BORN AGAIN Episode 22 Season 1 of The X-Files

Reincarnated botch, even the actors seem bored 3/10

Synopsis: A little girls appears to be killing cops connected by their work in the 80’s but why and how?

The Gansa and Howard MoW collaborations of season one got no better than mediocre and mediocrity is all they could muster here. Inspiration for this episode seems short sighted at best.

Born Again signals a return to conventional X-Files detective work for agents Mulder and Scully not seen and forgotten since Shapes. The agents are brought into this paranormal investigation by Detective Sharon Lazard played by Maggie Wheeler of O.M.G. Janice from Friends fame on the recommendation of her non-descript cop brother who had some sort of involvement on the Tooms case. They meet at New Yorks' 14th precinct, home of the crime scene and terrible police station banter dialogue.

Mulder wastes little time in realising what they are after, he has seen this before, not in some X-File dating back 40 year but in and X-File dating back 16 episodes to Shadows. This episode is bereft of any originality and if anything just plain thoughtless. Why if this girl was the reincarnation of Charlie Morris was she giving psychokinetic abilities? Surely having a vengeful cop in the guise of a five year old girl on a killing spree was a just cause for paranormal escapade. Needless to say Gans-ward got a little carried away on this one, their youthful exuberance is on show, they clearly needed to take a step back and surmise their creation when it was still on the drawing board.

Read into this you will but I find these posts easy to write when I am bashing an episode and fun to write when I am enjoying an episode but with Born Again I am just plain struggling.Even the chemistry between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson flounders, highlighted further by their wonderful exchanges shared in Darkness Falls and Tooms in the two previous episodes. Scully’s unnecessary presence signifies regression in the writing and is not something seen since Space.

There was some development to be had; Mulder asserts a firm belief in regression hypnotherapy in this episode, this technique of delving into past life and the sub conscious is a popular method in his pursuit for the truth. We first saw it was used on Billy Miles in Pilot and Mulder had already used it on himself to recall his sisters’ abduction. Later Scully will go on to devalue the credibility of regression hypnotherapy but that’s a different post for a different time.

Lacking in so many departments this episode is by no means ever going to be anybody’s favourite but it is watchable in the same way that a low flying plane is watchable, saying ‘oh look a plane’ and then forgetting about it 5 minutes later. 3/10

Musings;

• The plug that attacks Tony Fiore removes itself from the wall socket and appears to look at him before it takes his legs is unintentionally hilarious.
• This was Alex Gansa’s last creative influence on The X-Files story, good. He is the reason I have never seen Homeland which may seem harsh but he is awful in this season. Rant over. 
• Pffft NEXT!

SHAPES Episode 19 Season 1 of The X-Files

Sit, Stay, Play Dead 4/10

Synopsis: Mulder and Scully’s investigation into a shooting over a land dispute turns out to be more than just an open and shut case when a savage animal is introduced into the mix.

The episode is by no means an attention grabber let alone attention retainer. It is a werewolf yarn and we all know what a werewolf is and how they work; man gets scratched/bit, man turns into werewolf. Although it seems we are taking our prevailing knowledge for granted as it appears that The X-Files universe is unaccustomed to such myth. So as I watch Mulder and Scully investigate and learn about this nameless phenomenon I find myself reaching for my laptop.

Today I was off on a Native American Google search tangent that started with The Wounded Knee Incident mentioned by Ish during his first exchange with Mulder. I went on to learn more on the Native Americans’ plight against the U.S government , their battles to preserve the lands, their culture, their weapons, their farming methods, their hunting methods, their religion, their casinos. All the while Shapes listlessly stumbles from scene to scene offering little more than soft background stimuli.

This emphatically predictable story was in no way buoyed by the script and direction, which in places was downright awkward, the pinnacle of which has to be Mulders chucking in of the line ‘I want to believe’. When used without the class and the coherent context found at the end of Conduit this epic X-Files tag line is reduced to nothing but a cheap catch phrase.

Scully fairs little better. Her most poignant character trace is the ability to dismiss incomprehensible occurrences with logic and it is a trait we all appreciate, after all its part of what makes The X-Files so great. Although her ability to dismiss the ‘shape shifting’ Kyle Parker as a mountain lion is blind to the point of denial and not the ‘I saw it but I won’t admit it’ denial but the ‘repressed memory that may one day give me a brain tumour’ type of denial. The latter even played out on film to a certain extent when Kyle Parker gave off several loud roars as he was ‘shape shifting’ in the bathroom, the shot of Scully attempting to gain entry to the bathroom is silent. See no evil, hear no evil.

I think that the transformation scene of Kyle Parker into a werewolf still looks great today and finally my Google search tangent had a challenger to my attention. Alas it was a short lived battle of which Google prevailed.

There were other moments in which my curiosity peaks along the way. The castings of Duchovnys’ Twin Peaks co-star Michael Horse for example. As Sheriff Charles Tskany he practically reprises his role of Deputy Tommy Hill in a nod to the early 90’s supernatural drama to which X-Files owes for some of its inspiration.

There was also the backstory to these ‘shape shifting’ events which are attributed as the first ever X-Files. Apparently Edgar J. Hover himself initiated the investigation in 1946. The case, seeming unsolvable was swept under the carpet by Hoover(pun intended), which is a conspiracy in itself I suppose.

I find this episode unintentionally funny which is some sort of bonus I guess but this and its other entertaining facets are too few and far between in an episode guilty of sticking to closely to the myth ultimately causing it to be too banal. I did however get more out of watching this episode than expected, an education into the plight of Native American Man. 4/10

Musings:

• Or rather musing; Mulder breaches the gap left from a history of bloodshed between the U.S. Government and Native Americans. He offers an olive branch which is accepted. Is karma now at work? Is this act of philanthropy what helps the Navajo Indians bring Mulder back to life in ‘The Blessing Way’ Not trying to put too fine a point on it put Karma does play a large part in the Native American belief system.