Case 08, File 01: Within

AKA: What An Oddly Disconcerting Title

We're beginning to swim into some uncharted waters here. Not completely uncharted mind you, I have seen all these episodes, but while the earlier seasons of The X-Files (especially Seasons 1-5) are borderline tattooed on my brain, for some reasons my rewatches often trailed off around this point in the series. So while I know how this all shakes out, the details will often be surprising to me. I dunno if this is gonna make my reviews better or worse, but it'll probably make them different.

Our episode kicks off more or less where it ended, Scully is hanging around her apartment, musing on her pregnancy and Mulder's disappearance. Of course when she gets to the FBI she finds her and Mulder's office being ransacked because the FBI is looking for Mulder. Kersh is in charge of the search (I can't even summon a sarcastic yay) and he's appointed a guy named Doggett to be in charge of the search.

Unfortunately Doggett's first impression on Scully is him pretending to be someone else and also insinuating Mulder didn't actually trust her, so she chucks some water in his face and leaves. Back at home that night, she does some recon on him, but stops when she realizes someone is tapping her phone and watching her apartment. She responds in a very calm manner (she calls up Doggett and yells at him) and then goes chasing after a mysterious man in her apartment building, who her landlord says was Mulder.

So Scully, obviously decides to go to Mulder's apartment and fall asleep in his bed, because even if Mulder isn't there, the show has jumped on the Mulder/Scully train and it's gonna ride it till it runs outta rails. Oh and Skinner and the Lone Gunmen are tracking the spaceship that took Mulder. But the next morning Doggett shows up in Mulder's apartment because uh...I'm not totally clear on why, at least if his response of "There to feed his fish" was sarcastic. Anyway, back at the FBI, they find that someone has used Mulder's pass to break into the X-Files office and steal files.

"No I will not say 'Have you seen this boy?' God, you do it one time, for one movie... 

They bring Skinner and Scully in to talk about it, but Doggett is discovering evidence that Mulder had brain cancer and also was driving out to where his mother is buried a lot, and it turns out he paid for his own tombstone. That last one is pretty in-character, frankly. After mulling that over a bit, and also the rest of the info they've gathered, Scully realizes that whoever busted into Mulder's office is looking to clean up evidence of aliens and is specifically looking for Gibson Praise, the psychic kid from the end of Season 5/beginning of Season 6. Doggett also figures that out, but he just gets handed a file, which seems like cheating.

So everyone heads out to Arizona to find Gibson (they left him at a power plant with an alien, remember?) and everyone arrives at the school for the deaf where he's been hiding out at um...more or less the same time? Don't worry about that, because a mysterious man shows up to take Gibson, but Doggett tracks him down to find out it's MULDER. DUN DUN DUN. Guess Scully's visions of Mulder being tortured by the aliens were wrong. Oh yeah, Scully was having visions of Mulder getting tortured by the aliens. I didn't mention them cause uh...they don't really matter.

Within is the kind of episode I feel like Season 8 was always going to start with, simultaneously trying to move on with its story, focus on Scully as the new lead, put Skinner front and center and introduce Doggett, and still obsessed with the past, focusing heavily on Mulder, using him as a tease and a cliffhanger. And maybe a little bitter about Duchovny leaving (maybe I'm reading too much into things, but then I didn't write 3 separate, completely irrelevant scenes where Mulder gets tortured that wouldn't look out of place in a Hellraiser sequel).

The big addition, the one I'm likely to spend the next few (read: Like, 40) reviews griping about is our new leads, only one of whom hits in this episode ( And the thing is, I don't think Doggett is a bad character conceptually and I like Robert Patrick a lot, even his performance here. But Doggett is a character placed in an impossible position from the word go, replacing a beloved character who just wandered off and also being saddled with a bunch of dialogue and plot elements designed to build him up at the expense of Mulder.

Skinner and the Lone Gunmen are fun together, why didn't he follow them off into the spinoff?

And it's not just the weird out of place torture sequences that make me think the episode is trying to bring down Mulder a bit and put Doggett up. The plot turn that Mulder had brain cancer and was lying to Scully about it is as blatant a retcon as the show has done in a while and a pretty ill advised one at that, and while it doesn't land for me, stating that Doggett is a former Marine and police officer is clearly intended as synecdoche for him being morally upright and trustworthy (which is really funny in the current climate, but nevermind).

But none of it lands for me because we have no reason to care about anything Doggett does because he's a new character with no backstory. He'll get more depth as the series continues and again, I don't think he's a bad character, but right now he's in a bad position, where he has to start building relationships from scratch while everyone else, even Kersh, has history to lean on. I dunno if I'm totally on board with the idea of bringing back a pre-existing character to be Scully's new partner (okay, I'm not down with Skinner, but I'd love her new partner to be Krycek) but it might have been a good idea to make the new lead someone we already know, or introduce Doggett before this.

And the thing that really weirds me out is that the show makes the exact same unforced error that Scrubs ill-advised 9th season made (or maybe Community's 5th season would be a more current example), where it has a cast member who left but also has them hanging around at the start of the season. It's very hard to kick off a new story with new characters when you have reminders of the good old days hanging around. Give The Office this, when Steve Carrell decided to bolt, they didn't bring him back constantly.

"Guys? I know you're mad about me moving the production to LA and quitting anyway but this is getting weird."

Well I've been ranting about the arrival of Doggett and his effect on the plot for so long that I've barely spoken about the actually story of the episode, and that's by design. As with most two part episodes, this one is only really going to be worth talking about in retrospect, but I actually dig the plot a lot. It's weird to bring back Gibson when he hasn't been seen or heard from in nearly 2 seasons, but the moment lands pretty hard, and the episode is well paced and well acted (Anderson is still giving it her all). And yeah, the guy grabbing him being Mulder is a great final shot to end on, even if the episode can barely summon the effort to pretend it's really him.

The first time I watched Seasons 8 and 9, I was so sore about Mulder's exit that I feel like I didn't give them a fair shake, and I've barely returned to them over the years, so I feel like this is a chance to reevaluate them, and maybe see if I can find more to like. There's still a good chance that I won't think they're good, and certainly not as good as the earlier seasons (this stage of the game is where two of my other favorite shows, Seinfeld and The Simpsons began to see quality drop offs) but since I'm stuck here with them, I might as well try to find something to like.

Case Notes:

• The sudden shift from child in the womb footage to Mulder being experimented on footage is jarring, in a kind of good way.
• Robert Patrick is in the opening credits now, Scully has a new picture on her ID in the opening credits and we get Mulder falling into the eye. Not a fan of the new opening credits, but we'll struggle through readers.,
• I obviously don't need the Previous On, but I am amused by the fact that it opens with the accountant telling Mulder he's bankrupting the FBI.
• Scully walking wordlessly around the FBI is solid enough, especially since they hold off on the credits until she meets the Agents in Mulder's office.
• I know Scully is pissed but honestly, how did she expect the FBI to react to Mulder going missing?
• Scully is one of the witnesses to Mulder's disappearance? Wasn't she like, across the country when it happened?
• Skinner and Scully fighting over whether Skinner should admit to seeing aliens is good, it's good character work and it's nice to see Skinner kind of wrong footed by suddenly being confronted with proof of aliens.
• I wonder if people were shocked to the the T-1000 sitting next to Scully in the waiting room. I recognized him immediately of course, but it's a neat introduction.
• Doggett says that he's talking to the task force because they're building a profile of Mulder, but I think that would just read "Really hot, kinda weird."
• Doggett immediately trying to drive a wedge between Mulder and Scully by insinuating Mulder didn't trust Scully is uh...not a good way to get fans off on the right foot with him.
• Scully figuring out that Doggett was trying to play her is good. Her throwing her water in his face is better.
• Wait, so Doggett was in the Marines, then the Peacekeeping Corp in Lebanon, then in the NYPD and THEN in the FBI? Jesus when did he find time to sleep?
• Scully has been our Mulder analogue for three scenes and she's placing semi-deranged calls to fellow agents and having her phone tapped, nice to see her jumping in feet first.
• Mulder's apartment hasn't been cleared out. I thought his landlord was probably pretty tired of him given all the uh...stuff that went down while he lived there.
• Kersh and Doggett both being ex-military makes a certain amount of sense, they tend to get along. I also like that Doggett has figured out that he's being played early.
• Is Scully saying that she came by to feed the fish a call back to Season 2 or am I reading too much into things?
• "Ever see an alien Agent Scully." My dude, she has seen some WEIRD SHIT in her day. That's basically what she says, but I like my phrasing better.
• "We're wondering about [Mulder's] state of mind." Uh well that's an interesting question into his character, is he ever really mentally okay?
• Oh I guess that's why they say Scully was the other last person to see Scully, because they can't admit to all the uh, other people at that meeting.
• The visual implication in the light change from scene to scene is that Scully has been sitting and staring at the headstone for like 10 hours.
• The implication that Mulder was dying and lying to Scully about it is one of the more ill advised plot turns in these two seasons.
• Skinner is like six inches from admitting he saw aliens before Scully stops him. I guess she's so used to being Mulder's impulse control, she can be Skinner's too.
• Reading Mulder's case notes is a pretty good way to make him seem nuts, even if we know it's all true.
• Doggett just gets a helicopter? That's cheating, come on.
• Gibson hears Doggett is coming for him and just goes straight out the window, good job kid.
• The end of episode reveal that Mulder has Gibson is good, even if we know it's not really him, it's a good scene.
• As always these episode reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can afford to continue to bring you such startling insights as "I miss Mulder."

Current Celebrity Watch:

This episode features our first appearance of John Doggett, best known for his role as the T-1000 (the liquid metal Terminator) in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. He's worked pretty consistently ever since, and hey, he's currently on that Scorpion TV show that one of the guys from the last episode was on. I can't promise to not make too many Terminator jokes, but I promise to try.

We also have one of the Agents played by Dondre Whitfield, who was at this point reasonably well known for regular roles on both All My Children and The Crew. He's currently a main character on Queen Sugar.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Another FBI Agent is played by Bryan Greenberg, who was a few years out from a regular role on One Tree Hill, a show I only know from that clip of the dog in the hospital eating that guy's heart. Wait, is that One Tree Hill? Anyway, he's been in a bunch of stuff since then, including The Mindy Project and The Tick.