Summary
I think this one had huge promise but fell into a "hole of unresolvable complexity", an outcome that befell many mythology efforts in the years following. I liked how this one started; the teaser was tempting, as it should be. I liked the story angle with Mulder's mother (yeah, even the bit leading to the totally improbable discovery of that alien weapon in the lamp). The return of the alien bounty hunter and the multiple Jeremiah Smiths took me back to Colony (where we saw the duplicate doctors), which I thought offered significant continuity. The confrontation sequence between Mulder and CSM, and then later the much more violent one between Mulder and X, were both emotionally intense to watch. But after all that — and perhaps my real problem is with how the second part of this two-parter plays out — we got no real answers and the ones that we did get did not really relate to the questions that were asked.
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| Jeremiah Smith finds Agent Scully's apartment |
Why doesn't Mulder try the same place where he found CSM back in One Breath? I'm pretty sure he hasn't moved out of his dingy apartment, has he?
Speaking of One Breath, as I watched this, I felt like screaming out Fox Mulder's words from that episode (originally directed at Melissa Scully): "You're not saying anything to me!" If you pay close attention to the dialogue — and I don't really care that some of it's an homage to the Brothers Karamazov's Grand Inquisitor sequence — you'll get really frustrated that people are just talking in circles. And of course, every once in awhile, someone dangles the "Samantha carrot"...both CSM and Jeremiah Smith do this. Are we supposed to believe that all of a sudden the "plam thing" is what is important to everyone here... and that Ma Mulder was actually trying to reveal the location of said item when she wrote "PALM"? If that was the case, are we being told that she knew about "The Project"? I mean, it made for interesting viewing back in the day when I first saw this (Mulder making one of his ingenious leaps and then smashing lamps inside the house to ultimately find the alien weapon), but talk about reaching!
Picayune Peculiarities
So not only is Scully easy to find, apparently Jeremiah Smith even knows why he wants to find her. After all, apparently, the Jeremiah Smith who came to her apartment was not the one that she ran into at the front foyer of the Hoover Building. Did ABH or CSM tell this Jeremiah Smith that Scully is the one that he should seek out for assistance if he should escape... even if it meant calling at her door at one in the morning?
I've made comments in the past about the "stupid aliens" and here is another complaint: bad enough that the cloned dudes all looked alike and worked in the same field (even same department, same job with the Jeremiah Smiths), but couldn't they at least have different names in that case? The identical abortion doctors from Colony had different names.
One last thing: what is so special about the plam that it can't be replaced with another sharp, pointy thing (see Unruhe). As we will see in the next episode, good aim is probably more important than the weapon itself.
Best or Worst Moment
Okay, that does it... Scully must have her address listed in red and bold in the yellow pages under "FBI Agents". Yes, it surely isn't impossible for Jeremiah Smith to find out where she lives, but the "strange people finding Scully's apartment" is such an overused plot device that I must take this opportunity to protest.
Original Rating: * * *
Revised Rating: * * *
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