Homicide Episode Guide: In Search of Crimes Past

Written by Jane Smiley; story by Henry Bromell and Julie Martin

Directed by Ken Fink.

                           During its run, Homicide let a lot of reasonably well known directors like John McNaughton, Gary Fleder and Kathryn Bigelow take turns behind the camera. However, they almost never let any guest writers take turns for the show. This is hardly surprising because most TV producer with very  few exceptions  (Michael Crichton for ‘ER’ is the most obvious one) its very difficult for a famous screenwriter or a novelist to write for a show with its own style. So its strange that the show as a ratings stunt would hire a famous writer.

                           It’s even stranger when the famous writer is Jane Smiley. Though admittedly a brilliant writer, none of her most famous books (including Moo, Separate Keys and the Pulitzer Prize winning A Thousand Acres) have anything to with violence or crime, certainly not ‘homicide’ It would have made far more sense to invite someone  like Patricia Cromwell or P.D. James.

                           But it soon becomes very clear that Smiley knew the characters and plots of ‘Homicide’ very well. Indeed her script is so reminiscent of the old school  show that its pretty hard to believe that Tom Fontana or James Yoshimura didn’t have anything to do with.

                           It’s true that we have what seems like a trumped up situation when the daughter of a man on death-row takes Colonel Barnfather hostage and demands that the investigating detective--- Bolander--- reopen the case and find her fathers evidence. But it is done very much in the shows style. For one thing, we never see Barnfather held hostage or inside the room itself. For another, normal police work doesn’t screech to a halt as it did in the ‘white glove murders’ or the police shooting. Bayliss and Pembleton are still out investigating a suspicious death and Lewis is investigating a suicide. And third, though the detectives are concerned, they aren’t moved or paralyzed by grief. This is especially clear when they start joking about  Barnfather’s nerve or whether it would have been better for Granger to have been taken hostage.

                           Furthermore, the crisis of the episode is resolved before the show is half over.  Even before we learn that the clock is ticking on an innocent man, the detectives have gotten the evidence of innocence and a judicial stay in only a few hours.

                            More important then the man on death row  is the man who put him there. Ned Beatty goes through a very well done performance--- one which in many ways is as good as the previous episode. First Stan is absolutely sure that he put the right man in jail, and it comes as a great shock to him when Meldrick shows up with a confession by another man for the same murder. In a typical show of thoroughness, after the wrong man is set free he spends the next half of the episode trying to figure out how the real killer knew the victim. He then finds out a motive that the murderer would have and we he confronts a witness about this, he is put in the place when the witness replies that he didn’t ask the right question. This is a sad truth that sets the detective back. One wonders if this investigation might have been a brick in the wall that led to Stan Bolander retiring --- but that’s another story.

                           Bayliss and Pembleton  in the meantime catch a murder case that is  even more bizarre than the usual one. For one thing ,it seems to involve the accidental drowning of a seventy-four year old woman.  It would seem to be one to write off but Bayliss think that there’s more to this case. Indeed, it turns out that this a crime of passion--- very old passion. When he was in high school Sam O’Donnell was involved with a woman named Isabella Kunkel. But with the coming of World War II, he left her behind. Eventually, he married a woman and was faithful to hear for 50 years. But he still loved Isabel and when she comes back into his life, he finds that his marriage didn’t mean as much as he thought. Because the case involves a really old love triangle, there is a kind of bittersweet tone  to everything. When Tim learns that Mrs. O’Donnell was murdered, he and Frank are very reluctant to take the killer in. We mourn not for the life that has been lost, but the relationship that could never be. About the only wrong note that Smiley hits is that Tim and Frank are far  more companionable than usual. They  even talk about their first loves--- something that I can’t see the tough Pembleton doing willingly. Of course, the mood is shattered when Frank points out to Tim the last time he made a fool of himself over a woman, but still is seems a little false.(This is particularly ironic considering what will happen in the next episode.)

                           The show also has a lot of the quirky humor that ‘Homicide possessed. We have a suicide victim giving away his shoes to a homeless man before turning the gun on himself, we have the jokes over the hostage situation and most evidently we see Munch’s futile attempts to improve the bar by hiring quite possibly the most incompetent bartender in Baltimore. His attempts to improve the Waterfront end with their bar wrecked and  a huge loss of  money. It is especially funny because this particular bartender has perfectionist standards that he is absolutely is unable  to meet. Jerry Stiller continues the ‘Homicide’ tradition of having comedians making potent appearances (though this is more comic than serious)

                           Jane Smiley has never written another teleplay, certainly not another ‘Homicide’. It’s a great pity. This unlikely author understood how the show (with the exception of the major relationship) really worked. That is the gift of a great writer--- that he or she can raise brilliance out of a medium that he or she has no real experience in.

My Score: 4.5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Deadalive

Written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz

Directed by Tony Wharmby

This episode requires the viewer to take two enormous - and that's even by the standards of the X-Files - leaps of faith. First, you have to accept that the FBI would be so unsettled by Mulder's return that they would bury the body and not do an autopsy. Even allowing for his faith and Scully's wishes, that's a pretty big jump. The second comes near of the episode, when we learn that after being infected with the alien virus that has been the basis of the series for six seasons, that it can somehow be treated not with the vaccine that we've heard about, but simply with a course of anti-virals, they can knock it out as if were nothing more than a bad case of strep throat. (Granted, this is the mythology, which Carter has repeatedly demonstrated that he seems to be making it up as he goes.)

If you can get through those gaping plot-holes, the fact of the matter is Deadalive actually has a lot to offer. By having Mulder buried in the episode's tease, it seems to be putting a pin in everything we've been led to believe over most of the season, that Duchovny's supposed return is nothing than another deception. What makes it work is the way that there is a real sign of the passage of time. We cut to three months in the future: Scully is now obviously pregnant, and Kersh is offering Doggett a transfer off the X-Files. Doggett's is clearly torn: its been clear since he started working that he just can't get his mind around some of the larger concepts at work here, but he knows enough that when Scully finally goes on maternity leave, the X-Files can finally be closed down without any fuss. He can't be forced away from it, even though he thinks the digging up of Mulder's body is a huge mistake.

The return of Billy Miles, somehow apparently dead and alive simultaneously leads us to Mulder, and back to the endless hospital sequence. What makes this one feel less perfunctory is the condition of Mulder. One can't help but the draw the parallels to Scully's return way back in One Breath. And even more telling is the fact that it now seems that death is no longer the worst fate that can await Mulder. The scene where Billy Miles takes a shower and his skin literally falls off may be the goriest sequence the X-Files does all season, and seeing what may await Mulder if something is not done is somehow even more frightening to conceive. (Of course, we don't how the series is planning to handle it, but the appearance is bloody enough to make us fear for our hero.)

Deadalive is a crossroads episode for the series, and as a result, there are two conflicting approaches to the story, one of which is extraordinarily effective, the other seems like series runaround. The strongest part, as is the case for most of Season 8, is the fine work of Robert Patrick as Doggett. Given a chance to walk away from the X-Files, he finds himself going into depths that the series has not yet tried. His reaction to Skinner unearthing Mulder's body, isn't one based in denial, but rather to try and spare his partner pain. Even after seeing what has happened to Billy Miles, and his story, he can't bring himself to accept that what may be happening is somehow extraterrestrial. He nevertheless finds himself taking a huge leap in seeing Absalom, to try and find an answer to questions he doesn't want to ask. And the sequence where he encounters Krycek, and comes to battle with is a highpoint. All of this magnificent work, coupled with the driving irony that despite the fact he decides to stay on the X-Files is highlighted with the final scene - he's finally found Mulder, but now that he's back, he will be the odd man out in the unit.

On the contrasting end come the scenes between Skinner and Krycek as they try to negotiate a way to cure Mulder. Now don't get me wrong. After more than two years of having those pesky nanobots nesting in Skinner's blood with no consequence, I'm glad to see that Chekhov's gun is finally being fired. Its the return of Krycek that makes things so confused. Krycek's loyalties stopped making any logical sense around Season 5, and with the Syndicate gone, he now just seems like a loose end the series doesn't seem willing to tie up. We have no idea where he's getting his knowledge any more, and in true X-Files tradition, no one seems willing just to ask what will happen if Scully's pregnancy, which likewise has been ignored until now, comes to term. We can guess how he managed to get the vaccine, but given everything he's done to Mulder over the past seven season, why in God's name would he want to save him?

But you know something? It works in the end, and that because the series is finally willing to take risks. Only the X-Files would spend an entire season teasing Mulder's return, and then decide the most charitable thing to do would be to take him off life support. Only now would that decision turn out to be the right one to make, that somehow ends up saving his life. And the final scene, where Mulder somehow manages to return from the dead with the trademark Mulder wit still intact, almost makes everything we've had to go through in Season 8 worth it  There's no purple prose, no stupid narration, just a simple five line exchange between Mulder and Scully. Its perfect.

Deadalive is a messy episode, and I don't just mean the bloody horror that comes from watching so much of the hospital sequences. There are confusing moments that defy the corkscrew logic the X-Files has been running on for awhile. But there's more of the genuine feeling that has been present in the last couple of episodes than we've been getting for awhile. Its rather sad that now Carter and Spotnitz have finally managed to get the perfect merging of mythology pain and human emotion right - right when they're going to be forced to whisk it away again.

My score: 4.5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: This is Not Happening

Written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz

Directed by Kim Manners

In retrospect, one of the more bizarre things about The X-Files,  is how few actual 'events' there were. It became something comic, if very frustratingly so, how many of the promos we got (especially for the mythology episodes) that said every few weeks, the next episode "will change everything" And in fact, all we got was stasis, a series that refused to change. Contemporary series that were more conventional procedurals - ER and Homicide, for example - would have more game-changing episodes than the X-Files ever did, while later series would learn from X-Files mistakes, and actually deliver on their promises. By the time the series did  offer revelatory episodes - the end of the Syndicate, or the revelation of Samantha Mulder's final fate - so much time had elapsed that by now the average viewer of the series could only consider the endings either contrived or disappointing.

Which is why now, with the series in what could be considered its dying fall, that the X-Files actually delivered on one of its promises - 'The Search for Mulder is Over!" scream the promos. And it is. And in an equal rarity for the series, what we get is actually is worthy of our time, and far more powerful than you'd think, considering we've spent the better part of Season 8 pretty much ignoring that same search. What makes it far more effective is the fact that even though we should be celebrating the fact that we're going to finally find Mulder, almost from the beginning of the episode, there is a very grim air to the proceedings. When Teresa Hoese is found in a hospital bed, barely clinging to life, we finally seem to realize what the end of the search may entail, and damn the fact that David Duchovny is going to appear in the next six episodes. Scully finally admits what she has to have been considering for months - that Mulder is probably going to be found dead. It almost would be better not to find him at all, if that's how its going to be. We get a sense of this when we find the body of Gary, the young UFO explorer that was captured in Requiem. We can see the interior grief that Scully is going through when his friend Richie comes in to ID the body, and then he disappears, his job done. Now it seems clear that  there's a very real possibility that Mulder could be found dead in some field.

And that's the tragedy of the episode - that is exactly what happens. Scully has spent the better part of a season trying to take on the mantle of Mulder. It's a job that she finally admitted in the closing minutes of Badlaa that she is ill-suited for. She tries her very best throughout the episode to see things in the same way her partner did, but at the last possible moment, finding Jeremiah Smith in UFO cults camp, she stumbles, and the final cost is Mulder's life. The X-Files has played on so many emotional moments that is almost started to seem camp, but when Scully finally comes across Mulder's body, the pain is so wrenching and real, that it almost completely justifies everything we've had to go through in this often frustrating season.

Paradoxically, by this point in  the series, the mythology episodes are starting to coalesce better than they have earlier on. The purple and stilted prose that made so many of them unbearable, and the long and ponderous voiceovers are gone. What we are finally getting is something far more emotional - and real- than we have for years on this show. Even the moments that shouldn't work - Scully tearfully relating to Skinner a conversation she had with Mulder about starlight, or the scene where Scully 'sees' Mulder in her motel room  - manage to resonate because they are finally stripped away and deal with things we care about far more.  Its because the X-Files doesn't seem to be concerned with a bunch of old man sitting around in rooms, smoking, but rather the fates of individual people, that the show finally seems to be finding a mission statement that it has all but lost over the last few years. Jeremiah Smith now no longer seems like a pawn between two rival elements, but a man trying to do good work, that the character now seems fully realized. And yes, in just a few episodes the series is going to relapse very badly, but that doesn't change the fact that its finally starting to sing again.

This is Not Happening works in a way that some of the best episodes of the series have managed to succeed. Yes, there are parts that really seem to be going around in circles - do we really need to reintroduce a whole new group of characters now that we're finally free of the Syndicate? And though Annabeth Gish's initial characterization of Monica Reyes plays with a far more flaky appearance, the fact that she actually seems to be more of a human being (particularly in her connection with Doggett's dead son, a bit of characterization finally given voice to) means that ironically, the series is starting to finally get a handle on introducing new regular characters. This episode works because it is willing to finally take risks in a way that the X-Files just hasn't been willing to do; its promises the return of Mulder, and brings David Duchovny back without uttering a word of dialogue. It finally brings about an episode that deals with the realism of dashed hopes, and the pain and consequences that come as a result.

My score: 5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Per Manum

13. Per Manum

Written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz

Directed by Kim Manners

If making Scully pregnancy part of Season 8 was a shaky idea, the idea of making the possibility of her baby somehow being extraterrestrial was probably the worst possible path Carter and company could've chosen, both in theory and in realization. Especially considering what happened when Scully actually had a child back in Season 5 - but then again, the series seems to have completely forgotten that storyline. However, given the nature of Season 8 so far, and that the series has all but ignored, with a few subtle references what has been going on with Scully, one can't hope but feel that Per Manum gives the X-Files a boost it hasn't had in quite some time.

In typical fashion, what we've been getting as far as the mythos going around is something around. We meet this never before seen characters who's apparently been writing Mulder about alien abductions, and who tells a story so implausible not even the newly open-minded Scully is willing to believe it. The fact that what we see in the opening sequence is truly terrifying doesn't seem to give us much encouragement as for what's actually happening. And quick as a wink, we find out that the woman  Haskell mentions seems to have a link to her new doctor, and that he actually is part of conspiracy. And after nearly three years of going without one, we get a new informant, this one linked to Doggett. (I wonder how many fan conventions Adam Baldwin goes to where he gets ragged on for this) And all of this has to with a link to Scully's baby, which has a level of incredulity that we really could've done without at this stage of this series.

All of this is enough to make you wonder why the series wants to go down this particular rabbit hole. What makes the episode work - and for that matter, work extremely well - are the flashbacks. For the first time all year, David Duchovny is actually made proper use of, as we finally find ourselves deal with the core of how Scully could become pregnant, and the story of Scully's ova, in what seemed like a throwaway story all the way back in Memento Mori. By far the most effective view of Scully's problem is seen, not through the eyes of her doctors or her boss, but from her best friend. The scene where Mulder comes into Scully's apartment to awkwardly discuss what she wants him to do, is one of the best scenes in all of Season 8. Both of them are fairly coy around each other, Scully somehow sure that Mulder will deny her, and Mulder's fumbling around as he finally manages to say yes. Its discomfiting, its leaves our heroes unusually tongue tied, and its surprising moving, as well as the humorous moments, in which Mulder finally acknowledges one of the benefits of his rarely mentioned porn problem. A lot of fans were irritated that, after all of the shippers that the series was still dealing with ambiguity when it came to Mulder's role in Scully's pregnancy. Myself, I would've been much more satisfied if this had been the real truth behind what had happened. And the final scene where Scully comes back from the doctor absolutely shocked that the insemination process hasn't taken is quietly moving in a way that so many of the mawkish scene we got between our heroes during so many similar medical crises just weren't.

 The episode also works in a way that it finally links Mulder and Doggett in  a way that none of the scenes in The Gift did. Here Mulder is shown as someone who will share the deepest secrets he has with her, willing to do anything for the person he cares about the most, and is willing to comfort her in ways that finally are starting to seem appropriate for a woman that he's known for nearly seven years. Doggett, despite his steadfast soldier persona, still seems to be struggling to earn Scully's trust, and for the first time, he finally balks at being given the runaround. The genuine outrage and anger he shows throughout the second half of the episode features some of the best work yet by Robert Patrick. Ultimately, this comes to a perfect balance in the scene in Scully's hospital room, where he finally learns about his partner's pregnancy, and how much it has cost her. His quiet compassion mirrors Mulder's in a way his investigatory process didn't in The Gift, and it reveals that he Scully has finally found a level of trust in him, as well as a renewal to try and find a way to find Mulder.

Per Manum isn't a perfect episode - there's a bit too much of the running around in hospitals that made the latter half of Season 4 such a downer. And frankly, given that we seemed to finally be dealing with a new approach to the mythology in the season opener, it probably was a bad decision to start trying to do an entirely new mythos now. But we're finally getting a reason as to why all of the subterfuge and sneaking around has been for, and giving the storylines, which have been flat for most of the season, a real sense of purpose that the show has been lacking. It may lead to dangerous places, but for the first time in a long time, we seem to be heading in the right direction.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Hap & Leonard Season 2 Review

The Sundance Channel may be falling apart as one of the few sites for indepenent films, but as a source for original programming, it keeps improving. Importing a fair amount of its broadcasts - the Italian crime series Gomorrah and the wry British comedy The A Word, one of  its returning series couldn't be more American: the Texas set series Hap & Leonard.

Based on a series of well-crafted mystery novels by the veteran fiction writer Joe R. Lansdale (the series is subtitled Mucho Mojo, the next novel in the series) the title characters are two poor Texas, ex-Vietnam vets way south of the poverty line in the 1980s: Hap Arnold (British actor James Purefoy), white and dirt-poor in every sense of the word, and Leonard Pine (Michael K. Williams, in another one of those roles you can't imagine anyone else playing) a black, gay man in one of the worst places to be both. Recovering from the adventures in the first season, in which Hap's ex-wife ended up dying, Leonard is currently living in his late Uncle Chester's house, where he literally trips over trouble, when he finds the corpse of a boy in his floor.

As is their want, trying to do the right thing just gets them in trouble with the law again, where they are saved by a beauteous lawyer, Florida (Tiffany Mack) who happens to be the relative of neighbor. But as always seems to be the way with them, things quickly spiral out of control, when Leonard ends up in prison because of his behavior towards one of his neighbors. (He pissed on a drug dealer's head. The guy had it coming.) Leonard spends the better part of his weekend being wailed upon by the cops, and escapes further incarceration only by some none-too-subtle nudging by Hap towards the judge who he really has cause to loathe. All they have to do is stay out of trouble. Then they find out that Chester's oldest friend knew about the dead boy, and also may have known just how deep the secrets go. Unfortunately, he ends up driving into the river by the end of last night's episode.

Admittedly, Hap & Leonard  could be considered guilty of some egregious padding as the average length of one of their mysteries is just under 250 pages. And considering how many characters keep migrating to the front of the series, you wonder sometimes whether its going to pay off. (It's only halfway through episode two that we find out just why Brian Dennehy is on the cast list.) But the atmosphere is so well done, and often incredibly, morbidly funny that you realize just what a gem this series can be at times. It's definitely an acquired taste, but like chicken-fried steak, it has its own appeal. And considering that Landsale has written six other novels in the series, this show could be around for awhile. I really hope it is.

My score: 3.75 stars.

American Crime Season 3 Review

I'm not a hundred percent sure that the people running ABC are entirely sure of what they're doing. Though several of their comedies are at the level of the peak comedies in the 1990s, the rest of their programs are scattershot. Building their network on reality TV is a slippery slope, and they seem to have surrendered most of their original drama space to Shonda Rhimes.

But you know something? It's almost worth it. Because building up that ratings base allows to them to periodically experiment in brilliant stuff. And there are few things more brilliant on TV than American Crime, now in the middle of Season 3, and once again choosing a subject that could not be more relevant to the current Zeitgeist: human trafficking.

Changing settings yet again, Season 3 takes place in North Carolina among the migrant farms that surround the fields. As always, its hard to tell what the exact crime is that will be the wellspring for the action, but we've got a lot of fascinating characters playing around.  In a particularly good move, Regina King, winner of two consecutive Emmys for Supporting Actress moves to a lead role playing Kimara Walters, a social worker trying to help sex workers caught in the system, and who have little to no interest in being helped. Her latest project is Shae, a teenager caught, who is in no mood to be rescued even though she is pregnant, an irony not lost on Kimara, who has been trying for longer than she cares to think to have a child herself. Felicity Huffman, who in the previous two incarnations has been playing largely unsympathetic women, now takes on the role of Jeanette, the wife of  a man whose mother (newcomer to the series Cherry Jones) runs a migrant farm which usually traffics in illegal immigrant and where fifteen workers were killed in a fire, and is horrified by it. A lot of the action takes place on the farms where the hopeless are recruited in hopes of easy money. But right now, it seems like the critical character this season is Luis Salazar (Benito Martinez), a middle-aged man who crossed the border illegally, traveled a long way to North Carolina, and only in last nights episode revealed that he was in search of his son.

The acting in the series is almost always incredible. (I have not yet mentioned the arrival of Sandra Oh, as an attorney trying to help Kimara in her work) Huffman and King are their usual magnificent selves, but so far, it is Martinez (who was largely absent for Season 2), whose work is particularly impressive. He seems to be determined and is far more forceful as a man who is clearly the odd man out in this world. But there is a hidden strength that he finally lets rip against an unsuspecting farm boss that makes it seem hard to see how Emmy judges will be able to ignore it this year.  This is impressive stuff all around, and I await with anticipation the arrival of series regulars Timothy Hutton and Lil Taylor, who are scheduled to start their run in Episode 4.

American Crime, despite the fact that it is one of the most critically acclaimed series on any network, has always struggled with low ratings, even for the fragmented TV era. This is hardly surprising. It is a series that tries to deal with issues that most of would prefer not to see in our entertainment. It's even harder to deal with because it doesn't show clearly heroes and villains - only people stuck in the same broken system.  Which is all the more reason that this show should be deified. That a series this good could get made is wondrous; that its being made for broadcast TV is miraculous. It's as close to The Wire  as broadcast TV is likely to get in our lifetimes. Watch this show. I think we all need to.

My score: 5 stars.

X-Files Episode Guide: Medusa

Written by Frank Spotnitz

Directed by Richard Compton

At this point in the season, its hard to figure out what the hell X-Files is trying to be. There has been some new energy injected into it with the character of Doggett, but for the most part, the series seems to be falling into a pattern of redirecting old storylines with Scully now doing Mulder's lines and Doggett getting the old Scully's. And rather than deal with any of the issues that seemed pertinent at the beginning of Season 8 (you'd think by this point Scully would be showing a little) we seem to be getting episodes that are retreads of older storylines.

Medusa seems to play into that trope all too easily. We have our agents in an enclosed location for almost the entire episode. Doggett and Scully are headed down into a Boston subway line where a man has died under suspicious circumstances with a team of strangers. They have to figure out what the cause is of what may be a killer or a contagion. Save for the fact that there is an artificial deadline, being stupidly enforced by a nose to the grindstone bureaucrat, this could be Ice or Darkness Falls. We even have a similar effect with electricity eating people like acid much in the same we saw the mites do way back in the first season episodes.

But Frank Spotnitz is not Morgan or Wong or Chris Carter. He's made some great strides forward in his writing, particularly during this season, but monsters of the week have not been one of his specialties, and what we get is a lot closer to Firewalker than either of the classic episodes. Spotnitz seems to be aware of this, and tries to add a few wrinkles, by keeping Scully on the sidelines for almost the entire episode, tethered electronically to her partner and the rest of her team as they delve deeper and deeper into the underbelly of Boston's underground. The idea of a government conspiracy is pretty tired by now, but at least its a little fresher by having it be a local conspiracy being handled by this bureaucrat who seems more interested in the trains running on time than the fact that people are dying in the subways. After years of dealing with all the machinations of shadow governments, its almost refreshing to have an episode where the problems are simply ones of municipalities.

Unfortunately, the word that is key in all this is 'almost'. Aside from these textual changes, this is as boilerplate as the X-Files can be at this point. The characters that join Scully and Doggett on this sojourn are little more than ciphers, which considering that they include such fine character actors as Penny Johnson as Dr. Lowe and Ken Jenkins as the Boston official whose sole purpose seems to be to keep reminding everybody that they're on a clock. (Really, you'd think by now the FBI would have some pull over whether or not a crisis supplements evening rush hour.)  The burns are interesting effects to watch the first couple of times, but by the time we get to the final act, they seem cheaper than we're used to by this point in the series. And while its slightly more interesting to have this creature come from the sea, there's so little done with the idea that you think they might as well have had it come from a volcano, because there's very little texture that's different from anything we've seen. The fact that there's a coverup when the episode comes to an end is almost ridiculous, we've heard it done so many times.

Medusa's best moments, like so many of the good ones that work throughout Season 8, belong to John Doggett. The fact that he's still not asking any questions about why his partner is refusing to go underground is a testament to his loyalty. He may not believe in the paranormal even now, but he's still prepared to approach this with an open mind. He is more than willing to put himself in harms way to try and save people's lives even when his own partner tells him to get the hell out. And the solution he comes up with to save the people on the subway shows a level of inspiration that we're not a hundred percent sure even Mulder could come up with. The fact that there is a level of trust built up between Scully and Doggett is rather remarkable,. Ironically, its finally starting to solidify when it will be scattered away in just a few episodes.

Medusa is a lot stronger than many of the episodes we've had so far, but the sad truth of the matter is, we've still seen it done before and far better. And based on what we were promised when Season 8 began, the impatience with even the casual fan of the series must have been even heavier than before. It would've been disappointing to follow this kind of episode even if Duchovny were still with the series. Now, with the season more than half over, its becoming less and less clear what the show is trying to do. This episode would've been a waste of time last year; it barely passes muster with Robert Patrick in it. Are we ever going to get back to what we've been promised?

My score: 2.5 stars.