Another good episode? What is happening?
This, more than any recent episode, had a very Fringe-like feel to it. A straight up investigation, a race against time, and holy shit this was a fucking horror movie.
A really intense, really well paced horror movie.
I've mentioned the pacing of episodes in the past being a problem. Often it's the difference between a great episode and a stinker, or a good episode and a great one. 'Medusa' got going right away, and revealed just enough information at just the right times to keep the tension going and to enable the viewers to figure out what was going on without being completely obvious. In fact, I actually came up with an incorrect theory during the episode. And a correct one, moments before Scully did, but it's not like I figure it out in the first five minutes, which is always a plus.
The action got going pretty much immediately. As soon as Doggett and the rest of the team were down in the tunnel, the episode became quite scary. I like stories that take place in a confined space, especially one in which there's an enemy of some sort trying to escape that space in a way that will be tremendously catastrophic.
I don't know who the real villain was here, because it really seems the MBTA ('Subway'? Really? No one in Boston calls it that) people were mostly just bureaucrats with misplaced priorities. I don't think they were intentionally covering up the existence of the medusas, but they were certainly obsessed with getting the trains running on time.
Which leads me to a slight tangent. I'm glad this happened in Boston and not say, D.C. The D.C. Metro goes completely haywire if someone sticks an umbrella in the doors. I can't imagine what would happen if there was a giant colony of highly conductive saltwater creatures living in one of the tunnels. You can be sure there would be lots of delays and poorly run shuttle buses and overcrowded platforms, though.
So, yeah, more incompetent bureaucracy than deliberate criminal activity. There was a coverup of the aftermath and of the problem in the first place, but it sounds like the management didn't really know or care what was causing it, just that it couldn't get out because that would affect the trains. Nope, can't have that! Thankfully, Scully did and I have to say, I love seeing her in charge. I also like that despite her general respect for authority, Scully cannot tolerate people abusing their authority, as Karras does throughout this episode.
But let's also not discount the actual science in the episode. I mean, yes, science fiction, but for a change this season, we're shown some actual analysis that leads Scully to a reasonable conclusion. Granted, it's not exactly a conclusion she can do very much with, but that's been the case with many episodes. At least we got a pretty good idea of what was going on, how it got there, how they got rid of it, and how it activated when people came in contact with it. (Brilliant, really, having sweat be the trigger, considering they're all down in the hot tunnel and completely terrified of what's out there. Sounds like a formula for lots of sweat to me.)
And in that resolution - actually, throughout the story - we had a good bit of Scully and Doggett working as a team, and he even mentions that at the end, giving Scully more credit than he probably would otherwise want to, but it feels like they're really interacting on a good level here. He's spent so much of this season being very abrupt and forceful towards her - to be fair, their first introduction did result in a cup of water being thrown on him - but I feel like now he's maybe starting to understand what it is they're doing and what they're up against.
It's not that different from the FBI, in a way. At the FBI, Kersh is the bureaucrat who wants everything done his way. That is, he's insisting that the trains will run on time, and if the X-Files can co-exist with that, everything's great. And I think Doggett may have just realised that.
Especially coming off 'The Gift', where I felt that Doggett was finally reaching a point where he was starting to 'get' the X-Files. But now this conversation with Scully shows that he may be starting to appreciate what she's capable of and understand exactly what it is she does every day at her job, and that when she does something Kersh doesn't like, it's because of that, not because she's trying to undermine his authority or the workings of the FBI.
And she clearly appreciates his work here, too, and acknowledges it. I still prefer Mulder, obviously, but these episodes definitely becoming more tolerable from a character standpoint.
No comments:
Post a Comment