Case 07, File 13: First Person Shooter

AKA: Twitch Stream This

Once, while on a stream with YouTuber and generally excellent human Dan Olson, he said to me that, for any discussion of the worst episode of The X-Files to be interesting, Space has to be excluded. His reasoning was sound: Space is the episode with the least good in it, basically nothing worth talking about (and thus a very dull episode to review, honestly). But while there are no episodes with less good in them, there are some episodes with much, much, much more bad in them.

Our episode opens with three guys who somehow manage to give off strong nerd and strong meathead vibes entering a video game that is also a...holographic laser tag arena? Whatever, just roll with it or we'll be here all day. They're playtesting this game on behalf of the developers, who appear to only be one guy who's weirdly into it and one girl who spends of the time rolling her eyes. Anyway, after a few rounds of shooting holographic motorcyclists and Nazis (roll with it I said!) one of them ends up alone in a building, at which point a lady skintight leather shows up and shoots one of the dudes with a flintlock, actually killing him.

So our heroes are called in by the Lone Gunmen, who it turns out have been working for the company who makes the game in exchange for stock options so they're pretty invested in making sure it gets fixed. Unfortunately Scully sees a dead dude with a gunshot wound and isn't down to try and cover it up to save face for the company and thus calls the cops. Mulder meanwhile tries to get some info from the game and finds a wire frame (and eventual texture wrap) of the lady. Why didn't they have film of that area? Cause the episode needed some padding, shut up.

Anyway, Mulder puts out an APB for the lady while a Japanese super gamer shows up to kill the lady in the game (if you think that sentence is dumb, it's only going to get worse). After easily advancing to the lady, she immediately chops his hands and head off with a broadsword. After Scully does an autopsy of the initial corpse and finds no bullet, the cops pick up a woman who matches the description. She turns out to be an exotic dancer named Jade Blue Afterglow (told you) and she was, at some point in the past, paid to let some game designer scan her body.

"This is the most exciting game ever! I mean, we're standing in place and firing directly in front of us, what could be more intense?"

So the designers try to program around the lady who is uh, killing people, and send the Lone Gunmen to test it out, but of course she activates the game and tries to kill them, so Mulder goes in to save them in what is pretty clearly a terrible plan. But, because it wasn't terrible enough already, Mulder decides to pursue the lady when he sees her and when the game finally shuts off, Mulder has disappeared. Not sure how that works when the warehouse that houses the game is like, a finite physical space but whatever, I gave up on this episode making sense a while ago.

So after some arguing, they discover that the lady designer was the one who scanned Jade Blue Afterglow and made the killer lady for her own video game and she...somehow jumped into the other game and is feeding off male aggression? I didn't follow this part at all, and it doesn't matter, because they find Mulder trapped in the next level of the game, getting his ass kicked by the video game lady, and Scully goes in to rescue him. After a fairly lengthy amount of time where basically nothing happens but Scully shoots at the video game lady, they discover the game has a kill switch that destroys the entire game and use it. And so, as Mulder muses about video games and violence, the episode ends with the lady returning to the computer, looking like Scully. Roll with it I said!

Space may be the episode with least good, but First Person Shooter might be the one with the most bad. Right from the first moment, this episode is deeply tacky and incredibly annoying and it only gets worse. It's hard to think of an episode that tries to bring up more issues and fails so dramatically to actually address them in a meaningful way. To this day, I still can't believe that William Gibson, not only the author of Neuromancer but previous really excellent episode Kill Switch wrote this goddamn thing.

And it really is the script that sinks this thing. There's many other problems, but most of them would be forgivable if the script wasn't so godawful. The most obvious way the script sucks is the dialogue, which ranges from merely bad to cringe-worthy, but I actually think the bigger problem is that the script can't pick a subject. At various points it brings up sexism in the tech industry, male aggression, violence in the culture and it never actually explores any of them. It also has the much bigger, and more interesting concept it brings up, that the tech company would rather sweep deaths under the rug than protect their customers, is there in the text but never explored. Actually picking a theme and using it as the underpinning for the story might have given the episode focus.

This whole bit is weird, and kind of gross, but I like this moment, Duchovny is funny.

Giving the episode focus might have given the characters some depth, or at least given them something to do, but our episode specific characters are as flat as cardboard and never seem to actually do anything, until the lady designer gives them the kill code in the final minutes. There's the germ of a good character to her, that she feels stifled working in the testosterone poisoned industry, but the episode can't figure out what to do with it, and the fact that she apparently designed her escapist lady character to still be absurdly hyper sexualized betrays that the episode isn't interested in exploring it (and it certainly isn't interested in exploring the strong lesbian vibe that creates).

Some of this might be more excusable if the episode was at least exciting to watch, but it's not. The episode seems to be leaning hard into being an action episode, but they have no idea how to make that work in this context. The actual action beats are pretty dull, mostly flat shots of the characters shooting at something off screen and then flat shots of whatever it is being shot.  It's frustrating, because I know the show can do better than this; They've shot better shootouts, as well as tense moments of action or violence in the series before, but here they just decided to phone it all the way in, and it kills the last hope the episode has to not be a slog to watch.

If the episode has one redeeming value, it's as a snapshot of the public perception of the video games industry at a VERY specific moment in time. Sure the dialogue is excruciating (especially the stuff the two designers spout) but it's fascinating to see the video games industry treated like a rock star industry, with crazy security, the NDAs signed at the door and the lavish studio spaces. This particular moment in time was rapidly coming to a close (when this episode aired Daikatana was less than 90 days away from coming out, crashing and burning and killing the "Rock Star Developer" idea, along with several studios) but it is at least interesting to see it preserved so entirely.

I promised myself I'd only include one stupid moment from the game in the pics, and this one still makes me the laugh the hardest.

At the end of the day, the people I feel worst for is the actors. Anderson, Duchovny, the Lone Gunmen, even the two-devs they're all clearly doing their best (I particularly like Scully's barely concealed contempt for the entire first half) but they can't save this thing. Something like 60% of the worst dialogue of the series in this episode, and I can't think of a single cast member of this episode where this isn't one of the worst things they've appeared in.

...okay, maybe Krista Allen.

Case Notes:

• The cold open is already pretty dumb, and the dialogue is so intensely on the nose it's painful.
• Honestly, the game doesn't look that fun to play. Like, it's one corridor with motorcycles running at you and then they run down the corridor while guys fire at them from above? Your average laser tag game is more interesting.
• How are they measuring adrenaline in real time-no, you know what, I don't care.
• Maitreya is introduced Ass First like this is a Michael Bay movie.
• I feel like the stuff with the crazy over the top security and lavish treatment of the design team dates the episode to its exact moment in time.
• Mulder is defending the game as "Digital Entertainment." Is Mulder a gamer? I feel like we've never seen him game before.
• I actually like the Lone Gunmen trying to talk up Silicon Valley before they reveal they're invested in the company. It's awkward, but on purpose.
• I'm sorry, the game ships on Friday to 50 malls? Are they going to build the goddamn warehouse they apparently need to house this thing?
• The programmer dude is complaining that Scully is calling the cops but...Mulder and Scully are cops? The FBI are law enforcement, how did you expect this to go?
• I can't note every instance of it, because it's constant, but the dialogue in this episode is a physical assault on me.
• The cop is incredibly dismissive of an actual dead body with a gunshot wound.
• Oh my god, I'd forgotten they brought in a pro-gamer to kill the ninja lady, oh my god.
• The whole sequence with Daryl Musashi is deeply embarrassing for everyone involved, especially the writers. Dude getting his hands and head chopped off is grim tho.
• I'm sorry, the game designers didn't even give Scully the dude's name before she went off to do his autopsy?
• I feel like the bit in the morgue where Mulder and Scully discuss video game violence is what the episode WANTS to be about, but's not actually about that, it's should be more about the sexism aspect that it treats like a joke.
• The cops acting like drooling idiots around the lady is both probably pretty accurate and also kind of sad. They're LA cops, shouldn't they be used to sex workers?
• The episode pulls a visual reference to Basic Instinct, which would normally irritate me but is about the level we're at.
• "Jade Blue Afterglow" (yikes) acts exactly like someone should not act when arrested by the police. If you're going to say stuff, say exonerating stuff, or better yet, just shut up and ask for a lawyer.
• I'm not clear on why the Lone Gunmen needed Mulder to come down there in order to just like...leave the game space? Like, walk out of the room?
• The effect where Maitreya disappears into her sword is neat I guess.
• The bit where Mulder runs after the lady and then subsequently disappears into the game space is where the episode gets truly truly stupid. Why have a concept if you're not going to stick to it?
• Maitreya flipping at Mulder like a pinwheel is HYSTERICALLY funny.
• I like Scully implying the FBI is a haze of testosterone. Cause it is.
• I'm not clear on what Phoebe is supposed to be getting out of the incredibly sexualized fantasy character or how it's striking back as a woman. Again, if they were willing to go explicit with the Strong Lesbian Vibe, this might work better.
• The idea that Maitreya is feeding off the male aggression is a really weird one which is never followed up on and I feel like the episode still doesn't know what its plot is actually about. Which is a problem in the last 10 minutes of the episode
• The shot with Mulder standing the wild west town with the sword is bad but the really terrible green screen is what makes it comical.
• Why is the first level the dystopian city but the second is wild wes-look I'm done asking questions, whatever, we're almost done.
• The climax of this episode is something like the same 5 shots repeated over and over as Maitreya just keeps summoning new things and Scully stands perfectly still shooting directly in front of her. I wonder why this episode wasn't well received.
• Mulder's final monologue reads a little too close to a parody of Mulder speeches, which makes me feel like maybe this episode should have been more overtly comedic.
• I have no idea what I'm supposed to take away from the digital Scully at the end and at this point I'm too tired to care.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I'm not a rock star video game designer, so check it out.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Krista Allen, who plays Maitreya/Jade Blue Afterglow has been in a BUNCH of stuff (including a lot of episodes of Baywatch?) but she is probably best known for playing the title role in the Emmanuelle softcore porn series. No judgement, she probably got paid pretty well for it.

In addition, Michael Ray Bower, who plays Lo-Fat (sigh) was on the Nickelodeon tv show Salute Your Shorts as Donkeylips. I never watched it, but all indications are it was well regarded for early 90s kids programming, so good on him.