Season 4, Episode 14
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Howard Gordan

The X-Files‘ “Kaddish” is an exploration into a world that, to most viewers, is as alien and foreign to most of us as anything flying in from outer space. The community of Hasidic Jews seen burying and mourning their dead here are well represented even if the episode isn’t an extremely deep-dive into the customs and practices, yet it’s enough to whet the audience’s appetite for more should they wish. At least they fair much better than the one-note villains that plague the episode.

The episode begins with the funeral of Issac Luria, a Hasidic Jew who was the subject of a hate crime as retold through imagined flashbacks by his fiancée, Ariel. Later that night, during a driving rainstorm, someone fashions a mound of mud into a semblance of a man. As the person walks away, the mud begins to breathe. Mulder and Scully are called in when one of the three boys responsible for Issac’s death is found murdered and in possession of Issac’s convenience store footage so that the other two targets could be identified.

As Mulder and Scully investigate further, they unravel an underground neo-Nazi propaganda organization working out of a print shop. Here, they find charming pamphlets like “Are Jews Responsible for AIDS?” and the like. The owner, unapologetic for his beliefs, is hiding his connection to Issac’s murderer. As the episode progresses, an unseen force slowly murders all of the neo-Nazis. At the end, it is revealed that Ariel created a Golum in the form of Issac to exact revenge and out of grief. She ultimately causes it to disappear as she lets go of Issac. And after he had completed his task, of course.

“Kaddish” is far more successful an episode when it focuses on exploration of Jewish lore and customs than it is a supernatural outing. Much like Witness before it, there is a persistent theme of “the others” (the Jewish community, Mulder and Scully) through the episode, which works nicely with the overall theming of The X-Files. I appreciated the expansion of Ariel’s role and the relationship with her father, however brief their roles were.

I suppose the only nit I would have with “Kaddish” is the shallow characterization of the villainous Nazis. The creators intended to draw them this way and provide “hissworthy” objects against which they could pit the Hasidic Jew characters. But I always bristle when characters so plainly state their biases and ill-intentions. There is a craft to creating villains with subtlety, but I suppose 45 minutes of screen time isn’t going to allow that. Still, it’s too easy of a path to go down. That doesn’t take away from the positive aspects of the episode, though. It just makes it merely good instead of what could have been a great contribution to the overall X-Files lore.

Season 4, Episode 14
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz

“Memento Mori” is the episode that finally helped The X-Files gain some traction and major hardware at the Emmy Awards. That’s not to say that series creator Chris Carter was necessarily in the hunt for Emmys, but the series, at the time, had been building a great deal of credibility with the Television Academy – a surprising fact given their relative abhorrence for all things science fiction at the time. Still, it’s hard to overlook the episode given the series’ spin on a more traditional dramatic storyline, allowing star Gillian Anderson the ability to play Dana Scully as a broken and vulnerable woman. It’s something I would argue is there in the previous episode “Never Again,” and it’s something that plays out dramatically and beautifully here in “Memento Mori.”

Having been unwillingly diagnosed by the killer Leonard Betts, Scully begins the episode reviewing the X-rays of her head, showing the tumor lodged between her sinus and cerebrum. The prognosis isn’t good, but Scully (and Mulder) aren’t willing to give up. They journey to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to reconnect with the group of women who, like Scully, were abducted by aliens and contracted a deadly form of cancer that, as we later discover, has nearly wiped them all out. In Allentown, they track down a man, Kurt (David Lovgren), who apparently has ties to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) to which the women belong, and he begins helping Mulder sort through materials that may be critical to Scully’s survival. After Mulder is called to help Scully, the Gray-Haired Man kills Kurt who turns out to be an alien-human hybrid.

Scully, meanwhile, visits the last surviving member of the women’s abductee group – Penny Northern (Gillian Barber) – who is undergoing a last-ditch treatment to stop the cancer. She points Dana to Dr. Scanlon (Sean Allen) who has been treating and reportedly learning from the previous women who have died. Dr. Scanlon immediately recommends treatment for Scully, and she begins to undergo chemotherapy with her mother (Sheila Larken) at her side. Mulder, meanwhile, finds evidence in a nearby research facility that he suspects may be able to help Scully. After using the Lone Gunmen to break in, he discovers that there are other hybrids identical to Kurt, all working on a potential cure for their “mothers” – the women abducted by aliens who helped give birth to them. Believing that Scanlon is actually killing the women to protect The Program, Mulder takes information back to Scully who is grieving over the death of Penny Northern. We close with Skinner, who had instructed Mulder not to contact the Smoking Man, making a deal with the Smoking Man to save Scully’s life.

It is easy to see why the Television Academy fell relatively hard for “Memento Mori.” This is one of the more accessible episodes of the series and most certainly of the overall mythology series. It gracefully blends the human drama of cancer and Scully’s waning will to live with lighter touches of alien and conspiracy lore. To its credit, it allows Gillian Anderson to show incredible strength and, later, vulnerability in Scully. She runs the gamut of human emotions through the course of the episode, pulling a real tour-de-force performance out of the Emmy-winning Anderson. I especially loved the sequence at the end where she shares the vulnerability with Mulder, allowing him to kiss her forehead only as they continue to fight their natural impulses toward one another. This coupled with “Never Again” provides ample evidence of Gillian Anderson’s amazing acting powers, never overplaying her hand yet finding the right note each and every time. Her performance is so good that she even elevates David Duchovny’s typically flat performance as he balances between adult realization and coping and his natural immaturity, making him dance back and forth on his feet as he interacts with the very ill Scully.

“Memento Mori,” does have its flaws. It is laden with ponderous and pretentious voice-over meant to give Scully a reflective tone as she prepares to die. After Mulder secretly reads her words, she expresses deep regret that he had, telling him she intended to throw it away. That would have perhaps been a very wise choice given the florid nature of the text, which ultimately runs together and blends into nothingness. That is a minor quibble, though, as the rest of the episode finds a way to make Dana Scully’s cancer seem curable by the second as Mulder races to determine a cure. They managed to put a time clock on cancer growth, and that was a wise move given the episodic nature of many of the episodes. Still, Scully’s cancer will linger through the rest of the season and into Season Five as Skinner’s search for her cure takes him down a dangerous professional liaison.

In the end, “Memento Mori” is a touching and heartbreaking bit of television as we watch Scully slowly break. She has been so practical and certain of everything, yet that practicality and certainty works against her as she realizes the odds of her survival. Even though the voice overs are over-written and unnecessary, they do provide a certain haunting quality to the episode that helps it linger in our memory.

We may not like or even remember the words, but we’ll always fondly recall the tune.

Season 4, Episode 13
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Glen Morgan, James Wong

I suspect finding out you have cancer is a life-altering experience. Granted, I have never been in the position, but I have known those who have suffered from the disease. Having received an unofficial diagnosis last episode, Scully doesn’t mention her fears within “Never Again,” but the specter of illness hangs over her throughout the episode. It suffocates her, causing her to start to reject the trappings of her life she once found comfortable. As I’ve found over the course of four seasons, the best X-Files episodes manage to push aside the supernatural, relegate it to the background, and focus on deeper character development. “Never Again” is one of those episodes.

The prologue takes Ed Jerse (Rodney Rowland) through a divorce and straight into a seedy bar. Drunk and miserable, Ed wanders into a tattoo parlor where he has a pinup tattooed on his arm with the phrase “Never Again” written under her. Soon, Ed is taunted by a female voice (Jodie Foster) who consistently berates him and pits him against women out of jealousy. Ed eventually kills him neighbor beneath him, thinking she was talking about him when it was really the voice in his head. Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully are slightly at odds with Scully starting to feel like Mulder’s second hand rather than his partner – she doesn’t even have her own desk in the basement. After Mulder requests that she stake out someone in Philadelphia, Scully reluctantly agrees, embittered by her life falling second to the job.

While on stakeout, Scully follows her target into the same seedy tattoo parlor that Ed earlier visited, and she sees Ed begging to have his tattoo removed. They “meet cute,” and Ed gives her his number. After an argument with Mulder, Scully decides to take Ed up on his offer, and they settle on returning to the same dive bar from the prologue. After a deep discussing in which Scully discusses her affinity for strong men (thanks to her father), Ed convinces Scully to get a tattoo, and she obliges. Scully spends the night at his apartment, and, the next morning, Ed goes out to get breakfast. While he’s out, Scully is visited by two officers who tell her Ed’s neighbor is missing, and they have uncovered a blood type that did not match her. The blood sample also included something that, after analysis, proved to come from the same rare ink the tattoo artist used to achieve his brilliant colors. This substance could have caused Ed’s hallucinations. After discovering Scully was an FBI agent, Ed attacks her and nearly burns her in the basement. Overpowering the voice, Ed thrusts his arm into the incinerator. Scully then returns to DC where Mulder questions her, thinking he’d made her made by not giving her a desk. Scully responds simply with “not everything is about you Mulder,” leaving the typically loquacious Mulder speechless.

The brilliance of “Never Again” is within the completely different mood and tone established by the erotic adventures of Dana Scully. This is a tour-de-force performance from Gillian Anderson, giving us a darker side to Scully that we have yet to see. This side of Scully is the cancer diagnosis changing her, giving her a different, fragile perspective on her life. Practically in shock, she sinks into actions and relationships that she normally would never follow. It also gives her a moment of introspection where she admits her attraction to strong, take-charge men, namely Mulder and her father. What’s interesting about this is the fact that “Leonard Betts” and “Never Again” were actually filmed in reverse order from which they aired, meaning “Never Again” was filmed first, meaning that Anderson didn’t know Scully had cancer when she filmed the episode. Yet, Anderson’s performance here feels incredibly influenced by the earlier cancer revelation. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was luck.

Whatever it is, it works in spades. Excellent work.

Season 4, Episode 12
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz

The X-Files “Leonard Betts” elicits several interesting opinions on its titular character, a monster-of-the-week contribution to the overall X-Files lore, yes, but a very human and humane monster still. As embodied by Paul McCrane, Betts first appears as a benevolent soul, someone mysteriously gifted at identifying sickness and healing others. Yet, through the course of the episode, his gifts take a deadly, sinister turn, making the character one of the more fascinating the series has seen.

The episode begins in the back of an ambulance as Betts (Paul McCrane) operates on a patient that he later advises is dying of cancer. The driver is fascinated by Betts’s prowess at illness definition and turns to ask him a question. As she does so, the driver runs a red light, and the ambulance is jack-knifed in the intersection. Stunned, she walks to the back of the ambulance to check on Betts, but he is decapitated. Later, in the morgue, the headless Betts awakens and walks out… still sans head and captured on a blurry videotape. Mulder and Scully investigate – Mulder staking out Betts’s apartment and Scully performing an autopsy on Betts’s recovered head. Mulder finds some bloody clothes and a bathtub full of iodine in Betts’s apartment, and, after he leaves, Betts rises out of the tub, head in-tact.

Scully, meanwhile, begins to form an autopsy when the head blinks and sighs at her. Further investigation leads to two major facts: Betts is riddled with cancerous cells and can potentially regenerate missing limbs. Needing cancerous material to regenerate, Betts goes on a killing spree of those infected with the disease. He also kills the ambulance driver who recognizes him in passing in order to protect his secret. Tracking Betts back to his mother, she refuses to disclose his location, professing that God desires him to be on the Earth and is keeping him here despite his multiple deaths. We do witness Betts effectively shedding one form of himself to regenerate another, a disturbing and disgusting image. After Betts’s mother nearly sacrifices her life to feed her son with a cancerous tumor she has, Betts mysteriously attacks Scully, claiming she has something he needs. Scully is able to overpower him and kills him with defibrillator paddles to the head. Later that night, Scully awakens coughing, her nose dripping with blood.

The main theme of “Leonard Betts” is the exploration of the main monster. Betts initially appears kind and benevolent, extremely proficient and successful as an EMT. Yet, as the episode proceeds, he becomes a brutal killer. Granted, he (mostly) kills people who are apparently dying anyway, but does that give him the right to take their lives? Does his need to feed on cancerous tumors that only they can provide him make it OK that he’s taking their life? Do you curse the monster because it adheres to its very nature? These are all intriguing questions that The X-Files brings up but leaves to the audience to weigh in on where they fall. The key for me is Betts’s murder of his ambulance driver friend. That felt like the tipping point to Betts’s callousness and inhumane center.

The most popular result of “Leonard Betts” was Dana Scully’s revelation that she’s suffering from cancer, apparently something that was a known side-effect of whatever happened to her when she was abducted by aliens. Remember the group of women who were slowly dying out? They all contracted cancer and slowly died. Is it ironic that the monster Betts is the one who tells her she suffers from the disease, which she confirms later than night. This turn will last nearly a year in the series and will basically win Gillian Anderson an Emmy award.

Season 4, Episode 11
Director: Tucker Gates
Writer: John Shiban

Despite killing dozens (if not hundreds) of people every season, The X-Files isn’t completely without heart. There is an undercurrent of sensitivity and good intentions inherent within several episodes, even if it’s often buried beneath a veneer of gore and blood. However, “El Mundo Gira” kind of proves that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That may be a little strongly worded, but this episode ain’t good folks. In fact, it feels very insulting to the Mexican people.

The prologue starts in a small make-shift village where a brilliant flash of light is followed by a bizarre yellow rain. After the meteorological oddity ends, a young woman is found dead with a mold-like fungus eating away at her nose and face. The investigation eventually leads to Eladio Buente who held unrequited love for the dead girl, Maria. His brother, Soledad, was in a relationship with her and blames his brother for her death. Eventually, after Eladio begins to deteriorate and other people being to die, the local population brand him a “Chupacabra,” but Mulder and Scully eventually determine that Eladio has some sort of agent within him that causes every day mold and fungi to rapidly grow, killing people who come in contact with him. Mulder of course believes the quickening agent to come from an alien influence. By the end of the episode, several people have died, and the two brothers go on the run with Eladio’s countenance bizarrely shifted into something resembling an actual monster.

The problem with “El Mundo Gira” isn’t the story, per se. It’s a fairly typical X-Files outing if a little underwhelming in the detail and execution. The real harm here comes in the broad strokes used to paint the Mexican immigrants. The episode tries, through the concept of the lethal substance, to illustrate the everyday experience of the illegal Mexican – actual aliens (their words, folks, not mine). But each Mexican character is a blatant, telenovela-level stereotype. The hardened cop. The hysterical attractive woman. The elderly woman who looks at you askew and mutters Spanish curses under her breath. The workers trying to get any job they can. It’s all just too much, and it’s capped off by Scully making the most insultingly stupid remark of all (poor Gillian Anderson for having to say it) when she refers to Mexican immigrants as the invisible people, alluding to Eladio’s ease of escape.

Overall, “El Mundo Gira” isn’t very well written or directed. The actors do a decent job with the material that they’re given, but suffocating this shaky material with good-intended but poorly executed social commentary isn’t the way to go on The X-Files. At best, the episode is completely forgettable, and, at its worst, it’s horribly racist and insulting.