X-Files Episode Guide: Release

Teleplay by David Amann ; Story by John Shiban & David Amann

Directed by Kim Manners

With the series down to its final three episodes, one could wonder whether it made sense to try and spend another one trying to resolve the mystery of the death of Doggett's son. Considering that we've learned so little about in the two years we've known him, it would seem like a waste of energy. And given the X-Files' history of offering closure to any particular storyline - William Mulder's fate last week just being the most obvious example - it's hard to imagine this ending particularly well.

I've never been so happy to be proven wrong. And most of this is due to the character of Doggett. The X-Files has made a lot of mistakes in the last two years - starting with the idea that they should've existed at all - but none of them have been the fault of the character of Doggett. And its a tribute to how well the series has managed to handle the death of Luke Doggett that we've been getting the details in very small dribs and drabs. Indeed, we don't even find out how Luke was kidnapped and murdered until this episode. This is testimony to how subtle the series has been in dealing with this storyline - something that no one could accuse the series writers to even come close to mastering.

The most obvious delineation comes between how they handled Samantha Mulder's disappearance and the murder of Luke Doggett. Samantha was many things to the series, but mostly, she was a source of angst to Mulder, something to play with at least once a season  Doggett, however, has kept the death of his son as a very private pain, mostly through other characters. It's a testament that this seems far more realistic now than what we got with Mulder. And even if you're one of the handful of X-philes who believe that the resolution that we got to Samantha's story was acceptable, even the most loyal of them would have to admit it was contrived. Release is anything but. If anything, the answer is painfully simple. Luke Doggett was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A mob hitman saw him after he was kidnapped by a pedophile, and killed him without a second thought. That something this cold and simple could destroy a man's life and end his marriage is horrible and bluntly realistic.

Indeed, perhaps Release's greatest strength is that its not really an X-File at all. An FBI cadet named Rudolph Hayes makes the kind of insights that you would not expect a rookie to make. The reasoning and deduction that he follows leads Doggett and Reyes to a man that Doggett eventually comes to believe is connected with his son's death. The fact that this cadet is actually a schizophrenic who discharged himself from an institution doesn't change the fact that he seems to know what has happened to Doggett's son. And slowly, the truth comes out. There's no attempt at all to give the story a supernatural slant. We don't have any of the ideas of evil passing like a spirit like we got in Empodecles, there's no alien conspiracy, there's no disappearing to starlight. This is dignified and brilliant. It's hard to imagine any of the many procedurals that would follow this series, much less the X-Files itself, resolving this case as simply or without mawkishness as this.

It's particularly remarkable considering that this is coming from David Amann, who has written little more than half a dozen scripts for the X-Files, and most of them being ridiculously contrived. In Release, however, he does everything right. He writes the characters with subtle emotion, and makes the very real pain seem simple. He divides the story in a concise way that even as the series ends, features things we've never seen before. It's elegant and precise and it makes you realize Amann may have been the better writer in the series last days.

Robert Patrick gives arguably his best performance on the series. He's always been good at exercising restraint when it comes to Doggett, and in this episode, he manages to spend most of it holding back the entire time. We realize that this is a man who would rather suffer in silence than express emotion, that this has destroyed his marriage and stopped him from any kind of future with Monica. And most of this is done almost entirely through his face. Anyone who thinks he was stonefaced through most of his career doesn't give him enough credit for his work in Release. He's aided by exceptional performances from his guest cast. Jared Poe gives a superb performance as the mentally ill cadet, who seems insightful and yet watching his every move. The idea of profiling being a mental illness has been taken in many series prior and after this one, but rarely has it been made more clear here. Barbara Patrick in her few scenes as Doggett's ex-wife manages to see things with a clarity that her husband never could. The affection is expressive consider she is his actual wife. And Cary Elwes, who has spent his brief stint as Follmer basically playing the old cards of being an untrustworthy FBI superior, finally gets a few moments where he's given some actual character to work with. To see that his story with the series ends with a real mark of redemption rather than some kind of pointless death is something you really wish the series would've tried to do with the rest of its regulars.

Release is truly a great moment in the X-Files history. It's so good that the only complaint may come in retrospect. Did they have to wait all the way to the end of the series to gives its characters real resolution?  It may have been about preserving ambiguity, but episodes like this prove that there can be power in the simplest of solution.

My score: 5 stars.