Case 08, File 09: Salvage

AKA: As He Lost His Mind, Can He See Or Is He Blind?

The question of what makes a great, or even good, Monster of the Week episode is one that's been plaguing me these last few reviews. Obviously there are elements that need to be present; a decent monster, solid characters, an engaging script, good Mulder and Scully banter, but the absence of one of those elements doesn't make an episode bad. I think all of the good elements are less of a binary and more of a gradient; Lack of any one won't make an episode bad, but it will mean the other elements will have to work harder to make up for it.

Our episode opens with a woman mourning her husband, Ray's death from what she thinks was Gulf War Syndrome, while his friend Curtis thinks he didn't. Curtis leaves but driving down the road he sees his friend Ray. He sees Ray cause Ray is standing in the middle of the street and he hits Ray with his car, but the car crumples and Ray doesn't. That seems weird, so our intrepid heroes are called in to check it out, where they immediately find footprints embedded in the concrete, and also Curtis' body stuffed into a garbage can.

Curtis' head has some marks in it that look like finger marks, which makes Scully think someone (Ray) dug their fingers into his skull like a bowling ball, but Doggett is skeptical. Also they find Ray's fingerprints and blood at the crime scene. So Doggett goes to a grieving widow and her husband's boss and tells them he thinks Ray is still alive, because he remains a bastion of sensitivity. He's also right, because we get a brief scene with Ray at a halfway house where he's rude to a volunteer who tries to befriend him.

Meanwhile, at the salvage yard where Ray worked, his boss is busy covering up logos on barrels and shredding documents when Ray shows up. Being happy to see his old friend who he thought was dead, his boss pulls a shotgun on Ray and shoots him. And Ray, not being super stoked with that, kills his boss, but not before his severed arm starts regrowing with like, metal? It's pretty neat honestly.

This is also a neat shot, I like this shot.

Hokay so the next day Doggett and Scully check out the crime scene and Doggett finds the documents Ray's boss was trying to shred, and decides he's gonna check out the company they come from. Turns out it's a weird science lab working on programmable metal that can reshape itself when damaged. Yeah we've all got the general stuff down now, but let's act surprised. Also the volunteer lady finds Ray's obituary and decides to call his wife. Not sure I'd wanna get involved given that Ray's skin is rapidly turning to metal, but you do you lady.

Anyway at this point Doggett and Scully are basically on the same page about Ray being metal but are kind of concerned of how to stop him. That night Ray decides to attack the science lab but the head scientist, with the help of our heroes, tricks him into going into a containment room with 4 inch steel walls. Of course he rips his way through outside and escapes, cause otherwise the episode would be over. They decide to take the head scientist into protective custody while Ray's wife meets up with him and he tells her that he's gonna make everyone who made him into a metal person pay.

Doggett digs around the salvage yard and, to make a long story short, finds an oil drum with another completely metal person in it. He and Scully interrogate the head scientist and he reveals that this is the former head scientist who get infected with their living metal and somehow must have infected Ray. The FBI raids Ray's halfway house and he kills the volunteer lady trying to stay hidden. That just seems...rude.

Ray's wife sneaks into the facility, trying to find the guy responsible for the drum ending up at the salvage, but she changes her mind and they let her go and she gets threatened by Ray into giving him the name of the accountant who okayed the drum being sent to the salvage yard. Ray tracks him down and attacks him in his car but lets him go when his kid starts yelling? I dunno, it doesn't track super great, but Ray runs off to get crushed in a junkyard while Scully waxes philosophic about the nature of humanity. Oh and Mulder's still on the spaceship.

Salvage isn't an entirely bad episode, but it's a forgettable one, one that kind of slides off your brain after you're done watching it. It kind of puts me in mind of a reverse version of one of those early season episodes where they had to make up for subpar effects with clever writing, only here they make up for a weak script with some excellent special effects. I guess that's kind of an inevitable result of the show's age and increased budget, but it's still kind of disappointing.

"My god, he's like some kind of-"
"Agent Scully, I swear to Christ, if you say Terminator."

The big issue with the script is Ray as a character, or rather how he isn't one. The story is crying out for ways to make him more a more sympathetic character, since his plight is rather sad, but the episode keeps skipping over it. He rejects overtures from the volunteer lady and eventually kills her, he threatens his wife, he never gets much in the way of sympathetic dialogue, and several opportunities to emphasize any physical toll the transformation is taking on him are missed. Not only does this miss the opportunity to make him a more engaging character, but it makes the moment where he decides not to kill the accountant cause his kid is screaming feel abrupt.

The rest of the characters are pretty flat too, but at least the episode seems to be more comfortable with having Doggett and Scully share screentime than it has the last few episodes. They still haven't got much in the way of banter (I'm starting to think Banter isn't a card in Robert Patrick's deck) but at least it feels like they're working together and discussing the case, which is nice. Scully's wrap-up monologue feels like it's addressing themes the episode didn't actually have, but it's nice that she's actually talking with and establishing a rapport with Doggett. Maybe by the midpoint of the season they'll have an actual relationship.

So without much in the way of engaging characters or dialogue, what does the episode have going for it? Well it's a great looking episode; Overall the episode builds itself (both on a structure level and a selling-point level) around a handful of displays of Ray's powers, and they all look pretty excellent, especially the (clearly expensive) car crash that kicks off the episode. It's a pretty simple shot, but it looks incredible visceral and just totally fucking cool, instantly drawing you into the episode, in a way the rest of the scene's ocean of exposition can't. They also do a pretty good job selling Ray turning into a metal man, both the makeup effect itself and how it gradually takes over his body.

It's also got some decent acting in it; Ray has very little in the way of meaningful dialogue or non-violent interaction with other characters, so he has to sell a lot of his character through presence and facial expression, and he does a really good job, even when he's acting under what looks like a pound of fake-metal makeup. I wish he had a chance to show a greater range of emotions, cause I think he could honestly pull it off really well.

"I want to help you, you're my Metal Husband. I'm sorry, I shouldn't joke, I'm nervous."

One thing I got told, as a critic, was that if you want to drill down to what appeals to you about a show, think of the first piece of dialogue that comes to mind when you think of it and it will, in some way, tell you about a core appeal, at least for you. And honestly, it works at least for me, from classic shows (Twin Peaks' gives me Agent Cooper's "What year is it?" asking a painful question with no chance of an answer, or Seinfeld's "Is this about me? Then I've lost interest," comically drawing attention to its lead's selfish outlook) and newer ones (Breaking Bad's "I am the one who knocks," reminds me of Walter's descent into ego driven cruelty and crime, while She-Ra's "You promise?" reminds me of the core relationship of the series).

So when I apply this critical notion to The X-Files, the first piece of dialogue that comes to my mind is Scully half-sarcastically asking "Please explain the scientific nature of the whammy," a skeptical, comedic rejoinder to an already comedic line, which tells me that Mulder and Scully's ability to back and forth, and the comfortable easy relationship that ability telegraphed, was a core appeal to the show. And so while I may never be able to come up with a scientific formula for what I want out of an X-Files episode, I know when what I want is missing, and right now the series desperately needs it.

 Case Notes:

• The dialogue in the cold open is what we in the biz call an exposition bomb, but it gets us to the point pretty fast, so I'll forgive it.
• I like Scully standing in the crater caused by hitting Ray, it's a neat shot.
• The imprints in the road are kind of fun, and Doggett and Scully have a reasonably fun (if kind of stiff) back and forth about it. Anderson and Patrick are still not on solid ground but they're trying to fumble their way there.
• The corpse effect on the dude who got killed is pretty solid.
• Doggett seems weirdly unwilling to accept Scully's weirder theory, given that they found evidence that a recently dead guy was at the scene.
• The bit with Ray using nail clippers to cut what appears to be metal hair off his face is weird but I guess kinda neat?
• Doggett isn't mincing words when it comes to telling Ray's wife that he thinks Ray is still alive.
• The boss at the salvage yard switching from genial to pulling a gun on Ray is really funny to me for some reason.
• Also not sure why getting hit by a car doing 40 leaves Ray unmoved while getting shot with a shotgun makes him go flying back, but maybe he decided to just be dramatic.
• The effect on Ray's severed arm are great, as is Ray missing most of the skin on his arm and face. Lots of good effects in this episode.
• I like how the scientist just gives Doggett a lecture on smart metals.
• Scully finds evidence of lethal levels of metals in Ray's blood and she and Doggett are both just like "Fuck it, metal dude, let's do it."
• Ray just walks into the Dr. Manhattan style room cause the lighting in there changed. He may be made of metal, but he's not smart.
• The FBI working with the tech people to set a trap for Ray is pretty smart.
• Ray is 2/3rds of the way through the door and just decides "Fuck it, I'm going out the other way."
• Ray's blood turning to metal pretty clearly freaks Doggett out, I like it.
• Doggett discovers that the salvage yard is smuggling out weird barrels for the metal company and just decides to tip it over. Not like there could be something dangerous inside dummy.
• The image of the metal dude in the barrel is a freaky one.
• Not sure why Ray kills the lady at the halfway house. If it was a "Don't my own strength" thing, they don't play that up.
• Ray's wife gets on board the "Murder revenge" train pretty fast and then hops off it equally fast.
• Scully saying the killer was a machine to Robert Patrick is very funny to me.
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I can afford to bring you such searing insights as "I wish there was more banter."

Current Celebrity Watch:

Arye Gross, who plays the lead scientist played a main character on Ellen, a show whose importance and place in the cultural unconscious have been completely subsumed by the fact that the lead actress (and eventually character) were gay, so I doubt anyone remembers him for that. He's been working consistently, albeit all around ever since (a handful of recurring spots here and there). He was also in Atlas Shrugged: Part II, which is a more embarrassing thing to have on your resume than The Room, in my opinion.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Wade Williams (which is not a superhero name, unfortunately) who plays Ray has two major roles coming up in a few years, one as Father Cronin on The Bernie Mac Show and then as Brad on Prison Break. One of my roommates once watched Prison Break but I found it very hard to take seriously, so I don't remember much about it.