OK, so here's yet another episode that, like 'Teso dos Bichos', depends at least a little bit on a tenuous interpretation of cultural or religious mythology.
And, like 'Teso dos Bichos', pretty much falls flat on its face.
Well, OK, at least there's a little bit more to analyse here than 'Teso dos Bichos'.
It's interesting watching this in 2013, because the obvious place my mind went when I watched them holding a raffle for either a prize of $2 million or getting their organs cut out was The Hunger Games. Only in this case, all the slips of paper had Katniss's name on them. The odds were never in these people's favour.
The tension almost worked there, except I couldn't really be made to care that much about the characters. Sure, Hsin's daughter is ill and will likely die without a bone marrow transplant, but that's about all the sympathy I can muster for any of the people participating in this horrible game. Yes, desperate people will do desperate things, but the whole concept seems contrived. How is it that this great number of people is so desperate for money that they are willing to risk their lives for the tiny chance to win it? Are there really no other resources available?
And it turns out one of the game's directors, a previous winner (hmm, more Hunger Games parallels - clearly this show was ahead of its time), is crooked and has rigged the game so that no one can ever win. He reminded me a lot of Cancer Man, too, especially since he's shown smoking a cigarette at the end and has a similar hairstyle and facial shape and manner and tone of voice.
Of course, the game being rigged turns out to be his undoing in the end, because Detective Chao upends the table revealing his secret to a whole lot of people who aren't exactly happy to be cheated out of their organs and lives. It kind of reminds me of the Angel episode, 'Double Or Nothing', where the customers at the casino turned on its proprietor, not because they learned he was cheating, but simply because they all owed him their souls or their money. Probably mostly souls. In Angel, I mean, not here. Here it was just organs.
And in this one, there was also a Fight Club aspect, in that the participants, despite their dissatisfaction with the game and its horrifying results, refused to testify. The first rule of Risk Getting Your Organs Cut Out Raffle is you do NOT talk about Risk Getting Your Organs Cut Out Raffle, apparently. I wonder what the second rule is.
Well, Chao clearly violated the rules, and it doesn't end well for him, either. Wow, this episode, apart from the story about Hsin and Kim, which is heartwarming at the end, is just full of awful people doing awful things to each other. Like some past episodes - 'The List' comes to mind - the difficulty in liking the characters makes it hard to enjoy the episode, especially since Mulder and Scully didn't even have to be there in the first place.
Because apart from the shaky cultural mythology, none of the action actually was paranormal. So why was it even an X-File? Because the club was so secretive and used existing mythology to try to cover up their dealings, so it appeared paranormal? Eh, let's go with that. It's all I've got.
And it's not like there was any tension for Mulder and Scully here, so from a perspective of the show itself, why the hell were they even there?
In other words, what was the point of this episode?
I'm going with 'filler'.
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