Awards Daily TV

Season 4, Episode 13
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Glen Morgan, James Wong

I suspect finding out you have cancer is a life-altering experience. Granted, I have never been in the position, but I have known those who have suffered from the disease. Having received an unofficial diagnosis last episode, Scully doesn’t mention her fears within “Never Again,” but the specter of illness hangs over her throughout the episode. It suffocates her, causing her to start to reject the trappings of her life she once found comfortable. As I’ve found over the course of four seasons, the best X-Files episodes manage to push aside the supernatural, relegate it to the background, and focus on deeper character development. “Never Again” is one of those episodes.

The prologue takes Ed Jerse (Rodney Rowland) through a divorce and straight into a seedy bar. Drunk and miserable, Ed wanders into a tattoo parlor where he has a pinup tattooed on his arm with the phrase “Never Again” written under her. Soon, Ed is taunted by a female voice (Jodie Foster) who consistently berates him and pits him against women out of jealousy. Ed eventually kills him neighbor beneath him, thinking she was talking about him when it was really the voice in his head. Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully are slightly at odds with Scully starting to feel like Mulder’s second hand rather than his partner – she doesn’t even have her own desk in the basement. After Mulder requests that she stake out someone in Philadelphia, Scully reluctantly agrees, embittered by her life falling second to the job.

While on stakeout, Scully follows her target into the same seedy tattoo parlor that Ed earlier visited, and she sees Ed begging to have his tattoo removed. They “meet cute,” and Ed gives her his number. After an argument with Mulder, Scully decides to take Ed up on his offer, and they settle on returning to the same dive bar from the prologue. After a deep discussing in which Scully discusses her affinity for strong men (thanks to her father), Ed convinces Scully to get a tattoo, and she obliges. Scully spends the night at his apartment, and, the next morning, Ed goes out to get breakfast. While he’s out, Scully is visited by two officers who tell her Ed’s neighbor is missing, and they have uncovered a blood type that did not match her. The blood sample also included something that, after analysis, proved to come from the same rare ink the tattoo artist used to achieve his brilliant colors. This substance could have caused Ed’s hallucinations. After discovering Scully was an FBI agent, Ed attacks her and nearly burns her in the basement. Overpowering the voice, Ed thrusts his arm into the incinerator. Scully then returns to DC where Mulder questions her, thinking he’d made her made by not giving her a desk. Scully responds simply with “not everything is about you Mulder,” leaving the typically loquacious Mulder speechless.

The brilliance of “Never Again” is within the completely different mood and tone established by the erotic adventures of Dana Scully. This is a tour-de-force performance from Gillian Anderson, giving us a darker side to Scully that we have yet to see. This side of Scully is the cancer diagnosis changing her, giving her a different, fragile perspective on her life. Practically in shock, she sinks into actions and relationships that she normally would never follow. It also gives her a moment of introspection where she admits her attraction to strong, take-charge men, namely Mulder and her father. What’s interesting about this is the fact that “Leonard Betts” and “Never Again” were actually filmed in reverse order from which they aired, meaning “Never Again” was filmed first, meaning that Anderson didn’t know Scully had cancer when she filmed the episode. Yet, Anderson’s performance here feels incredibly influenced by the earlier cancer revelation. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was luck.

Whatever it is, it works in spades. Excellent work.

Season 4, Episode 12
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz

The X-Files “Leonard Betts” elicits several interesting opinions on its titular character, a monster-of-the-week contribution to the overall X-Files lore, yes, but a very human and humane monster still. As embodied by Paul McCrane, Betts first appears as a benevolent soul, someone mysteriously gifted at identifying sickness and healing others. Yet, through the course of the episode, his gifts take a deadly, sinister turn, making the character one of the more fascinating the series has seen.

The episode begins in the back of an ambulance as Betts (Paul McCrane) operates on a patient that he later advises is dying of cancer. The driver is fascinated by Betts’s prowess at illness definition and turns to ask him a question. As she does so, the driver runs a red light, and the ambulance is jack-knifed in the intersection. Stunned, she walks to the back of the ambulance to check on Betts, but he is decapitated. Later, in the morgue, the headless Betts awakens and walks out… still sans head and captured on a blurry videotape. Mulder and Scully investigate – Mulder staking out Betts’s apartment and Scully performing an autopsy on Betts’s recovered head. Mulder finds some bloody clothes and a bathtub full of iodine in Betts’s apartment, and, after he leaves, Betts rises out of the tub, head in-tact.

Scully, meanwhile, begins to form an autopsy when the head blinks and sighs at her. Further investigation leads to two major facts: Betts is riddled with cancerous cells and can potentially regenerate missing limbs. Needing cancerous material to regenerate, Betts goes on a killing spree of those infected with the disease. He also kills the ambulance driver who recognizes him in passing in order to protect his secret. Tracking Betts back to his mother, she refuses to disclose his location, professing that God desires him to be on the Earth and is keeping him here despite his multiple deaths. We do witness Betts effectively shedding one form of himself to regenerate another, a disturbing and disgusting image. After Betts’s mother nearly sacrifices her life to feed her son with a cancerous tumor she has, Betts mysteriously attacks Scully, claiming she has something he needs. Scully is able to overpower him and kills him with defibrillator paddles to the head. Later that night, Scully awakens coughing, her nose dripping with blood.

The main theme of “Leonard Betts” is the exploration of the main monster. Betts initially appears kind and benevolent, extremely proficient and successful as an EMT. Yet, as the episode proceeds, he becomes a brutal killer. Granted, he (mostly) kills people who are apparently dying anyway, but does that give him the right to take their lives? Does his need to feed on cancerous tumors that only they can provide him make it OK that he’s taking their life? Do you curse the monster because it adheres to its very nature? These are all intriguing questions that The X-Files brings up but leaves to the audience to weigh in on where they fall. The key for me is Betts’s murder of his ambulance driver friend. That felt like the tipping point to Betts’s callousness and inhumane center.

The most popular result of “Leonard Betts” was Dana Scully’s revelation that she’s suffering from cancer, apparently something that was a known side-effect of whatever happened to her when she was abducted by aliens. Remember the group of women who were slowly dying out? They all contracted cancer and slowly died. Is it ironic that the monster Betts is the one who tells her she suffers from the disease, which she confirms later than night. This turn will last nearly a year in the series and will basically win Gillian Anderson an Emmy award.

While the revival will premiere at New York’s Comic Con on October 10, “the truth” is out there in the form of a new trailer, split into two halves to maximize viewership for current Fox series.

The FBI has definitely gotten a lot sexier since Clarice Starling was a recruit. Taking a page from the holy book of Shonda Rhimes, the new ABC drama Quantico has the DNA of an FBI procedural, but creator and writer Joshua Safran has obviously been influenced by the Viola Davis smash. The pilot does a good job of shrouding everything and everyone in secrecy, but is the show doing too much too soon?

Quantico starts with a bang—or the aftermath of a bang. Grand Central Terminal has been devastated by a terrorist attack, and our leading lady, Priyanka Chopra, wakes up in the rubble. It is later declared the biggest terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, but the action swiftly backtracks to show us all of the FBI recruits arriving at the Quantico base in Virginia. Clearly, we are going to have to concurrent storylines with a lot of flash forwarding and rewinding.

It must be said that Chopra makes an impressive television debut as Alex Parrish. The camera loves her gorgeous face, but her no-nonsense demeanor is worth staying for. Everyone is pretty much represented here—A gay guy! A Mormon! A gun-wielding blonde hottie! A nice guy soldier!—but Chopra is the main focus. After the bombing, the FBI detains her in order to gather some information on her fellow recruits. Is one of them a terrorist, or are they stalling to get more information on her?

While the bombing seems to be the through line of the first season, the more interesting stuff is in Alex’s interaction with the recruits at Quantico. Their first assignment is to take a case file about another recruit and identify the missing element or secret. When it comes time to turn in their homework, some of the students own up to the missing information while one young man unravels completely. Since the pilot spends a lot more time insinuating that everyone is hiding something, I would’ve liked to have seen more interaction between all of them at the base. The terrorist plot is interesting enough, but the immediacy to it is missing.

There is enough here to keep viewers watching. It seems that every single network is on the hunt to own the next big drama, and Quantico promises that we will want to tune in every week to watch the story unfold. The supporting players—especially Tate Ellington as the smiley Simon and Yasmine Al Massri as the mysterious Nimah—do a good job at making you want more, but no one has anything on Chopra. She’s a great beauty, but she just might be the breakout performer of the fall. Her Alex is guarded and cocky, but the accusations made against her in the pilot suggest a vulnerability that will make people really like her. She has the potential to become a sensation in America even if Quantico doesn’t stick the landing.

Season 4, Episode 11
Director: Tucker Gates
Writer: John Shiban

Despite killing dozens (if not hundreds) of people every season, The X-Files isn’t completely without heart. There is an undercurrent of sensitivity and good intentions inherent within several episodes, even if it’s often buried beneath a veneer of gore and blood. However, “El Mundo Gira” kind of proves that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That may be a little strongly worded, but this episode ain’t good folks. In fact, it feels very insulting to the Mexican people.

The prologue starts in a small make-shift village where a brilliant flash of light is followed by a bizarre yellow rain. After the meteorological oddity ends, a young woman is found dead with a mold-like fungus eating away at her nose and face. The investigation eventually leads to Eladio Buente who held unrequited love for the dead girl, Maria. His brother, Soledad, was in a relationship with her and blames his brother for her death. Eventually, after Eladio begins to deteriorate and other people being to die, the local population brand him a “Chupacabra,” but Mulder and Scully eventually determine that Eladio has some sort of agent within him that causes every day mold and fungi to rapidly grow, killing people who come in contact with him. Mulder of course believes the quickening agent to come from an alien influence. By the end of the episode, several people have died, and the two brothers go on the run with Eladio’s countenance bizarrely shifted into something resembling an actual monster.

The problem with “El Mundo Gira” isn’t the story, per se. It’s a fairly typical X-Files outing if a little underwhelming in the detail and execution. The real harm here comes in the broad strokes used to paint the Mexican immigrants. The episode tries, through the concept of the lethal substance, to illustrate the everyday experience of the illegal Mexican – actual aliens (their words, folks, not mine). But each Mexican character is a blatant, telenovela-level stereotype. The hardened cop. The hysterical attractive woman. The elderly woman who looks at you askew and mutters Spanish curses under her breath. The workers trying to get any job they can. It’s all just too much, and it’s capped off by Scully making the most insultingly stupid remark of all (poor Gillian Anderson for having to say it) when she refers to Mexican immigrants as the invisible people, alluding to Eladio’s ease of escape.

Overall, “El Mundo Gira” isn’t very well written or directed. The actors do a decent job with the material that they’re given, but suffocating this shaky material with good-intended but poorly executed social commentary isn’t the way to go on The X-Files. At best, the episode is completely forgettable, and, at its worst, it’s horribly racist and insulting.

Update: Proving once more that overnights are totally a thing of the past, Scream Queens soared in delayed-viewing ratings, gaining 65% (2 million viewers) in recorded viewing plus another 1 million viewers on Hulu and Fox Now for a grand total of 7.3 million total viewers. It proved to be the biggest grower of the night.

Social media can be a tricky bitch sometimes.

Those of us plugged into Twitter and other more traditional media outlets have been bombarded with ads and buzz surrounding last night’s premiere of Fox’s Scream Queens. So, it comes as a bit of a shock that Ryan Murphy’s series failed to dazzle in its 2-hour premiere. Not only did it fail to dazzle, it came in fourth.

From a Variety article:

Fox’s “Scream Queens,” which had generated the most social media buzz heading into premiere week, opened with a 1.6/5 in 18-49 and 4 million viewers overall from 8 to 10, though special “rush finals” ordered by Fox show the premiere at a 1.7 in the demo. It ran fourth in its timeslot in 18-49, while placing second in adults 18-34 (1.6/7). The horror comedy from Ryan Murphy opened with a 1.7 rating in 18-49 and then held at a 1.6 for its final three half-hours, according to the prelim nationals. It tied for the 18-49 lead in the New York market with “The Voice” (2.9/10).

The two-hour premiere provided some nice time period improvement for Fox, which struggled out of the gate on the opening Tuesday a year ago. Last night’s “Scream Queens” did 60% better than the net’s lowly 1.0 nightly average for “Utopia,” “New Girl” and “The Mindy Project.” Starting next week, new comedies “Grandfathered” and “Grinder” will open the night for the net, with “Scream Queens” airing at 9.

We here at ADTV were underwhelmed by the pilot which definitely had its moments but felt massively unfocused and bloated. Yet, the amount of publicity and advanced buzz hardly forecasted similarly underwhelming viewership. Now, these early numbers don’t include numbers from delayed watching, which almost certainly would increase viewership among the target audience.

So, what are your thoughts? Have we reached Ryan Murphy saturation? Was no one clamoring for horror camp? Does this bode ill for American Horror Story: Hotel‘s premiere in two weeks?

Sound off in the comments below!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Glee. Grey’s Anatomy. Empire. Cop Rock.

What do these shows have in common? They’re all in one way or another variations of television musicals. Whether they’re designed from scratch to be musicals or whether they just dabble from time to time, each series has a specific take on the musical form. Some are smart meta commentaries. Some are deliberate cash grabs after opening up a new revenue stream for their production company (ahem, Glee). This week, the Water Cooler Podcast gang gather around the cooler and discuss the major, most popular examples of the genre – their successes and their miserable, dark failures. Join us in the conversation as we sing wistfully about our inner feelings. Just kidding, only Joey does that.

But first, we tackle the biggest shows coming out of Fall TV 2015 week one, including Scream Queens, Empire, and The Muppets. Sit back and enjoy!

02:16 – Fall TV Week One
13:07 – Musicals!

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When you are hungry for some truly compelling, fascinating, engaging drama, your stomach can growl with anticipation. Some of the TV we immerse ourselves with does not always keep us glued to the box, and can actually leave you feeling starved. Airing earlier in the year in the UK, Indian Summers begins this evening on Masterpiece PBS. I, for one, am craving the audience reception to this in America. As I may have mentioned before (via Downton Abbey) I hold my hands up and say period dramas revolving around the English is not always my cup of tea. I will give most things a try though, as I did with this 10-part feast.

The promotional build-up – teasers, trailers – here in the UK for Indian Summers (aired on Channel 4) was impossible to avoid. And like the overall feel of the show itself, in spite of how you sit with it in the end, it makes sure you are full to the brim with curiosity. Indian Summers turned out to be not only one of the most expensive ventures in Channel 4’s history, but also soon secured a second season after very decent ratings. Focusing on a time early last century in Northern India, the show delves into the social ramifications of the last chapter of the British rule, but an extensive knowledge of history is not really required here – thankfully. It keeps the setting confined, in Simla, a small ruffled community surrounded by beautiful scenery.

A feature-length opener for starters steadies the pace so we don’t choke too early. Any series with a pretty hefty ensemble cast of characters ought to walk us through it the first time we meet them. Indian Summers just about feeds us enough here, although perhaps none of the characters appear larger than life or over-the-top, we are given a clear instant idea of some of their traits and dilemmas.

The steam train brings many of the English to the Indian village, this includes Alice (Jemima West), angelic and troubled all at the same time. Her brother Ralph (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) is the Private Secretary to the Viceroy in India – so quite a big deal here basically. His somewhat arrogant, ruthless demeanor is miles away from his sister’s seemingly quaint, charming aura. Both have secrets that have to spill out eventually. A rather frustrated Sarah (Fiona Glascott) feels like a spare part as she arrives with husband Dougie (Craig Parkinson) – he teaches the Indian kids and is blatantly in love with the beautiful Leena (Amber Rose Revah). Then we have the civil servant worker Aafrin (Nikesh Patel), he’ll soon find himself embroiled in matters of politics and romance. His rebellious sister Sooni (Ayesha Kala) speaks her mind and rallies with the rest of the angry locals about the plight of their countries ruling. The most recognizable face is Julie Walters, as the empowered local club owner Cynthia, but don’t get too excited, she plays a rotten cow – and my goodness does she nail it.

The narrative is paced nicely, simmers more than it bubbles over. Which is helpful to an audience who may feel a little at sea at times. The dialogue is also a welcome aid, often explaining current society and its predicaments without the characters sounding like they are reading from a life manual. These are normal people living in a rather precarious state of affairs, but there is a hell of a lot going on here so you need to keep on track. The various plots interweave, but sometimes drift off a little. Not necessarily a terrible thing, I mean, an onion with many thin layers can still contribute to a satisfying supper.

What Indian Summers does not do is force red herrings down your throat, it certainly lacks the pretentious vibe we’ve seen elsewhere – its subtle promises are kept for the most part. There is not a lot of room for upper class etiquette either, the majority of the characters no matter their social status tend to fumble around, nobody is really sure of their place. That makes for encouraging viewing of a level-headed nature, we can judge and praise these people for their views and choices, that they could be just like us. There’s ample amounts of joy and romance too, don’t worry. There is also racism and malaria, so this is not a perfect world.

There is more than character conflict and affections to this though. The breath-taking scenery is photographed so invitingly, so majestically, you can almost feel the heat. It is cinematography so grand you may find yourself a little hypnotized on occasions. The luscious art direction and costume design follow suit. This has captured the era and the climate perfectly – I would imagine. That is to say the production values are so vivid and appetizing you are not meant to make much effort to feel you belong there.

In the end Indian Summers is a little light relief as far as TV drama goes. Whatever is on your menu this fall, be it an action-packed platter of a crime thriller or a juicy bacon double cheeseburger of a family drama, it might not hurt to leave a bit of room for Indian Summers – an refreshing, alluring, vividly colorful salad of a period piece, with perhaps just the right amount of drama and intrigue to fulfil your palette. Try it, and if Indian Summers is not to your tastes, you can always order something else next time. Bon appetite.

Indian Summers premieres Sunday at 9/8c on Masterpiece PBS.

Season 4, Episode 10
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Vince Gilligan

“A dream is an answer to a question we haven’t yet learned how to ask.”

This is a line bantered back and forth between Mulder and Scully as they wrestle with an imprisoned serial killer playing games with Mulder. Writer Vince Gilligan refashions an entire episode dedicated to exploring an alternative take on the disappearance of Samantha Mulder, who Mulder believes to have been abducted by aliens. Buoyed by a fantastic Gilligan screenplay and a hypnotic performance by Tom Noonan (Michael Mann’s Manhunter), “Paper Hearts” is another intriguing entry in Vince Gilligan’s brilliant portfolio of oddball entries into The X-Files.

“Paper Hearts” begins with Mulder dreaming of a red light guiding him into a park in Virginia where the body of a young girl is supposedly buried – an experience which immediately calls to mind the novel Alice in Wonderland, not specifically because the light spells out “Mad Hatter” but also because the viewer has the overall sense that Mulder is being led down a rabbit hole of sorts. The next morning, Mulder has a forensics team dig in that location to reveal the long-deceased body of a little girl – just as the dream had indicated. Missing from the dress is a heart-shaped section of cloth, the M.O. of a man Mulder had already arrested for murdering 13 girls – John Lee Roche (Noonan). After discovering Roche’s collection of his victims’ hearts, Mulder and Scully determine that Roche killed 16 girls, not 13 as originally thought.

When approached, Roche taunts Mulder with details surrounding the night his sister, Samantha, was abducted. Roche insinuates that he killed Samantha, which drives Mulder nearly insane. After digging up one additional body that turns out not to be Samantha, Mulder decides to escort Roche to his father’s home to determine finally if Roche did indeed abduct her. Roche begins giving excruciating details of the night she went missing, but Mulder has tricked him by taking him to a house Mulder’s father bought years before – not the house from which she was originally abducted. Mulder speculates that Roche was able to see his dreams and thoughts in order to use the memory of Samantha for his own personal gain. Later, Roche plays a dream trick on Mulder and is able to escape in reality.

Realizing that Roche was attracted to a young girl he saw on their plane, Mulder tracks Roche down to the town where Roche used Mulder’s stolen identification to abduct the young girl. Mulder finds the two – the girl unharmed – in a school bus graveyard. Roche has a gun pointed at the young girl’s back and taunts Mulder further, telling him he has no intention of going back to prison. Torn between returning Roche to jail and the risk that Roche would kill the little girl, Mulder shoots Roche in the head. As we close the episode, Mulder regards the final cloth heart with uncertainty whether or not it belonged to Samantha.

The screenplay to “Paper Hearts” is an intriguing concoction by Gilligan in that it introduces plausible deniability into the case of Samantha Mulder while still introducing an element of the supernatural into the story. As with other Gilligan-penned scripts, it’s not the supernatural that dominates the story. Instead, here, it is the character of John Lee Roche, a chillingly forthright and playful serial killer embodied by the very talented Noonan. Yet, the construction of the story isn’t its only successful element. In addition, the cinematography and the imagery of the cut-out hearts (fabric all of them – not paper) burns into the brain and makes a heart-wrenching mental association.

You realize that these hearts represent 16 little girls without having to see 16 dead bodies. In an interesting side note, given that these hearts aren’t actually paper and the fact that Roche was a salesman (and a conman), you have to wonder if the title isn’t a sick allusion to the 70s-era classic Paper Moon. In my dreams, I imagine that this was completely intentional, a brilliant trick dreamed up by the twisted mind of Vince Gilligan.

Literally crushes it.

Jessica Jones stars Krysten Ritter and will drop all 13 episodes on Netflix November 20.