xgirl's x-files x-perience REVISITED

xgirl's x-files x-perience REVISITED

Saturday, 25 January 2014

7ABX07 - Orison [REVISITED]

Summary


I suspect that although this episode was intense to watch the first time, I'll have more and more to pick apart the more I re-watch it. It was strangely deja vu in bringing back shades of Pusher of all things — the mind control element — and it was extremely heavy-handed in portraying someone — whom we had been told at the end of Irresistible as being just the boy next door gone bad, a la Jeffrey Dahlmer — as a real demon who was "pure evil". Having Scully kill Pfaster like she did was dramatic, but it's another one of those instances where I thought, how nice that in the TXF world we can all stop here and not have to consider how this would be a truly BIG issue — not just emotionally and psychologically, but legally and professionally — in real life. That said, I have to give kudos for the way in which the climax of this episode was presented. Very unnerving. Even though the "Mulder making it just in time again" (although not to save the day in this case) is getting just a bit old, the way the confrontation scene played out was very effective in a technical sense.

Does your clock radio do this on occasion?
"Whosoever shedeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed."

I don't really have a lot to add to my original comments, but after Millennium, I am already very tired of dialogue that contains the word "whosoever" followed by a verb ending in "eth".

When Mulder was explaining Orison's "self-inflicted" cerebral edema, I half expected him to say, "Remember when I had that guy drill a hole in my head? Same thing..."

Apparently, Scully is a candle fetishist...


Picayune Peculiarities


Okay, so the song "Don't Look Any Further" would have been in mass release in 1984... Dana Scully would have been twenty years old at the time, not thirteen. I hate it when meaningless minutiae is provided that can't be backed up. And it's all just to create a story about young Dana being awakened to the concept that there's evil in the world.

Does Scully actually have a CD of this song cued up in her player, or was that just more "Godspeak"?

Actually, we wouldn't have had the dramatic climax had Scully been smart enough to run out of her apartment rather than stop to dial 911 (whose operators in wherever it is that she lives apparently don't respond to a dropped call). At least then she could have alerted some of her hearing-impaired neighbours who didn't respond to the ruckus at her place. That whole final sequence where Mulder drives all the way from his apartment to witness Scully's "last straw breaking" is simply not believable from a timeframe standpoint.


Best or Worst Moment


Sometimes, the part of me that identifies most closely with Mulder is his "what? that's religion?" skepticism. (And at the same time, I know it's also something that really bugs other people about him.) But like Mulder, I have very little patience for the religious sorts out there who want to have it "all ways and back again". To that end, I have to select that little bit of dialogue regarding "nutbags" and "Has he ever talked to you?" as my 'best reaction to a worst moment'. Scully truly chose to take it as a personal slight despite her reply, but give me a break — how many more times do we have to give credence to psycho maniacs who claim that they're performing the will of God?

Original Rating: * *
Revised Rating: * *

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