The X-Files 2x15: Fresh Bones
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tori_reviewsThe X-Files 2x15: Fresh Bones
This is a really terrible episode. I watched it through, I wasn’t doing crafts or anything, but absolutely nothing about it stuck with me. This was the beginning of the end for my last rewatch, and I think it was probably because this episode is so bad.
Nothing about this episode makes sense, even in its own logic. The *refugees* are desperate to go back to Haiti, but aren’t being allowed to by the US government? Plenty of people see ghost-kid running around, many of whom must know he’s a ghost, but no one reacts to that; not even New Orleans guy who clearly knows but doesn’t tell Mulder and Scully? Also, ghost-kid can buy fries and make protection fetishes? Who put the dog in the morgue? Who put the thorns in the car? Why did the general bury the main guy only to dig him back up?
About the only interesting thing in this episode is that I must have subconsciously figured out who the guy who plays X is; I still couldn’t tell you what his name is, because I don’t consciously know it, but while the opening credits were rolling I found myself thinking ‘hmm, it occurs to me it’s been a while since we’ve seen X, he’ll probably show up in the arc episodes though.’ We also haven’t really seen any of the rest of the supporting cast in the same amount of time, so why X would be the one that occurred to me again signals the actor knowledge is somewhere in my brain. Then again, why he’s in this episode makes no sense; probably just to remind people he exists before the arc episodes; X isn’t like Deep Throat who would pop up at the strangest times in s1; or like Skinner that we just assume has been around but we’re not seeing. But he does only have a handful of lines here, in a scene that doesn’t have impact on the rest of this story.
Also, do any of Mulder’s big contacts ever give Scully the respect she deserves? When I noted that Deep Throat largely didn’t, I couldn’t remember if the trend continued; and at the start I wasn’t sure with X, he only made contact with Mulder but it was clear that he understood Scully to be part of the equation. And to be entirely fair, we haven’t seen him since One Breath, we don’t really know how those events impacted his opinion of Scully’s role in events going forward. But it would have been interesting to have him do something to help Scully in this episode, I’m not sure what, but it would have been something interesting in this story.
Are we saying it’s aliens?
Voodoo magic and possibly zombies, also ghosts again
Who’s driving?
Some of both, maybe Scully a bit more than Mulder
The gang that’s here
Mr. X reminds us that he exists, and is apparently the only thing I found worth commenting on.
How crazy does Mulder sound?
He keeps walking in and questioning people about voodoo and how it might have been used to kill people. He definitely isn’t keeping his crazy confined to Scully’s ear this time.
Scully’s convenient miss of the week
Scully got drugged by poison thorns (how they got in the car is still a question, but I’m confident in a scientific explanation for what was happening to her, there were no spirits involved in that) so she stayed in the car while Mulder when out to see someone rise from the grave. Though, seeing as that had already happened once this episode it still probably could have been explained. She does not attempt to offer an explanation for ghost-kid.
So it looks like I had pretty different feelings last time, or at least feelings beyond boredom.
2x15: Fresh Bones (2016 thoughts)
(Previous status: pretty sure I haven’t seen it)
I find this a weird scheduling choice, to have two magic episodes back to back like this. I also wasn’t looking forward to it and mostly had to remind myself that once I was done with it I could get on to the arc episodes. But I actually feel it was a little better than the last one as it actually had something of an identity that the last ep kind of didn’t as far as I was concerned.
Admittedly my thoughts on this were more a series of momentary thoughts rather than much in the way of overall thoughts. For one, I was very concerned about the fact that you could clearly see people’s breath in the scenes in the brig, so much so that I found those scenes a bit hard to follow as I really wanted someone to turn the heat up. I’m pretty sure that treatment can’t be acceptable, and I’m a little conflicted about the fact that it doesn’t get remarked on, because it may have been intended to make it obvious people were being mistreated so didn’t need to be commented on, but I’m not sure that logic hold sound as it probably was filmed in a cold Vancouver warehouse. And it may have only been so obvious in HD and wouldn’t have been intended to be obvious at the time.
I think the main plot makes sense (in terms of TXF logic), but I think a lot of the details don’t hold together. Why was the commander keeping a bunch of bones in his office? How had he cleaned them so quickly without anyone finding out? Why was he digging up another body at the end when he could have blamed everything on the dead guy before that (assuming anyone believed voodoo did it)? Why did X even bother to show up for this? I may allow the episode to take a stroke with the younger guy not pointing out that they were talking to a ghost in that he may not have recognized specifically which kid they were talking to, but it is a flaw. Isn’t the point of refugee camps because people can’t go back to their homeland, so why are they asking to and why aren’t they allowed to on this end?
I still don’t think there’s a ton of character material here. I’m not sure the writers have any idea what to do with Scully’s character. They still basically refuse to let her outright see anything, but they write her like she pretty much believes in this stuff anyway. She may be vaguely skeptical in that she doesn’t jump to the same conclusions though, but with the trouble they go to keep her from seeing proof I’d expect her to actually deny those ideas and she basically doesn’t. In my memory that was always her role, but I’m starting to think I may just have understood that to be her role and taken it at face value without realizing that’s not how they actually write her.
I have even less to say about Mulder. He was there. He’s very casually handsy with Scully, and while she’s okay with it she’s less handsy with him at this point. How does the end get explained when Mulder insists it was the dead guy and the only other explanation is Mulder killing people? He’d probably get away with it, but he might have gotten looked into over it.
Though hey, this episode didn’t involve rape, thus ends the streak.
This is a really terrible episode. I watched it through, I wasn’t doing crafts or anything, but absolutely nothing about it stuck with me. This was the beginning of the end for my last rewatch, and I think it was probably because this episode is so bad.
Nothing about this episode makes sense, even in its own logic. The *refugees* are desperate to go back to Haiti, but aren’t being allowed to by the US government? Plenty of people see ghost-kid running around, many of whom must know he’s a ghost, but no one reacts to that; not even New Orleans guy who clearly knows but doesn’t tell Mulder and Scully? Also, ghost-kid can buy fries and make protection fetishes? Who put the dog in the morgue? Who put the thorns in the car? Why did the general bury the main guy only to dig him back up?
About the only interesting thing in this episode is that I must have subconsciously figured out who the guy who plays X is; I still couldn’t tell you what his name is, because I don’t consciously know it, but while the opening credits were rolling I found myself thinking ‘hmm, it occurs to me it’s been a while since we’ve seen X, he’ll probably show up in the arc episodes though.’ We also haven’t really seen any of the rest of the supporting cast in the same amount of time, so why X would be the one that occurred to me again signals the actor knowledge is somewhere in my brain. Then again, why he’s in this episode makes no sense; probably just to remind people he exists before the arc episodes; X isn’t like Deep Throat who would pop up at the strangest times in s1; or like Skinner that we just assume has been around but we’re not seeing. But he does only have a handful of lines here, in a scene that doesn’t have impact on the rest of this story.
Also, do any of Mulder’s big contacts ever give Scully the respect she deserves? When I noted that Deep Throat largely didn’t, I couldn’t remember if the trend continued; and at the start I wasn’t sure with X, he only made contact with Mulder but it was clear that he understood Scully to be part of the equation. And to be entirely fair, we haven’t seen him since One Breath, we don’t really know how those events impacted his opinion of Scully’s role in events going forward. But it would have been interesting to have him do something to help Scully in this episode, I’m not sure what, but it would have been something interesting in this story.
Are we saying it’s aliens?
Voodoo magic and possibly zombies, also ghosts again
Who’s driving?
Some of both, maybe Scully a bit more than Mulder
The gang that’s here
Mr. X reminds us that he exists, and is apparently the only thing I found worth commenting on.
How crazy does Mulder sound?
He keeps walking in and questioning people about voodoo and how it might have been used to kill people. He definitely isn’t keeping his crazy confined to Scully’s ear this time.
Scully’s convenient miss of the week
Scully got drugged by poison thorns (how they got in the car is still a question, but I’m confident in a scientific explanation for what was happening to her, there were no spirits involved in that) so she stayed in the car while Mulder when out to see someone rise from the grave. Though, seeing as that had already happened once this episode it still probably could have been explained. She does not attempt to offer an explanation for ghost-kid.
So it looks like I had pretty different feelings last time, or at least feelings beyond boredom.
2x15: Fresh Bones (2016 thoughts)
(Previous status: pretty sure I haven’t seen it)
I find this a weird scheduling choice, to have two magic episodes back to back like this. I also wasn’t looking forward to it and mostly had to remind myself that once I was done with it I could get on to the arc episodes. But I actually feel it was a little better than the last one as it actually had something of an identity that the last ep kind of didn’t as far as I was concerned.
Admittedly my thoughts on this were more a series of momentary thoughts rather than much in the way of overall thoughts. For one, I was very concerned about the fact that you could clearly see people’s breath in the scenes in the brig, so much so that I found those scenes a bit hard to follow as I really wanted someone to turn the heat up. I’m pretty sure that treatment can’t be acceptable, and I’m a little conflicted about the fact that it doesn’t get remarked on, because it may have been intended to make it obvious people were being mistreated so didn’t need to be commented on, but I’m not sure that logic hold sound as it probably was filmed in a cold Vancouver warehouse. And it may have only been so obvious in HD and wouldn’t have been intended to be obvious at the time.
I think the main plot makes sense (in terms of TXF logic), but I think a lot of the details don’t hold together. Why was the commander keeping a bunch of bones in his office? How had he cleaned them so quickly without anyone finding out? Why was he digging up another body at the end when he could have blamed everything on the dead guy before that (assuming anyone believed voodoo did it)? Why did X even bother to show up for this? I may allow the episode to take a stroke with the younger guy not pointing out that they were talking to a ghost in that he may not have recognized specifically which kid they were talking to, but it is a flaw. Isn’t the point of refugee camps because people can’t go back to their homeland, so why are they asking to and why aren’t they allowed to on this end?
I still don’t think there’s a ton of character material here. I’m not sure the writers have any idea what to do with Scully’s character. They still basically refuse to let her outright see anything, but they write her like she pretty much believes in this stuff anyway. She may be vaguely skeptical in that she doesn’t jump to the same conclusions though, but with the trouble they go to keep her from seeing proof I’d expect her to actually deny those ideas and she basically doesn’t. In my memory that was always her role, but I’m starting to think I may just have understood that to be her role and taken it at face value without realizing that’s not how they actually write her.
I have even less to say about Mulder. He was there. He’s very casually handsy with Scully, and while she’s okay with it she’s less handsy with him at this point. How does the end get explained when Mulder insists it was the dead guy and the only other explanation is Mulder killing people? He’d probably get away with it, but he might have gotten looked into over it.
Though hey, this episode didn’t involve rape, thus ends the streak.
