Rewatch Extra: 4x22 Elegy
I rarely love teasers, but I love this one: the utter emptiness of the bowling alley and the hollow, mechanical clanking of the pinsetters. And then the ball rolling back to him with that sticky blood on the side, a message from whoever or whatever is back there.
Scully putting on bowling shoes. She’s so serious and focused on this little task. This whole episode, she’s very grave about almost everything, even more so than usual.
Look at her, so sober and buttoned up as she walks past these silly, carefree people jumping up and down about their bowling league. Mulder and Scully live in such a different world than the rest of us, and it’s to the show’s credit that we end up finding the bowlers bizarre, when really, they’re probably closer to us than Mulder and Scully.
I love when they're lying down on the alley together! Well, I’ve always loved moments when they’re next to each other like this, because back in the day, I used to get a weird feeling of: that’s what they would look like in bed together. Not in a lascivious way, but in a comforting, “ooh, your feet are cold!/who’s going to go get the paper?” way.
“I saw the look on her face.” And she gives him a hilarious eyebrow in response.
“What is that look, Scully?”
“I would’ve thought that after four years, you’d know exactly what that look was.”
Oh, in the midst of it all, these two.
Fact: there is nothing I love more than Mulder’s “casual” shows of his athleticism. And Scully is so impressed! They are adorable. He’s a total nerd because he’s trying to impress her like this, and she’s a total nerd because it completely works.
More whispering in the back of the class! And it’s really, really hot, how she’s just staring straight ahead while he gets his hot breath all over her ear. I want to know what he’s saying, and by that I mean I want to know what Mulder is saying, and also, what David is saying. If that makes sense. Because while they’re not ACTUALLY saying different things, they are.
“Are we boring you?” Scully immediately raises an eyebrow, like, “Oh! Busted! He was totally whispering sweet, sexy nothings in my ear.”
“Her apparition, what the Irish call a fetch, what is more commonly known as a wraith.”
He’s deliberately fucking with the cops by using these words, laying it on thick. If he’s not going to get any respect, he might as well go all out and mess with the guy, live up to his reputation.
And then Scully gives him "that look" again while he's talking.
“I did it! I admit it, I did it! I’m just a human being after all!” The guy who plays Chuck is great. Actually, the guy who plays Harold is great, too. They’re very specific actors, and that’s nice, because so often, actors play characters with disabilities in a broad, high school drama style.
“He did it! He’s the murderer!” Yes! Someone arrest Jay Leno, PLEASE.
Look at how serious she is.
“Nice catch, Scully.” You guys, I'm not sure if you've heard, but teamwork makes the dream work.
Mulder! Why, once again, are you asking Scully about the psychology behind the killer moving the rings? It’s like someone eternal sunshined his degree right out of his brain.
Of course, I love their give and take, and it’s not that I don’t buy Scully knowing about egodystonia, but c’mon. Mulder’s a wunderkind profiler and an Oxford-educated psychologist. Allegedly. Maybe he just faked it and he really just has a degree in communications from the University of Phoenix.
She gets super serious again.
Oh God, it’s the nosebleed. My hearrrrrt. Those tiny, perfect dots of blood on the paper. “Oh, Scully.” He’s devastated. I bet Mulder got absolutely no sleep while she had cancer.
In the bathroom, Scully stares herself down in the mirror, which is something she does later in this episode, as well as in “Memento Mori” and in “Gethsemane." It’s an interesting motif throughout the cancer arc, Scully looking at herself like this. It’s not something that really occurs for either of them with any regularity. The other instances I can think of off the top of my head are Mulder contemplating a nose job in “Sanguinarium” and Scully getting dressed in “all things.” They’re generally un-self aware and non-contemplative, like it would be wasteful (a waste of time, a waste of energy) to look at themselves (literally, but figuratively) when there are all of these things that need to be done. But her illness is forcing her to look at herself.
SHE IS ME
Scully is so twitchy and flustered at the crime scene. She can’t tamp down her nervousness, her fear, after seeing the apparition. And Mulder senses that something’s wrong, too, like he can feel the buzzy vibes she’s giving off as she tells him she’s going to get herself checked out. As you might have guessed, she is not actually fine.
She looks utterly bereft while getting her blood taken. What’s even more tragic is that she would never let herself look that sad or frightened in front of Mulder.
Mirror, mirror.
YES, it’s my favorite, Karen Kosseff!
KOSSEFF: You've kept working?
SCULLY: Yes. It's been important to me.
KOSSEFF: Why?
SCULLY: Why? Um…Agent Mulder has been concerned. He's been supportive through this time.
KOSSEFF: Do you feel that you owe it to him to continue working?
SCULLY: No. I guess I never realized how much I rely on him before this. His passion. He’s been a great source of strength that I've drawn on.
KOSSEFF: What happened last night, Dana?
SCULLY: I saw something. I, I don't know what to trust. If I saw it because of the stress, because the image had been suggested to me or if it was a suggestion of my own fears.
KOSSEFF: Your fear of failing him?
SCULLY: Maybe.
Before she says she never realized how much she relies on him, she sort of scrunches her nose up, like she’s a tiny bit embarrassed to admit it, but maybe, just maybe, kind of happy. She would never, in a million years, allow herself to rely on anyone else, let alone cut herself a second of slack to be happy about this, but with Mulder--maybe. Just maybe it's okay.
“I saw something.” The title of Scully’s eventual memoirs and subsequent Lifetime movie. “I Saw Something: The Dana Scully Story.”
When Kosseff asks her if she’s afraid of failing Mulder, she half chuckles, then says, “Maybe.” Again, like it's so silly, so improbable, she can't quite believe that she really might be afraid of that.
Oh God, Mulder is backlit again. Damn, he looks good. Duchovny should hire someone to walk around behind him with a spotlight at all times.
Harold’s lawyer is the snippy video doctor from IWTB and it makes me happy.
Scully, praying in her big old fuzzy robe.
Okay, Scully, do you even have to look through the peephole to see who it is? Really? Is there someone else who might be knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s door at this late hour?
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask you. What did your doctor say?”
“I’m fine.”
Mulder says that Harold is “unable to express the depth and power of those relationships.” Does this sound familiar, YOU TWO?
“And who among us would be most likely to be able to see the dead?”
Once again, Mulder misses her grief, as she keeps her sad face tucked away until after he leaves.
I love this, Scully striding down the hallway, her inky black coat flapping around her.
Scully may have cancer, but she will fuck you up. Is this the most perfect cap of her ever? She looks absolutely beautiful in this episode.
There’s this split second before she tells him what she saw where she kind of licks at the corner of her mouth. I don’t know why, but it’s perfect, this little nervous tick as she’s trying to rein herself in before telling him.
I love how they're shot so tightly, all we see are their expressive faces, their eyes, everything written plainly there.
SCULLY: I saw something, Mulder.
MULDER: What?
SCULLY: The fourth victim. I saw her in the bathroom before you came to tell me.
MULDER: Why didn't you tell me?
SCULLY: Because I didn't want to believe it. Because I don't want to believe it.
MULDER: Is that why you came down here? To prove that it wasn't true?
SCULLY: No, I came down here because you asked me to.
MULDER: Why can't you be honest with me?
SCULLY: What do you want me to say? That you're right, that, that I believe it even if I don't. I mean, is that what you want?
MULDER: Is that what you think I want to hear?
SCULLY: No.
MULDER: You can believe what you want to believe, Scully, but you can't hide the truth from me. Because if you do, then you're working against me. And yourself. Now, I know what you're afraid of. I'm afraid of the same thing.
SCULLY: The doctor said I was fine.
MULDER: I hope that's the truth.
SCULLY: I'm going home.
I love that they’re actually talking about how all Mulder wants from her is the truth, good or bad. Yes, the stakes are heightened here, but this is what it ultimately comes down to. She knows, when she says “no,” that it was kind of a low blow, to ask Mulder if he just wants her to parrot back and agree with him. And she seems to realize in that moment that he DOES want her to talk to him, to tell him the truth, not just about things that happen, not just in the course of their work, but to tell him the truth about herself and what she’s going through. And she is unable to do that right now, and this may grieve her more than anything.
Now they’re both going home alone, where they’ll just lie in bed awake, alone, thinking about how she’s dying and about how they just can’t get their shit together and be honest with each other and I LOVE THEM and I want them to just, right now, curl up together under a blanket. Seriously. I want Mulder to run after her and take her home and they can just get under the covers and hug each other. This sounds so childish, but at this second, as she's walking away and Mulder's slouching against the wall, that is all I want for them.
You know, season 4 isn’t terrifically early or anything. At this point, we’re getting into sort of the sweet spot of classic Mulder and Scully, but when you think about their relationship as a whole? That they’ve been together now for 15 years? It’s amazing, watching this, how young and fragile and somehow tentative their partnership still is, and how far they’ve come.
I think Scully's crying is as much about her inability to let Mulder in as it is about her illness/possible death in general. I see it as her grieving for the fact that she can, you know, go tell a psychiatrist what Mulder means to her, but she can’t tell him.
Scully putting on bowling shoes. She’s so serious and focused on this little task. This whole episode, she’s very grave about almost everything, even more so than usual.
Look at her, so sober and buttoned up as she walks past these silly, carefree people jumping up and down about their bowling league. Mulder and Scully live in such a different world than the rest of us, and it’s to the show’s credit that we end up finding the bowlers bizarre, when really, they’re probably closer to us than Mulder and Scully.
I love when they're lying down on the alley together! Well, I’ve always loved moments when they’re next to each other like this, because back in the day, I used to get a weird feeling of: that’s what they would look like in bed together. Not in a lascivious way, but in a comforting, “ooh, your feet are cold!/who’s going to go get the paper?” way.
“I saw the look on her face.” And she gives him a hilarious eyebrow in response.
“What is that look, Scully?”
“I would’ve thought that after four years, you’d know exactly what that look was.”
Oh, in the midst of it all, these two.
Fact: there is nothing I love more than Mulder’s “casual” shows of his athleticism. And Scully is so impressed! They are adorable. He’s a total nerd because he’s trying to impress her like this, and she’s a total nerd because it completely works.
More whispering in the back of the class! And it’s really, really hot, how she’s just staring straight ahead while he gets his hot breath all over her ear. I want to know what he’s saying, and by that I mean I want to know what Mulder is saying, and also, what David is saying. If that makes sense. Because while they’re not ACTUALLY saying different things, they are.
“Are we boring you?” Scully immediately raises an eyebrow, like, “Oh! Busted! He was totally whispering sweet, sexy nothings in my ear.”
“Her apparition, what the Irish call a fetch, what is more commonly known as a wraith.”
He’s deliberately fucking with the cops by using these words, laying it on thick. If he’s not going to get any respect, he might as well go all out and mess with the guy, live up to his reputation.
And then Scully gives him "that look" again while he's talking.
“I did it! I admit it, I did it! I’m just a human being after all!” The guy who plays Chuck is great. Actually, the guy who plays Harold is great, too. They’re very specific actors, and that’s nice, because so often, actors play characters with disabilities in a broad, high school drama style.
“He did it! He’s the murderer!” Yes! Someone arrest Jay Leno, PLEASE.
Look at how serious she is.
“Nice catch, Scully.” You guys, I'm not sure if you've heard, but teamwork makes the dream work.
Mulder! Why, once again, are you asking Scully about the psychology behind the killer moving the rings? It’s like someone eternal sunshined his degree right out of his brain.
Of course, I love their give and take, and it’s not that I don’t buy Scully knowing about egodystonia, but c’mon. Mulder’s a wunderkind profiler and an Oxford-educated psychologist. Allegedly. Maybe he just faked it and he really just has a degree in communications from the University of Phoenix.
She gets super serious again.
Oh God, it’s the nosebleed. My hearrrrrt. Those tiny, perfect dots of blood on the paper. “Oh, Scully.” He’s devastated. I bet Mulder got absolutely no sleep while she had cancer.
In the bathroom, Scully stares herself down in the mirror, which is something she does later in this episode, as well as in “Memento Mori” and in “Gethsemane." It’s an interesting motif throughout the cancer arc, Scully looking at herself like this. It’s not something that really occurs for either of them with any regularity. The other instances I can think of off the top of my head are Mulder contemplating a nose job in “Sanguinarium” and Scully getting dressed in “all things.” They’re generally un-self aware and non-contemplative, like it would be wasteful (a waste of time, a waste of energy) to look at themselves (literally, but figuratively) when there are all of these things that need to be done. But her illness is forcing her to look at herself.
SHE IS ME
Scully is so twitchy and flustered at the crime scene. She can’t tamp down her nervousness, her fear, after seeing the apparition. And Mulder senses that something’s wrong, too, like he can feel the buzzy vibes she’s giving off as she tells him she’s going to get herself checked out. As you might have guessed, she is not actually fine.
She looks utterly bereft while getting her blood taken. What’s even more tragic is that she would never let herself look that sad or frightened in front of Mulder.
Mirror, mirror.
YES, it’s my favorite, Karen Kosseff!
KOSSEFF: You've kept working?
SCULLY: Yes. It's been important to me.
KOSSEFF: Why?
SCULLY: Why? Um…Agent Mulder has been concerned. He's been supportive through this time.
KOSSEFF: Do you feel that you owe it to him to continue working?
SCULLY: No. I guess I never realized how much I rely on him before this. His passion. He’s been a great source of strength that I've drawn on.
KOSSEFF: What happened last night, Dana?
SCULLY: I saw something. I, I don't know what to trust. If I saw it because of the stress, because the image had been suggested to me or if it was a suggestion of my own fears.
KOSSEFF: Your fear of failing him?
SCULLY: Maybe.
Before she says she never realized how much she relies on him, she sort of scrunches her nose up, like she’s a tiny bit embarrassed to admit it, but maybe, just maybe, kind of happy. She would never, in a million years, allow herself to rely on anyone else, let alone cut herself a second of slack to be happy about this, but with Mulder--maybe. Just maybe it's okay.
“I saw something.” The title of Scully’s eventual memoirs and subsequent Lifetime movie. “I Saw Something: The Dana Scully Story.”
When Kosseff asks her if she’s afraid of failing Mulder, she half chuckles, then says, “Maybe.” Again, like it's so silly, so improbable, she can't quite believe that she really might be afraid of that.
Oh God, Mulder is backlit again. Damn, he looks good. Duchovny should hire someone to walk around behind him with a spotlight at all times.
Harold’s lawyer is the snippy video doctor from IWTB and it makes me happy.
Scully, praying in her big old fuzzy robe.
Okay, Scully, do you even have to look through the peephole to see who it is? Really? Is there someone else who might be knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s door at this late hour?
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask you. What did your doctor say?”
“I’m fine.”
Mulder says that Harold is “unable to express the depth and power of those relationships.” Does this sound familiar, YOU TWO?
“And who among us would be most likely to be able to see the dead?”
Once again, Mulder misses her grief, as she keeps her sad face tucked away until after he leaves.
I love this, Scully striding down the hallway, her inky black coat flapping around her.
Scully may have cancer, but she will fuck you up. Is this the most perfect cap of her ever? She looks absolutely beautiful in this episode.
There’s this split second before she tells him what she saw where she kind of licks at the corner of her mouth. I don’t know why, but it’s perfect, this little nervous tick as she’s trying to rein herself in before telling him.
I love how they're shot so tightly, all we see are their expressive faces, their eyes, everything written plainly there.
SCULLY: I saw something, Mulder.
MULDER: What?
SCULLY: The fourth victim. I saw her in the bathroom before you came to tell me.
MULDER: Why didn't you tell me?
SCULLY: Because I didn't want to believe it. Because I don't want to believe it.
MULDER: Is that why you came down here? To prove that it wasn't true?
SCULLY: No, I came down here because you asked me to.
MULDER: Why can't you be honest with me?
SCULLY: What do you want me to say? That you're right, that, that I believe it even if I don't. I mean, is that what you want?
MULDER: Is that what you think I want to hear?
SCULLY: No.
MULDER: You can believe what you want to believe, Scully, but you can't hide the truth from me. Because if you do, then you're working against me. And yourself. Now, I know what you're afraid of. I'm afraid of the same thing.
SCULLY: The doctor said I was fine.
MULDER: I hope that's the truth.
SCULLY: I'm going home.
I love that they’re actually talking about how all Mulder wants from her is the truth, good or bad. Yes, the stakes are heightened here, but this is what it ultimately comes down to. She knows, when she says “no,” that it was kind of a low blow, to ask Mulder if he just wants her to parrot back and agree with him. And she seems to realize in that moment that he DOES want her to talk to him, to tell him the truth, not just about things that happen, not just in the course of their work, but to tell him the truth about herself and what she’s going through. And she is unable to do that right now, and this may grieve her more than anything.
Now they’re both going home alone, where they’ll just lie in bed awake, alone, thinking about how she’s dying and about how they just can’t get their shit together and be honest with each other and I LOVE THEM and I want them to just, right now, curl up together under a blanket. Seriously. I want Mulder to run after her and take her home and they can just get under the covers and hug each other. This sounds so childish, but at this second, as she's walking away and Mulder's slouching against the wall, that is all I want for them.
You know, season 4 isn’t terrifically early or anything. At this point, we’re getting into sort of the sweet spot of classic Mulder and Scully, but when you think about their relationship as a whole? That they’ve been together now for 15 years? It’s amazing, watching this, how young and fragile and somehow tentative their partnership still is, and how far they’ve come.
I think Scully's crying is as much about her inability to let Mulder in as it is about her illness/possible death in general. I see it as her grieving for the fact that she can, you know, go tell a psychiatrist what Mulder means to her, but she can’t tell him.
