Does this remind anyone else of 'Irresistible'? That's kind of the vibe I got from 'Elegy', especially when Scully herself became involved in the case and experienced a strange connection to it that she wasn't entirely able to explain or deal with.
This was probably more straightforward than 'Irresistible' in that the perpetrator is a nurse so addicted to the drugs one of her patients is supposed to be taking that she commits these horrible crimes under their influence. Unfortunately, by taking the drugs herself, she ended up depriving the patient, Harold Spuller, of the treatment he needed, which ended up killing him in the end.
Again, like other episodes that hinge largely on horrible things humans do to each other, the X-File here isn't that important to solving the case. What's important, though, is that the paranormal aspect affects Scully herself, and is another reminder that she's apparently dying of cancer. And once again, as in 'Leonard Betts', we see some of Gillian Anderson's best acting.
We haven't seen Scully so scared until this season. I mean, yes, we've seen her reacting to terrifying situations, but this is a different kind of fear. It's a deeper, more personal fear now. And there's something about her very small, almost child-like reaction to it that really sells it for me. She just wants to go home. And probably curl into a ball and not deal with life.
She definitely doesn't want to argue with Mulder about what she saw, and she's clearly taken aback by his persistence at this point. He really should know better. The only people who saw any deaths in this episode were those who were dying themselves, and Mulder knew that and maybe should have been more understanding and sympathetic to what Scully is going through here. He was perfectly reasonable about it at the end of 'Leonard Betts' when he didn't know what was going on. And now that he does, he's back to challenging her skepticism.
I feel like that's the most important aspect of this episode. Not the case, not the secondary characters, but Scully. And the fact that she saw not one, but two recently deceased souls during it. I got kind of Sixth Sense vibe from this story. Like the dead or dying can somehow communicate with each other, but even if the "She is me" aspect is considered, there wasn't really much purpose to the spirits showing up, especially since Harold showed up at the end anyway, and what could he have told Scully that she didn't already know?
And speaking of haunting, at the moment Harold's spirit showed up behind Scully in her car, my girlfriend yelped and jumped off the couch. I wasn't that startled by the image of Harold in the car so much as the shock of the other person watching next to me.
What will be interesting is what happens when Scully is cured later on (I'm assuming she will be. I don't think the show is likely to drag out this plot that long, and I think the show is less likely even to kill her. She's in the movies, which I'm pretty sure aren't prequels.) because she saw the ghosts, which apparently could only be seen by people who are dying.
So I'm not really sure what that implies. Scully is dying but she isn't? She'll die and come back, like Buffy? But also, the deaths in this episode were fairly quick after people saw the ghosts.
In any case, I think this episode works pretty well as a case of the week, while still tying in somewhat to one of the main plot threads throughout the season. It's fairly typical, too. A big misdirect, then a confrontation with the actual villain.
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