Rewatch Extra: 1x79 Pilot
Ah, 1993. I really could’ve used this show in seventh grade, which was pretty awful in a nervous breakdown kind of way. It would’ve been nice to have friends like Mulder and Scully living in the TV back then. Alas, I was still watching TGIF on Friday nights. (Tangentially, isn’t it strange to think that a major network successfully devoted an entire night of programming to “family” shows? And it was only 15 years ago?)
The title card is pretty classy for a pilot. You know, there are certainly kinks to be worked out, but the look of the show locks in almost immediately, from the iconic title card to the Vancouver trees and lighting in the teaser.
I like the fade on Karen Swenson from blown out black and white into color. It makes it look like a crime scene photo and a moment later, we find out that she is, indeed, dead. Her dead body is very Laura Palmer.
Look, it’s Scully! And she’s smiling! And her outfit is killing me. A houndstooth jacket, tapered tan pants and what may possibly be those low top boots that were briefly popular in the early nineties. She is also carrying (for the first and last time?) both a briefcase and a PURSE. A purse! What’s in there? The Scully we come to know and love needs nothing but her badge, her gun, and maybe some lip gloss stuck in her bra. Her hair is bland but normal, so it’s tragic to think about what it’s going to have to endure over the next three years.
Seriously, she’s so happy and carefree. I can’t get over it. She’s randomly smiling at other agents as she traipses through the bullpen, blissfully unaware of her fate.
As far as these things go, the exposition in Blevins’ office isn’t too terrible.
She says she’s familiar with Mulder “by reputation.” I really, really love to imagine Scully hearing about “Spooky Mulder” at the academy, sort of chuckling with everyone else, not knowing what's in store for her.
I love the music, but that’s no surprise. Some of it is so terribly nineties (the plinky, bubbling stuff we get when she’s heading down to the basement), but it still rocks my socks.
Mulder’s working on a slideshow! While wearing glasses! With his fluffy, fluffy hair! I’m in heaven.
I love their first looks at each other. She gets this smile on her face when he turns around, like, “This may be a crap assignment, but damn, he’s easy on the eyes.”
Mulder straight out says he thinks she’s been sent to spy on him. I think this is less refreshing frankness and more an attempt to knock her off kilter. It doesn’t work. Yay! They halfheartedly keep at the “Scully the spy” stuff for the rest of the episode. Mulder asks if she wants to know something so she can put it down in her “little report.” Then when they’re having their motel heart-to-heart, he tells her she knows, she’s "a part of that agenda." She reassures him that she’s not a part of any agenda, she’s there to solve it, just like him. By the end of the episode, Mulder’s convinced of her loyalty and he's in it to win it. The only other time I think we ever see him mistrust her is in “Anasazi,” when he’s drugged, and he angrily accuses her of making reports on him, “taking your little notes.”
He read her senior thesis! (And will later quote it back to her.) I bet by the time he finished reading it, he was already half in love with her.
Gillian’s voice gets bizarrely high when she’s postulating that the marks could be needle punctures or animal bites. It happens other times in the episode, but it’s crazily noticeable here. She also does this weird thing throughout where she seems to be biting the inside of her cheek. Because I guess pursing your lips equals seriousness. I’m glad she lost that. David does some high talking, too.
“Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?” Mulder, you weirdo. Although I kind of like that Mulder is really, really less than suave here. Easily excitable and completely clueless about how to interact with people. But Scully just absorbs it all with good humor. It’s cool how she quickly becomes such a calming influence on him. She’s his blanky.
David Duchovny does not know how to pronounce Oregon.
“The girl obviously died of something. If it was natural causes, it's plausible that there was something missed in the post-mortem. If she was murdered, it's plausible there was a sloppy investigation. What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.” This whole speech rocks so hard. By the time she reaches the end, it’s like, look! There’s Scully.
I love her little smile when Mulder says he’ll see her bright and early to head for the very plauuuusible state of Oregon. She’s a bad-dressing dork who’s totally stoked to go on a wild adventure with the weirdest, dreamiest agent in the whole FBI.
Scully’s glasses are large and in charge. But let’s be honest--mine were definitely a similar size and shape in 1993. And I remember thinking I was the shit when I got them the year before, in sixth grade. I got them right before Halloween and I had these delusions about being super sexy in my Egyptian costume. Sadly, it was cold, and my mom made me wear a turtleneck underneath the one armed dress. The indignity! I had neglected to consider the fact that my sexiness would be tempered anyway by my mouthful of braces and my homemade wig. Also, by the fact that I was 11.
There are a few scenes that get cut for syndication. (The run time is a little over 47 minutes! Oh, 1993!) The plane scene and at least part of the later car scene, where David chooses to do an unfortunate accent for a line about the local salmon. I like to pretend that line doesn’t exist. It horrified me the first time I watched it on DVD.
I hate that they’re not wearing seatbelts in the car. I know that they’re not actually driving, but I’d appreciate it if they could pretend, for me. David does this a lot when he gets in a car and drives off. I know he’s just driving until they yell cut, but it makes it feel fake. Also, I am a Nazi about seatbelts. Gillian, especially, seems to have completely forgotten how to sit in a car.
The first appearance of sunflower seeds!
Mulder asks her if she’s squeamish about exhumations. She’s never had the pleasure. Hey, in eight years, she’ll dig you up, buddy.
The March 1992 time stamp introduces us to a world where up is down, black is white, and women are pregnant for a year.
I love that Mulder apparently travels with spray paint. Did he bring it with him? Could you travel with spray paint back then without being forcibly detained? Does he require his rental cars to have spray paint in the trunk? I’m sorry, I just want to know where the hell the spray paint came from.
The piano score is gorgeous and creepy.
Theresa Nemman: terrible actress then and now.
You guys, I kind of love Mulder’s fluffy hair. He’s so damn cute. No, really. How is he this attractive?
It’s adorable how enthused he is about the body, taking pictures of it with that giant camera until Scully tells him to point the flash away from her. Take a moment to imagine other instances in which he might point a camera at Scully.
Scully’s lounging in her oversized t-shirt and leggings! With her hair pulled half back. Hey, Scully, want to come to a sleepover? We’ll totally do makeovers and talk about how cute Jonathan Taylor Thomas is.
I haaate when Scully asks who it is at the door and he replies “Steven Spielberg.” Uhhh…what? Is that some kind of ET/Close Encounters joke? Whatever. It makes Scully smile, because she's still all excited about how hot he is, bad jokes or no.
Mulder in his backwards Georgetown hat! He wants to go for a run with Scully. And then be all, hey, we’re both sweaty and I think the shower is pretty big and we could conserve some water…
Look! Scully’s wearing the same houndstooth blazer from the D.C. scenes! Mix and match. I bet it’s a non-wrinkle fabric for ease of packing. Honestly, though, I love the re-use of clothes on shows. There's nothing more annoying than characters with an endless string of non-repeating clothes.
White nylons and white shoes! She's graduating from my high school in 1987!
Mulder is sort of stupidly quippy in this episode. I’m glad they toned him down and let Duchovny bring his own, understated funny.
“Dammit, Mulder, cut the crap.” This is something she should’ve said more often. It could’ve been a catchphrase.
I’m a sucker for them in frumpy, woodsy outerwear, and season one delivers.
I want to know the details of Gillian’s pact with the hair devil. Because that’s exactly how my hair gets in the humidity (thanks, midwest!) and I want to know how she tames it. Because seriously, those newest pictures from yesterday? She’s giving my other long hair idol, Mrs. Coach, a run for her money.
The editing could be better on the end of act cliffhangers. They hold on shots so long that it loses any tension.
The shot of the yellow line on the road flashing by is incredibly Lynchian.
I hate the freeze frame stuff as they lose 9 minutes. It’s bad.
Scully in her underwear is one of the few gratuitous nudity shots of her we ever get, and it's not even that gratuitous. Honestly, over the course of the show, there are WAY more naked Duchovny shots. YAY. This is actually something I've thought about seriously. No, not like that. Well, yes, like that, but in other ways, too. It's really interesting to me, the way she mostly stays covered up and he gets naked at the drop of a hat.
You know what, Mulder? I’d even do you in that denim shirt.
I love how he takes his sweet ass time looking at her back. And he makes sure to touch her. You know, for scientific inquiry.
Honestly, sometimes it blows my mind that Fox wasn’t like, okay, but can't they have sex here? The benefits of airing on a fledgling network with little clout and nothing to lose.
How do they get from the chairs over to the bed? Listen, I’m happy it happens, but it seems like an awkward move. Did Scully just get up and drape herself on the bed? And just look at how casual they are! How carefree! Scully, lounging on his bed in a robe!
He gets hilariously intense when he gets up on his knees: “Listen to me, Scully!” Okay, she’s listening! Now, cool it.
He says “Nothing else matters to me.” Honestly, this is one of the more interesting parts of Mulder’s emotional arc to me, the move from Samantha (an absence) being the most important thing to him, to Scully, who is there, being everything to him. As early as “End Game,” he makes the choice. In “Redux II,” he says the news of Scully’s remission is “the best news I could’ve ever heard.” In a woefully deleted scene from “The Red and the Black,” he actually says to her, about preventing things like her trip to the dam with Cassandra from happening again, “Nothing else matters to me now.”
The intensity in the motel room gets pretty hot, but it’s sadly broken up by the phone ringing. Maybe they would’ve sexed it up here if they hadn’t been rudely interrupted.
I saw David on Conan a few years ago, and Conan asked him if he ever watched old episodes. He said he’d seen “Fire” recently. (And if I remember correctly, he kind of disparaged it. Ha.) But he also noted that the whole episode was based on Mulder being afraid of fire, but that there was a fire in the pilot that Mulder wasn’t freaked out by. His devotion to continuity makes me swoon.
Oh, LORD. Theresa is so bad. This scene in the restaurant is so painful and stilted. “I’m scared I might…DIE.” She and Kersh could give a class on inappropriate pausing.
Wardrobe update: Mulder is wearing a denim shirt tucked into khakis.
Cemetery scene, I want to have your babies. The laughter, you guys! And then Mulder says, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” In this low, familiar voice. And she replies, “Where are we going?” in this deliriously cute way, like what she’s really saying is “Where are we going? And is it somewhere we can get naked and rub up against each other?” Then they walk off, bumping into each other in the rain. Seriously, they’re going to go have sex in their rental car right now. Not really. But maybe.
Look, Scully’s already doing weird things like inspecting Billy’s feet! And he already has his hand on her back. Mulder, not Billy.
This seems like a really dumb question, but I’ve never really considered it before: Mulder was presumably writing reports on his own. And now Scully has been tasked with reporting on their investigations. So have they been doing separate reports the whole time?
It’s kind of funny when Scully gets knocked down by Detective Miles. Not because I want to see Scully hurt (even though I may recently have expressed wishes that she be eaten by a bat), but because it’s just the first in a long line of “something happens to Scully and she totally misses seeing proof by THIS MUCH.”
I have no idea why Billy snaps out of his vegetative state and loses the marks.
Scully’s, like, having an orgasm over seeing the light. Then they stare at each other in wonder while panting heavily. Poor Chris Carter and his dream of the platonic ideal. He never stood a chance.
I think it’s an interesting choice to have Scully behind the glass with Blevins, the other guy and CSM during Billy’s hypnosis, while Mulder is in the room with Billy and Dr. Werber. (Would you let a guy named Heitz Werber hypnotically regress you? I wouldn’t. You’re just asking for trouble.)
Mulder has some kind of x-ray vision that can see through one-way glass and find Scully so he can meaningfully eye fuck her.
I’m glad William Davis worked on his walking, because it is AWKWARD here. It reminds me of Molly Shannon on Seinfeld as the woman who didn’t move her arms when she walked.
Dudes, I’m so glad they cut her boyfriend. I know, I know, I’m on the bus to Obvioustown, but I think having them both be so solitary and self-contained is key to everything. Shows so often feel the need to start out with a significant other and then use their excision as an emotional catalyst for the main characters coming together. I think part of the power behind their relationship comes from the fact that they only have each other, right from the start.
The first “Scully, it’s me”!
Oh, Scully, get used to late night phone calls. And visits, drunken and otherwise. And exhortations to get dressed and get on a plane. Or to come down to the morgue and do an autopsy that can’t wait until morning. In short, welcome to the rest of your life.
The ending seriously rules.