Teleplay by Glen Morgan & James Wong; Story by Darin Morgan
Directed by David Nutter
Our first dance with Glen's younger
brother is a remarkably straight-forward, mostly serious piece about a town
that deals with a small town in Pennsylvania, where people have begun to kill
each other in bursts, including what may be the first example in any medium of
a psychotic postal worker. Not a particularly unusual work, and yet there are
more than a few moments in Blood where the episode sings.
For one thing, we have the rare
example of a sympathetic lawman, who treats Mulder with respect and who doesn't
run away when screaming when he hears some of the more outlandish theories
presented. John Cygan does a very good job of playing a cop who is clearly in
over his head, and who wants to see the carnage in Franklin
end, even if he doesn't know why it's happening. The episode also has several
very good set pieces with each killing, so well done that it doesn't hit you
until the episodes over that you're basically seeing the same set piece over and over. It's certainly a problem the series
will fall victim to in future episodes, but here it just lends itself to the
sense of dread and suspense with each burst of messages.
Paradoxically, this episode plays
least well when it goes back to old habits. Considering how paranoid Mulder was
to make sure he and Scully weren't even seen
together in Little Green Men, it's kind of odd that he seems to be
consulting her as if there were no problems, or for that matter, why he doesn't
seem to mind her flying three hundred miles out of her way to come to the scene
of the crime. Even more inexplicable is why and how Byers, Langley and Frohike
seem to get involved in this episode. I understand Mulder may be relying on
them now that he's been pulled away from his official channels, but why would he go to and from D.C. to see them,
and not Scully? They're a lot more entertaining and relevant than they were in
their first appearance, and God knows the exchanges with Frohike are becoming
classic, but it's still not clear whether Morgan and Wong have a handle on them
yet. (They'll actually grow more as characters
when their creators let them go.)
The biggest problem is the lack of
an explanation. Even by this stage in this series, we know better that to hope
that the larger conspiracy is ever going to be revealed behind anything. But
here, electronic devices--- televisions and microwaves, which might be able to
be controlled by outside sources, but also devices in calculators, watches, and
our hero's cell phone--- are all being manipulated, and we have no idea as to
by who or to what end-- beyond Mulder's explanations. Admittedly, this may be
one of the rare occasions where the writers themselves are expressing
themselves. Glen Morgan also admitted that he doesn’t have a clue about who or
what was transmitting the subliminal message, saying that this is something the
viewers need to decide for themselves, and this may be one of the few occasions
where the audience's ideas may be far more plausible then the writers. Perhaps
this attitude actually plays a lot better when it comes in terms with the main
'villain' Ed Funsch. He doesn't know why
the universe has been pressing to him to buy a rifle and start shooting at
people, but his adrenals are spike and the world seems determined, so who is he
to stand in it's way? As the sheriff points out, Mulder knows more about what happened to him
than he does.
It's a darker, slier episode than a
lot of The X-Files we've had so
far, having Scully being the one to
wonder when Mulder was going to bring up alien abductions in his report, only
to have him dismiss the possibility with the very next line, and have it seem
like Mulder's about to fall victim to a subliminal message, only to see it be
far more direct approach on the TV he's watching. And it does have some subtler
suggestions about this being a pedestrian town, while still being subject to
government flyovers and guns being available right across from the blood drive.
If it ultimately falters a bit in the final act, that doesn't change that Blood
is still a piquant and often scary episode that demonstrates the series is
moving at a far better clip from when it was last year.
My Score: 3.5 stars.
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