08x04, "Roadrunners"
Atropos
Well, thank goodness I’d finished my lunch before we got to the invasive-things-under-the-skin part of the episode, because ENOUGH WITH INVASIVE THINGS UNDER THE SKIN OMGJFCWTFBBQ. They just insist on repeatedly hitting that squick, don’t they? This one hit enough of my bad buttons to be uncomfortable. Like “Home” was, it’s creepier than the average monster-of-the-week episode because (until we get to the Jesus parasite) it’s entirely too plausible. It’s also the ultimate dubious!Scully (and sarcastic!Scully) episode. It reminds me of an M. Night movie, and that’s not a good thing. Paddle faster, I hear banjos.
--and I almost want to like this episode because Scully gets to be such a badass, but it’s badassery in the face of what’s kind of getting into the territory of torture porn. There’s got to be some kind of deeper symbolism to her straining against her bonds in agony while tied spread-eagled (but face-down) to a bed while a parasite works its way into her spine and the religious zealots look on in eager anticipation. Rape? Developing pregnancy? Birth/anti-birth? Maybe I’m being too protective-prickly about what seems like Yet Another Scully Abuse episode, but seriously, the poor woman’s been through enough in the last few months.
And related to that, it was pretty much inevitable that Scully would invoke her pregnancy as a last-ditch appeal to her captors as a reason not to give her the Jesus parasite, but--because I’m the asshole in the room--a horrible thing done to a pregnant woman is NOT automagically more horrible than if it were done to anyone else. Though Scully isn’t too precious about her “condition” because earlier in the episode she was all “fuck this delicate pregnant flower shit, I’mma climb out this window.” ♥
Why Scully is a badass: She finally gets to swear what network television considers a blue streak at someone who deserves it. She lights the building she’s being held in on fire, despite the strong possibility that she’ll be the only who dies in the fire. She keeps the Jesus parasite out of her brain by hand while she orders Doggett to cut the damn thing out in the ultimate spur-of-the-moment meatball surgery. For which she’s conscious and aware. (The whole pregnancy symbolism thing gets really fucking disturbing at this point, honestly.) When she’s yelling for help, Scully uses her actual voice rather than ye olde high-pitched female scream, but honestly, from an acoustical standpoint, the traditional high-pitched female scream carries better than an alto voice.
And then the penultimate scene is Doggett carrying Scully off the bus all rescuing-hero style, which kind of chafed. Maybe the intent was to show what an awesome guy Doggett is by having him ride to the rescue after Scully leaves him behind (poor baby), but to me it just subverted Scully’s badassery. Fuckers.
I started having hope that Scully was learning from her mistakes when finally keeps her gun close at hand (because if I’ve learned anything from this show, it’s that you should never leave your gun further away than arm’s reach) but then she goes and gives it away to someone else. *facepalm*
And now on to the lighter side; sadly the bus driver is not actually Large Marge, and even more sadly, it does not turn out that the aliens are now using a bus to round up abductees and bring them to the pickup point. That would have been pretty awesome. So would crashing the bus through the barn at the end. (Also, I know someone who works for MCI, the company that made that bus.)
Just as I was thinking that the Bureau’s entered the twenty-first century and gotten DIGITAL cameras for its field agents, Scully pulls a Mulder and starts investigating this suspicious-looking substance she finds on the ground, which she identifies to Doggett as as a glycoprotein. And yes, the main--uh--inactive ingredient in semen is a glycoprotein. And the substance in question is produced by the Jesus parasite, which leads back to the whole rape/sexual themes of this episode.
Doggett--who’s left-handed and sounds like he’s from Atlanta by way of Brooklyn, though I think Robert Patrick’s a bona fide Southerner--did at least get a couple of good lines in this episode: “Just talked to a guy who had a gun in his pocket and I don’t mean he was happy to see me,” and “unidentified mucus,” which WBAGNFARB.
Nasubionna
First of all, I love Scully's green shirt outfit and short-temper with the stupid gas station guy.
This one has overtones of various other episodes: creepy towns like in Our Town and the sex-alien one with the cult-like behavior and magical clay… I believe it was called “Gender Bender”? Not one of my favorites.
I basically forgot about Doggett after awhile. For a while there, it felt like old times, just a Scully-centric episode. I longed to see Mulder back at the office like a lost puppy, sticking pencils in the ceiling tiles and calling Scully's phone every other minute.
I will say, it's kind of nice not knowing wtf is going on. I remembered the bat-boy episode from when it originally aired, but after that point it's all pretty much new to me! I seem to have successfully blocked it all out. I have no idea what is happening in this episode so far. All I know is that Scully the wonder doctor doing her improvisational seizure treatments is pretty neat.
It’s hard not to go wikipedia each episode to spoil myself, but I guess it's actually kind of fun to have a few x-files episodes that I actually haven't seen 1,010,101,083 times already!
Having a flashback to the “Ice” episode with the spinal parasite thing. That was one of the very first episodes, and one that I enjoy the most, but this one is not nearly as satisfying, because there is no bonding (or UST) experience gained between Mulder and Scully, just torturing Scully. I disapprove.
Nice try, the whole "I'm gonna have a baby, I'm pregnant!" thing to keep people from hurting you. Too bad these religious wackos are not sympathetic to that. I was a little uncomfortable with the blatant horror movie/torture porn imagery of tied-up, semi-undressed scully bound, gagged and tied facedown on a bed. moaning in agony. This was just really gross, and a cheap shock/sexually suggestive decision, and I didn’t like it. Scully’s been through enough at this point, they need to find a less-gross way to raise the stakes.
OK, this is kind of the first moment I kind of like Doggett. I guess a man punching someone and then helping a lady does something primitive to me or something, despite my usual radical feminist philosophy. I blame hormones. I also kind of love his hot-wiring skillz.
Interesting to make him cut the worm-god-thing out of her ("Just do it, John!" I think I am really hormonal, because I'm reading all sorts of weird sexual undertones in this episode)… is this like some sort of weird cesarean parallel? To his credit, Doggett stays pretty unflappable through the whole thing, considering he's not a doctor and is cutting right over her frickin' spine. I guess the show really wants us to like him by having him save Scully's ass so dramatically? Plus the weird way he talked to her like a disappointed parent at the very end. WTF? There are better and less insulting to Scully ways of getting us to like him and see that he is a competant agent.
I LOL'd at him FLINGING the worm-god-thing in the tour bus - they look just like the tour busses we'd take for band field trips with those ridiculous rainbow seats, haha! But it was pretty stupid of him to shoot it, because like so many X-Files creatures, that seemed like the kind of critter that needs to be studied!!! Firstly because it is apparently freaking dangerous, and secondly, to know if it actually manages to convince people somehow that it’s a god, or if everyone in that town just randomly decided that.
I like her sweater at the end of the episode, too. Maybe Mulder's been holding her back, fashion-wise?
Overall, not horrible, though feels really rehashed from several other cult/monster-of-the-week type episodes from the past, except replacing Mulder with Doggett. And the character dynamic even feels pretty similar if you compare it to early in the show when M & S didn't really know each other that well and were still rather distant and professional like Scully and Doggett are now. But yeah, too much rapey, torture-porny, weak-pregnant-lady nonsense for my liking, and I don’t expect to revisit this one too often, if ever.
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