X-Files Episode Guide: Agua Mala

Written by David Amann

Directed by Rob Bowman

The last time Mulder and Scully returned from exile to the X-Files, we had to endure the disappointing Firewalker. Now, we return after more than half a season away, and Mulder and Scully are brought back in this episode, which is frankly even more disappointing.

 Firewalker, while it was derivative of earlier episodes, at least had a uniformity of tone, and was written by a man who at least had an idea of how the series worker. Here, the writer is David Amann, who didn't exactly set the series ablaze in Terms of Endearment, and seems even harder pressed to try and meld comedy and suspense like he failed to do with his series debut. He doesn't exactly do much better here, though at least there are a few things that make this episode a little more bearable. The main bit is, of course, Darren McGavin, who is a lot more charming than he was in Travelers, and very entertaining to watch.  Unfortunately, he's only in the episode for three scenes, mainly ones that bookend the story. While it's very believable that Arthur Dales would head down to Florida (where it's mentioned more than once that "all the nuts roll downhill too), a lot of the subtlety that he possessed in that episode is absent. It's a great pity that this would be his characters final appearance on the series, but McGavin's poor health would affect the realty of the writers plans.

The episodes major problem is one of tone. It's starts out well, with a teaser that is genuinely one of the more unsettling ones that we've had this season. Unfortunately, Amann then decides that he's not comfortable enough with the suspense and awe of having to deal with  a sea monster story (which, frankly, was fairly unknown for the series to try), and he starts lowering the tone in terms of comedy. He really shouldn't have: the idea of having Mulder and Scully trapped in Florida because of a hurricane, with a genuine monster out of Jules Verne, would've been a good one, if derivative of Ice and Darkness Falls.

However, the story takes a major fall when Mulder and Scully end up in the condos with a bunch of refugees, and Amann decides to turn it into a comedy. However, he chooses to do so by inviting a group of characters that play like they're out of a CSI Miami series, barely uttering enough dialogue to sound like the stereotypes they are. When the deputy is laid low by the monster, instead of becoming a moment of seriousness, it ends up being played more for comedy than anything else, so that when he's literally sucked down the drain, it seems more for a laugh. By the time the pregnant woman ends up going into labor, with Scully being forced to deliver the baby held at gunpoint, and has literally seconds in which to figure out how to kill the monster before it swallows them whole, we are laughing - but not because this is actually funny.

It doesn't help matters that we never get to figure out what this monster actually is. The idea that something from the seas got washed by the hurricane into the sewers is an intriguing one, as is the fact that for most of the episode we barely see it. But Mulder and Scully are so busy trying to stay afloat that we're never quite clear how they manage to  save themselves. And really, the scene where Mulder seems to make the leap by taking a look at the cat that has somehow managed to save itself, is a leap so big that it's small wonder that Arthur Dales doesn't buy it.

There are  a lot of ingredients visible in this episode that could've made it entertaining, or at least a lot more watchable. But Amann isn't a good enough writer to figure it out yet.  And even though much of Season 6 has been trying to do X-Files lite, he doesn't yet seem to have enough of a grasp of the series to make it workable. So what happens in Agua Mala is that we get an episodes that fails on both categories as an X-Files: it's too scary to be funny, and too silly to be frightening. It really makes you wonder why Carter shuffled the episode order again, so that this would be the first episode we saw after the big two-parter. But then, this episode wouldn't work no matter where it was scheduled.

My score: 2 stars.