Season 3, Episode 7
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: John Shiban

The X-Files “The Walk” is a brutally efficient horror show. Relying less on gore and more on atmospheric terror, the episode combines the sad reality of war with a revenge drama. At the end, you don’t support the actions of the killer, but you certainly can understand his actions as motivated by the kind of anger that cannot be satiated. As such “The Walk” wins by focusing less on Mulder and Scully and more on the victims of war as they begin to lash out against each other.

We open with an injured war veteran having just recovered from his third suicide attempt. He claims that “he” won’t let him die, but we aren’t immediately who the “he” is. Seizing an opportunity, the vet runs into hydrotherapy room where he prepares a scalding hot bath and anchors himself down with weights. Just as he’s about to plunge into the tub, a voice calls out to him and various events follow that alarm hospital staff. Terrified, the man jumps into the tub but is quickly rescued, horribly disfigured. Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate and find a pattern of similar incidents where family members of a military officer are killed, the officer left to suffer as long as possible before committing suicide. Other murders begin happening, admittedly in a seemingly random pattern, before General Thomas Callahan’s (Thomas Kopache) own family dies. All military murders are traced back to quadruple amputee Leonard Trimble (Ian Tracey) who, after losing his legs, garnered the ability to astrally project his soul, allowing him to commit the murders without ever leaving his bed. When Callahan confronts Trimble, he is unable to shoot him, drawing him into his astral state. While defenseless, Trimble is suffocated by the disfigured veteran from the prologue.

Personally, I loved much of the episode. Before confirming the astral projector murders, “The Walk” has the feeling of an old-fashioned vengeful ghost episode, which technically it is with the exception of the killer technically being alive. There are multiple tense scenes that are well-staged and eerily effective – particularly the death scene of the General’s child and the pool death sequence that resembles last spring’s It Follows. I did have two minor quibbles with the episode. First, there is a subplot about Trimble making a connection to his victims through some stolen mail. This plot point didn’t really hold water for me as I didn’t see the purpose in following it through. Why does Trimble need to make that connection? If he could project his body, then wouldn’t he be able to go anywhere? Why introduce that into the story at all? Next, Mulder’s closing voice over, which underscores the connection between the pains of war and the recent crimes, feels incredibly obvious and too on the nose. The connections were already present in the episode organically without requiring an additional voice over to drive it home.

Otherwise, “The Walk” was a fine for what it was. I’m even willing to overlook the complete absence of a really strong acting presence after so many great guest performances thus far.  These days, after such turgid and convoluted mythology episodes, I’m much more likely to cut the “monster of the week” episodes a tiny break.

We all needed a tiny break.

Season 3, Episode 6
Director: David Nutter
Writer: Jeff Vlaming

“2Shy” would have a stronger reputation within The X-Files collection if it didn’t suffer greatly in comparison to the infamous “Squeeze” and “Tooms” episodes. These episodes share a common theme: the reclusive, seemingly normal individual who must murder in order to survive thanks to a genetic defect. The killers don’t kill for pleasure – they kill for necessity, for survival. What makes “2Shy” slightly worse is that the killer preys on the insecurities of heavier women through the treacherous world of online dating.

The episode begins with Virgil Incanto (Timothy Carhart) and his date, an attractive heavier woman, parking at night. She is thrilled for the attention, that a good-looking man she met over the internet would show such interest and kindness in her. When he leans in to kiss her, however, she begins to scream in terror. Her body is discovered in a rapidly decomposing state. By the time Scully and Mulder begin to investigate, very little is left of her corpse. In fact, when Scully starts her autopsy, the body has been completely digested with only a skeleton remaining. The episode proceeds as Incanto tracks down additional victims, all heavy-set women, from whom he can extract their body fat – something his own body apparently fails to produce.

Mulder and Scully eventually discover his identity thanks to his fondness for rare Italian poetry and a 911 call from the blind daughter of his landlord, a woman he killed after she discovered a decaying corpse in his bathtub. The remainder becomes a beat-the-clock sequence where Mulder and Scully must save his latest victim before Incanto can digest her as well. We close with the arrested Incanto outlining the necessity of his crimes to Scully: he satisfies both his and their needs through murder. After all, as Incanto says, “the dead are no longer lonely.”

After last episode’s vaguely unresolved plot line, we return to a more standard episode with “2Shy.” Unfortunately, its overwhelming resemblance to “Squeeze” detracts from what might have otherwise been a perfectly great episode. The major difference here is in the performance of the central villain. Timothy Carhart, a decent actor, cannot begin to compare to the legendary work of Doug Hutchinson in “Squeeze.” Hutchinson manages to create a human creature that still felt completely otherworldly but yet mixed our sympathies with our fears. Carport’s performance focuses squarely on the grotesque. Perhaps that’s attributed to the fact that Incanto emotionally engages his victims, tricks them into the necessary kiss, and unabashedly moves on to the next woman. His plight is harder to relate to, harder to sympathize with. At the end, Incanto is just as much of a cypher monster as Fluke Man or any other soulless creature we’ve met along the way.

One notable event in “2Shy” is the opportunity it affords Gillian Anderson to retaliate against her attacker. Having grown weary of the persistent “Scully in danger” moments of Seasons Two and Three, I found it refreshing to see her kick a little ass at the end, even if someone eventually had to help her fight off Incanto. It’s even better that the person who saved her in the end was Incanto’s last victim, using Scully’s gun to shoot him in the heart.

I rather thought that was poetic justice, myself.

Season 3, Episode 5
Director: Chris Carter
Writer: Chris Carter

“The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.”
~ Itzhak Stern (Sir Ben Kingsley), Schindler’s List

…except in The X-Files, “The List” is… well… it’s death.

I was all ready to sit down in front of “The List” with a small bowl (watching my middle-aged man figure) of mint chocolate chip ice cream, my personal favorite. The episode spun up on Netflix, and, within ten minutes, the urge was completely gone. Thanks, maggots. All the maggots.

The X-Files does it again. The munchies go out the door.

“The List” opens and largely takes place on death row where “Neech” Manley (Badja Djola) is about to be executed. He refuses the traditional last rites and, strapped into the electric chair, launches into an end-of-life rant that culminates in the revelation of the titular list, a list of the five people that caused him pain in prison, before being executed. Shortly after Manley’s death, Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate a gruesome death in the same prison. A prison guard was apparently suffocated to death, his body quickly riddled with maggots. Over the course of the episode, Mulder and Scully begin to investigate the crime but are quickly overwhelmed by the bodies that begin to pile up – a ticking through Manley’s list. Other prison guards and inmates claim to know those on the list, but the information isn’t deemed credible enough in time. Prison Warden Brodeur (J.T. Walsh) becomes panic-stricken that he would be on the list, going so far as to beat a prisoner to death.

On the outside, Manley’s widow Danielle (April Grace) is secretly seeing a prison guard, but she is filled with dread and paranoia over Manley’s possible return. At the end of the episode, she awakens to find Manley watching her sleep. He slowly turns and walks away, and Danielle creeps into the living room to find her prison guard boyfriend standing in the window. Danielle, believing Manley has been reincarnated as her boyfriend, shoots the man as the police pull up outside. The now-dead prison guard is believed to have committed all of the crimes, and the case is closed. Frustrated, Mulder tells Scully that pinning the case on the prison guard feels wrong since he had no connection to many of the victims. Scully tells him to forget the case, and they begin to leave town. Prison Warden Brodeur passes by in his car only to be attacked by Manley’s spirit and forced directly into a tree, killing him on impact.

First and foremost, enough with the maggots. It’s one thing to offer gore like this once or twice an episode, but the maggots are actually a plot point here. Each victim is filled with them, swimming around the dead bodies or dropping from the ceiling. For me, it became a distracting and gratuitous addition to what was an otherwise ordinary plot. Like most recent episodes, the cinematography here is phenomenal. The prison glows with an eerie green light, and smoke drifts in and out of corners, the light catching the smoke in brilliant ways giving the prison scenes an extra bit of detail and setting the scene apart from traditional prison content. The performances here are fine with J.T. Walsh giving his Walshiest of performances – solid and intense with an authoritarian air of vague evil. And Gillian Anderson looks absolutely disgusted every time she sees a maggot, most likely not a performance.

Much is made of Chris Carter’s direction of the episode for which he received a DGA Television nomination. I suppose I don’t have any strenuous objections to that, but it’s bordering on nothing to write home about. He makes the prison feel appropriately threatening and claustrophobic by, in my opinion, borrowing a great deal from, yet again, The Silence of the Lambs. He spends a lot of time in the interpersonal relationships between the characters, which never hurts, and he challenges viewers by leaving Mulder and Scully unsuccessful in solving the mystery. But I suspect that many praise the episode for its fantastic cinematography over its core direction.

But, again, enough with the maggots.

Season 3, Episode 4
Director: David Nutter
Writer: Darin Morgan

In my quest to review The X-Files on a day-by-day, episode-by-episode basis, many people have mention their personal favorite episodes across the series. I’d expected the more popular episodes – Fluke Man or “Home” or any of the mythology episodes – to pop up with greater frequency, but it’s a quiet, unassuming little episode called “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” that receives that honor. With good cause too. It’s a fantastic little gem of an episode, one that blends a light sense of humor within Mulder and Scully with an intriguing storyline and a revelatory and sweet performance by Peter Boyle who won an Emmy for his guest turn.

“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” features a central serial killer plot – a potentially psychic man reaches out to fortune tellers and tarot card readers to understand his gift and the root cause of his homicidal urges before killing each one. Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate, despite the similar reach out to a broadly flamboyant television celebrity psychic, and try to piece together clues to the seemingly unsolvable crimes. When Clyde Bruckman (Boyle) discovers a corpse in his dumpster, he calls the police and shares intimate details of the crime with Mulder and Scully – details that either the killer or someone with special abilities would know. Turns out Bruckman is psychic but in a less traditional way – he specializes in knowing people’s deaths with the occasional vision or two. The episode eventually becomes a cat-and-mouse game as both psychics try to uncover the other. Bruckman has a few tender moments with both Mulder and Sculy before the psychic killer – working as a bellhop in the very hotel they stash Bruckman – is discovered by Mulder and Scully. Thanks to Bruckman’s psychic assistance coupled with Scully’s luck, Mulder avoids certain death when Scully shoots the killer seconds before he plunges a knife in Mulder. They later find Bruckman dead in his apartment, the victim of a suicide.

“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” is indeed a classic episode, largely thanks to Boyle’s deep and accomplished performance, most likely the best performance seen on the series thus far. Not only does he elevate the material (something that happens quite frequently when the pulpier X-Files is matched with a talented actor) but he gives the kind of performance that only a seasoned actor could, one that uses lack of vanity and an embracing of age to convey the world-weary wisdom needed to make the role soar. The episode features more raw emotions and honest, poignant expressions of life and death, fate versus predestination. Boyle’s rare psychic talent, that of predicting deaths, is one that both excites and terrifies some. Mulder refuses to hear of his fate, but Scully asks, Bruckman telling her sweetly that she’ll never die. Fans of the show at the time became obsessed with the statement, which has since been confirmed by creator Chris Carter. Scully is apparently indeed immortal.

If that’s the only thing you take away from the episode, then you’re completely missing the point. The two psychics are two men possess similar gifts and, yet, diametrically opposed reactions to them. Burdened with knowledge, Bruckman is the more world-weary of the two, perhaps due to his age but most certainly due to the unfortunate burden of knowing how each person you meet with die. Craving knowledge, the serial killer is more intrigued with his abilities and wants to fully understand them. Yet, he confuses his psychic prowess with his urge to kill, seemingly thinking the two are linked. Bruckman explains it in the end, “You’re a homicidal maniac!” Brakeman bathes in knowledge, in understanding, while the killer craves it.

But it’s the quiet moments with Scully that bring home the brilliance of “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.” Bruckman shares a vision with her – they will be in bed together, her hand caressing his – and Scully scoffs at it, ever the doubting scientist. Yet, when the episode closes as Bruckman has committed suicide, she sits next to his death body, holding his hand gently. Gillian Anderson’s expert reaction here underscores not only the grief she experiences in the moment – her sadness over how she perceives Bruckman’s life – but also the core-shaking effect of having a seemingly random prediction completely come true. Yet again, Scully is faced with a supernatural / mystical moment and cannot appropriate react to it. Great stuff. Great performance. Great episode.

Season 3, Episode 3
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Howard Gordon

The X-Files returns from a journey into its byzantine alien mythology with a “monster of the week” episode, “D.P.O.” If breaking from the convoluted conspiracy theories wasn’t enough to make you leap for joy, then the fantastic opening sequence should light a fire under you. Not only does it take place in a legitimate video arcade, but it also costars Jack Black and Giovanni Ribisi, Ribisi playing a boy that can apparently control lightening. The early scenes have the feeling of a really great throwback to a 1980s-era Stephen King movie, ushering in a fun episode that becomes a perfect palate cleanser.

Ribisi’s “Lightning Boy” or Darin Peter Oswald (the “D.P.O.” of the title)  is bullied by another man in an arcade accompanied by Black, who is basically given enough dialogue to convey the  “you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry” sentiment. Oswald can control lightning and uses the electricity to effectively fry the bully. Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate and, though the link at the arcade, find Oswald working in a local garage where he holds a torch for his boss’s wife, Sharon. Later, we see how Oswald gets his kicks / blows off steam as he wanders drunkenly into a cow field and summons a lightning storm, killing a cow or three in the process. During the process, the flash of lightning leaves behind a calcified footprint, linking Oswald to the incident. After a series of seemingly unexplained electricity-related events, Mulder and Scully discover that Oswald’s body chemistry – an overabundance of electrolytes – potentially causes him to express or control lightning. After arresting Oswald on suspicion, they reach out to Sharon for additional evidence. She confesses that Oswald revealed to her that he had special powers, relegating her to a life in fear of him.

When the bumbling local police release Oswald, Mulder and Scully race to protect Sharon, but Oswald kills Black under suspicion that he leaked information to the FBI. The hospital becomes Ground Zero as Oswald gains entry, using Black’s body as a decoy. Sharon uses Oswald’s attraction to her to turn him on and get him out of the hospital, away from her husband. In the hospital’s parking lot, Oswald is cornered by the local sheriff as Sharon runs away only to be rescued by Mulder. Enraged, Oswald calls forth a lightning storm that ultimately knocks him unconscious. He is relegated to a psych ward, and no one will admit that Oswald has any power at all.

The star of the episode is undoubtedly Giovanni Ribisi who portrays Oswald as a kid punch drunk on love and power. The best scene in the episode offers Ribisi and Black watching a local intersection from a nearby billboard. Ribisi controls the stoplight and turns both lights green, encouraging cars to crash into each other. The glee he expresses both when a serious accident happens and when he later saves his boss from a heart attack is impressively rendered – even if it eventually evolves into Ribisi’s patented man-child performance. Also impressive in the episode is the brilliant cinematography, effectively capturing the awesome flashes of lightning while at the same time highlighting vivid colors in several scenes (the red of the arcade, the red of the hospital stairwell, etc).

Nothing in “D.P.O.” is especially earth-shattering in the context of the series, but it’s great to see talented actors elevating the material beyond its pulpy roots. Sure, it traffics in some of the more basic themes of early Stephen King novels (consider it something of a male-centric Carrie without the heavy religious “subtext”). Plus, I just loved seeing a glimpse of the great “Popeye” stand-up arcade game from the late 80s / early 90s. That was great stuff indeed.