Case 08, File 11: The Gift

AKA: If I Put Something About Soul Eaters Here Will I Get SEO From The Anime?

I feel like I've been mean to the Season 8 episodes, and I don't mean to be, but I can't really help it; The X-Files' quality had been dropping since Season 6, and losing one of their key actors, and the relationships his character had means that bad episodes had less to lean on. But there are still things the series can do to make a damn fine episode if it wants to. And there's no reason the series can't still make a damn fine episode without Duchovny. Or even with him.

Our episode kicks off with a mysterious man entering a mysterious house and shooting a mysterious person in a mysterious state (I dunno, rural Pennsylvania's pretty mysterious to me). And then it turns out the man doing the shooting is MULDER! Man, we missed him. Anyway, it turns out that happened months ago and Doggett is investigating cell phone records and is now investigating why Mulder was in rural Pennsylvania before he disappeared. Cause remember, Doggett was put on the X-Files to find Mulder. You don't remember? Well he forgot for a bit too, don't worry.

Anyhoo, it turns out Mulder was investigating a weird threat that some lady got from her sister, that a creature from the woods was gonna eat her (don't worry how Mulder found out about it). Doggett shows up to speak to the family (who turn out to be the people from the cold open...not the one who got shot, obviously). They act evasive, both to Doggett and Mulder in a flashback and Doggett notices that they've plastered over some bullet holes in the walls but decides its not worth investigating and heads back to DC.

While in Mulder's apartment feeding his fish, he finds Mulder's ankle gun hidden under his sink with three bullets fired and evidence that it was fired at point blank range. When he brings that to Skinner however, Skinner suggests that Doggett just wants to get transferred out of the X-Files and that revealing this will get Scully in a mountain of trouble. Back in the town, the sheriff digs up a grave marked with a weird symbol, and then later goes out to some lady's cabin in the woods and captures a mysterious person.

So Skinner and Doggett head back to the town (Wikipedia says its name Squamish? That's a made up name right, that's not a real place) and ask the sheriff about unnamed transient who died the day after Mulder was in town, and the sheriff is evasive. Eventually they ask to go see the transient's grave, and find that not only is it dug up, but whatever was in it exited by going down. Back at the weird family's house, the sheriff brings the man they captured to the wife (who had liver disease, sorry if I missed mentioning that) and the weird man...eats her? Like, entirely, when Doggett and Skinner return, she's gone and the man is vomiting into a person shaped hole in the ground. Gross.

"No, it's not Phi, it's a medicine wheel, although try telling that to the local frat."

Doggett goes and sees the lady who was protecting the man and she tells him that the man is a Soul Eater, that Mulder was there to get healed of his brain disease (remember that?) and that Mulder decided to try and kill the Soul Eater to save it, since healing people hurts it, but that it couldn't die. Everyone follow that? Good, cause Doggett finds the wife from earlier in a tunnel in the basement and carries her out and we're moving on. Oh and when they get her to the hospital, she's completely healed. So that's weird.

Anyway, Doggett heads back out the lady's cabin to rescue the Soul Eater, but the sheriff and his buddies show up to stop him and when Doggett refuses to surrender the Soul Eater, the sheriff (quite sensibly) kills him. But hey, the Soul Eater heals him and in so doing finally gets to die. And thus the episode ends with Skinner suggesting that Doggett not write a report on this particular incident. Oh and Mulder is still on the spaceship.

I'm not gonna lie, this episode rocks pretty hard, especially by the standard of Season Eight. It feels like a return to form for the series, harkening back to a time when they leaned more heavily on their writing and integrated the overarching plot more cleanly into Monster of the Week episodes (so I guess Season Four-ish). I've got quibbles, sure, some with recurring trends in Season Eight and some with this episode in particular, but I dug this episode pretty hard.

"Help! I'm stuck in a metaphor for man's inhumanity to man, help!"

Let's start with the quibbles, because they are comparatively minor but I wanna get to them: For starters, this is yet another episode where Scully and Doggett are separated, and they can't even be bothered to justify it. This one is particularly galling, because investigating a case that Mulder hid from her could lead to some great stuff for Scully, but instead she's off doing...nothing. The plot contrives some nonsense about how she's implicated in Mulder's actions, but that's a post-hoc justification for her absence. She's just not here and her absence is barely acknowledged.

Instead they team up Doggett with Skinner, which is a double edged sword. Skinner is a solid member of The X-Files cast, he's proven he's capable of carrying a portion of an episode, and he and Doggett have decent chemistry. The only issue is that they both exude such intense energy, that it occasionally seems out of wack for a comparatively low key episode like this. If they wanted to team them up on a more high key episode (something like F. Emasculata) that might be more their speed. It's not enough to be a real issue, and I do like them together, but it's a little much sometime.

But that's the only real issue with an otherwise extremely solid script. I like how the episode uses just enough misdirection to make us think the Soul Eater is the villain without ever lying to us. It puts together a lot of little details to make the town's actions seem understandable, while still clearly villainous, and on the other hand it manages to make the Soul Eater walk the fine line where it's frightening in some context and sad in others. It doesn't take much to flip the script and make us feel for it, but the episode does a good job.

It's a solidly moody episode, with a lot of nice atmospheric cinematography and some great gross out effects, which goes a long way towards making it feel like an older episode too. It feels like we haven't gotten a good graveyard scene for a while (and no, Hollywood AD doesn't count) and the whole episode is full of bits like that, just solid moody shot composition. It walks the line between intriguingly weird and just plain gross with the Soul Eater's ability set a lot better than say Badlaa did, even if I feel like we could have used less vomiting.

I dunno if dying is that much worse than going through life knowing you're made of some dude's vomit.

Of course the, however brief, return of Mulder to the show is going to be a subject of some discussion but honestly, it's a weird reappearance. The show is still kind of unsure how to deal with Mulder; We're still dragging around the "Lying about his health" plotline and we add the "He might get Scully fired" aspect, but they also treat him with a lot of reverence, figuring out the Soul Eater's power and then empathizing with his pain which I guess is keeping with his character (the final bit with Doggett imagining him in the office is kind of goofy though).

I think the Mulder plotline in this episode emphasizes the big problem with Season Eight in that it doesn't know what to do in his absence. We're coming up on Monica Reyes' introduction to the series soon, and more and more it seems like they should have dropped her in earlier, as it might have given them more tools to work with when trying to figure out where the series should be going. The series is in a weird transitional moment at this point and its getting more misses than hits right now, and if we're being honest has been getting more misses than hits since Season Seven. But it can still get the hits when everything lines up, and this episode is a pretty solid hit

Case Notes:

• I know the symbol on the door in the cold open is supposed to look mysterious, but it mostly looks like the Greek Letter Phi to me, it could be a frat.
• Having the guy shooting the mysterious lady be Mulder and then throwing Duchovny back into the credits is pretty clever, I'll give them that.
• They're doing an actual flashback this time, instead of a Previously On, I suspect to keep the question of what's going on in the cold open an actual question.
• I like Doggett saying that it's his job to find Mulder, like he hasn't been investigating other cases.
• The flashbacks with Mulder interrogating the Hangemuhls are well edited into the scene, and it's nice to see Mulder getting lied to again.
• "Was Agent Mulder...sick in the head?" Well that's a matter of some debate.
• Doggett has apparently been going to Mulder's apartment to feed his fish, but I'm honestly surprised the apartment is still Mulder's, it's been like 4 months at this point right?
• I like that they're still using Mulder's ankle gun as a plot point. This whole plot is all blatant retconning but it's the good kind, the kind that uses incidental details to build on stuff.
• Skinner gets defensive about Doggett suggesting that Mulder broke the law and lied about it but uhhhh Mulder broke the law all the time Skinner.
• Doggett and Skinner's scene is actually pretty good overall, they play off each other well and I like that Skinner Gets that Doggett is still resentful about being on the X-Files, while Doggett also gets that Skinner wants to protect Scully and Doggett wants to too.
• The scene at the lady's house is mostly just intended to upend our beliefs about the plot, but I like the difference between the Sheriff calling the creature It, while the lady calls the creature Him. It's simple, but solid writing.
• Basically any scene with the town inhabitants is a lengthy game of "Who can say the most mysterious dialogue" but the cinematography is nice and we've got atmosphere to spare, so I dig it.
• The reveal on the creature isn't the best but the rest of the scene is nice and freaky, especially with his mouth elongating and the lead in to the ads with the creature vomiting into the person shaped hole is just the right mix of disgusting and mysterious.
• I still like the Lone Gunmen bouncing off Doggett. I wonder if they're playing them up a lot cause their spinoff is coming.
• Doggett gets told about the concept of a Soul Eater and immediately figures out that's what Mulder was interested in.
• Doggett finds a trapdoor on the floor that leads to some mysterious tunnels and just hops in with no backup. Maybe trying to get into Mulder's head is rubbing off on him.
• Again, Doggett finds a naked, goo covered woman in a tunnel in a woman's basement and just leaves the woman there in her house. Come on Doggett, do better.
• Doggett finds out that Mrs. Hangemuhl's kidneys are suddenly better and he just figures out everything. Come on Doggett, season 1 Scully would have argued about it for at least 10 minutes, be a better skeptic.
• Mulder refusing to add onto the Soul Eater's pain is a very in-character thing for him to do.
• The makeup on the Soul Eater does a good job of walking the line between disgusting and sad, which is good for the late game switch to sympathy for it.
• The sheriff actually shooting Doggett (and, however briefly, killing him) is a nice sudden swerve, you don't expect your heroes to get shot like that.
• Obviously you know Doggett isn't dead permanently and you can figure out the final few minutes of the episode from there, but I like that the episode lets it play out and lets the Soul Eater rest.
• The wrapup scene being between Doggett and Skinner really hammers that he's Doggett's partner for this episode. And yeah, I like that Skinner basically says "Uh, maybe don't tell anyone about this."
• As always, my reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out cause I can't get a job eating people's sicknesses.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Natalie Radford, who plays the wife who gets eaten was a main character on the CTV adaptation of TekWar. This is stretching the definition of "Celebrity" well past the breaking point but I'm just surprised that CTV did an adaptation of TekWar and I figured you should all know.

Also, Caroline Langerfelt, who plays the weird woman in the woods played Joe's wife on Nash Bridges, a show with six seasons and over 100 episodes that I have never seen a second of.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Michael McGrady, who plays the sheriff, has had a talent for getting on the main cast of shows that never lasted more than 2 seasons, like Beyond or Southland. He also has a recurring role on Ray Donavan but I don't know a single person who watches that show. It might be good, I dunno.