“The X-Files: I Want to Believe” Okay, so, since it’s been eight years since The X-Files went off the air, I thought I should do a little research to remind myself of what all happened in the nine year run of the show. Then I decided screw it, I watched all 200 episodes and the first movie and wrote about a dozen fanfics exploring various details of the mytharc. I’m sure it’s like riding a bike – I’ll remember it as I go. Here’s what I remember off the top of my head: aliens intend to take over and re-colonize the Earth by or starting in 2012 and the US government, knowing this since Roswell, responded to this threat by bending over and taking it. Though, since an ancient alien craft was found buried in Cote d’Ivoire and the sentient black oil was infecting humans as far back as the Neanderthals it’s probably moot. Humans are aliens. Nanu nanu. Oh, and Mulder’s sister may or may not have been abducted by aliens and turned into starlight – one of the few recurring plots that had definitive closure - and he had a Luke Skywalker moment when he found out the Cigarette Smoking Cancer Man was actually his father. Scully was assigned to the X-Files to discredit Mulder’s craziness as the bureau would have liked nothing more than to shut down his little embarrassing department and kick him back to the BAU where he apparently could now be working for Aaron Hotch. Instead, Scully fell headlong into the crazy and ended up having Mulder’s baby even though after her own abduction by aliens she supposedly had no ova (though the chip they implanted in her neck did cure her cancer, so that was a good thing, I guess). Their boss for most of that time was Walter Skinner, though he got his ass canned for sticking his neck out for them a few too many times. David Duchovny had a mid-life crisis and quit for a while and 1013 had to start hiring replacement characters – i.e. Robert “T1000” Patrick and Annabeth “Annoying New Age Girl” Gish, both of which were for some reason ditched in a desert in New Mexico in the series finale after CSM was vaporized by a missile. Oh, and there were some dorky friends of Mulder’s who provided comic relief for the show but Chris Carter had them killed after their spin-off failed to be profitable. Whew. I think that’s it. Chrissy: Really? You sure you don’t want to go into that whole “Doggett’s son was murdered” sideplot? Diandra: Fascinating as that was, it really wasn’t part of the main mytharc. Besides, I just finished recapping “Haunted”, so I’m about maxed out on dead kid angst. Chrissy: I was being sarcastic. Diandra: I know. Oh, yeah, I should also note that I am recapping this movie blind. By which I mean, I have not seen it at least once before starting the recap so I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen. Call it an experiment. Chrissy: I think I’ll just call it craziness. Diandra: Shut it. The familiar melody of the “X-Files” theme whistles across the soundtrack (ah...that brings back memories) and we get a title card with a moonlit night backdrop. The wind howls. Is this movie about werewolves? I mean, I know werewolves and vampires are in right now, but really. We pan down to a snowy road and get a time/date stamp of “Somerset, West Virginia. 10:23 P.M.” What, 10:13 was too blunt? A car is driving down said road, driven by a woman with a really big nose. Seriously. I think it has its own agent and SAG card. And then, for some reason, we get a quick shot of an FBI search party combing the snow in broad daylight and we’re back to the car. At night. We cut back and forth. The woman pulls into her garage in the middle of nowhere to find her dog barking and pawing the window frantically. The search team pokes the snow, accompanied by search dogs and a helicopter with infrared. Billy Connolly is walking in front of the pokers, sporting crazy hair and not really looking like he’s an official part of the search party. A shadow darts behind the woman’s car, but she doesn’t notice. Amanda Peet and...Xzibit trail behind the line moving through the snow, shouting orders. Really? The rapper from xXx:2? Well, that’s one way to take away your movie’s credibility. Not that Connolly helps much. “It’s here,” Connolly mutters to no one. Big Nose gets out of the car and proves that she actually has full use of the brains God gave her when she spots a footprint in the snow outside the garage and a puff of breath coming around the corner and halts in her tracks, reaching slowly for a weapon from the tool rack on the wall. Of course, knowing the nature of the show that spawned this movie, she could have a grenade launcher and it wouldn’t do her a whole hell of a lot of good because whatever she’s up against technically can’t be killed. And now the cuts are coming really fast and I can’t really follow what’s going on. A bald guy comes around the corner and she attacks with the gardening rake, slashing his hand and face up pretty good. Connolly catches some scent and starts running ahead. Peet keeps yelling at the rest of the group to “let him go”, but none of them seem to be making a move to do anything anyway, so I’m thinking she’s just wasting breath. Another guy shows up and chases Big Nose around the house, tackling her to the ground in a large clearing that looks a lot like the one the FBI is combing in the daylight and Connolly drops to his knees roughly in the same spot and shouts “it’s here!” Ah. I get it now. He’s Allison DuBois. Peet drops down next to him and the rest of the team stands back and watches them dig in the snow until they find a severed arm wrapped in a trash bag. The hand has rake marks. Wait, huh? And we cut to “Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital” at “8:25 A.M.”, where a doctor is consulting via video conference with a room full of doctors. Blah blah pediatric neurologist blah deficiency in lipid metabolism and severely diminished enzyme output, which Scully thinks indicate “lysosomal storage illness”. Not that we see Scully saying this: we just see the back of her head, but the voice and the red hair are kind of a giveaway. But we are obviously supposed to relish the reveal when the doctor on conference asks her name and she says “Scully, Dana Scully” while the camera pans around to her face. I almost expect her to be twirling a martini glass between her fingers. Or at the very least, Mark Snow to do a drum roll. On a shallow note: damn Gillian Anderson is pretty. She walks down the aisle between the people listening in and rambles that she’s afraid the patient in question (some unnamed boy) has a “type two degenerative brain disease” like “Sandhoff”. Is that caused by watching too much television? She’s run all the tests, she’s just looking for a treatment. Consult flatly says there is no treatment “but if there were, I’m sure you’d tell me.” Yes, it’s called the Wait Around in Cornfields for a Passing Spacecraft and Offer to Be Their Guinea Pig treatment. It works wonders for advanced, untreatable cancer, I hear. Scully looks hopelessly at the priest who just snuck in to sit at the back of the room. Then she’s walking down a hallway past a couple of nuns (yes, we got that she’s working in a religious hospital from the cross on the wall in the background and that’s totally something she would do. We don’t need to be beaten over the head). She looks dejectedly at a little boy being pushed in a wheelchair from the other direction by what is presumably his parents. She takes a breath and fakes a smile. “Hi, Christian, how are you feeling?” Oh, God, his name is Christian? Really? He says he’s doing just fine, thank you, in a garbled voice like a person who has just had a stroke. Dad asks if she got any second opinions. She says yes, and they need to do some tests. Xzibit appears suddenly and announces to the entire hallway that he’s looking for Fox Mulder. Scully apologizes to the family and slinks over to him as he introduces himself as “Agent [Stupidname] Drummy with...” She buts in that she can take a guess who he works for but she no longer works with Fox Mulder, nor does she work for the FBI. Uh...when is this supposed to take place? Stupidname ominously says if she could find a way to contact him that would be great because the FBI *really* needs to talk to him and it could “save the life of an FBI agent”. So sometime later, Scully gets in her car and drives out to a farm house that appears to be just past the last tree in New England. Or Virgina. I don’t know where the hell this is anymore. Inside, she opens a door that is totally plastered with newspaper clippings and pictures and what looks like a poster with a spaceship. “What’s up, Doc,” Mulder quips from off-screen. She notes that he’s become strangely trusting “for a man wanted by the FBI”. He rambles about precognitive states and human intuition and transitory human existence “unaided by the conscious mind”. Scully folds her arms and makes a face like “ah, yes. Mulder spouting philosophical trippy garbage written by Chris Carter. This? I did not miss”. Or maybe that’s me. Then he turns to face her and slowly stands up and AAAUUUUGGGGGGHHHH! “But who believes that crap anymore,” asks the hairy rodent that is attached to the lower half of David Duchovny’s face. He tacks some article next to the old, familiar “I Want to Believe” poster while Scully tells him about her visit from Xzibit. Mulder hopes she “told them to go screw themselves.” Scully says they’re promising to drop all charges against him if he agrees to help them solve this case. What charges? Are we talking about the whole killing Knowle Rohrer thing? The supersoldier who couldn’t be killed and wasn’t? Way to oversimplify a story arc, Carter. Mulder rants that they put him on trial for bogus charges and tried to discredit “a decade” of his work. “They should be asking me for my forgiveness.” Okay, A) It was a military tribunal. What did the FBI have to do with it, other than denying Mulder had anything to do with them, which they usually did, B) a decade? and C) Where were you for the nine-year run of the show? Or did you just hit your head and forget that the FBI offering you an apology for trying to shut you down is about as likely as Bush junior saying something intelligent? Scully thinks they are. I take it back, apparently the FBI has lost it. She says someone who claims to be a psychic has come forward with some “promising evidence” on the case. Mulder says it’s a trick to smoke him out. “And it’s not even a good one,” the beard pipes up. “What the hell? A psychic? That’s all they’ve got? Come back when they have a crashed spaceship or a ghostly serial killer or something.” Scully thinks if the FBI wanted him they could get him very easily. No kidding if your idea of hiding consists of living in a big farmhouse and working as a neurologist at a local hospital and NOT EVEN TRYING TO CHANGE YOUR NAME. Weren’t there some very powerful people trying to kill you? Shouldn’t you be in witness protection? Why am I worrying about this? Chrissy: I don’t know. It’s not like Chris Carter has ever let little details like that stop him from screwing over the fans. Diandra: No kidding. Anyway, Scully thinks the FBI is just happy to have Mulder out of their hair. Usually. Mulder and the Beard are perfectly happy with that. Scully guilt-trips that an agent’s life is at stake and they were agents once so he should give a shit. Besides, she claims she’s worried about the effects of long- term isolation on him. He says he’s fine and nibbles on some sunflower seeds with this expression like a puppy begging you to take it home with you. No, really, I kinda wanna scratch him behind the ears and coo at him a little. It would be cuter if it weren’t for the beard that says “I reek of booze and unwashed man”. Scully sighs and looks up at the ceiling, where about a dozen pencils are lodged in the Styrofoam-like tiles. I don’t know why Chris Carter insists on putting in all these call backs to familiar character traits. He scared off his die- hard fans when he said the movie would be a Monster of the Week story and newcomers won’t get the in-joke. Chrissy: Because he’s never understood who, exactly, his audience is or what they want. Diandra: (grumble) Clearly. Scully says she’ll pass along his rejection and closes the door. Mulder stares at what looks like a picture of Samantha among the plastered articles. Really? What the hell? Somehow this long-abandoned plot device prompts him to change his mind. He follows Scully and says he’ll go under one condition. We don’t hear what that condition is or whether the beard has a stake in it. Chrissy: It gets its own separate apology. Diandra: And a book deal. Cut to them getting in a helicopter that actually takes off right from the front lawn of the farm house. They arrive at what is clearly Washington D.C. with the Washinton memorial and capitol building all lit up for night viewing. The time stamp identifies it anyway, adding that it is 9:24 PM. Mark Snow goes nuts with the brass section. They meet Xzibit, who escorts them into the FBI building and has them wait outside an office next to a picture of a smirking Former President Junior. Chrissy: Bet if feels good to finally be able to put the “former” in there, huh? Diandra: You have no idea. For some reason, the camera focuses in tight on this picture and the picture of J. Edgar Hoover on the other side of the door and the X-Files theme whistles ominously. Mulder and Scully look at each other like “eight years of that clown and they called *us* crazy?” Or maybe it’s just my imagination. They’re called into a conference room with a bunch of agents and Peet waltzes over and introduces herself as “Special Agent in Charge Whitney.” Note to the closed captioners: I don’t think “in charge” needs to be capitalized like that. Though it is an awkward line. She apologizes to Mulder for the awkwardness and assures him they appreciate his trust. He says yeah, trust, uh...what if he can’t help them here? Whitney brushes it off and says they’re the best chance “Monica Bannan” has now. Monica’s been missing for almost three days, she exposits, handing Mulder a file with pictures of the woman we saw in the opening. Scully reminds Whitney that after 72 hours there’s a slim chance the woman is still alive. I think the cut off is usually 24 hours, but whatever. Whitney says they don’t have any evidence proving she’s not alive and what little they have gives them some hope. She shows them a picture of the severed arm, which she says was found ten miles from Monica’s house. Scully reads the evidence file and notes that it’s a *man’s* arm. Mulder glances at it and concludes that it matches evidence from the crime scene. Whitney confirms: it matches the blood in the garage and on the garden rake. Mulder exposits that they were led to it by this psychic guy (Joseph Crissman, Whitney calls him), but they think he’s full of it. Xzibit starts to cut in. “Father Joe was...” “He was a priest,” Scully squawks, cutting him off. Xzibit’s like yeah, and? He called six hours after the disappearance claiming he had some sort of psychic vision of the victim. Mulder asks if they have anything else. Nope. Whitney says that’s why they called him – “I need to know we’re not wasting time.” That’s the weakest premise for an X-File I’ve ever seen. Mulder says well, the guy’s religious and well-educated and “said nothing to cast doubt upon himself” and has no physical connection to the crime so...yes, they’re wasting time. “Mine and your agents’.” He reasons that if they don’t have reason to doubt Father Joe, why are they questioning these visions he’s having? Xzibit says because he didn’t lead them to the victim, he led them to a severed arm. Mulder snorts that this isn’t an exact science and if it were him he’d be watching Joe 24/7. “I’d be in bed with him, kissing his holy ass.” “But enough about our personal life,” the beard adds. The collective agents look uncomfortable and Whitney says uh, yeah...he’s a convicted pedophile. Mulder yanks his foot from his mouth and mumbles a retraction on the bed comment. Richmond, Virginia. 1:01 A.M. Obviously the person assigning random oddly specific times through “Black Hawk Down” is still finding work. Whitney and Xzibit drive Mulder and Scully up to a sterile looking apartment building that Whitney identifies as “dorms” where they keep repeat sex offenders. The minor offenders, apparently. “Just avoid the activities room,” Mulder jokes. “Speak for yourself,” the beard says. Father Joe Connolly is watching The Jeffersons. Or at least it’s on in the background while he’s praying. He turns the TV down. Xzibit says Mulder has some questions for him. Scully says actually, she’s got a question: what was he praying for just now? “For the salvation of my immortal soul,” he says in this tone like “duh. What else?” Scully wonders if he really thinks God hears his prayers seeing as he “bugger[ed] 37 altar boys”. Chrissy: Somebody’s been in England too long. Diandra: Somebody needs to get off her soap box and get back to the business at hand. Oh, right. I forgot who I was talking about. Mulder commends Scully’s colorful phrasing. Joe says he has to believe God hears him or he wouldn’t be sending him these visions. Scully suggests God isn’t sending them. Mulder asks what, exactly he sees. Joe takes a moment to light a cigarette and says he sees “the poor girl being assaulted.” She’s putting up a fight and there are dogs barking, but he can’t tell where it is. He doesn’t *see* her alive, but he *feels* that she is. Mulder just nods and Scully makes a face like she’d rather be anywhere else right now. Mulder asks if Joe can show them how he gets these visions. Joe dumps his cigarette in the ashtray and says he’s not sure he can do it on command, but maybe it would work better if Scully wasn’t in the room. Scully glowers like this is the first time a psychic has asked her to kindly take her doubting energy from their vicinity, snits something about him putting on a show so people forget who he really is and stomps out. Mulder finds her on the balcony some time later. He says “so much for kissing his holy ass”. She mutters that she’s been away from this business too long, “or not long enough”. Mulder says no, she was fine. All he had were questions, but she pushed and challenged the guy. “Like old times.” In spite of the fact that her character supposedly grew and changed in those nine years of television fame, you mean? Yeah. She grumbles that the guy is a creep and a liar. He knows who did it because he’s been supplied with information. “I mean, look where he lives.” She waves the file on the arm that was found and points out that it was cut cleanly, not hacked off in a fight. And how was Joe able to lead them to it and not even come up with a guess of where the victim is. I’m getting dizzy trying to follow this logic. Scully predicts that in the next 24 hours they will find the agent dead and realize once and for all that Joe’s a fraud. Mulder mumbles that she could be right. Okay, who are you? Where’s the Mulder that would accuse her of not being open minded and come up with an even more ridiculous theory? “But what if you’re wrong,” he adds lamely. She looks over her shoulder at Joe putting on his coat in the doorway. Mulder says he’s taking the guy for a ride and they’re going to find out just how psychic he is. Scully looks like she can’t believe he’s going along with this (hello?), shoves the file into his hands and starts to leave. Mulder chases after her and begs her to stay. “This isn’t my life anymore,” she says. “I’m done chasing monsters in the dark.” And she seems to think he should just tell them thanks but I quit too. He says they need him and he needs her. Chrissy: Weren’t they, like, officially together at the end of the series? Diandra: Yeah, they were also on the run from the military, the shadow government and being hunted by supersoldiers. What’s your point? Chrissy: Why are they talking like they haven’t seen each other since then? Diandra: You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Chris Carter gives a shit. Chrissy: Wow. Someone’s bitter. Diandra: Yeah, well, someone discovered JJ Abrams and realized that some television creators actually respect their viewers and realize that not everybody shares their particular opinion. Chrissy: Should I have brought alcohol to this recap? Diandra: Probably. Scully sort of shakes her head, sighs, takes the file back from Mulder and gets in the car. Mulder’s beard does a little victory dance. Seriously, could somebody get him a razor already? This is distracting! Sommerset, West Virginia. 5:02 A.M. Look, I know Mulder doesn’t ever sleep, but doesn’t anyone else? They’re driving down that same snowy road again. I’m sure all these shots are supposed to look like slightly different locations, but they really don’t. Father Joe wakes up when they bump over a pothole and asks if they’re getting close. Whitney says “you tell us” without the slightest trace of irony or annoyance. He squints out the window and says he has no flipping idea where they are. Mulder says that’s okay because everybody works differently. “What are you, the good cop,” Joe asks. Mulder hands him Monica’s ID badge and he mutters that he doesn’t know who the hell this girl is and he doesn’t understand this connection to her. Mulder says there’s always something, even if it’s small. “And who made you the expert,” Joe asks. Mulder exposits that he once worked cases for the FBI involving unexplained phenomenon. Diandra: Oh, my God, really?! Is that what you were doing all through the 90s? Chrissy: Your sarcasm is duly noted. Joe asks if he believes in these sort of things then. Mulder chuckles to himself and says “let’s just say I want to believe.” Xzibit adds, for those of us who never watched the show ever, that his sister was abducted by aliens. Joe asks if that’s true. “It was a long time ago,” Mulder non-answers. Okay, I know there was a lot of complaining about how we never really had a satisfying answer to the whole Samantha Mulder story but really? I thought we were done with this. Joe stares at him unnervingly and says his sister is dead, isn’t she? Yes, that seems to be the one thing that we can all agree on (the where, when and how notwithstanding). Mulder snatches Monica’s badge back and pouts. Joe suddenly lurches forward and says this is where the agent was abducted. Whitney blinks at him and looks at Mulder like “what the hell good is this doing?” Mulder says he wants Joe to see the crime scene. So they pull up to the house and Joe takes one look at it and says no, this isn’t it. “You’ve brought me to the wrong house.” He wanders across the street to the house with the garage cordoned off with crime scene tape. Uh, yeah, that was a lame test. Whitney tells Mulder there was a lot of news coverage of the place and Joe could have recognized it from that. Mulder says yeah, but why would he go to such lengths just for shits and giggles? Whitney thinks he’s looking to redeem himself with the church seeing as he’s written dozens of letters to the Vatican pleading as much. Mulder thinks this is an odd way to get the church’s attention. Whitney points out that God speaking through someone is hardly odd religious fare. They still have to consider Joe a suspect, though they’re having a hard time connecting him to the crime. She says she’s not exactly the most popular agent right now for calling Mulder in. “Yeah,” Mulder mutters. “I wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity at the FBI myself.” I would comment on the clunkiness of this line and, really, the non-sensical, slapped together nature of this whole plot but I’m finding that image entertaining. Whitney notes that he’s dealt with psychics before and throws out a bunch of names, some of which I remember. RIP Peter Boyle. You will be missed. She calls his work on those cases “extremely impressive”. Is she trying to get into his pants or something? Mulder says he’s only half the team. Technically, since Y2K you’ve been a third of it, but Carter seems hell bent on pretending those last two years or so didn’t happen. Chrissy: One fourth. You forgot Reyes. Diandra: Yeah, well, whatever contributions she made were pretty negligible. Joe, wandering in the distance, suddenly drops to his knees. Mulder rushes to him, trailed by the other two agents. “She ran away,” Joe says like he’s in a trance. “She tried to escape. There were two men. But she couldn’t. He pushed her down.” God, even the dialogue is random and out of order. He says they put her “in the back.” “Where,” Whitney snaps. In a car. No, a truck. With “something on it, like a...” Instead of letting him actually give them something useful, Whitney interrupts to remind him that they have to find Monica, damnit! Joe babbles that she’s in pain but he doesn’t know where she is. “We need to find her,” Whitney squeals. “I can’t see,” Joe sobs repeatedly. Xzibit concludes that this is because he’s making shit up and stalks off. Then Mulder notices that Joe appears to be crying blood. We linger on this for about a half a second before cutting away. I officially don’t understand Chris Carter. I mean, if you’re going to belittle your shows entire mytharc by insisting that it was always about the weird paranormal shit, why the hell would you make such a weak plot without even a good Monster of the Week? Scully is back at the hospital for some reason. She goes to talk to Christian the kid with irreversible brain disease, who asks if he’s going to be leaving this place soon. Scully asks what’s wrong. Christian is kind of creeped out by the “way the man is looking at me.” Scully looks around and asks what man? Christian nods at the wall behind her. Or maybe at the priest in the hallway reading a chart. Is it wrong that I’m trying to see something more satisfyingly paranormal in this side plot? Scully tells Christian not to worry and marches off to talk to the priest with the chart. He says he wanted to go over all the tests they’ve been running on the boy himself. Scully notes that this isn’t really any of his business as he’s not the boy’s primary physician. Father Asshole says it’s his business to make sure his physicians are making the “right” choices both for the patients and the hospital. “We are here to heal the sick, not prolong the ordeal of the dying. There are other, better facilities for the boy.” Scully just takes the boy’s file, purses her lips and stomps off. In a pool somewhere, some guy who is apparently able to hold his breath for a really long time smiles creepily at some random woman. I suppose he’s supposed to be one of the guys who abducted that agent but I’m caring less about this plot by the minute and suspecting that it is just a gross waste of my time. Anyway. Time shift. Sometime later, the woman goes out to her car and the truck next to her revs its engine pointedly and drives off. She drives off in what looks like a mild blizzard and quickly catches up to the guy because he’s driving like a grandpa out for a Sunday stroll. She tries to go around him and he picks up speed and rams into her, shoving her right off the road and into a haystack. I would say it serves her right for driving like that, but he’s the one with the big ugly truck, so... She groggily watches over the deflating airbag as he stops, gets out and comes toward her carrying what looks like a burlap sack. “I’m fine,” she calls like a total moron who should really have whipped out her phone and called 911 by now. He punches out her windshield and we pull back while he drags her out of the car so we don’t see exactly what he does, but she doesn’t seem to be fighting when we push back in to see him dragging her away. Elsewhere, Scully is laying in bed looking sullen. From somewhere, Mulder says he can feel her thinking. She says she can’t sleep. His head pops up over her shoulder and he snuggles up to her. “Actually, I have a little something for that.” Pervert. Chrissy: Do you even remember this show? Diandra: All too well, thank you. “Just a little something?” Scully fires back. “Thank you,” he says, his chest puffing out a bit. What the hell are you doing, Dana? Stop baiting him! Mulder asks what’s wrong. Scully fills him in on the whole dying boy with a rare brain disease plot. This had better be related to the A plot in some way. I’m just saying. She thought there was something she could do to help him but the only treatments are so radical that nobody wants to consider them, so now she’s just bitter with God for being so cruel. She doesn’t know why she seems to have such a connection to this boy. Mulder asks how old he is. “You think it’s because of William,” Scully says. Oh, so we do remember his name? For those who have no idea who the hell William is, Mulder exposits “I think our son left us both with an emptiness that can’t be filled. Just go to sleep.” If you listen carefully you can actually hear Chris Carter saying “you will not ask questions about the mythology” backward on the soundtrack. Mulder says he’ll be glad to curse God for a while in her stead. She smiles sadly. He kisses her and she makes a face and whines about his ugly ass beard scratching her. Bless her. Now hand him a razor and threaten to never have sex with him again if he doesn’t get rid of that damn thing. Chrissy: What is it with you and facial hair anyway? You spent four years drooling over Michael Vartan, who is, like, permanently covered in stubble. Diandra: Okay, first of all, a full on scraggly beard is not the same as stubble. There comes a point when it stops being “rugged” and just makes you look like a hobo. Second, why are you talking about Michael in the past tense? You think I wouldn’t still do him in a heartbeat if I had half a chance? Chrissy: You’d have to beat me there first. Diandra: Bring it. Chrissy: How did we get off on this tangent? Diandra: Boredom? Mulder nuzzles her neck a little more just to annoy her and rolls over to his side of the bed again. Scully starts to go to sleep, then suddenly remembers that she was supposed to tell Mulder something about the toxicology report she got on the severed arm. There were traces of a drug normally given to patients being treated with radiation and traces of something called “acepromazine”, which is weird because it’s an animal tranquilizer. Mulder sits up, announcing that he can’t sleep and wanders into the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror. Chrissy: You are going to mention that he’s naked, aren’t you? Diandra: Oh, is he? I was too distracted by the beard to notice. Scully trails after Mulder and stands in the doorway while he rambles about why animal tranquilizer could possibly have been in the man’s arm. He mutters that Father Joe said he heard dogs and is it the kind of tranquilizer one might give a dog? While he’s talking he starts gathering shaving supplies (HALLELUJAH, THERE IS A GOD!). Scully doesn’t think it matters because Joe’s a fake and has Mulder playing connect the dots with nothing. Mulder says yeah, well, crying tears of blood at a crime scene he’s never been at makes him a little less skeptical. “How do you fake that?” Scully is saved from explaining exactly how it is possible to fake that by a ringing phone. It’s Whitney. Scully asks if there’s been a break. Mulder, face covered in shaving cream, wanders over to ask if they found Monica. Get your ass back to the sink and finish the job, Spooky. Whitney says they’re pursuing another lead. From the same source. In the back seat of the SUV she’s riding in, Joe tells them to turn up ahead at the barn. Mulder and Scully arrive at said barn “three hours later” in a snow storm. Whitney greets them and looks askance at Mulder, whose appearance is much improved in spite of the bloody toilet paper stuck to one cheek. Scully looks at her suspiciously like maybe now that Mulder is prettier she might try to jump him. What I wouldn’t give for a good chick fight. Chrissy: I can help you there. Diandra: No, thanks. Whitney says the psychic led them to the same site he led them to before. She’s rolling her eyes now, like she’s ready to wash her hands of Joe. Mulder ducks past her and goes to Joe, who is insisting that they’re going to find a body. Xzibit reminds him he told them she was alive. Joe says she is. Xzibit is tired of this circular argument. Welcome to the world of Chris Carter, bit. Whitney apologizes for dragging them out here and the FBI search team packs up to go. Mulder urges Joe to tell him what he sees. “I see a face. I see eyes staring out.” Mulder keeps coaxing while Scully makes faces and bites her tongue. Joe says the face is unclear, like he’s seeing it through dirty glass but “it’s out there. I know it.” He wanders off and Mulder turns to Scully to ask her input on the dirty glass comment. “Mulder?” “What,” asks Clueless McGee. “Stop.” Mulder accuses her of giving up like everybody else. She reminds him that this is no longer her job. Mulder says so, what, she’s just his booking agent? Scully refrains from punching him, which alone makes her a better woman than me. She says it’s her fault for getting him involved in this. He says no, it was the right thing to do. She says this isn’t about him finding a missing agent, “this is about you trying to save your sister.” Well, that would be quite a trick since she’s been dead for twenty years. Or thirty depending on which writer you ask. Let’s just say continuity with regard to the Samantha plot was not this show’s strong suit. Mulder says as much. Scully says that doesn’t seem to have stopped him from looking for her. Mulder just looks at Joe wandering into the nearby woods and calls back the search team. Whitney and Xzibit, for some reason, do not tell him to go take a flying leap and start tromping on over. “What are you doing,” Scully asks. “I’m trying to ignore you,” Mulder snits. Oh, no you didn’t, Spooky. You do know she could kill you and make it look like an accident, right? So, Joe leads the crazy train through the woods to a clearing and suddenly announces he’s found “it” and starts digging in the snow. Mulder helps him and then a bunch of agents start digging with shovels. Xzibit hits what he calls “solid ice” and Mulder calls “dirty glass”. Mulder starts clearing snow from a random spot in the ice and shines a flashlight right on a face under the ice. Whitney looks shaken and slightly ill and starts calling for equipment to dig the body out. Mulder strolls away, his job apparently done here. Joe wanders over to Scully and tells her not to give up. On what? The child she gave to some couple in the middle of Nowheresville to keep him safe from the people that are apparently no longer chasing her since she’s running around in public treating sick children? I don’t know what the hell we’re talking about anymore. Elsewhere, the killer is driving up to a dog pound. Inside, the woman from the car earlier is in a crate amid all the barking dogs, wailing for help even though that’s probably useless and her time and energy would be better spent trying to figure a way out of that crate. Some old guy squats next to the crate and peers at her and she starts babbling that she’s sorry she hit the truck and she didn’t mean it and she won’t tell just please let her go! Honey? Shut up. You’re just making yourself hoarse for nothing. Old guy and the guy from the truck start babbling at each other in Russian and wheeling the crate through what looks like a covert underground operating room. The ninny wails some more and finally shuts up and watches, peeing her pants as the guys start arguing in unsubtitled Russian and moving around the room. There’s a guy on the table near her who turns his head and looks at her. She begs him to get her out of here like he’s not tied to the table or something and promises to help him if he helps her. He makes gurgling noises and she starts screaming for help again. Gah. Hospital, 8:08 A.M. Father Asshole is conferring with that group from the opening about relocating the dying boy to a hospice. Scully sneaks in, whispering apologies for her tardiness. Father Asshole fills her in on the whole moving Christian to a death home decision they were just going over. Scully blinks at him and says that was a discussion, not a decision. Asshole says they’ve discussed it and none of her colleagues object. Scully says too bad, she objects. Asshole reminds her that Christian’s condition isn’t treatable and unless she’s come up with some sort of miracle cure she’ll just have to let him go and move on. She just stares at him, which he takes as his cue to move on with other business. Scully sinks into her chair and zones out for a minute, thinking, then blurts that there is a treatment, actually. It’s called “intrathecal stem cell therapy”. Another young woman in a lab coat blurts that Scully can’t possibly be seriously thinking of putting the boy through that. Scully asks if she would do it if it was her son. Asshole says it’s not either of their sons. Scully says it’s not for the hospital administration to decide what’s best for him and if they don’t like her decision as his primary physician they can take it up with a “higher authority”. Oh, great, here it comes. “I have taken it up with the highest authority,” Asshole smarms. Is Chris Carter really going to present this battle between Science and Religion as a novel concept? Has he read anything by Dan Brown? Meanwhile, in Quantico at 10:20 A.M. a forensics team is working away at a giant block of ice with blowtorches and drills. Mulder is trying to call Scully and looking at a picture of Monica shaking some guy’s hand. There’s a very prominent bracelet on her wrist that looks like a medic alert tag. Scully totally ignores the loudly vibrating phone as she plugs “stem cell therapy” into a Google search. Yeah, unless you’ve got about five million hours to kill there’s probably a more effective way of researching that. Mulder leaves a message on her voice mail. The woman in the ice – or the head anyway - is not Monica, but so far they’ve extracted limbs from 11 different people and they’re all severed the same way as that first arm they found. Somebody’s been dumping body parts for months or maybe years. What, is the lake permanently frozen? How has nobody found floating body parts yet? I mean, I know it’s supposedly in the middle of nowhere, but shouldn’t there be some obvious impact on the wildlife from drinking water polluted by decaying human parts? Why am I worrying about details like this? Oh, and there’s no apparent connection between victims – they’re all healthy males and females – and they found more traces of that animal tranquilizer. Mulder hangs up as Whitney bustles over. He says he can’t reach Scully, but he has a good feeling about this being the break in the case. Whitney mutters that he and Father Joe keep saying that. Mulder points out that she’s just uncovered a serial killer – she’s got, like, a dozen cases she can solve now. She moans that that doesn’t help her find her missing agent. Mulder brushes it off – they’ll find her, he knows it! Chrissy: My memory is a bit rusty. Are we supposed to trust Mulder’s hunches? Diandra: Despite all reason or evidence to the contrary? Yes. Somewhere nearby Joe is still rambling about a woman’s face, except he says it’s a different woman and she was taken from a car and is being held in a box. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere specific. Mulder asks if Monica is with her. Joe doesn’t know and neither do we. Mulder asks if the same men took them. Joe says yes. In other words, he doesn’t know any more than the viewing audience and vice versa. Mulder looks deep into Joe’s eyes and decides that he’s telling the truth and they need to get a car ready. Xzibit asks where they’re going. Mulder doesn’t know yet. “I don’t believe this,” Xzibit mutters. Mulder says that’s been their problem from the beginning. Whitney jumps in to say she can get the car and a list of all missing persons in the greater Virginia area and would he like a blowjob while she’s at it? Somerset, West Virginia. The gang arrives at the scene of the last woman’s abduction, where the local sheriff’s department is digging the car from the snow. Whitney fills in Mulder on the details: the woman’s name is Cheryl and she disappeared sometime yesterday. There’s no blood anywhere and the keys are still in the ignition. Xzibit theorizes that she wandered off on foot, got tired, sat down, fell asleep and froze to death. Mulder thinks it’s odd that she made such a sharp turn off the road on such a long stretch of perfectly straight road. Not if she was trying to avoid a squirrel. Those things are *suicidal*. Joe sits in the driver’s seat of the car for a minute, looks around a bit and says he’s not getting anything. Xzibit loudly and snarkily declares his lack of surprise and Whitney decides they might be done with Father Joe. Mulder suddenly finds a medical ID bracelet only slightly buried in the snow, proving that all the other agents around here are totally incompetent. He says he noticed the missing agent had one too. Whitney has no idea what that means. Mulder has them open the trunk of the car, where they find her gym bag and a frozen, chlorine scented swimsuit. So they run to the nearest public pool and show the guy at the desk a picture of Monica. He’s somewhat old and senile, unfortunately, and rambles that young people all look so much alike. Whitney asks to see the sign-in sheet while Mulder paces and looks annoyed. Check in guy says they threw away yesterdays sign-in. Mulder’s had enough and wanders into the locker rooms. Check in guy asks rhetorically if that guy realizes he just went into the woman’s locker rooms. It’s Mulder, dude. If he doesn’t keep putting out “proof” of his heterosexuality people might start wondering just what exactly happened between him and Doggett out on that oil rig in season 8. Chrissy: And there it is! [WHACK!] Diandra: Hey, this isn’t “Pirates of the Caribbean”! You don’t get to slap me when I make slash jokes. After all the pages of Mulder slash I’ve written it’s bound to come out eventually! Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. Scully and a team of about a dozen doctors perform the totally radical surgery on Christian. Afterward, Mulder finds her in the locker area, scribbling in a notepad. “People say I went under ground,” he jokes. Yeah, obviously not that far. Seriously, Carter, you have totally undermined the urgency, futility and danger that was supposedly surrounding these characters in the last hours of the series. This is worse than the Bobby Ewing in the shower thing. That, at least, had a somewhat satisfactory explanation. Scully apologizes for ditching him but she needed to keep her focus on the dying boy and the “radical and extremely painful” mostly experimental treatment she just insisted the hospital let her give him. They won’t know if it worked until the whole series of treatments is over. What does Mulder want? He says another woman is missing and she gave them a new lead: she and Monica went to the same public pool where the killer probably found them. Oh, and they both had medical ID bracelets and the same rare bloodtype: AB negative. Hey, the writers actually got a detail about bloodtypes right! That’s a rare occasion in Hollywood! Scully concludes that they were targeted for organ harvesting. “Black market,” Mulder agrees. Scully says they must have access to medical records and lists of organ recipients. Mulder’s like yeah, hence why we need you, Doctor. Scully suggests he start with transporters and call the Richmond DA. Mulder doesn’t take the brush off – he *needs* her on this! He *loves* her so much! They *need* to work together again! Scully practically rolls her eyes and says no – he led the FBI this far already and pretty much handed them the key to solving the damn case. Why can’t they just lose the training wheels and finish it already? Mulder whines that they’re SO CLOSE and he can’t just let it go because it’s “not that simple.” “No, it’s complicated,” she mutters. Mulder asks what the hell that’s supposed to mean. I’d like to ask Chris Carter the same question. Scully rambles about how she’s been afraid this would happen eventually and she hasn’t had to face it and she’s a DOCTOR damnit, this isn’t her LIFE anymore! Dear Chris Carter: you’re repeating yourself. Stop it. She says he doesn’t understand. “I can’t look into the darkness with you anymore, Mulder. I cannot stand what it does to you, or to me.” Mulder says he’s just fine and dandy. Scully says yeah, that’s the problem. She thinks he should take a good look at himself. Mulder looks as baffled as I am by this whole conversation. “Why? I don’t think I’m the one who’s changed.” I’m guessing that *is* the problem, actually. Scully says they’re not with the FBI anymore and she doesn’t want that “darkness” in their house. Mulder yelps that this is who he *is* and always *was* long before he met her. “It’s what I do. It’s everything I know!” Chrissy: Don’t try to change me, baby! Diandra: Exactly. Which is probably why this relationship should never have made it this far. Oh, shit. I think I actually just agreed with the argument Chris Carter always insisted on making. Shoot me. Scully sighs that she can’t tell Mulder to give up. Isn’t that what you just did? She can, however, tell him that she’s not coming home tonight. Ooo. Ultimatum. Mulder sighs and begs her not to do this. Scully says she has her own shit to deal with and “I don’t know what else to do.” Mulder sighs, wishes her luck and slinks off. I’m confused, are we supposed to care now about a relationship that Carter wrote off a long time ago? Is this just filler between the all-important Monster of the Week stuff? Chrissy: I think you’re supposed to assume that Mulder is right and Scully will see the light eventually. Diandra: That’s what I’m afraid of. Scully is leaving to go who knows where when Christian’s parents corner her. They’ve changed their minds about this new treatment of hers. Scully reminds them that they don’t even know if it’s working yet. Dad says Christian’s been through enough already. Mom adds that they want to just give up and put their faith in God. “If you were a mother, you’d understand,” she adds. Oh, shut up, you twit. Scully, who is decidedly not stupid, notes that they’ve talked to Father Asshole. Dad says yeah, but the decision is all theirs. That’s what you think. Scully just blinks and looks at them like “you poor, pathetic idiots” and asks what if it was working and stopping the treatment proved to be the wrong choice? Mom asks if she really thinks she can save the kid. Well, you can at least find out before you give up and wail “woe is me”, can’t you? (Kim) Manners (RIP) Colonial Hospital, 5:01 P.M. Seriously, does nothing in this movie happen at 3:30 or noon or something? This is starting to get on my nerves. Some doctors and nurses are chatting away while they remove somebody’s organ and hand it to the Russian guy, who zips it into a transport bag and skips off. He’s stopped at the elevator by some local cops and rants at them about how important it is that he moves very quickly with the live tissue here. They pull him aside and the guy not wearing a full police uniform says he’s with the DA in Richmond and he’d like to see the man’s license. Russian snits that he has a green card. DA guy is like, yeah, not what I asked. What have you got here? A heart? Russian says it’s a liver, which I hear goes nice with fava beans and Chianti. Chrissy: You just couldn’t resist, could you? Diandra: Nope. Where is he delivering it? Willow’s Memorial. What, no Spotnitz General? DA guy completely unsubtly asks if he’s ever delivered an organ “outside of normal or lawful channels”. Russian squints at him and says no. DA guy asks if his employer would say the same. Russian is like, there’s a cancer patient who needs this liver, man, tick tock. “Am I under some kind of suspicion?” It should be noted that he asks this question after a series of statements in very fractured English. Yeah, language skills are a little spotty there. Scully, meanwhile, knocks on Father Joe’s door and asks to speak to him. He invites her in and insists she sit down even though she says she isn’t staying long. “You said something to me the other night” she begins. He says yeah, he said “don’t give up”. What about it? She asks why he said that. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he says cluelessly. She doesn’t exactly like this answer and starts pacing and yelping “do you know anything about me? Do you know what it is that I do?” He’s like uh, no, crazy woman, but you obviously are a “woman of faith” judging by your comments that first night and the cross around your neck. She does still have the cross, right? I haven’t been paying attention. Though, she obviously doesn’t believe in the same things as her “husband”. Heh. She instinctively spits that he’s definitely NOT her husband. Blah blah how dare you judge me? Blah you’re judging *me* blah blah you’re a creep. Joe asks if she knows why they live in this “vile box of monsters”. “Because we hate each other, even as we hate ourselves for our sickening appetites.” Scully’s like yeah, *that* makes it so much better. Joe asks where she thinks those uncontrollable urges come from. “Not from God,” she snaps. Joe says well, they don’t come from him because he castrated himself when he was 26. Yeah, well, you could castrate a dog and it will still hump everything in sight. What’s your point? He says the visions weren’t his idea either. Scully gives up and heads for the door but he calls “Proverbs 25:2. God’s glory to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to search out a matter.” She snaps at him not to quote scripture at her. He asks what the hell she’s doing here and what she’s afraid of. “’Don’t give up.’ What was that for,” she yells. He’s like, I don’t know! I’m just a fucking priest! He starts shaking and drops the Bible in his hands and she snaps at him that he can drop the act. He keeps shaking and seems to have a full blown seizure. Before we can figure out what the hell is going on here, we switch back to latest victim Cheryl in her box. Sigh. Russian doctor waves some food in front of the box and is just unlocking it when all hell breaks loose in the next room. He runs to a gurney where we see a woman’s arm with a Med ID bracelet shaking, a vitals monitor beeping crazily. Cheryl, meanwhile, is smart enough to use this opportunity to try to escape. Unfortunately, there is an attack dog waiting for her at the nearest exit. And back at Joe’s apartment. The cavalry arrives as Scully is assuring someone that the ambulance has arrived and Joe is stabilized. Mulder asks what the hell happened. Scully says Joe had a seizure. Mulder is confused. “Who called you?” Scully’s like ‘no one. Why are you asking questions? Get away!’ Mulder gives up and says they need to talk to him. Scully says tough shit. Whitney shows her a picture of the Russian guy transporting the organs and says they have a suspect. I find it interesting that she identifies him as a Russian immigrant using the French word for immigrant. Scully asks if they have him in custody. No. They asked a few questions and sent him on his merry way. They didn’t have evidence but Whitney has a “fairly credible witness” who claims he was at the pool with the women. Scully asks what this has to do with Joe. Mulder says it’s the guy from his visions. What? When? Where? Who am I? Scully accuses him of wasting their time. That’s okay, Chris Carter has already wasted everybody’s time with this circus. Xzibit hands Mulder a picture of Russian organ transporter’s “employer”, who happens to also be an old “friend” of Father Joe. “That’s one of his 37 altar boys.” Xzibit says he and the suspect are married in the state of Massachusetts. What? Did I hear that right? The two Russian guys heading the black market organ harvesting ring are married to each other? Holy gay rights, Batman! Whitney says they have a warrant to search their offices and the FBI and ambulance take off in a whirlwind of flashing lights. Scully tells Mulder it’s over. Since Mulder has never really listened to her, he chases after one of the FBI trucks and hops in, leaving Scully all alone to wonder what the hell she ever saw in him. Whitney waits until they get wherever they’re going to tell Mulder to stand back and let the agents do their job. She rambles about how they were all fooled and she called him in because she thought he could help and blah blah blah. Xzibit leads the raid on the empty offices. As they’re rummaging, Russian guy the younger...is he younger? He’s the employee of the couple...let’s just assume he’s the default catcher. Chrissy: You’re going to enjoy this, aren’t you? Diandra: Immensely. Anyway, he arrives and slinks past the searching team without them even noticing. Nice, guys. He runs out onto the street right in front of Mulder, who cocks his head at him like “huh...isn’t that...?” Catcher runs, dropping his organ transport bag, which both Mulder and Whitney totally ignore as they give chase. Chase, chase. Mulder is almost hit by a bus. They run through what looks like a construction site or something and Whitney falls way behind and it’s really dark and I can barely see what the hell is going on. Welcome to “The X- Files.” Chase chase camera wobble grunt pant we’re all too old for this shit. Xzibit finds the organ transplant bag just sitting in front of the office door and frowns at it. Mulder and Whitney play Marco Polo for a while as Catcher dances circles around them. Xzibit and his team open the bag and wrinkle their noses in disgust. Whitney calls Mulder “Fox” because she apparently didn’t get the memo about not using first names on this show. We catch a glimpse of a head in the organ bag but I can’t really tell who’s it is. Catcher – or possibly somebody else...it’s hard to tell in the dark – appears suddenly in front of Whitney and shoves her over the side and she falls down all the flights they just ran up. Huh. I thought Xzibit would bite it first. I guess considering the way Amanda Peet has been phoning in this whole performance and looking completely bored we should consider it a mercy killing. Our Lady of Perpetual Misery. Scully makes sympathetic faces and holds Mulder’s hand as he babbles that they’re both dead. Apparently the head belonged to Monica. I thought the nose looked a little big but, like I said, darkness. Scully continues to make sympathetic faces. “I thought we were winning, Scully.” Scully sighs and says “I know you did” and practically pats him on the head and tells him he’ll get it right next time. Mulder says he’s here to see Joe and he’s got some pictures of these guys for him to look at. Scully stares at him incredulously. “You still want to believe him.” Good lord, woman, it’s like you haven’t known the guy for the past eleventy years. Sheesh! Scully informs Mulder that Joe has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Mulder just wants to be sure. Scully offers to ask Joe herself. Mulder and Scully stand over Joe’s bed. He looks like about ten miles of bad road and is gasping and wheezing constantly all of a sudden. He says he had a vision of a man speaking a foreign language. What I wouldn’t give for Scully to say “That wasn’t a vision, Father Joe, you were watching the travel channel”. Instead, she shows him a picture of Catcher. Joe says that’s him! Scully says they think he’s the one who’s been abducting people and they think this man was helping him. She shows him a picture of Pitcher. Joe says he doesn’t know who that is. Scully’s like oh, really, you mean you don’t recognize one of the boys you molested years ago? Joe looks closer and his eyes widen. “Oh no,” he moans. He says this guy was his connection to the girl – that his visions were supposed to save her from him. “This is God’s work,” he says. Which part? Mulder just clenches his jaw petulantly. Scully just has one more question. Is Monica still alive? Joe says he can still feel her so yes. Mulder and Scully look at each other like “well, so much for that then.” Scully chases Mulder down the hall. He says that second victim might still be alive and he’s not going to give up on her, damnit. Scully says she understands, really. “This stubbornness of yours, it’s why I fell in love with you.” Yeesh. What kind of issues do you have? Mulder weirdly says it’s also why they can’t be together. He storms off. Warehouse. Or wherever. Catcher is arguing with the older doctor guy. Pitcher is laying on a table looking sick, a blanket covering him up to the neck. We focus on Pitcher’s head and pan down one uncovered arm to...that hand we saw shaking on the gurney back in the dog pound and we know is female because there’s bright red polish on the nails. Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me. What the hell sort of crack was Chris Carter smoking when he came up with this? Yes, graft a man’s head onto a woman’s body. That’s a brilliant plan, Dr. Frankenstein. I’m sure there won’t be any unforeseen side effects, like, oh... DEATH. What the FUCK? Mulder goes back to that big field where the original arm was found and wanders through the woods to the place where the giant chunk of burial ice was dug up. Then he gets in the car and drives to a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Um...this is all going somewhere, right? He goes to talk to the station attendant, who warns him that there’s some “bad weather” headed their way and he’d better get wherever he’s going before it hits. Oh, come on. This movie’s enough of a disaster without having to deal with a blizzard. Mulder asks if the guy carries acepromazine. The attendant asks if he has a prescription. Uh, no. Attendant says he can’t sell it then. Fine, Mulder just wants to know if he sold it to this guy. He flashes a picture of Catcher. Attendant barely has time to glance at it before the phone rings. While Mulder is impatiently waiting for the guy to finish the call, Catcher’s truck pulls up outside. Well, hello, Mr. Plot Contrivance, how are you today? Attendant finishes his call and comes out to find Catcher standing all by himself at the counter. He looks around and asks what happened to the other guy. Catcher’s like ‘huh? Dude, I don’t have time for your crises, I need a refill on my prescription. We follow Catcher as he leaves the station, Mulder’s car trailing not far behind. Seriously. You’re on deserted country roads. It’s going to be obvious you’re following if you don’t put some distance between cars there. Mulder whips out his phone while he’s driving and we get a couple shots of his phone book, which consists of three veteran X-Files writer/producer/directors and Scully. He’s so busy futzing with his phone trying to dial Scully that he doesn’t notice the truck has stopped in the middle of the road and slams right into it. See, kids, this is why you don’t text while driving. Catcher backs up and plows into him again, using the shovel on the front of the bumper to shove him right off the road. The car tumbles down the incline, smashing into the camera and the screen goes black. For about .1013 of a second. Our Lady of Perpetual Agony. Chrissy: Why do you keep changing the name? Diandra: Because it reflects my darkening mood with regard to this movie. Shush. Chris Carter is sitting in the hallway drinking coffee like he thinks he’s Alfred Hitchcock. Scully stomps past him into her office. She reads a medical newsletter about some radical procedure and the camera focuses on the words “laboratory animals, particularly dogs”, “fused at the neck” and “survive for a period of several weeks”. I hope PETA dragged them over hot coals. The computer is beeping an “out of paper” message. She goes over and hits reset on the printer, which spits out a picture of a man standing over one of the mutilated dogs, a picture of a dog’s severed head and what looks like a picture of a dog with two heads. I think I’m going to throw up. I’m not kidding. It’s disturbing enough when people do inhumane experiments on other people, but it’s just sick and twisted when they do it to helpless animals. There is a special place in Hell reserved for sick bastards who torture dogs. Scully whips out her phone and calls Mulder, who naturally doesn’t answer. She says she just found something in her stem cell research (what the FUCK does that sick shit have to do with growing organs for transplants?!), some experiments being done in Russia with dogs and she thinks their suspects have been doing it on humans. “The FBI agent’s alive.” She concludes. Dana, you once argued that Monica Reyes was dead because her brain waves were totally flat. In what alternate universe would you consider a woman who’s head has been cut off and replaced with someone else’s to be still living? What kind of doctor are you? The body can’t survive without the head, and even if you could reattach it, it’s been detached long enough to be dead by anyone’s definition. Mulder manages to drag himself from the wreck. He has blood all down one side of his face and staggers around like a drunken sailor for a bit, looking for sign of Catcher. Scully calls Xzibit and yelps about not being able to reach Mulder. “Well, where is he,” Xzibit asks. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be calling,” Scully snaps. Hee! Xzibit suggests she call the police because this is not an FBI matter. Scully looks like she would like to get him alone in a room with some sharp implements and shouts that she NEEDS his HELP, damnit! Xzibit says he can’t help her. “Then let me talk to somebody there with some balls who can,” Scully snaps. Aw, yeah, that’s my girl! Dog pound. The Russians pull Cheryl out of her box and tranq her. Catcher is driving down the road when the shovel falls off his bumper and starts spewing fuel or oil or whatever the hell powers those things. Mulder just happens to come on this stalled truck some time later, when Catcher is mysteriously disappeared from it. He pokes around inside, finds a hammer, stuffs it in his coat and runs off again. Dog pound. Catcher is talking to Pitcher. Or his head anyway. He’s reassuring him he’ll be fine. He’s speaking English for some reason. “I’ve taken care of it,” he says. “I’ve taken good care of it. You don’t need this one anymore.” A nurse pulls back the sheet to give Pitcher some sort of injection and we see the corpselike discolored skin attached to his relatively normal colored head. The other doctors and nurses, meanwhile, are submerging a very doped up Cheryl in a vat of...something. Just to warn you, I might have to hand recapping duties over to Chrissy while I go vomit at some point if this gets really graphic. Chrissy: No you won’t. I’ll be throwing up along with you. I don’t remember the show being this twisted. Diandra: Me neither. Guess that’s what happens when you loosen the FCC reigns. Mulder somehow finds the dog pound. Where did he get tracking skills? Or did the truck keel over right next to the pound? Inside, the doctor is removing Pitcher’s head from the original body. Catcher is leaning over him, babbling that he will be fine. He will live and have a strong body again! Um...if you’re gay, doesn’t it weird you out a little that that body is going to be *female*? And most likely paralyzed? I mean, it already baffles me how these guys who look like they barely have a medical license are able to reconnect all the myriad of veins and arteries and muscles running through the neck. *No one* has figured out how to reconnect severed nerves skillfully enough to restore normal movement (damaged nerves, yes, we may be getting close, but not totally torn and severed and not even belonging to the same body). Just how messed up are you, anyway? The doctor shoos him away so he can work. Another doctor or nurse or somebody swabs Cheryl’s neck. Mulder climbs over the fence around the pound and is attacked by a dog with two heads. The sick bastards inside hear the commotion and Catcher runs out to find the poor animal dying. Or at least the one head dying or already dead and the other whimpering pathetically. Thankfully, it doesn’t look quite real enough to make me sick. It basically looks like the stunt dog has an ugly prosthetic head strapped to his collar and he’s blinking his big, wet eyes up at his handler like “okay, I’ve been really good about holding still while the nice man waves that big shiny box at me. Can I have a treat now?” Scully arrives at the scene of the accident and tells the cops that the car they’re towing up the hill is hers. The lead cop says uh-huh, she just talked to some “bigwig” at the FBI. He called from Washington. Scully points behind her and says yeah, that’s him. And Skinner steps out from behind a car. What the hell? Bigwig? Wasn’t he fired years ago? And I thought the last time we saw him he was practically being marched off to his execution. Do you need a refresher course on your own series finale, Carter? Cop says the snow’s pretty heavy so they haven’t even found any footprints or anything. But they found his cell phone. She shoves it in Scully’s hands and skips off. Scully notes that the phone has blood on it. Skinner reassures her that Mulder’s okay. “He’s got to be. I love him too much to lose him!” Chrissy: Oh, would you stop it! Diandra: What? I just got half the fandom rallied behind me with that joke alone. Back at the pound, Catcher is wandering around looking for Mulder, but can’t find him because he’s crouched in a tunnel Cheryl tried to escape through earlier. Obviously, they rely on the dog being enough to keep people in or out because the only thing guarding that entrance/exit is a plastic flap. It looks like a makeshift doggy door. Anyway, Catcher does not see the chinks in this security plan and gives up the search. Inside, the doctors are hooking Cheryl up to tubes and sensors and turning on equipment that looks like it was new technology back in the 80s. Blood flows out one tube in her neck and around to the other so I guess it’s some sort of crude life support. The doctor gets Pitcher’s head detatched and the sudden shrill bleat across the soundtrack is actually more shocking than the fact that they’re passing a guy’s detatched head around. And then Mulder stumbles in and tells them to stop. Um... Mulder? Honey? You’re not with the FBI anymore, you have no gun and no back up. What are you doing? Besides committing suicide- by-homicidal-whackjob? He raises his idea of a weapon – a rusty wrench. Oh, Mulder. How you survived a decade doing this for a living is beyond me. Everybody starts yelling at him in Russian and – as he only understands French as I recall - he asks if anybody speaks English and orders them to get that woman out of the ice bath and take the tubes out of her neck. You’re holding a wrench, Mulder. Granted, they’re only holding scalpels, but there’s more of them than you. You can hardly expect them to actually follow your orders. While he’s ranting, he uncovers the headless body on the gurney and glances at the head sitting in an ice bucket with wires and crap attached to it. It’s eyes open, freaking him out, and the distraction is enough for one of the doctors to sneak up and shoot him with a small tranq gun. He staggers and Catcher arrives back inside to punch him in the face before he totally collapses. Chrissy: Was he always this incompetent? Diandra: Let me think...yes. Even if he was with the FBI, it probably wouldn’t have changed the course of this scene because he wouldn’t have called back up and he would have dropped his gun three scenes ago. Scully and Skinner are driving around rather futilely and Skinner is assuring Scully that Mulder will be fine. “I know Mulder. He’d get to a phone and call first. He didn’t do anything crazy.” While I have no doubt that first part is true (wink, wink), the rest of that makes me wonder if Skinner’s memory is going. Scully is with me on this because she turns to look at him like “where have you been the last decade?!” and he mutters “not *overly* crazy.” HA! Catcher drags Mulder out into a shed where there’s a headless body laying next to a stump with an axe stuck in it. Okay, what is the point of this? Scully and Skinner are still driving aimlessly when Scully suddenly orders Skinner to go back a bit. She climbs out of the car and starts looking at a row of mailboxes, stopping on one with the numbers 25 and 2. It looks like either a number got smudged out or the idiot doing the stenciling accidentally put a space big enough for a fourth number. Anyway...really? The significance of the random scripture quote was in the *numbers* instead of the words? Has Carter been watching “Lost”? Note to Chris Carter: much as I may have once loved you...you were never that good. Catcher maneuvers the headless body around for a while, raises the axe, and we cut away as he’s bringing it down so we don’t know what the hell he’s doing. Scully shuffles frantically through the mail in box 25:2 and finds an invoice for medical supplies sent to a “Dr. Uroff- Koltoff.” Wow. A hyphenated double-whammy of generic Russian names. She notes the address and stuffs the mail back in the box. You might as well take it with you. I don’t think anybody’s going to be checking that box after he’s sent to a high-security prison for being a homicidal nutjob. They suddenly hear dogs barking and Scully starts running toward the sound. Mulder lolls on the ground while Catcher is futzing with a garbage bag. Can’t tell what he’s doing. He rolls over and tries to grab for the axe, but from his angle and half- conscious state it would probably be wiser to just play dead. Catcher grabs the axe, hauls Mulder over the chopping stump and starts sharpening the blade ominously. Mulder just lolls and probably thinks “well, this was a stupid plan.” Catcher is just raising the axe over his head when Scully appears behind him and shouts “hey!” He turns and is whacked in the face by...a shovel? A tree branch? I don’t know. He collapses and she bends over Mulder, hands fluttering, calling him frantically. “Sorry about your car,” he slurs. *Then* he thinks to tell her that the second victim is still in there, possibly getting her head chopped off while they’re busy getting reacquainted. Luckily, Skinner is already ahead of them. He bursts in, gun blazing, and barks at the lead doctor to put his hands up and drop the scalpel or he’ll blow his hand off. See, Mulder? *This* is how you do it. Also, it helps that this guy seems to be suddenly alone with the detatched head partially connected to Cheryl by a couple blood-filled tubes. Scully slips in and announces that Mulder needs warm clothes and fluids. Um...yeah, I think Cheryl might need it more right now. Skinner herds the suddenly reappearing group of doctors and nurses into the next room, locks them in and stomps out to take care of Mulder (wink) while Scully scrubs up. Outside, Skinner wraps a shivering Mulder in his coat and assures him that Cheryl is in good hands with Allstate. I mean Scully. Sorry, reflex. “Skinner,” Mulder asks woozily. “I’m cold.” Skinner cuddles him closer and tells him he’ll be okay (“I gotcha”) and thousands of slashers run for their computers, chased by rabid plot bunnies. Cut to some unidentified time later. Mulder is back in the farmhouse office, cutting out an article about Dr. Frankenstein’s arrest. Scully arrives to announce that Father Joe is dead. Mulder points to the article and notes that the FBI is claiming Father Joe was an accomplice and didn’t even mention the whole psychic connection thing. Mulder? You were put on trial and sentenced to death for killing a man the government wouldn’t admit couldn’t actually be killed. Quit bitching and just accept that the government will publicly acknowledge paranormal shit when pigs fly in the frozen recesses of hell. Scully says he’s dead so they’ll never really know the truth. Mulder snaps that he knows and he can prove it. He died of the same lung cancer Pitcher tried to survive by adopting a whole new body. He theorizes that Joe died at the same moment that Scully cut off the blood supply to Pitcher’s disembodied head. If he had the death certificate, he could prove it. That’s not really concrete proof, Mulder. Chrissy: You do know who you’re talking to, right? Diandra: (sigh) Scully wonders if Mulder really thinks the FBI is going to listen to him. Mulder yelps that “it’s an injustice to the man’s name!” Scully sighs and asks who is really going to care when you take into account what he did to all those boys. Mulder says he thought she believed Joe. Scully says she wanted to believe him. Did Carter have a bet going with someone about how many times he could fit the movie’s subtitle/catchphrase into the dialogue or what? She did believe him, actually, and Mulder being alive and in one piece is sort of testament to that. Mulder asks what Joe said to her. Scully blinks and twitches spastically and finally says “He told me ‘don’t give up’.” She adds that she saved his life because she didn’t give up on him but rants that she has put Christian through hell by not giving up on him and she has another surgery this morning because she believed God was telling her to save the kid through a pedophile priest. Yeah, I’d leave that last part out when talking to the hospital administration. Mulder starts waxing philosophical, which is never pretty. He says what if Father Joe’s prayers were answered after all and he was forgiven because *he* didn’t give up? I don’t...yeah, I don’t care anymore. Whatever. Scully says yeah, good luck trying to prove that. Gotta go! Mulder follows Scully out to the car and asks why he would have said those words to Scully. Because they’re pretty standard encouragement for someone who’s feeling helpless to change their situation? Mulder doesn’t think it had anything to do with him because he said it to *Scully*. Um...I thought it was pretty clear it had more to do with the Christian subplot than Mulder. Where did she get off track? Mulder says “if Father Joe were the Devil, why would he say the opposite of what the Devil might say?” He thinks maybe there’s a broader, deeper meaning. If Chris Carter thinks I’m going to waste any more time on this lame, half-ass plot, analyzing it and reflecting on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything (to which the answer is 42, I understand) he’s definitely on crack. Scully gets all teary eyed and begs Mulder not to make this any harder than it is. Mulder hugs her and whispers that if she has any doubts whatsoever she should just call off the surgery and they’ll run off together. Yeah. That’s...stupid. You moved right back to Virginia under the noses of the people who tried to kill you and now you wanna run away? I’m starting to wonder if I have a better grip on reality than Chris Carter. Chrissy: I’d say that’s a pretty good bet. Scully says “as far away from the darkness as we can get?” Mulder thinks that’s not really possible as the darkness always finds them. Damn metaphors. “But let it try,” he adds and they kiss and the romantic strings swell. Our Lady of Perpetual Annoyance and Exhaustion. Scully finds Christian’s parents talking to Father Asshole and walks right past them with barely a glance. She goes into the operating theater and hems and haws and angsts. Another doctor asks if she’s ready to do the surgery. She looks around at all the doctors and nurses staring at her and the three random nuns standing outside the door and says yes. She smiles at Christian and the screen goes black, the main theme whistles and we go right to the credits. Um...okay. There’s some random little snippet of Mulder and Scully in a boat looking like they’re on vacation at the end of the credits but it makes no sense and has no dialogue or frame of reference of any sort so I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen. You know...I tried to go into this movie with an open mind, even though I knew it was going to be a Monster of the Week and most of the reactions I heard when it came out in theaters were negative. Once upon a time, I loved this show. But Chris Carter has done what I never thought possible: he has made me look back and wonder how I ever fell in love with “The X-Files” in the first place. And it’s not because it didn’t have anything to do with aliens or really any of the mythology of the show – I can deal with that. What I can’t deal with is the clumsy way he tried to rewrite half the show and make the three characters he decided to use mostly unrecognizable. Chrissy: They’re not unrecognizable, really, they just regressed in their development to some point in the show’s history that Chris Carter deems the show’s high point. Diandra: Yes, that’s exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you. Chrissy: Can we switch to recapping “Speed Racer” now? I’m thinking grown men in spandex might cheer me up after an hour and a half of that shlock. Diandra: Yes and God, I hope so.