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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