Case 09, File 02: Nothing Important Happened Today II

AKA: It's A Bad Reason To Be Called That

It's very clear, in retrospect, that there was no particular plan for The X-Files larger plot, but a lot of people were fooled because the show FELT big. But if you were paying attention and knew what to look for, the signs of the show's inconsistency were always there, and one of the big ones is Alex Krycek. I've made jokes about Krycek's constant betrayals, but the painful truth at the core of those jokes is that Krycek was written like that because they didn't have a solid idea of what Krycek actually wanted. And with Krycek dead, they needed a new guy who betrays people constantly.

After a cold open about a ship with a lab being forced to return to port, our episode kicks off right where the last one ended; With Doggett being dragged underwater by Shannon. Right around the time the natural result of being dragged underwater happens, she decides she's gonna make out with him. Oh and I guess she gives him oxygen too, but I was more focused on getting to make out with Lucy Lawless.

Anywho, after a quick meeting with Brad, where he advises Reyes and Skinner to distance themselves from Doggett, cause Doggett is politically radioactive, we check in on Doggett who has been brought back to his house by Shannon. Shannon admits to being a super soldier, just like Knowle, but unlike Knowle, she hates it. And she also says that the reason she's been killing EPA dudes is that they're responsible for putting a chemical in the water to prime everyone to give birth to super soldiers. That happens in a couple scenes, but I'm kinda shuffling stuff around for clarity.

Back on the ship, the captain sneaks off to go try and contact one of the dead guys from the previous episode, only to come back to find his First Mate missing and replaced by Knowle. Turns out the First Mate is dead but there's me shuffling stuff around again. Anyway, Kersh has Brad suspend Doggett for all that shit he did in the last episode and change because he can't be seen suspending Doggett while he's looking into Kersh.

Being rescued and carried home by Lucy Lawless is DEFINITELY a fantasy for a lot of people.

Anyhoo, the Lone Gunmen pop into the X-Files office to track down the numbers that have been calling the dead guy's phone number, and manage to pop in right as the Captain is trying to call him. Frohike tries to imitate the dead guy and learns that there's a ship with a lab docked in LA. The Captain then decides the best way to handle his issues is to try to rob the lab at gunpoint. Given that he's got an invincible super soldier on board, it goes about as well as you're expecting.

Scully, Doggett and Reyes, now not trusting Shannon,Ta head off to check out the boat...only to get immediately ambushed by Knowle. Knowle gets beheaded by Shannon who is sad that Doggett didn't trust her, and then gets stabbed by Knowle's headless body. Okay, moving on. They head onto the boat and find the lab but also some bombs, so they have to leave before they get any evidence. Back at the FBI, Doggett admits to Kersh he hasn't got anything on him, but Kersh says that he actually advised Mulder to leave and was good the whole time. And thus the episode ends with Doggett back on the X-Files and William moving his mobile psychically again.

Taken as a whole, Nothing Important Happened Today parts 1 and 2, feel a little like the new opening titles; It's clearly The X-Files but something is...off. Uncanny almost. Maybe it's the way the two episodes are written, maybe it's the way that the episode is trying to position Reyes and Doggett as the new core cast, or maybe it's the new time period, but this beginning of Season 9 feels off, kind of wrong and it's not a good starting point to a season.

"Shooting him 10 times hasn't worked but...well maybe 11th time's the charm!?"

The two core elements that this episode is trying to set up for the rest of the season is the super soldier plotline and the William plotline. One of those is worth telling, the other is...less so, so it makes perfect sense that they'd devote more time to the one that is less interesting, IE the super solider plotline. Frankly, I don't like the super solider plotline at all. The super soldiers are a boring villain, all of the worst elements of the Alien Bounty Hunter but none of their cool parts. I find villains who are functionally invincible uninteresting, and the mystery of them just standing around watching Scully give birth can only sustain them so long.

William's plotline is more interesting, but it's less focused on in the narrative. It's really just setup. Scully panicking over her name maybe being in the lab is a good concept, even if it it's been an element of Scully's character for a while, and Gillian Anderson sells it as always. The psychic William stuff is more interesting, and it's probably one of the best executed elements of the episode, but it doesn't go anywhere yet. Still, that's a plotline with potential and it's one that I seem to recall enjoying most out of Season 9.

The other major plot movement is shifting Kersh from the bag guy column to the ambiguously good column and...I dunno, I just don't buy it. Skinner made a similar shift after he'd been in the plot for a few seasons, but that felt more natural; Skinner was a much more ambiguous character prior to his face turn, while Kersh was pretty constantly antagonistic, so the sudden reveal that he was helping Doggett the whole time, so him having turned out to have been good the whole time feels very much like a retcon. Which it is, but it shouldn't feel so much like it.

Eh, still looks better than the baby from American Sniper.

The episode as a whole is like that, they seem to trying to add in new characters and plotlines to replace gone or resolved ones. Brad feels like an attempt to cross bring back Spender, but while there's a solid character there, and Cary Elwes manages to project some solid slimy energy, he's too thin as a person to really land, and honestly, I never really responded to the "FBI Internal Politics" stories. The FBI things the X-Files are jokes, and that's all I really need.

As for the actual plot of this episode, it feels oddly disconnected. I guess it's because the first half of the story was about the EPA guys and then the second half was all about the boat and it feels like they could have weaved those together better. The whole "Chemicals in the water making everyone have Super Soldier babies" feels more like a Resident Evil plotline than an X-Files plotline and I don't mean that as a compliment. Shannon's plot seems to go back and forth a whole bunch, relying on Lucy Lawless to sell it, before ending rather abruptly. Knowing she was intended to be a recurring character and couldn't be salves that a little bit but only in retrospect. Really we've got the meta text writing the text pretty hard in Season 9, not in just who's there, and the fact that the season exists at all.

And that includes the metatextual context of its place in history; These two episodes premiered in November of 2001, a post-9/11 world, and it's going to be fascinating to see The X-Files try to exist in that new context. The sudden, massive cultural shift meant that people were less interested in antigovernment media and The X-Files doesn't really have much in a way to exist in that new context. Conspiratorial media would be back of course, but in a much darker form, and watching The X-Files flail around trying to figure out how to exist in the new world is one of the stranger elements of Season 9.

I mentioned in the last review that very few narrative TV shows make it to 9 seasons and while most shows that had reached 9 seasons would have been better off if they'd called it quits earlier, that doesn't mean we can just ignore them. I may say The Simpsons would be my favorite show if it had called it quits at Season 8, but it didn't, and I don't get to pretend that those 20+ seasons don't exist. So while we might not like Season 9, it does exist and we have to include it in our assessment of the series.

 Case Notes:

• Hey, no Previously On, just jumping right into some dude going through security.
• Dr. Nordlinger is distressingly close to Nerdlinger from Homer Goes to College.
• The reveal that the whole scene is taking place on a big ship is okay, but am I supposed to know who any of these people are?
• I'm sorry, this episode gets a title change?
• Oh we get a post-credits Previously On.
• The bit where Lucy Lawless saves Doggett is one of our first indications that she might actually be working to help him.
• Cary Elwes is having a lot of trouble controlling his British accent in this episode.
• Shannon calling her and Knowle "Adam and Eve" made me super excited the first time I saw this episode that it was gonna tie back to Eve all the way in Season 1, but that was obviously never going to happen.
• The ship stuff is mildly intriguing, but the characters have to speak so vaguely that it kinda saps my strength.
• I hate Adam Baldwin as a person, but I can't deny that he's got some solid menacing aura when he shows up here to threaten the ship's captain.
• It's an interesting character beat that Reyes calls Scully, Dana while Doggett calls her Agent Scully.
• I like the match cut between Shannon's neck and Knowle's neck.
• Kersh having Doggett suspended through Brad is a good plot beat, and Doggett's scene where he confronts them is good use of your Robert Patrick.
• The Lone Gunmen just walking into the X-Files office is fun, though why isn't Langley's face blue anymore?
• Frohike trying to pretend to be the dead guy while Knowle prepares to kill the captain is really tonally dissonant.
• Doggett just standing there shooting Knowle is dramatic but it's really funny that this has worked so poorly and he just keeps going at it.
• The speed at which Knowle gets knocked out, Shannon reveals she wasn't double crossing them and then headless Knowle kills(?) her is really sudden.
• Also headless Knowle taking out Shannon feels very Sleepy Hollow, the tone in this episode is all over the map.
• Wait, wasn't Doggett suspended, why does he still have a gun? Or is that his personal gun?
• Scully and Reyes finding the lab when there's a bomb on board is kind of classic X-Files give and take, find something but be unable to prove it. I like Scully panicking about her name being among the test subjects.
• Nice practical explosion there, love it taking out the car windows.
• Couldn't they send divers to go look at that lab though? Cause I feel like some of it has to be intact.
• I get that the story about King George noting that nothing important happened on July 4th was a metaphor (and didn't actually happen), but like, most people wouldn't sign until the 12th of August, and he wouldn't hear about until months later, calm down dude.
• The way the stinger works, by not showing us the mobile moving but just giving us the metallic squeak, is real solid.
• The episode is dedicated to a guy named Chad Keller, who died in the September 11th attacks. IMDB tells me he was a friend of Chris Carter, and that's a little sad.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can afford my plan to put chemicals in the water to turn the frogs straight again.