Case 09, File 11: Audrey Pauley

 AKA: Wasn't There An Episode Named Audrey Already?

One of the core issues with The X-Files' tension is that the leads are FBI Agents, giving them a degree of power and authority that can occasionally cause issues. Villains can't just make our leads disappear without consequence; Someone knows where they are and will miss them, pretty quickly, and they are both armed and capable of summoning law enforcement without issue. This doesn't come without benefits (since it provides a lot of storytelling shortcuts) but it is an issue that each episode has to navigate.

Our story opens with Doggett getting a ride home from Reyes after a...date? He later fantasizes about kissing her, so I guess it's ambiguous. But he doesn't and she heads off her merry way and immediately gets T-Boned by another car. She's rushed off to the hospital where she gets injected with something by the doctor working on her and wakes up in an empty hospital where everything is strange and also the hospital is floating in a blank void.

Turns out she's in a coma in the real world and has no brain activity, so when Scully and Doggett arrive, it seems like she's brain dead and her Living Will says that she's gonna have the plug pulled. Doggett isn't jazzed about that though and he starts digging into thing. Meanwhile, in the void-hospital, Reyes meets two other people trapped there, Murdoch and Barreiro, who think they're dead and in purgatory. Reyes doesn't buy that, and she starts realizing the hospital is strange, has no signs and garbled text in the charts.

But before she can do anything about it though, she sees a mysterious woman hanging around the hospital and then disappearing when Reyes gives chase. She can't deal with that either before Barreiro starts crackling with electricity and then disappears, while in the real world, his life support machine is unplugged and a mysterious woman watches. Same mysterious woman, incidentally, her name is Audrey, she's the title character, I just don't feel like dragging that one out.

Doggett meanwhile is getting desperate to stop the plug being pulled on Reyes and gets some help when Audrey tells him Reyes is still out there, but also she can't help him more than that. Turns out she's got a model of the hospital in the apartment she lives in at the hospital (just roll with it) and she can imagine herself into it (roll with it!) and that's where the spirits of Reyes and also Murdoch are (roll with it I said!) Reyes realizes she's met Doggett and asks her to bring him a message, a reference to the conversation they had right before her crash.

"Goddammit I'm stick in the Twilight Zone opening credits again."

While all this is going on, Doggett's investigation is heating up and a nurse tells the doctor who worked on Reyes that he failed to note down that he injected her with something and the doctor responds by murdering her. He doesn't take criticism of his note taking well. Audrey gives the message to Doggett though and he gets Scully to give the nurse an autopsy. This gets a bit of build up, but I don't think it ever comes back.

Time is running out though; Reyes parents are on their way to pull the plug and Murdoch disappears too. Audrey gets Doggett to look into Murdoch and Barreiro after vaguely explaining her deal and Doggett gets Scully to look into it too. Audrey pops back into the fake hospital for a quick explanation (the fake hospitals how she sees the world due to an ambiguous mental disorder), which isn't super important, but it's neat) But the Doctor sees Audrey talking to Doggett and kills her too. At this point she pops back into the hospital and tells Reyes she can just like, leave and Reyes does. And she wakes up. And Doggett arrests the doctor. And the episode ends.

Audrey Pauley is an odd episode; Part of me wants to commend it for resisting the urge to go bigger, ramp the tension up or do something goofy, but on the other hand, the episode is just kind of dull. There is good stuff here, most heavily in the acting and directing, but the episode as a whole just feels like a snore to actually watch. Gently observed character pieces are all very well, lots of really great older episodes are like that, but they at least managed to still be engaging to watch.

"Help, I'm being attacked by an incredibly unnecessary effect!"

The episode's biggest strength is also, ironically, one of its biggest weaknesses too. I mentioned above that one of the issues The X-Files has is how much power its leads have, and this episode is a good example of how to use that as a reversal, because it gets a lot of its power by putting Doggett into a situation he has no power over and Robert Patrick does an excellent job under those circumstances, playing up the desperation he has as he spirals around trying to figure out what to do when he has no legal or physical power. He can't shoot Reyes out of a coma, and even Scully points out that if he catches the evil doctor, it won't bring Reyes back.

But it also leads to what I think is one of the episodes biggest weaknesses, and to go into that, we're going to have to compare it to another episode. If we accept that a lot of episodes of Season 9 are altered recreations of early series episodes (something I've been getting a bit more skeptical of but I think it still works), then this one feels like a recreation of One Breath. Obviously it's not 1 to 1 (this is a low key Monster of the Week, One Breath is one of the major pivot points of the entire Myth arc) but the similarities are obvious. But it's their differences that are most instructive.

One of the core elements of One Breath, for example, is the mystical tone which makes it feel like what actually makes Scully come out of the coma is Mulder finally breaking down and grieving, and Scully's will to live. Mulder driving around DC, yelling at people and pointing guns at the Cigarette Smoking Man was all for naught, all he needed to do was be there for Scully. Audrey Pauley on the other hand gets too hung up on its own mechanics and in the end it seems what needs to happen is Audrey hops in and just unlock the door for Reyes.

I guess it doesn't help that Audrey Pauley lacks One Breath's tight focus. I really feel the inclusion of the evil Doctor does absolutely nothing to help the story except distract from the actual story it's actually trying to tell. The Doctor is a non-character, his motivations never explored except for an offhand comment from Doggett that he "Gets off" on pulling the plug, and there's no reason for him; Reyes could wind up in a coma just from the car accident. Yes, the people who put Scully in a coma were doing it for nefarious reasons but that was as part of a larger story context, and not really the focus of the episode, and giving them a villainous person to arrest makes the whole episode just kind jolt to a stop abruptly.

This is a nice shot, I like it.

I also don't really dig Audrey as a character and don't think she's a necessary addition. I kind of understand what they're aiming at (basically an expansion of the ambiguously angelic nurse from One Breath), but she too is a non-character, the mechanics of her fake hospital are too over explained to just be ambiguously mystical but still don't make sense, and the part where they add in her having some sort of mental disorder doesn't help and honestly makes the whole thing uncomfortable. Much like the evil doctor, all she does is distract from the story about Doggett's desperation and Reyes' journey home.

If the episode does have one major thing going for it, aside from Robert Patrick's performance, it's that it's a very stylish episode. Okay the random lightning when the two guys disappear is a bit goofy, but for the most part it has some really excellent shots, often very long takes or swinging the camera around to have someone disappear and the fake hospital is a great set, subtly off and creepy. The X-Files made its bread and butter on less-is-more episodes, and it's great to see it can still create some great visuals on the cheap.

Ultimately, despite all my whinging, Audrey Pauley is not a terrible episode, just kind of a boring one. But in a way, that's worse. The X-Files is at a major pivot point; Duchovny is gone, Anderson is eyeing the exit, and The X-Files is trying to make the case it could soldier on without them. Putting together episodes that are neither massive triumphs, nor engaging failures is exactly the sort of thing it could not do at this point in its history.

Case Notes:

• Reyes and Doggett going out to get beers makes sense for their friendship, but they are pushing this semi-romantic thing a little hard.
• Doggett eats microwave pizza, which is honestly a little too Mulder for him, he seems like the kinda guy who at least knows how to cook.
• Reyes is 100% right that Doggett is a Dog Person though.
• The suddenness of the car accident in an an otherwise sedate scene actually works pretty well.
• The hospital floating in the void is walking a fine line of cool and goofy.
• Murdoch telling her to not look outside into the void? Good shit.
• Reyes gets a bit annoyed when she realizes Murdoch thinks they're dead but honestly, that's a pretty logical assumption.
• The shift to the void color grading when Reyes walks behind Doggett is nice.
• The scene with the guy dies in the real world and thus disappears is pretty creepy, especially after the building changed.
• Holy crap is that the girl from Oubliette? Edit: It is
• The patient aide lady is trying to set a record for the least helpful attempt to help ever huh?
• The patient aide being allowed to live in the hospital, with a model of the hospital in her room, is pretty weird honestly.
• Why is the episode named after Audrey if she refuses to help?
• Okay, the message for Doggett being "You're a dog person" is pretty solid.
• Evil Doctor is totally willing to kill the nurse over her seeing him giving Reyes and injection but she like, hands him an out to the mid-telling him. Why kill over that?
• Dunno if we really needed a flashback to the opening scene of this episode and him fantasizing about kissing her is kinda off this early into their partnership.
• I like that the fake hospital seems kind of Off, but I bet it was much easier to decorate.
• How much do you wanna bet that at some point in the original script for this episode, Doggett say Reyes in a window in the model hospital and they nixed it cause it was too dumb?
• Doggett starting to think that Audrey is crazy is a darkly amusing beat, since he wants to believe her but he clearly doesn't.
• I forgot Reyes was raised in Mexico City until Scully mentions her parents are coming.
• Doggett refusing to tell Scully where he got the names of the other two guys? Also a good darkly funny beat.
• I feel like giving Audrey some kind of ambiguous mental disorder is a weird choice and I don't know why the episode needs it. It just kind of makes things...uncomfortable.
• Audrey's last line to Reyes ("I know who told me to build it") feels very disconnected from her in the rest of the episode. Was that a big concern?
• Man the finale of this episode is lame.
• Reyes is just fine 3 days later? She was still in a car accident!
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can let afford to get some of the FBI Agents out of the mini-hospital in my basement.

Current Celebrity Watch:

The nurse who gets murdered for absolutely no reason is played by Vernee Watson-Johnson who had a main role on a sitcom called Carter County back in the 70s. I got as far as reading that one of the cops in the main cast was a member of the KKK and I decided I didn't want to read anymore.