"The Truth Is Out There" Re-Watch: "Demons" & "Gethsemane"

 The X-Files

We have reached the end of season four. We are ending season four with two mythology episodes in a row but they aren't a two-parter which is a little strange. Let's get to it.

"Demons"

Dana Scully: "Mulder, I refuse to believe that you had any part of this."

Fox Mulder: "I had those people's blood on my shirt, Scully. I was missing for two days, I have no recollection of my actions during those two days, there were two rounds discharged from my gun, I had the keys to this house and the keys to their car. Do the words "Orenthal James Simpson" mean anything to you?"

Mythology of Monster of the Week: Mythology

X-File of the Week: Special Agent Fox Mulder wakes up in a motel room in Providence, RI. He has no recollection of the last two days and his shirt is covered in blood that isn't his. He calls his partner, Special Agent Dana Scully, who comes down to try to help Mulder piece together what happened during his missing times. They locate two dead bodies whose blood match what is on Mulder's shirt. Can Scully prove that her partner is innocent of murder?

How's your head?

This is a kind of a weird mythology episode. The mythology portions all hinge on these recovered memories that are coming back to Mulder, but can they be trusted. This is a plot point that we have seen a few times before. If there is some sort of memory retrieval or regression therapy, Fox Mulder is going to do it because that is his whole deal. And it was about time that it was going to bite him in the butt. And it does bite him in the butt pretty hard here.

One of the interesting things about this episode is that it hinges on this ketamine therapy that Dr. Charles Goldstein is administering to Mulder and Amy Cassandra. There is a lot of talk about how dangerous and borderline unethical it is for Goldstein to be doing this. A lot of hand wringing. Scully is disgusted when she learns about it, even before she finds out that Goldstein is trying to drill in to Mulder's brain. Unsurprisingly, a lot has changed since 1997. In 2024, respected therapists are using ketamine treatments to treat people with anxiety and depression. I know at least two people who get those treatments. So, I had to chuckle a little bit with the pearl clutching that happens in this episode.

What memories are coming back to Mulder? They revolve around the abduction of his sister, Samantha. Mulder sees his mother and father arguing with the Cigarette Smoking Man. Teena is freaking out. Mulder comes to the conclusion that the Cigarette Smoking Man made Bill and Teena choose between himself and Samantha and they chose Samantha. Mulder also gets the idea in his head that the Cigarette Smoking Man may be his real father, which leads him to confront Teena about all of this.

That whole scene with Mulder and Teena is wild. Mulder is not doing great. He's hyped up on ketamine. He's trusting these memories that might not be real. The drugs and this guys shady practices may just be re-enforcing ideas that Mulder already has. So for him to go and accuse his mother of basically being the Cigarette Smoking Man's whore. It's... a lot. And he definitely deserves the slap across the face that he gets from her. I always feel kind of bad for Teena. Mulder is so caught up in how he feels about everything that has happened to his family, he doesn't ever seem to think about how it affects his mother. She lost a daughter. Then, she lost her husband. Like, show some compassion, bro.

I typically like "Memento" style things, whether they be movies or television episodes. When an episode like this is done well, it can really cleverly reveal what really happened. I think that this episode does that in a lot of ways. Mulder wakes up covered in blood and he clearly is shaken by what he happens. When Scully shows up, you really see how impacted he is by the idea that he maybe killed someone. He's in shock. We get a moment between Mulder and Scully when she shows up at the motel. He's in the shower. He can't get warm. And there is Mulder naked. Naked Mulder. In front of Scully. Fans have been thinking about this since the first episode. It's not a sexy moment, but still a moment. And it was nice to see how compassionate Scully is and how she never once wavers in her conviction that Mulder didn't kill anyone.

The episode does lay out a lot of clues and weaves them together in an interesting way. There is the keys that Mulder finds that leads him to the Cassandra residence. That leads him to see the paintings that Amy Cassandra was making that leads them to the house where their bodies are. They learn that Amy Cassandra was an alien abductee which is what led her to Dr. Goldstein. My biggest issue with this episode is that we never learn what happened during Mulder's missing time. How he found the Cassandra's. Why they went to that house. How they got his gun. What caused them to kill each other and why he didn't do anything to stop it. I understand that the show likes to keep things ambiguous sometimes, but I think this was a bad choice in this instance. Part of what makes episodes like this enjoyable is the pay off and we don't get that. It feels kind of lazy. Like, writer R.W. Goodwin didn't know how to end the episode or how to tie it all together. It kind of leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Grade: B

"Gethsemane"

Dana Scully: "It just means proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish."

Fox Mulder: "How about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?"

Mythology or Monster of the Week: Mythology

X-File of the Week: In the St. Elias mountains of the Yukon territory, a perfectly preserved alien corpse is found encased in ice. One of the scientists reaches out to Special Agent Fox Mulder who feels like he might finally have incontrovertible proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life. But, soon he and his partner, Special Agent Dana Scully are confronted with a story that calls into question everything they have worked for over the past four years.

Partners.

Since the inception of "The X-Files," the season finale's have always been some of the strongest episodes of the season. And they always tie in to the series's overarching mythology.  This episode isn't bad, but it is probably the weakest season finale that the show has had so far.

The episode begins "in media res" with Scully in Mulder's apartment identifying a dead body that the audience doesn't see. We then shift to Scully meeting with a panel of FBI people that is led by Section Chief Blevins. I hate Blevins. I feel like most "X-Files" fans do. He's the one that assigned Scully to debunk the X-File and work with Mulder. He's just a tool. He doesn't appear super often, but when he does you just kind of hate him. Also, it feels like there are a lot of episodes that begin just like this one with Scully meeting with some sort of disciplinary panel but Mulder not around when really he's the one that should be there.

I think the strongest parts of this episode are the parts that deal with Scully's cancer. We learn that Scully's cancer has metastasized and that she has become terminal. She doesn't tell Mulder this or really anyone. There is a nice scene where Margaret Scully hosts a dinner and we meet Scully's older brother Bill who is following in their father's footsteps. Margaret also invites their priest to the dinner in an ambush tactic since Scully has been turning away from her faith during her battle with cancer. Scully's faith has always been a big part of her character so you'd think she'd be finding solace in that, but she isn't. This comes up in her argument with Mulder after they examine the supposed alien corpse. Mulder asks if she would go all in if she could prove irrefutably the existence of God. Scully doesn't even really entertain this because sh knows that you can't. This is an interesting conversation and it does kind of make Mulder look like an ass, which is not shocking.

Scully and Bill have a tense conversation after Scully is knocked down the stairs by a main who steals the ice core sample that was taken from around the alien corpse. Bill doesn't understand why Scully keeps putting her life in jeopardy especially when her health is already bad. It's clear that Scully's prognosis has made her a little more reckless than she would have been in the past. Bill claims that Scully has a responsibility to not just herself but the people who care about her. Is that true? It's an interesting question that I haven't seen posed before. It's clear that Bill is not a big fan of Mulder's either. The look on his face when Mulder rings the Scully home and call Scully away from the family dinner.

The mythology portion of the episode deals with if the thing that Mulder has been chasing is real or not. The man that steals the ice core sample, Michael Kritschgau, casts doubt on everything. He basically tells Mulder that everything he thinks he knows is a lie. His sister's abduction was fabricated. Every piece of evidence that he's found that substantiates his belief that extraterrestrials exist was manufactured. Or they are scientific anomalies. The strange DNA found in the ice? A combination of different strains to form a chimera that could look alien. Perhaps the most damning accusation: that they gave Scully cancer. All this to protect and cover up the military-industrial complex by the government. I've always been sort of torn by this. It makes sense in one way, but on the other there are still a lot of questions. The biggest one being how exactly did they give Scully cancer?

The episode sort of falls apart at the end when they reveal that the body that Scully identified at the start of the episode was Mulder's. According to Scully, he committed suicide. This feels like something just done for shock value and for a cliffhanger. We all know that Mulder isn't dead. So, it rings pretty hollow. And that sort of sucks the wind out of the sails in general. But overall, season four is a strong season and despite the weak cliffhanger, I'm excited to start season five.

Grade: B

Season Grade: B+

Next up, season five premieres with Scully's health issues coming to a head.

What did you all think? Did both of these episodes kind of fall apart near the end? How do you feel about season four in general? Where would you rank it? Let me know in the comments.