I'm not really sure why they needed two episodes for a story that was extremely similar to a single episode they already did back in the fourth season, 'Paper Hearts'.
And like past episodes that dealt with Samantha's disappearance, I'm still not convinced that there was any actual closure here.
Question number one: Scully participated in seances in high school?
OK, now that that's out of the way. I guess I'm satisfied with the idea that Mulder at least thinks he can move on, but I'm still kind of disappointed because Samantha was the driving force behind almost everything he did in his life. What's going to keep him searching for the truth now that he's sure he has learned it?
There's a lot going on in these episodes, too. We have what looks like an 'ordinary' X-File kidnapping; Mulder's mother's apparent suicide; and of course, the Smoking Man getting in the way of pretty much everything ever.
So let's start with Teena. Her character was always kind of odd to me, because I was never sure how they wanted to play her relationship with Mulder. It was clearly strained for most of the series, but I think most of that came from how Mulder treated her regarding her possible involvement in Samantha's abduction. She was probably more or less innocent in the whole thing - she even said she hated their father for it. But by this point, she was the only person Mulder had left to even consider blaming, other than the obvious villains like the Smoking Man.
But when Scully discovers that Teena was dying from what sounds like a pretty horrific illness, it became clear that the suicide was pretty much a red herring. Just a matter of bad timing. Well, I suppose there's really never a good time to deal with losing a parent, is there?
Which brings us back to the main driving plot of the episodes.
We know that the kidnapping was anything but ordinary, but that doesn't stop Skinner from trying to shut down Mulder's investigation, and this parallels well to the Smoking Man having shut down the investigation of Samantha's disappearance. Of course, since we find out at least some of what happened to Samantha in this episode, given that she spent quite a lot of time with the Spender family, it makes sense that he'd have done that.
I do like that we got another rare confrontation between Scully and the Smoking Man. These two need to interact more. Angry Scully is more awesome than angry Mulder - angry Mulder is too child-like, but angry Scully means business. If anyone is going to kill the Smoking Man one day it won't be Mulder. Scully could actually manage to pull the trigger, I think.
And the Smoking Man is rather misguided. Mulder has always wanted the truth. Hiding it from him may have allowed him to continue pursuing it and uncover a whole bunch of other things in the process, but I don't think he necessarily wanted to know all those things. The one thing he did want to know was never answered. So I don't think the Smoking Man did it out of kindness, but out of cruelty, or at the very least a complete lack of empathy or compassion.
The idea of a guy who portrays Santa Claus at a Christmas themed park being a child molester and murderer is sadly, kind of unsurprising. I mean, yes, it's shocking how much he was able to get away with, but really, if you're the kind of sicko who targets little kids, what better way to gain their parents' trust than by being Santa Claus? Completely creepy and horrifying. I somehow doubt multiple murders would show up in a background check, since if anyone knew about them, he'd be in prison for ever, but still. It's disturbing that someone capable of that level of monstrousness could appear so ordinary and mundane as to not make anyone so uncomfortable that they might think twice about trusting their kids with him.
I mean, I know that happens all the time, too, which is even more disturbing, since at least this show is fictional.
But Santa wasn't responsible for Samantha's apparent death, at least not according to the psychic. And that's about as reasonable as it sounds, isn't it? I know Mulder is inclined to believe in things like psychic powers, and Scully's logic and reason kind of take a back seat in these episodes, but it also kind of turns out there's something to pretty much everything Piller says, so I'm not entirely sure whether he was being honest or if the whole thing was a setup.
I generally feel that most 'psychics' speak in vague enough language that anything they say can make sense in some context. And there's a heavy dose of confirmation bias involved in continuing to believe that the coincidences they've revealed are more than just coincidence. However, if he wasn't planted by the conspirators to specifically give Mulder just enough information to put his mind at ease, then we obviously haven't seen the last of the search for Samantha.
Either way, Mulder is led to believe, or understand if it's really true, that his sister is dead and that she's at peace. He's lost his entire family now, including his mother and sister in a matter of the last few days, and yet he claims to be free. At peace, like Samantha. Supposedly.
I'm still not convinced she's really dead.
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