Passing Paper Hearts Thoughts



Watched Paper Hearts yet again; I remain extraordinarily impressed by the *restraint* of the episode. Most of the other great guest spots on XF are marked by showiness. This is in no way bad, I adore Peter Boyle and Charles Nelson Reilly and Lili Taylor. But Tom Noonan's performance is all about holding back, letting the creepy evil of his character slip into your brain in slow degrees.

I don't think there's any other episode you have to watch so closely; some episodes are even improved by looking away (if you just listen to Dod Kalm it's a really cool episode; if you watch, the horrible makeup makes you cringe.) But for Paper Hearts you have to watch every moment, catch every little flicker that crosses faces.

The high point of this is Mulder's third encounter with Roche, when he first gives him the cloth hearts. Roche's trying to hold back his smiles as he slides his fingers across the little packets... oh my. And the tiny exchange at the end of the fourth encounter, when Roche looks uncertainly at Mulder, afraid he has pushed too far. The flicker of satisfaction that the hook is safely set passes in an instant.

Paper Hearts is also the episode that satisfied me that half of Myrke's hypothesis was wrong.

[*Editor's note: This piece was taken from the alt.tv.x-files-analysis newsgroup.
Both Laura, the writer, and Myrke, whom she's referring to, subscribe to that
newsgroup]
She wrote a wonderful article about Duchovny's acting. Point one was about why it was so easy to read sexual tension between Mulder and Scully and Mulder and Kryceck and even Mulder and Skinner; it was simply that smouldering at people, moving into their personal space, lowering his voice intimately was a basic element of DD's acting; the seduction. The other half was her assertion that a lot of what people saw as DD's subtle underacting was just them filling in the blanks in his performance.

(I'm probably horribly misstating Myrke)

I agree with the first half of the this; it's hard not to after you watch episodes looking for the giveaways. But the second bothered me for a while; *was* I just reading acting into silences? The autopsy bay scene alone would convince me otherwise. Though I don't think her theory is completely without grounds, the other thing Paper Hearts demonstrates is that he's a hell of a lot better actor than when he started XF; compare the scene in Beyond The Sea of him explaining the Luther Lee Boggs case, in a reeled off monotone, to the vulnerability, the nervous tension expressed in his body, in the matching scene in Paper Hearts.

Paper Hearts is in some ways all around stronger than Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, which relies most heavily on Darin Morgan's extraordinary, intricate script and Peter Boyle's moving performance. I still count Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose the greater, because the script is *so* astonishing; but while GA and DD put in fine performances, they aren't exceptional ones, it's well filmed but not particularly memorably, and I can't say I've ever even noticed the score. Paper Hearts's script is wonderful and subtle, both the leads and the guest star put in wonderful performances, the odd, off kilter framing of shots is vital to pulling us into wonderland, and it's a crime that Mark Snow's score didn't receive an Emmy.

Though the wonderful delicacy of the other performances brought Mitch Pileggi's weakness into sharp focus. I like him very much, but he is pretty much a one note actor. The role is tailored to fit that note, and he does very well by it, but there's not a great deal more to explore. I can understand why the producers are said to be mulling over a new AD.

Paper Hearts probably represented the ne plus ultra of Gilligan's infatuation with Mulder-as-profiler; I wonder a bit if some of his apparent recent disenchantment with the character was the realization that he'd never exceed this, and that it was going to look repetitive trying. And it was almost painful to watch the moral and intellectual gravity that Scully is allowed in this episode. She researches Roche, presenting Mulder with a *supported* rational explanation for his knowledge. And more than just his intellectual anchor, she's his moral voice: "I didn't see anything." "I did." She refuses to allow Mulder to hide from his actions, yet she is still fiercely loyal, not going to Skinner.

It is an agonizing contrast to the opening Mulder & Scully scene in Bad Blood, where the only consequences they care about are the ones to themselves. And please, don't tell me I don't get the joke. Humbug, CBFR, Small Potatoes manage to be extraordinarily funny while enriching the characters. Even the slapstick episodes like War of the Coprophages and Syzygy don't violate the character's moral natures.

How he could love and respect them so one season, and be so contemptuous of them the next, I do not know. I can only hope that season six is not a continuation of five in this manner.


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