Case 04, File 23: Demons

AKA: Cucked By The Cigarette Smoking Man

Mulder makes bad decisions. This is not a complaint or an insult, this is a fact of his character, one that other characters are aware of. There is a moment in the second movie where Skinner insists that Mulder wouldn't do anything rash and Scully just looks at him in disbelief. As much as I love Mulder, the fact that he can do some stupid stuff is basically just something we all have to live with. But still, even among his many odd choices, there a handful that stand out.


Our story kicks off with Mulder have a rapidly edited, weird color flashback to his mom and dad arguing about something and scaring his sister. He then awakens to discover he's in Rhode Island with blood on his shirt and no memory, which means he's either having a very good weekend or a very bad one. He calls Scully who immediately heads to Rhode Island to check on him, discovers he's in shock, that 2 rounds from his gun have been fired and that the blood on his shirt isn't his. So doing well there.

After some digging they find some car keys which belong to an elderly couple, David and Amy Cassandra. They also discover that Amy has been obsessively painting her childhood house, which Mulder sort of recognizes. So they head out to check on the house and discover Amy and David dead in the house. Whoops. While all this is happening some dude is cutting his own face out of pictures and bleeding from the head. So that's weird.

So the cops show up and are understandably skeptical about Mulder's "No memory," story and interrogate him, while Scully does an autopsy on Amy and finds a weird puncture on her head and Ketamine in her system. After discovering that the blood on Mulder's shirt is Amy and David's and arrest him. But while all that's happening, the guy who was cutting his face out of the pictures (and who turns out to be a cop) decides that the best thing for himself is to blow his own head off.

"No Mulder, I'm gonna need you to stay in the shower for a few minutes."
"To get warm?"
"Sure, that."

All this makes Scully figure out that the Cassandra's deaths were actually a murder/suicide thing with Mulder there for...moral support, I guess? Mulder, who has been having brief flashbacks all episodes, has a big one where he remembers his mom and dad arguing with a young Cigarette Smoking Man. Scully realizes that Amy, and the cop, were abductees and was receiving aggressive treatment for it (hence the hole in her head) and that it's probably responsible for the suicide thing.

So, after a brief and confrontational visit with Amy's doctor they head down to Greenwich for a brief and confrontational visit with Mulder's mom where he decides he's gonna accuse her of banging the Cigarette Smoking Man. Mulder, in a storm of good decision making, heads back to Rhode Island to get another hole drilled in his head and try to remember, but he mostly goes batty until he's tracked down and talked down by Scully, and the episode ends with Scully musing about how Mulder is having more and more trouble finding his way to answers.

As much as I love season 4, Zero Sum, the cancer stuff in Elegy and this episode in particular reads to me like they realized they were running out of time in the season and wanted to set things up for their big finale. Mulder's search for the truth is one that has always consumed him and he has been acting a little erratic sure (I mean, he took an impromptu trip to Russia) but in order to make the cliffhanger land, they need to set him up as on the edge, so they do the sometimes messy work of hastily establishing his shaky mental state.

"I needed that treatment like I needed a hole in the head. Heh, hole in the-oh I am not well." 

But needing to throw together some plot elements quickly doesn't make it a bad episode. Sure they could have built some of that stuff into the Max episodes earlier, but that would have detracted from those episodes. So this episode has a mission to do and it has to do it quickly, but it's still a fun ride, and an engaging mystery while it's happening.

If the episode has one major strength, it's Duchovny. He's been asked to pull a lot more acting weight than he usually was this season and he's been doing really well. And while this isn't on the level of his work in Small Potatoes, it's still a damn fine little performance. It may be mostly designed for this episode to build up to the next couple, but I totally buy his desperation and anger at not being able to remember what happened, or know if he can trust those memories. I dunno if it's enough to justify him having a hole drilled in his head (twice) but it's something.

On the other hand, the episode's big issue is that it doesn't manage its time very well. The question of how Amy and David Cassandra died is resolved with 15 minutes still left on the clock, which isn't enough time to dive wholeheartedly into the "Mulder got a hole drilled into his head" and is too far into the episode for their plot to be a red herring. It gives the episode the sense that it might work better as a two parter since it doesn't really have the space it needs to give both half of its plot the space to really breathe.

But it still manages to keep my attention all the way through. The flashbacks are pretty uniquely presented, with jagged editing and weird colors, which helps keep your interest (and also pull you in early, since they're the first thing throws at you). I also really like Mulder and Scully's interplay here, and not just because I'm a massive shipper. I like how Scully doesn't even consider for a second that Mulder killed the Cassandras and also drives out to Rhode Island without a second thought. She is ride or die for Mulder and I love it.

"Mulder, why did you shoot the wall?"
"Cause the writers wanted some excitement in the last couple minutes, don't overthink it."

Of course in order to properly address this episode we have to address the flashbacks themselves and what they say about the ongoing quest for Samantha. I'm on record as having very little patience for the Samantha subplot given its resolution (and we're coming up on one of the biggest red herrings in the series on that front) but this is probably one of the best ways it's been handled so far. I like that this less about what happened to her and more about why, as well as fleshing out Mulder's dad's backstory. Even the inability to trust if these flashbacks are real doesn't really bother me, since it helps sells Mulder's frustration at being helpless.

I'm not a huge fan of the Myth arc episodes as I've said before, but this is the kind of Myth episode that I tend to like best, episodes that are less about the conspiracy and more about its effects on the characters. We're coming up on some big reveals and complications in the larger plot of the series, but for now I just like episodes where we get to see how Mulder and Scully are feeling.

Case Notes: 

• I dunno if I have any readers with epilepsy, but the flashbacks in this episode are not gonna be kind to you if you do, so be careful. 
• Hey, after the weird flashback of Mulder's parents arguing, we open on a shot of Mulder's eye. Take that Lost, you didn't invent it! 
• Hey Scully sees Mulder naked when he's in the bathtub trying to get warm. Is that the first time? Hm, he's in shock? Oh sorry, my focus was elsewhere. 
• I love Scully trying to convince Mulder to go to a hospital before investigating. Are you honestly expecting Mulder to make good decisions Scully? 
• The episode suddenly smashes to a guy bleeding out of his head and cutting someone's face out of a bunch of photos. The X-Files always did have a way suddenly throwing freaky stuff at you. 
• All Amy paints is the house she grew up in. Come on Amy, grow as an artist. 
• Fading from the painting to the actual shot of the house is great. 
• The flashbacks remain reasonably freaky and appropriately mysterious. I dunno how much we need the flashing lights though. 
• The sudden reveal of Amy and her husband's corpses is a pretty solid raising of the stakes. 
• The cop is pretty condescending but in his defense, Mulder's story is pretty flimsy. 
• Scully finds the hole in Amy's head basically by accident, which is good for Mulder. 
• I feel like handing Mulder his bloody shirt in interrogation is probably bad form. That's evidence man, bag it. 
• I'm glad the episode reminded me who the cop who was cutting his own face out of photos was before he kills himself, because I wouldn't have recognized him without the shot of the photo with the face cut out. 
• The cop says the guy who shot himself was a joke on the force because he believed in aliens and Scully swiftly changes the subject. 
• Mulder's car has a pretty thick layer of dust for a car that's been there like, 50 hours max. 
• The visit with the psychologist is one of those scenes that's relying a lot on Duchovny and Anderson to sell their growing distrust of Dr. Goldstein. They do good jobs though, and I particularly like Scully's thinly veiled contempt. 
• As someone who lives just a stones throw from Greenwich, CT, I would like to remind Mulder that a drive from Providence to Greenwich is just shy of 3 hours, depending on traffic. Scully is right, you shouldn't drive that when you're having random attacks. 
• Look Mulder, I know interpersonal relationships aren't your strong suit, but maybe barging into your mom's house and accusing her of banging the Cigarette Smoking Man is not the best way to get answers. 
• Teena's neighborhood doesn't look much like any place in Greenwich I know, but her house looks very convincingly Fairfield County. 
• Mulder drives off and strands Scully in Greenwich. No joke, that has happened to me. Except I just took the train home. It was like 20 minutes. 
• Mulder figures out that the doctor drilled a hole in his head and his first instinct is to ask him to do it again. Mulder, I know you make bad choices sometimes, but this is next level. 
• I like Scully screaming furiously at the doctor for what he did to Mulder. I am a shipper, I am weak, I'm sorry. 
• The final confrontation with Scully is solid, but I feel the resolution of the episode, where we can't know if the memories are real, is a little lame. I guess the final Scully monologue, where she talks about Mulder losing his way and his increasing irrationality, is setting up the cliff hanger in the season finale. 
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Consider donating so I can justify also reviewing the Lone Gunmen.