Case 11, File 09: Nothing Lasts Forever

AKA: Jenna Maroney Starts A Cult

One of the things that happens as a series runs towards the end is they start to get melancholic and a wee bit meta. If it seems like I've said this before, it's because this would be the third time The X-Files has done this (because this is the third time it's come to an end). I will say that however that this time around the plot they landed on, about a pair of people desperate to extend their lifespans at all costs, is a little on the nose for a show that's nearly 30 years old and feels more than a little past its sell by date.

Our episode opens with some rando doctors performing surgery on a different rando, and boxing up their organs, while also...licking them? Weird. They dump them all in a cooler, but before they can do anything about it, a weird lady in a hoodie shows up and kills two of them with...the spikes off a fence? The survivors bolt with half the organs and she dumps the other half at a hospital with "I will repay" written on the cooler.

Mulder and Scully decide this is weird, so they pop by the crime scene and chase off the other agents by acting like weirdos, and Mulder puts together what happens. He also has a little bit about how his eyesight is getting worse. Meanwhile, back at the uh, organs, they've made it to a weirdo cult who puts the organs in a blender and drinks them. Oh and the cult is led by a lady who also drinks it and watches herself on the TV from the 60s, while her husband is sewn to a cult member. So that's gross.

Scully decides she needs to go to church over this and while she's there, the girl who attacked those doctors whose name is Juliet and basically says "They had it coming, I'm getting my sister back." Unfortunately for her Mulder notices that three spikes from the church's fence and basically figures out what's going on. Back at the cult, the lady (Barbara) is Real Pissed about the missing organs being needed to keep her young, and the doctor is still running around with a girl sewn to his back. Gross

Mulder and Scully go see Juliet who denies involvement but does admit that her sister is in a cult. Back at said cult, Barbara kills the girl sewn to the doctor, but her organs are...no good? So the doctor heads off to go steal back the organs back and one of the cult members offers to sacrifice himself so she can drink his organs (gross) but she sings a song and then the other cult members butcher him while she sings.

"Mulder why are you struggling with glasses, you've had glasses since the Pilot-"
"Shut up, shut up, shut up."

The doc returns with the organs and Barbara is so jazzed she decides to sew Juliet's sister to his back. Meanwhile Juliet has traced the cult back to this building, while Mulder and Scully planted a chip in the organs to track it. They chat with the super who reveals he's never spoken to the residents and every room has a dumbwaiter that leads into the sewer, because he wanted to put a gun that belongs to a guy named Chekov on the wall.

Mulder and Scully go talk to Barbara, who tries to distract them and then sic her cult members on them. She succeeds in throwing Scully down the dumbwaiter (see?) but Juliet shows up and stakes her. Mulder, who decides Scully is more important than catching Juliet, heads down into the sewers to find her, but finds the doc, who tries to threaten Juliet's sister to escape but Juliet kills him. Mulder finds Scully, who landed on a pile of trash to survive. And thus the episode ends with Juliet's sister back at home, while Mulder and Scully chat about faith. And presumably Juliet in jail.

Nothing Lasts Forever is the kind of episode The X-Files could only make this deep into its run, and not just because its really gross on a pretty visceral level. The core themes of the episode, about aging being natural and the importance of letting go, only really lands (on a meta level) when the show is this close to the end. Of course its a little odd to come to that theme the third time it was supposed to end, but you know, better late than never.

"I'm a star, I'm on top, someone bring me some lunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngs."

It's also a pretty solid monster of the week episode outside of that. The villain is an interesting one; I've made cracks that it's like Jenna Maroney (of 30 Rock, if you're a philistine) started a cult, but that's not a complaint. The actress strikes a faux-sugary tone that mixed with her intense ego and bouts of rage makes for a genuinely unnerving character. She feels less like a supernatural monster and more like a real egotistical abuser and that can be more intense than a werewolf when utilized properly.

It's also a pretty gnarly episode, and once again I mean that in a good way. A subject like this is pretty gross, and the episode knows that and knows how to communicate it. There's a lot of genuinely grisly visual imagery, and the episode leaves just enough to the imagination to make it even more gross. The set and makeup work with that, making the cult compound feel gross and grimy, and it helps make our main villain feel even more out of place, this shining disturbed movie star standing amid the muck. It's all comes together to make the whole thing great.

The rest of the cult is a little lazier, but with the focus on Barbara, we can mostly overlook that. The doctor is a pretty uninteresting character, and we never get much of an idea of how the cult members are lured in, or what they're getting out of it, and Olivia (Juliet's sister)'s home life looks too comfortable to just be luring in runaways or street kids. There's the tiniest look into the doc's motivation (he tosses out some guff about how the government keeps getting in his way) but that's like, 40 seconds before he dies, so it barely matters. And it doesn't matter to my appreciation of the episode, Barbara is, appropriately enough, the star of the show.

The rest of the episode is mostly focused on the fact that Mulder and Scully are getting older and feeling like they're slowing down, and it's a decent way to contrast Barbara's willingness to commit horrible acts to maintain her youth. It, combined with Mulder and Scully talking about the other paths they might have taken, feels like the show is talking about winding things down, rather than clinging on to past glories. That might land a little better if the show wasn't on its revival, but you know, it's a nice sentiment.

I just really like this last shot, sue me.

I don't want to overpraise it, its still got a pretty weak script, heavy on exposition and often more on the nose than I think it wants to be. The nadir is the bit where, rather than reveal anything naturally, Mulder and Scully just explain to each other how their plan to trap the cult worked, and then get exposited to by the super when they should just be heading upstairs to stop the cult. And while I like Juliet a lot as a character, I feel like the episode could do more with her, by the third act she mostly just exists to kill the doctor and Barbara.

The list of shows that went out on top of their game is punishingly short, even shows that called it when they didn't have to usually had a season or two of rolling downhill before they did. No, far more shows ended either too early or much too late (or, in Arrested Development's case, both). So The X-Files is not unique in that experience, but even at its absolute worst, it's still The X-Files. And as someone coming to the end of a 7 year project of reviewing it, I get feeling melancholy about endings.

Case Notes:

• We're opening on surgery? What is this, House?
• Oh good. Tad O'Malley. Again.
• Juliet prays before going to do her shit, she must be Daredevil.
• Mulder's reputation in the rest of the FBI never ceases to amuse me, and I like him using his reputation to fuck with other agents.
• Mulder puts together a lot of stuff really fast, and while the details about him aging are kinda generic, they do add some depth.
• Is that lady fucking drinking a liver smoothie? ARE THEY DRINKING ORGAN SMOOTHIES?
• Not sure how much I vibe with "Blended organs makes everyone horny."
• The two people sewn together with the person in the next bed just casually sitting there drinking blood is really freaky, good job drawing me in with raw disgust.
• Mulder having access to the Darkweb is really funny to me.
• Mulder deciding to wait for Scully in the church is cute.
• "WHERE ARE MY LUNGS" is a funny thing to yell.
• Mulder and Scully chatting about the power of faith is decent, it's good character building stuff, even if we are at the last possible moment for it.
• Mulder noticing the missing bars on the fence is a little coincidental, but I can roll with it.
• The difference between what Juliet looks like when she's being a vigilante and when she's snarking with Mulder is stark, but it's believable enough as a mask she's putting up.
• I feel like you shouldn't talk about how your cult members are your seeds that you're gonna eat eventually in front of them.
• I like how Mulder and Scully use the organs at the hospital as a trap to catch the cult. I'm less enthused about how they have to just drop a bunch of exposition on us about it.
• The super just straight up saying "Hey, it's freaky but I don't ask questions" feels kind of authentic to New York, I'm not gonna lie.
• I feel like the scene with Mulder and Scully meeting Barbara takes just a shade too long, our heroes take a bit too long to get suspicious.
• Turning the entire scene into a hyper confused action beat is an odd choice (I still have no idea what combination of movements got Scully thrown down the dumbwaiter) but Juliet arriving and just straight staking Barbara is good.
• It's like one line of dialogue about how much the doctor hates government regulation and it's still enough to make me laugh.
• Juliet just walks up to Mulder and Scully and explains that she's religious so she's cool going to prison.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I'm gonna be keeping it going after I'm done to support future projects, so please check it out if you like my reviews.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Jere Burns, who plays the doctor, has been in a bunch of stuff, but his largest role was a main character role on a sitcom called Dear John. I've never heard of it before, but it had Judd Hirsch in it, and it ran for 90 episodes in the late 80s and early 90s, so what do I know?

Audio Observations:

The song that Barbara sings is called The Morning After, made famous by Maureen McGovern after it won Best Original Song for The Poseidon Adventure. I'm gonna be honest, I hate The Morning After, but it's well used here.