"Up is down and black is white."

And frankly I'm not sure what to make of this latest effort 
from the writing trio we know as "John Gilnitz". It's an 
episode that made me alternately smile and wince. Not flat 
out bad, but painfully short of greatness. All in all it 
came across to me, in the end, as an example of everyone 
trying too hard instead of letting the point come naturally. 
It's as if the motto from the writing through post-production 
was "damn it everyone be funny". So, instead of surrounding 
Mulder and Scully with characters they were surrounded with 
caricatures making "Dreamland" somewhat of a rough night for 
all.

In one of the best moments of this episode, the teaser, 
Scully ponders the life she and Mulder lead. Despite her 
skepticism and job pressures she's once again driving down 
a dark desert highway with no cool wind in her hair - "we 
just keep on driving", driving for the dim hope of proof. 
She talks of a normal life. Perhaps one in which a person 
has a regular job. Perhaps one where a person has a family 
and a minivan. Mulder tells her "this is a normal life". For 
them it is. They are immediately, as is normal for them, 
surrounded by gun toting military and a strange thing happens. 
Scully's musings become their own personal nightmare.

Mulder gets the wife and kids. Scully gets a by the book 
partner. This is where the caricature begins. While I enjoyed 
some of Duchovny's reactions to family life the family itself 
was just too mired in bad sitcom hell. Perhaps if the characters 
had not been such stereotypes this might have worked. The 
actress who played the daughter was particularly annoyingly 
bad though kudos do go to an almost unrecognizable Nora Dunn 
as wife Joanne for trying to find the truth in the pain of the 
character even if it was out of sync with what everyone else 
was doing. Meanwhile, Michael McKean has the job of turning 
Mulder from occasional punk to full time prick. Too bad his 
performance fell so flat. He just seemed adrift. It would have 
been soooo much better to see Mulder as Scully was instead of 
someone "playing" Mulder. The joke here is to watch Scully 
become increasingly unhinged at her ass-slapping, Morley 
smoking, lout of a partner. Granted this was somewhat 
entertaining to watch, but the fact that it took Scully so 
long to finally snap (and what a lovely snap it was as she 
stumbled on the "out of your pretty little mind" comment) is 
unrealistic. Still, seeing her reaction to the "I think it's 
time you got your panties on straight. We're Federal officers. 
We go by the book." was worth the price of admission.

Can Mulder and Scully just come up with some sort of adequate 
code word or handshake system for these body swap experiences? 
In incident after incident they are fooled by shape-shifters, 
monkey boys, and pushy real estate women, yet when it comes 
time to try to prove who they are they just come up with 
lame-o things like the person's middle name or family details. 
With the wealth of shared bizarre experiences these two have, 
even mentioning that this is like that "Van Blundht thing" 
should ring a few bells. Granted the yogurt example was a step 
up from what we usually get, but still. If they are going to 
repeat themselves in circumstances I wish they'd give the 
audience and the characters a little more respect. I'm only 
cutting them a tiny sliver of slack with this because Scully 
was actually with Mulder at the time of the event probably 
making it more difficult for her to realize a swap could have 
happened. 

The thing I think I liked most about this episode was that it 
underscored Scully's commitment to the X-Files nicely. It's 
almost as if in the body swap she becomes Mulder in a way. 
She's tagging along when she shouldn't at the start, she's 
bitching to her "partner" about "protecting our work", she's 
mad about going by the book, and when push comes to shove she 
disobeys her supervisor, ditches her partner and goes back to 
Nevada to investigate herself. 

My biggest problem with this episode was that it just did 
not seem to know what it wanted to be when it grew up. 
Conceptually it had all the makings to be very funny, but 
something happened in execution that made much of it fail. 
On one hand we had Duchovny mugging and prancing for laughs 
and on the other Anderson playing her role straight to try 
to find the humor in Scully's outraged or stunned reactions 
to the circumstances. Director Manners never seemed to find 
the pace or rhythm of the episode to make these approaches 
sync up.

You know, I don't know how many times I've seen the old 
"mirror game" trick done, but in this case imitation is not 
the sincerest form of flattery. It may have made all the 
difference for some putting Duchovny in his underwear for 
the Marx Brothers rip off, but still it was forced and 
painfully silly. Mulder is so worried about his circumstances 
that he spends his time wiggling his ass in the mirror? 
Whatever.

So, in the end we were left with some good things and some 
bad things. Meanwhile, Kersh forces Scully into a sting and 
it seems she is finally making sense of it all. My big hope 
is that come part two of this, we can, in the words of Joanne 
Fletcher "make this work" so we can make sense of it as well. 

Random Musings
--------------

-Snow sampled with weaving the title theme into the score 
in "Triangle", but here is was all over the place. It seems 
after the movie this is the latest in his bag of tricks.

-Kudos to the set work and cinematography for that scene 
driving into area 51. The eerie blue illuminations of planes 
and buildings was wonderful.

-Finally an episode where Duchovny can wear his wedding 
ring for a valid reason and not annoy the fans.

-Speaking of cinematography, we had the landing light 
flashlight again much to my delight.

-Frank's Fashion Spot: Just when I thought I couldn't hate 
a Scully outfit more than the horrid black zippered jacket 
comes this monstrosity. Someone burn that odd "stylish" 
buttoned so it gapes jacket. Now. Also, did it strike anyone 
else as odd to have Scully in a skirt almost the whole episode? 
When she got out of the car with the flashlight wearing one it 
just felt wrong. I will not, however, complain about this 
year's lower necklines. On the Mulder front, he seems to be 
in a bit of a casual rut. How about tossing in a black T-shirt 
every so often to offset the grays?

-The special effects department had some fun with this one. 
The men merged with the rock or the floor was a successful, 
creepy effect. Too bad  "The Philadelphia Experiment" did it 
first.

-Yet Another Porn Reference: Mulder sleeps to the soft-core 
SIZL station. Personally that first show he clicked on looked 
far more interesting in a really bizarre way.

-And while he's watching porn Mulder is mumbling about Scully 
in his sleep? Well, well, well.

-Kersh is right about the frequent flyers comment, and they 
are also back to their magic traveling ways. Unless they 
chartered a jet to get back to DC it is downright impossible 
for them to be in nowhere Nevada at 11:30 at night and back 
in DC for that 9:42AM meeting the next day. Time zones are a 
bitch on travel going east.

-I said it last week, and I'll say it again. Laura Leigh 
Hughes is a stitch as Kersh's assistant. Talk about an actress 
working so few lines to such great success. The moment in the 
hallway with Anderson complete with her condescending delivery 
of "Agent Scully" just spoke volumes. I hope they keep this 
woman around.

-A little character trait I've noticed about Scully that 
always amuses me is that she tends to really over enunciate 
when she's pissed. As if to make herself perfectly clear.

-Gag that worked well: the dichotomy of having the old Indian 
woman bark out the answers of the fighter pilot.

-Our Little Sailor: "Don't you ever want to stop? Get out of 
the damn car?"

-One of the episode's best moments: Joanne realizing that 
Scully is indeed a woman's name when she sees her at the 
door and slapping Mulder's goofy grin off his face at the 
excitement of seeing his partner.

-In the "it's the little things that count" department: 
When Scully tracks him down Mulder touches her as he would 
normally and Scully reacts with discomfort at the hand on 
her shoulder.

-Bee pollen? Is this some sort of odd holistic attempt 
to make herself immune to the likes of Jean Claude Van 
Damme Bee in the future? Hey, whatever works.

-Nice touch to have the brilliant lights at the end 
illuminate a "Morely Lights" sign.

-Can you believe that I haven't even mentioned how weak a 
premise this whole Star Trek space/time continuum tear was? 
Oops, just did.

Autumn
"I'm all atingle"