Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Daniel Sackheim
This is one of the darker and danker
episodes the show would ever do---- not so much in tone as it is in lighting.
Half the episode the characters are either underground or in places where the
sun don't shine even in the daytime. That actually helps the episode, because
as long as were dark and wet, we really don't have any idea what exactly Mulder
is wading through the water to find. And that makes it one of the scarier
episodes as well.
Carter's first script for the
second season is, for a change, a monster of the week rather than some epic
mythology episode. And just as Little Green Men demonstrated how good the
alien-mythology could be when Carter wasn't writing it, The Host demonstrates
how good MOTW could be when he was. Throughout
Season 1, Carter's major problem seemed to be his trouble of giving added
significance for every episodes with a lot of purple prose and convolutions----
a habit, unfortunately, he never quite shook. It's true to a certain extent in
this episode, mainly when Mulder and Scully talk in deep terms about what might
have made this creature that would eventually be christened the Flukeman, and
the bizarre calls that Mulder seems to get from an unknown source over the
phone, who we never see (in this episode) But for the most part Carter lets the
story flow and have Mulder and Scully investigate rather than pontificate, and
I can't tell you how much that helps the story.
Some might say--- coming from an
era where TV shows do even the smallest visual effects on computers--- that
having the monster dressed in one of the ugliest looking combinations of
prosthetics shows how primitive X-Files is
in comparison. I think that it actually helps the story. For one thing, the director is damn sure to
make sure we don't actually see the monster until the episode is nearly half
over, and for another, seeing this awful looking mutation helps make the final
revelation in the denouement--- that this monster was not a creation of nature
but from the sea of radioactivity which was Chernobyl
more believable. It's also a little comforting that even at this point they're
letting us know there actually is an actor doing all this. If this had been
Darin Morgan's only contribution to the series, it would have been worthy of
note. Thank the lord that it wasn't (or watch the next episode)
More than that, now that Carter is
finally away from the basement, he's
helping make his leads for believable and dimensional. Mulder seems even more
despondent and angry than he was at last week (but what do you expect now that
he's back on the wiretap and dragged through the Jersey
sewers), and is now contemplating resigning from the FBI. For a change, it's
Scully who has to find a way to keep going, agreeing to do an autopsy, coming
up with a lead when the worm is found in the corpse, and putting two and two
together when she gets the newspaper. There's also some welcome growth from
Skinner, who with each episode seems to becoming less a cipher, and more fixed
in his own position. There are definite indications that he might be 'the
friend in the FBI' the caller references himself as (he's certainly more
trustworthy--- but we'll get to that as well.) When he admits to Mulder that
this should've been an X-File, it's a big step down a path he'll be willing to
lead on.
It's not a perfect episode. The
shots of Gillian Anderson are getting so bizarrely placed that it's beginning to
look like Scully really is hiding something (Anderson was seven months pregnant
at the time) The calls make this case seem more important then it actually is,
and frankly, it's hard to know why it's so important that they resolve the
case. And the setup for a sequel is a little lame, considering that this is one
of those cases that they never followed
through on. But The Host is a creepy, squirmy, and humorous little story that
plays like a well-oiled machine, and demonstrates that the second season is
finding a groove a lot quicker than the first.
My Score: 4 Stars.
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