Case 04, File 06: Sanguinarium

AKA: The Gritty Scrubs Crossover We've All Been Waiting For

There's a lot to be said about episodes like The Field Where I Died or the next episode Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man. Episodes like that take the show in new, interesting directions, expanding the types of stories the series can tell, flesh out the world and characters and are just generally incredibly healthy for the show. But there's also a hell of a lot to be said about episodes that are just right in The X-Files' wheelhouse.

Sanguinarium kicks off in a plastic surgery clinic, with a doctor prepping for a liposuction. He proceeds to drain so much fat from the patient he dies, and it turns out he's not even the right patient. Mondays am I right? Look, I can tell shitty jokes too, I am but a man. Anyhoo, he claims he was possessed and not in control of himself during the incident, which probably won't hold up in court, but it's his story and he's sticking to it. Scully thinks he's full of shit and was just overworked (since he was taking high dose sleeping pills) but Mulder thinks something supernatural is going on...because he's Mulder, basically.

During their digging around Mulder finds an odd series of burns in the floor in the shape of a pentagram, which makes him think witches, even while he acknowledges a pentagram is a protective symbol. He starts to suspect things are a little odd too when another doctor kills a patient with a laser. Yikes. Mulder finds another pentagram (this time in bruises on the patient's stomach) and go to talk to the secretive medical board, who point them at a nurse, Nurse Waites, and point out she was present at all the deaths, plus a similar series of deaths 10 years ago. Plus we get to see her casting a spell at the same time. So there's that.

So they go check out her house and find a lot of evidence that she's a witch. While they're doing that, we follow one of the doctors who named her as the culprit, Dr. Franklin, home, where Waites attacks him from a pool full of blood. But he fends her off and when Mulder and Scully arrive, she immediately starts spitting up needles and dies before they can interrogate her. While all this is happening, we learn that Franklin is actually a wizard himself and is probably responsible.

"Mulder, do you know how gross it is that you made this pentagram with the victim's blood?"
"Yeah, but it's a cool shot."

Scully thinks Waites is responsible for the murders but Mulder has been reading a book they found at her house and discovers that the two patients who died's birthdays correspond to two of the four Witch's Sabbaths and thinks that Waites was trying to protect the patients and that it's not over. Mulder is right, as he always is, as another patient (whose birthday is also a Witch's Sabbath) immediately gets acid to the face and dies. So Mulder interviews a Dr. Shannon, who tells him that during the previous set of deaths, the only one who didn't have the a Witch's Sabbath birthday was a doctor who worked himself to death.

So they look into the doctor and after spending some time fiddling with the hospitals face editing software (roll with it) they discover that the doctor who died looks like Dr. Franklin. They go to his house to find he has an inverted pentagram on his floor with the names of the dead patients on it. Dr. Shannon confronts him at the hospital but he teleports some medical instruments inside her and peels off his own face while they do surgery to save her. They save Dr. Shannon but another patient dies and the episode ends with Franklin at a new hospital with a new face applying for a job.

Sanguinarium is not a complicated episode of The X-Files, but it's a damn fine episode nonetheless. Its easy to lose sight of this during episodes like Home or The Field Where I Died, but this is what originally attracted me to the show: Mulder, Scully, a clever little mystery, some nasty gore, a supernatural entity to defeat and an ambiguous ending. Its not exactly going to set the world on fire, but it doesn't need to.

"I get that she wants to kill me, but this pretty extra."

The thing this episode is best known for is its gore, and that's pretty well deserved; It IS an episode where Richard Beymer peels his own face off. It's one of those episodes where the makeup department really went hog wild, with people's faces getting melted and ladies jumping out of tubs full of blood. It also manages to escalate nicely in that department, starting out relatively subtle with the (mostly) off screen gore in the cold open and building until we get to the aforementioned Face/Off.

The escalation in the gore goes along with the mystery, which is well formed and intriguing. Its good enough at its early misdirection that you don't even notice Richard Beymer hanging around in the background until he's become the villain, and even then it doesn't tip its hand about what's going on until the end. It maybe spends a little bit too much time building suspense, since if I have to pinpoint an issue with the script it's that it ends up rushing through its final moments, since it only has a few minutes left and wants to get its stuff finished before time runs out.

There's not a whole lot to say about his otherwise, which is a shame because saying stuff about X-Files episodes is what this blog is all about. I guess the acting is pretty solid across the board. Only Nurse Waites and Doctors Franklin and Shannon get any real screentime among the secondary characters but they all do good work with what they get. I was actually surprised that the actress who plays Nurse Waites isn't showing up in my future celebrity bit, she was very intense and I felt like I'd seen her elsewhere (turned out it was just minor roles in an episode of Seinfeld and an episode of Community).

"How are we gonna reveal Franklin is actually the villain?"
"Fuck it, just show him floating, I want more time for the face peeling."

If I had to pick an issue with the episode, its that it doesn't follow through on its theme. It starts talking up the vanity of the plastic surgery industry early, but while it gets lip service here and there, it basically drops off the map until the very end when the pieces are coming together and we get what Franklin's goal was. I suspect it was pushed the background because otherwise the implication might come in that the victims kind of 'Deserve' what they get and that would make the whole thing feel icky, so maybe I shouldn't complain.

Still, there's a lot to like and precious little to dislike. I'm not dissing when the series stretches its wings and goes for the weirder or smarter stuff, I love it. But I also sometimes just like a good solid Monster of the Week episode, one that doesn't push the envelope too much. When I first started watching The X-Files, I had no idea of the weirder or more experimental episodes, I just liked Mulder and Scully and I liked watching them solve mysteries and fight monsters. Sometimes that's enough.

Case Notes:

• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Take a look if you like what I do and want to support me doing it.
• I got my wisdom teeth removed right after posting my last review and let me tell you, it's a good thing I got it before that episode than this one. Getting surgery after this episode would be tough.
• I actually really dig the cold open in this episode, just the right amount of subtly and creepiness.
• I do however notice that the Nurse is in the operating theater without having scrubbed up. She's not even wearing gloves.
• This episode is wasting very little time in setting up its story and themes. Scully is basically giving a rant about the cosmetic surgery industry in the opening scenes.
• The scenes of the doctor's meeting for the coverup remind me a bit of Die Hand Die Verletzt, which is fine with me, that episode kicks ass.
• Seriously, why is everyone out there with bare hands. Surgery needs gloves.
• The opening scene with the guy getting killed via stabbing is freaky, but the scene with Ilaqua killing the lady with the laser always got to me. Like the opening, it's a pretty simple scene, but the episode does a lot with very little.
• I like the little throughline of Mulder obsessing over his looks. It's not in there a lot, but it's good flavor.
• The cinematography in the scene with Waite casting in her house reminds me of the final scene of The Witch. That's a compliment.
• Mulder's "Probably cause" crack about the broom still gets a laugh from me, I'm not ashamed.
• The scene in Dr. Franklin's house is pretty freaky. I especially like the bathtub filled with blood and Waite popping out of it.
• Waite may be a brilliant witch, but she is a bad fighter. She was armed AND had the drop on him and she still managed to screw it up.
• Waite coughing up the straight pins scared the shit out of me as a kid. Still gets me a bit.
• Showing Franklin floating to indicate he's actually responsible is a little cheap, but I guess that's just because the rest of the episode is so good.
• Mulder is hit and miss when it comes to the info about the witches Sabbaths, but he is pronouncing most of them very very badly. I get that none of them are pronounced the way they look (Celtic will do that to you) but come on, be better.
• Woah, they went all out for the shot of the lady after getting hit by the acid. Good shit episode. Good, incredibly freaky shit.
• I like the doctor telling Scully "Everyone wants to be beautiful." Um, that's Scully lady, she's amazing.
• Doctor Franklin's name in the previous cycle 10 years ago is Dr. Cox. Scrubs won't start for another 4 years by the by.
• I wish Richard Beymer had more to do in this episode, he's very intense in the scenes he's in. I guess they didn't want to show their hand too early (he's bordering on well known enough to hit Celebrity Murderer Syndrome).
• Franklin teleporting the medical instruments into Shannon is an easy effect, but it really works.
• Franklin taking off his face is easily the freakiest thing in the episode and it still has me squirming in my chair.
• Scully walks into the surgery in progress trying to interrupt it, but she already walked in without being sterile, so its basically borked.
• The one major flaw in this episode is that it doesn't end super well, it just kinda runs out of time and resolved everything super fast.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Doctor Franklin is played by Richard Beymer, an actor with an incredibly long and storied career, from playing Tony in West Side Story to playing Peter in The Diary of Anne Frank, to (most importantly for purposes of my Twin Peaks cast watch) playing Ben Horne in Twin Peaks. He's not in Season 3 much, but if you haven't seen Season 3 of Twin Peaks, you absolutely must. It's good enough that it's playing a MoMA.