"Interesting? As in preposterous and outrageous?"

Well. I don't even know where to start. 

Here's what I got out of "Per Manum": Scully's hair is really floofy now. I 
like it that way. It is pretty. She looked very nice in all her ridiculously 
manufactured soapy angst, didn't she? I sure was glad in those flashbacks 
that they were not able to really give her that helmet head hair again so she 
even looked nice then. You know what Carter and Spotsy? I'm not thinking one 
bit about stupid goat bleating alien babies. I'm thinking about Scully's 
poofy floofy hair. And here they told us they were not going to write any 
comedies this season. That doctor trying to suck the snot out of a baby 
alien's nose was one of the funniest things I've seen on TV this year (and 
yes, I am even counting stuff on "Will and Grace"). And one of the saddest. 
"Bleeeeeaaaaaattt!"

I can't call it a waste of an hour though as much as I'd like to. Sure, the 
premise was juvenile, the plot incomprehensible and stupid, and the entire 
point of the hour was to continually tweak the audience and still not tell 
them ONE SINGLE WORTHWHILE THING. (Are those boys clever writers or what? We 
still don't know how she got pregnant, who the father is, what she's pregnant 
with, or what the hell is the matter with the calendars at 1013. They must be 
just in a drunken tizzy over the way they gave the audience absolutely 
nothing.) However, the actors - God Bless 'em - still showed up to work. They 
worked their asses off so we could be left with a big fat nothing. That is 
just so wrong.

Here we had Gillian "I don't need no freaking lines" Anderson (at this point 
I bet she actually prefers the parts where she doesn't need to recite 
ridiculous dialogue) giving us everything we need to know about Scully's 
state of mind from a few seconds looking in a mirror: There really is a baby 
in there. Am I showing? I'm glad black is slimming. Maybe I'm showing a 
little. It's a blessing. I'm so lonely. Oh God. Don't cry. Get a grip. 

We don't even need Mark Snow's Scully's lonely angst theme to remind us. It 
was all there in her face. Just as it was in that first elevator scene with 
Scully at her transparent best. Well, frankly as it was the whole episode. 
Gillian was acting her heart out. Thank God for that. I loved how busted she 
looked when Doggett told her Parenti's office called. And my goodness but 
Robert Patrick was great in this episode. He actually made me feel bad that 
Scully was treating this guy so poorly. And I'm usually not like that at all. 
I just adored the look on his face as he was trying hard for her while 
hearing that stupid story about Haskell's wife giving birth to an alien. And 
then when she smacked him down for going through her file (she'd apparently 
forgotten how prominently featured she is in those files) he looked like a 
pup that just got swatted on the nose when he thought he'd been good. 

Patrick was also so good in that scene in the diner where for some reason 
Skinner and Scully called him in just so she could purse her lips and give 
out one word answers while Skinner explained it all. Doggett is trying so 
hard to be a good guy here and his hurt at his treatment by his partner was 
well done. As was his hurt at the end when he wondered why she had not told 
him and we find out it is because Scully was afraid she could not continue 
her unorthodox search for Mulder by investigating subway systems, scrap 
yards, exterminator offices, slug cults, ghost kids, butt genies, and man 
bats if he new. That made sense.

I so enjoyed seeing Duchovny actually get to finally have lines beyond 
"SCULLEEEEEE" this season, but it just seemed to me like he was a little out 
of his X-Files groove. I missed Mulder's charm. I saw it in glimmers such as 
"The answer is yes" as he answers a Scully trying to cover her worries, but 
he seemed a bit more deadpan than usual to me. Especially given the things 
they were talking about.

As dumb as the flashbacks were, and as much as I despise this retroactive 
storytelling that makes ZERO sense in context to what we've seen in the past, 
it was nice to at least see Mulder and Scully together again. And see them 
interacting in such an intimate (well for them) manner. Even if it was a 
Mulder, who as we are told has been suffering from some big old brain death 
thingee, worried that Scully is keeping something medical from him. God 
forbid that. Oh and I love the way he kept the whole ova thing from her for 
three years. She wasn't sick that whole time and it was her body damn it. And 
agreeing to father her child without clueing her in that he's gonna die at 
any time from an alien virus - better hope he doesn't pass that on to the 
little Sculder. Yeah, let's worry this might come between you rather than 
forgetting to tell her about the impending tombstone purchase. Oh, look at 
me, I'm onto how stupid the writing was again. I don't blame Mulder for these 
things. I blame the writers. How utterly insulting this "gee what you didn't 
know was happening last year" path has been. For the audience and the poor 
actors who get their performances last season negated. Carter and Spotnitz 
should just be embarrassed that the only way they could tell their weak story 
this year was to shoe horn in retroactively stuff that makes no sense in the 
context of what we saw. I'm so glad we got to watch dreck like "Fight Club" 
and "First Person Shooter" while Mulder and Scully were scurrying around 
behind the scenes dying and trying to have a baby. If we have to tell a story 
by flashback then why not give us the scenes we want to see, like Scully 
asking Mulder to be the father of her baby? Or them realistically figuring 
out how a baby would fit into their uh, somewhat busy and dangerous lives? 
Did that require too much thought?

Kim Manners did his usual nice job with the camera work - I especially liked 
the way the camera circled around and around when Scully and Hendershot went 
to the army base. For a while I thought he was trying to make us dizzy so 
we'd forget how stupid it was for Scully to go to an army hospital given the 
luck she's had at military facilities in the past. Editor Chris Willingham 
made the flashback segues seamless. I especially liked the use of light in 
the first flashback in Scully's apartment - the warmth and golden glow of the 
scene with Mulder to the stark cold darkness of her standing alone and 
remembering. I found Adam Baldwin (who guest starred as Doggett's friend 
Knowle Rohrer) especially interesting from the supporting cast. Wondering 
whether he was really friend of foe was the one thing up in the air that 
didn't feel manipulative and ridiculous.

So, if a man spends his life studying the mytharc like Frank Spotnitz tells 
us he does, well shouldn't that man remember things like the fact that Mulder 
and Scully had the barren conversation before a judge in "Emily" an episode 
he co-wrote? Wouldn't he perhaps recall that Mulder did not rush those ova 
right over to a specialist, but instead cooked the suckers in his pants 
pocket for hours in an episode he was nominated for an Emmy for? Do you think 
he could possibly make the time line match up just a little in the third 
episode in a row he worked on? Scully is 14 weeks pregnant? At this point 
more like 14 months according to episodes he wrote. I am really curious what 
math he uses to shrink from May until February into 14 weeks. Or even from 
May until the 11-23-00 date on that tape. And this is just the continuity 
stuff. The plot itself makes me wonder if Carter and Spotnitz are capable of 
doing anything that will end this thing with any sense of class at all. 

So Duffy Haskell is in on it. OK. Why lock him out of the room in the teaser 
then? Scully's doctor is in on it to, eh? Yeah it makes so much sense that 
people as paranoid as Mulder and Scully wouldn't have had these guys checked 
out. This is now the second time in a row Scully has managed to pick a doctor 
for something major that is evil. What are the odds? Is her optometrist in on 
it too? Note to Scully: stay far away from that laser eye surgery. So why 
hasn't Scully just run her own DNA test? She is a scientist. This is the 
woman who performed a Southern Blot on herself before. It would be pretty 
easy to settle this once and for all. For that matter she could run one on 
Miss Hendershot's baby too and clear every stupid little mystery in this 
episode up in a jiffy all the while wearing her cool lab glasses that I'm 
sure would compliment her nice hair. And if the ova was not viable all those 
years ago why the heck did they still have it around? Did Mulder just say "oh 
well, I'll keep it in my freezer as a memento?"  Why didn't Scully question 
the fact that Hendershot knew she was pregnant when it is such a huge secret? 
Why in the world in a place where you are trying to hide things like Zeus 
Genetics is there A) no security and B) a bunch of botched babies in an 
unlocked deformo room that any expectant mother can just accidentally waltz 
into if they took a wrong turn trying to find the bathroom? Oh, that's right, 
for a plot convenience. What was the whole point of this silly thing anyway? 
If they wanted Hendershot why not just take her, what's with the luring 
Scully into it? Why the whole setup? There was no reason that I could see to 
expose any of this to Scully unless the conspiracy just really wanted to 
freak her out for the hell of it because they had nothing better to do and it 
seemed like fun.

Did I mention Scully's hair looked nice? And that 1013 is lucky to have the 
actors that they do?

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

-Retread Alert: Duffy Haskell was played by Jay Acovone. He was also the 
detective in "Demons" that had Mulder in that lovely orange jumpsuit.

-Speaking of Jay, for some reason when Duffy first met Scully he spent almost 
the entire conversation staring at her chest. That was special. Too bad she 
wasn't wearing one of those unbuttoned shirts she's so fond of so he could 
have really got an eyeful.

-Things I wondered as my mind wandered during utterly ridiculous parts of 
this episode: I wonder if Scully now thinks she was taken by aliens instead 
of men since she's now all over that alien thing like white on rice.

-No good can come from things with Zeus in the name. Especially in Germantown 
- home of alien clone breeding in "Colony/EndGame". So Zeus Genetics brings 
back memories of Zeus Storage and for that matter the Zeus Faber.

-Since Doggett was asking questions about Scully's little X-Files secrets 
maybe he should have also asked what she did with that cool tattoo.

-I wonder what Apple had to pay for that obvious product placement in Zeus 
Genetics. Apple, we're the computing power behind terrorizing pregnant women. 
Makes me want one.

-Date Stamp: We know this one took place after 11-23-00, the date on the 
video tape.

-Bad liar Scully was back with a vengeance, wasn't she? I think my favorite 
was when she pretended to be Miss Hendershot's friend: "I'm worried about 
her."

-He may be a stuck in the mud skeptic, but at least Doggett has got in the 
spirit of the X-Files office. He's got his Montana Man Bat headline tacked 
behind his desk on the wall.

-Frank's Fashion Spot: Um. The hair.

-Scariest moment of the episode: When I spotted that turtle shaped stool in 
Scully's apartment. I'm going to pretend now that was a gift from a friend 
that she feels like she has to have out.

-Did you get the feeling Mulder was happy he could do something he was a pro 
at to help out Scully? Win/win.

-Blink and you'll miss him, but Mark Snow was one of the doctors at the Army 
hospital. He was the one that led Miss Hendershot off.

-Speaking of Miss Hendershot, they probably could have shaved two minutes off 
this episode just by shortening that name. What a constant mouthful.

-It almost seems silly to quibble over time stamps when these guys are months 
off at this point, but it did seem odd to me that they got to the hospital at 
5:01AM and said labor would take 4-12 hours to induce but by the time they 
were escaping it was night again.

-Manly Man Meter: OK points for that big old pick up truck. Points for 
standing up and accusing Scully of her secrets and lies. Points for squealing 
his tires when he was cranky. Points for just being such a damn good guy. 
However, and I almost hate to point this out, but I have to. Blame the makeup 
people, but when Doggett went to meet his pal Knowle you could really see the 
eyeliner under his eyes. It made it look like he'd just come from a drag 
competition and not quite got it all off. You can see why I can't give a 
perfect score for that, can't you? 8.

-That last flashback was the icing on the, uh,  well it sure as heck wasn't 
cake. Maybe the icing on the day old dried up rye toast. We learn that 
everything we learned about the baby experiment was for naught. We find that 
Mulder and Scully are still so fond, so very very fond of each other's 
foreheads, and we also see Scully swoop into kiss Mulder and wuss out at the 
last second and smooch his neck instead. Oh well, you take what you can get.

Autumn 
"It was my last chance."