"Yeah, we'll have it our way."

I wish. 

Logically I know that this episode was Mulder light and Scully 
even lighter to accommodate the summer filming schedules of 
Duchovny and Anderson. Emotionally, I'm irritated that we had 
to waste an episode of the last season on something like this. 
Vince Gilligan is one of my favorite writers on the show, but 
even he could not make me care about some brain eating shark 
boy with a really wicked tongue no matter how much he tried. 
Gilligan specializes in showing us the monstrous side of humans 
like in "Paper Hearts", "Pusher", or "Unruhe", but he failed in 
making me care about the human side of a monster. 

I'm just not up to going "oh poor little shark man with the 
sad eyes and growling stomach. I know he sucked the brain out 
of that nice lady upstairs, but he can't fight biology even 
though he told us he managed to his whole life up until a month 
ago." Frankly, I even found the writing of Mulder and Scully in 
this episode, aside from a few clever quips, to be quite lazy, 
and coming from Gilligan it really disappointed me when I could 
not even count on that. Scully was literally paint by numbers 
down to the shock at seeing her umpteenth monster and skepticism 
101, and it always annoys me when Mulder is allowed to make huge 
leaps for no apparent reason but to make him right. Right from 
the start he's deciding that the dude's brain was eaten and 
speculating a tongue made the hole in the head. He's magic you 
know. He then picks the suspect right away out of 32 Lucky Boy's 
because, I dunno, he's a little nervous around FBI agents? So we 
get smart ass Mulder toying with the kid complete with winking 
and really bad jokes. I guess Mulder did not have all his psychic 
sense scooped out of his brain last week after all. At least we 
got that "good cop, insane cop" line out of it. That was a small 
ray of sunshine.

Taking what little we could get from Mulder and Scully this 
episode, the banter between the two of them even when disagreeing 
was light and playful. It's nice to see that after season six. 
Scully even actually looked amused by Mulder's theory enough to 
give him a full jaw drop. That is before disappearing for most 
of the episode apparently to do an autopsy where she finds some 
shred of shark tooth. A shark tooth fragment which somehow got 
implanted in the victim's head even though we've been told there 
is but a small hole and it appears like the tongue thingee is 
what makes it. Oh well. Maybe she was also busy deciding which 
black suit to wear. 

In the absence of our leads the tale is told from the perspective 
of a Slim-Chew popping monster as he moves from victim to victim 
and feels really bad about it. Oh the monster angst. Chad E. Donella 
does a fine job working with what he had and trying to make Rob 
interesting. I certainly can't fault the actor for having to spout 
all that "biological imperative" and "I have to be me" stuff. The 
rest of the supporting cast was written in unfortunately broad 
strokes making it up to the actors to try to find an interesting 
character. We had the stereotypical ex-con thug, the overly 
sympathetic shrink who stupidly confronts the murderer, and the 
kindly neighbor Sylvia, who was the only one given any sort of 
interesting character back story.

Director Manners had some fun shots in this one. I especially 
liked seeing the drive through guy pulled through the window. 
At least all the times we had to watch the trash being picked 
up one had the fun body tumbling shot. Still, there is a big 
production mistake in the end when blood from Rob obviously 
splatters on the camera when he is shot. The makeup was effective, 
but distracting when for some reason Rob also lost all skin 
pigmentation when he pulled his ears off.

Why this episode was chosen for sweeps I'll never know. Surely 
they could have found a better follow up to the two parter 
instead of this ultimately forgettable outing.

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

-Could the Lucky Boy logo look anymore like an obnoxious 
little creep? Something tells me they don't sell many of 
those T-shirts at twelve bucks a pop.

-Speaking of the Lucky Boy they certainly seemed to have a 
pretty limited menu. The sign looked like it had maybe six 
options and drinks. 

-You know, I sure as hell would not be that obnoxious to 
someone working at a drive through as the guy in the teaser 
was unless I really wanted the "special sauce" on my burger 

-Rob sure made a lot of noise taking his ears off and the 
like if that guy in the car could hear it over his radio 
and chugging car.

-Derwood's prescription bottle was dated 6/28/99 with 
instructions to take something three times a day. If we 
go by that the episode date stamp is sometime in July. 
Somehow I doubt they meant that.

-Frank's Fashion Spot: It was slim pickings this week with 
the hideous baby blue of the Lucky Boy uniforms (which one 
of the store's fashion victims had tried to match with her 
eye shadow and frosted lipstick - shudder). Scully apparently 
packed black. Imagine that, but really. A *pink* low cut shell 
underneath? How the mighty have fallen.

-Lucky Boy must really pay those burger flippers well if Rob 
was able to afford that apartment in Orange County. Plus they 
have EAP folks that make house calls!

-I know head wounds bleed a lot, but just how much blood did 
Rob get on that shirt? The whole tub looks full of it and the 
shirt is soaked. Like that nail brush is really going to help. 
Methinks Rob might want to look into a lobster bib for his 
little outings for buttery treats.

-So this whole apartment building has one trash can? Those 
people must be really serious about recycling. 

-You know, I did feel a little bad for Duchovny's double 
Steve Kiziak in this episode when I realized the poor guy has 
to subject himself to every bad haircut Duchovny gets.

-I'm sure we've all been waiting for the return of the toilet 
humor of 1013. Well, we can all breathe a sigh of relief at 
that line about dipping the boys in the slaw. Lovely.

-How convenient that Derwood had his name engraved on his bat. 
No plot device there.

-Was that supposed to be a joke about Peter Jennings being the 
most handsome man in the world?

-Mulder tells us that Spinks' car is missing. Must be a fine 
automobile since Derwood wears a motorcycle helmet.

Autumn
"I'd say that's ground beef."