X-Files Episode Guide: The Calusari

Written by Sara B. Charno

Directed by Michael Vujer

I want to give this episode more credit than it deserves. As I may have mentioned earlier, The Calusari was the first episode of The X-Files I ever saw. It was the shining force that brought me into the series. By the time I was committed to the show, and stayed with it, through thick and thin, for the next six years. And for the uninitiated, it might prove a great way to get into the series. If you were fifteen. And hadn't seen The Omen. Or The Exorcist. Or half a dozen other rip-offs. Or any episodes from last season.

'Cause when you look at it now, it's pretty lame. It seems to be another in the line of creepy child episodes that we got in the show's first season, only not nearly as well done. As an added bonus, it adds another in the long line of religious sects that the show has a tradition of assaulting--- the Kindred in Genderbender, the Native American in Shapes, the bizarre vegetarian cult in Red Museum. Oh, it tries to gussy them up by having them by being Romanian instead of religious, but it's the same principle, and not nearly as subtle. Frankly, we should be relieved the child wasn't the reincarnation of Bela Lugosi.

Oh, I'll admit there are some good sequences. The opening teaser is flat-out chilling--- probably more so for all the parents who were watching the show. And it's nice to see after the last seasons of having Mulder operate unassisted (save for the Lone Gunmen) to see someone whose a little more respectable analyzing certain elements of the story. I always liked Chuck Burks--- he had a scientific backing the Gunmen just didn't seem to have, and seemed to take things a bit more seriously over time. I always wished Mulder would have turned to him a little more often.. But after that, the sequences start to seem like directly plagiarism from earlier episodes that, frankly, weren't that good to begin with. The strangulation of Steve Holvey is pretty much stolen from a sequence in Born Again., and the Calusari themselves don't seem that far separated from the revivalists who populated Miracle Man. And look, there's the social worker who counseled Scully in Irresistible seen doing normal work--- for her. And all of them are just preludes to the exorcism that we get  at the climax of the episode, where Scully is confronted by the ---wait for it--- evil twin of Charlie that is supposedly the representation of evil itself. Frankly, this is an average X-Files on a good day, to see the Calusari essentially calling the creature murdering the Holvey family the equivalent of Hitler seems even more out of place---- and insensitive--- than the reference to the death camps that we got in Squeeze. At least, there they had the excuse that it was one of the first episodes. There's really no excuse for it now.

The only excuse for this ridiculous mish-mash of ideas and rip-offs is that the show is getting close to the end of the season. We can understand the rationale there, considered that Born Again and Roland were essentially the same story. But why on earth Sara Charno, who demonstrated such subtlety in Aubrey would do something this haphazardly is a mystery far more compelling than that this episode tries to put forth. It must have stung, because she never wrote another episode for the series, which is something of a shame. But then again, if this was truly the best Charno could do, maybe the series was better served without her. I do owe her a certain amount of gratitude for her luring me in, but that only extends so far. Why couldn't I have been brought in by Humbug---- but that might have set up my expectations for the series far differently.

My score: 2 Stars