Schizogeny

"What the hell is going on here?"

Usually I'd save a quote like that for the "Our Little Sailor" 
section of Random Musings, but it seemed to fit as an opener 
to this review. I had no idea what was really going on in this 
episode right up until the very end when it suddenly made even 
less sense despite the desperate attempt at a voice over fix. 
The one advantage of not having a clue as to what is going on 
is it can make an episode suspenseful. At first we seemed to be 
dealing with murderous quicksand. Then, I was convinced I'd 
accidentally turned on the new FOX show "When Trees Attack". 
No wait, it morphed into an after school special about child 
abuse and teen angst. Wrong again. It's really a "Psycho" take 
off with an axe man thrown in for good measure. Hmm, there 
seems to be the start of an interesting parallel to Mulder's 
past. Nope, that's gone. It's back to "The World's Silliest 
Car Chases *With* Attacking Trees". If I was going to be really 
cruel I'd have used the quote "I know everything happens for a 
reason, but I still don't see no reason for this". I just 
couldn't do it though because despite the fact that "Schizogeny" 
had some serious problems I still found things in it that I 
enjoyed. 

What were those things? Well, I have to admit that the teaser 
really intrigued me. Dad comes home from a hard day at the 
nut-o-rama fighting the bleeding blight well into the night 
and finds that Bobby has dug a huge hole in the front yard 
(apparently for the purpose of holding the cameraman for those 
cool ground level shots) but left the shovel out. Meanwhile, 
Bobby is trying to amuse himself on his Playstation by seeing 
if trying to look through that hair hanging in his face makes 
the game more of a challenge. There's yelling. There's running. 
There's atmosphere. There's a man with an axe. There's cool
creepy forest cinematography. Slurp! We end with a great shot 
of Bobby as Phil becomes one with the mud. What can I say. It 
struck my fancy. Unfortunately, after the teaser we were 
treated to a festival of exposition that seemed to last for 
days before we got to anything even remotely creepy again.

I also thought that David Duchovny did an admirable job of 
trying to make something out of Mulder's past paralleling to 
Bobby. Too bad that the editor and script didn't seem to give 
him much help in this endeavor.  He's especially good in the 
last interrogation scene. Speaking of Bobby, Chad Lindberg 
does a wonderful job of portraying this tortured teen.

But alas, the problems were there and they were bountiful. The 
script by Scott and Wollaeger was choppy and uneven and seemed 
a few drafts short of completion. The jokes, if you can call 
them that, were awkward - "I am a cocktail sausage" - whatever. 
No one seemed to have clue one what to do with Scully in this 
episode. You know it is not a good episode for Scully fans when
her "big" scene involves giving the evil Stern!Scully stare 
while waving her badge wallet  to get a kid armed with a comb 
he refuses to use out of a classroom. The rest of the time 
they just had her around for the occasional reaction shot while 
Action!Mulder did everything. He climbs down, he climbs up, he 
finds a drop of blood on a tree branch, he gets in a car chase, 
he questions folks, he saves the boy, he digs up graves, he 
examines a body (can't have Scully doing that can we) and even 
points out something to the medical examiner (who apparently 
does *not* come from Dr. Scully's "the body has a story to tell" 
school of post mortem examination as he doesn't even notice a 
huge splinter on a murder victim). Scully? Oh that's right, she 
gets to call for back up when the axeman cometh. When she does 
offer anything Mulder laughs at her (and later he observes poor 
Bobby who can't make friends could be him - hey pal it helps 
when you don't laugh in their faces after asking their opinion). 
Could we please, please have an episode soon where Mulder and 
Scully work like partners instead of this one or the other stuff?
Is that too much to ask? That they actually work together to 
solve something?

New director Ralph Hemecker seemed more concerned with artsy 
camera angles than inspiring his actors - we get lots of ground 
shots, mirror shots, etc., but we need more than nice camera 
work to make an episode successful - like things making sense. 
We're never really given much information as to why Mulder 
believes what he does this episode either. He doesn't even tell 
us about some old X-File where trees are mortally attacking people. 

With a more work I think this episode actually could have been 
a contender - it had an interesting premise, as offered it is 
merely an average outing and a fifth season blight. 

Random Musings
------------------------
-While Chef Scully tells us her mud pie weighs in at 12 pounds 
9 ounces the scale does not share her opinion. It reads almost 
11 pounds.

-I know they were just trying to make a cute little joke about 
Duchovny's "400 inches a day" of rain comment that got him into 
so much trouble in Vancouver this fall, but having Scully say 
that just to make the joke is a bit insulting. She would know 
better, because if it got anywhere near 400 inches you'd be on 
the lookout for Noah. It just so happens this review is delayed
because I was at the "wettest spot on earth". It's found on the 
island of Kauai and it averages 440 inches a *year*. 

-The censors may have thought they were fooling us by having 
dubbed "dorkweed" over what looked like "dickwad" (and by the 
look on Scully's face she isn't too impressed with the dub job 
either), but they aren't paying that close of attention as they 
let pictures of a bare breasted woman and someone flipping off 
the camera with both hands slide amongst the busy background of 
Bobby's wall.

-So, exactly why are Mulder and Scully here? Did the almost 
non-existent local law enforcement call them in? Does Mulder 
randomly read suspect statements for every murder investigation 
in small Michigan towns and the standing up in the mud thing 
peaked his interest?

-What was with that shoe clue? So the woman has mud on her shoe. 
It's been raining. The bigger question is why she was wearing 
those ugly gold suede pumps with that pantsuit. Which brings us 
nicely too...

-Frank's Fashion Spot: As much as I like Scully's double-
breasted pinstripe suit does she have to wear it *every* week? 
She's grown more attached to that thing than that awful beige 
phase a few years back.

-When Lisa looks out the window after her dad is pulled out 
there is no jagged glass around the frame at all. In fact she 
places her hands right along the bottom of it which later 
sports all sorts of jagged edges when Mulder & Scully look 
at it.

-Are the people in this episode afraid of light switches? Lisa 
goes into the root cellar in the dark in the middle of the night 
after hearing a frightening conversation. Yeah right. And when 
Mulder and Scully come into Karin's house they don't even bother 
with the lights and go straight to their B-quality flashlights. 
Gawd I miss the big lights.

-When Karin was in her "Evil Dad" mode her voice kept giving 
me "Aubrey" flashbacks. I kept expecting her to say "Somebody's 
gonna take the blame for this little sapling-uh-sister".

-Actually for me the most interesting X-File in this episode 
was how Mulder and Scully could, steadfastly refusing to have 
a normal conversation inside their vehicle, stand out in a 
storm so loud they had to practically shout to each other over 
the roof of the car and not get wet while we could see the
downpour behind them.

-Mulder can notice a bead of blood on a twig but he doesn't 
notice a rather large body sticking out of the basement window 
when they park their car right behind the good aunt's Volvo? 
It wasn't that dark.

-I hope Mulder took the insurance option with Lariat. He's 
going to need it.

Autumn
"Well, you ask me for answers. Those are the best ones I've got."