X-Files Episode Guide: My Struggle II

Teleplay by Chris Carter; Story by Dr. Anne Simon & Dr. Margaret Pearson

and Chris Carter

Even when the X-Files was running on all cylinders, the season-ending episodes always left a lot to be desired. Part of this was a problem with the mythology in general which, as has been relayed time and time again, promised to bring big, world-shifting changes, but remained stuck in the same familiar patterns season after season. When we finally got the possibility that the conspiracy would be unveiled and an alien invasion would come back in Season 6, it turned out to be more exposition than actual action. When we were finally told the fate of Mulder's sister, it had been protracted for so long it came as anticlimax. So naturally, when we get to the end of the X-Files revival, one that seems to promise something all-encompassing, its easy to assume that it would just be more of the same. And My Struggle II certainly starts out that way - we get a two-minute segment of ponderous voiceover, this time from Scully instead of Mulder, looking at her end of the mythology. And look, there's the credit swap at the end of the tease  'This Is The End' instead of 'The Truth is Out There'.

But very quickly, it becomes clear that this isn't business as usual. Part of it has to do with the fact that Mulder and Scully are kept apart until the end of the episode, but most of it is because, for the first time in the entire history of the series, we are getting what we are promised. Perhaps we should be a little annoyed that Tad O'Malley is back without a word of explanation as to how or where he's been,  but unlike the premiere where he just seemed like a gimmick, this time he serves a purpose. The apocalypse has been something the series has only hinted at, even when the Syndicate was meeting. Now, we actually get the sensation that something truly epic in scope is happening, and as the episode progresses, O'Malley's pronouncements stop seeming like the rants of a typical pundit, and really seem like the world is ending. Joel McHale gives a corrosive performance as he realizes that his announcements really are the stuff of Armageddon, he actually becomes quieter and quieter.

Admittedly, a lot of the science that goes on within the story seems a little more like doublespeak than usual, but this probably is more Carter's responsibility than anyone else. By now, the average X-phile has heard so much science connected with the series that when he actually gets real scientist to provide the backdrop for it, we can't help but tune it out anyway.. What makes My Struggle II work, and work far more effectively than any mythology than any the series did in very long time, is that it takes the story of the end of the world, and humanizes it more than it has. This may not be entirely of Carter's doing, though.  When Millennium, Carter's next project eventually fell under the auspices of Glen Morgan & James Wong, they ended its second season - very likely thinking the series was going to be canceled - by bringing about an apocalypse very much like the one that is unfolding here. They took a mythology they had been building up, and basically tore it all down to bring about something far more banal and deadly. It was frightening and unnerving, and featured images and performances that have rarely been seen before - or since - on TV.

One gets a certain feeling that this is what is happening here, and makes all of the usual X-Files shifts even more realistic than usual. There's the fact that we have the betrayal of a certain X-philes character - this time we learn that Agent Reyes has been working for the CSM for the last several years - but because for the first time in the series history, we see that character make the choice to do it, it has a power that the betrayals of Krycek or Fowley ever did. The sequences with Annabeth Gish have a resonance because she's a character we came to trust over her brief tenure on the X-Files. The Cigarette-Smoking Man returns in all his bloody glory - but this time, we actually see him recovering from death, and he manages to look simultaneously a great villain and incredibly pathetic. The confrontations of Mulder and the Smoking Man are so much of the series that they ended up losing their power by Season 5, but now for the first time, Cancer Man does have all the power, and the fact Mulder spends their entire meeting bloody from a previous fight, and then near collapse from the virus that is spreading throughout the world gives William B. Davis to gloat with a genuine sense of victory. Its aided by the fact that Mulder doesn't walk away, exactly, from this

And for the first time on this series, we get a very real scope of everything to  break down, something that not even Millennium managed to accomplish. Set in a hospital, where more and more patients begin to appear, where the doctors and eventually Agent Einstein fall ill. The messages from Tad O'Malley become more and more fractured, which is somehow even more terrifying - the Internet beginning to collapse may be something that is truly appalling. And the final moments, when Agent Scully tries to get the vaccine she's designed to Mulder and Agent Miller, while all around her, D.C. collapses, looks more frightening than something even The Walking Dead tried. Even if you wonder, why the hell they didn't bother to do any of this when the series was on the air, or for either film, you can't complain that much, because the images are hard to ignore. The final moment, when an alien spaceship finally hovers over Scully is something unparalleled for this series.

So what's the problem with the episode? Basically, the fact that we now know that another Season has been renewed. When Millennium was renewed for a third season, with a different showrunner, the writers handled the apocalypse of the second season, by basically trying to pretend it didn't happen. (Morgan & Wong later claimed that they had a plan for a third season that involved going forward from that scenario, but I found it very difficult to trust any writer who comes from that kind of background). It basically undid the series going forward, and the show basically collapsed. One can't help but think given the X-Files history that its very likely that Carter and colleagues will try to walk back a lot of what they did, no matter how powerful the images were. And even if they do go forward from this point on - how can they move forward? The greatest strength of The X-Files would, more often then not, tend to be from its standalone episodes rather than its mythology. How do you go back to chasing Flukemen and liver-eating mutants when the world's under threat of global collapse? I know that lots of series since the X-Files went off the air manage to adjust to series changing revelations very easily, but this series has always managed to remain in stasis, even when it was at its peak. Its hard to imagine it changing even now.

The X-Files has managed, even its relatively brief tenth season, that there still are new stories and approaches to be taken. That seems to justify its being brought out off hibernation. Whether or not that will play will in a future season - that may be something not even Mulder and Scully can say for sure.

To be continued in 2018...

My score: 4.5 stars.