The X-Files Season 2, Episode 8: One Breath

Dear The X-Files,

Please save some good episodes for your later seasons. How can you possibly top this?

Seriously, this season, only 8 episodes in, is incredibly dense with amazing episodes.

However, one minor issue I had, and not with the show, was with my own timing in watching it. I know that Scully sticks around. I know she cannot possibly die in this episode. But I have to assume that people watching in 1994 might have thought otherwise, and this episode would be a lot more tense for them.

I've watched 'One Breath' three times now, and rewritten this post about six. There is a LOT to say about this very dense and important episode, and I think breaking it up by character is going to work the best.

The story in 'One Breath' is essentially told through Mulder's eyes. It's one of the few episodes so far whose story is driven entirely by events more or less internal to Mulder and Scully and people close to them, as opposed to some outside event that must be investigated. And Mulder has important conversations and interactions with many of the other important characters at the time.

Margaret Scully

Scully's mother has given up hope. Based solely on the air dates of 'Ascension' and 'One Breath', we're talking about a matter of no more than a few weeks, since the show seems to mostly exist in real time. And as of the cold open, this is before Scully herself has even been found. She's just missing.

Margaret surely knew the risks of her daughter's chosen profession, and so maybe that convinced her that in this line of work, there was nothing so simple as 'missing', but that it would make the most sense to assume the worst.

She had also just recently - within the last year - lost her husband, very suddenly and tragically. Even once Dana reappeared at the hospital, her mother seemed willing to give up, I think mostly because she regretted not getting the chance to say good-bye to her husband. She wasn't going to lose that chance with her daughter, and it may have been easier to say good-bye rather than hold on to some slim hope that she would recover.

Plus, like with most things in life, you often get what you want not by trying hard for it, but by accepting your current situation. She had accepted that Dana was lost.

All that said, what's she going to do with the carved headstone that now indicates 1994 as the year of Dana's death? Imagine that scene:


MARGARET: Oh, Dana, you're awake! It's so good to have you back, we got you a present!
DANA ...

Melissa Scully

I'm having a little trouble with Melissa's storyline here, because in one scene, she's shown trying to communicate with Dana and explaining herself to an oddly skeptical Mulder, but in another, she calls death perfectly natural and laments the fact that humans hate to look on it or witness it, so they hide it in bleak hospitals behind dark curtains.

I do agree that we, as humans, have a tremendous fear of death. It's only natural, since it's something that no one can experience and then describe to the living. But Mulder is right - even though death may be natural, and even though Scully's apparently imminent death may be a natural process given her current condition, that condition may be unnatural.

And Melissa won't hear any of it. I think it makes sense considering her spirituality. She accepts death, and accepts her own and her sister's mortality.

Mulder here is acting more like Scully normally does - he won't accept it until he can understand exactly why it is happening.

The Lone Gunmen

I feel like this scene was a little out of place in such a relatively non-sci-fi episode, but I get why it's there. Here is yet another group of people, and one that Mulder may be more inclined to believe than anyone else, who are telling Mulder there is nothing he can do for Scully.

X

The plot line with X is perhaps the most fascinating of the episode. X is definitely not Deep Throat. He doesn't want to get that close - close enough to get himself killed.

But then, after killing the blood thief in the hospital laundry room, he manages to somehow orchestrate, with the help of Skinner, Cancer Man, and a mysterious woman we've never seen before (also, welcome to the 1990s, cigarette vending machine in the hospital), a confrontation between Mulder and Cancer Man, along with a break-in at Mulder's home.

The break-in is most interesting, because we see that X was telling the truth about it, though I can't say for sure what his actual intent was with it. Was he using it as a way to get rid of Mulder? Or did the people who took Scully pose a threat to him, too? Or were the people breaking in even the same people? I could see that all being a setup, using expendable people to give Mulder the impression he was getting his revenge, but preserving the rest of the conspiracy.

I don't think X was in on Scully's abduction, but he definitely is aware of more than he's letting on, despite giving Mulder just enough information to get himself killed.

WHAT ELSE DO YOU KNOW, X?

Skinner

Skinner's story is interesting, and his refusal to accept Mulder's resignation is very telling about how he really feels about both Mulder and the Cancer Man, along with the X-Files.

I don't know which side he's really on, though. He does seem to be playing both sides, but given his sudden change in attitude towards Cancer Man, specifically his smoking in the office, I'm inclined right now to think he really is a good guy, and hasn't been bought or bribed or blackmailed by the shady organisation that Cancer Man is involved in.

His story about his time in Vietnam describes someone who is a 'True Believer' having his faith shaken. And now, while he may not believe as fully in that cause any more, it gave him perspective on life, which is that life is always in danger. And now, as a True Believer in justice, and the work he does to achieve it, he is willing to make choices and bets that could endanger his own life in the pursuit of justice.

He, like Cancer Man, has chosen Mulder, not for manipulation, not as some sort of game, but out of respect. And like X, he sees a part of himself in Mulder, and won't let him give up just because a decision he made may have endangered Scully's life.

He believes Mulder is a good agent, and for all we know, he may also think that Mulder does have the ability to unravel this great conspiracy that's consuming the FBI and other presumably agencies.

I'm not sure that necessarily means there are good things in Skinner's future, but he seems to be very accepting of his own mortality.

Cancer Man

I don't believe for an instant that Cancer Man actually lives at 900 W. Georgia St. (And not just because it doesn't exist - there's a 900 Georgia Ct. NW in Washington and a 900 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, MD, but there is no such thing as a W. Georgia St.) I also don't believe he typically spends his evenings watching old movies and drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Well, OK, smoking cigarettes, definitely.

But he's got power ('some', in his own words) and he's not afraid to die or kill for his cause. His cause in which he is a 'True Believer'. Mulder, though, has some lingering skepticism, not about paranormal activity of course, but an increasing paranoia and distrust of the powers at the FBI and elsewhere in and near the government. And, as Cancer Man puts it, "that's why I'll win." Mulder is not a True Believer. At least not yet.

The entire confrontation appears to have been set up to help Mulder personally, because it seems both Skinner and Cancer Man knew him well enough to know he'd never actually kill anyone. And in the end, the person he has learned the most about through his interactions with X, Skinner, and Cancer Man has been himself.

Scully

So we still don't know where she was or what happened to her, but she's awake and seemingly more or less recovered. She can't remember what happened to her, but that's fine - at least we don't have to deal with a long running amnesia plot, right?

The scene between her and her father is fairly clear cut, but I'm really unsure of the significance of Nurse Owens. Why and how did Scully visualise her in her dream state? Who or what is she supposed to represent?

Her only interaction with Mulder is entirely from his perspective, as he doesn't seem to appear in any form in her dream other than in the background. But she later tells him she had the strength of his beliefs, so in whatever mental state she was in between life and death, she always knew he was there.

Mulder, or Tying Everything Together

I'm with Mulder at the beginning - how did Scully arrive at the hospital? Who found her? How was she brought in? Why is she in a coma? I love his rage here. He wants answers and everyone is unable to give him any, or worse, is being intentionally obtuse.

And the same is true when he breaks in to Cancer Man's 'home'. His anger is a thing to behold, but he still doesn't get answers, only more questions.

But the one consistent thread, from Scully's family, from X, from the Lone Gunmen, from the doctor, from Cancer Man, and from Skinner, is that everyone is telling him there is nothing he can do but move on.

I am still trying to unravel exactly what was going through Mulder's head between Melissa's visit to his apartment and returning to find the place ransacked. I think his breakdown can be interpreted in a number of ways, in fact - he's not just upset about Scully, and I don't know that he's entirely upset because he missed his opportunity to confront her abductors. I think he was hoping, or at least willing to join her in death. He and X both had to know that Mulder alone against a group of attackers would face long odds. He's mad with grief because he thinks he lost Scully and because he got nothing else in return - neither death nor revenge.

But his smile when he answers the phone and finds out that Dana is awake shows that none of that was really important in the grand scheme of things. While justice, and maybe even revenge, could still be important, he has Scully back, and now nothing else matters. And when she tells him she had the strength of his beliefs, I thought, as he held out her cross to her, that he would respond in kind, that he had the strength of hers, though I suppose it's kind of implied, since he spent the entire episode investigating and being generally skeptical of everything anyone told him.

Scully's recovery allowed Mulder to believe again, and in the mean time, he's got just barely enough information to maybe start connecting some other dots.

Given the nature of Scully's disappearance and subsequent injury and near death experience, I doubt the show will get 'back to normal' immediately. There will likely be some aftermath of her having been in the hospital, but I'm hoping it's only an episode or two before she and Mulder and back to working on the X-Files together.

And I'm betting the next episode will be a bit of a letdown, even if it's an otherwise good episode. I'd say, "...much like '3' after 'Ascension'," except '3' wasn't a good episode, so it was a letdown in a lot of ways.