Summary
An effectively executed story about one of TXF's creepiest villains, Donnie Pfaster. (Too bad when they picked up the thread in season seven's Orison that they made a mess of it.) A significant part of why this story worked was because of people's reactions to a rather nondescript man. We had a sympathetic small town cop overwhelmed by the sadistic nature of this guy, we had frightened street walkers fearing for their lives (and this is always an interesting angle because we tend to think that hookers are expected to face danger on a daily basis), and we had Mulder thinking that he's just there to provide a bit of profiling advice, waiting for the right moment to dismiss it as not being an X-File and then taking his partner out to a football game. Who would have thought that the usually cool and collected Dana Scully would do the big "freak out" thing, seek professional help, and then end up being the final victim of this sickie? (And yes, the contrived manner in which that came about prevents me from rating this one higher.)
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| A watershed moment in the Mulder & Scully relationship |
And therein lies the inability of Dana Scully to trust her partner fully.
In the midst of the sick freakshow that is known as Donnie Pfaster, it was refreshing to have a guy like Moe Bocks to balance the scales. He's likeable and open-minded. Just a normal, small town cop (he's FBI) who's not above considering strange possibilities like aliens and UFOs but finds it hard to comprehend how a seemingly ordinary guy can do what Pfaster has been doing.
But as gruesome as this [non] X-File is, it's really not the true focus of this episode for the committed viewers among us. Which, when you think about it, makes this a rather successful episode, as the casual viewer is engrossed in (and grossed out by) the subject matter while the rest of us see Mulder contemplate losing Scully yet again. Worse yet, all of this may have been a result of a frivolous whim of wanting to attend a football game on Bureau bucks.
On Scully's side of the coin, while she tells Dr. Kosseff she trusts Mulder with her life — and here's the fanfic writer in me poking her head out for the first time in over a decade — her words and actions indicate that she doesn't sufficiently trust him in her life. (I've already said as much in my Crossing Lines story.) We are shown in various ways throughout the series how emotionally open Mulder is to Scully, but it takes another four years for Scully to show this side of herself to Mulder again.
Picayune Peculiarities
Uh... when Mary Richards lived in Minneapolis in the 1970s, I got the feeling that it wasn't as big and cosmopolitan as New York City, but when did it become the Hicksville that's depicted here? People don't lock their doors and highways leaving the airport are so empty that cars can be run off the road? Aw, shucks...
Best or Worst Moment
This one's easy — gotta be that scene when Scully freely lets her guard down in front of Mulder, without thinking about it. (After all, there's perhaps all of two instances of that really happening in this entire series — here and in season six's Milagro.) DD's reaction work was bang-on as Mulder must have been seized by ten different emotions all at once in that moment.
Original Rating: * * *
Revised Rating: * * *
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