Case 06, File 17: Trevor

AKA: The Gritty Shadowcat Reboot?

Calling one episode of The X-Files a ripoff of another is unfair, to say the least. The series sits at over 200 episodes, most of them Monster of the Week episodes. The series can't possible avoid repeating itself, even obliquely, on occasion, especially if you boil plots down to broad outlines. If you boil everything down to its bones, everything looks like bones. Which is why I won't say this episode is a ripoff of any others, but it does bear some strong resemblance to a lot of Revenge From Beyond the Grave episodes.

Our episode kicks off this time with a guy named Wilson "Pinker" Rawls (no, he's not Trevor), a man serving out a lengthy prison sentence for stealing a bunch of money which was never found, in Mississippi during a tornado. But when he attacks another inmate, he gets sentenced to solitary, despite solitary being out in the tornado. If that seems all kinds of illegal, it is! Anyway, once the tornado is gone, the solitary confinement box is destroyed, and also the Warden has been cut in half inside a locked office. Weird, huh?

It is weird, which gets our intrepid heroes called in, and they are as stumped as anyone, as it appears the warden was burned in half, and after some discussion, Mulder discovers that part of the wall is super fragile. While all this is happening, the still alive Rawls breaks into a thrift store and steals some clothes, but when he's apprehended by a security guard, he somehow slips free of his cuffs, and the store, and steals the guard's car.

Meanwhile, a mysterious woman watches the news of Rawls being reported dead with apprehension. I gotta mention her, but it's not important right now. Anyway, Mulder finds the handcuffs and notes that they're fragile in the same way, while Rawls breaks into a former associate's house to look for information on an ex named June. His friend takes offense and shoots him, but the bullets have no effect and uh...well things go badly.

"Mulder are you wearing those sunglasses just cause you think they make you look cool?"

Specifically, when Mulder and Scully get there, they find he is missing uh, all of his face, and when Mulder finds the bullets, he gets his theory: Rawls can pass through solid objects and destroys them by doing so. They also discover that the woman he's looking for is named June, there's no record of her recently and that she has a sister who lives nearby (she's not Trevor either). They go to check her out but find that Rawls has gotten there first and written "I want what's mine" on a door, before leaving (Luckily Jackie's son is at a friend's. That doesn't seem important, but it is). Oh and when Mulder and Scully get June's address, Rawls is hiding in their trunk. But they don't know that.

So they go to June's, who is the woman from the 3rd paragraph, who has a new fiancee (whose a bit of a straight edge and a bit of a dick) and she reveals she found the money Rawls stole and used it to get a new name and a new life, which causes her husband to leave. Mulder and Scully convince her to go into witness protection but Mulder notices the damage to the trunk and intuits that Rawls is there. This is confirmed when they discover another similar "I want what's mine" sign.

But, when they discover that he stopped his sign (written by using his powers on the wall) at the mirror, they realize he can't pass through things that don't conduct electricity, which gives them an idea of how to stop him. But they can't stop him from breaking into June's hotel room, killing her guard, at which point we finally get our big reveal: Rawls isn't looking for his money, he's looking for the son that June had and gave away. And hot on the heels of that revelation, Mulder and Scully realize: Jackie's son (the one who was at a friends, remember?) is actually June's son.

But Rawls beats them there, and after a tense confrontation in Jackie's house, Jackie's son (he's Trevor) bolts and when Rawls gives chase, he is confronted by our heroes, who shoot him with rubber bullets, something he can't pass through. He tries to chase Scully, but she hides in a phone booth (remember those) and he can't pass through the glass. He tries the ancient art of Brick but when he realizes he's terrifying his son, he gives up and is uh, promptly run over by June and killed (windshield is made of glass and he can't pass through glass, remember?) And that's it. The end.

I don't have a funny caption here, I just thing this effect is really cool.

Trevor is an episode that I know isn't super well regarded but I've always liked a lot. It has a unique take on a common power set, a couple of solid setpieces and some great corpses. It maybe spends a little too long on its villain bouncing around, and maybe it reads a lot like some previous episodes (it always reminds me a lot of The List for some reason) but its a good watch with a solid villain and sometimes, that's enough.

A lot, and I do mean a lot, of the episode is focused on Rawls as a character, so he's a good place to start. He is overall a pretty well realized villain, with a solid sense of him as a person from the get go: He's a vindictive dipshit with no sense of proportion, which is established in the first few seconds and then hammered into us over and over (June even gets a little monologue explaining it), but I guess it's a good character trait to have, as it gives him a solid, believable motivation. There's a certain amount of sense in his "I Want What's Mine" messages, as he would likely see his child as his property rather than a person.

Of course a well realized villain is only halfway there, and Rawls has a good power set. It's not a unique idea (the idea of walking through walls is old hat as far as super powers go) but it's realized in a very interesting way, with him destroying whatever he passes through as a very interesting wrinkle, and a good way of creating cool deaths. They don't always make the most of it, there's exactly one scene of him passing through a wall, I suspect the effect was too expensive or difficult to do consistently, but I like the bits they do with it. A lot of shows wouldn't go through the effort to show Rawls getting shot, and I like that they did.

The central mystery is also, in my opinion, at least, pretty solid. Rawls is a simple enough guy that we can believe that he's just out for his money and there isn't, at first, a reason to believe he's out for more until we get the reveal (and yes, I'm aware that the episode title spoils it, but episode titles don't really show up any place in the episode, so original viewers wouldn't know that). And the finale is really solid, the meeting between Jackie, June, Rawls and Trevor just incredibly tense all around and the actor playing Rawls effectively sells his rage, his shock when he realizes he's not invincible anymore and his very quick change of heart at the end.

"Hey, you ever see The Frighteners?"
"What? No. What's that?"
"...no one's ever seen it."

I guess I could complain that we don't get as much screen time for Mulder and Scully, since we're spending so much time on Rawls, but I can live with that for an episode or two. And they use the screen time they get well. I like that Mulder actually figures out Rawls' weakness based on evidence rather than just intuiting it and Scully even figures out a mystery too, as she's the one who guesses that Jackie's son is actually June's.
Is Trevor actually good or am I just being overly generous? I certainly could find more stuff I like and dislike about it, but I don't think listing them will change my overall opinion. It's a Monster of the Week episode, something I always like, but that doesn't override my critical eye. I suppose I could be more critical towards this episode, but then I would run the risk of being dishonest about my feelings toward it, and I promised myself that I'd always be honest.

Case Notes:

• I get that men's prisons are a nightmare of toxic machismo, but I still feel like insulting another prisoner when he's holding both hammer and nails is a recipe for an injury.
• The Warden is casually violating one of his prisoner's human rights and openly and intentionally sentencing him to death. I do not feel bad for him at all when he dies.
• Visual of the warden burned in half is a great one to end a cold open on.
• David Copperfield jokes are old hat, but this one is okay.
• Mulder looks so excited when Scully brings up spontaneous human combustion, I love it.
• Scully says that there's a few documented cases of human combustion but...didn't they see it happen?
• I'm a sucker for fun shots, so I like the bit with the camera following Mulder around the room while the reverse shot does the same movement on Scully.
• Wait, why would the Department of Corrections let Rawls have condoms?
• I get that Rawls' girlfriend is supposed to be living an overly clean, suburban life, but the house looks like something out of Edward Scissorhands.
• Rawls adjusts to his new abilities uh...more or less immediately. I guess if he didn't he wouldn't have been able to kill the warden.
• Mulder finds the damaged wall in the warden's office and begins to immediately intuit Rawls' ability. He's already figured out how Rawls got out of the handcuffs.
• Mulder is wearing what look like Terminator shades.
• The corpse with his face burned out is aces.
• I understand the story reason behind the bullet holes, but how did they make holes in the walls if they were turned powdery?
• Rawls having to strip naked to go through Jackie's door somehow makes it worse. You wanna believe someone is more vulnerable without clothes, not less.
• Rawls hides in Mulder and Scully's car trunk, which is a good idea (and him coming up with it quickly is a nice character beat) but what if they like, went back to a hotel to figure out where June was. What if Jackie didn't tell them?
• I keep forgetting that Rawls' full name is Wilson Pinker Rawls. I dunno if, given that name, I'd go by Pinker, Wilson seems preferable.
• June's fiancee is a relentless dickbag. That's all.
• Mulder's crack about how Rawls' messages are trying to tell them something reminds me of the Banksy joke from Misfits.
• Scully says Rawls could just get the 90,000 dollars anywhere, but he couldn't like, walk through the walls with it.
• I do like the reveal that Rawls is looking for his son, it makes his actions make a lot more sense.
• June named Rawls' kid Trevor Andrew, and I'm sorry, Trevor Andrew Rawls is a serial killer name.
• There is a small amount of humanity in Rawls when he tells Jackie she's a good mother. Not a lot, but it's enough to keep him being a complete monster.
• I also like that Trevor instantly recognizes that something in the situation is wrong, even before Rawls freaks the fuck out for no reason.
• Rawls' change of heart comes a little too hard, too fast, but it fits with what an overly emotional guy he is.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out, cause I can't walk through walls to steal money to support myself.

Current Celebrity Watch:

John Diehl, who plays Rawls, has been hanging around TV, theater and low budget movies since 1980, and is probably best known for his role as Larry Zito in the first three seasons of Miami Vice. He also had a short lived secondary role on The Shield which I'm only bringing up for the following:

Future Celebrity Watch:

Catherine Dent, who plays June, would go on to play Danny Sofer in The Shield, which given she was in every single episode is probably a pretty big role.