Rewatch Extra: 4x15 Memento Mori
It takes some balls to do something like this teaser. What other TV show has such weird, poetic interludes, complete with voiceover? I'm constantly amazed at how much they were able to do, how they didn't get themselves locked into anything, stylistically. It generally doesn't come off as being a gimmick, either. I don't know how to quite explain how I think of this show, but it's almost like it's...encyclopedic. Does that make any sense? Like it's the television incarnation of the world's most fascinating common book, some sort of journal that has a million bizarre pieces of flotsam pasted into its pages.
Oh, hey, dudes. This is a love note. From Scully to Mulder. In the fourth season. “That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you, that are you.”
Scully in her hospital gown and her little sock feet! She’s so sad and small and alone.
Can you even imagine Mulder going to, like, the grocery store floral department and buying her those flowers? God, what did she tell him on the phone? He knows he’s looking for oncology, at the very least. Just think about him in the car, driving there, that cellophane-wrapped bunch of flowers on the passenger’s seat, his hands gripping the wheel.
After he asks “How you doing?” his face is so open, so fearful, so childlike. He’s searching her, trying to figure out if he can exhale, or if some shit’s going to go down. Mulder, some shit’s going to go down, buddy.
After she says she feels fine and he quietly responds, “good,” his voice snagging slightly, they just nod their heads at each other dumbly, like they’re waiting, trying to get up the nerve to jump over this huge cliff that’s right there before them.
“You’re the only one I’ve called.” It’s so simple, but it’s this huge moment where she’s saying, you are the only one I trust/need/want. And he just nods his head, blinks, whispers okay: yes, okay, I’m in.
“I refuse to believe that, I--”
It’s like she’s daring him. I don’t think she quite lets herself process the information yet, at least on a non-clinical level, but she’s like, I need you to know how fucked up this might get. Are you going to blink?
“I don’t accept that. Th-th-there must be some people who have received treatment for this, we can--” She almost smiles at him, tells him there are, narrows her eyes a bit.
When they’re in Skinner’s office, giving him the news, Mulder’s…pawing in the background like a caged animal, he can’t stand still. He wants to get out of there as soon as possible, and I think it’s probably a combination of not wanting to hear all of this repeated, as well as wanting to get out there and DO SOMETHING. He also doesn't take his eyes off her as she's talking to Skinner.
“Yes, sir, but for my own reasons, I’d like to pursue this through the justice department rather than as a personal matter.” Oh, SCULLY. It’s like: she knows how to do her job, and she knows how to do it damn well. But she doesn’t know how to deal with this as a personal matter. As a person, not an FBI agent. So she thinks she'll try to take care of this, solve this, like a case.
The flashback isn’t awful, but those ladies with their little rattling implants crack me up every time. Do they carry those vials around in their purses at all times? Just in case they need to rattle them at someone for dramatic effect?
“Quit starin’ at me, I’m fine.” All he wants to do is make sure she’s okay, but she doesn’t want that right now. And he doesn’t try to force it on her. I think this is the moment where he decides, okay, patience. I’ll do what I can. I’ll be here when she makes that decision. I’ll look away from her if that’s what she asks me to do.
I love the way her breath fogs up the mirror as she regards herself, sizing herself up. She is still alive.
Mulder is never more G-man than here, leaning against the wall in his dark suit and dark tie.
I love how he softly guides her back over to the hallway to talk. The whispering kills me.
“What it feels like to be dying of cancer?” God, she sticks the knife in and twists. And he sighs, shakes his head, takes it. Allows her to twist that knife if that’s what she needs to do.
“Mulder, it doesn’t matter.” “It DOES matter. If what you have is a result of your abduction, and that abduction is something the government knows about, then those are facts that should be brought to light.” He doesn’t want to listen to her force him to hear that she’s sick, he wants to go out there and fucking punish someone. Scully is a pragmatist: however it came about, that doesn't change the fact that she's sick. Mulder, as we know, cares deeply about the rightness of how things came to be, who or what caused it.
“You have one remaining witness, Agent Scully.” She tilts her head up at him when he calls her that. Probably because it's incredibly hot.
I love how she tries to be kind when basically telling Penny that she thinks she’s full of shit.
You guys, the phone call. THE PHONE CALL. I love how he’s just barreling forward, this force: here’s what we’re going to do. And she just quietly waits until he’s finished to tell him she needs him to bring her the overnight bag and call her mom. She asks him to call her mom.
“I will be right there.” It’s entirely possible that this is my favorite line ever uttered by Mulder. It’s so tender and it’s so focused. And she gives this little half smile in response, like all she’s thinking is: too late, too late, too late. I might love him and now I’m dying and it’s too late. And then as soon as he hangs up, he allows himself to let the anger go, slamming the cabinet closed and clenching his jaw. In the background, Kurt Crawford’s all, “Cough, cough, awk....ward.”
When Scully wakes up in the fuzzy white of the hospital, the doctor’s shadow against the window moves like an alien, which I’m sure is deliberate.
The scene with her mom is just top notch. As soon as she enters the room, Scully curls into herself. She’s stripped of her Agent Scully black suit armor, barefoot and wearing a flimsy gown, and as soon as her mom comes in, she reverts to this childlike state. Probably because her mom's fucking scary here, in that way that only a mom can be.
So did Mulder actually tell her mom that she has cancer? That fucking blows my mind. That Scully basically asked him to do that for her and he said okay, and did it. I want to see that scene.
“You are my only daughter now.” OH SHIT. I know she’s not doing it on purpose, but it’s like…way to make her feel guilty for GETTING CANCER. Catholic guilt, is there anything you can't do?
Her letter (as she undergoes treatment) is absolving him, knowing what he’ll be like if she dies. (I’m assuming she’s vaguely meaning these missives to be left for him after she dies? Because it’s not like she’s going to hand them to him at the office or something. OH GOD. If she actually would’ve died, Mulder would’ve promptly gotten his ass killed doing something stupid or, seriously, killed himself.) And as she’s saying this, as she’s saying she must travel alone and she wants to know Mulder is pursuing his own path, we see him breaking into the fertility clinic, all for her.
“Someone was doing something bad to me.” Get used to it, lady.
Skinner can't get anything done because Mulder's always showing up to boo-hoo in his office. I bet Skinner takes a lot of antacids.
“Agent Scully's name is on this file, although I'm pretty sure, pretty DAMN sure, she's never undergone treatment for infertility.”
“I’m willing to deal now.”
“You deal with this man, you offer him anything, and he will own you forever.” Even though, by the end of the episode, he tells Skinner that he was right, there’s always another way, we find him willing to deal again.
“Put on something black and sexy and prepare to do some funky poaching.” Byers sort of pulls at his collar nervously, completely unprepared to do anything remotely funky. Byers! You nerd! I love you.
Skinner: I need a miracle.
CSM: Well, you think a lot more of me than you let on, Mr. Skinner.
Skinner: What would it take?
CSM: For Agent Scully's life? What would you offer?
Skinner: What'll it take?
CSM: Well, I'll have to get back to you on that.
Skinner is dealing for Scully’s life, and protecting Mulder in the bargain by not allowing him to deal with CSM. God, I love conflicted Skinner of the middle seasons!
“We gots to go.” I love Duchovny’s delivery of that line. I wonder if “gots” is actually in the script, or if he added that.
Byers is actually wearing a turtleneck and a trench coat, like he totally took Mulder’s advice and immediately rummaged through his closet for something black and sexy.
As he’s busting his ass for her: “Mulder, I feel you close, though I know you are now pursuing your own path. For that I am grateful, more than I could ever express. I need to know you're out there if I am ever to see through this.”
The lab is brilliant, with the algae green aquariums, bubbling, incubating hybrids. As are the silver drawers. The light bouncing in the creepy ova room makes it almost look like it’s shot with a fish-eye lens.
Mulder, take more vials! Take all of them! You’ll thank me in approximately two to three years!
This guy chasing Mulder is the world’s worst assassin. Why doesn’t he just stick the barrel through the hole he’s made in the door and shoot Mulder from a few feet away? Instead, he just keeps wildly firing at the door, I guess hoping the whole thing will come crashing down.
When Mulder's reading her journal, he gets this pained look on his face, like he knows he's reading something from beyond the grave.
The look when he opens the door and sees her sitting there with Penny is so conflicted. Like he can breathe, because there she is, she's okay; but right there in the bed, there’s her possible future. He looks like he feels selfish, almost, for needing her so much.
He sits in that chair from 9:47 at night until 5:05 the next morning. YOU GUYS.
“I got scared that something had happened…and I read some of what you wrote.” He’s so embarrassed, so guilty, like he’s pried open her head and looked inside. Oh MAN, after the debacle of 8 and 9, it’s still so wondrous to me, how Mulder is always so careful to let her be, to allow her have her own agency. He knows that he’s overstepped a boundary here and has to tell her immediately, to apologize. And then a few moments later, when she says to him, almost apologetic, that she'll come back, “but for my own reasons,” he smiles. He isn’t hurt or pettily needy, jealous, wanting her to commit for his reasons. He smiles and tells her to “come on back.” (And look at how she responds.)
“You will find it. To save yourself.” Oh, MAN. Do you see? He'll help her, yes, of course, he’ll be there, but just look at that. YOU will find it. YOU will save yourself.
They are so pretty. And I honestly think that this is one of the scenes where she looks most gorgeous, even though she's pale, with circles under her eyes. Gorgeous.
I love them. Look at the way her head fits perfectly below his chin, her fluffy white robe, his black leather jacket. She throws her arms completely around him, underneath his jacket. They kind of sway there together.
“The truth will save you, Scully. I think it’ll save both of us.” When he kisses her on the head when they’re still embracing, the look on her face: it’s like it almost hurts, how tender he’s being. Seriously, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the subtext of this whole episode is: “I’m pretty sure I’m totally in love with you, but I’m dying.”
Classic Forehead Kiss
This is what gets me, more than anything. The way they look at each other. I will never, ever understand how DD and GA pull this off. But she just gazes up at him here, his big hands carefully cupping her entire head, with this look of utter trust and openness and, for this one tiny moment, they seem content. And his touch is careful and tender, yes, but it's not like she's fragile, it's like he completely realizes how important this is, how everything comes down to this one person in his arms, and he doesn't want to fuck it up.
Oh, hi, deleted kiss. There you are.
The scene is lovely without it, and I suppose it was a good decision, but shit. Is it not the most perfect thing? Every second of that grainy, deleted scene is so lovely and warm and natural. And, in a weird way (or maybe not?), considering the circumstances, super hot. My favorite part might be how she smiles when they're done, his hands still on her neck, kind of tangling in her hair.
I think...that their relationship at this point can be split into two eras. Before "Memento Mori" and after. This, well...this is where things get serious. Yeah, yeah, they'll slink back into their quietly unrequited ways, but I think that her cancer knocked a tiny bit of sense into both of these crazy fools.