Friday, January 20, 2017

X-Files Episode Guide: The Unnatural

Written & Directed by David Duchovny

Once again, we find ourselves in the broken down hallway of the apartment of Arthur Dales, with a long, rambling, sort-of mythological tales told in flashback that doesn't really fit anywhere in the mythos. Why is last season's episode Travelers so loathed (even though, as previously noted, it was one of the better episodes of Season 5) and this episode one of the more beloved in the X-Files canon? There are a lot of reasons for that, but the most prominent one is that The Unnatural is far more fun.
The episode is, for one thing, perfectly timed. Considering that Milagro was essentially an episode that analyzed Mulder and Scully from the point of view of its creator, this episode tries to take a lot at a story from the X-Files, and turn an entire episode of the conspiracy into one of pure joy. Duchovny has written quite a few episodes that have dissected the mythology of the series a bit, but in his first truly original script for the series, he wisely takes away all of the conspiracy and double-talk, and writes in a far simpler style. What we are supposed to take from the tale of Josh Exley, an alien who finds himself enraptured, not by an of the more pertinent things of what we call normal life, but by something that he himself considers "useless" - baseball - and it truly transforms, not just figuratively but literally. Mulder may not be interested in the world of baseball (or so he tells Dales, we know enough about his character for the last six season to know that he's a rabid Yankee fan), but in a way that's the point. This is not a story of the mythology, but a pure fable. A story of a baseball legend who just happened to be an alien. In essence, it gets to the core of humanity. Josh (at least partially modeled on the great Negro League star Josh Gibson) goes from being an alien to being human because of love. And in the final minutes of the flashback, it becomes a literal truth, as he finds himself bleeding human blood, laughing at it, even as he dies.
There should be elements of this story that don't work, there's a certain level of shifting between the real world and the flashback (Poorboy somehow being a link between the world of 1999 and 1947; a black and white TV showing moments of Colony) that should come across as pretentious. But as Dales tells us, this is an example of trusting the tale, not the teller, and we find ourselves carried along with the sweet, charming story about the friendship between Officer Dales and Exley and a story about baseball being one of those things that transcends even the complications of humanity. It's a real energetic episode, and one that is matched by the performances. Jesse L. Martin, in one of his earlier, more playful roles, well manages to cease the nature of Exley, both in his scenes as a ballplayer and the way he talks about his 'family' in metaphor. Frederic Lane plays another Arthur Dales, this time with far more pleasure than he did in Travelers. This time his character is overwhelmed, not by a massive Communist conspiracy, but by the truth behind a man he comes to consider a friend. Even Brian Thompson, who hasn't had anything really imaginative to do with the Alien Bounty Hunter character in three seasons, finally manages to get a little extra energy and emotion into his character.
About the only think that's really flawed about this episode is how it takes the character of the 'other' Arthur Dales out of the series lexicon. This was a necessity given the illness of Darren McGavin, but the result of having Dales now being played by another person, takes a lot of the energy out of the character. (It also doesn't make a heckuva a lot of sense plotwise, since Mulder knows that the real Dales is in Florida having visited him in Agua Mala.) While M. Emmet Walsh gives his usual solid performance, one can't help but wonder if there wasn't another way to work around this. Had Walsh had to tell it as one of Arthur's old tales, thus adding a further remove from the story, it probably would've worked a lot better. As it, Dales never appears again in the series, and that's something of a real loss for the show.
Though the flashback is truly one of the more wondrous bits of storytelling, Duchovny also is good enough to bookend it with Mulder and Scully at play. The opening act where our heroes come as close to flirting as they've done in quite some time is really very charming, but even more delightful is the end where Mulder teaches Scully how to hit a baseball. The final shot where the flying balls become shooting stars is one of the more brilliant pieces of cinematography the show has done.
The Unnatural is triumph for Duchovny on all fronts: it is without question the best script he would ever write for the series, and it is superbly acted and directed as well. Clearly Duchovny took as his model for this script, not Carter, whom he scripted out his previous stories, but Vince Gilligan, who demonstrated in Dreamland how to turn the mythology on its head. One wishes Duchovny could've kept this level of balance for his remaining stories, but unfortunately that was not to be the case.

MY Score: 5 stars.

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