti-Semitism in this episode is just disgusting. If you're not just vibrating with rage when the agents are talking to Curt Brunjes and seeing his gross pamphlet that I don't even want to say the name of, then you've got problems. And that the people who murdered Isaac are teenagers. It reminds us that this kind of hate is passed down and it's cyclical and it's still happening today which is even more awful. And those words are woefully inadequate for that fact.

If I have a gripe about this episode, its that Scully's skepticism is getting to be a bit too much. After all that she's seen and been a part of, it's getting harder and harder to swallow that she would be so hard headed about this stuff. Honestly, her explanation about how the book could have caught fire seems less likely than a golem.

Grade: B+

"Unrequited"

Fox Mulder: "I found his story compelling, personally, but then again I believe the Warren Commission."

Mythology or Monster of the Week: MotW

X-File of the Week: Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are brought on by Assistant Director Walter Skinner on a task force when high ranking military personnel are being murdered. The assassin is a former POW that was left for dead and erased by the officials and it seems like the agents may have been set up to fail.

No one cares.

This is another episode where the agents spend most of their time doing like normal run-of-the-mill FBI work an as you all know from the other episodes where they do that, I'm not a huge fan. There's a ton of other police procedurals out there that I could have watch. I want to see aliens and weird monsters! An invisible assassin doesn't cut it! 

The episode tries to lean in to it's conspiracy background towards the end with a visit from X replacement, Marita Covarrubias who gives Mulder an info dump about how actually these murdered generals were allowed to be killed by this guy to cover up a cover up and that the big wigs knew that Skinner would fail at saving them, so why not make it look like they were. And when they succeed at saving one of them, they pretend it was a different guy that was the assassin and Skinner goes along with it. Why does he do that? Well, it's a win right even if part of it is a lie. And he has his own Vietnam inspired PTSD. So, sure.

This episode is kind of ho hum and really boring. I always find it kind of a slog to get through whenever I do a series re-watch and this time was no different. A lot of time these not so great episodes can be carried along by the leads charism but even here there is nothing. Though I did laugh when Scully tells Mulder that the doctor laughed at her when she asked him about the blind spot potentially obscuring a whole person.

That's another thing. It feels like the writer of the episode, Howard Gordon, doesn't even try to offer up any explanation for what's going on aside from well the Viet Cong were once referred to as invisible assassins so clearly this guy learned their ways. It feels like a shrug. And if the metal detector at the Pentagon goes off, even if no one is going through it, wouldn't that raise a little bit of a red flag?

This episode is so meh. I could have used a check-in to see how Scully's doing with her diagnosis. Something. I'd have even taken an alien red herring. At least the episode was a couple minutes shorter than they usually are.

Grade: D

Next up, the agents investigate a suspicious plane crash that takes the life of multiple alien abductee, Max Fenig.

What did you all think? Did the Scully episode hit you in the feels? Do you feel like the writers handled "Kaddish" a bit more sensitively than they have similar episodes? Were you as bored with "Unrequited" as I was? Let me know in the comments.