The X-Files 3x06: 2Shy
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tori_reviewsThe X-Files 3x06: 2Shy
Tonight on ‘The 90s Fear of the Internet’...
This was another mostly nothing episode. At the end of the day I neither liked it nor disliked it particularly. It did feel like it was refining a few earlier ideas, in some ways better but also less memorably.
It’s a little bit Tooms, where the villain has a mutation that requires consuming a specific body part to further his life cycle. I think. While there are some things about this that make more sense than with Tooms, it still doesn’t exactly explain a lot of things. Is he going to die in a few weeks if he doesn’t get his fix? Can he digest animal fat or does it have to be human? Has he been living with this his whole life, and if so how did he realize he had to live this way? Are there medical records of his condition? Is there a semi-effective treatment that that can work for him, but consuming fat from living humans does better? Does he need to feed every day, if so how is he doing it, if not how often does he need to? With Tooms he was just a psychopath who would come out and murder five people for livers every so often, but this guy appears to need a constant stream of victims, how is he pulling that off?
It’s also kind of ‘Irresistible,’ to the point where I feel like it was almost a response to it. Having the local cop talk about how he’s resistant to women working on certain types of cases because it’s likely to affect them more, is almost exactly what actually happened to Scully with that case. And yet she stands there looking at him like it’s ridiculous to think that and she’s never heard something so ridiculous. And to be fair to her, at the point he says that, he is presuming a lot about the case, they don’t know that they’re dealing with a guy or his attitude to women. Mulder has made some connection with another round of cases (that somehow Scully didn’t know about until now) but I’m not even sure they told the local cops about that still-uncertain connection. This cop doesn’t know Scully’s history or what affects her, so he is clearly being sexist, I just think Scully’s reaction is a little hypocritical.
When I say it’s almost a reaction to ‘Irresistible,’ it’s like they got a memo that they should show Scully defying sexist men (they kind of did it badly in ‘D.P.O.’ too) and not reacting the way she did in ‘Irresistible.’ And the end even makes sure to have the women be the ones to take down the male villain, which they didn’t do in the former episode. But as a reaction to that previous episode, I wish it was done in closer proximity to it, and able to acknowledge the commonalities. I’m sure you could pretend there was any kind of arc between the two events, but if they were able to see the parallels and expect the audience to catch on (I know, it was the 90s) they could have done more with it.
The final line of the episode, that the dead are no longer lonely, feels like it’s trying to be something either thematic or connecting to something, but it doesn’t land like it has meaning. The episode hasn’t been about loneliness, except among the victims. If Incanto was lonely because of his condition we’re not given that as part of the story. There isn’t anything about Scully (the one in the scene) or even Mulder feeling lonely giving them empathy for anyone else in the case or for that line to resonate. Because I watched the episodes in pretty quick succession, my thoughts kind of go back to ‘Clyde Bruckman;’ that in death Bruckman is no longer lonely, and from there I think how it might relate to Scully’s potential immortality to never be released from loneliness. But that is a stretch and has no bearing on this episode. If it was a building theme, of the leads being lonely and depressed and these kind of lines sitting in their mind leading to some penchant to seek death, or the possibility of death, or be okay with it if it comes (all or which, I’m looking at you around end of s4), it could have been an interesting emotional arc; but I know it’s not really doing that.
Also, when Mulder calls Scully he says he’s already called some chatroom company about a warning, but that timing doesn’t flow with what we see. I didn’t want to forget to mention that.
Previous status
Never seen before
When are we?
Scully says it’s August 29 when she does the autopsy, so we’re back in time from the last dates we had, good to know (unless we’re a year in the future).
Is that continuity?
Sort of anti-continuity since somehow Scully didn’t know about the Mississippi cases until now. You could have said something about her being on vacation then, just to avoid questions from me.
Are we saying it’s aliens?
More body-consuming mutants. I really have a lot of questions about how this exists.
Creepy kids
Actually the kid isn’t creepy, I was just convinced she was familiar for most of the episode, but she has very few credits on IMDB and nothing I would have seen.
Scully’s convenient miss of the week
Again I was convinced when Mulder and Scully split up it was so Mulder could see something freaky without Scully around; but instead it was so Scully could get attacked. She still doesn’t really see anything extra when he does.
Is it rapey?
As a metaphor it is damn rapey, at face value...still pretty much.
How crazy does Mulder sound?
For Mulder, quite sane; for reality...it does fit the evidence with only a few really weird things, and if he just said it could be some kind of injected poison breaking down the victims’ cells rather than a fat vampire it probably could have passed for logical. Also, the show has collected evidence of quite a few freaks and mutants, these things could sound more reasonable in universe at this point.
Tonight on ‘The 90s Fear of the Internet’...
This was another mostly nothing episode. At the end of the day I neither liked it nor disliked it particularly. It did feel like it was refining a few earlier ideas, in some ways better but also less memorably.
It’s a little bit Tooms, where the villain has a mutation that requires consuming a specific body part to further his life cycle. I think. While there are some things about this that make more sense than with Tooms, it still doesn’t exactly explain a lot of things. Is he going to die in a few weeks if he doesn’t get his fix? Can he digest animal fat or does it have to be human? Has he been living with this his whole life, and if so how did he realize he had to live this way? Are there medical records of his condition? Is there a semi-effective treatment that that can work for him, but consuming fat from living humans does better? Does he need to feed every day, if so how is he doing it, if not how often does he need to? With Tooms he was just a psychopath who would come out and murder five people for livers every so often, but this guy appears to need a constant stream of victims, how is he pulling that off?
It’s also kind of ‘Irresistible,’ to the point where I feel like it was almost a response to it. Having the local cop talk about how he’s resistant to women working on certain types of cases because it’s likely to affect them more, is almost exactly what actually happened to Scully with that case. And yet she stands there looking at him like it’s ridiculous to think that and she’s never heard something so ridiculous. And to be fair to her, at the point he says that, he is presuming a lot about the case, they don’t know that they’re dealing with a guy or his attitude to women. Mulder has made some connection with another round of cases (that somehow Scully didn’t know about until now) but I’m not even sure they told the local cops about that still-uncertain connection. This cop doesn’t know Scully’s history or what affects her, so he is clearly being sexist, I just think Scully’s reaction is a little hypocritical.
When I say it’s almost a reaction to ‘Irresistible,’ it’s like they got a memo that they should show Scully defying sexist men (they kind of did it badly in ‘D.P.O.’ too) and not reacting the way she did in ‘Irresistible.’ And the end even makes sure to have the women be the ones to take down the male villain, which they didn’t do in the former episode. But as a reaction to that previous episode, I wish it was done in closer proximity to it, and able to acknowledge the commonalities. I’m sure you could pretend there was any kind of arc between the two events, but if they were able to see the parallels and expect the audience to catch on (I know, it was the 90s) they could have done more with it.
The final line of the episode, that the dead are no longer lonely, feels like it’s trying to be something either thematic or connecting to something, but it doesn’t land like it has meaning. The episode hasn’t been about loneliness, except among the victims. If Incanto was lonely because of his condition we’re not given that as part of the story. There isn’t anything about Scully (the one in the scene) or even Mulder feeling lonely giving them empathy for anyone else in the case or for that line to resonate. Because I watched the episodes in pretty quick succession, my thoughts kind of go back to ‘Clyde Bruckman;’ that in death Bruckman is no longer lonely, and from there I think how it might relate to Scully’s potential immortality to never be released from loneliness. But that is a stretch and has no bearing on this episode. If it was a building theme, of the leads being lonely and depressed and these kind of lines sitting in their mind leading to some penchant to seek death, or the possibility of death, or be okay with it if it comes (all or which, I’m looking at you around end of s4), it could have been an interesting emotional arc; but I know it’s not really doing that.
Also, when Mulder calls Scully he says he’s already called some chatroom company about a warning, but that timing doesn’t flow with what we see. I didn’t want to forget to mention that.
Previous status
Never seen before
When are we?
Scully says it’s August 29 when she does the autopsy, so we’re back in time from the last dates we had, good to know (unless we’re a year in the future).
Is that continuity?
Sort of anti-continuity since somehow Scully didn’t know about the Mississippi cases until now. You could have said something about her being on vacation then, just to avoid questions from me.
Are we saying it’s aliens?
More body-consuming mutants. I really have a lot of questions about how this exists.
Creepy kids
Actually the kid isn’t creepy, I was just convinced she was familiar for most of the episode, but she has very few credits on IMDB and nothing I would have seen.
Scully’s convenient miss of the week
Again I was convinced when Mulder and Scully split up it was so Mulder could see something freaky without Scully around; but instead it was so Scully could get attacked. She still doesn’t really see anything extra when he does.
Is it rapey?
As a metaphor it is damn rapey, at face value...still pretty much.
How crazy does Mulder sound?
For Mulder, quite sane; for reality...it does fit the evidence with only a few really weird things, and if he just said it could be some kind of injected poison breaking down the victims’ cells rather than a fat vampire it probably could have passed for logical. Also, the show has collected evidence of quite a few freaks and mutants, these things could sound more reasonable in universe at this point.
