Case 07, File 09: Signs and Wonders

AKA: I Was Born A Snake Handler And I'll Die A Snake Handler

There is a moment in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace in which a character is dying and, randomly, decides to spout off some facts about Bermuda. It's funny, not just because of the non-sequitur but because, like much of Darkplace, it's reflective of a real thing writers do. Get too into researching an idea or concept and you can find yourself forcing that stuff in because it's just on your brain. You can even find yourself writing an entire episode about it.

Our episode opens with a young man, Jared Chirp, being kind of pissed about medical results and then grabbing a gun and trying to drive away. Turns out to not be a good idea as a bunch of snakes show up in his car and bite him to death. But since there are no snakes in the car when others investigate, Mulder and Scully are called in to check that out. Disappearing snakes is weird, right? Turns out Jared, and his pregnant girlfriend Gracie, used to belong to a fundamentalist Church that practices Snake Handling, that is holding onto poisonous snakes to prove your faith. They currently belong to a much more progressive Church run by a guy named Mackey.

Mulder and Scully go and check out the church and get threatened by snakes who are just hanging around the Church, and also get to meet the pastor, Enoch, who is a weirdo who says that he prays for Chirp's soul and is generally menacing. That night during Enoch's snake-ified service and Mackey's normal service, Mackey's church lady is attacked by snakes that, likewise, disappear. Our heroes decide they want to interview Gracie and it turns out she's Enoch's daughter and she left cause Enoch is a weirdo.

So they decide to go back to Enoch's church and Enoch, being a weirdo, grabs Scully and tries to put her hand in a snake cage. An unorthodox way of dealing with a federal agent, to be sure. So Enoch ends up in jail, where he maintains that he didn't kill anyone (even though his wife died of snake bites) and his daughter insists on his innocence too. Mulder and Scully head out to Chirp's house where they find his medical tests that say he's infertile. Back at the prison, Enoch seems to be telling the truth too, as that night a bunch of snakes show up and bite him a bunch. It's scarier than I'm making it sound.

"A snake! Near my gun! That's exactly what I didn't want!" 

He lives through the attack, but his daughter won't let him get treatment because once you've gone Snake Handler, you might as well be a Christian Scientist too. Mulder and Scully learn from Mackey that the actual father of Gracie's child is Enoch, which makes me wonder if they're related to the Peacock family. But before anything can come from that, Enoch's body expels the venom (gross) and he kidnaps Gracie back to his Church where they give her an exorcism that results in her giving birth to snakes. So that's uh...yeah not gonna beat around the bush, that's gross.

Okay, home stretch: Mulder and Scully take Gracie back to the hospital but Gracie says Enoch saved her. Enoch attacks Mackey saying he took Gracie away from him. Mulder arrives and stops Enoch from killing him but gets a hunch at Mackey is actually responsible (and was also the father of Gracie's baby but they just skip past that). Mackey attacks Mulder with snakes, but Scully arrives to save him, and the episode ends with Mackey in place at a new church in Connecticut. He's apparently in Hamden, which I have no special insight into, I've never been to Hamden.

To say I took issue with the theme of this episode when I was younger (much less now in the hellish year of our lord 2020), is an understatement. I haven't been Christian for a long time now, but the point of this episode, that the nasty cruel version of Christianity practiced by Enoch is a more faithful version of Christianity, still rankles me to this day. But as much as that bothers me, I'll try not to make this review about that; There's plenty about this episode to both like and dislike outside of that theme.

The central thing to like about this episode is that it's creepy Monster of the Week episode, which it feels like we haven't gotten for a while. Sure we haven't had Myth Arc episodes in a while, but outside of Rush, the only non-funny Monster of the Week episodes we've had have been sequels to previous episodes or other series (plus one major experiment with the form). It's nice to see the series just get back to basics with just Mulder, Scully and a mystery to solve. We'll get more of those as the season progresses but this is at least good for that.

"I'm just expressing my religion!"
"I am 1,000% sure this isn't covered by the 1st Amendment!" 

The mystery is one of those that feels like a good twist at the time but doesn't work in the long run (we call that a Saw twist). The problem with the twist is, I don't think it really plays fair. Sure, it's surprising that Mackey is the bad guy and Enoch is the good guy, but it's surprising because it doesn't make any sense. We are given no reason to distrust Mackey and Enoch spends the entire episode acting like an unhinged lunatic. A handful of moments where Mackey acted shifty, or Enoch acted less like the kind of person who sticks random women's hands in snake cages, we might have had a chance to see it coming.

The script as a whole feels a little oddly paced, probably as a result of repeated stops to drop some exposition. The writer clearly spent a lot of time reading about snakes and snake handling, and a lot of that information made it into the episode, even when we didn't strictly speaking need it. I also feel like it could benefit from a stronger focus on Gracie, who is supposedly the central figure the episode turns on, but who never seems to do anything. The closest we get is her deciding to keep Enoch from getting medical treatment for his snake bites, but that's about it. More information on her relationship with Enoch, or even Jared, would make for a stronger character and better stakes as a result. I mean, we find out her mom died from snake bites but never whether that informed her decision to leave the church, come on.

Aside from that the episode mostly works as a creepy showcase of good horror sequences. Snakes are kind of inherently creepy, and while the episode gets some work out of that, most of its great stuff is atypical use of snakes. Yes we all thought Gracie's stomach writhing was creepy, but Enoch's body suddenly expelling all the venom is the most intense sequence in the episode by a mile, and also a unique way to approach this material. Even this far into the series, they're still finding cool new ways to gross me out.

"So you know I'm a demon, what are you gonna do, exorcise me?"
"Hm? Oh that's a much better idea, I was just gonna straight up stab ya." 

Of course I do, eventually, have to approach the theme that bugs me so much, that sometimes intolerance can be good (not my interpretation, the EP said that) and that Enoch's brand of angry hateful Christianity is closer to the real thing. And I hate that theme, because it's the logic train used to empower some of the worst aspects of American Christianity. Maybe it was a less heinous theme in January of 2000 but by the time I watched it, I had no patience for it and in the hellish year of 2020 I have even less interest in it. Maybe that's not fair, but a lot of my reviews have an emotional component, so here we are.

There are other more minor issues I take with the episode (Mackey could stand to be a little creepier and Enoch could stand to be a little more over the top) but in the broad strokes there's nothing really wrong with Signs and Wonders. It's a perfectly serviceable little Monster of the Week episode with a theme that just happens to rub me the wrong way, which I think is making me overly critical. Maybe I should take a step back and try to see it with fresh eyes, since we're running short of classic flavor Mulder and Scully Monster episodes, but I'm not sure I want to do that, and I don't think it would yield a different opinion if I did.

Case Notes:

• The cold open starts with a guy ripping up a medical results paper and it seems like that should be in a different show.
• Honestly up until the snake rattle, this could the cold open to like, 20 different episodes (dark stormy night, dude is running from something, mysterious person outside his house). Snakes add a lot though.
• The visual of the guy having been bitten like, 100 times is pretty nasty, even Scully looks taken aback.
• The episode makes several stops at "Facts about snakes and snake handlers" junction, and they all feel like some pretty heavy exposition dumps.
• I wonder if viewers outside the US thought this episode was making up the snake handlers or the hardcore Christians in the US. No, they're real, it's distressing.
• Mulder makes a pretty explicit dick joke to Scully, good stuff.
• Mulder and Scully stop in the middle of their investigation to discuss how Scully's belief, the snake handler's belief and Mulder's belief in flying saucers aren't that different because The X-Files loves pointing out the parallels between Mulder's beliefs and religious beliefs.
• Enoch has okay presence, but he seems more low key than the episode needs, I think we need a scenery chewer.
• The cut from the snake mouth to the staple remover is a great match shot, better than the weird morph of the staple remover into a snake.
• The family drama stuff in the middle is a solid, if blunt, way of showing the fallout of belonging to a weirdo church. More of that would have been nice.
• Scully just straight up breaks into a dude's trailer. I guess Mulder is rubbing off on her.
• Could someone tell Enoch that forcing an FBI agent to hold her hand in a box full of snakes is an excellent way to end up in jail?
• The snakes coming to attack Enoch is a good mid-episode twist, I'll give the episode that.
• Mulder saying that people want to be told what to believe is a better theme for this episode to have, but it's not what the rest of the episode goes on about.
• I think that the medical test in the cold open was originally going to be a paternity test, but then they realized that Gracie can't know about him getting tested, which is where the "Sterility" test came from.
• The "Giving birth to snakes" scene goes too fast to hit the way it wants to, but I'll admit it's also a solidly disturbing sequence.
• The reveal that Mackey is the actual villain is something that should have hit the audience earlier, as it is we have to rush through what should be like, 3 or 4 scenes in about 90 seconds.
• The final bit, with the snake coming out of Mackey's mouth, is just too silly for this episode which has been much more on the grim and scary side.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out because I can't go around handling snakes for money.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Reverend Mackey is played by Randy Oglesby, who has never been famous or well known in any major role, but did get to play Tom's father on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip where he got to deliver the immortal line "That's swell Tommy, but your little brother is standing in the middle of Afghanistan!"

In addition, Gracie is played by Tracy Middendorf who did a two season run as a character's mom in the Scream tv show. I honestly keep forgetting they made a Scream tv show, so if someone wants to tell me if her role was big, feel free.