Case 04, File 24: Gethesemane

AKA: Old Alien and the Mountain

End of season cliffhangers are a risky business, not least because they require a degree of certainty that the series is coming back. You want to give the audience a desire to return without making them feel like they're being manipulated. It's a fine line to walk, but if you do it right, you can keep your audience always coming back. There's a reason why I'm writing this review while watching Orange is the New Black. Fumble it thought and the audience can feel they're being manipulated for cheap effect.

After a very brief cold open in which Scully is called to Mulder's apartment by the police and then goes to meet with some FBI to say the FBI equivalent of "Mulder's work is shit" we get started with our story, a few days earlier, with a geological team in the Yukon who accidentally dig up an alien body in a cave. Back in DC, Scully is at dinner with her family and getting the hard sell from her Priest, when she gets a call from Mulder asking her to come to the Smithsonian.

At the Smithsonian they meet one of the scientists from the mountain who tell them about the alien and when Scully resists Mulder's suggestion they go see it, he makes plans to go check it out while he asks her to take some of the ice cores they brought back to be tested. She does and discovers it's very old ice but that it also contains some weird "Chimera" cells. But before she can follow up on that, a weird dude sneaks into the lab and steals the ice cores, pushing Scully down the stairs to escape.

Back on the mountain, a guy shows up at the cave and shoots all the guys who are there. Mulder and the scientist arrive to find only one guy alive, but he hid the alien body and they get it back to the states. Meanwhile, Scully has a brief confrontation with her brother about her work (don't feel bad if you don't remember him, I think this is the first time he shows up) and tracks the guy who stole the ice down to the Department of Defense, capturing him before he promises to tell her some cool stuff.

"Dana, I'm worried about you and your work."
"Then why didn't you show up when I was in a coma after being abducted."
"Shut up, that's why."

Back with Mulder, he and the scientists do an autopsy on the alien which appears genuine, but Mulder is called away by Scully before they can finish. While Mulder is away, the guy who shot the scientists on the mountain shows and reveals the one survivor of the mountain massacre is in on it. The guy who Scully captured reveals his name is Kritschgau and he tells Mulder that all of this, including lots of other stuff he's seen, was designed to make Mulder claim aliens are real so the government can use that to cover up other stuff? I dunno, it's confusing.

Anyway, Mulder returns to find the scientists dead and the body missing and after an intense argument with Scully, she tells him she was given cancer to make Mulder believe. Back home Mulder is angry and despondent and we cut back to Scully testifying to the FBI, claiming that Mulder killed himself the previous night. Cue 10,000 fans screaming in outrage.

Gethesemane is an episode with a complex legacy. It is a functional and engaging opening to the trio of episodes that serve as the season finale for season 4 and the opening for season 5, but so much of it is weighed down by that cliffhanger. It's a solid cliffhanger as such things go, and Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny act the hell out of it, but once you've seen season 5 and know that not only is it not true, but Scully doesn't even think it's true, you can't help but feel manipulated, which sours me on this episode a bit.

"Hi, my name is Kritschgau and I'm a really terrible spy...and I probably shouldn't have told you that."

But let's try to remove our understanding of what comes later and judge the episode as it is. There is a solid amount to like here, but like most season finales, it's hampered by the fact that it's just the first part of a 3 part episode which means it doesn't really have an ending, just the cliffhanger. It's a solid base to build from, and I remember being fond of the season 5 premier episodes, but as always I can't judge it completely until I have the whole picture and I won't have that until I've gotten the next two episodes under my belt.

Honestly, as weird as it sounds, I think one of the bigger issues with the episode is Kritschgau. He basically drops into the episode (and the series) at the midpoint, tells Mulder that everything he knows is wrong (I will not recite Weird Al lyrics here) and Mulder just believes him because he knows about Scully's cancer? I feel like Kritschgau needed to get better established, maybe have him be a recurring character throughout the season building to this reveal at the end? I suppose this is the result of writing a series by the seat of your pants, characters just appear out of nowhere.

But even with Kritschgau showing up to tell Mulder that up is down, black is white and short is long (DAMMIT) the episode manages to mostly hang together. As said above, this is the first part of a three part structure, so it's all forward momentum, pushing everything to where it needs to be to get for the next two episodes and wisely pushing all the exposition till the next episode (where, if memory serves, it'll hit like a tidal wave), so the episode manages to keep up the speed until we get to the climax.

This Alien Autopsy sequel really goes off the rails.

And then there's that climax. As I said, I have problems with some guy we've never met before showing up to tell Mulder that everything he thought was just so important doesn't matter (help I can't stop) and Mulder just buying it, but I really have trouble with the episode selling that Mulder would kill himself over it. I have no idea if people bought it when the series was new, but I think having him exit like that would be somewhat lame. Duchovny and Anderson sell the hell out of their scenes which gives it more impact, and the series has been trying to build up Mulder's mental state as fragile in the last couple episodes, but I feel more work was required to make us buy he'd kill himself. Maybe put more emphasis on the fact that's neglecting his soulmate Scully in what they think is her final days? I dunno, I feel like they overplayed their hand.

Honestly, the episode needed to pull more focus on Mulder or just shunt him off screen to his own thing and focus on Scully, because splitting it the way they do (they get maybe 3 scenes together) is not working out. Scully is mostly dealing with her cancer and her family drama (primarily her brother, who is something of a condescending dickbag about the way she is dealing with her cancer) while Mulder is mostly on the alien stuff. These two things do not jive super well and they end up with both feeling kind of underserved.

Despite all that, I like this episode. Season 5 is just around the corner and we've still got a lot of good episodes ahead, and as I said, I remember liking the Season 5 premier. I can forgive a lot of flaws in an X-Files episode, even the flaw of intentionally lying to me to manipulate me, because I do love this series. And if I'm being totally honest, the sight of Mulder watching that meeting on alien life while crying still hits me right in the heart strings to this day.

...seriously though, I seem to recall just an OCEAN of exposition coming.

Case Results:

• Best Episode: Home
• Worst Episode: Synchrony

Case Notes:

• Kicking off the cold open with a bit of Scully coming to check out the cliffhanger is uh, kind of a cheat.
• Less of a cheat is also having the cold open do a bit of a flashforward to Scully kind of (but not really) selling Mulder out at an FBI meeting.
• Look, I don't wanna tell the scientists at the beginning how to do their job, but finding weird shit in the arctic never works out for anyone. Hell, we learned that in this very show.
• I like the meeting room set, it looks scary but in a realistic sort of way. It also reminds me a bit of the War Room from Dr. Strangelove.
• Hey, is this the first appearance of Scully's brother on screen? Did he not even show up with Scully got abducted?
• Scully's mom brought their pastor in to lecture Scully's lapsed faith in the face of her cancer. That's kind of a cheap move Father Whatever.
• I like the sharp contrast between Scully's brightly lit family dinner and Mulder's darkened apartment. It's a little visual symbolism 101, but it works.
• Scully's brother looks pissed that Mulder is dragging Scully off to the Smithsonian. He should be.
• Scully says to the meeting that she couldn't tell Mulder that she her cancer was getting worse, but it's pretty obvious from the way she's acting.
• I get that the episode is moving pretty fast (and that the Conspiracy is trying to stop the alien from getting pulled from the ice) but I still feel like just shotgunning everyone in the cave is a pretty lazy and conspicuous way of dealing with the guys in the cave.
• The guy they sent to steal the ice core samples is the worst spy ever, he basically wrote "I'm a spy" on his jacket when Scully saw him and then only won the fight cause he got lucky. Put more effort in Spy Guy.
• Scully's brother is not wrong that Mulder is kind of abandoning her, although in his defense, he did just assign her the goal of "Take ice cores to scientist," not his fault it went sideways.
• Hey, Piltdown Man reference. Mulder is, of course, such an all purpose nerd that he knows about it. I'm not bashing it, I know about it too,
• The guy who knocked Scully down the flight of stairs has his prints in the Federal Database. Come on man, that is Spy fail number 2.
• I'd forgotten they spend 5 minutes of this episode on an Alien Autopsy.
• I like the scene in the parking garage. Scully is both determined and PISSED.
• Kritschgau gets caught by Scully and he immediately flips and starts informing. He is the WORST spy.
• Of course the one guy who survived the attack turns out to be a spy. See Kritschgau, that's how you spy.
• I really like the argument Mulder and Scully have in the warehouse. It's emotionally intense and it, and the following scene, are a great acting showcase for Duchovny and Anderson.
• The first time I saw this cliffhanger, it wrecked me all the way. It's still a pretty solid cliffhanger, but it irritates me a little more given that I know they're lying to my face.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Consider checking it out, I think after 4 seasons of this you can tell I'm in for the long hall.

Future Celebrity Watch:

The guy who plays Kritschgau, John Finn, is an actor who's been working steadily since the 80s and continues to this day. He played John Stillman, a main character on a TV show called Cold Case, which despite my having never heard of it, ran for 7 seasons and over 150 episodes. I'm not into police procedural's though, so maybe that's why.

Also, there's a credit for a guy named John Oliver in this episode, but don't get excited, it's not THE John Oliver.