For the first two episodes of the second season of The Last Man on Earth, Phil Miller (Will Forte) and Carol Pilbasian (Kristen Schaal) have been driving around the country like apocalyptic nomads after “Tandy” (aka Phil) alienated the other survivors to the point of expulsion last season. I assumed that the second season would pick up with Tandy and Carol meeting new survivors, new groups of people to annoy. But in episode 2 titled “The Boo,” Carol and Phil reunite with the old Tucson crew in Malibu where they meet a newcomer played by Will Ferrell (yes, really!).
This felt like something you’d see in episode 8 or 9 of a 10-episode season, but LMOE got back into its Season 1 trouble by episode 3.
When Phil decided they were going to go back to the Tucson crew (despite Carol’s resistance), I found it a bit of a let down. Part of me looked forward to meeting new survivors and watching Tandy put his foot in his mouth in new adventures. Plus, since the first season just ended in the spring, it seemed too soon to already revert to Season 1 antics.
But then again, new adventures means new guest stars, which could put Last Man on Earth into the dangerously hackneyed Gilligan’s Island territory (maybe the Harlem Globetrotters survived the virus and are living outside Arizona). The last thing anyone wants to see is a revolving door of guest stars.
One of the things I love about watching this series is how I have no idea where it’s going to go, and, despite my misgivings about Phil and Carol going back to the Tucson group, I trust the creators and writers. After all, we’re not watching for concrete plot developments such as what caused the virus that wiped out the world’s population. We’re tuning in to see what mess Phil will get himself into this week.
LMOE is walking a fine, interesting line, and doing things unlike of anything else on television. The show’s concept is total drama with the premise mirroring The Walking Dead, but it’s played out like comedy. How long and far can this story go? Like the characters on the show, we’re left asking ourselves the same question.
Fear the Walking Dead, AMC’s Walking Dead spin-off, wrapped its 6-episode premiere season on Sunday night, capping a quick run that polarized audiences raised on the bloodthirsty gore of its big sister. After taking in the pilot in the end of August, I decided to wait to absorb the entire series as a complete whole, particularly after hearing it was something of a slow burn. For me, that strategy worked best, giving the persistent tension and overwhelming sense of dread that the series seemed to ooze. By the time Sunday’s season finale rolled around, I was able to take it all in as a complete work, and I found it ultimately a compelling side note to The Walking Dead even if some of the punches it packed felt a little muted.
So, what ultimately does Fear the Walking Dead contribute to the overall Robert Kirkman-inspired televerse? It was conceived – clear ratings ploy aside – as a way to turn the clock back on the United States before the zombie apocalypse took over and life as we know it ceased to exist. It gradually introduced us to the outbreak and to social reactions that ran the gamut. One of the most compelling images of the series to date has been the quick clip in the pilot of a videotaped zombie attack on a Los Angeles freeway and the YouTube-obsessed teens’ reactions to it. It was an eerily “now” way to tie the outbreak with modern customs, particularly the burned-out teens’ reactions to the violence. Later, the series explored the militarization of everyday life and, eventually, how that conceit deteriorated as well. It also illustrated the rapid tear-down of socio-economic boundaries, best highlighted by two middle class characters’ vandalism spree in an upper class home. To me, Fear the Walking Dead actually seemed more about class warfare than actual zombie gore, which is intriguing given the object cash grab the series had to be. Perhaps they were trying to reach a little higher than cynics gave them credit.
The characters were a more mixed bag. Only Kim Dickens really broke through with her Maddie Clark, the high school guidance counselor well on her way to Carol-level violence. Dickens gave a tremendous, fully realized performance that ran the gamut from steely determination to ruthless practicality to the emotional moments of a mother’s love and bitter disappointment. This role provided Dickens the material she really needed to break out, and I hope it makes her a star. She’s really the very best thing about the entire series, in my humble opinion. Second place goes to Ruben Blades as Daniel Salazar, a completely ruthless barber who proves adept at cutting more than hair. I found Blades performance subtly terrifying in the clarity Salazar experiences as he uses violence to achieve his goals. On the flip side, I personally found Dickens’s son Nick (Frank Dillane) a whiny, redundant brat, and the series was weaker for all the screen time it dedicated to his cliched drug problems. And, to no fault of the actor, Cliff Curtis’s Travis was written as a comically optimistic person, hilariously oblivious to the deterioration around him.
Reactions to the series have, as I’ve mentioned, run the gamut as well. Some find it redundant and lackadaisically paced. Some find it a compelling exercise of slow-building dread. I fall in the second category for sure, seeing real benefit and potential in the vastly different rhythms that Fear follows. For better or for worse, this is not The Walking Dead. These characters aren’t as brutally efficient as Rick and company have grown to be. This Los Angeles-set location offers vastly different visuals and color pallets to differentiate it from The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead through Season Five has become something of a “wait to see who dies” exercise while Fear focuses more on the impending doom we all know is over the horizon. Yet, and this probably is the biggest complaint people have against it, it resets the zombie clock back to a time when people didn’t understand what they were up against. We have to relive the education process. We have to experience their gradual understanding again. That didn’t bother me, but I can appreciate why it would bother others.
However, the season finale provided everything audiences have been begging for since Day One. Having learned the true intent of “Cobalt” (effectively, the military would leave the safe zones and kill everyone left alive), Travis and his gang fled to the local make-shift hospital to rescue his (dead) wife and Nick. Questionably unleashing an arena full of zombies on the unsuspecting military, our heroes break into the military outpost and have multiple tense, near-death experiences as they wind their way to safety. Most promising is the pick-up of a smart new character, Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), who bargains his way to safety and leads the survivors to his seaside home by the end of the episode. Having plans to abandon the gang and flee to his yacht, Victor is a compelling character, freshly and confidently played by Domingo. I hope to see more of him next season. Plus, the promise of zombie adventures on the sea holds particular interest for me as it is dramatically different than anything we’ve seen on The Walking Dead.
The finale’s shocking moment involves the anticipated death of a particular character who made a gradual shift from bitchy to angelic in preparation for her graceful exit. The method of death is designed to be tormenting and haunting, but, for anyone raised on The Walking Dead‘s “The Grove” episode, it sadly takes on an anti-climactic air.
So what to expect from Season Two? I suspect the zombie ante will be upped significantly to give the audience what they crave: violence and gore. Given that, I suspect Fear the Walking Dead will become exactly what many believe it to be right now: monotonous and redundant. Then, we’ll have two zombie massacre shows about our “walking dead” characters without a home, waiting to die. For now, Fear is unique enough to merit a kind word or two, largely thanks to the mileage it obtains from Kim Dickens’s great performance. Even in the zombie apocalypse, you can’t fake great acting.
Bobby Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire) stars in Martin Scorsese’s newest HBO series, Vinyl. Cannavale plays a record producer during the 1970s with Olivia Wilde playing his former model wife. The production, co-produced by Mick Jagger and written by Boardwalk Empire’s Terence Winter, will air in January 2016.
Season 4, Episode 19
Director: James Charleston
Writer: Howard Gordon, David Greenwalt
The X-Files dumps the central mythology storyline for a “monster of the week” that, ultimately, isn’t really a monster at all nor particularly X-file worthy. Taking a cue from Back to the Future, the episode sets up a travel back-in-time plot that involves shaky science, bad acting, and all the trickery that comes with time-travel stories. Thanks to the collusion of those unfortunate events, “Synchrony” fails to jell into a coherent whole.
“Synchrony” begins with an elderly man running wild through the streets near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His targets are two younger students – Jason (Joseph Fuqua) and Lucas (Jed Rees) – who are deep in conversation, bordering on an argument. The elderly man tells Jason that he needs to save Lucas from a bus at 11:46pm later that same night. After the old man is taken away by campus police, Jason begins to grow weary of the oncoming bus and of Lucas’s fumbling with his paperwork. He shouts after Lucas, but he cannot hear him. In an attempt to save Lucas’s life, Jason inadvertently pushes him into the bus’s path, killing Lucas. Jason is arrested, and Mulder and Scully are brought in to investigate Jason’s claims of some prophetic capabilities within the old man. Further adding to the complexity of the case is the discovery of the campus security guards deeply frozen body, registering at first 15 degrees before dropping to 8 degrees.
The old man intercepts a visiting scientist and injects him with a solution that causes him to immediately freeze as well. Mulder and Scully bring in Jason’s girlfriend, Lisa (Susan Lee Hoffman), to review the body. She determines that the scientist may not be dead and develops a procedure to unfreeze and revive him. The scientist is thawed and revived, but his temperature dramatically increases, eventually causing his body to spontaneously combust. Receiving a tip that the old man resides in a nearby hotel, Mulder and Scully investigate and uncover a photo of Jason, Lisa, and the scientist together. Mulder then spins a hypothesis, later confirmed by Lisa’s ignorance of the photo, that the old man is actually Jason having travelled back in time to change the past. Lisa arrives at the same conclusion and confronts the elderly Jason who injects her with the rapid freezing serum, something that is apparently keeping him alive thanks to the complexities of time travel (more on this later). Scully successfully revives Lisa, but young Jason confronts older Jason. After the two argue over killing all of Jason’s research and the effect it will have in the future, the older Jason bursts into flames and grabs the young Jason, killing them both. We close with Lisa continuing Jason’s work.
So, I have a few significant issues with this episode. First, it’s not entirely clear why the older Jason first travels back in time and tells him to kill Lucas. There is a brief line of dialogue that infers Lucas may know something about Jason’s research, so I’ll go with that. But if the older Jason’s ultimate end game is to stop the research, then why not freeze Jason immediately upon contact. Why go through all of the motions he attempts if Jason’s research is the central key? Second, it’s never clear exactly how Jason is able to travel back in time. There is, again, a brief line of exposition exploring the idea, but it’s never successfully answered. Third, if the older Jason changes the strand of time, then how is he certain of the outcome? As Jeff Goldblum told us in Jurassic Park, life finds a way. Apparently, the future discovery of advanced cryogenics will be Lisa’s success as she ignores all of the episode’s drama and continues on the research. Finally, Susan Lee Hoffman’s performance as Lisa Ianelli is simply not good. In fact, it’s so bad that it may be the single worst semi-major performance in the entire series thus far.
All of that on top of the fact that Mulder and Scully are effectively ignored through “Synchrony” as functioning characters rather than instruments of plot momentum and “Synchrony” ultimately becomes a flat, nothing of an episode. It’s too bad, too, because other series and films have done the time-travel plot before and done it significantly better than The X-Files. After watching this, I had the distinct impression that no one really knew how to address all of the questions they were raising. Instead, they quickly brushed over important plot points with sub-par writing.
The Good Wife received a warm welcome from critics and viewers in its first four seasons. It went done a very conventional path of a smart, entertaining drama series, and it was appreciated for what it brought it to the table. But something miraculous happened in its fifth season where the show stripped away everything it built in its first four years and created something new. That’s what made The Good Wife have such a resurgence in the eyes of critics and viewers recently. And after the civil war of law firms and the death of its lead actor in season five, season six once again recreated the show with its heroine venturing into politics and the supporting cast finding themselves mired in a criminal battle with the top drug dealer in Chicago. The Good Wife spiked excitement on the lonely plains of network television by tossing out the old and starting from scratch. Now it’s seventh (and presumably final) season arrives and it once again revamps the series’ tone, focus, and direction, paving the way for refreshing new expedition into law and politics.
This series has many great attributes, but kicking off with a flawless premiere episode is not one of them, barring season six’s spectacular “The Line.” Season seven begins with “Bond,” a milder episode than “The Line,” but still terrific, fast-paced, and unapologetically smart.
Alicia’s reputation is still lingering in shambles from her forced resignation of the State’s Attorney’s office set up to look as if she was guilty of election fraud and the hacking of her personal emails, which exposed her affair with Will Gardner, making “Saint Alicia” the “slutty wife” and a professional cheater in the eyes of the public. Alicia was forced out of the firm she founded with Cary Agos and Diane Lockhart and has not found employment elsewhere. Before The Good Wife has specialized in showing the sexy side of the legal profession, often with guilty rich people and top companies seeking help from upper-class law firms. But not now. The central setting is the lowly bond court, where a handful of lawyers have 90 seconds or less to try to get less financially fortunate people a fair shake at bail, while they themselves get paid pennies for doing so.
Seasons five and six started with eruptions of workplace dramatics and personal revelations, while season seven carries a more serene tone. It lacks some of the juicy passion that made the past two seasons undeniably compelling, but there’s no doubt the new season will be enlivened as The Good Wife team begins to build on the foundation laid by this weekend’s premiere. “Bond” has to reshuffle its cards and get through exposition of new characters and plot developments, which it does swiftly and neatly.
As someone who was enamored with the accomplishments of seasons five and six, I was worried that season seven would be disappointing in its approach, but the always reliable creators Robert and Michelle King managed a balancing act few other television writers would have been able to achieve. The Good Wife fandom lashed out at the serialized nature of season six and the darkness Alicia was imbued with as politics destroyed her morally and then publicly with the scandal. I found season six to be mesmerizing and feared the King would shy away from a more serialized arc in season seven in trying to win over the audience that began watching The Good Wife for more procedural case-of-the-week episodes in season one. What they do in “Bond” is something laudable: They retain the maturity from season six while still applying the roots of the show from seasons one through four/five to the current storyline. They explore the law through the cases of the week in “Bond,” but they never fall into the trap of letting that element impose on the grander arc of the season and the character development.
“Bond” rejects precedent and pattern, and opens unlike any other Good Wife premiere before it. The previous season ends with an uncertain proposal and the following season picks up directly where the the cliffhanger ended. “Bond” is not a straightforward continuation of the season six finale, “Wanna Partner?” where Alicia exhausts her last option at a business partner with whom to practice law in a more morally sound way, then minutes later the series’ big-bad Louis Canning arrives at her door, requesting for Alicia to join his firm. This final season six scene transpired in a similar way that season four’s finale did, with Cary appearing at Alicia’s door and the two agreeing to start a new firm together, so logically, viewers thought Alicia was going to partner with Canning. But after seeing the premiere, that’s not the case.
Alicia turned down Canning’s offer to join his firm because he is “the devil.” Later in the episode we learn the one client Alicia retained in “Bond” was business sent by Canning so Alicia can make a profit, seeing as her finances are far from lucrative since the State’s Attorney scandal. Alicia still wants to be her own woman and take on cases that actually help people, but when asked by Canning if she wants him to stop sending her clients, Alicia responds by saying no. The episode ends with that disturbing exchange, and then the ending from season six crystalized for me and I realized how haunting of a cliffhanger it was: Alicia is at the bottom and sees it as an opportunity to do the right thing, but she doesn’t want to dig herself into a financial hole, so desperately, she will continue to accept help from “the devil.” It’s the type of profound moral ambiguity the show is known for.
In addition to the Canning aspect of the plot, The Good Wife planted plenty of other seeds to grow season seven’s storylines in “Bond,” and the most shocking being Peter’s firing of Eli Gold as his campaign manager and hiring Ruth Eastman (Margo Martindale) as his replacement, and then Eli’s alliance with Alicia as her personal chief of staff in the presidential campaign, which now sets up a fruitful battle between Peter and Ruth versus Alicia and Eli within Peter’s run for president. And more prominently, “Bond” opens up Alicia’s legal future with the addition of Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo), a free-spirited, confident lawyer who befriends Alicia in bond court. The writers play with a fun role reversal between Alicia and Lucca in the episode’s climax which is undoubtedly foreshadowing their eventual partnership. These twists in the narrative create MVPs out of Emmy nominee Alan Cumming and The Good Wife’s newcomer, Jumbo.
Though “Bond” could have used a bit more fire in its tone, “Bond” was a noble beginning and indicates that The Good Wife could be building another outstanding season. The Kings have created a show that is proficient in adult storytelling. The magic found in seasons five and six were created from top-notch, risky writing being expanded by skilled direction and funneled with life by an impeccable cast. Those elements remain in the series, but in “Bond” they take new form.
Season 4, Episode 18
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz
When last we left Mulder and Scully, they were embroiled in a mythology conspiracy linked to former (multiple) alien abductee Max Fenig and the downing of Flight 549. Mulder had uncovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft that was attempting to make contact with Fenig and a mysterious object he was carrying. The UFO, however, was shot down by a military plane, causing Flight 549 to crash as well, killing all but one on board. The conclusion to the plot as illustrated in “Max” is effectively a complete wash-out, failing to contribute anything significant to the overall series mythology. This, to me, is a total cardinal series sin.
The episode begins immediately after the actions of “Tempus Fugit” with Mulder arrested for “interfering” with a military operation and Scully trying to save the life of the critically injured Pendrell who was accidentally shot while Scully was protecting an important witness. Skinner arrives on scene to tell Scully her witness will be arrested for bearing false testimony, effectively making him a patsy for the government cover-up of the Flight 549 debacle. Mulder and Scully are reunited – apparently the charges against Mulder (as always) were dropped – and Scully informs him that Pendrell has died. They then visit Max Fenig’s abandoned trailer where they find a video of Max claiming to have proof of the existence of alien life. Mulder and Scully are convinced this object is what Max was carrying on the plane that ultimately caused the convergence of three aircraft.
Later, Mulder finds a luggage claim ticket in Max’s discarded mail and recovers it from the airport under heavy scrutiny by military personnel. During this activity, Scully talks to Sharon (Max’s “sister”) who confirms this piece of technology Max believed was alien in origin existed in three parts, one of which Max had on the doomed flight. Mulder finds another piece in luggage claim and boards a flight to return to Washington. On the plane, the Man in Black responsible for Pendrell’s death sits next to Mulder and demands the object. During the confrontation, a UFO approaches the plane, and Mulder loses nine minutes, having no recollection of what happened to the Man in Black or the object he was carrying. The episode closes with a scene dedicated to Mulder’s birthday gift to Scully.
“Max” and its predecessor “Tempus Fugit” are both very technically accomplished episodes with an incredibly realistic plane crash aftermath and alien abduction sequences taking center stage. However, the overall story as written is exceedingly weak, offering no forward momentum in the mythology storyline. All we know is that there are three objects of potential alien origin in various locations, potentially back in the hands of aliens. We don’t know what these objects are, their function, or really even confirmation on their origin. Instead, we have a tossed-aside Pendrell, no character growth for Mulder, and a recurrence of Scully’s cancer-causing nose bleeds. I’ve long been on the record in general as not really liking mythology episodes, although there are certainly those that have substantial merit as long as they are either interestingly executed or advance the cause in some manner. Ultimately, “Max” fails on both fronts, proving the worst kind of mythology episode there is.
Last season, Saturday Night Live epitomized the constant criticism that the sketch comedy series can be uneven. While some performances can be the subject of the “water cooler” the next day or even set the internet and social media ablaze, the majority seemed flat and it strained for laughs. In its 41st season premiere, SNL had a bevy of material to tackle, but the weak second half of the show almost ruined the strong opening.
When you have a figure as big as Donald Trump threatening to run the entire country, it’s time for SNL to swoop in and shine with its political humor. Taran Killam has the honor of playing the presidential hopeful, and his impersonation is eerily spot-on. The cold open had Trump and wife Melania (played by Cecily Strong) explaining that his public appearances may have painted Trump in a poor light, and he wanted to give “everyone the chance to get to know the real Donald.” They poke fun at Trump’s insane comments about Megyn Kelly (“She’s talented and beautiful. But she’s a heifer who’s always on her period and I hope she dies”) and they mention how much money they have –“Welcome to our humble gold house,” Melania declares at the top of the sketch.
Killam has Trump down. He pouts and even gesticulates with his mouth like him. Killam is one of the most used current cast members, but his impersonation is pretty awesome. There is enough fodder for SNL to play with for the entirety of the presidential debate, and they have the opportunity to make it as big as Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. Don’t mess it up SNL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHl3nsXCqi4
Miley Cyrus clearly raided Phyllis Diller’s garage sale to find the right shower curtain to wear for the opening monologue. I’ve complained that SNL has too many hosts singing for their opening, but Cyrus crooning Sinatra’s “My Way” as a tribute to those we will never hear from again is pretty fun. Vanessa Bayer got to throw on a Rachel Dolezal wig, and Aidy Bryant had the audience applauding with her trembling Kim Davis.
SNL kept the political commentary coming with a short commercial for Abilify for People Who Think They Can Be President. The Republican Party has well over 10 hopefuls, and I will laugh at anything that pokes fun at Rick Santorum’s serious bids for any higher office.
SNL introduced its new cast member, Jon Rudnitsky, in a quick spoof on 1950’s sock hops. Taran Killam, Kyle Mooney, and Rudnitsky all see a girl they want to dance with at the high school dance, but the new guy gets more than he bargained for with Miley Cyrus. Cecily Strong and Kate McKinnon sing chaste responses to their new beaus, but Cyrus busts out a hardcore rap. Guess you aren’t really initiated to SNL until a musical guest/host lathers your face up with whip creams and licks it off, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jh2n5ki0KE
It was only a matter of time. Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton is down on her luck and enjoying a scalding hot vodka when the bartender, Val, lends Clinton her listening ear. Did I mention that Val is played by the actual Hillary Rodham Clinton? The crowd went nuts when she appeared, and the writers joked about Clinton taking her time to speak out against the Keystone Pipeline and rally in favor of gay marriage (“could have done it sooner,” she laments to Val). Clinton seemed rather at ease on the stage and not as stiff as one might expect. Get that younger demographic, Hillary!
Here’s the quality turning point of the episode. Head writer Colin Jost and the underused Michael Che make jokes about Joe Biden and Lemony Snicket’s Planned Parenthood donation. Kim Davis is called a homophobic Forrest Gump. The groaning begins with Kyle Mooney wheels out as Pope Francis to recap his trip to the United States. Mooney sounds like a cross between Borat and a pizza proprietor, and the stint is designed to make Francis look like an overreaching, out-of-touch figure. It fails. Mooney doesn’t even seem to buy it with his unenthusiastic chest thumping. Later on, Leslie Jones appears to dole out advice on texting with the opposite sex. Jones is always great with her aggressive delivery, but does anyone buy her lust for golden boy Colin Jost? I sure don’t. The best appearance is from Pete Davidson, but that might be because he never feels like he’s forcing anything. He compares Donald Trump’s possible presidency to Sanjaya winning American Idol—we all think it’s a joke, and then it’s up to the terrified young people to stop it before it becomes a reality.
Since I’m an old man, I thought the commercial for the FOX drama The Millennials was funny. McKinnon plays a girl who has been at a job for 3 days and she demands a promotion—no, she deserves one. Cyrus and resident young person Pete Davidson also work in the office, and all the young people can’t do anything without their fingers constantly texting.
The sketches begin to get strange when Cyrus, Strong, Jones and Vaness Bayer visit the famous deli where Meg Ryan faked an orgasm for Billy Crystal in the beloved romantic comedy When Harry Met with Sally… The women take turns faking it, but Jones makes it awkward with her loud and unusual orgasm. Apparently, she does it in public places and the condom always breaks. I’m starting to worry for Jones’ vocal chords, because they only let her scream all of her lines.
SNL continues its awkward relationship with race in this PBS spoof on late night talk shows. Late night has been called out for its lack of diversity, and the network presents an “uncovered” episode of Too Late with Ruby Nichols, featuring Leslie Jones as a host who has to overcome racism. In her opening monologue Nichols says, “They wouldn’t let me into the theater to the premiere of Vertigo. They wouldn’t even let me in the front door of this theater and it’s my show!” When it comes to an interview between Nichols and Hayley Mills, they show a clip of Mills in an uncomfortable show. And then the sketch…just…ends. It was incomplete and strange.
Back in 2013, Bobby Moynihan and Beck Bennett discovered that Kyle Mooney made a sex tape with Cyrus. The final skit involved with Moynihan and Bennett walking in on Mooney and Cyrus getting hitched in a dressing room. Mooney immediately freaks out and questions whether he wants to go through with the ceremony. Every time he opens the door to the dressing room, it seems that time has flashed forward and he watches his life flash before his eyes. A man fearing commitment and questioning his decision to raise a family isn’t original, but the ridiculousness of it all it kind of amusing. It’s not a strong ending, but at least the end wasn’t one of the previous sketches from the second half.
If Saturday Night Live would have focused entirely on the politics, it would have been a stronger episode. It’s a good start, but it’s disappointing that the second half didn’t live up to the front end. Would it have been better if the show recapped the silly events of summer?
This week, Joey serves as the Awards Daily TV pop quiz master as Megan and Clarence battle it out for general TV pop quiz dominances. It’s a short one this week, folks, as vacations and scheduling conflicts prevented a deeper dive into the currently blossoming Fall TV season. But don’t worry, we’ll be back next week with another episode including reactions to the premiere of American Horror Story: Hotel and other new series. In the meantime, enjoy our latest pop quiz!
Season 4, Episode 17
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz
The X-Files returns to its central mythology storyline in unexpected ways with “Tempus Fugit,” the first of a 2-part episode arc. While it appears deceptively simple at the start by focusing on a seemingly alien-caused plane crash, the episode then spirals into multiple directions that, of course, can’t be satisfactorily resolved until its upcoming conclusion. As I’ve said before, it’s difficult to review and form coherent opinions around a 2-parter and only seeing its first half. Still, “Tempus Fugit” is a dense episode that, at times, becomes incredibly difficult to follow.
The prologue begins on Flight 549 with Max Fenig, popular alien abductee from early in the series, on the flight, terrified of a man seated toward the back of the plane. This strange man gets up to go to the bathroom and begins to assemble a zip gun. Before any other actions are taken, the plane begins to violently shake with brilliant white lights emanating from outside – brilliant white lights that recall UFO activity from elsewhere in the series. After Mulder conducts an impromptu birthday celebration for Scully, they are approached by Max Fenig’s sister, Sharon, who tells them of the plane crash. After investigating the crash site, they discover a few anomalies – a missing nine minutes from most wristwatches being the primary oddity. Elsewhere in the crash site, two mysterious agents find the body of the would-be assassin and use acid to erase his fingerprints and facial features as well as steal his zip gun. Max Fenig’s seat partner is the only person on the flight to be found alive, but he is suffering from extreme radiation burns similar to those who have been exposed to the white lights before in the series.
Now, here’s where it gets tricky. Sharon reveals that she isn’t really Max Fenig’s sister but is later abducted by aliens. The air traffic controllers who were communicating with Flight 549 have information on the crash but have been told to keep the secret. One of the two controllers is found dead from a “suicide,” causing the other to divulge what he knows to Mulder and Scully – basically that there were three aircrafts in the vicinity the night 549 crashed. The air controller believes one aircraft shot another one down – possibly a UFO – which caused the 549 crash accidentally. Mulder begins to search for the potentially downed aircraft in a lake and eventually finds it and an alien body submerged under the water. Scully, meanwhile, takes the surviving air traffic controller back to D.C. where he is almost murdered by a Man in Black, but the attempt is accidentally foiled by Agent Pendrell, Scully’s biggest fan, who is shot in the process.
Whew. Deep breath.
It is difficult to formulate an opinion on all of this given that I’ve been effectively cut-off in the middle of the action, so some of my lingering questions about the episode are natural questions to have. I don’t know the end of the story. As a mythology episode, the goings-on are fairly typical – government conspiracy, UFOs, a dead alien body, etc. It’s becoming the bizarre norm around these parts. It is a nice turn of events to experience it without the Smoking Man seemingly holding court over all of it. I can only assume he’ll show up in the next episode as he tends to be the one pulling the strings with these kinds of stories. But we’ll have to wait until the next outing to see that and really to form a coherent opinion about the overall story itself. It’s just that difficult to review “Tempus Fugit” when it’s not a complete work.
Season 4, Episode 16
Director: Michael Lange
Writer: Howard Gordan, Chris Carter
Chris Carter apparently has a deep mistrust of the American government. I’m not going to go into whether or not that mistrust is warranted – this is television site, not one for political discourse – but his feelings are deeply interwoven into all of his writing. Carter mostly pens conspiratorial mythology episodes, yet he does from time to time branch out into “monster of the week” stories as he did with “Unrequited.” Yet, this episode, while having no connection to the central mythology of the series, has many of the same unmistakable hallmarks of a mythology episode and shares a central theme with them – the government cannot be trusted. “Unrequited” is largely procedural, but it does make a few moments available for real human drama, bearing fruition to a middling episode that neither offends nor thrills.
The episode begins as many recent X-Files episodes like to start – in medias res (in the middle of the action). Mulder and Scully are serving in a security detail for Major General Bloch as he gives a speech at the Vietnam Memorial. Bloch is the target of a particularly dangerous assassin (Nathaniel Teager, played by Peter LaCroix), one that apparently has the ability to make himself appear/disappear at will. Mulder and Scully persistently search him out but lose him into the crowd, putting the Major General at great risk. Flashing back, we see Teager stow away in another high-ranking military official’s car and assassinate him with ease. Mulder and Scully are asked to intervene, but there is little evidence on which to act save a mysterious playing card that mimics ones used by Vietnam soldiers to mark their kills. After the FBI arrests the leader of a radical paramilitary group, they close in on Teager’s identity and discover he was long-considered dead by the military thanks to a handful of (obviously extracted) teeth.
When Teager kills another high-ranking military official despite FBI coverage, he is spotted on a security tape, illustrating his abilities only extend to the naked eye. Mulder eventually reaches out to his all-knowing U.N. contact and learns that all of the assassinated officials were involved in a conspiracy to cover up the fact that American POWs remain in Vietnam. He deduces that Teager’s orders may actually come from the government itself to cover up the plot. Flashing forward to the speech that opened the episode, Mulder and Scully manage to distract Teager long enough to save the Major General. When Teager attempts to highjack a car, he is shot and again becomes visible, muttering his military identification as he passes out. The government claims this man was not Teager, but Mulder believes that to be a lie, effectively ending the episode with an uneasy lack of clear resolution.
“Unrequited” overall has an intriguing storyline even if it fails to satisfactorily resolve many of the main questions it raises. Teager as a character is a mystery, a cypher, and he’s clearly intended to be one as he is a secretive military operative. Yet, we aren’t clear exactly how he obtained the ability to hide from the human eye – it is casually mentioned that perhaps he learned it from his captives. We also never find out what happens to him at the end of the episode. And, as with may government-centered conspiracies, we never really find out an answer to the central question of his motives or of the potential for the government to be targeting these high-ranking military operatives. What we’re left with is a by-the-numbers procedural where Mulder and Scully attempt to uncover the truth with a sprinkling of the void left in the American psyche by the Vietnam War, highlighted by Teager’s touching interaction with a Vietnam War widow and with his brief interaction with a former colleague.
In the end, “Unrequited” doesn’t really offer anything we haven’t seen or heard from The X-Files before. None of the direction or scripting is particularly new or evolutionary for the series, but that’s not a huge deal honestly. It is warranted for a series of this calibre and success to remain in stasis for an episode or two. They’ve earned their right to do so.