Case 08, File 05: Invocation

AKA: Isn't This The Plot Of The Lovely Bones? I Never Read It

Writing a character on a TV show, especially a main character introduced late in the series run, is a little like writing backwards. Elements are added onto their personality and backstory as the story needs and become integral parts of the character or are discarded, depending on the later story needs or how fans respond to them. But there are elements of a backstory that can't be left to the random happenstance of random story beats, in which case you might want to develop a whole episode to introduce them.

Our episode opens in 1990 in Oklahoma where a little kid named Billy disappears from the carnival at school. 10 years later, the kid reappears on the playground, apparently having not aged a day, which strikes everyone as odd so they call in our heroes. Right away Scully is pointing out how weird it is that, even medically, Billy is the same kid he was 10 years ago, while Doggett is getting very intense (and honestly kind of inappropriate, he tries to play bad cop with him) about finding out who kidnapped Billy.

Scully thinks that the kid was abducted by aliens (presumably in some draft of the screenplay that line belonged to Mulder before they realized he wasn't there) but Doggett thinks some local weirdo named Purnell did it. So after heading out to intimidate Purnell (and briefly gaze at a picture of a kid), Doggett to break into Purnell's sealed juvenile records. Back with Billy, he gets back to his parent's house where he weirds out the family dog and his brother Josh. Oh and also that night, he goes into his brother's room with a knife.

The next morning, the family finds that Billy has stabbed the mattress, so Scully thinks it's probably pretty reasonable that Billy get checked out by a psychiatrist. But she quickly switches her opinion when she finds out that the symbol on the handle of the knife is one that a police psychic (just roll with it) drew when she was called in 10 years ago, and also that it was a symbol Billy was drawing a whole bunch too. They think that's weird, as is the fact that when they go to bring him in, he teleports from the car back upstairs to menace Josh some more.

So they call the psychic back in, who immediately tells them that powerful forces are working through Billy, and also Doggett is obsessive cause he lost someone in a similar situation and then falls over with the same symbol appearing on her forehead. Also while all this is happening, back at his house, Purnell is bullied by his mom's boyfriend Cal, and goes out into the woods where he's buried a child's skull, which I guess explains why he found it weird that Doggett brought up talking to Billy. Oh and Cal blackmails him into silence about the thing in the woods.

"Don't worry Mrs. Underwood, we're standing here in a group, ominously, for good reasons.

Anyhoo Purnell goes and checks out Billy's house and when Doggett goes to hassle him, he sees Billy in the car and he and Scully chase after and arrest him, even though Billy is not in the car. Meanwhile, Josh and his dad are out getting gas, when Josh decides to go check out a pony trailer and gets kidnapped. Oh and the horse trailer has the symbol everyone's been drawing, which looks like the Blair Witch is gonna sue. Oh and Billy is still missing.

Hokay so, Doggett and Scully question Purnell and after some digging, he reveals he wasn't the one who kidnapped Billy but he knows who did, and then leads them to the horse stable owned by Cal (remember him?) where they rescue Josh, but there's no sign of Billy, at least until they chase Cal into the woods. There they catch a glimpse of Billy on top of where his skeleton is buried. And so, the episode ends with Scully insisting that the only way Doggett can deal with how weird this case was, is by embracing it. Oh and Mulder's still on the spaceship.

Much like Patience before it, Invocation feels a little like a Season 1 episode that got a revamp for Season 8, specifically in how it revolves around Revenge From Beyond The Grave. But it's better at it than Patience was too, it has a slightly better grasp of its new relationship and is beginning to shake off the new-character jitters. I dunno if I'll stop talking about any time soon, but Doggett is beginning to settle into his role which should make the sailing a little smoother going forward.

"I was just doing Good Cop/Bad Cop, what's the problem?"
"He's seven!"
"So?"

Of course it's hard to forget that Doggett is new to the show when so much of this episode is clearly given over to some very obvious telegraphing of Doggett's backstory. It's honestly not a particularly strong element of the episode, or the series as a whole, even if Robert Patrick does a good job with it. We'll talk more about it in detail but Doggett's kid storyline feels like such an obvious retread of Samantha, I almost wish they'd gone with something completely different. It's also not done well in the episode, with the bit with Doggett checking out his son's photograph feeling like it's in the wrong place, especially since all the other references to it are more vague, it feels like an epilogue moment rather than a mid-episode moment.

The rest of the episode is pretty standard stuff; We've got a creepy kid, some weird symbols, a slightly easy to predict mystery (hint: The dude who did it is the guy who has no other purpose in the story) and we've got a solid, if unremarkable, episode of The X-Files. That's not to say it's not well executed in that context, or well executed enough. The resurrected kid has a pretty solid creepy-kid stare, and the scene with the psychic is pretty solid, but there's nothing in the broad strokes that really makes the episode stand out. 

No, the stuff that makes this episode stand out is all weird incidental details, mostly in how Scully and Doggett continue to navigate their new partnership. I like that Doggett is at once very passionate about finding the kidnapper but also kind of shit at interacting with kids and probably a little too intense. Scully is a little more sidelined in this episode; Her suggesting that aliens are responsible for the kid not aging feels more like Mulder leftover stuff and her snapping at Doggett for breaking into Purnell's sealed juvie records is really funny to me, given how often she and Mulder casually broke the law, but ultimately this episode is mostly Doggett's show. Still, she's settling into her role as the Believer pretty well, and Anderson does a good job with what she's given (as always).

"Aw man, that Blair Witch lady out in Maryland is gonna sue the shit out of us."

I guess if I had to say one major issue that drags this episode down is that the stakes feel kind of low. Revenge From Beyond the Grave plots usually feel lazy because it's an easy way to give the monster (or ghost I guess) motivation, but the tradeoff there is that the ghost has to actually do something. Aside from once stabbing his brother's bed, Billy doesn't do anything in this episode, just hang out and seem vaguely menacing. The Revenge From Beyond the Grave episodes of Season 1 might have had worse writing and directing, but at least the ghosts did shit like possess a 10 year old girl and give her psychokinetic powers, give me something I can work with.

I've mentioned this before, but Doggett is a character with a lot of stuff working against him; He's arriving very late in the show's run, when the episode quality has already begun to decline (it's been declining since Season 6 if I'm being honest), replacing the beloved male half of a duo who are not only instantly iconic but whose effortless chemistry has been holding up the show since the word go. They have very little time to endear him to the audience before they start getting annoyed at him, so I don't blame them for such an instantly sympathetic backstory as "Wants to avenger his dead child." Whether it works or not is something we'll learn together.

Seriously, I don't remember how his kid storyline shakes out.

Case Notes:

• The music at the start of the cold open is trying VERY hard to be creepy.
• Given how important the time frame is to this episode, they might have wanted to make a bigger deal of the "1990" title card.
• Billy disappearing mid-swing is a pretty decent shot, not gonna lie.
• Honestly, I'm surprised that the mom still wanted her kid to go to the exact same school that her first kid disappeared at. Wouldn't you move?
• The crowd of adults just standing and staring is deeply weird.
• Doggett seems a little awkward around kids, which is a nice contrast to Mulder who always seemed pretty at ease with kids (joking around a bit for example).
• Doggett going for interrogation techniques on a kid is a great moment of everyone realizing he doesn't know what he's doing.
• Of course the dog doesn't like Billy, it's a dog in a horror show, but I like that the other kid is instantly suspicious too.
• I like that Scully is still uncomfortable bringing up paranormal explanations.
• Scully being mad that Doggett broke into sealed records is fun, because she and Mulder broke the law every 20 minutes. It's also good characterization for Doggett though.
• Nice to see that The X-Files still has the guts to put actual literal children in danger.
• Doggett pulling the picture of his kid out of his wallet to gaze at it is giving the game of why he's so into this case away too early.
• Billy just standing there when the mom finds the knife in the other kid's bed (Josh I think his name is) is a solid level of creepy kid stuff.
• Doggett is trying very hard to make Scully's suggestion of "Maybe the kid who stabbed his brother's bed might wanna get some psychological help" sound unreasonable.
• I like the cop being clearly embarrassed about having brought in a police psychic, even when they find the same symbol the psychic (and Billy) drew on the knife.
• The scene with Billy appearing in Josh's room is really solidly edited.
• I like how Purnell's mom's boyfriend shows up and his first instinct is to hassle Purnell.
• I'd like to once again joke that they got lucky not picking a psychic who is a huckster, but honestly, the bit where the symbol appears on her forehead is just really solid.
• I dunno what to think of Scully playing the psychic gibberish backwards, it's a very Mulder thing to do.
• I like the chase with Ronnie and Scully, although I dunno if the show wants to have Doggett running after cars, it's uh...gonna make me make comparisons to famous roles of his.
• Josh decided to go across the street to reach his arms into a horse trailer is really dumb of him, no wonder he gets kidnapped.
• The reveal that Purnell wasn't actually the killer is pretty solid, the actor sells it really well. Law of Conservation of Characters tells us who the killer has to be, but it's still a nice reveal.
• Scully's argument basically boils down to "Look, we got a win here, maybe we don't question it?"
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can afford to hire a psychic investigator to figure out what the hell happened to my missing dice.

Future Celebrity Watch:

The psychic investigator is played by Maggie Baird, an actress who does a lot of minor roles or single episode roles across a lot of TV. Prior to a few years ago, she was probably best known as the voice of Samara in the Mass Effect games, which I love, but now she's probably best known as musician Billie Elish's mother.