I think this was a Christmas episode as only The X-Files can do it. It was also pretty amazing.
I really enjoyed the buildup in this one, especially the scene where Mulder and Scully found their own skeletal corpses under the floorboards, and I was all set to be disappointed that the ghosts were corporeal and could actually fire guns, when I realised, literally less than two seconds before Mulder did, that they weren't actually shot.
Holy shit that was a tense few minutes there. I mean, sure, I know they can't die - that would be weird, right? Both Mulder and Scully die in the beginning of season six and then the rest of the series is all about other people. Yeah, not so much. Still, I couldn't figure out how they'd get out of it. I initially thought maybe they'd both wake up in a hospital room with Skinner standing over them all, "What the fuck did you people do?" Which would have been pretty amusing.
But the real resolution is even better, because Mulder realises it's all in their heads. And while we're shown at the end that the ghosts were real and did interact with each other and the house, the whole mind game they played was entirely based on Mulder's and Scully's own fears.
And in the end, they really both have the same fear. They discussed it a little bit in Dreamland - what is a 'normal' life? And while Scully indicated that she thought the lives they led weren't entirely normal, Mulder expressed satisfaction with his own. And in the course of those two episodes, they learned a lot about themselves and each other and would have perhaps reached a point of realisation that there is more to their lives, even right in front of their faces, that they don't realise, except none of it actually happened.
It's OK, I'll get over it eventually.
But here they have an experience they do remember. Everything the ghosts tell them is true, coming from their own subconscious. And they share a fear of being alone. As much as Scully claims to want to go deliver the gifts to her family - and to be fair, she doesn't have a lot of family left, so I can see that desire being even stronger at this point - by the end of the episode, she's not entirely disappointed to have spent Christmas Eve with Mulder, even if it was a harrowing experience filled with self doubt.
This can only eventually progress towards the actual reality of Mulder/Scully, right? I mean, sure, she got him porn for Christmas (the package is shaped like a VHS tape, so I'm going with porn, because we know Mulder very well at this point, though it's probably intended to be a sports video of some kind) and he got her something phallic in shape, though I doubt that much was intentional, it's just an unfortunate aspect of the package's shape in this case.
But let's say we assume for a moment that he did get her a wildly inappropriate gift and she did get him a porn tape. There's a tremendous amount of symbolism there, since both of those items tend to be used by people in solitary activities. And I know I'm deriving symbolism about their loneliness from gifts they didn't actually give each other, but still.
Mulder and Scully would be alone if it weren't for each other. They both know it, and they both fear it, they just haven't found the right way to express it to each other. Scully's remaining family don't exactly accept her new found positions on things she's seen, or her apparent loss of her Catholic faith, and Mulder's not really close to his mother any more, after making some horrible accusations out of fear and paranoia.
Again, they are the only people in the world who can each understand the other. There is no one else for Mulder and Scully but the other one, and it's only a matter of time before that becomes reality on the show.
I hope.
Also, I don't think I can really finish this post without pointing out how brilliant Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin were. For one thing, they were the only two other people in the episode. A cast of four. Has there ever been an episode of The X-Files with that few people in it? But also, in addition to being well written, their roles really worked for them and could only have been pulled off by them. I guess one side-effect of the show moving to Los Angeles is the end of their policy of only hiring lesser-known actors. Because when they were in Vancouver, they tended to go for up and coming Canadian actors.
Even so, and as much as this episode was primarily about Mulder and Scully, it still wouldn't quite have come off without the performances of Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin, or with less established replacements.
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