X-Files Episode Guide: Trevor

17. Trevor

Written by Jim Guttridge & Ken Hawryliw

Directed by Rob Bowman

Considering that this is the fourth script written by a first time - or rather pair of writers - that we've had this season, this is one is a lot better than we've dealt with this year. Helps matters that Hawryiliw - try that one on your Scrabble board- has been working in the X-Files prop department since the series early days. And that's a bit fitting, since Trevor bears a great deal of resemblance to a first season script. It plays a lot better than most of them, but ultimately a few other problems prevent this episode from being anything other than average.

Admittedly, the teaser and the first act lead one to believe that this might be a bit better than some of the so called scary X-Files we've had this season. The opener is one of the more engaging that we've had, and when Mulder and Scully get involved, there's a bit more playfulness than we've come to expect from our protagonists. The opening exchange about David Copperfield is one of the best ones the series would ever do, and where Scully is the one to suggest spontaneous human combustion is one of the more wonderful responses, as well as the idea as illustrating how much Scully has grown over the past few years. The idea that Pinker Rawls is somehow managing to pass through solid objects is fairly creative, as concepts, and the effects people manage to make it work very well in the first bit of the episode, culminating with Rawls surviving being riddled with bullets. Mulder's theorizing is better than usual, and his solutions are more practical than they usually are for this particular theory, which is a radical change from a lot episodes, where our heroes survive mainly on dumb luck.

Unfortunately, this episode drops dramatically when it comes to trying to give recognizable traits to most of the characters. Rawls plays most of the episode as this horrible human being, the kind of person who won't think twice about killing anybody who gets in his way, and John Diehl does a good job when he makes the character seem as brutal as everyone says. But in the final act, when the story turns to what Rawls has been searching for this entire episode, turns out to be his not a score from a robbery but rather his seven-year old son. The transition for him hearing that his child led to him getting out of prison was an act of God is a change of character that is completely unbelievable, as are his attempts to act as a father to a child he's just met. The scenes near the end where he finally meets Trevor don't work at all, and the last  scene where he seemingly turns away from his killing frenzy after looking at his son's face, is a twist that doesn't play.

But even less likeable is the way his ex-girlfriend June is portrayed. It's clear the writers to an extent were trying to set June up as someone who, in her own way, was as twisted as her boyfriend - this is a woman who left her son with her sister as if he were a piece of luggage, then used the money from the robbery to try and set up a new life for herself.  But the way her new boyfriend reacts upon learning the depths of the lies she's told, just doesn't play - considering what we know about Pinker Rawls, he comes off as something of a prick. And the way she utterly denies her son isn't much better, so it doesn't explain why, in the climax of the episode, she takes her car and runs Pinker through. It's hard to say whether we was supposed to come off as a battered woman or a vengeful fury, whichever way the writers planned it just doesn't work. Catherine Dent is a great actress (a few years after this she would finally get the range that she deserved on FX's grounding breaking cop drama 'The Shield') but the script just doesn't give her enough to make the ambiguity that the role supposedly has to pay off.

Make no mistake, Trevor is a much better episode than Alpha, and honestly its something of a shame that this would be the only episode that Guttridge and Hawryliw would ever write for the series. They clearly have a gift for the mystery part of the series better than so many other writers wouldn't. But the lack of consistency with the dimensions of the characters make it a lesser entry in the sixth season. It might have served better in an earlier season, but we've come to expect better by now.

My score: 2.5 stars.