Truth
is as subjective as reality.
This line is uttered by the title
character (Charles Nelson Reilly) before this episode truly begins. Scully then
says Chung wants to hear her version of reality.
So before we begin discussion of the episode itself, I think it's worth
bringing up my guiding stars when it comes to the critical perception of The
X-Files Robert Sherman and Monster of the Week's Emily St. James'
(who reviewed the episode) because, just like those in the episode itself, they
absolutely do not align. And to confuse you further (as is the case with this
episode) I'll tell you my perception of their perceptions.
First as I mentioned in my essay on
Clyde Bruckman Shearman may be the only person, not just among X-Files fans but
in the known universe, who doesn't think Darin Morgan is one of the greatest
writers of all time. It's not his biggest flaw in Wanting to Believe but
it is his oddest and that's particularly true with Jose Chung. This is
what he says in the second paragraph:
It is, as I say, very clever. It's
also pretentious, overwritten, and desperately self-indulgent. Jose Chung is
the kind of thing you get when you find an incredibly talented writer and tell
him that he's a genius once too often.
His biggest problem seems to be that
he finds this episode heartless. He says that he finds Charles Nelson Reilly 'not
as good as Peter Boyle' in Clyde Bruckman. (I should now tell you he loves
Reilly when he plays this same character again in Millennium even though
there's really no difference between the portrayals in each version.) And the
thing is even at the end of the day; he can't really tell you why he doesn't
like it:
This manifestly isn't a case of the Emperor's New Clothes; the
fanbase is right – this is dazzling and brilliant; the episode is as
clever as everyone thinks it is. I just don't care very much.
Now lest fans of The X-Files read
this and argue that Shearman is 'a ticking time-bomb of insanity (where) events
have so warped his psyche one shudders to think how he gets any enjoyment out
of life", Shearman is basically spot on with every other writer,
especially Vince Gilligan. Is it bizarre that he things 'Hell Money' long
considered not only one of the worst but also among the most racially tone deaf episodes in the entire
history of the series is twice as good as Jose Chung? (That's his own
ranking: Jose Chung gets two stars; Hell Money, four.) Yes but it's not a
dealbreaker for me to dismiss the entire body of work. It is the only review in 277 pages I can't
even glance without wincing at so I don't read it. It's not enough for me to
dismiss the other 275 pages. Why Shearman gets basically so much right and gets
Morgan wrong is nearly as inexplicable to me as the mytharc but since Shearman
and I agree it doesn't really make sense, I'm inclined to let that go.
St. James feels the other way and her
review gets to the heart of why it is a masterpiece. That said, I do disagree
with her about one of her final judgments – and might also explain why Shearman
has a problem with it:
And although its probably one of the
very finest episodes of television I've ever seen, I'm not sure it’s a terrific
episode of The X-Files. If The X-Files were a Lord of the
Rings-length novel, then 'Jose Chung' would be its first appendix, a source
that is both in love with the main text and critical of it, a place where real
human concerns creep around the edges of the show's chilly implausibility's."
That may explain why Shearman has such
a problem with this episode: he's reviewing it as an episode of The X-Files and
by that standard it's lacking. However my perception is the inverse of St.
James: I think it’s a brilliant episode of The X-Files but I'm less
convinced its one of the greatest episodes of all time, the same way I'd argue
for Clyde Bruckman or, in a different context, Mulder & Scully Meet the
Were-Monster. (I once put that episode on a list of the 50 greatest TV episodes
of the 21st century in 2019.)
The reason that Jose Chung works so
spectacularly for me is for the reasons I've argued as to why Morgan is a
genius. During his tenure with Ten-Thirteen he essentially invented the term 'meta'
when it came to television. Jose Chung
is in that sense the clearest example of meta in his first tenure with Ten-Thirteen,
something he'd revisit again in his second tenure and demonstrated he still
could do it better than so many shows had done in the interim. The major flaw with 'meta' I've come to
realize is when it tips over into fan service and when it does that, you really
do risk the show becoming what Shearman things Jose Chung is.
I feel this very strongly about episodes like Lost's
Expose or when comedies like South Park and Community basically
trend in that direction as they increasingly did. It's also why I love episodes
that do it well like Homicide's The Documentary and Buffy The Vampire
Slayer's Superstar which are among the earliest examples of the genre and
still the best. And it's why Jose Chung works as well as it does: it takes what
we the viewer have come to observe over three seasons and basically twists it
to its ultimate finish. This is particularly true with the line I quoted above:
it basically is mocking the show's catchphrase: "The Truth is Out
There". The X-Files would
hint in many of its serious episodes that maybe it wasn't a great idea to try
and find the truth in the first place; Morgan's essentially saying that its
impossible to ever find it – and with a comic subversion that makes you realize
its probably the real reason Mulder doesn't agree to be interviewed in the
first place.
You might wonder why I didn't give a
spoiler warning. And that's the best part of this episode: I could tell you
everything that happens in it but when you were asked what happened you say to
your friends: "How the hell should I know?" St. James will argue that
she has the basic story behind what happens in Klass County is very simple
- and I really want to agree with her-
but after multiple rewatches since reading the book, I just still can't commit
to it. So I'm going to give my answers to the two biggest questions that St.
James poses.
The first is how much of the episode
really happened and how much is fictional? I'm of the opinion that the only
thing he can we truly trust is what we see in the teaser because it's the only
thing that isn't subjected to reinterpretation later on. To review that
extraordinary piece of work (for which super-director Rob Bowman rarely gets
enough credit for when it comes to Jose Chung): Harold Lamb and Chrissy Giorgio
are on their first date when their car is intercepted by two U.S. government
officials disguised as aliens. While that was going on a second craft appeared
and a third alien emerged. Whether that was a bounty hunter, a Russian spy
plane or Lord Kimbote is irrelevant. The
government found out what happened and did what they did and covered it up,
whether through hypnosis on the part of the teenagers or killing off the pilots
and destroying the evidence. That's what
I think happened. It's only slightly in conflict with St. James version but
that's kind of the point.
The second question is how much of the
episode is meant as a slam against the X-Files fan base, mainly through such
people as Roky and Blaine both of whom
clearly emphasize the fans who even by 1996 were so excessively obsessed with The
X-Files as well as well as the way
it treats Mulder. I agree with St. James that this is just a case of Morgan
poking the fan base gently in the ribs. However I'm now convinced Morgan is slamming
someone associated with The X-Files, and I'm inclined to think its
Carter and the mytharc he's creating.
Here's some background. When Darin
Morgan was asked to submit a writing sample to get his job with The X-Files he
came up with the opening teaser for this episode. Apparently he then put it in
a drawer, as all writers do at times, and set to work on Humbug. During Season 3 he was more productive and
created Clyde Bruckman and War of The Coprophages.
Two things happened by this point:
Morgan was beginning to find the process of working for TV exhausting and the
mytharc was starting to spiral. As Carter admitted he never had a bible for the
series and he kept changing the mythology with each season. In the first half
of Season 3 he'd essentially argued that alien abductions were a front for
experiments on humans and by 731 he and Spotnitz had made that their
conclusion. When they took up the mythology again in Piper Maru/Apocrypha, they
seemed to have leaned on the side that aliens were de facto the cause of
everything.
Morgan had hinted at how absurd the
conspiracy was becoming in War of the Coprophages when he had one of his
characters argue that killer bees were part of the alien invasion. By the time
Morgan left the series Carter had essentially decided that this was a good idea
and made it integral to the mythology basically for the next two and a half
seasons by which point any idea that the mytharc was going to make sense was
something not even the deluded Roky and Blaine would believe.
So in what he expected to be his
farewell to The X-Files Morgan returned to what got him his job and made
it very clear just how absurd he thought the mythology of the episode was by
centering on an alien abduction and throwing in basically every part of the
mythology that Carter had done, treating it with such brilliant jokes and humor
that I'm relatively certain Carter had no idea he was being roasted. Or if he
did, he clearly never took it personally: he kept trying to bring Morgan back
to The X-Files to write scripts in Seasons 4 and 5, eventually convinced
him to write two scripts for Millennium (when he was reunited with his
brother Glen) and got him to write two equally brilliant scripts for the
revival more than twenty years after they first met. (By that point Carter had
embraced his own inner comic angels to new heights as we'll see going forward.)
The clearest demonstration of Morgan's
satire towards the mythology is, as always, through Mulder. One of the great
gifts of Morgan is just how much fun he pokes at Duchovny's work as Mulder,
both through his ridiculous good looks and how he appears like a buffoon to
every outside observer. But he's rarely made Mulder look more horrible then in
Jose Chung. It's telling that no matter what version of events we get Mulder
looks like an idiot. Most of this is
seen through Scully's retelling of this to Chung and we can tell she's doing
everything in her power to make her partner (who has refused to be interviewed)
not look like the raving lunatic he appears to be, well, basically in every
episode of The X-Files. If she's
censoring any part of her version its how she must have reacted with increasing
incongruity with everything Mulder did during this episode. The only time we see it look through is after
Chung tells her about Roky's manuscript and asks how could he have believed
this.
Scully: "Well, Mulder's had his
share of peculiar notions."
(Flashback)
"Mulder, you're nuts!"
Scully is clearly doing everything in
her power to filter out all the disputes they must have had in Klass County to
make Mulder sound rational. Everyone else, whether its Detective 'Bleeping'
Manners' to Blaine Faulkner to the cook at the diner clearly thinks Mulder's
out of his gourd. I'm honestly amazed Chung is as polite as he is when Mulder
confronts him in his office: this is clearly 'reality' and Mulder sounds even
more delusional then in any of the versions we've seen.
The episode also does everything to
make clear that when Mulder investigates cases that even satirical, he can be
incredibly cruel. He has no more use for
Chrissy and Harold then the government or the aliens do. To him, they are just
a means to an end: a way to discover the evils that either aliens or the
government is doing. The show makes this clear in a subtle fashion by basically dismissing both of them
completely by the end of the second act and only coming to back to them by the
time Chung deals with them. (More on that later.) When Chung asks Mulder the
same question he asked everybody and Mulder replies: "How the hell should
I know?" it cuts to the core of Mulder and the show completely.
The fact that Mulder only comes to see
Chung to tell him not to write this book makes it clear the only thing he cares
about is how the world sees him even if Chung changes his name. He may claim
not to care how the FBI sees him as 'foolish, if not downright psychotic' but
you'd think the chance to show his theories to the world would overcome that.
(We'll actually see that play out in X-Cops in four years' time.) But I suspect
this is Morgan showing just how little Mulder cares for the collateral damage
he causes in the gentlest way possible. At this point in The X-Files with
the exception of his family and Scully and those closest to her, Mulder has
cared very little for the collateral damage he causes in his quest for the
truth. (This will no longer be true by the time Morgan leaves the series.) In
fact Chung's description of 'Reynard Muldrake' in the final monologue is far
closer to accurate then Mulder – and perhaps the viewer – wants to admit.
To be clear I also agree with St.
James in her footnote "this episode is for sure a big ol' love letter to
Scully." Oh is it ever. In every scene she's in you can tell that Gillian
Anderson is absolutely having the time of her life. To be fair this has to be
true of every single member of the cast and crew when they were filming this
episode. But you can tell Anderson said: "Finally!" when she got this
one.
Morgan has always treated Scully with
far more respect in his episodes then he does Mulder. It's not that she doesn't
make a fool out of herself more than once ("Her name is Bambi?!,"
anyone?) but Scully is far more often the heroine of these scripts then she has
been to this point in any individual writer has treated her even though by this
point everyone thinks Anderson is the real start of this show. But all of the
episodes Mulder is the driving force and Scully is usually there to explain his
actions which get him into trouble. Now Scully gets to tell her story (to her
literary idol, no less!) certain that Mulder's version of events will never see
the light of day.
So much of Anderson's comedy is based
in just how embarrassed she clearly his by her partner and what's she being
forced to endure but never expresses it. So for once she gets to remain
stone-faced during the flashbacks and explain – in the most straight-faced way
possible – how insane she finds her partners theories and behavior. Because
this is a Morgan script she also gets to show her emotions more than Mulder
does: she practically holds her head in her hands during the 'alien autopsy'
and she's practically blushing when Jose Chung calls her a 'brainy beauty who
also had good taste." (The outtakes for this episode must be hysterically:
both Anderson and Reilly admit she kept cracking up while it was being shot.)
And it must have been so much fun for her to be seen as 'a man in black',
getting to deliver the lines with the same vehement authority to Blaine in his
version and then cutting to "He said I said what?" in the
present.
Reilly's work is indeed one of the
best guest performances in the show's entire history. For those of us who
remember Reilly from his days as a game show consultant it might be shocked to
know that in this performance (and again on Millennium) he actually
turns his trademark zaniness down to maybe five or six. There are occasions the
antic side of Reilly shows up (when he describes the difference between
'experience' and abduction to Scully)
but he was clearly intelligent enough to know that this in this episode
he's more or less the straight man and the humor comes from the fact he can't
believe what he's hearing is being considered serious by so many people (cough,
Mulder). Chung is clearly modeled on
Truman Capote, both in attire and why he's writing 'From Outer Space'. (In
Cold Blood was described by Capote as a 'non-fiction novel and this is a
'non-fiction science fiction'.) Reilly was a contemporary of Capote and could
have put his trademark mannerisms as interpreted by him. Instead he plays him
as any other writer so when he has to deliver arguably one of the best
monologues any writer (for The X-Files or otherwise) ever wrote for
television, it has tremendous power and gives this episode a genuine soul at
the core of all the comedy.
I know that I've described this
episode in a way that makes it sound bleak and I won't deny there are certain
dark underpinnings. There's the fact that this is the first in a line of
brilliant comic episodes in which the possibility of rape is essentially played
for comic effect more than the problematic implications. (To be clear the show
does deal with it in a serious fashion and you really wonder if Manners is more
upset at Mulder and Scully the comic side of his 'colorful phraseology' would
let on given his interrogation of Harold and his initial reaction before the
'bleeping' aliens show up.) And even if you can overlook there is a deeper
implication of the episode and what it means to have your memories taken from
you. Morgan himself acknowledges that concept in interviews.
But despite that the only memories
I've ever had of Jose Chung are those of fondness mixed with great humor. I
can't explain why exactly. Maybe it's because every time I watch it, I keep
discovering details I've missed that add to the overall humor of the story.
Maybe it's because the non sequiturs and jokes are among the best that Morgan's
ever written even by his impressively high standards. Maybe its because one of
the Men in Black is Alex Trebek and the reader knows my obsession with
Jeopardy. How the hell should I know?
To be sure it has a lot to say about
the human condition more than so many other episodes of The X-Files and
television. But I think I love Jose Chung never forgets that it is a TV episode
first and foremost, there to entertain and to make us laugh, cry and think at
the same time. The episode begins with a
shot that makes us think we're looking at something from Star Wars and turns
out to be an undercarriage of a crane and ends with a thoughtful monologue on
the darkest parts of our soul and then punctures it with the theme music of The
X-Files for the first (and except for the original series finale, the only)
time in the series. Unless you're Robert
Shearman, how can you not love that?
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