Case 05, File 01: Redux Part 1

AKA: There Is Water At The Bottom Of The Pentagon

Season 5 is the last truly great season of The X-Files. That's not to say that the later seasons don't have great episodes, just that is the end of the Golden Age. And while Season 3 was the experimental and 4 was the dark one, Season 5 was defined by being BIG. Big budgets, big names (both in front of, and behind the camera). Season 5 was, to my mind, the season where they started to see if Fox would balk at the size of check they were being asked to write, and they basically never did.

Our season opens where our last one left off, with Mulder sitting in his apartment crying and apparently contemplating suicide. But this time however, he gets a call from Kritschgau telling him his apartment is being watched and Mulder, still being a bastion of good decision making, decides to go upstairs and attack the guy who is spying on him. That goes sideways, with Mulder ending up shooting him. A Plus Mulder.

So Mulder decides to take advantage of this to fake his own death and enlists Scully's help to have her positively identify the body. She does, but Skinner doesn't buy it, while Mulder uses the dead guy's ID to sneak into the Department of Defense, which seems like it should be harder. Anyhoo, while he's in there, Kritschgau recognizes him and gives him an OCEAN of exposition about how the government used rumors of aliens to cover up their weapons research. I'm not gonna recap it here, cause seriously, there's an acre of it and most of it turns out to be lies as I recall. Anyway, the big points are that the cure for Scully's cancer and for Kritschgau's son are in the building. Somewhere.

Anyhoo, back at the ranch, Scully checks out the phone records of the guy who was spying on Mulder and figures out he was calling the FBI, eventually coming to conclusion he was calling Skinner. She also begins to get some info about the ice cores, and the weird stuff inside them, and decides, on a hunch, to compare the stuff in the ice cores to her own blood, thinking it'll show it has a virus that gave her cancer. I didn't totally follow the logic train there, so I'll just move on. She also has a big fight with Skinner, who knows she's bullshitting about Mulder being dead.

"Did they really just stick a camera down through the floor? I am INSULTED!"

Mulder is sneaking around the DoD and eventually comes across some weird rooms full of dead aliens, people being experimented on and eventually wanders into the weird filing room from the pilot. Remember that room? Anyway, he finds Scully's file and then traces it back to a file cabinet and steals a vial from it. The Cigarette Smoking Man figures out he's sneaking in, but let's him escape with it. We finally, finally, get back to the scene from the previous episode, where Scully is going to show indisputable evidence her cancer was given to her by the government but she collapses of a nosebleed first. And thus the episode ends with Mulder getting the vial tested and finding out it's filled with....water! Cliffhanger!

Redux Part 1 (the new style of naming two part episodes with Part 1/Part 2 might mess up my naming system, but whatever) is yet another middle part of a three part story, so it is once again kind of a meandering story without much of a beginning and no real end. It suffers from being the come down from a cliffhanger that turned out to be bull (and ends in another cliffhanger that is slightly less bull) so I feel like I'm just going to get bogged down in obsessing over details.

One of those details that really bugs me, and bugged me even as a kid, is the absolute tidal wave of exposition Kritschgau hits Mulder with, about the history of the US military using the rumors of aliens to cover up their experimental stuff. A lot of it is redundant or at least unnecessary (I summed up the salient points in the above...sentence) but they devote so much time to it that it almost feels like they needed to pad the episode. In fact, given how much time they spend devoted to Mulder hiding from Department of Defense guards (which is pretty pointless) that I feel like they did need to pad the episode.

"I dunno what Scully is doing, but I bet it's not half as cool as this."

Scully's subplot is more low key, but a lot more engaging. Scully's stakes are a lot more tangible (yes, I know that both Mulder and Scully's subplots have, ultimately, the same stakes, but Scully's feels more real) and her interplay with Skinner is a lot more tense, especially since his motivations are theoretically unknown at this point. I guess it just highlights that Mulder's subplot basically consists of him wandering around a building by himself looking at shit.

The rest of the episode is pretty barren, mostly getting stuff in place for the next episode. The check ins with the Conspiracy are pretty go nowhere (and I find it hard to believe that the Cigarette Smoking Man of all people would buy Mulder's ruse so whole heartedly) but I very much liked the bit where the Cigarette Smoking Man finds out Mulder is sneaking into the Pentagon and specifically orders that he be let go. It's been a while since the series has really been able to sell the Cigarette Smoking Man as a character with genuinely ambiguous motivations, so it's nice to see him be mysterious here.

And then there's Kritschgau. I said this last time, but it's worth reiterating, that Kritschgau is in an awkward space as a character, in that he's incredibly important to these two episodes and still completely flat. We get precious little sense of him as a person here (and as I recall he promptly disappears after the next episode until like...season 6 or 7) so he just feels like he's utilitarian, there to fill a role in the script, rather than a human in the story.

"Sir, you could have just called in your orders."
"This is cooler, now shut up." 

A few months ago a friend of mine suggested I do Part 1/Part 2 reviews as one review, and while I'm probably not gonna do that, I can see the logic. I struggle with the middle part of three part episodes more than any others, because it's hard to find stuff to say about them. So while I feel like I managed to pull it off here, it's the next episode where things get really good. So I'm just gonna call this one here and start on the next one.

Case Notes:

• Hey, they say Last Season On instead of a Previously On. I wonder what makes them say Last Season instead of anything else.
• This is some pretty great Mulder monologue in the cold open.
• The cold open moves pretty fast, but I love the bit where Mulder realizes he's being spied on and then has a very brief and very intense confrontation with the guy with the shotgun.
• I love Mulder waiting in Scully's apartment, even if I still think having Scully know Mulder is alive is a mistake, from an audience standpoint.
• Mulder's main motivation becoming to save Scully is smart, since it's something the audience can connect to. We all love Scully.
• I like that Skinner immediately groks that something it's right with Scully IDing the body. Skinner is no dummy.
• I find it hard to believe that something as classified as the Department of Defense research center can be accessed by just swiping a card. Fingerprints? Passcode? A picture you have to match? Nothing?
• Kritschgau runs into Mulder at the Department of Defense and just decides to give him a walking tour of the DoD.
• For some reason, I love the Cigarette Smoking Man breaking into Mulder's apartment with a Swiss Army Knife. It's very low tech, in a good way.
• William B. Davis does some great acting in his scene alone in Mulder's apartment, conveying a lot of complex emotions without any dialogue.
• I thought the actress who plays the phone operator at the FBI looked familiar: She played the FBI lady who attacked Skinner way back in Pusher. Apparently it's the same character too.
• I like that a huge chunk of the episode is devoted to saying that the US government is basically addicted to war, it probably contributed to most millennials being suspicious of the Military Industrial Complex.
• I actually totally forgot the subplot where the scientist makes the alien body's cells start dividing to create something alive, so I don't remember where it's going.
• Mulder picks the lock inside the Department of Defense with a lockpick in under 30 seconds. The security there is shockingly lacking.
• I gotta say, I'd wanna put my room full of fake alien bodies behind a few more layers of security, due to this exact scenario.
• Also, you keep your room of fake dead aliens next to your room full of people you abducted? Come on military, get on the ball.
• I actually kind of dig the confrontation between Skinner and Scully in the hospital, if only because both of them act the hell out of it.
• How often does an episode contain both Mulder and Scully voice over? I feel like it's pretty rare.
• Hey, it's the big storage room from the pilot (and the last episode of Season 1). This is a good episode for X-Files continuity.
• So wait, the virus in the life form from the ice is the same virus that gave Scully cancer? That's where this subplot is going? Huh.
• And we're back where we started, in the FBI meeting. It only took the entire episode.
• Woah, flashbacks, we almost never get those in this series. Scully looks so young in the flashbacks to the pilot. Long hair Scully is great Scully though.
• I love the Cigarette Smoking Man aiding Mulder's escape from behind the scenes. I will ask why security getting into the building was so loose but so tight getting out.
• I like how bleak this episode ends, Scully collapsing and the Lone Gunmen telling Mulder that all that's in the tube is water. It's good stuff.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I've still got 6 seasons and 2 movies to get through, so consider checking it out to help finance my poor decision making.