Oh fun, Krycek again. And the black oozing goo, now also known as the Black Cancer and the Black Oil. Perhaps it will reappear as Black Slime next season.
I think that but for the final reveal, this two-parter would have been largely just kind of blah. There seemed to be a lot of filler considering that the plot itself was more straightforward than many of the other two-part episodes we've seen.
So now there appears to be yet a new aspect to this mysterious black oozing goo, which is that it can apparently be contained by sealing people's eyes and mouths, but it causes them to remove the stitching and allow itself to escape? Or something? I don't even know any more. First it seemed to just take control of people and force them to do its bidding, then it just seemed to kill people, and now this. What's next, hallucinations? Innate ability to find large prime numbers to crack government encryption?
I suppose maybe we won't ever find out now that we know they have a usable vaccine against it, thanks to, of all people, Marita, who is now shown to truly be on the Death Eaters's side - I don't think there's any ambiguity there at this point. She was meeting with them and either she's very good with her words and can make them think she's one of them, or she actually is one of them. I figured she would be more neutral, given her position at the U.N. Either way, her infection allows them to test the cure that Krycek has brought from Russia.
There's also a more important story here, which is that apparently there's some kind of alien war going on that's now being fought on Earth against the Colonists. And that this is somehow not in the interest of our Death Eater friends. Because they want the aliens to overrun the people of earth? I guess maybe they've been promised high ranking positions in the aliens' administration.
And of course, the war is being carried out in the most horrific way possible, by burning to death the people who are previously connected to the government's large conspiracy to cover up the alien presence. That is, everyone with a chip in their neck. Or in their body somewhere, because apparently just removing the one from Scully's neck wasn't sufficient, since she was still summoned without even realising it. I bet the other implants are in her teeth. That's where everyone else's have been, right?
But perhaps most importantly, we meet the Spender family. Kind of an unfortunate thing to be named 'Spender', right? I'm sure Jeffrey got a lot of jokes about that when he was in school. It's probably one of the reasons he decided to be an FBI agent. Well, that and he's probably evil. I don't trust this kid. He shows up out of nowhere, his mother is a believer in alien abductions, and is clearly somehow a victim of the government's (or someone's) abduction and experimentation, and oh yeah, HIS FATHER IS THE CANCER MAN.
What.
Also, the Cancer Man is apparently recuperating from his injuries in the snowy mountains of Quebec. And presumably the impetus for him writing this letter to his son is his new outlook on life, and maybe his now strained relationship with the rest of his secret organisation, considering someone who must have been close to them tried to kill him.
And yeah, so I don't know what this does to my various other theories about the Cancer Man, since he was only shown, not named in this episode, but for the moment, I'll assume he's a Spender, as well. We'll call him Big Spender. I make this assumption because he's clearly aware of Jeffrey's existence and knows Jeffrey is his son, so it doesn't sound like a situation where he impregnated Cassandra and then disappeared without ever knowing about her son. I think he disappeared later. And went to Quebec. Because of course he did.
But it's not just this connection that makes me not trust Spender. Remember the last time a young new agent showed up? Yeah, that was Krycek. I'm just saying.
And speaking of Krycek, he's still doing his whole evil and threatening thing, but does try to tell Mulder about the war, though Mulder is now highly skeptical about any alien invasion.
The government's - or rather, the Death Eaters' - misinformation campaign worked. They've successfully thrown Mulder off their trail, or at least thrown him onto one that would be less damaging to them if he followed it to completion.
I like the role reversal, too, which we've only really seen a couple of times before. It's refreshing to see Mulder not blindly accepting every ridiculous theory about aliens, even though in this case, we know he's slowing down their investigation that should eventually lead to the discovery that aliens do exist, much like it often appeared Scully was before. Now she has little choice but to believe something, no matter how much Agent Spender tries to dissuade her from that belief.
Like she said, her mother wasn't feeding her abduction storylines, and as much as Mulder was, she never appreciated his descriptions and never believed what he was saying was true. Until she saw it with her own eyes. Which is, of course, how scientific skeptics work. We have to see it to believe it. Granted, she didn't entirely see it, but why would the hypnosis have drawn that out of her? And why would she have been with the others in Pennsylvania in the first place? That much is irrefutable, right?
Given that this is a shorter season than the previous four, I'm guessing we won't see any more episodes on this plot or any of the other alien-related plots until the finale. That seems to be the pattern, right?
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