X-Files Episode Guide: Detour

Written by Frank Spotnitz

Directed by Brett Dowler

For awhile, this was one of my favorite episodes of Season 5---- an episode that seemed to be reaching back to a simpler time (and in retrospect, it's really odd that I considered the incredibly dark third season 'simpler') and visiting a lighter toned episode with the tone of the Darin Morgan themed episodes War of the Coprophages and Quagmire  . You can certainly see the resemblance--- Mulder and Scully go out into the woods looking for an unidentified predator that has been attacking intruders in the woods, get stranded from authority, and end up having a whimsical exchange in the middle of the night. Considering how dark the cancer arc was, one can certainly see why Carter & Co would have welcomed the idea. But with the benefit of nearly eighteen years, its pretty clear that Detour not only doesn't hold a candle to either of those episode, but is one of the more confused episodes in the canon.

And perhaps the most obvious reason is that its being helmed by Frank Spotnitz,  someone X-philes minds do not automatically think of when it comes to comedy. There are, granted, some fairly funny ideas in the episode, and some that lend to some pleasing elements. But the sad truth of the matter is that Spotnitz can't seem to make up his mind whether this episode is a traditional thriller with comic elements or a comedy with scary elements. He is not aided one bit by the special effects team, which admittedly does a fine job of making it impossible to tell what kind of animal is stalking people in the forests of Florida or Mark Snow's unusually labored score, which for some reason, keeps using a repeated motif from Humbug, of all episodes.

And part of the larger problem of the episode is that we go through basically the entire length of the story with no clear idea of what kind of monster is chasing Mulder and Scully.  Usually bubbling over with ideas, Mulder doesn't seem to have even a theory of what the heck is trying to kill him. Even when Mulder is facing the most horrid of creatures, he at least has some outlandish theories that we can find plausible given the evidence. Unfortunately, he saves it after all of the action is over with----  and this time, it borders on the ludicrous. So what has apparently been chasing people and trying to kill everything in site are----  Ponce De Leon conquistadors who found the Fountain of Youth and have been living in the woods for over four hundred years. Even Spotnitz doesn't seem to think very much of the idea having come up with it, but that seems to be the only explanation that we get, and the episode hasn't maintained a level of comedy high enough to pull off this level of ridiculousness.

Which is something of a shame, because there are some pretty good moments as the episode progresses. The idea of Mulder getting involved in a case, because he doesn't want to go to an FBI team-building seminar that he and Scully have been sent on. (Private revenge of Skinner for calling him a traitor in Redux?) And there's the fact that it has to do with communication between partners, when we can tell just the opening sequence how well Mulder and Scully communicate. How they manage to meet one of the few competent law enforcement agents in X-Files canon---- only to find themselves outmaneuver. And while the five minute sequence in the woods can't approach the one in Quagmire that it's all but ripped off from, the level of flirtation and banter between our two leads is amusing (and probably made shippers throughout the X-File verse hearts skip a beat), capped off with a wonderful bit where Scully sings. Terribly. So its not like this episode is completely without virtue. Had the story manage to maintain that level, it probably would've been more entertaining.

But Spotnitz is never completely comfortable with the idea of the comedy, and keeps trying to turn it into a thriller. This, too, isn't a bad idea as there are more than a few genuine scares in it. The scenes at the beginning of the first act, and the scene where the monsters try to track the  boy in the house are genuinely unsettling, as are the sequences where we get the sense where the predators are clearly trying to divide and conquer our heroes. But they're surrounded by such bizarre bits that you have trouble believing, such as the biggest flaw in the episode: Mulder and Scully get completely lost in a hole where their prey has been stalking them---- and are somehow found by the search and rescue team that has found them in exactly the right place. Even for an X-File, that's hard to believe.

Detour has a lot of good moments, and is at least a much more watchable episode than any we've had so far. But ultimately, one gets the feeling that the whole doesn't nearly add up to the sum of its parts. It's not scary enough to be a thriller, its not funny enough to be a comedy, and it lacks any kind of resolution to what the heck we've been spending the last forty minutes trying to chase. But hey, at least the shippers were happy, and I guess that's all that matters.

My score: 3 stars.