Well, this was uncomfortable and kind of gross, wasn't it? 'Terms of Endearment' wasn't bad, just super uncomfortable all the time.
Here's a hint, people: if you don't want people to think you're up to something, don't act like you're trying to hide anything. It really never goes well.
Which is why, in the end, the more demonic Betsy Monroe is able to put one over on Wayne Weinsider, whose motives were very different from hers and who acted shifty throughout the episode. Well, his motives were, in fact, the opposite of hers. She wanted a demon baby while he wanted a normal one, and they were similarly aborting those before that did not meet their criteria for a successful pregnancy.
Sheesh, they could have solved this whole problem by having her adopt the demon babies and him and Laura adopting the human ones. Well, OK, so that would have introduced a whole other set of issues, but maybe more amusing than uncomfortable?
Because the way it played out has horrific implications. It's really way too close to the idea of aborting pregnancies for sex-selection or selection of other genetic traits. And not only that, in this case, the abortions (at least initially) were being performed by a man against the woman's will, which, no. Just no.
And of course, that woman is blamed for it, and accepts the responsibility. What century do we live in again? I know the real implication in the episode is supposed to be that the devil can trick anyone into believing anything, but otherwise, this comes off very badly. Worse, still, when Laura has her life? Her soul? Something sucked out of her mouth by Wayne. So now he's apparently a Dementor. I'm not sure why he returned it to her at the end, except that maybe that was involuntary? It wasn't entirely clear.
I remember being very skeptical of the plot involving abortion doctors back in 'Colony', because I was afraid the show would go to a very political place, which is kind of dangerous water to be treading, especially for a science fiction show that doesn't get overtly political. Like, I'd expect it on The West Wing, not so much here. But they didn't really delve into the abortion issue here, either, which I'm taking as a positive feature of the episode. I'm glad the writers didn't go there.
I suspected pretty early on in this episode that Wayne was the demon. It seemed way too obvious, but at the same time, that obviousness made the twist at the end work. I didn't catch on to how or why Betsy was able to stop him, but once they spelled it out, everything kind of made sense. Well, made sense in a way that only The X-Files can make it make sense.
The episode has a slight amount of the usual thread of Spender not really giving a shit about the X-Files, which I suppose was the exact reason he was assigned there, but here he seems especially apathetic to the case. Thankfully, Mulder is resilient and digs up the file and goes off to investigate it himself, because why not? It's not like he has anything more he cares about to lose at this point, right?
I think they'll have to resolve that at some point, but it might come at the end of the season. There's going to be a confrontation of some kind between Mulder and Spender or Skinner and Spender or something, and Kersh's treachery will be revealed and Mulder and Scully will be back on the X-Files and everything will be good and whole again.
Randomly, one of the things I observed in the episode was that Laura looked kind of old. They never specified how old she was supposed to be, but it looked like she didn't have other children, so she was supposed to be a young, excited first time mother to be. She looked about 45. And as it turns out, the actress playing her was about 45 at the time. So I guess I'm better at estimating people's ages than I thought?
Also randomly, Mulder, you're in a Taurus, he's in a Camaro. You aren't going to win a race against him. You'd probably be better off on foot, where you also would not outrun his car, but might actually be able to outrun a Taurus. (Apologies to Taurus drivers, but I've driven enough of them that I stand by my statement. Those things have no power whatsoever.)
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