Case 06, File 11: Two Fathers

AKA: Mulder Has Two Daddies

There's a problem that long running shows eventually hit where the plot has spiraled out of control into a mess, with so many twists and turns and different factions and motivations, that keeping track of all of it usually requires a Pepe Silvia Wall (am I trying to turn Pepe Silvia into a verb or an adjective, I forget). When you get there, you can take two paths: You can either let the plots continue to spin out of control and hope you can wrap them up eventually (this is known as the LOST path, and I do not recommend it) or you can try to prune a bunch of stuff, and usually a lot of characters along with it.

Our story opens with a bunch of doctors operating on a woman in a train car, an operation that apparently goes well as when another doctor named Openshaw shows up, there's congratulations all around. Short lived ones, as the faceless alien rebels immediately arrive, burning all the doctors but leaving the patient, Cassandra Spender (hereinafter Cassandra, remember her?) alive. The next morning Skinner tells Jeffery Spender (hereinafter Spender) that she's alive, but she doesn't want to talk to him, she wants to talk to Fox Mulder (hereinafter Mulder). Get wreckt Spender.

But even when Spender calls Mulder, Mulder tells him to eat shit because...well Spender has been an unending dickbag to him and thinks that Spender will use it to entrap him, why should Mulder help him? But Scully convinces him to check it out by telling him they'll do what Spender wants them to do, without Spender knowing. Meanwhile the Cigarette Smoking Man is monologuing about the events of the episode to an unseen party in a framing device, while in the actual plot of the episode, he's wandering around trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

What the hell is going on is that Cassandra is a successful alien/human hybrid, which Openshaw thinks means they need to kill her in order to keep the invasion from happening. Cigarette Smoking Man kills Openshaw to protect the secret and then calls another conspiracy member to tell him "Shit's fucked." It comes too late for that conspiracy member, as a faceless alien rebel shows up immediately with Openshaw's face on his own (they don't really explain that, but whatever) and kills the conspiracy member.

Mulder in a Knicks t-shirt. That is all. 

So now Mulder is on the case and he meets with Cassandra, who tells him basically all that stuff about how she's a hybrid and the aliens are bad and coming, but also offhandedly mentions how the Cigarette Smoking Man is Spender's father. They head to Spender's office to try and figure out who his dad is (it turns out CSM's name is CGB Spender) but despite Skinner's efforts to the contrary, Spender catches them in his office and uses it as an excuse to have them suspended because seriously, Spender is an unrelenting asshole.

Meanwhile, at the Conspiracy meetings, the conspiracy member who got killed by the faceless alien is there and arguing they should work with the rebels. And if you're thinking it's kinda obvious what's going on, Cigarette Smoking Man picks up on it too. And after negging Spender a whole bunch (apparently he got Mulder kicked out on Cigarette Smoking Man's orders, and also Cigarette Smoking Man doesn't think much of Spender) he sends Spender to go kill the alien impersonating the Conspiracy member.

But Spender fucks it up and Krycek has to do it. While Spender is dealing with the massive world changing knowledge of aliens, Krycek lets slip that Cigarette Smoking Man is in on it and will kill Cassandra to protect the conspiracy, which kinda makes Spender pissed. Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully are cluing Skinner into the problem too and they both go to check on Cassandra but she's missing. Not for long though as she immediately shows up at Mulder's, being followed by someone and demanding Mulder kill her to protect humanity. And that, ladies and gents, is our cliffhanger.

"And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling conspiracy members!"

After S.R. 819, Two Fathers is a return to a more typical Myth Arc two parter (the first of the season), complete with the return of the Conspiracy and some great Cigarette Smoking Man monologues. But it's trying to feel like more than that, like the stakes have shifted since the movie at the end last season. And while we will, as always, have to wait to see the next episode to see how it lands, for now it's mostly successful.

The big note this time around is the return of Cassandra Spender, now saying that the aliens are bad at that the rebels are good but that's probably the element I'm most lukewarm on. Cassandra is a middling character on her own, made slightly deeper to her connections to two of the major villains (more on that in a moment). She's so one dimensional that she changed her opinion on the aliens that abducted her upon showing up in this episode and the episode barely even registers it as a blip.

One of the two characters who her return affects is Spender, and honestly, I just detest Spender too much to care about how his character gets advanced in this episode. Getting more depth on the Cigarette Smoking Man is always nice (and I like how he denies he ever really cared for Cassandra, even while he admits he couldn't bring himself to kill her) but Spender himself is a lost cause as a character, too one dimensional and douchey to be worth developing. I seem to remember his Face Turn (and subsequent exit) are impending, so any more time spent on him is basically wasted.

Speaking of previously minor characters making reappearances, we get a brief showing from Diana Fowley, but she only really shows up as the payoff to the framing device (she's who Cigarette Smoking Man is talking to) so that'll only be important in the next episode. Far more interesting to me is the reemergence of the alien rebels, suddenly able to steal people's faces (Arya style baby), something which goes tactfully unexplained, I guess cause they figured it's only weird if they draw attention to it.

"It's me! Diana Fowley! I'm in this series too, remember!"

The Alien Rebels are one of my favorite elements of the series, and them openly declaring war on the Conspiracy is a neat plot point, but I especially like them trying to manipulate the Conspiracy into working with them. Honestly, I wanted more about the conflict between the Colonizers and the Rebels. Having the events of the series seem like a small part of a much much bigger war is a great way of making the goings on even more scary, so framing the main part of the war as being between them, with humanity just caught in the middle, would work great.

Whatever, I'm wandering into "Review the episode you want" territory, and I'm avoiding talking about our leads cause they don't actually do much this episode, which is my major complaint. Spender is the one who goes through the character arc in this episode and Cigarette Smoking Man is the one who spends most of the time monologuing. Mulder and Scully get told Cigarette Smoking Man's real name (which is neat, but doesn't seem to matter much, at least in this episode) and get in trouble for breaking into Spender's office, but other than they're mostly sidelined until the final moments.

Seasons Six is usually the point pinpointed when the series as a whole begins to lower in quality, but it's also an opportunity for the Myth arc episodes to get a lot better. Myth arc episodes build on what came before more than Monster of the Week episodes (which mostly have to stand or fall on their own) so the fact that this episode is loosely plotted and kind of light on Mulder and Scully isn't that bad of a thing, since the episode has the entire series up to this point to lean on. Now let's see if it can stick the landing.

Case Notes:

• I like the cold open to this episode just fine but they wouldn't be spending so much time panning around to literally everything else in the surgical suite if the face of the patient wasn't going to be a Reveal.
• The head surgeon is trying to cram as much exposition into congratulations as he can.
• You'd think that after getting totally wrecked by them last season, the Conspiracy would start coming up with some countermeasures to the faceless Alien Rebels.
• I like CSM's talk directly into the camera, like he's telling the audience the plans the conspiracy has had, but don't tell me this is the end Cigarette Smoking Man, it's the middle of the season.
• I like how Skinner walks into the X-Files office and immediately starts dragging Spender. Everyone hates Spender.
• Spender has apparently sent Skinner one note in six months. Come on Spender, pretend to do your job.
• For about 80 different reasons, the scene where Mulder plays basketball is one of the funniest things in the entire series. Mulder using slang is inherently funny and you cannot tell me otherwise.
• I dunno why Spender is mad that Mulder is being a dick to him. Spender has been an unrelenting douchebag to him, why would Mulder treat him at all well?
• Cigarette Smoking Man seems genuinely sorry to be killing the burned doctor, it's a nice touch to remember he's a human.
• I like the timing on the reveal that the rebels CAN disguise themselves as other people, just with someone's face plastered over theirs. Also? The face getting pulled off thing is super gross.
• The gist of Mulder and Scully's conversation is that Mulder is okay investigating the thing Spender wants them to investigate, so long as Spender doesn't know. Oh Mulder.
• They haven't brought up Mulder's sister much lately, so when Cassandra drops her into the conversation it feels abrupt.
• Cassandra is basically throwing the entire Myth arc of revelations at us in her conversation with Mulder and Scully.
• Oh hey, Krycek is here, and still working with the Conspiracy. And he's basically here to drop exposition. He borderline says "As you know" to the alien rebel in disguise.
• Cigarette Smoking Man slapping Spender is pretty satisfying, not gonna lie.
• I get that we need some dramatic tension, but why would Mulder and Scully get kicked out of the FBI for going into Spender's office instead of all the other stuff they've done over the last six years.
• I like that the Cigarette Smoking Man saw through the Alien Rebel's disguise, it's nice when he's smart. He also sent Spender to kill him, but also sent Krycek for when Spender inevitably fucked it up.
• Krycek lets slip that CSM is involved in abducting Cassandra. I dunno if that was him assuming that Spender would be on board, that Spender already knew or just betraying CSM because he can't help himself.
• Oh hey, Diana Fowley is working with CSM. Remember her? She exists.
• The cliffhanger on this episode, Mulder pointing a gun at Cassandra as someone pounds on his door and Cassandra begs him to shoot her, is pretty excellent.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I won't have to pause the reviews for half a month when my computer breaks.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Nick Tate, who plays Dr. Openshaw, wasn't in a lot of famous stuff, but he was in a 70s sci-fi show called Space: 1999 with future Oscar winner Martin Landau. That title is hilarious to me, for reasons that should be self explanatory.