X-Files Episode Guide: Milagro

Teleplay by Chris Carter ; story by John Shiban & Frank Spotnitz

Directed by Kim Manners

This was another episode I really wasn't looking forward to rewatching. I originally thought that the amount of gore in the episode was repugnant, especially by the standards of 1990s broadcast television, combined with the often turgid levels of the voiceovers throughout made this one of the worst episodes that The X-Files would do in its first seven seasons. However, many of the writers of the series, particularly Carter and Spotnitz considered it one of the more significant episodes they would do ever. And more than a few reviewers of the episode consider it one of the series more profound episodes. So, I figured I had to, at least figuratively, open my heart to it. And much like when I reexamined The Field Where I Died in the middle of Season 4, it seems that I had vastly underestimated it, and given my profession, that's a little unforgivable.

If we were to view Milagro as a straight X-Files episode, then of course it would end up  near the bottom of the pile.  The central investigation deliberately goes in circles, seems to have no motives or reasoning, and ends unsatisfactorily. But what I didn't really understand is that the case is really not supposed to be about the murders involving psychic surgery. It has to do with writing, and in  a sense writing about the X-Files. The central story is really about Philip Padgett, a man who wants to write a story about Mulder and Scully, and so in order to do so must immerse so totally in the world that he becomes a character. In a certain sense, Milagro is also about Chris Carter, and what's it like when your creation basically begins to control you. It may not be subtle that the episode begins with Padgett ripping out his own heart to come up with inspiration for a story about our heroes, but that's part of the point.

This episode wouldn't have doable had it not been part of the continuing theme of Season 6 - investigating Mulder and Scully's lives more closely. We've had Mulder swap his life with another man, we've had them analyzed by the X-Files they're examining, we've had them re-imagined in a domestic setting, we've had their lives repeated over and over again. So the idea of having our heroes become the characters of a writers fits in very nicely with this. What probably unsettled so many viewers -- probably this one as well - was that unlike Darin Morgan or Vince Gilligan,  Carter plays is entirely straight and earnestly, examining Scully as a woman who has sacrificed so much of her career that she finds herself now considering the workings of her own psyche. The fact that she is being studied by a writer who is so clearly stalking her - he follows her into a church out of the hope she might come there, he moves into Mulder's apartment building just so he would have a chance to see her more often - that the scene where he and Scully seems to be on the verge of seduction shouldn't work at all. But it does, mainly because Carter seems to be making a statement about whether writers should be able to control their characters or vice versa.

None of this would be possible without the brilliant performance of John Hawkes as Padgett. One of the great character actors of our time, he does something that shouldn't be possible - more than a few actually. For starters, the prose that makes up Padgett's novel is very purple, bordering on pretentious. (It should be, after all, it's Carter speak.) But given his ability to deliver and the plaintive earnestness that involves most of it, it actually manages to sound like a pretty good novel.. And his prepossession even when Scully finally comes into his apartment, and realizes just how deep his obsession with her is rather remarkable: he maintains a level of equanimity throughout that we've come to see only in the behavior of some of the most intense serial killers on this show. (Of course, he is one, after a fashion, but its hard to realize that.)  The scene that he shares with the killer that he's created is also very haunting - we know from the scene that he's literally talking to himself, but he finally seems to realize whether or not he is letting his art control him. He is told this by Scully, and she openly complains about, but he realizes at the episode's conclusion that the best possible ending for his work may not be the most humane, as he finally realizes that the monster that he has created is actually himself.

I'm still not prepared to rank this as one of the best episodes of the series, or even the best of the sixth season. It is still a little too gory for even a viewer used to the bloodiness of pay cable to enjoy, and frankly the bloodiness borders on being superfluous more than once. (What was the point of seeing Padgett at the end, with his heart ripped out). And even though you know this episode is way too self-conscious on purpose, that doesn't make it seem any less ridiculous at some point. But it features one of Gillian Anderson's best performances, and its definitely far more watchable than it seemed the first time around. And as someone who has more than once had to struggle on making his characters do what I want them to do, I can certainly appreciate the struggles of Padgett - and Carter - a lot more than I did the first time around.

My score: 4 stars.