Hey, it's 'Fresh Bones' without the racism. And that's not really much of a compliment.
I wasn't really sure, at first, what was meant by 'Theef'. The most obvious answer, and what we found out in the episode, is that it's just a misspelling of 'thief'. I was kind of hoping it had some other significance.
This was definitely one of the more terrifying plots of any episode, given that no matter how safe people tried to be, there was really no escaping Peattie's magic, provided he had a picture of them and one of their hairs. This whole 'magic' thing is kind of unfairly broken, isn't it? I mean, being able to do harm to people remotely without giving them a chance to defend themselves is pretty damn low.
And hey, speaking of that whole "he needed a picture" thing, Scully, we need to talk. You are an FBI agent. Usually, you are a pretty damn good FBI agent. So why the hell would you just leave your badge in your car while you accompany the people you're protecting into their house? Sure, I don't expect you to be worried about dark magic, but there are plenty of mundane but still dangerous things someone could do if they got their hands on your badge.
I'd say I hope she learned her lesson, but there was so much else going on, and what she was going through in the house was traumatic enough without it having to be somehow instructive.
Still. Take your badge with you next time.
The main issue, though, and one I wish the episode had actually spent a little more time on, is the very complicated medical issue of easing a dying person's pain, especially in a manner that may accelerate their death. Because that's what Peattie is angry about. He feels his daughter was robbed of 20 minutes of her life because Dr Wieder concluded he could not save her, but he could at least reduce her suffering until she died.
I don't think the doctor's intent was at all to kill her, though I'm sure her father would disagree with that assertion, as well. He saw it as a willful act of murder. And even if the doctor had intentionally accelerated her death, I would at least argue that a case can be made that was the most compassionate thing to do anyway.
And Scully even admits that she would have done the same thing in Dr Wieder's position. I don't think it's quite as clear cut as Mulder seems to believe, and Scully agrees, but the question in the episode is whether Peattie was powerful enough to save his daughter. Given that he was using his daughter's body as his charm to strengthen is violent magic, I would say probably not. Plus, we only ever saw him use his magic for evil, never as a positive force.
Another interesting thing about this episode is that it's oddly the second in the series to discuss a neurological disease caused by cannibalism, the first being season two's, 'Our Town'. I guess the writers heard about it and found it so unusual and disturbing they just had to reference it as much as possible.
One of the things I really did like in this episode, or at least thought would be interesting at first, was the usual banter between Mulder and Scully. Obviously, when Scully confirms Mulder's suspicion about hexcraft at the beginning of the episode, he's surprised, but I'm really not. She's talking about the intention, not the effectiveness. And it's certainly a fact that someone who believed such magic were possible would take certain steps to execute it. Even the skeptical Scully can see that, though that's probably where her willingness to accept it ends. (At least until she's a victim of it herself and pretty much has no choice but to accept it.)
But Scully keeping Mulder guessing was a fun little sub-theme in 'Theef'. It started out innocently enough with Mulder believing she would wonder what the hell they were doing there - and to be fair, I think "Why is this an X-File?" is pretty much the same thing as "Why are we here?" provided the emphasis is on the word 'we' in that question.
And I suppose she keeps us guessing, too, because we never find out for sure whether she came to believe she and the others were victims of a magic hex or not.
I say she did, because dammit, it's well past time for her to start actually believing some of this stuff.
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