Case 08, File 12: Medusa

 AKA: All Of My Attempts To Write This AKA Turned Into Covid Jokes

One thing that I think helped The X-Files gain so many fans and stay so popular is that, while its primary influence is horror, that's not the only thing it draws inspiration from. Romance, comedy, action, and especially thriller are all big parts of its DNA and what that means is that, depending on what you want out of an episode (or depending on what your actors strengths are) The X-Files can probably find something for you.

Our episode kicks off with an undercover transit cop on the Boston subway watching for fare jumpers (yeah that seems like a good use of time). When he spots one, they have a brief scuffle on the train, before the train suddenly stops and when it pulls into the next station, the cop is missing most of uh, his face. Gross. That's pretty odd, so they call in Scully and Doggett to check it out, who suspect a pandemic is responsible and thus that the subway should be closed.

But the transit authority is quite adamant that our heroes solve this as quickly as possible, as they want the subway up and running for rush hour at 4. So Doggett heads down into the tunnels with a team consisting entirely of a scientist, a transit expert and a cop, while Scully stays behind in the command center to watch on video. I guess none of the people going into the tunnel have ever seen Aliens. Or Alien. I feel like they do the video thing in Alien 3 too? I dunno, that series likes the "Someone gets attacked by the alien while someone else watches from a command center" thing.

Anyway, after some digging around in the tunnels, and the transit dude getting a light burn on his neck, they find a guy who matches the description of the guy who attacked the dead transit cop, who attacks Doggett...only he's missing most of his face and chest, and a little more digging in the tunnels finds a few more bodies missing parts. This makes Scully almost positive that it's a pandemic and they need to shut down the subway, but the transit guy is resisting, cause he reallllly wants the trains to reopen at 4 (seriously, this episode is way too relevant right now).

"Agent Doggett, I swear to god, if you make one more reference to Aliens, I'm leaving you down there to die."

When the transit guy in the tunnel comes down with a bad case of bad-electric-effects (oh and also skin burning off), the scientist decides to stay behind and get him back to the surface with a hazmat team, while Doggett and the cop press on. But when they get to the part of the tunnels where the train stopped, Doggett finds that the cop's skin is glowing and realizes he's infected. Oh and back on the surface, the transit guy is trying to hide the dead bodies so they can't acknowledge what happens.

Doggett tries to keep the cop underground with him, but the cop flips out and knocks him out cold, disappearing into the tunnels. That turns out to not be a great plan, as when Doggett comes to he finds him in like 30 seconds and tries to take him with him. Back on the surface, a scientist arrives with a sample from the tunnels and tells Scully that it's...weird little jellyfish? Whatever, roll with it.And we also gotta roll with the fact that Doggett and the cop found a mute kid who points to a leak where the jellyfish are coming from. No I don't get it either, it's weird, 

And it doesn't matter cause the transit guy has started up the trains again, and Doggett decides to use the third rail and the cop's gun to zap the jellyfish water, which...okay. Anyway, the episode ends with Doggett in the hospital and Scully telling him that his stunt with the electricity killed all the Jellyfish and the transit people are probably gonna get away with covering it up, because that's uh, just how X-Files episodes end. Oh and Mulder is still on the spaceship.

Medusa is an episode with a lot of tension and some good concepts that, like so many good episodes, blows the landing. That's not always a huge issue, but it does mean that a lot of its problems are harder to hide and the way it blows the landing is particularly egregious. It's also got a lot of recurring issues that have been cropping up in Season 8 from the word go, so while it's not the worst episode I've seen recently by any stretch, if it earns a pass it's because we're kind of at a "We'll take what we can get" point here in the season.

"Oh no! He's being attacked by bad special effects!"

The big issue is that ending, so let's talking about it. Namely: What the FUCK happens in the last 5 minutes here? The episode trots out a mute 10 year old who shows them where the jellyfish are coming from and then Doggett connects a gun to the third rail to electrocute them? Did I get all that? The whole ending is nonsense and reads mostly like the writer realized they were on page 39 of a 42 page script and just had to wrap shit up. 

It'd be one thing if they were trotting out this narrative convenience for something cool or thematically resonant, but everything we learn about the monster in this episode just kind of makes it less interesting. Okay it being tiny, bioluminescent jellyfish is conceptually neat, but after that it just kinda collapses. The fact that sweat sets it off is such a weird plot element to drop into the last 3 minutes, and it comes with basically no setup. If they'd dropped that information earlier in the episode and had to navigate around it, it could have worked, but landing it 3 minutes before credits means it's basically meaningless. And no, the explanation that the kid is too young to have developed sweat glands is not worth it.

And it's a shame, because the setup is actually really solid. I mentioned during the last review that Robert Patrick's skills as an actor make him better suited to the more action/thriller style episodes and he proves me right here. Sending a group of people into a dangerous situation is a pretty standard plot setup, but it's classic for a reason, and the early parts of the episode, where they're wandering the tunnels are the best part, with a good sense of foreboding and engaging dialogue. If the episode had continued in that vein, it probably could have been pretty good.

"Uh, officer, your skin is glowing. It's fine if it's supposed to do that, but I thought I'd double check."

And it does have other stuff going for it (even if it continues this seasons' refusal to put Doggett and Scully in the same scene together). The subway set is really impressive, and the effects used to create the people missing their skin is consistently good. The electricity effect on the skin isn't quite at the same level, but they wisely keep it off screen or filtered through Doggett's camera, so it doesn't drag stuff down. Even the glowing skin is a solid sign that something's wrong, simple but visually effective. And while the transit official trying to reopen the subways despite the danger to the public is hitting in the uh, wrong way right now, it's well realized and both Scully and the transit official sell it really well. All of that stuff means that, prior to it completely falling apart in the final few minutes, I was ready to give this episode a good review. Instead it's just okay.

Keeping a full hour of TV together is not always easy and I've tried, in the past, to be generous to episodes that blow the final few minutes, but for some reason, I feel that generosity kind of lacking this time around. Maybe it's because the last episode was so good, so I expect the series to do better. Maybe it's the fact that we're eight seasons in, and they should know how to stick the landing by now. Maybe it's the last three seasons of declining quality. Or maybe I just really miss Mulder.

And on that note, yeah, maybe I will marry David Duchovny, thanks for asking.

Case Notes:

• The subway stations and cars I've seen in Boston don't generally look like the one in the cold open here, but I'm not familiar enough with Boston to speak definitively.
• They've got undercover, plainclothes cops watching for fare jumpers? That's just sad.
• The cop missing half his face is a pretty solid effect.
• The head of transportation might as well walk in with a sign saying "I am the ticking clock on this episode's plot" but it's a good enough ticking clock for the moment.
• I like how annoyed at the transit official Scully is. Something in the tunnel burned off someone's face, that might cause problems.
• The transit official's Boston accent is terrible and he keeps slipping in and out of it. I'd drop it and just go with his normal voice, frankly.
• The episode introduces the group Doggett is going into the tunnel with like they're an action movie, so they can get picked off one by one. I ain't knocking it, Robert Patrick has action movie chops, its nice they decided to lean into it.
• The train command center looks like an action movie set too.
• One of the dudes askes Doggett why he brought a gun, but uh...he's an FBI Agent, isn't he always armed?
• The tunnel was built during the Big Dig. I would like to remind you that the Big Dig started 10 years before this episode, and wouldn't end for another 6.
• Love that the dude can just run at Doggett outta nowhere and no one sees or hears him until he's 3 feet away.
• I get that the second cop's job is have them wrap stuff up as fast as possible but uh, dude is sitting there missing most of his skin, you ain't curious about that?
• Anderson is selling the hell out of her arguments with the transit official and I like that Doggett is fine with Scully being in charge, even with jackass cop trying to drive a wedge between them.
• I like the back and forth between Scully and the transit guy. Anderson really nails it, the official is stiff in the right way (bad accent aside) and the idea that the government might be willing to let people die to keep things running is uh...hitting me hard right now.
• The glowing under the skin thing is a better effect than the lightning.
• I like Doggett's sense of upright morals making him decide to try and keep the cop in the tunnels. It's undercut a bit by him being dumb enough to get kicked in the face, but still.
• The doctor who went to find Scully thought that Scully was a man but...she had Scully's first name? Are there a lot of men named Dana?
• The thing killing people being a tiny bioluminescent jellyfish is reasonably clever.
• The cop went to all the trouble of knocking Doggett out but then his plan was to just bang on some wood blanks until someone heard him?
• The last act of the episode basically requires that the transit official act entirely irrationally but it's a reasonably exciting third act I guess.
• Doggett being nice enough to bring along the jackass cop is nice, but I would've left him.
• The random kid showing Doggett how to survive is just weird. Why doesn't he talk?
• The bit with the train is really silly for like a minute there. Sweat setting off the things and electricity killing it feels like they pulled them from a hat, but whatever, the episode's over.
• The end, where the incompetent government jackasses get away with it, feels very much like the ending to an early series episode, maybe Blood or F. Emasculata.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. And once again, all of my jokes here just kept turning into Covid jokes, so just check it out okay?

Future Celebrity Watch

Our big one here, at least by my measuring, is that the transit official who wants to reopen the subways is played by Ken Jenkins, who would go on to play Dr. Kelso on Scrubs, which was only about 8 months out. He also had a recurring role on Cougartown, which I still haven't watched. He's pretty good on Scrubs, and he's pretty good here, even if his Boston accent is awful.

Next up is Penny Johnson, who plays the doctor who goes into the tunnels with Doggett. She'd already finished a pretty lengthy run on Deep Space Nine as Kasidy Yates, but in a few years, she'd get a recurring role as Captain Gates on Castle. She's currently on The Orville, which I'm just not going to watch, don't try to get me to watch it.

And last up is Brent Sexton, who plays the transit guy who gets most of his skin burned off, and who never managed to get a main role in a long running show, but was the lead on something called Life, which lasted for 2 seasons, was a main character on the first two seasons of The Killing and had a recurring role on Deadwood. I wouldn't normally bring it up, but he was also in a previous episode, Patience and I just kinda failed to include him, so here he is.