Case 05, File 15: Travelers

AKA: Turns Out Roy Cohn Is The Real Monster

I always got the sense The X-Files regretted killing off Mulder's dad as early in their run as they did. Mulder's dad is a conceptually fascinating character, with his conflicted loyalties to his family and to the Conspiracy, the fact that he gave up Samantha to be abducted, his friendship with the Cigarette Smoking Man, all of that stuff could make for a fascinating character, but they killed him off in more or less the same breath in which he arrived in the series. So it's understandable they'd want to jump back to show him in flashbacks.

Our cold open this time around starts off (in 1990 by the by, before the official beginning of The X-Files) with a sheriff going to serve an eviction notice to a guy named Edward Skur. Inside he finds the house is really gross, and also discovers a corpse missing all its fatty tissue, which is a bit odd. Skur, an old man, attacks him, is shot and dies, but says the name Mulder before he dies. Ooh spooky. So our fresh faced young FBI agent Mulder, decides to go meet an old retired FBI Agent named Dales who had a case opened on Skur and find out what happened.

Well it turns out that back in the 50s, Dales arrested Skur due to all that House Unamerican Activities Committee thing, back before we figured it was flat out evil. Before they can haul him up in front of Joseph McCarthy, Skur hangs himself in prison. Dales is wracked with guilt and goes to apologize to the widow Skur but before he can he sees the man himself walking down the street. He chases Skur down, but Skur pins him down and starts to attack him with a...thing in his throat, before getting scared off.

The next morning, after writing in his report that Skur is alive, despite you know, the suicide thing, he Dales gets pressured to remove that part from his report, first by his partner Agent Generic and then by Roy Cohn who I will write more on in a moment. Then he and his partner are called out to check out a dead German doctor, but are confronted by the police when they discover his corpse, which looks like the corpse from the cold open. The local police say they didn't call them but Dales discovers a card telling him to meet the sender at a local bar.

I have no real thoughts on this picture except that he looks incredibly dorky in these glasses and I love it.

Dales goes and meets a man named Mulder. Dun dun dun. Bill Mulder works at the state department and says that the German doctor had experimented on Skur after the War and two other men who killed themselves. Dales figures out Skur is after him and his partner and tries to call his partner to warn him, but it's too late: His partner has been Skur-ed. And he can't even investigate it, cause when he tries, Roy Cohn shows up to tell him to back off. After a brief, overly cute, scene where we find out where the name X-Files comes from, Skur discovers one of the two men's bodies (the ones who killed themselves) are still in the morgue and goes to check it out, only to find an insect...thing in his esophagus. Ick.

Dales decides its time to tell the widow Skur that he's on to what happened to Skur and wants to help him bring the people who experimented on him to justice. The widow Skur goes to see her not-quite-dead husband in the bomb shelter to tell him, but he succumbs to the thing in his throat and she gets Skur-ed. At this point, tired of being jerked around, Cohn shows up (Bill Mulder in tow) and takes Dales to see J Edgar Hoover who gives a slightly unhinged speech about how they need to stop communism and convinces Dales to help bring Skur in.

So Dales meets Skur at a bar and Skur tells him that them meeting is actually just part of the larger experiment and attacks him, but Dales captures him and remains un-Skur-ed. The episode then concludes with Mulder (our Mulder, not Bill Mulder) back in the framing device, wondering how it was that Skur escaped and older Dales musing that someone must have set him free. Oh and we get one last flashback showing that it was Mulder (Bill Mulder, not our Mulder) who set him free.

"Any of us wanna have a reaction to this stuff?"
"Nah man, it's the 50s, we have to suppress our emotions until they manifest as alcoholism or spousal abuse."

When I talked about how they wanted to explore Bill Mulder more, that was a bit of a cheat. I do think they wanted to explore him more, but the episode isn't really about him. What it's about is the fact that Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny had to go shoot the movie this season and they had to write around their availability sometimes. But within the confines of that requirement, the episode is pretty good, and does give us a valuable, if brief, look into the life and times of Bill Mulder.

The historical setting of the episode is one of the more unique things about it, pushing The X-Files' basic concept and style well outside it's usual comfort zone, and it comes with a lot of unique baggage. The X-Files is a show that is constantly suspicious of the government, and if you want a reason to be suspicious of the government, the HUAC would be a damn damn damn fine reason to be suspicious.

And the series does its homework in terms of who to involve. Roy Cohn had died of AIDS 12 years earlier, and America has still not totally reckoned with his actions, but bringing him in here shows that they know how monstrous he really was, and I love how they portray him here, a slimy little asshole, casually abusing his own power and reveling in how much he can get away with, which is a pretty solid interpretation of him, and the actor does a fantastic job in the part. Hoover is a much smaller part of the episode but I love he comes off like an unhinged madman, ranting about communists and patriotism. It's some good portrayals of historical monsters.

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature and you will atone! Am I getting through to Mr. Beale?"
"Uh sir, my name is-"
"Shut up son, I don't care about you, I'm doing something."

The central mystery is a bit of a stop and go, and Skur is not fantastic character, either as an antagonist or deuteragonist (his best scene is the scene in third act with his wife, where we get a sense of his conflict and how much he resents what happened to him) but the plot works pretty well. Dales is a reasonably engaging character, and both the script and the actor do a pretty solid job of making his character arc believable, given that they only have about 2/3rds of a 40 minute episode to show him realizing that he's working for some bastards. His partner is less engaging but he's basically just a victim, so I can roll with it.

If I have a major complaint (aside from Skur not being super interesting) it's that we don't actually get that much out of our friend Bill Mulder. We do eventually find out why Skur said Mulder's name as he died, but Mulder just sort of wanders in and out of the story without a lot of explanation for why he wants to stop the Skur experiment. Yeah it's horrifying and immoral (and Skur hints that Dales' involvement is just part of the experiment itself, but the episode makes it clear that Bill doesn't think that) but so is a lot of stuff that the Conspiracy does, what made this different? And while we're on the subject, why were they sewing alien bugs into people's throats? Was it just for giggles? What was it supposed to accomplish?

A lot of shows wouldn't be able to handle missing one or more of their key characters for episodes at a time (and indeed, losing one of them more permanently would deal the show a crippling blow later in its run). But it's a sign of the power of the series at this point that it manages to keep the engine running at such a high level of quality throughout this season, even with its cast wandering in and out to get to the movie set. A lesser show, or even this show at a lesser power, and that would crash the season around their ears. But they still manage to make episodes like this that, while perhaps not their best work, have engaging stories and themes. And that, that is quite something.

Case Notes:

• Opening the episode with an old guy getting evicted in 1990 is an odd choice, but you do you X-Files.
• I do love the bait and switch of the cop seeing the glove on the bathtub and then realizing it's actually a mummified corpse.
• I like how Mulder is a completely awkward dork in the part where he goes to see the old FBI Agent. It's pretty subtle by acting standards but it's good.
• The old FBI Agent says that he doesn't think Mulder would have heard of HUAC. I know that it's mostly an excuse to explain it to the audience, but Mulder is with the FBI, he is college educated, odds are he's heard of it. It was something of a big deal.
• "Do you think [HUAC] would have found nothing unless nothing was what they wanted to find?" Uh, or it could have been that there were just really really evil?
• Mulder smokes? Mulder SMOKES? Man, he changes so much between now and the pilot episode.
• There's a really solid point about how HUAC was impersonal and cruel for the sake of cruelty. It's mostly flavor to the larger conspiracy narrative, but it's good stuff regardless.
• I do love the old man's narration. It, and the 1950s setting and outfits, give the series a sort of Film Noir feeling.
• Hey, that dude has insect legs coming out of his mouth. That's...neat.
• I genuinely forget big chunks of this episode, so this mystery is kind of intriguing.
• Hey, it's Roy Cohn, IE the most monstrous thing to ever appear on The X-Files. He taught Donald Trump everything he knows. Seriously, look up Roy Cohn sometime, he was fucking evil.
• I do like that they try to communicate how awful and slimy Cohn was in his handful of scenes.
• There's not a lot to talk about when it comes to the dead German guy at the house except I love 50s slang. "You called us ya mope." Love it.
• I like the meeting between Bill Mulder and Dales. Bill Mulder has clearly mastered the Conspiracy's art of saying a lot of words without explaining what's going on at all.
• Scene where Skur kills Dales' partner? Solidly gross, I approve.
• The guy who's playing Cohn is doing a great job oozing nastiness. His best line read is "See, now you're a patriot again."
• I love how casual the explanation for the unsolved cases are filed under "X" is. The writers clearly don't give a shit and they're telling you that you shouldn't either. It's a cool title, don't overthink it.
• Lots of this plot is general X-Files stuff but with the added caveat that since Dales isn't Mulder, he has to get things done other ways, like him browbeating a morgue attendant into doing an autopsy.
• Both Dales and the morgue attendant are pretty calm about a bug crawling out of the dead guy's esophogus.
• Roy Cohn is bad at delegating, he seems to do all his threatening and intimidating in person.
• The room where Dales meets with Hoover (also a complete monster) reminds me of the room where Beale meets the Chairman in Network.
• You know, if I was Skur and I wanted to meet someone when I was on the run, I wouldn't go into a completely empty bar. It tastes like a trap.
• I like that Dales is supposed to die in the bar, it fits with the way the Conspiracy rolls.
• "Hey Mulder, if you keep digging into the X-Files, they'll ruin you." Don't get cute X-Files, it doesn't fit you.
• Mulder's dad letting Skur go is a bit of an odd ending, but it works, so I'll forgive it.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I'm pushing 4 years of doing these reviews, so check it out if you like what I do.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Darren McGavin, who played older Arthur Dales, was a veteran television actor with a huge career, spanning nearly 50 years. Most of the stuff is stuff that people don't really remember nowadays (he got an Emmy nomination for playing Murphy's father on Murphy Brown) but I guess people remember Billy Madison? He played Billy's father.

Future Celebrity Watch:

While not really a celebrity, Fredric Lehne (young Arthur Dales) played Azazel on Supernatural, which is a show that is still going for some reason. Similarly Garret Dillahunt who plays Edward Skur is currently on Fear the Walking Dead, which is a show that sure is on the air.