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.