"Hey, remember when we wrote that episode, 'Home' in season four? Let's do that again." -surely someone on the writing staff who forgot how horrifically disgusting that episode was.
The concept of 'Roadrunners' was a little bit intriguing, but like the last episode, they again failed to really make it a true X-File. There's no investigation as to the origin of the creature, or really even any investigation at all. Scully's just stranded and has to escape. And that's the story.
I thought it was certainly suitably creepy and generally played like a horror movie, but other than grossing out the audience, what was the point?
I'm glad, at least, that it's Mulder who seems to have left the show and not Scully. Back in the few episodes they made in seasons one through seven that Scully didn't appear in, I always thought they were kind of pointless and often pretty bad, but the couple of times Scully appeared without Mulder were reasonably good. I guess now, though, without Mulder there at all, we can't go from a somewhat creepy Scully episode like 'Roadrunners' and expect at least that the next episode might return us to some of the banter between them we've come to enjoy for the past seven seasons.
Which tells me the writers don't necessarily know why people watch this show. And maybe I'm different already - maybe people really just watched it for the suspense and didn't care that much about the characters. But given how iconic I know Mulder and Scully have become, I somehow doubt that, at least not entirely. Maybe, though, they really did intend for people to be interested mostly in the story rather than the characters, and it just happened that the characters were good.
Again, this season is really confusing to me.
Atmospherically speaking, this wasn't a bad episode, even if the story itself wasn't really much of a story and more of just an escape. The worm thing (banana slug, apparently - remind me never to go anywhere near where such things live) was definitely creepy, and the disturbing effect of watching it - sorry, him - squirm around in Scully's and Redshirt's backs was right up there with the Flukeman in terms of nightmare fuel.
But so much is left unanswered. Were these people all infected with similar creatures? I would assume not since at the end it was indicated that even once it was dead, they were still steadfastly holding to their beliefs. So it wasn't a 'Bad Eggs' kind of situation, which is what I suspected it might have been initially.
Everyone was acting rather strangely, though. I mean, it's not like cults aren't creepy on their own, but the fact that all the members of this one had such a strange manner to them - also, this took place in Utah, are the writers subtly making fun of Mormons?
Oh, and Scully, I know you believed Hank was an innocent victim, but maybe you should have guessed he was being controlled by that thing and NOT GIVEN HIM YOUR GUN? We've been over this before, Scully. Sometimes you are really really bad at being an FBI agent.
For that matter, maybe you also should have figured out exactly where you were going and how much gas it would take to get there before driving out into the middle of the desert and hoping to count on the kindness of strangers. Because that really worked out great.
That said, I don't think she necessarily needed to take Doggett with her, as he suggests (or insists) at the end of the episode. I think he kind of crossed a line in berating her like that. He doesn't know her, and as far as I know, she doesn't work for him, so really, the lecture is more than a little inappropriate. It's not like she expected this to happen, right?
However, there was this gem of a line:
"Please. This is such a wonderful, wonderful thing... for you... and your unborn child. That last man just wasn't a suitable tabernacle. The thing of it is there's always the chance that your body won't fail him... that he'll be in you forever."
Emphasis mine. If that wasn't intended as a reference to 'Home' then I don't even know what to think any more.
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