XF S8 Reviews: "Patience"
For purposes of clarity, I will divide this review into plot and commentary sections.
Plot:
Killer bat people attack.
Commentary:
For me this episode is all about how difficult it is to be a female believer. This is Scully's first case without Mulder and she's determined to do it right, even down to taking the reins with the slideshow, as she practiced doing in "Fight Club." And she even does a decent job.
It all goes wrong, however, as soon as she and Doggett arrived at the crime scene. Needless to say Doggett is driving, and he pulls up so that he is on the same side of the car as the local police. By dint of sprinting around the car as fast as her high heels could carry her, Scully manages to get there in time to introduce herself to the local detective, and thus maintains her position of authority until such time as Doggett gets out of the car and makes his masculine gender apparent.
The detective is standing in between the two FBI agents, so naturally he turns to Doggett and leaves Scully, frustrated, looking over his shoulder and feeling conspicuously short and female. While Mulder usually did the talking when he was around, they were so joined at the hip that at least both of them were in the frame at once. Scully tries to get the detective's attention and to not-so-subtly inform him of the chain of command and seniority--Understand, Detective, that we've seen cases like yours regularly on our unit. Agent Doggett has only just been assigned to the X-Files--but even so she's fighting a losing battle.
It only gets worse once they start examining the evidence, and Scully's believer status becomes apparent. Her status as a scientist, far from gaining her respect, only reinforces Doggett's position as The One to Talk To.
SCULLY: That's not an unheard of birth defect. Uh, no more rare than polydactylism.
(Both men look at her, then at each other.)
DETECTIVE ABBOTT: What did she just say?
DOGGETT: I assume she means it could be human.
The men are already talking about her as if she isn't there. Then both her willingness to entertain extreme possibilities and her unwillingness to close off options leave her open to further ridicule.
SCULLY: I'm not quite sure yet.
DETECTIVE ABBOTT: (sarcastically to DOGGETT) She's not quite sure yet.
While Mulder's status as an outcast in the FBI exposed him to ridicule and scorn right from the beginning, this scene makes it clear how much Mulder was able to rely on his gender in order to ensure him a certain minimum amount of respect. A lot of people thought of Mulder as nuts, sure, but he was also a Good Guy and a Good Agent. While if a woman like Scully has far-out theories, she is seen as flaky, ditzy, incompetent, and all in all someone to be talked around and talked over rather than talked to. By trying to take on Mulder's mantle, Scully is putting herself at a huge disadvantage in a Bureau that still only has ten percent female agents.
As the episode wears on, Scully continues to be put in the one down position in more subtle ways. Left advocating Mulder's side of the argument, she is more uncertain in advocating her point of view than usual. She was wrong, she says. I can't exactly explain it but I realize that I owe the Detective an apology. It is Doggett who discovers the key newspaper clipping and thus, despite all of Scully's efforts, it is Doggett who makes the important breakthrough. Then when Scully decides that she wants a body exhumed, it is Doggett who has to go to bat for her in order to persuade the local detective. Then when Scully loses faith in her try-to-be-like-Mulder strategy, it is Doggett who has to encourage her to keep going, using a line that really sums up the whole message of the episode: About all I know about the paranormal is men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But I don't think you're wrong, Agent Scully.
It is painful, and realistic, and exhausting. I have no doubt that Scully's treatment at the hands of local law enforcement is the sort of thing that really happens. I also have no doubt that it was the writers' intention to play up the sort of sexism that Scully encounters when she abandons the rigid rationalism that has been her weapon and her defense for so many years. The choice to show a more vulnerable Scully in this season is obviously a conscious strategy, and it does work. It does work. wendelah1 and foxestacado have persuaded me that the loss of Mulder combined with her unexpected pregnancy does put her in a very different place than she was previously, and that it makes sense to have her vulnerable, uncertain and even, yes, weepy.
Still, something inside me instinctively cries out against it. It's not that I want to see Scully as a strong, untouchable, invulnerable person. I like her complexities, the emotions that she keeps beneath the surface, the way she still relies on her mother and the way that she struggles to get by. It's just that I didn't want to see this. Scully has been through so much--her abduction, the death of her sister, her cancer, her two near escapes from Donnie Pfaster. Through all of it she's built her walls higher and higher. Finally, for a brief time in season seven, we see her happy and at peace with herself and with Mulder. So when that happiness inevitably comes to an end with Mulder's abduction, she's in a different place. More in touch with her emotions, in a sense more typically feminine, and more easily hurt. That's what love and pregnancy will do for you, I guess.
Perhaps I'm churlish to want to deny love and pregnancy to Scully. It's not that I wanted to deny her love, in fact. I just didn't want it to change her... and perhaps that's just as foolish. I was happy with Scully as someone who for the most part lacked maternal instincts, and just wasn't that good with children. I accepted "Emily" somewhat unhappily, and moved on. I really didn't want her to get pregnant. Then I saw "Requiem" and the acting was so stunning in that scene that I had to believe. Now, I guess, I'm still struggling with the consequences of that, and so is she. What I really don't want to see now is Scully giving William up for adoption, mostly now because I'm afraid the acting will convince me that it really happened too. And it is something that I can't see her really surviving as a person.
I didn't want life to break her down yet again, and it has. It keeps doing that. Every season since season four, I've wondered how much she can take without crumbling completely. And I still wonder, and yet I still watch.
Plot:
Killer bat people attack.
Commentary:
For me this episode is all about how difficult it is to be a female believer. This is Scully's first case without Mulder and she's determined to do it right, even down to taking the reins with the slideshow, as she practiced doing in "Fight Club." And she even does a decent job.
It all goes wrong, however, as soon as she and Doggett arrived at the crime scene. Needless to say Doggett is driving, and he pulls up so that he is on the same side of the car as the local police. By dint of sprinting around the car as fast as her high heels could carry her, Scully manages to get there in time to introduce herself to the local detective, and thus maintains her position of authority until such time as Doggett gets out of the car and makes his masculine gender apparent.
The detective is standing in between the two FBI agents, so naturally he turns to Doggett and leaves Scully, frustrated, looking over his shoulder and feeling conspicuously short and female. While Mulder usually did the talking when he was around, they were so joined at the hip that at least both of them were in the frame at once. Scully tries to get the detective's attention and to not-so-subtly inform him of the chain of command and seniority--Understand, Detective, that we've seen cases like yours regularly on our unit. Agent Doggett has only just been assigned to the X-Files--but even so she's fighting a losing battle.
It only gets worse once they start examining the evidence, and Scully's believer status becomes apparent. Her status as a scientist, far from gaining her respect, only reinforces Doggett's position as The One to Talk To.
SCULLY: That's not an unheard of birth defect. Uh, no more rare than polydactylism.
(Both men look at her, then at each other.)
DETECTIVE ABBOTT: What did she just say?
DOGGETT: I assume she means it could be human.
The men are already talking about her as if she isn't there. Then both her willingness to entertain extreme possibilities and her unwillingness to close off options leave her open to further ridicule.
SCULLY: I'm not quite sure yet.
DETECTIVE ABBOTT: (sarcastically to DOGGETT) She's not quite sure yet.
While Mulder's status as an outcast in the FBI exposed him to ridicule and scorn right from the beginning, this scene makes it clear how much Mulder was able to rely on his gender in order to ensure him a certain minimum amount of respect. A lot of people thought of Mulder as nuts, sure, but he was also a Good Guy and a Good Agent. While if a woman like Scully has far-out theories, she is seen as flaky, ditzy, incompetent, and all in all someone to be talked around and talked over rather than talked to. By trying to take on Mulder's mantle, Scully is putting herself at a huge disadvantage in a Bureau that still only has ten percent female agents.
As the episode wears on, Scully continues to be put in the one down position in more subtle ways. Left advocating Mulder's side of the argument, she is more uncertain in advocating her point of view than usual. She was wrong, she says. I can't exactly explain it but I realize that I owe the Detective an apology. It is Doggett who discovers the key newspaper clipping and thus, despite all of Scully's efforts, it is Doggett who makes the important breakthrough. Then when Scully decides that she wants a body exhumed, it is Doggett who has to go to bat for her in order to persuade the local detective. Then when Scully loses faith in her try-to-be-like-Mulder strategy, it is Doggett who has to encourage her to keep going, using a line that really sums up the whole message of the episode: About all I know about the paranormal is men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But I don't think you're wrong, Agent Scully.
It is painful, and realistic, and exhausting. I have no doubt that Scully's treatment at the hands of local law enforcement is the sort of thing that really happens. I also have no doubt that it was the writers' intention to play up the sort of sexism that Scully encounters when she abandons the rigid rationalism that has been her weapon and her defense for so many years. The choice to show a more vulnerable Scully in this season is obviously a conscious strategy, and it does work. It does work. wendelah1 and foxestacado have persuaded me that the loss of Mulder combined with her unexpected pregnancy does put her in a very different place than she was previously, and that it makes sense to have her vulnerable, uncertain and even, yes, weepy.
Still, something inside me instinctively cries out against it. It's not that I want to see Scully as a strong, untouchable, invulnerable person. I like her complexities, the emotions that she keeps beneath the surface, the way she still relies on her mother and the way that she struggles to get by. It's just that I didn't want to see this. Scully has been through so much--her abduction, the death of her sister, her cancer, her two near escapes from Donnie Pfaster. Through all of it she's built her walls higher and higher. Finally, for a brief time in season seven, we see her happy and at peace with herself and with Mulder. So when that happiness inevitably comes to an end with Mulder's abduction, she's in a different place. More in touch with her emotions, in a sense more typically feminine, and more easily hurt. That's what love and pregnancy will do for you, I guess.
Perhaps I'm churlish to want to deny love and pregnancy to Scully. It's not that I wanted to deny her love, in fact. I just didn't want it to change her... and perhaps that's just as foolish. I was happy with Scully as someone who for the most part lacked maternal instincts, and just wasn't that good with children. I accepted "Emily" somewhat unhappily, and moved on. I really didn't want her to get pregnant. Then I saw "Requiem" and the acting was so stunning in that scene that I had to believe. Now, I guess, I'm still struggling with the consequences of that, and so is she. What I really don't want to see now is Scully giving William up for adoption, mostly now because I'm afraid the acting will convince me that it really happened too. And it is something that I can't see her really surviving as a person.
I didn't want life to break her down yet again, and it has. It keeps doing that. Every season since season four, I've wondered how much she can take without crumbling completely. And I still wonder, and yet I still watch.