The X-Files
We are entering the home stretch of season four and you'd think we'd be focusing more on Scully's cancer diagnosis, but nope. Instead, we are getting too monster of the week episodes. Let's get to it.
"Synchrony"
Fox Mulder: "Think about it, Scully. If Lucas Menand never gets hit by that bus, his complaint get heard before the grand committee, Jason Nichols loses funding and he never gets to collaborate on his research with Dr. Yonechi. Therefore, this photograph never gets taken because this celebration never happens."
Dana Scully: "And if you sister is your aunt and your mother marries your uncle, you'd be your own grandpa."
Mythology or Monster of the Week: MotW
X-File of the Week: MIT cryogenics researchers, Jason Nichols and Lucas Menand, are arguing about a grant when an old man warns them that Lucas will be hit by a bus at 11:46. The two brush him off and put him in the hands of campus security, but when Lucas is hit by the bus and killed things take a turn. Special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully arrive as people associated with Nichols start turning up flash frozen and Mulder posits that the elder man may be Jason Nichols from the future.
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| A photo from the future |
This episode has a great cold open. You kind of know right from the start that this old dude is from the future. The episode isn't trying to hide that from you. It's extremely like atmospheric. The rain. The arguing. You don't know what it's about but you can tell that it's serious. Joseph Fuqua who plays Jason Nichols plays the moment where he realizes that this old man i telling the truth perfectly. The look on his face. The way his body changes. It's really great.
I didn't mention him as a notable guest star, but if you've watched genre television at all in the past thirty years than I'm sure that you recognized Hiro Kanagawa who played Dr. Konechi. He's had roles in "Smallville," "iZombie," "Legends of Tomorrow," "Star Trek Discovery" and he's currently in the FX/Hulu miniseries, "Shogun." He also plays two different characters in future episodes of "The X-Files."
I am sure I've said this a million times before, but a lot of these monster of the week episodes really live and die by the performances of the guest actors and the guest actors in this episode are pretty uniformly strong. Michael Fairman is great as the older Jason Nichols. You can see aspects of the younger Jason in his performance inside that weathered kind of beaten down future version of himself. We don't see a lot of young Jason interacting with his girlfriend and the woman he's covering for, Lisa Ianelli. So we depend on the interactions between her and the older Jason to sell that relationship and they totally do. There is chemistry there and you can understand what they mean/meant to each other.
Th practical effects in this episode are really amazing too for the time that it was made. I really love the frozen effects and the spontaneous combustion of the two Jason's from the end of the episode. The pseudo science in this episode is kind of wild. Jason and Lisa are working on a chemical compound that rapidly freezes someone. How does this relate to time travel, you might ask? Well, one the things that prevents humans from time traveling is the fact that your body would burn up. Well, if you could flash freeze yourself during the process and then thaw yourself out once you got to your destination, problem solved. I guess. But apparently knowing the future has thrown the future into chaos. Hence, old Jason becoming a Marty McFly style assassin.
One thing I wish the episode would have focused on was that Scully wrote a thesis on time travel. I love that she did and I love that Mulder quotes it, but I feel like this is kind of just dropped as a fun fact and then dropped. I would have leaned more into that particularly with Scully's role as the skeptic. It definitely feels like a missed opportunity but otherwise this is a solid standalone in season four.
Grade: B+
"Small Potatoes"
Walter Skinner: "Who wrote this?"
Eddie Van Blundht: [as Fox Mulder] "I did, sir."
Walter Skinner: "You spelled Federal Bureau of Investigation wrong."
Eddie Van Blundht: [as Fox Mulder] "It was a typo."
Walter Skinner: "Twice."
Notable Guest Star: Darin Morgan
Mythology or Monster of the Week: MotW
X-File of the Week: In the town of Martinsburg, WV, five women have given birth to babies possessing a vestigial tail and in a town as small as Martinsburg, this is strange. All the women claim that they haven't slept with anyone aside from their spouses and one claims she was impregnated by Luke Skywalker. Enter Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who soon land on loser Eddie Van Blundht as the perpetrator here when the investigate the clinic where four of the couples went through artificial insemination. It seems like Eddie has a special power that allows him to shift his appearance which soon causes problems for Mulder.
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| This isn't what it looks like. |
Remember when I said that I really love time travel in basically anything? Well, guess what? I also really love body swapping or shapeshifting episodes. They are like catnip to me. What can I say? The episode o "Buffy" where Buffy and Faith switch bodies? I can't get enough. And I love an episode of "The X-Files" that leans more towards comedy especially when it's successful. So, all the ingredients are there for me to love "Small Potatoes" and for the most part, I do.
I think we have to talk about the actor who plays Eddie Van Blundht to start off with. You may not recognize his face, but if you're a fan of "The X-Files," you know who Darin Morgan is. He's written a few of the most prolific episodes in the shows four seasons. Episodes like "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" and "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose." He was played the Flukeman too, so it's not too wild that he would come back to the show to act even if he had hung up his pen at this point.
Morgan does a great job here. He really imbues Eddie with this sad sack energy. Eddie's not a sympathetic character at all and Morgan does a great job of driving that home with his performance. Even when he's masquerading as Mulder and talking to Amanda Nelligan, his ex girlfriend, and she is saying to his face that he is a loser and she knew, even back in high school, that he wasn't going to go anywhere, you don't feel bad for Eddie. Because in the end, he still shape shifted to trick women into having sex with him. I do think it's interesting that because he's felt like and been told he's a loser his whole life, when he shape shifts into these men he thinks must have it all, he's shocked by what he finds.
Look at what happens when he takes over for Mulder. I think sometimes we are blinded by David Duchovny's good looks and that stops us from really taking a good, hard look at Mulder's life. Sure he's super hot, but that's basically all he has going for him. He has a manic obsession that has stunted his once promising career trajectory and made him a total joke even though he is good at what he does. Talking to him has to be off putting. His best friends are a group of conspiracy buffs. The only romance in his life is a phone sex operator who calls him with a deal and he doesn't even give his real name. Plus, he has like a should be crippling porn addiction. He's worked with Scully for four years. She's the closest person to him and she's shocked when Eddie as Mulder asks about her.
The whole scene with Eddie as Mulder getting Scully wine drunk is hilarious to me because I always think of it in the context of people who were watching the episode when it first aired in 1997. There were folks who couldn't wait for Mulder and Scully to get down. And here, they were on the cusp of getting what they wanted, but not really. When you see the two getting ready to potentially kiss for the first time, you're on the edge of your seat but you know that if they do lip lock you are going to be furious that the agents first kiss doesn't really count because that's not really Mulder.
I love when the show utilizes David Duchovny's comedic talents. He's a funny guy and he definitely gets to show off those chops in this episode. I love the small adjustments he makes when he's playing Eddie as Mulder. He's not as smooth as he usually is as he struggles to open his office door or does his best Dirty Harry in the mirror at Mulder's apartment. I cackled when he was trying to position himself in the most alluring way for Scully to turn around and see when she is opening the bottle of wine he brought for her.
I will say that I don't really love the way the show kind of glosses over the fact that Eddie is sexually assaulting the women in the episode. This is a very '90's trope that hasn't aged well. It's kind of played for laughs and that gives me the big ick. What makes it slightly more palatable is the fact that they don't write Eddie nor does Morgan play Eddie as sympathetic or as the victim. But this is a trope that needs to just be done away with for good.
Grade: A-
Next up, Skinner deals with the consequences of his bargain with the Cigarette Smoking Man and a murder investigation leads the agents to a home for the mentally ill.
What did you all think? Do you love time travel and body swaps/shape shifting as much as I do? Do you love when the show goes the comedic route? How do you feel about Eddie and how the episode handles what he did? Let me know in the comments.
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