Written by Paul Brown
Directed by Stephen Surjik
The good news after the muddled
mess of the last episode, this one is a lot simpler. Unfortunately, simpler
doesn't mean better.
In some ways, I agreed with some of
the points of Gung, the Asian orderly who as it the crux of this story:
Americans tend to treat their elderly with disdain and lack of sympathy. And in
a nation where Alzheimer's is one of the most prevalent diseases, I feel much
more needs to be done. It is therefore demeaning they are used in such a
wretched script as the one we have here, one that puts everything into the most
Crayola type terms--- old people good, medical staff bad.. The staff is so loathsome
and uninteresting in the care of their patients that the viewer is almost
inclined to root for the orderly to be thrown out a window, or, in what is
arguably the most ridiculous stunt that X-Files
has tried so far, trap Mulder and a truly loathsome nurse in a room that
floods.
There are also some worthy idea
about government treatment for the elderly. Unfortunately, I am using the term
'worthy' in the weakest sense of the word. All of the medicine that's
supposedly being used to treat the patient in the study is no match for the
'ancient Chinese secret' that gives these old people their grooves back.
Unfortunately, Brown clearly has no more ideas as to make the patients and more
interesting than the staff, with the exception of one becoming a magnificent
artist. (How he managed to get that mural painted in the space of a few hours
with nobody noticed is one of the bigger plot holes that the story just leaves
hanging.)
In the midst of all these problems,
there's the fact that this episode doesn't give much for Mulder and Scully to
do. It's a novel approach that Scully is the one more interested in the case at
first, and seems more sympathetic and engaged in the episode that Mulder does.
But our heroes don't seem to do much to help this particular story along.
Mulder has no great insight into the case until the stories more than
two-thirds of the way over, and then he gives no explanation as to how all of
the magic mushrooms are somehow causing the spirits of this nursing home to go
apeshit. Scully has some insights into the medical aspects, but when the
attacks come, she literally just stands and watches as one orderly is thrown
out a window, runs around ineffectually when Mulder is trapped in a room that's
flooding, and then stops what she's doing to tell one of the doctors that one
of the elderly patients is having a seizure. There's also no explanation as to
how the minute the seizure stops, all the ghosts disappear --- but since the
episode doesn't seem that interested in any plot, we hardly care by now.
After the general high quality of
the second season, Excelsius Dei is the first episode that plays like a holdover
from Season One. This isn't a compliment. It might be forgivable if the series
was still finding its sea legs, and after all, this is a MOTW by a writer who
had only written for the series once before
(and perhaps understandably, never again.) There's little pretentious
dialogue or engaging characters or, for the most part, interesting set pieces.
It just seems... confused, like Brown had some interesting ideas and they
either tossed out in the process , or he just plain didn't care. What we are
left with is an episode that doesn't seem particularly imaginative, and is
clearly lacking in the banter to make this story palatable. We've now had three
episodes like this in a row, which would be a troubling sign, if we didn't know
we were finally about to hit pay dirt again soon.
My Score: 1.5 stars
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