Case 10, File 06: My Struggle II

AKA: An Anti-Vaxxer's Worst Nightmare

If The X-Files is to keep grinding on, it has to maintain a fairly delicate balance; Mulder and Scully can't fail, precisely, but they can't succeed either. If the conspiracy fails, if aliens and supernatural monsters are revealed, then the status quo would shift so entirely, it would be basically an entirely different show. But if the conspiracy feels too all powerful, like Mulder and Scully's actions don't matter, then the show would just get depressing and boring. So you have to use a light touch, a scalpel, if you will. Which is why it's always so interesting to see Myth Arc episodes that just go ahead and use a Buster Sword.

Our episode opens, after a Scully series recap to match the Mulder one from the season premier, with Scully arriving in the office to find Mulder missing and a video from...sigh...Tad O'Malley on the laptop. And then like 5 seconds later Tad calls her. He's at Mulder's place, which is trashed, and Mulder is missing. But they've got bigger fish to fry because Tad tells her that there's a big, government run plague coming that'll wipe out most of humanity based on the alien DNA from the smallpox vaccines.

Before we can even get an "Everybody got that" Miller and Einstein are there to help Scully find Mulder and because people are getting sick really quickly and really intensely. Scully thinks that Tad is right, that the vaccines are killing people's immune systems and that the soldiers (who are getting sick first) have anthrax. She and Einstein will now spend the next 30 minutes hanging around the hospital exchanging technobabble about how the vaccines are killing people.

Meanwhile Mulder is beaten up and driving down to South Carolina to, it turns out. Miller, on the other hand, tracks Mulder's cellphone and goes after him. Back at the hospital, Scully gets a call from Agent Reyes who it turns out is working for the conspiracy now and tells Scully that the alien DNA she has is protecting her from the coming plague. Also she knows that Mulder went to confront the Cigarette Smoking Man about the fact that he sent a dude to Mulder's house to fight him and that's why the place was trashed.

Is MindQuad an American Dad joke, or am I imagining that?

But! It turns out Cigarette Smoking Man wanted to see Mulder to offer him a cure for the oncoming plague, because he still loves Mulder. Mulder refuses cause he still hates him, but he starts getting sick and eventually Miller arrives also getting sick, and they head back to DC. Back in DC, Scully has realized that her alien DNA could be used to immunize people against the contagion. Or boost their immune system, I think? Her DNA will fix it, is the point.

By this point shit has gone thoroughly sideways, society is collapsing, people are losing their shit and, of course, there's a traffic jam when Scully tries to get to Mulder, so they have a brief drive across the city. But, when Scully finally gets to him, a UFO shows up over them. Bet you're excited to see how they follow up on THAT huh? Life is full of disappointment, cause the episode ends.

I'm not gonna lie to you guys, gals and nonbinary pals; This episode just flat fucking sucks. It's trying to be big and epic, to feel like a huge momentous event, but what it actually feels like it getting drowned in an ocean of exposition and technobabble, all leading up to an unsatisfying cliffhanger. And given how that cliffhanger gets resolved in the next season (and don't worry, we'll fucking get there) that cliffhanger just feels insulting.

The plot, on paper, might work as a culmination of the story, and I'm not gonna lie, I would actually be kind of on board with it in concept; The conspiracy's own mistake (going after Scully and giving her alien DNA) being what finally thwarts their plans. But in practice, it just happens so fast that it feels like it has no weight. A worldwide plague brings society to its knees over the course of about 15 minutes but also doesn't seem to really affect anything. You cannot sell a worldwide global pandemic bringing America to the brink of destruction with a handful of shots of people rioting in the third act.

I think they were both kinda hoping that kiss wouldn't go for the cheek.

Part of this feels like the result of the shortened season; With only two real myth arc episodes, and 4 episodes in between, Season 10 never have the kind of length required to do a full season's set of myth arc episodes, but dammit, they were still going to try. That means jamming all of the story twists and turns that would normally happen over the course of the back half of a season of The X-Files into a single episode, and the episode feels overstuffed and rushed.

It doesn't help that the actual revelations aren't...great, outside of the fact that Scully's DNA can fix the plague. I was against bringing back Cigarette Smoking Man, he has bogged down the entire series at this point and their absolute refusal to try and move on from him, even after they literally hit him with a missile at the end of the last season, shows a complete unwillingness to let their story grow. The X-Files has had lots of compelling villains, even outside of the Cigarette Smoking Man, seeing them fall back on him this hard feels like it's empty fanservice, the worst reason to bring back a show.

The other major twist is that Reyes has joined the conspiracy, and it just sucks. First off, having our first acknowledgement of the two characters who had to hold up the series during Mulder's absence being one of them joining the bad guys feels cruel. But more than that, it's a completely nonsensical twist. Reyes doesn't need that much arm twisting to join the bad guys and there's no real motivation to it. Cigarette Smoking Man just says "I can stop you from dying when shit goes down" and she rolls with it. Reyes wasn't as big a character as Mulder and Scully, but I still think she has enough strength of character to not fold without some work put into it.

Oh wow, what an incredible cliffhanger, hope the resolution isn't FUCKING BULLSHIT!

The focus on Miller and Einstein in this episode makes me feel like, at one point, the idea was to make them the new leads if Anderson and Duchovny didn't want to stick around for further seasons, but this episode is a much better showcase for that premise than the previous one. Einstein had some amusing back and forth with Mulder, but her scenes with Scully are boring. Without the kind of playful silliness to the scene, she just doesn't work; She doesn't feel like the sober yin to Miller's yang, she feels like a killjoy. Miller on the other hand doesn't feel like much of anything in this episode. He barely even seems to notice how bizarre the scenes in Cigarette Smoking Man's house would feel without any context for them. His only role is to drive Mulder back from the Cigarette Smoking Man's place to DC and honestly, they could have just gotten Skinner to do that.

The trick of The X-Files was always to make you feel like there was some grand plan, like the story was going somewhere specific when it was really just be slapped together on the spot, to the point where the TV Trope entry on a show that does that is named after series creator Chris Carter. My Struggle II is what happens when that illusion has totally broken down, where we all know that there is no grand plan to the series and that they're just trying to desperately slap together enough plot to hold the series together long enough to wring a few more Monster of the Weeks out.

And it's not going to get any better from here.

Case Notes;

• Hey a Scully narration to match the Mulder narration at the beginning of the season.
• Hey, appearance by the Well Manicured Man in the opening narration, been a while since he showed up.
• Scully transforming into an alien during the opening narration is on the wrong side of cheesy.
• Oh gooooood Joel McHale is back. Yay.
• Uh, Tad, if you have to preface your doctor friend with "He's not a quack" well...uh...his "Not a quack" t-shirt is raising a lot of questions answered by his shirt.
• They kinda jump into stuff Happening at the hospital really fast.
• Switching over to beat up Mulder in his car is good, it's mysterious and intriguing.
• I like Scully trying to poetically rework "I believe in science but I've also seen some Weird Shit."
• "There's talk on the internet." A+ line there, amazing.
• Wait, what is the significance of Mulder being near South Carolina?
• For a terrifying moment I thought Miller in the office was Krycek and we were back where we started.
• I do kinda like Einstein taking apart Scully's wild theory, although I feel like that would work better if I like, knew Einstein as a character.
• Them trying to pretend there was enough left of the Cigarette Smoking to reconstruct him just draws attention to the fact that he should be 100% dead by now. I was willing to pretend to forget he got a missile to the face.
• The reveal that Scully is immune to the diseases is good, but doesn't land very well because it's too tied up in the rest of the stuff going on that is moving way too fast; They're trying to jam a season's worth of Myth Arc episode reveals into 40 minutes.
• I don't like the fight in Mulder's house between Mulder and CSM's goon, I don't like them turning Mulder into Jason Bourne and it just moves way too fast.
• Mulder and CSM's conversation is boring and ecofascist but I do like him throwing "You don't want to believe" at Mulder, it's a good reversal.
• The big problem with Tad is that he's too close to a real world conspiracy nut and they are leaning way too far into that this episode, making him spout a lot of real world conspiracy stuff.
• Scully's DNA being what will save everyone is such a weird choice but I guess it works with the long term plans of the series.
• I actually like the second scene with Mulder and CSM more, it's a lot darker and Mulder dying while CSM peels off part of his face is a lot more striking.
• Scully and Einstein is...I'm sorry it's just interesting, they are too similar and just having them throw medical technobabble at me is making me tune out.
• I get what they're going for with Miller and CSM but it just doesn't work, Miller is a non-character and they have no history.
• The climax of this episode is Scully driving slightly erratically through DC onto a bridge and having a lengthy conversation with Miller before a UFO shows up. Lame.
• Remembering how Season 11 opens, given how huge and world shaking this entire finale is, makes me really dislike it all the more.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out or I'll start my own weirdo conspiracy site and that's a threat.