An interesting idea; a soldier who loses all of his limbs and projects himself in order to take revenge on the people he blames. The deaths are kind of cool; and they hold nothing back, even when he buries his boss's kid in the sandbox while he's playing with army men.
As far as the case goes, I think it's a fairly strong episode. With a villain that is totally unsympathetic.
I love M & S passing notes while they are interviewing the victim. I love how slightly unprofessional it is, and how Scully in particular doesn't really care. Like she's saying 'ok Mulder; pass! Onto the next unexplained phenomena please...' She writes something about him being a classic crackpot or whatever ;)
Followed by the classic Scully "I'm only pretending to be interested in what you are saying" face.
M & S have to put up with an army chick who feels like she needs to be over aggressive in order to make it in this man's world; she gives them the runaround about military protocol. Scully never responds well to chicks like this, and I think Mulder kind of digs it. Heh.
DRAPER: I don't know that he's available.
S: Ask him to make himself available. Tell him that its our protocol. In the mean time, we'd like to finish up with Lt. Col. Stans...
Scully: 1, Army Brat: 0
Later, revenge is exacted on the same woman in the swimming pool.
Score is still Scully: 1, Brat: 0. Game over. Can't win if you're in a body bag.
For once the investigate proceeds like an investigation rather than Mulder looking for evidence to back up his crazy idea. I mean, he still has the crazy idea, but they focus on the evidence; running fingerprints, listening to eerie voice message tapes...
Mulder has even been walking around with an x-ray dental plate in order to pick up unusual radioactivity from astral projections of the suspect. Neat!
Eventually they catch him in the act of projecting; at first they think he's having a seizure, but Mulder knows right away what's going on.
Mulder saves the general... the end! Which is fine; I actually think it's his turn anyway.
Great recap! "You can't win if you're in a bodybag." "For once, the investigation proceeds like an investigation." Awesome stuff.
ReplyDeleteI liked this ep too. It didn't blow me away, if only because astral projection is (to me) a stretch even by the relaxed standards of the X-Files. What saves this ep is the villain. He's GREAT; motivated entirely by bitterness and revenge. It's nice to have an X-Files villain who's actually just a bad guy. He's not trying to feed, or right past wrongs - he's killing because he thinks his victims deserve it. I liked that he was condescending and even cocky despite having no limbs - it was just *believable* if that makes sense.
Scully taking that bitch down a peg or three was wonderful. You could tell there was less room in Mulder's pants. :-)