X-Files Episode Guide: Dreamland

Written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban & Frank Spotnitz

Directed by Kim Manners

The mythology by this point in the series has become so convoluted that one is amazed the writers hadn't tried to satirize it more often. Darin Morgan came closest to doing so in Season 3, and his brother Glen managed something of the same approach in his episode Musings of A Cigarette-Smoking Man, but basically every writer has kept to the same old tried and true house style when it came to mythos.  One can't know for certain, but I'd be willing to bet Gilligan, the most playful of the writers  may have convinced Spotnitz, the man who besides Carter has written the most of the mytharc, to try and combine the two. One gets a sense of it in the teaser of Dreamland, when Mulder and Scully, on their way to visit Area 51, meet along with the usual cadre of military men, a man smoking a Morley who is not William B. Davis, but rather a MIB who is the consummate bureaucrat. And that's the man who Mulder ends up doing a body swap with when a UFO crashes and burns over their heads.

There's a great deal of fun to see Mulder, finally given a chance to see inside a portion of the conspiracy, to find out that along with meeting shady figures like Newt Gingrich and Saddam Hussein, Area 51 is not that different from any of the other government offices. There are the friendships among the older fellows, there are the brownnoses who are trying to do their jobs well, and the basic pattern of the day seems to be crisis management, although this isn't disaster relief but rather a warp in the spacetime continuum. And keeping in with Gilligan's pattern of having villains with  relatable problems, a man who has all the power and influence that Mulder could ever dream of is so dissatisfied with his wife, kids and mortgage that he practically jumps at the chance to end up switched bodies with a handsome, single FBI agent.

 Michael McKean gives one of the more delightful guest star performances in the series history as Morris Fletcher as a man who finally seems to realize all the potential that Mulder has in his life. One could make the argument that this is, in a sense, little more than a continuation of the idea that Gilligan floated in his classic Small Potatoes But this one takes the potential hinted at in the episode, and takes it to a fairly intriguing conclusion. Morris may not be doing a great job when it comes to solving X-Files, but the fact of the matter is, he's a far better FBI agent than Mulder ever was, at least from the perspective of Kersh. (I would've killed to see a closeup of Kersh's face, when Fletcher profusely apologizes to him for going off the reservation.

It's also very interesting the way that it paints a picture of Scully as someone who, as much as she may have railed in the teaser about wanting a normal life, is so used to dealing with the X-Files that she can't accept a Mulder who does everything by the book. Seeing the usually restrained Gillian Anderson get progressively more frustrated as her partner becomes a womanizing, by-the-book, chauvinist who keeps calling her 'Dana' is one of the more enjoyable moments, and demonstrates her flare for exasperated comedy.

The episode also has some of the more playful bits that the series would put forth. Fans of the series would later complain how the series would become increasingly 'X-Files lite' over the next two years, but the fact is, when the X-Files wanted to, it could comedy extremely well. Seeing poor Mulder trying to fit into a family life shows just how unsuited he is for a live like the one Scully has been crying out for. And the bit of camera work where Duchovny and McKean parody a classic sequence from the Marx Brothers is very imaginative. It's even more interesting than by now the conspiracy chooses to show not a bunch of old men trying to rule the world, but a bunch of middle-aged guys just trying to do their jobs and not understanding what the tech support guys are talking about, even when it ends up with a 75-year old Native American woman talking like a military pilot or a lizard with its head in a rock.

It's not a perfect episode, but for once it has nothing to do with the convolutions of the plot. Nora Dunn's performance of Fletcher's wife is so shrill and henpecked that's impossible to feel anything but irritation with her. (Although it was very funny when Scully shows up at her door)  And the end sequence where Mulder is eventually led off by guards and black suits is something we've seen so often, even though its happening to Fletcher, we tend to wave it off as yet another silly cliffhanger. But overall Dreamland is a very entertaining episode that more or less makes you wonder why the heck Gilligan wasn't allowed a crack at the mythos more often. Who knows? Maybe in addition to making it funny, he could've made it comprehensible.

My score: 4 stars.