Case 09, File 07: John Doe

AKA: Honestly A Supernatural Cartel Sounds Pretty Rad

It wouldn't be clear by how much until much later, but by January of 2002, the media landscape was changing rapidly underneath The X-Files' feet. The first episode of 24 premiered 5 days before the first episode of Season 9 and ride the wave of paranoia and xenophobia in the aftermath of 9/11 to become one of the biggest shows of the 2000s. Season 9 therefore is, at least partially, the story of a series trying to adapt to the changing world while in motion, a tricky proposition at the best of time, but even more difficult for a show that's already clinging to life by its nails.

Our episode opens in media res with Doggett waking up with some dude stealing his shoe. Three things quickly become clear: One, he's in Mexico. Two, he's under arrest. Three, he has amnesia. Since he can't call the US Embassy and tell them to come help (because he doesn't know his name) he ends up hanging out in jail for upwards of a week until one of his fellow prisoners, Domingo, helps him get sprung via uhhhhh bribe.

Domingo seems to think that this entitles him to Doggett doing some work for him, but Doggett initially disagrees. But after tracking down the dude who stole his shoe (and getting a weird tiny skull piece of jewelry from him) he agrees to work for Domino and his buddy Nestor, even after learning they're Coyotes (they smuggle people across the border). Domingo and Nestor also indicate they know why he's amnesiac (to each other, I stress) and Doggett figures out from his tattoo that he's a former Marine.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Scully, Skinner and Reyes (also Kersh) are looking for Doggett, who at this point has been missing for two weeks. Reyes, who was raised in Mexico, is down in Texas looking into the case Doggett was investigating (a missing banker with connections to the Cartels) while Skinner and Scully are looking for evidence of where Doggett went. But, when they discover evidence that Doggett crossed into Mexico, Kersh shuts down the investigation since, you know, they have no jurisdiction in Mexico.

"Ah shit, a bleach bypass, I'm either in Mexico or the Middle East."

Back in Mexico, Doggett is having flashbacks to his son being alive and calling the Marines to try and find out who he is and doing odd jobs for Domingo, while Domingo thinks that he's found out who Doggett is (a guy who's wanted for a double murder). Nestor, on the other hand, thinks that having Doggett around is a mistake and after asking the old dude who, apparently, sucked out Doggett's memories if he can go to kill Doggett and after the dude says "I don't care, have a good time," he heads off to kill Doggett. But Doggett is A, a total badass and B, the main character, he gets the drop on him and kills Nestor.

Meanwhile, Reyes has (against Kersh's orders) headed into Mexico looking for Doggett after getting a tip from Scully who got a tip from the Marines and finds a dead guy who has similar wounds on his head to Doggett. Domingo shows up and gets mad at Doggett for, you know, killing his friend and knocks him out. Instead of like, killing Doggett, he decides to go talk to the mind wipe dude who...kills him? I think? He's out of the episode after this, and he was dumb enough to knock Doggett out and not like, tie him up, so whatever.

Doggett comes to just in time for Reyes to show up and she tries to tell him about his past, but then the local cops show up, and since Doggett knows they're owned by the local cartels, he figures that's an issue. It's also an issue that Doggett finds out from Reyes that the son he's been having flashbacks to is dead and he has a brief breakdown when he gets all his memories back. But he solves his breakdown the way everyone should: Driving an armored bus through the door and getting rescued by Skinner. And so after a brief confrontation with the dude who took his memories, he admits he wants his bad memories so that he can have his good ones too and the episode ends.

I'm not gonna lie to you, John Doe kinda slaps. It's not exactly top tier X-Files and it might not work in a stronger season (or with the original cast) but as an episode of the series built around Doggett and Reyes, it kicks more than a bit of ass. But it's also interesting, because while other great episodes of the series have a timeless quality to them (specifics of the technology featured aside), you can more or less pinpoint exactly when in time it came out, which honestly just makes it even more interesting.

If any of y'all know an etsy that'll make me this bracelet, put it in the comments.

Take, for example, the way Mexico is shot, with washed out, flattened colors outside (which I THINK is a bleach bypass, but might just be really overexposed) and dark moody shadows inside. This is pretty clearly a take off of Traffic, which came out a little over a year earlier and wound up being massively influential on how Mexico, as a country,  is visualized in American media. That, combined with some of the details of the plot, such as the Cartels and Coyotes, point to the American preoccupation with the border of the day.

Not that Cartels or Coyotes are really explored in any detail, this isn't Sicario. No, they exist mostly as a backdrop for Doggett (and to a lesser extent Reyes) to bounce off of, this episode is mostly about Doggett. And from that point, it's pretty good. It took about a season, but the show seems to have figured out how precisely to use Robert Patrick. He does some pretty intense work during the amnesiac parts of this episode and when it comes time for us to feel his grief as he relives the death of his child, he does an incredible job. Making it feel like it's the kind of grief that could genuinely take him off his feet for a few moments during a gunfight is hard, and he does a great job.

It's also a nice looking episode and while it doesn't have a lot of action, the moments where it does turn it up work really well. I may make fun of the episode for blatantly ripping off Traffic (which, you know, it does) but people rip of Traffic for a reason, it looks great, and the action is entertainingly shot, in a way that fits The X-Files. The bit where Doggett basically annihilates Nestor's foot is pretty gnarly, in a good way, and the bus crash looks great. I also like that the big finale involves the bus that's just been sitting there in the background all episode. It's not exactly mind blowing, it basically turns the bus into a giant Chekov's Gun (Chekov's Bus?) but it's fun and reasonably clever.

"THIS IS HOW I PROCESS GRIEF!"

If there's one aspect of the presentation that doesn't work, it's the flashbacks. I get what they're going for, and reminding us of Doggett's kid is important to making the finale land, but the actual way they're executed just does not work. The flashbacks themselves are nearly unbearably treacly and the visual lead in, the swirl into the glow-y footage, just feels silly. Lost would canonize how to use audio leads to cut into flashbacks, but that was still over 2 years out, so tv shows were without something to ripoff.

The script is reasonably solid, but I'm more interested in the fact that the episode seems to get a big boon from keeping Scully and Skinner more or less completely to the background. I mentioned this a bit in the 4-D review, but the show is more or less about Doggett and Reyes now, so it seems that the more they background Scully and Skinner, the better an episode gets. Not that I don't love them (I have 7 seasons of reviews talking about how much I love Scully) but having to devote time to two characters the show doesn't seem to know what to do with seems to only weaken the episode.

The most interesting aspect, in retrospect, is an offhand reference by Kersh that they don't have a lot of resources to find Doggett, because so much of their resources are tied up in anti-terrorism work. This is, unless I missed one, the first acknowledgement that the series exists in a post-9/11 world. There is a strong argument to be made that not only did 9/11 kill off The X-Files the first time around (there wasn't a lot of space for media fearful of the government in the early 2000s) but also made its revivals... awkward (the shift of public perception of conspiracy theories began with 9/11 Trutherism in the late 2000s). So while John Doe is a pretty damn fine little episode, it's also an episode that shows why the show was going to crash to its first ending in a mere 13 episodes.

Case Notes:

• The Day One title card is nice and ominous even if it does make me think of the "Dawn on the Final Day" meme.
• Doggett doesn't even seem mad that he woke up in a mysterious location to someone stealing his shoe, he mostly seems annoyed.
• I dunno why the audio of Doggett running with one shoe is funny to me, but it is.
• It takes Doggett till the cop asks him his name before he realizes he has no memory. I feel like you'd pick that up quicker.
• The scene in the jail is pretty much just exposition, but it's good exposition, and I like how in control the dude who gives Doggett the nickname is. Robert Patrick is also doing a pretty solid performance of someone who is completely lost and trying to downplay it.
• Okay, I get why they're doing the Day One, Day Two thing if they can jump right into Day Eight.
• I know, instinctively, that the dude who got Doggett out of jail wants him to do Crimes, but taking the offer and then refusing to do the work is still a dick move.
• I was gonna ask what Doggett's plan when he walks away is, but now I'm just curious how he found the dude who robbed him so quickly when he doesn't speak the language and has only one shoe.
• I know the skull is like, a clue to what happened to him, but I'm still very amused by the image of Doggett with a silver skull bracelet.
• My Spanish is pretty shaky but I'm pretty sure Nestor called Doggett a son of a bitch.
• More general mysterious stuff, especially from Domino and Nestor, although I'm not sure if I'm imagining the thing moving under Doggett's skin (Post episode edit: I was). Also, how did he never notice his own tattoo in eight days?
• Took us 15 minutes for us to check in on the rest of the cast, who are obviously searching for Doggett and we immediately get some backfill on where he was and what he was doing when he disappeared. It's a little clunky, but the strength of the structure makes up for.
• Reyes being raised in Mexico feels like a pretty major retcon, but I'll allow it.
• I like the bit in the interrogation where Reyes speaks Spanish to talk around the lawyer, it's clever, and Gish is doing a good job selling her anger.
• There's some good character work for Doggett in this episode, both in him refusing to do more than odd jobs for the Coyotes and in how he goes about trying to find out who he is.
• The bit where Domingo suggests Doggett is wanted for a double murder, and it's not immediately clear if he's wrong or lying, is solid intrigue.
• The old dude sitting in the bar framed by bright light is so unnecessarily dramatic, I love it.
• Reyes knowing that the fake name Doggett chose is the name of a telephone card company is pretty funny honestly.
• It takes us till we're less than 15 minutes to the end of the episode to start getting properly into our supernatural element of the week. That's not a complaint.
• I like that they couldn't think of a better way to get the gun off Domingo than for Doggett to have a flashback RIGHT THEN. It's again, not a complaint, it's just amusing.
• I like the bit with Reyes trying to find Doggett in Mexico, especially when she says that Doggett ran out on her, it's a good detail and again, showing how people try to solve a problem is good characterization.
• Wait, Domingo knocked Doggett out and didn't even tie him up? He is a bad criminal.
• The cuts on the forehead being from the cartel guy's fingernails is a fun explanation, since you're expecting something more graphic.
• The person coming through Doggett's door being Reyes is a nice twist, although the cops showing up 20 seconds later is pretty funny.
• Doing the final flashback and the wrap-up scene with Reyes is, in my opinion, the wrong choice. Doggett declaring that he wanted the memories of his life back, no matter how painful, because they're his is a fantastic final moment, adding the other scenes just weakens it.
• Will say this, Robert Patrick looks pretty realistically like shit in the ending.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I don't have to start selling my services as a memory vampire to make money.