"I know it probably doesn't have the sense of closure that you 
want, but it has more than some of our other cases."

No, not much closure at all. This is Darin Morgan's ode to
"Rashomon", where everyone has a different story to tell about
the chain of events of the disappearance of a Washington state
couple and what follows. While I found Darin's take on an alien/
conspiracy episode entertaining and certainly very funny in parts, 
it didn't have the snap for me that Morgan's other efforts had. 
Still, I know this tape will be warming my VCR more than most. 
Maybe my viewing was hampered by the sad knowledge that I 
might have been watching Darin's last effort for the X-Files. I never 
would have guessed a year ago that my favorite drama in all of 
its moody intellectual darkness could also turn into, on occasion, 
one of my favorite comedies as well. For that we have Darin 
Morgan to thank. While other new writers have been added to 
the staff, no one else has consistently tested the borders and 
redefined what the show could be - making all of his efforts, if 
nothing else, fresh, different, and highly anticipated. If he has 
indeed left the show, they will be hard pressed to find a talent 
so willing to experiment with such success - and no, as a final 
effort, this doesn't have the sense of closure that I want.

I think that if this episode had a theme it would be "truth is as 
subjective as reality" and the script attempts to prove it by showing 
the same events seen through many eyes. Mulder, of course, 
believes what he hears while Scully, of course, paces and rolls 
her eyes so many times I was worried she would hurt herself from 
screwing up her face so often. Then we have the hilarious "Roswell! 
Roswell!" Blaine who shares Mulder's taste in wall hangings and 
wants to believe so bad he has warped everything he sees into scenes 
from the UFO and abduction books he read (not because he had to - 
LOL!). His take on Mulder & Scully as men in black ("one of them 
was disguised as a woman, but wasn't pulling it off" and her partner 
the "mandroid") who slap and threaten people had me rolling.

The teaser did just that - nothing was quite what it seemed - the 
underside of the telephone repair man's lift as a UFO, the "aliens" 
Jack and Ray who echo one of the episode's other themes "How the 
hell should I know", and, uh, "Lord Kimbote" who looked like one 
of those great old stop-motion cyclops monsters from the Hercules 
or Sinbad movies. We open to the "I want to believe" poster, but 
in this episode we don't know what to believe. So our premise is 
that Scully is talking to Mr. Chung because she is a great admirer 
of his work (including the funny riff on The Manchurian Candidate).
I really liked Charles Nelson Reilly in this part, he was fun and 
flirty with Scully and seemed to know just how to deliver the 
dialogue - my favorite bit of his was his discussion of the use of 
"abductee" versus "I just had a little alien experience". Scully 
prefers neither word. Hmm. Imagine that.

However, the highlight of this story, hands down, had to be Scully's 
biggest nightmare - a starring role in the "Alien Autopsy: Truth or 
Humbug" video. I loved the way this scene was shot, the take on 
the theme song playing as background music. However, what I 
enjoyed more than anything was the downright pouty and whiny way 
Scully got as she tried to explain "It's so embarrassing". Gillian 
Anderson certainly makes Scully her funniest when she is flustered.

The other supporting performances were uneven. I didn't much care 
for the kids and the swearing detective, appropriately named 
"Manners", was a bit much. A lot of effort went into that bleepin 
for the payoff line by Scully. I actually found her explanation 
"Well, he didn't actually say bleeped, he said ..." funnier - somehow 
the image of Dana Scully using language like that is quite amusing. 
I was, however, impressed with Jesse "The Body" Ventura. He 
seemed to really enjoy his stint as a MIB, and it was fun watching 
him rip the videotape out of the VCR (who needs an eject button) 
or perform a back-breaker wrestling move.

Where things got interesting and tangled started in the "Ovaltine 
Diner" where the cigarette smoking "alien" tells Mulder of covert 
intelligence operations and UFOs as secret  military airships while 
molding his mashed potatoes in an homage to "Close Encounters 
of the Third Kind". The closest thing in X-Files history to the story 
we get here harkens all the way back to "Deep Throat" with 
human piloted UFOs and induced memory losses. Something was 
done to our heros here (maybe by the evil Alex "you're feeling very 
sleepy" Trebeck - or someone who looked incredibly like him). My 
take on it was that both Scully and Mulder were hypnotized given 
Scully's robot-like actions and lack of memory (you know she hates 
that). It was a funny sight to have her awake in bed fully clothed 
trying to figure out how Mulder, who suddenly has a keen interest 
in ice buckets, got in her room. Not quite the bedroom scene that 
some folks look for.

Oh well, the tale ends without closure with Mulder & Scully as 
witness to the coverup alibi, and the book published much to 
Mulder's dismay. "From Outer Space", the epic tale of "noble of 
spirit and pure of heart" Diana Lesky and her partner Renard (a 
medieval name for Fox) Muldrake, the "ticking time bomb of 
insanity". As ending images we see Scully (whose eyebrows 
certainly got a workout this episode) as a perfunctory 9 to 5
lien hunter, feet on her desk, reading at work (she is nevertheless 
a federal employee) and Mulder *in his bed* watching a bigfoot 
video. Life, for the X-Files ghostbusters continues ...

Random Musings
------------------------
-Some interesting camera work done in this one. I really liked 
the way there would be no cut between the flashback and the 
storytelling. You'd see the character say something and then 
they were telling the same thing to Mulder & Scully - neat effect 
used well.

-Did Scully not have the most hideous hotel room? That red 
furniture? Ugg. The scene with Mulder reading her the tale of 
Lord Kimbote the Shakespearean alien was quite amusing though.

-In a hilarious bit of business by Gillian, during both hypnosis 
scenes every time the hypnotist (who seems to always appear in 
Darin Morgan episodes) says "You are getting sleepy" Scully yawns 
in the background behind him.

-"I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and 
not learn a little something about courage."

-Sometimes when I watch this show I can't help but think that Scully 
believes every sentence is some sort of vocabulary challenge. How 
many $100 words can one woman fit into a simple sentence? Our brainy 
beauty does provide us a lay man's translation once though. In 
Scully-speak "Mulder's had his share of peculiar notions, he's not
inclined to dismiss anything out right" equals "Mulder, you're nuts."

-If nothing else I think we did learn that Mulder can and does issue 
a "girlie scream".

-What were those big heeled clunky shoes that Scully was wearing?

-Mulder: "So what if they had sex"
 Scully: "So we know that wasn't an alien that probed her."

-I loved how the boyfriend says "I'll never let anything happen 
to you" and the girl is immediately taken while he cowers and the 
other "alien" just smokes and says "this is not happening".

-I hope that Duchovny didn't need to film those sweet-potato pie 
scenes too many times, with the huge bites he was taking. I could 
only think when Mulder went back to Scully's room it was probably 
to get sick.

-Just what is the "military, industrial, entertainment complex"?

Autumn
"They just found your bleepin' UFO"