One of the best themes throughout The
X-Files run was the idea of the banality of evil: that not even aspects of
government conspiracy or supernatural powers were often cover for little men
doing horrible things. Both Gordon and Gilligan were experts on putting this
into their writing and I'd argue you see it play out in their later work. Both
Jack Bauer and Carrie Matheson are two of the greatest characters in 21st
century television because they are essentially ordinary people who are forced
to do questionable, even horrible things, in the name of a greater good.
Gilligan took a different direction and it
was clear from his earliest scripts. Almost from his debut on the series he was
a master in creating ordinary human men – and they were almost always white men
– who possessed supernatural powers and
used them for horrible inhuman things. And because of these characters ordinary
appearances they were able to essentially hide in plain sight and commit their
crimes in the shadows or some cases broad daylight. This could apply to Walter
White, Gustavo Fring, Lydia Quayle or so many of the people who inhabited the
New Mexico that Vince Gilligan created in Breaking Bad and many of whom
we'd see again in Better Call Saul.
In many ways the 'monsters' in Gilligan's
early scripts are far clearer ancestor texts to these characters then the
direction connection of Bryan Cranston's being cast in The X-Files in
Drive in 1998. (Don't worry, we'll get to that in due time.) And I think it's
worth looking at four of those early episodes Gilligan wrote, all of which are
considered masterpieces by the fanbase (myself included). It's clear in them
you can see Gilligan's fascination with the ordinary villain someone who may
have some kind of supernatural ability but is never the less a monster.
Gilligan frequently has empathy for some of these characters which makes it
difficult to hate them completely but there's none of the moral ambiguity with
them that viewers will later have with so many characters in his later shows.
Part
of that is no doubt because Mulder and Scully are the heroes of this show and
most of the time these very human monsters are a direct threat to their lives.
Mulder, far more often then Scully, is the only person who is capable of
understanding them – and just like with almost every other monster, he's
usually lucky to escape with his life.
Never is this more true then in the third
season episode 'Pusher'. Only the second script Gilligan wrote for The
X-Files it ranks as an all-time classic in what is largely considered the
show's finest season. It tells the story of Robert Patrick Modell, aka
Pusher. Modell is an ordinary man whose
last job was at a convenience store. He had average grades, average high
school, average military career. He applied to the Bureau and never came close
to passing the psych screening as the interviewer caught him in half a dozen
clear lies. He is a little man who wants to be big.
If that sounds familiar consider this. He
develops a brain tumor and it gives him a psychic ability. Just as with Walter
White's cancer it liberates him from his average life and he begins a spree of
violence. His voice is good enough to persuade people to kill themselves so he
commits fourteen contract killings that go on the book's as suicide. Then he
cold calls an FBI agent and openly brags about it. In the teaser of the episode
he is arrested and put in a car with a cage and then simply by repeating the
words 'Cerulean Blue is a gentle breeze' he convinces the driver to not see a
car with that shade of blue and drives into it. With his last breath the deputy
unlocks his prisoner and sets him free.
Modell uses the metaphors of the samurai
much like Walter White will use the code name Heisenberg. Modell appears to
have charisma in spades but its clear its borrowed because everything he does
seems like its out of a formula action movie. When Mulder ends up following his
bread crumbs he considers him a 'worthy adversary' and focuses his anger on
him. And he is enough of a sadist to make sure that even as his victims kill
themselves they feel every bit of pain. We see such memorable set pieces as him
convincing an FBI agent to cover himself with gasoline and light himself on
fire, to persuade an overweight agent to have a heart attack while keeping him
on the phone to complete a trace. And this cruelty is just as on display in
full view of Mulder, as he persuades a judge holding him for pretrial motions
to let him go by 'putting the whammy on him', by giving up the phone number
he's calling his apartment from cheerfully after forcing one of the agents to
die listening to him speak.
The climax of the episode is one of the
great set pieces in series history. Mulder and Scully have traced Modell to a
hospital where he's having an MRI. Mulder goes in after him, and we hear two of
the other agents kill themselves based on Modell's persuasion. He gets to
Mulder and the two of them start playing Russian roulette. Scully comes in
after to see Mulder with his gun trained on Modell. It's clear Modell is trying
to set up a situation where Mulder kills Scully, that he's sensed just how
vital she is to him and that this he couldn't survive. And its very telling that while Mulder has no
problem putting a gun to his own head and pulling the trigger (he should
probably see somebody about that) he resists with all his mental power to not
put the gun on Scully.
Scully saves Mulder when she pulls the fire
alarm, interrupting Modell's speaking long enough to break the spell. Mulder
shoots Modell (and keeps pulling the trigger even though there's only one
bullet in the chamber) but the wound isn't fatal. We learn in the denouement
the tumor Modell had was operable right up to the end but he chose not to have
it removed. In other words: "I did it for me. I was good at it. It made me
feel alive."
(Just to be clear Modell does come out of
his coma and there is a sequel to this episode but he never says those words
exactly. )
I should mention that 'Pusher' is the first
'official' episode Gilligan wrote after Carter invited him to go the show after
he freelanced an episode during Season Two. Gilligan would later express
gratitude to Carter that he was so patient with many staff writers when it came
to their output. (Darin Morgan underwent a similar apprenticeship and would
also be grateful to Carter for giving him that space.) And with the writer's
room in transition yet again during Season 4 Gilligan would step writing three
solo scripts and collaborating on two others that year. The first two solo scripts and his first
collaboration continue with the theme of a serial killer who is nevertheless
ordinary. That was especially true in his first script Unruhe.
Unruhe was a watershed moment for The
X-Files in many ways: it was the first episode that aired after Fox moved
the show from Friday nights to Sunday nights. This transition would officially
turn The X-Files into a hit show averaging over 20 million viewers a
week for the next two years. There's no
single writer who deserves credit for that but I remember the impact this
episode meant.
The episode's 'monster' is Gerry Thomas
Schnauz, a construction worker whose more sympathetic then most killers on The
X-Files are. It's clear he was subject to years of abuse by his father, a
dentist who tormented both him and his sister for years. His sister committed
suicide and Gerry would attack him with an axe handle. He suffers from a
paranoid schizoid disorder and was released to take care of his father. After
he passes away the mental illness he suffers from overcomes him and he begins
to stalk female victims believing that they suffer from 'unrest' or unruhe in
the German. He uses a combination of drugs to create a knockout drug called
'twilight sleep – a dental anesthetic. He genuinely believes he is saving the victims
he is stalking and performing what amount to ice pick lobotomies on them.
In a twist on that format Schnauz has no
supernatural powers. Indeed the X-Files is something the killer isn't aware of
and in fact Mulder's focus on it increasingly bothers Scully who is sickened by
the victims. And it works because of something that could not work in a reboot.
Schnauz's presence has the ability to warp photographs to leave behind a
capture of his mental state. If this were to be done on an iPhone, it would be
dismissed as a computer glitch and we'd ignore it – and honestly it wouldn't be
nearly as terrifying.
Technology is used to help capture Schnauz.
Mulder goes back to DC to analyze the photo and Scully is checking out a nearby
worksite on a hunch. She finds Schnauz on metal stilts. While she's talking to
him Mulder points out a detail on the picture that says the killer is either
very tall or wants to be. Scully hangs up the phone and goes 'Unruhe'. Schnauze
manages to run away but she catches him and find an awl in his pocket.
Schnauz is played by that exceptional
character actor Pruitt Taylor Vince, an ungainly looking man who suffers from
astigmatism, a disease that causes his eyes to involuntarily close and open.
This makes Schnauz both more creepy and more human simultaneously. Later that
episode he targets Scully because he believes she suffers from the same unrest.
The trope of Scully being abducted and
Mulder having to save her would have become tiresome if the show didn't reverse
the trope more often then not. And the scene between Scully and Schnauz is
unnerving because he believes she like everyone he's dealt with "is a
victim of the Howlers'. Part of his illness makes him believe they say and do
everything. When Scully tries to convince him that they live inside his head he
takes the camera and takes a picture of himself. It shows him surrounded by
darkness, dead. Scully tries to take it as a sign to get help. He takes it as a
sign to finish his work. Only the intervention of Mulder at the last minute
saves her.
In the last moments of the episode Scully
engages in what is the frequent practice of voiceover narration in which she is
theoretically writing her final report to the Bureau. The final speech includes
the following:
My captivity forced me to understand and
empathize with Gerry Schnauz – my survival depended on it. I see now the value
of such insight. For truly, to pursue monsters, we must understand them. We
must venture into their minds. Only in doing so, do we risk letting them
venture into ours?
Almost coincidentally Gilligan has set
forth the paradigm that will lead so much of the world of Peak TV that is to
follow, where the viewer must get inside the heads of monsters like Walter
White, understanding and even empathizing with them. Gilligan admits he may
have succeeded to well on Breaking Bad but the truth is we feel a
certain sympathy with Gerry Schnauz as must as anyone.
(And yes Gilligan did name his monster of the week after his friend and
future collaborator on so many projects after his friend Thomas Schnauz. Schnauz would actually write on The
X-Files in the final seasons with Gilligan so he clearly didn't hold it
against him.)
If Gilligan was testing how much we could
empathize with a killer in his first Season 4 script in his second one he
pushed the idea of arguing the entire premise of Mulder's quest – that his
sister Samantha was abducted by aliens – was a lie. In 'Paper Hearts' he
created one of the greatest episodes in the show's entire run in large part
because it focused on one of the most unsettling serial killers the show would
ever deal with.
The episode begins with Mulder having a
series of dreams which lead him to a long-murdered girl that links to one of
his cases from Quantico. The killer, referred to as 'Paper Hearts', strangled
his victims with an eight gauge electrical cord and would take a trophy – a
piece of fabric cut from their clothes in the shape of a heart. Mulder deduced
that the killer was a salesman, someone who traveled a lot and could gain
people's trust. Someone ordinary. That turned out to be John Lee Roche, a
vacuum cleaner salesman who confessed to thirteen killings – but his trophies
were never found.
Eventually Mulder finds the trophies in an
old copy of Alice in Wonderland. Roche clearly sees himself as the Mad Hatter.
In between the pages we find sixteen cloth hearts. Its only then we meet Roche.
Roche is played by that brilliant character
actor Tom Noonan, who'd already played Francis Dolahyde 'the Tooth Fairy' in Manhunter,
the first adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter novels. Noonan was tall and
soft-spoken and had a frequently ominous bearing so its intriguing that in
Gilligan's version we never see Roche do anything violent or menacing until the
final act. The way he nonchalantly greets Mulder in prison, as if they were old
friends, is so quietly unsettling as is the way he calmly describes himself as
a child molester. It's not until the first act is over and Mulder has another
dream that we get to the truly frightening idea – Gilligan implies that Roche
abducted and killed Samanatha and that her abduction by aliens was all a lie.
At a certain level we know the series isn't
going to reverse a critical part of the mythology. What Gilligan is trying to
do is place the seeds of doubt in Mulder's head. It does so most convincingly
when Mulder finally asks Scully whether she ever believed Samantha was abducted
by aliens – and she's silent. Scully is the person Mulder trusts most in the
world and even at a truly emotional broken point she won't say she ever
believed his story.
Roche spends the episode toying with
Mulder, engaging in emotional blackmail, claiming he sold a vacuum to his
parents, a model that Mulder finds in their old home. He leads him to another
of his victims but its not Samantha either. Finally Roche persuades Mulder that
he'll tell him the truth – but only if he takes him to the site of Samantha's
abduction.
This episode shows Mulder at his absolute
worst. He beats Roche when he demands his trophy; he ends up bringing back his
hearts and finally he violates the orders of the FBI by taking Roche to
Massachusetts. Roche confesses that he killed her – but then Mulder tells him
that he's taken him to the wrong house.
Roche's power is a reversal of the idea of
the profiler getting inside the head of the serial killer – he argues that
Roche managed to get inside Mulder's head to form a connection that gave
him the memories of what happened to Samantha. In other words Roche was an
ordinary man who gained extraordinary powers – and chose to use them to wreak
revenge on the man who put him in prison.
In the final act Roche does this again with
another dream which he uses to convince Mulder to free Roche, taking his badge
and gun in the process. This lead Roche to abduct another young girl. Of course
Mulder will eventually find and rescue the girl: he has to save his reputation.
But Gilligan finds himself putting his lead character into the emotional
quicksand he'll later be very good at with his many characters in New Mexico.
There've been many episodes to this point
where either Mulder and Scully have the choice of either trying to get answers
to their questions or doing the right thing. Mulder does do the right thing –
but in Gilligan's version he has to shoot Roche in the head rather than learn
whether Samantha was Roche's final victim.
'Paper Hearts' ends almost as a mirror
image of Unruhe: Mulder is just as emotionally exhausted at the end of his
experience as Scully was at the end of hers. He beat the monster but the
monster has left his mark.
The last script was a special one: 'Leonard
Betts'. Gilligan only co-wrote it along with Frank Spotnitz and John Shiban but
I think most of the details of the monsters bear his imprint. And I'm pretty
convinced its him driving the idea of playing with the format.
The episode begins with the title
character, a paramedic in Pittsburgh, apparently being decapitated by a head on
collision. His body is put in the hospital morgue – and then later that night,
it appears to breakout of the morgue, headless.
For the first half of the episode there's
no actual crime that's been committed so the writers are clearly having fun and
it plays as a black comedy – Mulder resenting having longer arms so he has to
go through a barrel of medical waste, Scully and Mulder cracking jokes over his
mummified head, making bizarre jokes about evolution. And for once the viewer
spends the episode playing catch up with Mulder and Scully with a new
revelation about Leonard coming to us just as quickly as it does to them.
Leonard is by far one of the most
sympathetic monsters any episode has ever created. Leonard will eventually kill two people
during the course of the episode but he's so apologetic each time and its
clearly done as a matter of survival more than anything else. He's played by
Paul McCrane who in less than a year would shot to popular consciousness as
'Rocket' Romano on ER, arguably the most abrasive character that the
show would ever have. So its striking to see him basically as yet another man
whose basically ordinary and who has managed to survive despite doing such
horrible things because no one notices him.
Of course there's the fact that he has the
power to regenerate body parts: we see him do so with his head, his thumb and
he even seems to recreate an entire new body to throw the cops off his track.
He does all this despite the fact – wait for it – his body is riddled with
every form of cancer. To the point that he actually uses cancerous tumors to
survive and in order to live he finds a smoker and kills him.
Who among the X-philes can forget his
incredible line: "I'm very sorry. But you have something I
need." And the real reason we don't
forget it is because at the climax of the episode he corners Scully in an
ambulance and says just as he's about to attack her. By that point Scully has
found the cancer-ridden victim and she knows exactly what that implies. She
manages to unfreeze long enough to kill Leonard. But then she goes home and
coughs up blood.
The most interesting thing about Leonard
comes when they find his mother who doesn't want to talk to him. She makes it
clear she loves her son:
I don't believe you when you tell me he
killed someone. But if he did, he had his reasons. God put him here for a
purpose. God means for him to stay – even if people don't understand.
We later see her taking care of Leonard in
a bathtub full of chemicals.
"I don't think they're ever going to
leave you alone…You have to conserve your strength. You know what you have to
do. I'm your mother and it's a mother's duty to provide."
Later that episode they go to her house and
find her lying there unresponsive. His mother was suffering from cancer
herself. He took what he needed from her, then patched her up and called the
ambulance that came to pick her up. In fact he's still on that ambulance
looking after her when Scully figures out where he is.
In other words a man riddled with every
form of cancer was willing to do anything to take care of his family. (Leonard is still more selfless than
Heisenberg would ever be.)
Long before Gilligan arrived at The
X-Files the show had created the template that monsters live among us, that
an animal control operator could be a liver-eating mutant or that the men you
pass in the hallways at your job could be shadowy government figures bent on
world domination. Perhaps the best lesson Gilligan did when he began to write Breaking
Bad that just because these creatures had mind control or the ability to
warp photographs that didn't make them special or any less monstrous. You might
empathize with some of them but that just made them more dangerous. Mulder and
Scully knew better than to tread lightly around these ordinary monsters because
they – like Gilligan – knew that usually made them all them the more likely to
want to show you how dangerous they were if you let your guard down.
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