Case 06, File 02: Drive

AKA: If I Make A Reference To The Ryan Gosling Movie Will People Get It?

The X-Files is not an actor's show. That's not an insult, a lot of my favorite shows aren't really focused on the acting. The series is mostly known for good sci-fi hooks, solid monsters and scary sequences, more than it's known for its acting. The flip side of that is that the genuinely great performances, not merely good but great, tend to be the ones that really stick in the audience's minds.

We kick off with the main, non-FBI, character of this episode, Patrick Crump, driving his wife down the road fast enough that the cops have decided he should stop. After they stop and arrest him, his wife's head, lemme just check my notes here, pops. Like, explodes. Gross. Meanwhile, our intrepid heroes are, lemme just check my notes, investigating people buying large amounts of fertilizer. Mulder is naturally not gonna stand for that and when he catches a glimpse of Crump's situation on TV, he decides to go check it out.

When they get there, Scully is completely baffled by what happened to Crump's wife, while Mulder's desire to talk to Crump is interrupted, first by the fact that Crump has started hearing a high pitched noise and is going nuts over it and then by the fact that Crump has, lemme check my notes, taken Mulder hostage and forced him to drive him west. Scully however thinks that what caused it is a disease and quarantines herself in the morgue.

During the high speed hostage situation (how often do you get to say that about an X-Files episode?), Mulder's phone gets tossed out the window and Mulder starts to realize that Crump, for all his bluster, starts to suffer unbearable pain if he slows down. Realizing that something is weird, he decides to try and help Crump, avoiding a roadblock for him.

"What do you see there Chuck?"
"I see what I think is an OJ Simpson reference but that joke would be 4 years out of date, I don't think that's possible."

Scully, who at this point has probably given up trying to stop Mulder from doing stupid shit like this, finds out it's not a pathogen, even though someone else has died from it, and goes to go check it out, eventually discovering that all the stuff in the area where the second victim was found has died, except for one old deaf woman. Meanwhile Mulder and Crump are having a good time, finding out that they have to keep driving west to keep Crump alive, stealing a car when they run out of gas and finding out Crump is kind of a racist. Good times.

But we're running out of time, since there's only so far west they can go from Utah. After some more investigating (including Scully lying to the army, neat) Scully gets her theory. Some sort of sound wave caused by the military near where the deaf woman, and Crump, lived messed up their inner ear bad enough to the point where if it goes off, their heads are gonna explode. She has a plan to try and save him, where she overshoots the car in a jet and jams a needle in his ear to fix it. This uh, well thought out plan never manages to go off though, because Crump dies before they can him there, and the episode ends as many in this season will end, with Director Kersh being a dickbag to our heroes.

The plot summary might not properly communicate this so let me be clear: This episode is a barn burner, a great first Monster Of The Week for the season and another clear example of what the series is capable of when it's firing all cylinders. It's not a complex episode (in fact, I'm about to spend the next few paragraphs explaining all the elements that make it work as well as it does) but it's always been one of my favorite episodes of the season and probably the best piece of evidence that the series still has gas in the tank going into Season Six.

"GIVE! ME! AN! EMMY!"

Our first big element is how well this particular threat fits everything together to make the episode exciting. The basic premise (having to keep driving at high speed or Crump will die) is already a solid starting point, especially with the great auditory detail of the audience hearing the high pitched ringing noise, but tossing in the hostage situation adds an immediate element of danger to the people we actually care about even before we've gotten to connect with Crump, and forcing the drive to constantly move west is just the icing on the cake, giving the drive a ticking clock to solve this thing as they rapidly run out of places to go to the west.

The other major element that elevates this episode is of course, our secondary character, Crump (or Mr. Crump, as he insists on being called). Some of the best episodes have villains who are a mix of villain and victim, and Crump is in that category, both the guy who's taking Mulder hostage and also an innocent man mixed up in a plot beyond his understanding. It also helps that he's kind of a racist dickbag, it helps him feel like a fully realized person rather than a generic victim, and it gives the audience an easy way to see his interactions with Mulder softening. And of course Cranston plays him excellently, giving him just the right mix of standoffishness and pathos to make him a great character.

It's a well directed and paced episode too. The episode opens with some news footage of Crump's first drive, which is a unique way to open the episode, and we've barely even arrived at the police station where Crump is being held before we're tearing out across the desert. It doles out new plot points in a smart way, spends an appropriate amount of time on the actual mechanics of keeping Crump alive and getting back into contact with Scully (like the gas station car theft or the bit where Mulder gets a new cellphone) and it looks great to boot. Honestly, I think part of the reason this episode got made is to take advantage of the move to LA by actually shooting an episode set near there.

There's generally a lot of small touches that make the episode work. I like Mulder instantly figuring out that he's actually the one in control of the situation when Crump starts being in agony. I like that it's Scully who figures out what the deal is this episode (and I also like her lying to the army guy when he assumes she's with the FCC. Mulder is rubbing off on her). I really like the bit where Scully goes to check out the place where the other guy died. The suits they're wearing and the way it's shot give it an otherworldly feeling, which is nice.

"Anyone else reminded of the opening of The Martian?"
"That movie won't come out for 17 years, can we PLEASE get some contemporary references?"

If there's one element that doesn't work for me at all, it's Kersh's interjection at the end. I get that Kersh is our new in the FBI antagonist, but Skinner was a complex character with ambiguous motives, Kersh is just needlessly antagonistic in ways that don't make sense. He more or less tells Mulder that he wants him to quit in the final scene here, which seems like an odd thing for a Director of the FBI to say to one of his agents. I'll probably complain about Kersh a lot this season, but having him get the denoucement in an excellent episode like this one just rubs me the wrong way.

The series as a whole lives and dies on its Monster of the Week episodes, since those make up the bulk of the show, which is why it's always surprising to see how many things have to be working well together to make it work and how many ways it could have gone wrong. Episodes like this one, ones that are really incredibly solid from beginning to end, are the kind I look forward to the most, because they're great fun to watch and review, and reaffirm why this show is my favorite show of all time.

Case Notes:

• As cold opens go, this one is exceptionally solid, very creepy, great sense of mystery to what's going on, and naturally some great Bryan Cranston.
• I get that they want Mulder and Scully doing normal FBI stuff but Mulder does have like, actual skills, why are they using him on checking fertilizer purchases. Is it really smart to use him like this, even if it is to humiliate him?
• Mulder catches a glimpse of something weird on TV and he's immediately ditching his assignment to go check it out. God I love him.
• It's a measure of what kind of episodes the series usually makes that, when Scully is checking out the dead wife's skull, I keep expecting some sort of bug to jump out.
• I know Crump has been through a lot, but I feel like "I need to drive west, fast, in order to not die," is one of those things you want to explain slowly and carefully.
• Scully immediately starts trying to contain what she thinks is a disease outbreak and Mulder gets taken hostage. At least this episode is playing to their strengths.
• Mulder sees Crump react to him stopping at a light and immediately groks the basics of what's going on and also that he's actually holds the power. I like when the series remembers he's observant.
• Our check in with Kersh is kind of eh, he's still just villainous for the sake of it, and I'm not interested in his input.
• Crump thinks Mulder is Jewish, in what is both an oddly awful character moment and a weird callback to Season 4.
• I like the feeling of the scenes where Scully and the other FBI agents check out Crump's place, the lighting and the suits they're wearing giving it a really eerie tone.
• The X-Files doesn't often indulge in its monsters killing animals so this thing killing a dog is unique.
• Scully actually figures out what's going on before Mulder does, at least from her end of things.
• Mulder leaves Scully a slightly unhinged note about how he has to keep driving, and Scully trusts him enough to take him at his word.
• I like Crump trying to be nicer even as he feels his life kinda running out. He and Mulder's exchanges give the plot a real weight to it.
• Scully realizes that the military officer thinks she's from the FCC and just rolls with it. Mulder is rubbing off on her.
• I like the big exposition dump at the end but I also love the fact that they basically admit they had no reason to make it so that he had to keep going west other than to provide a ticking clock. I ain't knocking it, the ticking clock works like gangbusters.
• Mulder looks so dejected at the end of the drive.
• Kersh is so obvious in his desire to make Mulder quit that it makes him less of a character. I do like Scully's last word on the matter though. "Big pile of manure."
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Please check it out so I can continue to justify my terrible life choices.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Apparently the guy who plays the farmer they meet at the beginning, Junior Brown, was a semi-well known country singer at this point. Or maybe he wasn't well known? He'd released six albums by 98. I have no knowledge of the 90s country scene so if someone wants to chime in here, feel free.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Crump is, of course, played by Bryan Cranston. Cranston was a rising star at this point (he was then playing David Whatley, a recurring character and excellently detestable person, on Seinfeld). He'd first get really noticed a few years later as the dad on Malcolm in the Middle and, of course, would become a big name playing Walter White on Breaking Bad, a show run by this episode's writer Vince Gilligan. Most versions of how he got cast point to this episode as the one that made Gilligan want to hire him.