The X-Files
It has been over two years since we've done an "X-Files" recap. What can I say? Life has been lifing. I've been introducing my boyfriend to the show, so what better time to jump back into season five. A quick refresher. The season began with Scully on death's door, but she was saved by the Syndicate? Her cancer is in remission and the Cancer Man might be dead. But Mulder's belief in extraterrestrial life is completely shaken. The show celebrated it's 100th episode with a Lone Gunmen/Mulder origin story. And now it's Christmas time. A Scully focused Christmas two-parter? I can't wait to see how this turns out. Let's get to it.
"Christmas Carol"
Margaret Scully: "It has happened to me. When your father died, it was a long time before he left me. I saw him in my dreams. The phone would ring and just for a moment, I was sure that it was his voice. And you're doing the same thing with Melissa. You're seeing her in this child, but that does not make this child my granddaughter. We're still connected to them, Dana, even after they're gone."
Notable Guest Star: John Pyper-Ferguson as Detective Kresge
Mythology or Monster of the Week: Mythology
X-File of the Week: Special Agent Dana Scully is home for the holidays but she receives a phone call from a voice that sounds mysteriously like her sister, Melissa. She is led to the Sim home where Roberta Sim has committed suicide. Scully feels drawn the to the Sim's daughter, Emily. Scully doesn't believe that this is a suicide and as she delves deeper she begins to believe that Emily could be Melissa's daughter.
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| Scully loves Christmas. |
This is the spotlight season since the show's stars are busy doing movie re-shoots and things so we got a Scully-less 100th episode and this episode is virtually Mulder-less. We do get a glimpse of him when Scully calls him early in the episode but that's it. I did a bit of research (I Googled the episode) and it turns out that David Duchovny was promoting his film "Playing God." Do you all remember that movie? I don't, but it does exist. And Angelina Jolie was in it! That's wild. It was a huge flop which isn't a huge shock when you read about this movie.
Everyone knows I love Dana Scully and I did feel she was sort of getting the short end of the stick. It sometimes feels like things are happening to Scully and that she has not a ton of agency. She has been abducted and gotten cancer. She spent the last couple episodes of last season and the most first two episodes of this season in the hospital. So, it is really nice to see her actively participating in her life. She's making choices. They may not be the best choices, but she is making them.
There's a lot I enjoy about this episode. The holidays are fraught even if you don't have to deal with what Scully deals with and the episode does a great job of of capturing that. From the moment that you see them interacting its clear that Scully has a wall up. She's distant. Even when she's in the room, she's a million miles away. She understands that her life is so different form theirs and she doesn't know how to reconcile those two things. Family is tough and sometimes you step in it without realizing that you're stepping in it. Bill's, Scully's brother, wife is pregnant and she's going on and on about how wonderful it is. How her life didn't begin until she found out. She's rubbing it in that Sully is childless and alone. It's not on purpose. She has no idea that Scully learned she can't conceive, but it forces Scully to isolate herself even more.
One of the recurring actors that I love on this show is Sheila Larken as Margaret Scully. She and Gillian Anderson have believable mother/daughter chemistry that is on display throughout this episode. Margaret confronts Scully about her somewhat frosty reception to Tara talking about pregnancy, but her demeanor completely changes when Scully tells her that she can't have children of her own. The switch flips and immediately Margaret is the strong, supportive mother that we know she is. We see that again when Scully confronts Margaret with the possibility that Melissa had a daughter. She doesn't believe it but she tries see where Scully is coming from and empathize with her.
We see Scully being a damn good FBI agent and doctor. She is a dog with a bone when it comes to Roberta Sim's suicide. She muscles her way in to the investigation and changes it from a suicide to a murder when she learns that the drug that was found in Roberta's system wasn't prescribed to her, but to her shifty husband, Marshall. She finds a tiny needle hole in the heel of Roberta's body that could be the injection site. Scully is both Mulder and Scully in this episode. She's the stalwart investigator. The skeptic, but she's also the conspiracy nut. She's seeing Marshall's nonsense and learning about the medical trial that Emily is part of. She sees Marshall meeting with men in black and knows that something is up thanks to her work with Mulder. She's too late to stop them from staging a suicide in Marshall's cell after he's arrested for Roberta's murder.
Emily is another story. Scully feels a connection to her from the start. She gets multiple calls from a voice that sounds like Melissa's, and she becomes convinced that Melissa is Emily's mother. Melissa had a wild few months where she lost contact with family and Scully thinks that is when she got pregnant and gave her up for adoption. Bill is not convinced and show's Scully a photo of a very not pregnant Melissa from that time. Scully is undeterred. She tries to convince a social worker that she should be Emily's guardian. It all leads to the revelation at the end of the episode (that we all see coming) that Scully is Emily's mother.
The Emily of it all is where I struggle with this episode. The "successful woman isn't fulfilled unless she has a baby" storyline is one that never really jives with me. And I think part of it is because those storylines are usually introduced by men. Three writers craft this episode and all of them are men. It might have been good for there to be at least woman in "The X-Files" writing room. I don't doubt that there are women that would feel the way that Scully does and I think that it is not farfetched to think that Scully wouldn't care about having a baby until she realized she couldn't. But the way they frame it, just doesn't sit well with me. Her conversation with the social worker especially and doubting her career and the choices she's made. Being willing to throw it all away for this girl that she just meant that she doesn't even know if she's related to at that point. Had they framed this differently, I might not have had that much of a problem with it.
All in all though, this is a good Scully focused episode after she's been kind of on the back burner.
Grade: B+
"Emily"
Fox Mulder: "I found Emily's surrogate mother. I had Frohike hack into the California Social Services adoption database."
Dana Scully: "You've got a name?"
Fox Mulder: "Yeah, her mother-of-record is one Anna Fugazzi."
Dana Scully: "Fugazzi?"
Fox Mulder: "Yeah, as in slang term for fake."
Dana Scully: "I don't understand. Why create a false record?"
Fox Mulder: "Because there are no true records. Emily didn't come into this world through any system that keeps them."
Mythology or Monster of the Week: Mythology
X-File of the Week: Special Agent Dana Scully has learned that she has a daughter that she doesn't know about. After the girl's parents are killed under suspicious circumstances, her partner, Fox Mulder, arrives. He reveals that he learned that while Scully was abducted her ova was harvested and experimented with and he believes that Emily was the product of that experimentation. Could Emily be part of the alien/human hybrid conspiracy that Mulder and Scully have been working against for years?
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| Are you the parents? |
Mulder is back this episode and honestly, I kind of wish he had stayed away for at least one more episode. I will say that if he had, we wouldn't have gotten the iconic image of Mulder making the Mr. Potato Head face. That is great, but this episode is definitely the weaker of this mythology two-parter.
I'm honestly not even sure what to say about this episode. Despite my slight misgivings about the Scully sad she can't have a baby plotline, I thought overall it was interesting. This episode reverts back to the tried and true formula that we see during a lot of these mythology episodes. Mulder and Scully are separated for most of the episode with Scully handling the more grounded part of the episode and Mulder going after the conspiracy related stuff.
Scully is weirdly understanding of Mulder's bullshit which is hardcore back on in this episode. He tells her from the jump he doesn't think she should adopt Emily. He reveals in front of the judge that he knew that Scully's ova had been harvested during her abduction experience and he hadn't told her. I feel like her reaction to this reveal is extremely understated. I would have freaked out and she's more like, yeah, you should have told me but whatever. It feels like she'd be more upset particularly with how she was reacting last episode about not being able to conceive.
Again, this episode very much feels like stuff we've seen before. The men in black turn out to be alien human hybrids. Emily has the poisonous green blood indicative of hybrids. The big reveal is when Mulder follows one of the men in black who is disguised as Emily's doctor, Calderon, to a retirement home where he meets the real Anna Fugazzi. He does some research and finds that all the old women there had given birth to healthy babies around the time that Emily was born and Scully's name is in the records. He also finds a live fetus in a strange green liquid that Mulder ends up stealing a vial of. This show loves a fetus or embryo. What's up with that Chris Carter?
Much like a lot of mythology episodes this one kind of seems inconsequential when you judge it against what is learned and what is not. We don't get a lot of new information. We do learn that there are alien/human hybrid babies. Mulder gets that vial. Is he still a non believer? Is he not? Does the show care? Will he be one when it's convenient and not be one when it's convenient? Probably. Mulder learns that all the evidence of what Calderon was doing is gone except for Emily's body. Oh yeah. She dies. We all knew that would happen though, didn't we? And Emily's body is actually gone because when Scully opens her casket she finds bags of sand along with her cross necklace which she gave to Emily.
Yeah. Kind of a let down overall when you compare it with part one, but even so, entertaining. There are definitely way worse mythology episodes.
Grade: B-
Next up, Pusher Modell returns and Mulder and Scully investigate a stepson murdering his stepfather but there may be more to it than meets the eye.
What did you all think? How do you feel about Scully's can't get pregnant storyline? Did you like "Emily?" Let me know in the comments.
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