X-Files 8.7 "Via Negativa"

"We've seen this kind of thing before...Jonestown, Heaven's Gate..."

Several episodes of the X-Files. Now, I'm not
saying they can't do cults again, but we've done psychic assassins before.
Diana and I think second season's "Sleepless" covered this material
before--killing in your dreams? Of course, Mulder and Krycek worked that
case. Also, what's the one where the guy in the wheelchair can kill with
his mind? And even "Pusher" to an extent. There's an episode where
Scully's doing an autopsy on someone who appears to have died by burning,
but their skin isn't burned? Like they believed they were being burned and
their body reacted as such, but it doesn't seem possible? I don't know
which one that was off hand, and the point is, really, this is all very
familiar territory.

This episode was especially grizzly. Liked the scary bloody footprints,
but the axed heads was, heh heh...overkill. We get another look at Dog's
weird giant house in the suburbs. Scully's in the
hospital--presumably...well, et's get to that later. She's not around.

Greeeeaat. No Scully. that's just what this show needs. We've lost one
lead, let's lose the other and focus on the guy we still don't know.
Skinner (and Scully, for that matter) seem to be actually LOSING ground as
characters. I don't recognize them anymore. Like, what was with Skinner
being all "believer-guy" in the third eye--like Scully, we are supposed to
believe that just because he thinks he saw a UFO, he's open to psychic
assassination and third eyes and whatnot. And when your STORY EDITOR,
Frank Spotnitz is as inept at writing plausible dialogue and maintaining
character continuity as your show's creator Chris Carter is, boy are you in
trouble.

I'm not going to go into the X-File to much--as I've said, nothing new
really. Only, we never do get a sense of why this is happening. Cult guy
is mad at drug guy, drug guy is scared of cult guy--who claims he doesn't
want to kill. Sooooo....why are all these people being killed? IS it a
malevolent force? Is it that once you start down the dark path, forever
will it dominate your destiny? Oh right, we don't really care. We don't
need to come up with theories and answers now that we don't have to worry
about conversations between our leads.

In the first season, despite lots of flirting (Yes, anti-relationshippers,
review the tapes!) light banter, humor etc., Scully wasn't REALLY fleshed
out until "Beyond the Sea" and Dog really needs that episode where we can
get a grasp on him. It'd be nice for Scully to get to know him too. I'm
not actually pining for Morgan and Wong to rejoin the writing staff...am I?

Kersh hates the X-Files and Scully--why? WHY ARE THE X-FILES EVEN OPEN IF
HE HATES THEM SO? He can reassign Scully and close the X-Files if he
wants, sheesh. Again, with no cancerman, no John Neville, why are we doing
all this?

That whole bit with the ax where Dog finds an ax in a book that fits the
wounds and Skinner's like "is that our weapon?" and Dog's says "It's in a
museum in.." Eurpoe? Whatever. WHATEVER!! So, no one could make this
ax? Prop houses make them! Recreationists make them. Weapon-geeks make
them. Skinner says it's another dead end. Right, cuz no one could just
forge an ax--not in this day and age. WHATEVER!!!!

Liked Skinner's protectivenes, but it's muted by the fact that they're
being all coy. It seems likely that she had a miscarriage at this point,
right? "acute abdominal pain"? (the conveniently available sign in sheet
everyone can read, whatever!) I maintain she's not actually going to have
a baby, it makes no sense. But they don't want us to REALLY KNOW (hee hee
it's a secret!). So we don't get to see Scully talking about any of this
to anyone. Carter is insane. He's cutting the heart out of the show--all
the humanity is happening off camera so he can "surprise" us with the
baby's paternity or conception or SOMETHING. Just stupid. We have no
sense of Skinner and Scully's friendship except this flash of
overprotectiveness.

Drinking game time, Dog goes off on a "I don't believe this crap, GIVE ME
THE FACTS! I'm just a simple ex-marine New York cop" Rant.

Not only have Dog and Dana not had a real conversation--they really haven't
worked all that much together.

All the 'severings" were icky, as were the rats--didn't' we do that in
third season's atrocious "teso dos bichos".

the interlude with the lone gunmen was diverting--if only because it was
amusing and the show is so relentlessly dreary. Scully and Dog are soooo
sad (and that doesn't seem likely to change), so it's fun to see the lone
gunmen (though I doubt they can maintain their own show). I've always
loved the noble Byers. I liked how no nonsense Dog was, but that he
accepted their information and didn't dismiss them as I (and they) thought
he would. Didn't buy their "blessing" though, when Frohike said "Not bad
for a rookie." or whatever. I think one of the problems is the cast and
crew and Powers that Be at X-Files love Robert Patrick and he's a great guy
and they don't realize they haven't given us enough of Doggett for us to
agree.

Horrible research moment: "Altamont was in the 70's" Uhhhh, actually, The
tragic Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway (near Livermore, CA not
very far at all from my hometown of Concord) occurred in late 1969.

Skinner is called "Agent Skinner." Isn't he still a Deputy Director?
Let's have some protocol for the love of pete!

Why is kersh the big bad. does he work for someone? If so, do they think
they're being clever? I mean, it can only be Cancerman, right? If it is
anyone? Watch it be krycek. that's so stupid, it's almost possible.

Why would the third eye want Scully dead? Or is this Just some sort of
Freudian thing where Dog wants to kill Scully or have sex with her
or...something?

that whole "Twin Peaks" thing with the backwards-then forwards dialogue,
DOg's dream-kill was laughable to me. Just bad.

OKAY. then there's the inexplicable end. Now, Dog BELIEVES! He thinks he
was going to kill Scully in his sleep...or her sleep? How does that work?
Who needed to be asleep? What? Don't bother trying to get this one
folks. But, of course, since they CANNOT AGREE YET ON ANYTHING, she talks
him out of it, just a dream.

Why was Scully even at his house? Not only do we have no reason to believe
she knows where he lives, But even if she did, why would she go there? I
mean, he thinks she saved his life but she's just there to gently shake him
awake and tell him the cult guy is dead? She can't do this on the phone?
Why would she come over unannounced, enter his home uninvited and come into
his bedroom to tell him about tipit's death??????? No reason that makes a
lick of sense. Her mildly weepy "I'm back at work now (read: "I'm FINE")
seemed to suggest she lost her baby but of course, that's none of our
business.

Those of you who watched the Sound of Music instead were lucky indeed. The
Sound of music is probably my favorite movie (Star Wars is right up there
too) of all time. It's so awesome. It's all about courage and honor and
family and love and truth, right? Standing up to the Nazis. I used to say
"I've never met a musical I didn't like, but I have to say I really hate
"The Music Man" the Music man is the antithesis to the SOund of Music.
Music Man is about this guy who come to town to con them. He cons them
into making them think they can be a marching band, then when he's caught,
they thank him because they REALLY DO FEEL LIKE they are a marching band
(all part of his scheme) and he gets away with his con and he even gets the
girl. THE END. Amoral piece of crap plus the music is very annoying.

Well, I'm going home and it looks like next week will be a rerun. I can't
imagine there would be new episodes on Christmas and New Years Eves.
Football will be GREAT! Everything's still up in the air, anyone can do
it, the playoffs are going to be exciting, even without the Niners. So,
have a wonderful holiday, safe journey, great New year, and, to all you
Math geeks out there, have a kickass Millennium! Christine :)

X-Files 8.6 or so it claims... "redrum"

You are a prisoner not only of time but of your own character...in a prison
of your own design...on a cellblock called...THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

And, I don't mean that in a good way. If I wanted to watch sci-fi
anthology shows that were intriguing until the third act I'd watch the new
Outer limits on SCI Fi or whatever. How was this an X-File? It wasn't!
Scully and Dog were just guest stars--so much so that the guest star even
got the coda! That's INSANE. Chris Carter is INSANE. I'll bet this WAS an
old Outer Limits that they tweaked into an X-Files--these were two new
writers, I believe.

I'm not even going to waste my time on this one kids, it's been a tough
weekend. I lost my checkbook and had to cancel my account and start a new
one (thank goodness for Wells Fargo and their open-on-Sunday branches).
So, until I get my new checks, I'll be worried and fretful and mildly
irritated (I can hear my co-workers on this list all saying, "GREEEAAT").
Niners lost (but hurt the SCRams in the process, that's good). Dallas beat
the Redskins in the battle of the scumbags, and, in keeping with the theme
of this week's X-Files, Troy Aikman got knocked into last week. Like the
X-Files, Troy should have hung up his spurs several years ago.

This just wasn't an X-File--we never get any kind of explanation of HOW
this could happen--why the universe would reverse itself so that this one
guy would go to prison? I mean, his wife is saved, but the guy still hung
himself, right? If it were some sort of curse instigated by the killer or
something...I guess we'll never know. Scully and Dog won't file a report,
why would they?

I thought Joe Morton was great at first, but didn't it seem like, when he
was interviewing the guy that KILLED HIS WIFE he was a little too "just
interested in why this is happening" to you? He didn't seem remotely angry
or devastated or anything.

Dog really suffers in this one. We know the guy's innocent so Dog's
yelling at him just made me mad at him. We get some insight into Dog, via
his home, but it was all confusing. I mean, why does he live in a big old
house? By himself? We see that he rides a bike and he reads a lot and he
sleeps in his Marine shirt. woopty doo. Have Scully and Dog had a real
human non-work related discussion yet? No--unless it falls into the very
large area of "Important things Chris Carter doesn't think we need to
know." We need to see them bond a little. Dog's military background and
Scully's military upbringing being the most obvious way to go, but what do
I know? I mean, isn't Dog a lot like her brother? How do they expect us
NOT to view him as an interloper when they won't let us get to know him?
WHy should I give a rat's ass about what he thinks or feels or says? Who
the hell is this guy???

This episode establishes that it is December 8th and Scully still ain't
showing...um...OK. I know, I'm being silly asking them to pay attention to
such things. I don't know when the finale was supposed to take place but
something ain't right. My sister jokingly suggested "Maybe Scully and the
baby are moving backwards through time?" Good one, Jen.

Does anyone believe they're really going to go through with this? having
her very pregnant? Having her go into labor and be a mom? I doubt it.
Don't you think less of her now that she's decided to endanger her unborn
child by placing herself in constant danger? And what was up with her line
to Martin "Maybe you already have the answer within you." Since when did
our belovedly analytical Dana Scully become a frickin' fortune cookie?

Oh, and I hate Dog's couch. That cozy cool leather thing? It's so NOT
Doggett. Can you picture him at Ikea shelling out $1000 for that thing? I
picture him with an old hand me down 70's couch myself.

Then the whole "you killed my brother" clichй, and Dog, after giving his
buddy the "I'm Joe-by-the-book" speech, enters the crime scene, possible
suspect in tow to poke around for evidence. That'd go over real well in
court, their viewing the tape ( and perhaps altering it) without witnesses.
Dog's figuring out that Martin came in the door in the morning due to the
sunlight on the mirror? SO Encyclopedia Brown.

Then it gets REALLY BAD--the whole bit when his wife comes home? And we
have scary music and doorknob jangle--but it's his wife. Then it happens
again--Dear GOD! It's the killer!! Not only was that just silly BUT, wait
a minute, there was no passage of time! Martin gets home, his apartment
complex is swimming in cops, there are like, three units with sirens
flashing, cops everywhere. They leave, he calls his father in law, she
shows up, the killer shows up. It's all in real time--maybe five
minutes??? The killer didn't see all the cops outside? Wouldn't he be
scared off? Wouldn't some of the cops still be out there? Lame.

So, not a bad story...for an anthology show. Not the X-Files. Is the
X-Files dead? Could be. My feelings about this can best be expressed in
the lyrics of U2 : "We're cut adrift...but still floating. I'm only
hanging on to watch you go down...my love."

Oh X-Files, you're so cruel. Have a great week, Christine :)

X-Files 8.5 "Invocation" NOT the worst episode ever....

We're at least moving in the right direction.

I liked the overall story, but the execution was faulty. This was written
by David Amman, who wrote the horrible "Agua Mala" hurricane in Florida
episode that was played for laughs despite the deaths of several people
including a small boy, and the pretty cool "Rush" where the kids get
addicted to those caves that make them experience super fast time or
whatever? (Yes, Laura, the guy from Young Americans was in it. Be Strong.)
This episode was neither as bad as Agua, nor as good as "rush."

I thought this one would've been a million times better had they TONED DOWN
THE FREAKIN' MUSIC. I've ranted about this before but it really is like
we're stupid. The "twist" ending, the kid NOT being evil, would have been
cooler if not for the overkill of satan-kid horror movie music. I kept
thinking "this can't be a demon possessed kid, it's too obvious." Had they
not had that annoying music and just had it unfold (dog freaking out etc.)
with a bit more subtlety, it would have been a stronger outing. I also
wondered if this was an old idea they had from the Mulder days, but maybe
not. A kidnapping case is a logical thing for the FBI to be called in (in
real life, I don't think the FBI can have jurisdiction on cases just
because they're weird).

The kidnapping angle of course leads us to Mulder's sister Samantha, and
Scully's comment about some alien abductees returning unaged was the thing
that made me wonder if this script predated Doggett. It also made me thing
about how royally the show botched the whole Samantha thing. It was this
painful loss that informed Mulder's every move and thought and his quest to
find her was our quest, and then it sort of petered out in that bizarre
freaky kid world that Silent Billy seems to be from (hey, continuity???
Nah.) Mulder gave up the search for his sister with a shrug--"yeah, she
must be dead, never mind the last 25 years of my life."

The fact that Billy wouldn't speak seemed to be more surprising to everyone
on the show than it would be to me--I mean, wouldn't he be traumatized. I
liked the idea that everyone would be put-off by the kid, but people
weren't freaked enough. And where were the tabloids? the media crush? It
hardly seemed to be a secret and wouldn't it have caused a sensation? Mom
was a little too willing to accept it, but maybe that's how a mom would
be--everyone else sensed what he WASN'T--a 'real boy," where as mom knows
what he IS--her baby.

Dog was again irritating with his whole "see no paranormal hear no
paranormal" spiel where he says (basically)"all I care about is who took
him, I will not concern myself with the fact that he should be 10 years
older." Again, Scully's too angry at his rationalism, although she does,
at the end, finally say "Been there done that " about the Skeptic thing.

The knife thing was cool. At the commercial, after he goes into Josh's
room, I was like "It CAN'T be this stupid" and it wasn't. His blood on the
knife (his murder weapon) was the first real clue to the fact that he's
just passing through trying to avenge his own death. But, his going into
his brother's room and plunging it into the mattress was...troublesome.
Again, like the music, it was trying too hard to lead us in the wrong
direction, which made me go "why are they trying so hard for him to seem
evil, it's gotta be something else." I was leaning towards Josh, the other
kid being evil or something. Fortunately for them, the show's abject
lameness the first four episodes made me willing to view the red herring
story as a possibility to the bitter end--I knew it was indeed possible
that this was just another demon-kid story.

If I were from Oklahoma, I'd be really pissed about the trailer park thing.
It seemed kinda clichй in a "God only knows what people are like in that
bid wide expanse I fly over between NYC and LA" typical Hollywood way.

Doggett looks at a picture of a little boy--yea! he has
angst/demon/personality SOMETHING--a past! Booo--may be to close to
Mulder's angst/demon/past. Hopefully the kid is merely dead and not
kidnapped (he's not a REAL child, merely a means to an end--making one of
our leads more interesting--so it's OK for me to say that.) Maybe he died
in an accident, maybe he was murdered--maybe he's a troubled teen in a
mental hospital. We'll see. If he's missing, I'll scream.

The whole thing where Dog got mad because they wanted to remove him was
bizarre--kids wandering around with knifes: bad.

I found Scully's being open to the possibility that this psychic wasn't a
crackpot TOTALLY FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll scream a
little now, "AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!" I mean, OK, maybe
she believes in the conspiracy and aliens but have they just decided she
Believes everything now? It's never been established that she would take
this woman seriously at all. I believe in demons but not ghosts, the loch
ness but not vampires, angels but not aliens. She's too blasй about
believing stuff that last year she would have rolled her eyes at. I also
don't always have a bead on what Dog and Dana are arguing about half the
time. Mulder and Scully's conflict was so basic and motivated by their
worldview: his need to believe in the unbelievable, her need to explain
everything. Dog and Dana just seem to bicker, just seem to be contrary,
just seem to shift opinion throughout the cases for no reason other than to
illustrate THEY ARE DIFFERENT. Get over it. Get past this.

DIALOGUE ALERT: "I take psychic readings, not see through walls."
HUH? If she'd said "I take psychic readings, I don't see through walls", I
would have understood what she said without having to think about it for a
minute. Dog's joke about her knowing whether or not they were coming
seemed reminiscent of a similar joke in "Poltergeist" although, I'm sure if
you purport to be a psychic, you probably get jokes like that all the time.
If you are a psychic in Oklahoma, people probably wonder why you didn't
know that tornado was going to demolish your trailer. I can't believe that
Scully, Dog or Mom would let this woman freak out around this kid. I mean,
as far as they know, he's this traumatized kid and they want this strange
woman getting readings off him? Anyone else thing that symbol looked like
the Blair Witch symbol? Did Scully pick up on the thing about Dog's kid(?)
or not?

If you had one kid abducted, I'll bet you a million dollars you don't leave
your other kid alone in a parked car, and I'll bet if you are said kid, you
don't WANT your dad to leave you alone and you certainly don't wander off.
He should be more clingy and dad should be all smothery. Josh also seemed
to old to be lured by a pony--especially as...don't they have alot of them
in Oklahoma?

The tape thing--singing on the tape fell flat to me--trying to hard.

So, creepy guy only kidnaps once every ten years? And accomplice/victim
guy...did he kill Billy to save him or did creepy mustache guy do
everything and a/v guy was just a witness? I wasn't sure. But, it was
cool that Billy was reappearing to avenge his death (why now? and how
could Dog (according to psychic) be a sort of catalyst if he only came onto
the case after Billy appeared?) So, not a great episode, not very
well-written, but a nice X-File. Improvement, that's good.

Where's Mrs. Scully? I want my Scully's!

Whether it's in the Superbowl, or merely in a meaningless game between two
sub-par teams, there's something deeply satisfying about kicking some San Diego
Charger butt.

Next week look cool to me--Joe Morton, always good, and the story looks
cool, and premonitions are neat. Have a good week! Christine :)