08x03, "Patience"
Atropos
First of all, how much fangirl rage was there that Bat Boy didn’t actually kill Doggett?
Secondly, BAT BOY’S ALL GROWN UP! <3 <3 <3
See, besides being a peculiar child whose earliest “grown-up” books were my mother’s Lovecraft books at the tender age of four or five, I was a huge fan of the Weekly World News. There was something about their over-the-top fake crazy-ass news that just appealed to the part of me that loved Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Ed Wood movies. So this episode really won me over in a big way! The cheesy cemetery soundstage was adorable (intentional or not I don’t know, but it looked like the model cemetery set from Beetlejuice) and it was great to hear Frank Welker doing his monster-noise thing again!
Another major feature of this episode that I liked is the interplay of gender politics--local yokel lets Scully introduce herself, then shuts her out to talk to Doggett, at which point Scully subtly pulls rank… and he continues to talk to Doggett, occasionally referring to her in the third person. So then she uses big words at him, snrk. Later on Doggett has to ask LY again to do what Scully just asks him to do, which of course gets results. Even later on LY’s henchmen practically demand that she be burned as a witch. I was not sorry to see LY go.
Outstanding line: “It’s dark up here.” Yes, Scully, it’s an attic.
OH MY GOD IS THAT KAREL STRUYCKEN--no.
OH MY GOD IS THAT JUNE WHEELER--yes! I have a talent for recognizing second-string actors from one thing to another. Also, gorgeous car. The weathervane is pretty too.
After the initial scene with his asshole friends coming down to see the basement office, Doggett seems to spend a lot of time trying to show Scully what an awesome guy he is (while looking completely at sea, bless his little heart).
There’s almost a passing of the torch occurring in this episode; Mulder is now officially out of the credits (but falling!Mulder still remains, hee). It’s Scully’s turn to run the slide carousel; Scully is now the veteran and the one who, in many ways, is the believer (the reference to “Occam’s principle of limited imagination” is kind of cute); Doggett even tells her at one point that’s she might be trying too hard to Mulder. At the beginning Scully tells Doggett she’ll get him his own desk--something she never got, until now--and at the end she puts Mulder’s name plate in a drawer. (Fuck you, Chris Carter--right in the feels.) The bit with Stefaniak asking Scully if she’d be willing to isolate herself, and how long she’d wait, seems pretty unsubtly significant.
Nasubionna
Maybe I've been in the medical field for too long, but who the heck doesn't know what polydactyl is?? Gotta love the Angry Ignorant Sexist Local Cop, a frequent guest star type in this series. School him, Scully. School him good. I was not sad to see that detective get eaten, although angry mustache man replaced him. Sigh. Overall, I don't really have much to say about this one, maybe because I'm tired and it just feels too much like stuff we've seen before. Maybe I'm just overly cynical. This is one episode from season 8 that I pretty clearly remember from the old days, so I was probably pretty pissed off at the time, and there might be some lingering bitterness towards it, LOL! First monster-of-the-week with Doggett, and a fairly bland one at that. I do like the idea of a vengeful monster keeping tabs on folks for 40+ years, though.
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