Case 07, File 21: Je Souhaite

AKA: If I Made A Wishmaster Joke Here, Would Anyone Get It?

What exactly is it that makes an episode a comedy episode instead of a regular Monster of the Week. One could argue that it has to do with how scary or not it is, but that's not it. Humbug is way scarier than Teso dos Bichos. There is a character to the way the plot moves in a comedy episode, good or bad, that gives them a distinct flavor from the regular Monster of the Week episodes and which can, when properly utilized, make what could be a horrifying episode warm and funny.

Our episode opens with a guy named Anson, who works at a self storage and dreams of owning a boat, getting yelled at by his boss for not emptying out a storage unit when instructed. Anson does like 30 seconds of work before he finds a woman rolled up in a rug. That's weird enough already, but when his boss comes looking for him, he finds Anson missing and also his mouth just disappears. So that's really fucking weird.

So our heroes are called in and they decide to go see Anson and the first thing they notice is that he has a huge goddamn boat in his driveway. Anson is hiding out with his brother Leslie (who is in a wheelchair) and the mysterious lady from the rug, and they assume Mulder and Scully are with the IRS about the boat, so Anson hides out. After getting chased off by Leslie, but catching a glimpse of the lady in the rug, Mulder and Scully are completely stumped by what the hell is going on.

Not us though, cause we are immediately privy to a scene where the lady (who we'll call Jenn, cause that's the nickname Mulder gives her later) is demanding Anson use his last wish and Anson complains that he wasted his first two. So after some wrangling, and Jenn trying to get Anson to wish for Leslie to get out of the wheelchair, Anson wishes that he could turn invisible at will and is immediately hit by a truck and dies. A Plus dude, A Plus wish.

Because I'm super nice, I decided to not put up a pic of the manager's face and just show you Scully's reaction.

So Scully has to do an autopsy on an invisible dude which she does by putting yellow dust on him to see him, while Mulder has tracked down the guy who owned the storage locker and has discovered he suddenly got rich and then died when his penis was too big (I am not kidding, that's a thing that happened) with the woman in the rug in tow, which makes Mulder suspect that she's jinniyah, or a female djinn and he tries to get Leslie to give him the thing she came in. Leslie tries to trick him (and Mulder doesn't ACTUALLY buy it) but Leslie goes and recovers the rug.

Things go pretty rapidly sideways from there (except Mulder finds out that Jenn worked with Mussolini and Nixon, that doesn't end up mattering, but it's there). Leslie wishes Anson back to life and then wishes Anson could talk again and then Anson (after doing some screaming) blows up the house trying to get back to being dead. But hey, the rug lands in front of Mulder and Scully and Jenn confirms she's a jinniyah and now Mulder gets three wishes. So that's nice.

Except it's not nice, cause his first wish is for peace on earth and Jenn responds by removing all the people on the earth (okay fair) and then Mulder has to spend a wish getting them all back. Oh and he yells at her in Skinner's office, and then she disappears. So that's funny. Anyway, Mulder gets it in his head that he can get it okay if he comes up with the best worded wish, but Scully convinces him that it's not worth and he wishes for her freedom (Aladdin style baby) and the episode ends with Mulder and Scully hanging out and watching Caddyshack together while Jenn is off in a coffee shop somewhere.

Well guys, gals and nonbinary pals, we did it, we made it to the last Monster of the Week episode of the original Mulder and Scully run. And honestly, since most of my rewatches have trailed off around here, it feels like a good place for the series to end. But it's not where the series stopped and we're not going to pretend that it is either. The X-Files will continue beyond this episode, but there are times when I wish it could have gone out with the kind of grace this episode has.

This shot makes me laugh so much I needed to put it here.

The biggest strength this episode has is its characters, which is where it gets most of its humor. It's not an episode with a particularly complex theme (it basically has Jenny state its theme aloud in the third act) but the characters are so entertaining and believable that it hardly matters. Anson and Leslie are solidly enough realized characters and their back and forth entertaining enough that it manages to carry a HUGE chunk of the first half hour of the episode, even while the mystery of what's going on is basically already resolved.

Which does lead neatly into the episode's only major flaw, which is a somewhat wobbly structure. The mystery is more or less resolved for the audience about 10 minutes in when we see the boat in the driveway (and we get confirmation about a scene later) and Mulder and Scully don't get to meet Jenn until we're about 10 minutes away from the end, so they have to bolt through Mulder's scenes with her. It's not that I don't like the Anson, Leslie and Jenn show, but I also like the Mulder and Jenn show (featuring guest star Scully) and I wish we got more of it.

But the stuff we get is pretty uniformly great. The episode might not express its theme in a super complex way, but it makes up for that with some highly amusing writing and acting in other areas. The visual gag of Scully having to color in Anson's invisible body isn't just a really solid effect, it's also a great character beat for Scully, and watching Anderson play up that delight is great, as is Mulder's extreme amusement at the previous uh...wish getter (owner? user? All of those feel gross) having died from his dick being too big. Dick jokes are usually easy to make puerile or just plain lame, but Duchovny sells it with a mix of using big words and just generally being amused himself.

It helps that the episode is punching well above its weight level in the effects department. I've already mentioned how the bit with Scully and the invisible corpse is fun, but the explosion that levels Anson and Leslie's house is really impressive, especially as the culmination of a joke that had been building in the scene for a while. And yeah, emptying downtown LA for what amounts to a bit in the final minutes is just really impressive.

Yeah, I've seen Zabrinsky Point too, ya ain't special.

But I think what this episode has, what the series has and is about to lose, is a more nebulous thing that I can best describe as a kind of warmth. The writing and directing don't noticeably dip in Season Eight (or at least I don't recall them doing so, I am prepared to eat those words) and the replacement pair are fine in-and-of themselves, but they never had the easygoing, comfortable chemistry that Duchovny and Anderson have, and when that goes away, the whole series suffers for it. The X-Files was never a hangout sitcom where we just visit with characters we like, but it can occasionally tap into that vibe and this episode has it in spades.

I first fell in love with The X-Files based on a VHS copy of Darkness Falls that the Anchorage library had and I watched repeatedly one summer, and part of that was how much I love Mulder, Scully and Mulder & Scully (I used to joke with a friend that the moment I knew I was gonna love this series was Mulder's "Come on, it'll be a nice trip to the forest" line.) I'm committed to bringing this blog all the way through Season 11, but I'll be lying if it's not hard to say goodbye to the era of The X-Files that made me a fan and move on to episodes I don't know as well.

Case Notes:

• I want to make fun of the fact that Anson is so incredibly oblivious that it takes like 2 minutes of yelling for him to realize he's being talked to, but I think the writers just found saying the name "Anson" over and over funny.
• Dialogue in the cold open is VERY on the nose, but at least we've got our characters set up.
• It is gonna take way more than an hour to clean out that storage unit, at least for one person.
• The boss with his mouth fused shut is VERY disturbing, especially for a comedy episode.
• Scully reacting badly to the boss' new mouth is good stuff, as is Mulder's clear discomfort. It is quite gross.
• Mulder and Scully bantering their way across the trailer park until they notice the boat is making me all misty eyed.
• I like that Anson assumes Mulder and Scully are with the IRS and are obsessed with getting slammed with taxes on it, it's a good character note.
• Mulder basically admitting he has no idea what the hell is going on, is cute, I like cute.
• Jenn gets a lot of characterization very fast during her talk with Anson and Leslie, this deep rooted disdain for the both of them and trying to get them to wish for Leslie's legs to get healed.
• The bit were Anson is invisible is a bit too long for its punchline, but it's funny, so fine.
• Okay I lied, the bike getting flipped on the invisible corpse makes the entire bit worth it.
• The dude who had the djinn before Anson having died from his dick being too big would probably be less funny if they didn't have Mulder dancing around saying it that way.
• Mulder and Leslie humming the I Dream of Jeannie theme is hitting that right level of cuteness that this episode is riding on.
• Leslie lying to Mulder is good, Mulder instantly realizing that Leslie is lying to him is better.
• Jenn having been involved in Mussolini and Nixon is something I don't need.
• Leslie and Anson being too stupid to figure out that they should wish for Leslie to get out of his wheelchair is semi-fun but it takes too long each time they do it. I do like him going for a solid gold wheelchair the second time.
• Poor Scully, having to look crazy in front of the guys from Harvard.
• The bit with Undead Anson, Leslie and Jenn is one of those things that shouldn't be as funny as it is. Just the timing on that scream is great.
• Jenn's rant is pretty on the nose for what the theme of the episode is, but the actress sells it pretty well. The funny bit about what she was wishing for in 15th century France helps a lot too.
• Mulder gets access to his wishes a bit late in the episode to do a full bit with them, so they kind of have to rush through him realizing he should make an altruistic wish and then making a stupid one, but him running down the empty street is solid enough I guess.
• Mulder ranting at Jenn and having the camera pan down to reveal the rest of the meeting there is an easy joke, but they pull it off pretty well and it's nice to see the show using the camera as part of the comedy.
• The final scene with Mulder and Scully in his office is okay, a little on the nose again, but it features the thing that I felt the other comedy episodes were missing, some actual thoughts in its head.
• Mulder and Scully sitting on the couch and snarking about Mulder choosing Caddyshack is making me misty eyed again. I love them so much.
• Jenn sitting in a coffee shop without the djinn mark is where the episode obviously has to end, but again, it pulls it off.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I'd feel a lot better slogging through the next few seasons if I had some more support off it, so check it out.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Anson is played by Kevin Weisman, a solid TV actor who has hung around a lot and been in a lot of major TV shows. His biggest role is probably as the tech guy in Alias, a show I know very little about. He also recently played Gert's dad on Runaways, which is pretty good. I like the comic better, but you know how it is with comics.

Will Sasso, who plays Leslie, hasn't had any roles of that size, but he did play a main character on a sitcom called Less Than Perfect which I've never heard of until I saw it on his IMDB page. Apparently Andy Dick is it? Is that why we let him keep hanging around?