Homicide Episode Guide: End Game

Written By Rogers Turrentine; story by James Yoshimura and Henry Bromell

Directed by Lee Bonner

            ‘Homicide’ hasn’t been playing by the rules in the entire ‘detectives shot’ storyline and they don’t stop in ‘End Game’ either.

 Tradition suggests that the killer be found and arrested by the end of the episode. But in the great tradition of ‘Homicide’ we don’t even know if the detectives found the real shooter. Gordon Pratt SEEMS like  the shooter ,his behavior corresponds with that of the killer and he behaves like a guilty man but we never get a straight answer one way or the other. Certainly, we get absolutely no indication from Pratt himself---- though considering his appearance and his attitude we think he did it.

Portraying Gordon Pratt is noted character Steve Buscemi. By now he has built up a reputation for being the quintessential eccentric criminal. Which makes sense because, well, he looks like

a weasel.. But Gordon Pratt is a very meaty role. He appears to be an academic, philosophic racist---- the kind of people who form militias out in Montana or West Virginia. He has a lot of intellectual books (Homer, Sophocles and Marx), in his rundown apartment a predilection for guns, and a real sense of being a wannabe For most of the episode, he talks a good game trying to sound like an intellectual gentlemen.    But it becomes pretty clear that it’s a façade and that he is little better than a thug.

            The interrogation scene between Pembleton and Pratt is an exceptional scene. Pembleton seems like the same cold ruthless interrogator that he always does--- until we get a clearer picture of Pratt. He never graduated from high school, he doesn’t understand Plato and he certainly can’t read it in the original Greek. He makes a feeble attempt to translate a passage and then gets one-upped when Pembleton (who had a classical education) interprets the page with no trouble. Then Frank falters. Heaving exposed Pratt’s ignorance he rubs it in the mans face----a move which angers Pratt into finally calling in a lawyer. With only circumstantial evidence, he can not be held. And he walks out of the station.

            We then get another scene in which Pratt walks out  by a parade of police looking at him coldly.  Then comes the wrap-up in which temperatures come to a head. Munch is pissed at Pembleton for blowing the interrogation and letting his emotions compromise him. This is ironic considering Frank’s behavior up to now. Most of the detectives leave angry---- which given the nature of Pratt’s crime, leads to something that has probably been  inevitable

            Though the search and interrogation of Pratt take up much of the episode, we do see some more of the detectives recovering. Felton is feeling well enough so that he can be released. Bolander seems alright but slips into a coma while talking to Munch, requiring him to have an operation to relieve the pressure on the brain--- something that may have given him amnesia. Howard, though she’s still in pretty bad shape, is finally awake and it seems like she’ll get through. The detective parts of them haven’t changed though. Beau goes to Kay and tells her that he thinks it was his fault for the shooting because he didn’t come in the building first. And since he was a better shot, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten the shooter. But Kay is standing firm. She was the primary she goes in first. A cop is  a  cop.

            We also get some insight into their colleagues. Reporter Rhonda Overby talks to the detectives while they walk in and out of the squadroom. Bayliss, as you might expect seems the most optimistic, Pembleton the most cool and firm. But there are some surprising reactions .Lewis is incredibly pissed off and delivers a very foul diatribe, while Munch is still reeling from the shooting (Though he does come up with a bit of Munchian wit when Overby asks him who cops talk to relieve their stress. ‘Reporters’)

            It is clear that there is a lot of anger still around and eventually, perhaps someone finds an outlet for it. Two hours after leaving police custody Pratt is found shot in the lobby of his hotel. 911 never comes and  Bayliss is the only cop who appears on the scene. No one will miss him but there are implications that when confronted by it, must face--- that someone he knows might have done it. He faces it more in the next episode but he may never be able to get right with it.

            Not much of a release, huh. ‘end Game’ doesn’t feature any of the  usual behavior or investigation from a police shooting. The guilty man may have gotten away with a murder--- or a cop might have killed an innocent (if unsavory) man. There’s no closure here, not for the police or for the audience. And that’s how real life works too. Fontana and friends may not have liked using violence in this case but dramatically it paid off. In spades

Homicide Episode Guide: Dead End

Written by Jorge Zamacona and Julie Martin; story by James Yoshimura

Directed by Whitney Rasnick

            The second episode in the ‘police shooting’ three parter moves a little slower than the previous episode. This, too, is standard ‘Homicide’ behavior.  Half of a cops life is spent on stakeouts or waiting for suspects to reappear. For the first half of ‘Dead End’ comparatively little happens. 

            That doesn’t mean that  there isn’t some great stuff. We continue o see more into the makeup of Bayliss and Pembleton. Showing some rookie tendencies even now, Tim tries to think positively and hope that his friends are OK. Pembleton is the realist. He knows that they could die but that he can do nothing about it. The only thing he can do is catch their shooter. The single-mindedness that we see in Frank continues to permeate and will not hit him until the next episode.

            Things actually are going better for the detectives. Felton  is feeling pain his foot and shoulder but he is doing  better physically. Emotionally, he’s going through some pretty dark territory. First, he has finally come to the realization that he and his wife no longer love each other---  a particularly sad one considering all the effort he put into finding her. He is also feeling guilty about the possibility that his partner might die and that he can do nothing to help it. Daniel Baldwin does some fine work in his scenes but his finest moment comes near the end when he visits Kay’s room for the first time. The look on his face as he traveled down the hall--- that was a great job.

            Even though Bolander and Howard are still in critical condition (and therefore absent from the screen for most of the show) we still get a sense of their presence. In particular, we learn a lot more about Bolander’s relationships with his partners. Mitch claims that he and Stan got along so well that they took vacations together and had great fun --- something that he has never done with Munch. Eventually Mitch confesses that they had a great deal of difficulty getting along outside the job. But despite this both men clearly care for him (though they don’t say it).

            We also meet Margie, Stan’s often spoken off but never seen ex-wife.  For all the coldness Bolander accused her of having, she seems a personable middle-aged woman who is afraid of losing her husband but its nervous about seeing him.

            During this episode, the police slowly circle the nets around Glenn Holton. We learn some more about pedophilia and learn some surprising things. Holton has a girlfriend--- or at least someone who cares enough about him to risk collecting his pornography stash.

            We also see some new faces. For the first time, we see QRT (Quick Response Team)  the police involved in dealing with big crisis. Led by Lieutenant Jasper (played by real-life Baltimore Homicide police commander Gary D’Addrio) they have there own sense of pride and confidence in their abilities. Inevitably, he and Pembleton clash on how to surveil and capture Holton in the shipyard where they finally catch him. This isn’t just Frank’s fault; as we’ll see Jaspers doesn’t get along with anybody from Homicide.

            And having spent enough time supporting the detectives the bosses decide they must look for a scapegoat. Granger and Barnfather  manipulate Russert into investigating her fellow shift commander and assigning blame for his signing the arrest warrant which (as we learned in the previous episode) had the wrong apartment number on it. At first Giardello is enraged at the lack of support. However, because he is the kind of man that he is, he takes the heat from the bosses. This time, however, Russert rushes to his defense revealing her loyalties to the job. Oddly enough Barnfather takes his rebuke quietly in a rare moment of compassion.

            But there are more serious problems ahead for everybody. Bayliss and Pembleton interrogate Holton on both the shootings and the murder he did commit. Playing to his sense of fear of what will happen to him, he ‘cops to the shooting--- only to ‘confess’ that he is actually not the shooter. The police have been chasing the wrong man; the investigation is back to square one.

            Few TV shows would dare devote more than twenty minutes, let alone two episodes to going after an attempted police killer and end up chasing the wrong man. But this is how ‘Homicide’ is different. Nothing has been gained by the end of ‘Dead End’--- the policed have no clear  idea who the shooter is, Bolander and Howard are still in critical condition--- but we feel the enormous impact of nevertheless. This is what lets what could have been a cops and criminal chase into something as effective and strong as this episode is. This is powerful stuff.

My score: 4.5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Patience

Written & Directed by Chris Carter

Considering that the X-Files had demonstrated that it had clearly had a direction after the opening two-parter, it therefore can only be viewed as a major step backward given how the series proceeded from here on out. It doesn't help matters that many of the Monster of the Week that we would get would be among the more pedestrian that the series would ever deal with.

Patience isn't the worst one of the bunch, but it does suffer from some of the most lackluster plotting and ideas that the X-Files has tried to do in quite some time. Even the monsters of the last couple of seasons had some interesting ideas among, even if they weren't well executed. This one just seems remarkably sloppy. We see from the first point on  what the creature is that is responsible for the slayings that call in Scully and Doggett. It appears to be... a bat-man. Seriously. Now if Mulder were here, there could probably be some kind of literal reason how some creature like this could come into existence. Here, the closest we get is when the man who has been in hiding from it for more than forty years tells us that a bat is evolutionary very close to the ape, and therefore it is possible that it could evolve the same way that a man could. I'm not sure that even Duchovny would be able to sell that particular explanation.

It doesn't help matters that the reason for the killings are among the most lazy and moronic that the series has dealt with. Here is Ernie, a man who spent more than forty years hiding from this horrible creature because it had his scent on it. Apparently, this creature, despite being one of the most capable killing machines imaginable couldn't find its prey, even though it was literally under its nose. One could argue that this would make it the most idiotic monster that we've ever seen on this series, except it turns out that  the whole reason it manages to land on its prey again is because Ernie's wife died, and he burnt it before dumping it in the lake so that she could be buried on consecrated land. I want to be sympathetic, but really the amount of sheer idiocy in the middle of all this wouldn't make a lot of sense in the most pedestrian comedy episode. Admittedly, the change in tone back to serious isn't a bad idea - considering how bland several of the comedy episodes had been becoming, a return to scares would be welcome. But if you're going to be scary, at least make an effort to make the plot worthy of it. Its rather shocking that so many critics seems to find this particular monster one of the most frightening that the X-Files had produced ; the makeup is admittedly striking, but its not particularly original compared to some of the best creatures the series has had in its heyday.

Were this an episode that dealt with Mulder and Scully, Patience would hardly be worth the viewer's time. Where it manages to succeed, and work a lot better, is having Doggett around. Scully is now, for better or worse, the voice of the believer, and what makes this episode work is the fact that she is not at all comfortable in this role. One can see her try to fill that void in the opening sequence, telling Doggett that this is Mulder's office, and attempting a presentation, complete with slides. But despite her best efforts, its clear that Scully is not at all secure in the idea of trying to play Mulder. She doesn't want to show Doggett up, and its clear, despite her attitude towards the local law enforcement, that she is very doubtful about every guess that she makes.  She wants to be the one who can do the job, but its clear, even given her advances all through Season 7, that she still is comfortable as skeptic. Anderson does some very good work mining areas that, frankly, we haven't thought she was capable of.

If the episode then put Doggett back in the role of playing Scully, it would be a lot flatter than it could be. But as much as Doggett is a meat and potatoes man, its really clear that his mind is a lot more open than Scully's was way back at the beginning of the series. He may not necessarily believe in the supernatural, but he is more than willing to accede to his new partner's experience. And while straightforward police work has had little place on the X-Files, its telling that his approach does have advantages the neither Mulder nor Scully were willing to try during their earlier time.

So there are some good points to this episode. The problem is there few and further between. Watching the scenes where Scully and Doggett are berated by the local police are so cliched you figure Carter wrote the dialogue in his sleep.  And the fact that Scully spends much of the last act listening to Ernie tell her about how much one must sacrifice to keep someone safe is so clumsily put forth, you can practically see the word 'metaphor' - just like the even less subtle scene where Scully puts Mulder's nameplate in his desk and shuts the drawer. It's not remotely subtle at all, but that's the overall theme with so much of Patience.

As an introduction to the adventures of Scully and Doggett, this episode is serviceable. As a scary episode, it barely passes muster. And really, considering what we seemed to have been promised at the end of Without, it can only be viewed as a disappointment. Unfortunately, this is what we're going to get for more than half the season. You'd think Carter, of all people, would've known better.

My score:2.25 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Without

Written by Chris Carter

Directed by Kim Manners

At this juncture, most of what happens in Without is basically more of X-Files greatest hits: we have the Mighty Morphing Bounty Hunter impersonating everybody he comes into contact with. We have Scully and Skinner holding guns on each other. We have an FBI agent being attacked by someone he thinks is someone else. Oh, and as an added bonus Kersh is publicly berating a subordinate who doesn't deserve it.

And yet, this episode works a lot better than most of the mytharc has in quite some time: mainly because for once the Bounty Hunter is impersonating characters that we have come to know and trust for nearly six years instead of random strangers. For the first time, the aliens ability are being used in a way that give it strength, and because it's being done off someone who has no history with it - Doggett - it actually seems fresh and vital in a way it really hasn't since as far back as End Game. Seeing Mulder being someone dangerous, watching Scully physically throttle a man twice her size, seeing Skinner throw Scully across the room give the Alien Bounty Hunter a menace that he just hasn't had in almost in his entire existence. (Of course, there's a real drawback to this, but we'll get to that in a bit)

 There's also a real vitality to what we're seeing because Scully's the one seeing it, not Mulder. The scene where she finally admits that she believes in the existence of extraterrestrials should come as an anticlimax, considering how much evidence she's had to refute just to try and be skeptical, particularly for the last couple of seasons. But because of what she's being forced to go through at this juncture, there's a real spark to it when she finally admits, probably because she's doing it more to herself than anybody else. Similarly, when Doggett is chewed out by Kersh for losing Mulder in the middle of the desert, and Skinner lays out the brutal reality of what the search is really about, there's a genuine anger to it. Partly because Skinner is expressing some of the genuine frustrations he's had being head of the X-Files all these year, but mostly because he's a human being who now realizes what's going to happen to Doggett - a fact that becomes all too real at the end of the episode when Doggett gets assigned to the X-Files.

Without also has a spark, because it genuinely seems to be playing how the series would work if it had followed the path of 'the search for Mulder' the way Fox advertised it. There's a genuine mix of the X-Files elements being put into the play along with the real life search. Doggett's genuine search for Mulder is being negated because none of the usual elements apply, and his reaction to his description of what he thought was Mulder at the episode's beginning is one of the more sincere reactions we've had from any authority figure. Watching him deal with the combination of the paranormal and the possible betrayals of the FBI are intriguing. And the heartbreaking moment when Scully leaves the desert not knowing how close she was to finding Mulder is one of the more shocking moments of the series.

All of this new energy gives The X-Files a spark it hasn't had in awhile. The problem is, however, that we are now officially leaving the mythology completely behind. And as a result, the series loses a lot of momentum again. There should be a great deal of symbolism in the fact that the Bounty Hunter has finally been really killed, but its negated, not merely by the fact that we immediately afterwards see Mulder being surrounded by them, but by the fact that the series will never deal with shapeshifters again. One could say the series will never recover from this, except that the mythos long since left the point of being comprehensible.  What makes it especially painful is that this shows how the series could have work, and once again Carter makes the choice to walk away from it for the purpose of extending the series. One really  wonders why he chose to. The X-Files has now decided that it can operate without it's leading man; couldn't it have at least decided to continue with some semblance of continuity in its underlying plotline. And having yanked Gibson Praise out of the air very perfunctorily, the series realizes what a mistake they've made, and throw him back into the ether just as perfunctorily.

The other major problem is the fact that, having announced that the series is going to be about the search for Mulder, it then spends nearly half the season, doing anything but. Now, I realize that part of this was a necessity brought on by Duchovny's absence. But one could've seen this work based on scheduling. If Duchovny really wasn't going to return until the last six episodes of the season, they could have spread out the other three in such a way so that it would've been more spread out. (And given the way the series ended up using him, frankly anything would've been an improvement over the way they handled the five episodes before Mulder's return). One could use the excuse that by this point Carter and company really were flying by the seat of their pants, except by now we've seen how other series handle situations like this. And honestly, considering how badly they handled Season 9, its clear they didn't learn much from what they did.

Because of that, Without suffers from being considered a true step forward, and a truly great episode. But the fact of the matter is, even with all the baggage, this is a major step forward than anything we've dealt with in the mytharc for quite some time. And the ferocity and honesty of so many of the performance, particularly the good work of Patrick, make us feel that maybe The X-Files can survive this major shift. The fact that it would very quickly take a major step backwards doesn't detract as much as it could from the force of those changes.

My score: 4 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Within

Written by Chris Carter

Directed by Kim Manners

The X-Files has made a lot of transitions over its run, but most of them were due more to tone than plot. The fact that the show may not have planned to be so much about laughs rather than scares, particularly during to its transition to Hollywood, was not necessarily a bad thing, as it produced many moments of great imagination. The fact that what was originally the biggest part of it - the mythology - eventually turned out to be its Achilles heel may not have been much of an overriding weakness. When the series finally tried to handle the overarching questions - most notably with Samantha Mulder - they basically failed because they had run out of steam.

So now, the series was faced with its most devastating transition yet, only unlike the others, this one has been thrust upon it. Its how you continue your show when your leading man has gone on walkabout. One could make the argument that the most sensible decision would be not to continue the series at all. But since everybody has decided that the X-Files has to go forward, forward it shall go. And it decides to do so, not by shoving the disappearance to the back, but by putting it front and center, by having the disappearance of Mulder put right in the middle of the opening credits that we as fans have started to consider a safe haven. Whether or not this was a smart decision given the middle third of the season is another difficult one, particularly as this whole trick only works if Duchovny's disappearance is seen as a temporary problem. But considering that at this point, the X-Files has been flying blind when it comes to everything important, why not the disappearance of its male protagonist?

 And to be honest, there are some bits of it that work, and work well. The major point that works is the introduction of John Doggett. Admittedly, the introduction of new characters has never been this series strong suit  - the last really strong character was X, and that was nearly six years ago. All the other characters that have been introduced since than have either been forced to play on ambiguity, which was later abandoned when we saw which side they were on, or were ultimately so untrustworthy that was basically everything we associated with them. Doggett plays off that more his opening scenes, trying to read things in a rational matter. But because he seems to have a genuine desire to find Mulder, and doesn't seem to hold with these conspiracies that every other character has come to embrace that his solidity is actually his great strength. Robert Patrick fine performance will give Doggett more reality than  just about any other character than we've seen in quite some time. There will many flaws in the last two seasons of the X-Files. Doggett is not one of them.

Also a growing source of strength is the performances of Anderson and Mitch Pileggi. Absent Mulder, and now coming to grips with some of the reality that this manhunt is just another smokescreen, they find themselves forced to accept the reality of what may be happening. It seems a little more realistic for Scully - given everything she's seen the last seven years, it is becoming easier for her to accept Mulder's position.  One would expect it would be harder for Skinner, but considering how the scales dropped from his eyes at the end of Requiem, there's a genuine sense that he's finally - if too late - try to be the ally that the agents have needed all this time.

 As for Mulder, the bits that work best are the ones Duchovny's not on screen for. Its very disappointing that the only scenes we really get with Mulder are the ones where he's being horrendously tortured on an ancient ship. What makes the episode work is the idea that Mulder might somehow be manipulating the world in order to try and find some kind of truth. It's almost impossible to believe that Mulder could've hidden the fact that he was dying from Scully for nearly a year (hell, he was in the hospital four different times last season; even Scully would've checked his medical records), and its a bit of resolution the story makes to discard when it isn't necessary any more. But the idea that Mulder could somehow be doing this in order to serve as some kind of threat is intriguing. It shouldn't work, given everything we know about him, but by the time the episode ends we're almost prepared to accept it.

So when Within looks ahead, it actually isn't too bad. Where it stumbles when it tries to look back. I understand the necessity of bringing a new antagonist at the FBI, now that Skinner has to be cast as an ally, but did they have to go back to Kersh? James Pickens, Jr. is a much better actor than he got a chance to show on X-Files (it wasn't until Grey's Anatomy that he found his true role of a lifetime) but to cast him as the ultimate bureaucrat, trying to cover the FBI's ass seems a real step backwards for the series. It's a little harder to understand the reason for bringing Gibson Praise out of left field to be the target of the search, particular since the show gave up on him nearly two years ago as well. He actually seemed more interesting than as a cute chess prodigy; now he just seems like a stodgy thirteen year old?

And while I've had nothing but praise for Mark Snow's musical stylings for the last seven years, can I just say how much I loathe this new 'Scully's Theme' that he's developed? It's blaring, its tuneless, it crawls down your spine, and its only reason for being seem to be as a musical cue for Gillian Anderson to start angsting out. She's had no problem doing that on her own; she doesn't need music doing it now.

For all that, Within remains one of the better season openers the X-Files has had in quite some time, mainly because it has a purpose. The series has a new mission statement, for better or worse. One just wishes they had stuck with the better.

My score: 3.5 stars.

No Doubt AN Intriguing Series

CBS has been the number one network for more than fifteen years, but over the past few years, the series that have been powering have been more formulaic, and have less room for originality and plot development. When both The Good Wife and Person of Interest reached the end of their runs last seasons, it seemed that there was very little real in the way of procedurals. Which is why it comes as something of a relief - albeit a measured one - to see a series like Doubt on CBS,  a series, that while at times formulaic, demonstrated why the formulas work so well.

The series lead character Sadie - played by Katherine Heigl - is an attorney for a small Manhattan law firm. One of those focused lawyers on the job, she has a more interesting back-story than some characters we've gotten. The head of the firm (Elliot Gould, finally getting a role on television worthy of his talents) was a defense attorney on the case of her mother, a political radical (Judith Light, continuing her late career renaissance) when she was 2. Her mother has been in prison ever since, and Gould's character has raised her ever since. As a professional, she seems solid, and when she handles individual cases, like last week when she had to handle the case of a judge being charged of abusing his wife, the story clicks.

However, Doubt is also trying to handle a long term story for its season, where Sadie is defending a doctor (Steven Pasquale) from a prominent political family accused of committing a murder nearly a quarter of a century earlier.  As the case begins to get tighter around him, the doctor seems more interested in proving to Sadie that he is innocent than he is about the public, which caused him to voluntarily submit his DNA earlier. This seems like a weak idea to begin with, but its amplified by the fact that she seems to have romantic feelings for her client. This is a very dated idea for a TV plotline, and feels way too reminiscent of a similar storyline that played out with Heigl's character on Grey's Anatomy. What may save this from being a bad idea is the fact that her second chair (Dule Hill, finally getting a role he can sink his teeth into on TV),  knows this is bullshit and calls their client and Sadie on it. Its a still a plot I'm not a hundred percent comfortable with, but it does seem to have more direction than that storyline.

Doubt has all the earmarks of what used to have the material for a good TV series back in the day. It has well written legal plots, interesting characters, and a dynamite cast. (I haven't even mentioned Laverne Cox's work as a trans attorney, simply because the story manages it far more naturally than a lot of other series would) Normally, it would have the material to make a fairly successful series. But given CBS' track record of late, and their lack of patience with any series that doesn't immediate poll with 15 million viewers, it may not be an easy sell. I hope not, because broadcast TV needs more series like this, and less Criminal Minds spinoffs.

My score: 4 stars.

Big Little Lies Review

For much of the 1990s, the master force behind television was David E. Kelley. Still the only showrunner to win both Best Drama and Best Comedy Emmys in the same season, he was one of the most unbridled forces in TV, creating such brilliant works as Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, Ally McBeal and The Practice. But paradoxically, when the new Golden Age of TV began, Kelley began to seem something of a relic. Perhaps the Bush administration did more to make him seem like his methodology now seemed more like preaching then anything else. Though he had successful series in the 2000s, like Boston Legal and Harry's Law. he no longer seemed as relevant. And though he's adapted a couple of series since then, he's gone quiet.

But that seems to be changing in a big way. Late last year, he developed his first series for streaming TV, Amazon's Goliath, which has already won a Golden Globe for Billy Bob Thornton. And now, he has melded with HBO in what seems sure to be another powerhouse in the realm of limited series that has been going on for the last few years, on the level of The Night Manager and The Night Of: the adaptation of Liane Moriarity's Big Little Lies.

Of course, this would be a major event for HBO anyway, considering the talent involved. Leading the series are some of the greatest actresses working today, Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley.  Kelley has always been good writing roles for women in any medium, but in this group, he has some of the strongest collection of thespians he's ever worked with.

The adaptation is set in Monterey Bay, and centers around a group of mothers, leading their first graders off to school. Witherspoon portrays Madeline, the ultimate alpha female, trying to demonstrate that she is the best parent ever to the world, and mainly to her remarried ex-husband, whose younger new wife has a hold over her daughter that she doesn't like. The most recent grudge emerges when the new wife signs a petition saying that they shouldn't perform the school play that Madeline has been throwing her soul into. The fact that its Avenue Q, a play no first grader should see, is irrelevant to Madeline.

Nicole Kidman plays Celeste, a fortyish woman, who seems to be a rhapsodic marriage with a slightly younger husband (Alexander Skarsgard), but their loveplay seems just a little too gooey, with just too much of an edge. Laura Dern plays a working mother whose very employment seems to earn her the enmity of all around. And Woodley plays Jane Chapman, a single mother with no man in the future, and a way too quiet child.

Throughout the community, there seems to be way too much tension in every element, but the catalyst that seems to set everything in motion is an incident at the first day of school, where Jane's son Ziggy is accused of attacking Dern's child. Madeline, who has befriended Jane almost on a whim, takes Jane's side, and seems to cause all of the dominos to start falling. The fact that Ziggy seems just a little too suspect about it may be ultimately irrelevant.

Where these dominoes will fall is still unclear. What we do know is that they will end in murder on the night of the fundraiser, though who has been killed and why is still unclear.

Given cables recent sloppy history with event series  being set around murders (yeah, I'm looking at you, True Detective), this should fill the average viewer with peril. It doesn't because of the incredible work of all the actresses involved, particularly Witherspoon, who seems to be playing an older, more maternally focused version of her classic character Tracy Flick, and Woodley, who consistently demonstrates why she one of the most undervalued actress of our time. Considering the rest of the casts effectiveness, which also includes Zoe Kravitz and Adam Scott, Big Little Lies looks like it could easily be another rung in HBO's gathering assets of TV series. And it demonstrates that Kelley, who has tried adaptations in the past, is still one of the best writers the medium has ever known. For once, I'm looking forward to what happens next on his work. 

My score: 4.5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Requiem

Written by Chris Carter

Directed by Kim Manners

By the time this episode was written, no one -  not even Carter - knew whether it would be the last X-Files ever done. All indications to this point had been that Season 7 was going to be the final one, Duchovny's contract was up, and the greatest indication the series might continue would be in movie form. So under those circumstances, Carter wrote Requiem, an episode title which would indicate an end of sorts. So let's set aside all of the usual conflicts and problems with the story  - God knows this episode wasn't immune - and just consider, for a moment, that it was going to be the last episode.

This was a little trickier for me the first time I saw it, considering that I had never seen the Pilot. Most of the symmetry was lost on me, and considering what happened in the following seasons, that might not have been the worst thing. Nevertheless, Mulder and Scully are brought back to the site of their very first investigation, in Bellefleur, Oregon. They go under the same disapproval that was following them when they went there the first time. The threat is more financial than some of the ones the X-Files has endured over the years, but bureaucracy  would be a more interesting sword to slash it to death, considering most of the other ways have tried and failed

And there are a lot of similarities to the Pilot present - some alien force is present in the woods, Sheriff Miles is an obstacle to the agents, we come across the same X that Mulder almost giddily spray painted seven years earlier, and even the motel that they stayed at seems to have been rebuilt. But in another way, so much has changed. Billy Miles, the comatose teenager somehow behind everything in the first case, has become a sheriff's deputy, with enough time having passed for him to marry and divorce. Teresa Hoese, the ME's daughter who seemed so fluttery and untrustworthy in the first episode has become a calmer, married mother. The children that were at the center of the case have become adults, and Mulder and Scully are seven years older, still looking for respect from the FBI that will never come, the conspiracy and shadowy figures behind their investigations dead with still no real resolution. The world seems to have moved on without them.

There is a critical scene that is mirrored halfway through the episode. In the Pilot, Scully came to Mulder's motel room scared out of her wits that she might have been infected by some alien force. Rather than sexualize their relationship, Mulder took the opportunity to befriend her, and they very carefully formed the friendship that has served the series ever since. Now, in Requiem, Scully comes to Mulder's motel room, in a similar situation, and this time, the two of them spoon in his bed. But rather than try and bond (and oh, how every shipper in the world must have pouted at this scene), Mulder tries to talk her out of his quest, realizing that everything that they have gone through to try and find the truth, just isn't worth it when it comes to the personal costs. It seems like he is accepting that it is somehow time to rejoin the rest of humanity.

The one remaining character from the Pilot who is still around - CSM - has also changed, and much for the worse. Confined to a wheelchair, finally on the brink of death (or so it would seem) he sees in the crash in Oregon a chance to rebuild the project that has cost him everything. Why he should turn to Krycek and Covarrubias (and how the hell they both managed to get where they were is just one of a dozen mysteries Carter never bothers to explain) is hard to fathom, except that they may be the only family he has left at this point. His result for his trust is as bad as all the other alliances he has made - they betray him, and in the end decided to push him down a flight of stairs. Again, you really wish that Carter would've just decided to let the bastard finally die - it would've been fitting for the master manipulator to be taken off the board in such a pathetic fashion. And you get the feeling Carter may have even considered it, given how the next couple of seasons went.

The rest of the characters who come back for Requiem are somewhat of a mixed bag. The Lone Gunmen seem just to be caught in doing what they do rather than anything deserving of a future series. Nicholas Lea finally gets a chance to play off some of the menace that has been missing from his character for nearly two seasons. But the biggest revelation is Mitch Pileggi's work as Skinner. Finally getting the proof of the alien conspiracy that his two best agents have been telling him about, his performance in the last scene is his finest hour. No longer will be someone who plays with ambiguity, for the remainder of the series he will finally be the ally the two agents have always wanted.

And the final series of scenes are remarkable. When Mulder finally gets the proof he has spent his whole life searching for, the mixture of shock and joy on Duchovny's face puts to shame the idea that his expression has always been that of a stoneface. And the final minutes with Anderson in the hospital are equally wondrous - as she finds out that something that she never thought would be possible - her pregnancy - has happened.

If this had been the last episode - or even a segueway into movies - it would somehow have been perfect. The fact that the series chose not to resolve all its mysteries in its final act would have nevertheless been satisfying as it gave Mulder the only resolution his quest could ever bring. The fact that Scully's pregnancy would've been one last mystery would've still made us realize that even in its last seconds, The X-Files could amaze us.

So what's the problem with Requiem? It wasn't the end. All of the symmetry that we saw in the last episode kind of gets shot to hell when you decide to keep the series going an extra two seasons. As a result, the fates of Billy Miles and Teresa Hoese are just some added characters that Carter and company somehow think add more in the next year. Mulder's abduction no longer seems like a fitting end for character, just another cliffhanger, now weighted with the very real problem that there probably won't be a fitting resolution for it either, given Duchovny's contract woes. And Scully's pregnancy is the worst part of all, the definition of added baggage that the X-Files will absolutely do a horrendous job of handling in the next couple of years. If you're going to write this an end, then follow through - to just get started again seems to be a waste of energy.

After what has been mostly a fairly disappointing season, Requiem does have the advantage of leaving the fans wanting more. The problem is, Fox and Carter should've been satisfied with that, rather than think that they were morally obligated to give more.

My score: 4.5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Je Souhaite

Written & Directed by Vince Gilligan

At this juncture of the series, the only writer who is making X-Files still watchable is Vince Gilligan. Considering how relatively late he joined the series, it's fairly remarkable that he seems to be capable of giving the fans what they want, the only one who can see a future for it. So it seems particularly fitting, in what at the time many thought would be the penultimate episode of the entire series, that he decides to expand his horizons still further and take on the task of directing. The episode he creates is a small gem.

Admittedly, this may have been more for his own process than anything else - the experience he would take would lead to his expanding his role on Breaking Bad several years later. But beyond this, he seems to recognize that Je Souhaite is the end of an era. Even if he didn't know the future of this series, he seems to realize that this could be the last time we really see Mulder and Scully at peace, seeing them in what is, for all intents and purposes, the last standalone episode they will ever do, the last case they will investigate together.

And in an episode that is all about the failure of wish fulfillment, something that fans of the series have been struggling with, in a way, he gives both our heroes exactly what they've always wanted, even if in typical fashion, its taken away before they can show it to the world. The scene where Scully finds herself examining an invisible body is one of Gillian Anderson's most remarkable scenes all year - after years of second guessing, even this season, she finally seems to find the proof of the paranormal that she's been looking for the last seven seasons for. Her childlike joy as she observes the invisible corpse of Anson Stokes is rather stunning, as is her delightful breakdown when she realizes that the body is gone. It may be somewhat frustrating to see Scully go back to her self-doubting ways when the body's gone, but there's something rather wonderful about that as well - this is the last time she will ever find herself doubting the paranormal for the remainder of the series, and there's a fair amount of nostalgia in it to it.

Mulder also gets what he's always wanted -  not just proof of the supernatural, but rather being able to do something with it. There's something rather enjoyable when he finally realizes that he has three wishes to do something with, and something Mulder-like in the fact that he tries to do the right thing with it, rather than dealing with the selfishness that everybody else in the episode has had to deal with. One can even see, if you want to, that's he trying to break away from the power that all the conspirators in this series have tried to hold over the entire world, and do something good with it. Of course, it turns out that the end result is pretty much the same - he wishes for peace on earth, and all that does is erase every human being from the planet. And just like he has done every other time on this series, it is Scully who brings about the way to guide him back to what the right thing to do is.

Admittedly, the theme for the episode is somewhat of a stretch, even for the X-Files. A genie, even given the very broad scope of the series, doesn't really fit into what Mulder and Scully have been chasing for the last seven years - and its very telling that Mulder has to go to a Barbara Eden sitcom just to come up with something that the Stokes brothers can comprehend. But in a larger sense, there's a certain logic to it - Mulder and Scully have become so much a part of the firmament the same way that the mythos of the genie once has.  And in a sense, they need to understand this because there is a transition between how foolish mankind has been. The argument is aided immensely by the forcefield of stupidity that seems to surround the Stokes brothers, who seem terminally impossible of comprehending anything. Given all the power in the world, Anson can't seem to think of anything to help his brother out of a wheelchair - it would be cruel, except Leslie can't either.(Attention should be paid to the superb comic performances of Kevin Weisman and Will Sasso as the Stokes') For half a millennium, the genie tells them, mankind has done nothing but make the wrong wish. Put in the word 'choice' for 'wish', and you can see the mythos of the X-Files writ large.

And what this all does is prove (though the series still doesn't seem to get the message) is that the X-Files was never really about changing the world or bringing about the truth. Given every option that Mulder can have to better mankind, he chooses instead to grant the genie her freedom, and watch Caddyshack with his partner. Admittedly, it seems to go against everything we've seen the last seven seasons, but Gilligan was never that big into the mythos anyway.

If Je Souhaite had been the last standalone episode - and no doubt everybody working for the series may have thought or even hoped it would - it would've been a perfect final statement for what the series could be. (God knows, a lot of X-philes really wished that they had just stopped there) It's quietly funny without being obnoxious as so many of the comedies this year have been, and it ends with a note of hope that so much of the series. As it is, this is a note of sublime peace that the series won't be able to (or for that matter, really try) to match again.

My score: 5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Fight Club

Written by Chris Carter

Directed by Paul Shapiro

In rewatching The X-Files,  I was surprised to find which episodes seemed better with the passage of time, and which seemed notably worse.  It was very surprising that even some of the episodes that I had utterly loathed at the time, such as 'Field Where I Died' in Season 4, and 'Milagro' in Season 6 were actually a lot better than I had given them credit for being on first and even second viewing. There is no such \feeling for Fight Club, an episode whose title immediately makes you think of the movie catch phrase "The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club'. Unfortunately, I kind of feel I have to.

By now, its become very clear just how tired the writers and actors behind this series had become at this point in the show. They might argue, in hindsight, that making the seventh season had rejuvenated them somehow, but looking at the majority of the episodes, you wonder how on earth they could think that. While the seventh season has had some good moments in it, for the most part, you can just see the level of exhaustion in both the writing and acting. I don't know for certain whether Duchovny and Anderson had a falling out by this point (there were rumors), but by this point TV Guide and the majority of the media were now certain that this episode was probably going to be among the last ever made.  Even if that wasn't the case, the Syndicate was dead, Mulder's sister had been found (sort of), and the mythology seemed to have been wrapped up. There seemed to be very little left to say about the X-Files, and even there had been, there was no time left to say it. And that makes Fight Club just seem like some horrible symbol of everything that the X-Files was now.

Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate a case where two FBI agents apparently decided to beat the crap out of each other after seven years of working together. They find themselves investigating the involvement of two women, both played by Kathy Griffin, who seem to have spent there entire lives following each other around the country, and whenever they get together, the earth starts trembling, machinery starts breaking, and people start beating each other up. That's it. That's the entire story. Former X-Files have basically been built around a single setpiece, but very few have been built around the same setpiece being shown over and over again. Carter then tries to make something out of it resembling a comedy, but like so many of the comedies this season, there isn't a single laugh to be found in it. Even if there were, so many of the jokes would involve a kind of brutal, nasty humor that even the most atypical comedies aren't trafficked in by this series.

There may also be a larger statement in the way this episode plays out. Every major character in this episode (including Mulder and Scully) have a duplicate of some kind. And the climax of the episode resolves around the unlikelihood of the another lead character Bert Zupanic happening to have a duplicate of his own. Now, you can just find this truly implausible, or you can read it as a statement by Carter that a) these stories don't seem to make any sense anymore, and b) nothing in the series is unique. Especially not Mulder and Scully. And just to emphasize that, he cuts their scenes to even more minimal than usual, and he basically reverses their roles, and in the climax has them get involved in a huge brawl, where they probably beat the crap out of each other. (I've never really believed that they could do that, but maybe that's the point. Carter is now saying our heroes are so much of the firmament of the series that they do whatever he tells them to do.) By the end of the episode, Scully seems to be reporting to a wrestling promoter, for some reason, that investigating the paranormal too closely is something best avoided. At which point you wonder, how much of this is Carter saying that he's tired of writing for this series?

Duchovny and Anderson have seemed awfully pedestrian through parts of Season 7, but never has there been an episode that seemed to demonstrate how much they are just going through the motions. The entire guest cast is completely flat, with not a single personality to be visible among them. It says something about the writing that the highpoint of the episode is when Carter gets Mulder to say 'shit' through a bad cell connection, that's the level of charm the writers now seem to want to go through at this point in the series.

Fight Club is an episode that seems to be a cry for help from Chris Carter, begging the Fox executives to put this series out of its misery.  No matter how many people were still watching X-Files by this point (it was still between 11 and 12 million), this is not a series that seems to be begging for a Season 8. It's a brutal turd of an episode, with no redeeming value. If the series managed to get another spark of life after this, it was not because of an episode like this.

My score: 1 star.

X-Files Episode Guide: Hollywood A.D.

Written and Directed by David Duchovny

I would like to be reasonable and fair to Duchovny's second effort in writing and direction, mainly because of how entertaining The Unnatural was. There, Duchovny took a critical piece of the X-Files mythology and turned it into a fable. Here, if one were particularly charitable, you could say that Duchovny was now trying to mythologize the Hollywood version of what the X-Files has become. But charity only takes you so far, and most of what you see in this episode is as ghastly and horrendous as the film version of the series was.

What makes Hollywood A.D. so particularly tragic is that you can see that there's a really intriguing mystery surrounded by the offal that is the comedy that Duchovny thought he was trying to write. Considering that the episode starts with a teaser so horrendous and grotesque, I was actually praying for some Carter-speak by the time it was over, that's actually rather remarkable. I know Duchovny was trying to satirize the X-Files series as a film, but really what emerges is so generally awful, it makes the Da Vinci Code seem subtle by comparison.

The episode rapidly manages to regain its footing as the story emerges. There's actually an intriguing idea behind the story - a cardinal's church is the target of what appears to be a terrorist bombing, and the man behind it turns out to be  a missing 1960s counter culture figure who clearly has gotten involved in religious forgeries. The ideas are so interesting, you can almost forget the presence of a movie writer Wayne Federman, who for some reason, AD Skinner has decided to have accompany Mulder and Scully on this investigation.

The story picks up even more when Federman leaves after the first act. Mulder and Scully now find themselves investigating a fake gospel and a bizarre piece of an artifact that they believe to be 'the Lazarus Bowl',  a piece of pottery capable of raising the dead. The story about the mythos is actually pretty intriguing, and well-conceived enough that you might think that Dan Brown used this section to inspire a goodly amount of his bestsellers. The episode than takes on a more interesting turn when, as Mulder and Scully prepare to arrest the Cardinal for the murder of Micah Hoffman, who should show up but Hoffman himself. Skinner gets more angry at his agents than perhaps is warranted (particularly given some of the shit they've put him through over the last seven years) and puts them on suspension for four weeks. It then becomes even more interesting when it turns out the revolutionary actually went through a period of conversion. None of this should be plausible at all, but Harris Yulin and Paul Lieber are so good in their scenes that it actually seems rather emotionally powerful, and even intriguing.

Unfortunately, having set up such an intriguing mystery in the first half of the episode, Duchovny then complete burns the whole thing up by deciding to literally go Hollywood. Bad enough that he decides to make Ed Wood part of the investigative process somehow, but the scenes in Hollywood are exercises in pure self-indulgence. The late Garry Shandling and  Duchovny's then wife Tea Leoni end up playing Mulder and Scully in the movie purely for the purpose of having them around as in-jokes. There have been more ridiculous casting throughout the last couple of seasons in Hollywood, but few that were more self-indulgent. The scenes having Mulder, Scully and Skinner in a split-screen bubble baths seem more ridiculous than any real attempt at comedy. And the screening of the movie is such a fairly horrible idea, it makes the opening sequence positively subtle by comparison. The subsequent deaths of the Cardinal and Hoffman are delivered off-screen, and have even less meaning because of the last twenty minutes. And Duchovny clearly has no idea how to end things well - given the opportunity to have Mulder and Scully celebrate using a Bureau credit card for the night, he has a group of fictional zombies appear on a movie set and dance. What the hell!

Duchovny's earlier script was slightly self-indulgent as well - it actually had the nerve to show a scene from Colony in the middle of an episode on aliens. But we could forgive it the plaudits because for the most part it was subtle and gentle in its humor. Here we have an episode that has a more intriguing idea, in some ways, than The Unnatural, and Duchovny completely flushes it as if he's trying to merge as many unfunny jokes and references as he can. There's no reason to have Cardinal O'Fallon's character in the movie as the Cigarette-Smoking Pontiff - Duchovny just wants to have the joke there. And none of the lines that would play for any laughs in the movie would work unless you've seen the entire series to this point. If Duchovny was trying to make fun of Hollywood for some reason (which is particularly bizarre, considering at this point in his career, he wanted to leave the X-Files to do movies) than he could've done so in any number of subtle ways. As it is, he seems to be acting like so many other writers on the series, determined to play with all the lights before the show is closed.  There've been other episodes this season that have been lacking effort before, but few that have shown the presence of so much overkill.

My score: 1.25 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: The City That Bleeds

Written by Julie Martin and Jorge Zamacona; story by James Yoshimura and Bonnie Mark

Director: Tim Hunter

            Putting the life of a character on a TV show in jeopardy is a fairly common practice. But one wonders how seriously  one can consider these threats to be considering that creators of television dramas are attached to a character.  There are exceptions to this rule (David E. Kelley has made something of a career of killing regulars on his series) but for the most part they don’t kill them because they want to consider the possibilities of bringing them back. (That may have been true in the 90s when this review was written. It's now become something of a given in almost every drama that airs, broadcast, cable or streaming.)

            The creators of Homicide  clearly didn’t have a problem killing a character off. And they no doubt realized from the emotional drama that they had managed to mine from ‘Crosetti’ showed that there was enormous potential in  playing with the characters. They did, however, have a problem with using violence. Indeed Tom Fontana was very reluctant to having a gun fired on the show, must less having three of his characters get shot. It seemed  out of sync with the original plan to keep Homicide from becoming a typical police drama relying on guns being fired. But the show was coming to the end of its third season (NBC was only committed to 13 episodes; they later added seven more) and the ratings were still mediocre.  So, probably to goose the ratings more than anything else,  a three part story arc was written involving  the shooting of three of the series regulars while they went to serve an arrest warrant.

            The strategy worked; the episode got some of the highest ratings in the show’s history, but no one on the staff was particularly thrilled about what was done in order to get these numbers. For the next three years, they would stay away from the detectives being hurt while on the job.

            As reluctant as the writers were probably to write the opening teaser in ‘The City That Bleeds’ one can not deny that it is a very effective  scene. Everything seems to be going perfectly normal as Bolander, Felton, Howard and Munch go to arrest a pedophile for the murder of a ten year old. They talk about last night at The Waterfront; Felton makes a show of letting Howard walk in first. Then suddenly, in a series of fast cuts we see the detectives fired upon. Interestingly enough, though we see the gun fired and the detectives going  down, we never actually see them get shot.. In this way Homicide is playing against the grain.

            A similar pattern occurs when Gee hears about the shooting. Hearing that three of his men are shot Gee runs to the hospital but he makes it clear that the few who remain must get themselves ready to catch the shooter.  Bayliss and Lewis are particularly rocked by what has happened . Tim feels despair and guilt that he wasn’t shot. Pembleton, however, shows the same cold and professional detachment that he would as if the three detectives who had been shot were strangers and  seems annoyed when Bayliss says he does.  He knows that  this is wrong, but he can’t let himself think about whether people he worked with may never come back. It is how he works. (It will eventually hit him but not in this episode.)

            Some detectives bear their feelings in odd ways. As in the case  with Detective Mitch Drummond.  Bolander’s former partner (one who Munch was always being unfavorably compared to in the first season) leaves his  normal assignment to try and catch the man who did this. He may not have always gotten along with Stan but he’s pretty sure that his partner would do the same for him.

            His current partner is quite understandably rattled by what has happened. When Gee goes to visit the detectives in the hospital Munch is as close to going to pieces as he gets. He obsesses about the fact that  his friends blood is on his shoes, and  the way the doctors refer to the condition Stan’s in (how they say ‘when he wakes up’ when its really ‘if’)

            The strongest reaction, and perhaps the most stunning is Giardello. He seems all right on his first couple of trips to the hospital, even puts up a brave face for Feltons kids when his mother arrives but it soon becomes clear that this is the façade. When he learns from Meldrick that the detectives went to the wrong address because the case report was mistyped he demands that the woman who botched it be fired. He then praises the strength and fortitude of his detectives while driving back. Than he asks Meldrick to stop the car  and he has a minor meltdown. He compares the helplessness and the pain that he’s feeling to that of  an incident that happened to his daughter Charise (his favorite daughter) eighteen years ago.  He is responsible for his detectives but he can not help them through their darkest hour.

            And speaking of the detectives after the shootings we don’t see a great deal of them  after they get shot. The writers know that while they care about the conditions of their friends, they are police first and they want to get the man who shot them. The obvious candidate for that title is Glenn Holton a repeat sex offender who committed the murder of a ten year old boy. This leads into an dark matter that crime shows don’t normally traffic in: child molestation. This is a darker sin even than murder: even some of the criminals who they investigation think that there’s something perverse about pedophilia. (This is brought out in the one funny moment in the show; when  the owner of a pornographic theater says she wouldn’t cater to this sort of individual.)We get more insight from sex crimes Detective Theresa Walker, an expert on these sorts of people. She is a strong forceful person, one who is not even afraid to  go head to head with Pembleton.

            It is events like these that can even unify the bosses. Captain Barnfather comes down to publicly offer support to Lieutenant Russert  and even holds a press conference in which  he prays for them (But look how quickly he does an about face in the next episode )

            It is not until the end of the episode that we get any idea how the detectives are doing. Bolander was shot in the head and will not even be conscious until two episodes later. Howard was shot in the heart and is barely clinging to life. Felton escapes with minor injuries and is conscious by the episodes end. His first concern is for his partner, and he is already feeling guilt for what happened. This is how detectives think they are always concerned for their partners.

            ‘The City That Bleeds’ ends with a major operation to capture Holton at a train station but they come up empty. Again ‘Homicide’ goes against the grain. Most other police shows that deals with police getting shot  would have suspect in custody b the end of the episode. ‘Homicide’ does not. And as we  will learn in later, they will have spent a couple of days searching for the wrong man. Aside from the violence, almost everything related to the crime is spot on.

Fan Rating: 13th

My score: 4.5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Brand X

Written by Steven Maeda & Greg Walker

Directed by Kim Manners

This one is a mixed bag, to say the least. Here are some of the things that Brand X does right. It has a sense of timeliness that the X-Files generally lacks, dealing with an issue that was very relevant at the time, especially considering that the movie 'The Insider' had just gotten a slew of Oscar nominations for a variation on the same subject. (On a side note, it's also fairly daring for the series to finally do an episode on the key brand of cigarettes on the series - Morley - and not even mention are old friend the Smoking Man). It gives Skinner something to do instead of growling behind a desk - indeed, after  spending most of Season 7 with him making only cameos, to have an episode where he goes from being chewed out by his superior to fighting for his favorite agent's life, and actually doing something to save him almost seems like overcompensation. It's good to see 'Saw' criminal mastermind Tobin Bell not doing a dramatic turn where he seems to be hamming it up, and the most imposing thing we ever see him doing is about to light a cigarette. And after years of dealing with government conspiracies to little avail, its also interesting to see the series finally take on a corporate conspiracy, and see that armies of lawyers can be just as unnerving as the Syndicate.

The major problem, however, with this episode is that while it has all the elements of good story, it has a great deal of difficulty putting it all together. There are some good ideas in play - a corporate whistleblower is killed not by the company that he might be financially damaging to, but by the research that he was responsible for managing. There's the idea that the tobacco beetles that seem to be part and parcel of North Carolina are actually the cause of the deaths that seem to be part of this. And the idea that the most damaging thing about this X-File turns not to be murderers but rather second-hand smoke has a kind of clever twist to it. Unfortunately, when you try to put this together in an actual plot, it doesn't hold up as well, even by the admittedly slim standards of The X-Files. One could see how Dr. Scobie got infected - he was monitoring the focus group that was the cause of so much death, and that kind of exposure might have been enough to kill him. One could almost see how that might have led to Darrell Weaver's neighbor passing away -  we don't know how long he lived there. but he might have been there at least a couple of weeks. But Mulder is only exposed to Weaver for a matter of minutes, and somehow he gets enough of a dose to be nearly  fatal. And other people who are involved with the project - Dr. Voss in particular - never seem to be sick at all. It's a big enough hole that you could miss in the fear for Mulder's life, but it doesn't seem to hold up nearly as well.

You get the feeling that this is an episode that Walker and Maeda, who, big surprise were writing their first script for the series in Brand X, could've corrected if they'd had at least one more draft. There are a lot of good ideas in the story - including the idea that Morley was actually trying to do something good in genetically engineering  a safer cigarette - but a lot of its overshadowed by the amount of gore and bugs in the story. Now by the comparison of some of the stories in the canon, this isn't a very gory tale, but there are also a lot of bugs involved, and as is often the case when the X-Files traffic in insects they don't seem to add very much. We never get a clear idea how in engineering the cigarettes they made the bugs this effervescent, and instead the writers tend to traffic in the level of gore that we see instead. And the climax of the story, where Skinner holds Weaver at gunpoint seems anticlimactic because we never seem to get a clear explanation as to why, after nearly two minutes of Weaver saying Skinner's not going to shoot him, he does it anyway, and somehow that's enough to get him in the hospital where Scully manages to figure out how to save Mulder's life. Though admittedly, there is a nice level of irony that having been infected by tobacco, nicotine is what ends doing the job.

There are so many elements in this story that work, its especially disappointing that Brand X turns out to be yet another in a long line of mediocrities for Season 7.  Looking at everything that was good about, its a shame this is another episode that's basically smoke and mirrors.

My score: 2.5 stars.                     

X-Files Episode Guide: all things

Written & Directed by Gillian Anderson

More than sixteen years after Anderson's sole contribution to the X-Files pantheon, I'm still not sure what to make of it. I know what the critics thought of it, I know what the shippers think of it, I know what I thought about it at the time, but it's a maddening episode nevertheless. It's not terrible or self-indulgent, but considering that it doesn't fit into any part of the series canon, I can understand why so many people were frustrated with it.  That said, there are certain parts of that actually would only have worked in Season 7, a season that has been incredibly erratic.

I can understand why Anderson might have wanted to write and direct an episode at this juncture - Duchovny had done so sporadically and had another one just two episodes down the road. (More on that later.) And considering how little information we've gotten on Scully's backstory outside of her family, one could understand why she'd want to try and pursue it before the series closed up shop. However, I can understand why so many people would be frustrated by her attempt. Mainly because, strictly speaking this isn't an X-File at all. A lot of fans were irritated by the attempt to look inside Scully back in Never Again because it seemed to be exploring the flaws in the Mulder-Scully dynamic. And the fact that Mulder is absent for the majority of the episode, this time by design, one could understand why a lot of them got a sinking feeling.

But considering the journey that Scully has been taking for much of Season 7, finally starting to acknowledge that Mulder's beliefs have been right this whole time, all things could not be better placed. And in order to show the parallels between the path that Scully has been taking throughout the series, it's fitting that the path also takes back into Scully's past. Admittedly, the coincidences that seem to follow the episode seem a little far-fetched, but that's the point. Without Mulder here to point out the possibility of the paranormal, it makes Scully's journey seem all the more emotional.  When Scully encounters a man she studied under, and once had a vital relationship with, we begin to see part of what made her go down this path in the first place. It sort of plays into the attraction she's always had to authority figures, but for the first time, we start to see some of the consequences. And it's fitting that the man she loves is so much like her, despite the age difference we can see why Scully would've been attracted to him, and why she left feeling the consequences of her actions.

It's not clear whether the spiritual presence is something that has always been part of Gillian Anderson's own history, but it's fitting that most of what we see is more holistic than spooky. The idea that Scully is trying to follow a certain road is actually well illustrated, particularly in the episodes really climax, where she seems to have a vision. She isn't willing, even to Mulder, to say that God showed her a path, but it is something that might be something she'd be willing to accept.. And it's also fitting that Daniel Waterston doesn't believe that what she tried to do for him worked - in a sense, it represents the trail Scully has blazed. The old Scully would've agreed with Waterston that medicine brought him out of his coma; the Scully who has reached this point now can accept that their might be other things beyond her scope.

So Anderson the writer does a pretty good job. Where the episode fails is under Anderson the director. The viewer is supposed to accept that the pace of all things is supposed to be a suggest as to what Scully should do. But it makes it point very clear the first time it happens, maybe the second. By the time the pace has slowed down for the eighth time, you begin to think there's a lack of confidence in the point that Anderson just wasn't comfortable making. As a result, the episode seems sluggish at time, and it seems to dwell on the fact that very little is actually happening. This in an emotional and spiritual journey, not a physical one, but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of the episode is godawful slow.

Of course, a lot of the viewers of the episode don't give a hill of beans about the spiritual journey or the vaguely coincidental plotlines. All they give a damn about is the overwhelming possibility that the episode hints in at the teaser, where Mulder and Scully finally, finally do the wild thing. Never mind that the episode seems to end with Scully falling asleep before Mulder can even kiss her, this is where the magic finally happened. It's fitting that at this point Anderson both as writer and star is willing to accept something that Carter, even at this late date, wasn't going to allow to happen. (As a side note, how long has Mulder had a bed in his apartment? Did he get one for just this occasion?). You'd think by this juncture the writers would've been able to loosen up on their rule that Mulder and Scully were never, ever going to sleep together. It sure would've made the last two seasons of the series easier to deal with.

Leaving aside that, all things is a pretty good episode. It's not as self-indulgent as some of the other scripts have been this seasons, and it actually gives Anderson a chance to flex her acting muscles in a way she hasn't done much this season either. One could make the argument that nothing really happens in this episode, and considering that the X-Files was supposedly in its final stretch, that could've been even more of a disappointment. But as part of the trip that the most skeptical character in the world has been taking this season, it actually seems vital. Even Mulder admits as much.

My score: 3.25 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Chimera

Written by David Amann

Directed by Cliff Bole

Two seasons into his stint on the show, its still pretty difficult to tell whether David Amann is a good fit for the X-Files. So far, his episodes seem to do less well when it comes to providing good doses of the paranormal, and have more interest in the looks of the emotion of the characters involved. But the more stories he wrote, the better a fit he seemed to be getting for the series, as we see in Chimera.

In  a way, Chimera could be seen as a companion piece to Amann's first story, Season 6's Terms of Endearment. There we saw a supernatural creature who was trying to do anything to live a normal life in the suburbs. In this episode, we see a creature arising from a need to protect the so-called normal life. But as Mulder picks up very quickly, the life in suburban Vermont isn't much less seamy than the one that seems to be murdering prostitutes in the underbelly of D.C. - it just looks a bit prettier.  Admittedly, there's very little in this episode that we haven't seen in so many lesser TV series - the perfect homemaker who has been murdered turns out to be having an affair that has left her pregnant - but it has enough of a paranormal twist to it to make it seem more of a suspense episode than we've seen in awhile.

Admittedly, what makes this story far more interesting than the one than we've seen before is the atmosphere. We see a lot of ravens which, though its never stated explicitly in the episode, are summoned to transform a seemingly innocuous housewife into a creature capable of killing the women that she sees as a threat to her perfect family. The broken mirrors are actually a more interesting touch to the episode as they keep us from getting a good look at the monstrous creature that is behind these violent attacks. We don't really get a look at it until the climactic battle between it and Mulder, when it finally sees itself in the reflection of the bathwater that is trying to drown Mulder in it. As twists go, its a fairly good one - its not until Ellen Adderly finally sees the monster that she's become that she finally manages to control herself.

The atmosphere provides some creepy elements, if not a lot of scares (perhaps part of the reason that we never see the monster that clearly is because it looks like a pretty lousy makeup job). But the level of writing is more intriguing than a lot of episodes that we've gotten this season. Mulder and Scully are separated for almost the entirety of the episode; this time, after they've been involved in a stakeout for what appears to be a female serial killer who has been responsible for the disappearance of six prostitutes. At first, this seems to be just an excuse to play the humorous contrast between the cheerfully domestic atmosphere that Mulder is enjoying in the Adderly household, while poor Scully suffers in a freezing surveillance mission. But in an utter rarity for the series, this is one occasion where the separation helps the investigation. Admittedly, the resolution to Scully's  part of it is more faultily handled comedy than anything else, but by realizing that the killer was just a preacher cross dressing to try and win over members of his flock, Mulder finally manages to put together that the killer isn't the sheriff whose been having affairs with both of the victims, but rather his wife, who has effectively become another person to do what she thought she had to do in order to save her family. It's actually more effectively than what we learned happened to Ellen in the episode's denouement.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that Chimera is a classic. Even saying that it's one of the better episodes of Season 7 would be damning it with faint praise. There are far too many false leads in this episode, especially the character of Jenny Uphaus, whose entire presence in the story seems to be 'I am a fake out",  The fact that Mulder's refers to not having a significant other in the 'typical definition of the term' actually seems to play out as more depressing than cheerful given what the viewer of the X-Files ultimately knows about the future of the Mulder-Scully relationship. And the ultimate conclusion of the episode smacks of the explanation that was forced on the end of Psycho rather than anything than a real reason for what happened. But it is a fairly good episode in a season that hasn't had a lot of high notes. And it shows that even as many of the older writers of the series were beginning to have a lot of trouble writing for the show that some of the newer hires were starting to find a groove. Shame that the series would soon be moving in a direction so radical that most of them would have to start all over again.

My score: 3.5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: En Ami

Written by William B. Davis

Directed by Rob Bowman

For  a while I wondered why on earth anyone - even the writer of this episode - would title it En Ami. Not even Davis could be the kind of man who thinks the Cigarette- Smoking Man ever had friends. Then I realized that while in French it means 'my friend', the English phrase is its opposite. Therein lies the duality that seems to lie within this episode.

At first, En Ami seems like a vanity project more than anything else, a reason to give The X-Files most notorious character a chance to show off behind the keyboard, just like Duchovny has on numerous occasions and Anderson will in just a few weeks. Its an interesting idea, giving us a chance to see behind the curtains of the series nemesis, without the lens of satire that Glen Morgan did four years earlier. One wonders, though. given the fact that Davis had only one real appearance left in the series, and that the X-Files was about to close up shop, whether it was a good idea to spend an entire episode on it, especially now, considering that the Syndicate was in ruins. To try and argue that CSM was, in fact, a more ambitious, even Shakespearean characters seems something of a stretch, considering all the horrible things we've seen him do would seem to be something of a stretch and one that, if it could've been pulled off at all, should've been done much earlier in the X-Files run.

Or so it would seem. Instead, Davis plays upon the idea that the Smoking Man is a character who has long ago passed his prime, and is now (supposedly) in his dying fall. And after years of trying to win over Mulder, and repeatedly failing, there is an intriguing dimension to the idea that he would try to win over Scully instead. Behind the scenes, Davis tried to play on the idea of the relationship between Richard III and Lady Anne (he doesn't quite try to woo her over her father-in-law's coffin, but given the amount of death he's dealt out over the years, the parallel isn't that far off), and there is a certain level of it trying to get Scully on his side. It's a little hard to believe that Scully would ever willingly go along with CSM on his quest for redemption, but the part of her that is still a doctor, and is still looking for a miracle nevertheless wins out as she decides to go on a journey with a man she loathes for what he calls 'the holiest of grails'.

Davis delivers the last truly great performance he will ever get a chance to give on the X-Files. A lot of the deviltry that he's had has diminished since the destruction of the Syndicate and whatever happened during the operation he had in Amor Fati, but for once, this actually works in his character's favor. The picture that he presents to Scully is very different than the one he presented to Mulder way back in One Breath; now, he seems like a man who once held the fate of the world in his hand, but who has since lost practically everything he holds dear. Even knowing that what he's doing is essentially a con, we can almost believe his supposed affection for Scully; after all these years, she and Mulder are practically all the family he has left. (It's telling that by this point, the only person he can trust to carry out his dirty work is the Gray-Haired Man, a villain who we last saw in Season 4. Considering everything else that's happened, it's clear his days are numbered from the moment he appears on screen.) He also does a fairly good job of copying the endless purple prose that we in the X-Files now know as 'Carter-speak (after all, he's had to say pages over the last seven years.), and also the good sense to know when it can be punctured as so much pop psychology. But there is also a level of humanity in it that has been largely absent in his character in the past, such as when he quits smoking for Scully, or delights in showing her a centenarian whose life he has saved.

Admittedly, the plot is so much X-Files fiddle-faddle - Scully is called in to try and find the cure for cancer, not knowing that she's been set up by an agent from DARPA in a series of double-dealings met to preserve the CSM's agenda. But strangely enough, most of this works in the series favor, as we are seeing through the eyes mostly of Scully. Had it been Mulder on this journey, it would've been same old, same old; but Scully being around on this particular trip lends it a level of freshness. It adds layers where perhaps, there aren't any (the scene where Smoking Man dons gloves to handle a sleeping Scully was endlessly played over by X-philes for months after this), and gives a certain measure of character study to where, truthfully, there hasn't been a heck of a lot of character to study. The last scene, where the CSM finds that he is not worthy of the prize that he spent all this time and energy trying to acquire, should've played as anticlimax, another X-File down the drain, but the quiet of Davis somehow sells it.

En Ami isn't quite a masterwork - there's just a few too many loose ends, and a little too much cleverness underutilizing Duchovny, for one. But it is very well done as a final shot, and by far the most entertaining and watchable of the vanity projects that the leads would produce this season. One wishes that they had let this be the final statement of Cancer Man. But then again, no one was sure how the X-Files was going to end yet.

My score: 4.25 stars.