Rewatch Extra: 5x06 The Post-Modern Prometheus
Happy 10/13!
FYI, Young Frankenstein is my favorite movie of all time.
I will never tire of the gorgeous black and white. Most people look better--more flawless, more glamorous--in black and white. But it just takes David and Gillian, who are both maybe at 8.5 out of 10 on a bad day, and cranks up their beauty even further.
When the credits started when it first aired, one of my friends called: “It’s supposed to be in black and white, right?”
The music is amazing. Calliope-inspired, a sideshow/fairytale mix. Which is entirely appropriate.
Jerry Springer! Listen, I’m not gonna lie. Junior and senior year of high school, I was a little obsessed with that show, so his appearance here was exciting. The topics were always completely off the wall, verging (and not so verging) on strange perversity, but Jerry always approached his guests with this almost cheerful bemusement. He was totally in on the joke and I loved that about him. (Also, the fights!) Part of my “senior prophecy” was that I would gain hundreds of pounds (after taking over the Couch Critic column in TV Guide) and my dream of becoming a “Springer Exclusive” would come true.
“Hey, why not just give him a razor and some shaving cream? I mean, he’s going to be shaving in a couple of years anyway.”
So why doesn’t Shaineh DO anything when Mutato comes in? She just sits there, all, “Who’s there?” I guess it follows the classic horror trope: no one ever takes sensible action when threatened.
Scully’s deadpan reading of Shaineh’s letter is hilarious. “I was in bed and could swear I heard Cher singing. The one who was married to Sonny.” “I got your name off the TV. Some lady on the Jerry Springer show who had a werewolf baby said you came to her house.” I’m a sucker for opening scenes where Mulder’s quietly driving while Scully somehow comes to understand the full scope and insanity of the case.
“But it was all hairy and stuff?” Her delivery cracks me up. But you know what, who can blame her? If I were talking to someone who had met a Springer guest, you can be sure I’d be all, “But he really wore diapers and baby bonnets all the time?” (Although, my high school drama teacher told me she knew people who’d “played” guests, which sort of burst my bubble.)
Shaineh: But as I told Agent Mulder on the phone, that’s what takes the cake.
Mulder: Mrs. Berkowitz had a tubal ligation two years ago.
Shaineh: You can’t plant a seed in a barren field.
Scully’s uterus: Hmmm….
“Do you drink, Mrs. Berkowitz?”
Scully is at her eye-rolling, bitch-face best here, but Shaineh isn’t even fazed by it.
Izzy is a hilarious dope: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
“Peanut butter sandwiches?”
“You think baloney would be more effective?”
Who doesn’t like peanut butter, Scully? It unites us with the Mutatos of the world.
“I am alarmed that you would reduce these people to a cultural stereotype. Not everybody’s dream is to get on Jerry Springer.” Speak for yourself!
I love how Mulder slouches on the hood of the car so he’s at eye level with Scully. I don't know if you noticed, but they're an adorable pair.
“But common sense alone will tell you that these legends, these unverified rumors are ridiculous.”
“But nonetheless, unverifiable, and therefore true in the sense that they’re believed to be true.”
This is kind of how I see this whole episode. I can’t quite reconcile it as something that ACTUALLY happened to them, but it sort of works as a legend, a fable, a tall-tale.
J. Peterman! I love, when Scully’s explaining the gene, he’s sighing: “If you two will excuse me, I really don’t have time for this.” It’s kind of hilarious, especially in the early to mid-years, to see people dismiss them like this. Because we build them up as people to be taken completely seriously, but the rest of the world has no patience for their clannishness or their meandering trains of thought.
So I see the idea of creating a Frankenstein monster fitting in two ways here. It’s certainly a theme within the show, and one that only gets stronger. People are creating and manipulating and hybridizing life. Scully and Mulder are both, at points, dabbled with. But then it’s also a meta idea that Chris Carter is clearly a bit enamored with: writing, creating a character, that’s a form of giving life to a Frankenstein monster, too. You cannot control either. The physical “monster” will not behave, whether it’s through escaping or rampaging or even a physical mutation that changes the desired effect. And neither will a character, despite your best intentions, an idea he refines in “Milagro.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I can.”
He’s in the traditional “mad scientist” mold, but it’s almost eerily refreshing that he’s so completely honest. He’s not cloaking his motives by pretending that he wants to help people. He’s basically saying, I want to be God.
Mulder: Well, then why do them at all?
Scully: To unlock the mysteries of genetics, to understand how it is that even though we share the same genes, we develop arms instead of wings. We become humans instead of flies or monsters.
Mulder: But given the power, who could resist the temptation to create life in his own image?
Scully: We already have that ability, Mulder. It’s called "procreation." And first thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to verify the pregnancy of Shaineh Berkowitz.
This is such an interesting exchange. Mulder’s first question seems like he would be “against” such experimentation. And then Scully’s answer, while couched in her role as the scientist, actually aligns with a Mulder POV: doing something to collect as much information as possible, to know the unknowable. And then Mulder sort of switches back, perhaps seeing that the kind of voracious appetite for truth/knowledge he has could be dangerous when applied to science, to genetics. Because as we’ll see in “Je Souhaite,” Mulder can’t resist a similar temptation to wield power. (Not that he wants it solely for the power, but I just find the two temptations similar. Even though he wants to make things better, “fixing” things with wishes is...god-like.)
Also, you guys, Scully loves talking clinically about human procreation to Mulder.
Donnie Pfaster would LOVE the Pollidori bedroom with its weirdo flower swags. I have never, ever understood the decorating scheme here. It reads well in black and white, but come on. What the hell?
“We got some monster grapefruits on the way. Bigger than your head, almost.”
“Christmas 1993!” Shaineh probably gets the most realistic parent lines of any character on this show.
Mutato is kind of version of Eddie van Blundht. Both are altering the states of their victims/themselves, creating a bizarrely “romantic” scene, but when it comes down to it, it’s rape. Period.
“Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves.” An awesome song. My friend Tom once made me a hilarious valentine in one of our classes that read, in part: “To [my last name]: a gypsy, a tramp, and a thief.” We think that I may have sung it the week before at karaoke, but certain collegiate memories are fuzzy.
Elizabeth Pollidori is carefully covered with a plain white sheet like she’s had a medical procedure done. It’s creepy.
David and Gillian are both ON during the scenes at the Pollidori house. As they’re overtaken by the smoke, they collapse onto the floor at the same time. And then when we see them next, they’re slumping at the kitchen table like a couple of kids who got drunk and are getting in trouble, but don’t even care because they’re so hungover that they just want to eat a giant plain bagel, drink a Sprite, and go to sleep.
Hey, more terrifying creepiness: Elizabeth is so desperate for a child that she thinks it’s exciting that she may have gotten knocked up by an intruder! WHAT. Although, not that the situation is EXACTLY the same, I think there are some unsettling similarities to Scully’s eventual pregnancy. I mean, she clearly thinks, even at the very beginning, in “Requiem,” that Mulder was involved, so it’s not like she woke up pregnant, not having had sex with someone. But she doesn’t know HOW. Her reaction is more nuanced, of course, and tinged with appropriate fear, but I can't help but make the comparison.
Oh, Mulder: “I think you know!” And then he promptly stands up for dramatic effect, only to totally stumble and crash. The story of his life.
“The other victims. They had their frying pans….violated.”
The fight between Pollidori and his father, with their locked silhouettes against the wall, is a really nice addition to the melodramatic style.
I love Duchovny’s delivery of “It’s alive.”
“I … have never acted to harm another soul.” Um…try again, Mutato.
Okay, so the implication is that Mutato and his father had a hand in the creation of all of the animal/people in town? And no one noticed? And no one ever had to get any kind of genetic test for any reason that might've cause a doctor to go, "Hey...."
“But in our trespasses, we gave you a loving son.” THAT IS FUCKED UP. Can we all agree on this?
“Hey. He’s no monster!” Except for the part where they raped your mother to create you, dummy. YOU ARE HALF-PIG, SIR. I understand that because you are half-pig, it might be difficult for you to understand, but TRY TO KEEP UP.
“This is all wrong, Scully. This is not how the story is supposed to end.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dr. Frankenstein pays for his evil ambitions, yes. But the monster’s supposed to escape to go search for his bride.”
“There’s not going to be any bride, Mulder. Not in this story.“
“Well, where’s the writer? I want to speak to the writer.”
Okay, so this is all well and good and cute and meta, but it does disturb me that Mulder has apparently absolved Mutato of his role in this debacle. In Mutato's speech, he seems to be saying that his FATHER is the one responsible for the animal people. But in the instances we’re privy to, Mutato himself is there, and judging from the babies that Shaineh and Elizabeth have at the end, he is the father. Because he raped them. We’re not talking mad science and test tubes anymore. So I would buy that Mulder would be disappointed that the “character” of the monster is not living up to its literary forbears, but I don’t buy that he thinks that Mutato should somehow deserve to escape and search for his bride. Sure, Mutato was originally a victim, created by Pollidori. But with his father, he perpetuated the crime. He is guilty. So it skeeves me out that we’re supposed to find Mutato somehow charming or cute. That we’re supposed to smile when Mulder high fives him at the end. I mean…what? High fives for rapists? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
And it’s all even MORE insane because “Christmas Carol” and “Emily” are next. “Who are the men who would create a life whose only hope is to die?”
BUT THEN, well, we get Mulder and Scully dancing, which totally makes me forget about the past forty minutes. (You’re not playing fair, here, Carter.) I adore how he sticks his arm out to her, his head down--sort of sheepish, and yet knowing that she’ll take his hand. And her face when she sees what he’s offering, she can’t quite believe it. She reaches her own hand out almost gingerly, like he might pull back. Oh, but he doesn’t. He just yanks her to him, pulling her flush to his chest. And the whole time they’re dancing, they give each other these “ooh, I like you” looks. It is a lovely, perfect ending. Well, that is, as long as you imagine, “Bad Blood”-style, Mulder saying over the credits, “Except for the part about the rape.”