Season 4, Episode 7
Director: James Wong
Writer: Glen Morgan

The X-Files again takes a break from the supernatural and looks back into the past to build a character around its most unfamiliar evil force, the Smoking Man/Cigarette Smoking Man/Cancer Man. The episode is interesting enough, compelling enough, and humorous enough to make it an effective contribution to the overall mythology of the series. Fans likely wanted to know more about the man, and, even after this episode, I doubt many questions were answered. Still, this monologue recited by Smoking Man (William B. Davis) at the end of the episode made it all worthwhile:

Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So you’re stuck with this undefinable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there’s nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while there’s a peanut butter cup or an English toffee. But they’re gone too fast and the taste is… fleeting. So, you end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. And if you’re desperate enough to eat those, all you got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers.

That, my friends, is everything.

The episode begins as an off-screen Mulder and Scully meet with the Lone Gunmen, observed by the Smoking Man with surveillance equipment and a sniper rifle. They discuss information about the Smoking Man’s past as he prepares to assassinate someone. This scene is employed as a framing device for various flashbacks into the Smoking Man’s past. The first sequence happens in the early 60s when the young Army Smoking Man is asked by a collection of men to assassinate JFK in Dallas, Texas, and select Lee Harvey Oswald as a patsy. The second sequence involves the Smoking Man assassinating Dr. Martin Luther King despite admiring his philosophy.

The third sequence is more comic in tone as it alludes to the Smoking Man’s wide-reaching conspiratorial reach from the Anita Hill controversy to the Rodney King trial to the winner of the Super Bowl and to the Oscars. Later, Deep Throat contacts the Smoking Man and reveals the recovery of a UFO and a live alien. They discuss the alien’s fate and flip a coin to determine that Deep Throat will shoot the man. Through all 30 years these sections cover, he attempts to write and publish a novel, which is consistently rejected by multiple publishers. In the mid-90s after overhearing Mulder and Scully meet, he finally succeeds in attracting a publisher who agrees to print the Cigarette Smoking Man’s work in serial form, and he types up his resignation letter. The publication – Roman a Clef – is a trashy magazine, and he will obviously go nowhere with his writing. He rips up the resignation letter, leading to the classic monologue about life above. In the end, the Smoking Man decides not to assassinate one of the Lone Gunmen, citing the final line from his novel: “I can kill you whenever I please, but not today.”

There isn’t much to say about this episode. The revisionist history segments are interesting and go a long way toward illustrating the path the Cigarette Smoking Man took to becoming the hardened man we’ve grown to know. Here is the man who gave up a personal life to his career. Here is a man who envied Bill Mulder’s family life, a fact that apparently plagued him for several years. Here is a man who did what his country told him to but lost his soul along the way. And here is a man who wanted to be so much more (a writer) but was far more successful as a conspiratorial power player. After all of this, I’m not all that certain we learned a great deal about what makes this man tick. Yes, we’ve seen instances of his life that, I suspect, were designed to provide that data, but I only have more questions than answers.

In the end, “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” becomes a little bit of a cop out as the Smoking Man is unable to kill the Lone Gunman, an event that would have hindered any spin-off plans they apparently had. Yet, there is no justifiable rationale for the Smoking Man not to have killed him, in my opinion. It’s a cop out, plain and simple, and an unfortunate way to end a fairly decent episode.

Season 4, Episode 6
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Vivian Mayhew, Valerie Mayhew

After taking an episode off to wax poetically about past lives, The X-Files roars back to the gore in full force with “Sanguinarium.” Honestly, with a name like that, how could it be anything else? Aside from the slightly shocking gore (for late 90s network TV, remember), the episode is tense and intriguing until a scattered ending ruins the spell. The episode was produced from a spec script written by fans. There’s a reason this was the only one they contributed to the series.

The prologue introduces a massive plastic surgeon clinic where the attending physician, scrubbing in for a routine liposuction, becomes obsessed with the procedure. In a trance-like state, he literally vacuums the person on the table to death before a registered nurse (Rebecca played by Tim Burton favorite O-lan Jones) can stop him. As Mulder and Scully investigate the scene, they find an occurrence of a pentagram on that operating room floor. Another victim dies (this time by the use of a concentrated laser through the skull), and Mulder and Scully determine that both doctors were on a particular sleep medication. After reviewing the second victim’s tape, they see a pentagram – commonly assumed to be the sign of the devil but was more commonly used as a symbol of protection – on the patient’s chest. After suspicion is laid on Rebecca, Mulder and Scully visit her house to find signs that she dabbles heavily in the occult. Meanwhile, another doctor, Dr. Jack Franklin (Richard Beymer, Twin Peaks) is attacked at home by Rebecca, but she dies after vomiting pins. In the end, Dr. Franklin is revealed to be the culprit behind all of the supernatural activities, having pulled off his own face to replace it with another. The episode closes with the doctor applying to a different clinic, this time with a new face.

“Sanguinarium” is mostly famous for its excessive gore over any actual written or performance skills. The murders are graphically staged – the manic liposuction, the laser treatment, the acid bath, and (technically not a murder) the peeling of Dr. Franklin’s face – and the episode seems to rely on carnage over intelligent, well plotted stories. That’s not to say the episode doesn’t have its pleasures. I was taken by the intelligent art direction that used a pentagram in a conference room table and featured an operating unit carefully laid out to resemble a pentagram. This subliminal effect is far more unsettling than any of the gore prominently featured. Although that was indeed an intensely unsettling feature of this minor entry as well.

Season 4, Episode 5
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Glen Morgan, James Wong

The romantic notion of past lives has been explored many times in both film and television, and The X-Files episode “The Field Where I Died” doesn’t add anything to the overall representations of past lives. What it does do, however, is tell a past life story in a compelling and highly emotional manner, something The X-Files typically doesn’t offer, with some tremendous acting on display.

The episode begins randomly with Mulder standing in a beautiful field, holding two old photographs. The context is unknown, and, honestly, Mulder’s voice-over isn’t really helping anything either. Anticipating some activity, the audience is surprised (at least this one was) when the scene cuts immediately to the opening intro with no hints at shock or horror. The action then shifts to an FBI crack down on a Jonestown-like cult community who is suspected of possessing massive quantities of arms. All members are arrested, including the cult leader Ephesian (Michael Massee) and his selected brides which includes Melissa (Kristen Cloke). Unable to find any evidence of illegal activity, the FBI is on the hook for providing evidence that will justify Ephesian’s imprisonment. If he is released, there is evidence that he will lead his cult into mass suicide.

And then the story pivots in an entirely unexpected way. The FBI had received a tip from a mysterious “Sidney” when no person by that name could be found. After questioning Melissa directly, Mulder and Scully witness her devolve into her “Sidney” persona – either a multiple personality issue or a past life breaking through to the present. Melissa actually displays multiple personalities, one of which is a woman from the Civil War era. Under hypnosis, Melissa lapses fully into the Civil War persona of Sarah who claims to have known Mulder in a previous life. Intrigued/plagued by the revelation, Mulder undergoes hypnosis, revealing the potential past life in which he was a woman with a child possessing the soul of Samantha, his missing present-day sister, as well as a Civil War-era man named Sullivan Biddle in love with Melissa’s Sarah. After grieving through the exposure, Mulder is awakened without the critical information, and the cult members are released. The end brings the dreaded mass suicide, including Melissa, that the FBI was unable to avoid. Mulder closes the episode in the same scene that opened it – in a beautiful field at sunset, clutching two pictures from the past.

Structurally, “The Field Where I Died” pulls a neat trick by ending/beginning the episode in the same location, echoing the theme of circular/past lives featured prominently within the episode. Additionally, it kicks things off with the cult story, making the viewers anticipate supernatural elements around the figure of the cult leader, before it completely pivots into the past lives regression plot. The star of the episode has to be Kristen Cloke’s magnificent performance as Melissa, not only given the trick of rendering the multiple personalities but also in conveying a broken, damaged woman taken in by the cult. The actress would continue into science-fiction works, but she never achieved the level of credibility warranted by her performance here in The X-Files. David Duchovny’s emotional performance as the tortured Mulder has received some level of criticism, but I think he works well here given the nature of the plot. Duchovny was never a natural actor, but, here, he stretches pretty much beyond what I suspect he’s capable of as an actor and acquits himself well in the role.

“The Field Where I Died” isn’t an outstanding episode, but it is different enough from the usual supernatural stories to warrant a recommendation, largely due to Cloke’s tremendous performance (which, oddly enough, reminded me of Ruth Wilson’s work in The Affair). Personally, I applaud The X-Files taking a risk and moving forward with such a heavily emotional story line. The risk, in my assessment, was well worth the reward of exploring the romantic notion of past lives.