Season 7, Episode 20
Director: Paul Shapiro
Writer: Chris Carter
There’s nothing quite as soul-crushing as a television series in the decline. Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true. Even more soul-crushing is a television series in the decline on a network that will continue to drag out the series for another two seasons, effectively beating a dead horse until it barely resembles anything at all. The last few episodes of The X-Files have demonstrated a series and creative team who is basically throwing anything against the wall to see what sticks. We’ve seen Gillian Anderson write and direct. We’ve had a second bizarre and quirky outing from David Duchovny. And now we have series creator Chris Carter try his hand at a Vince Gilligan-inspired comic script with “Fight Club” with mixed results.
The opening is by far the best sequence of the episode. Two Mormon missionaries (at least I think they’re Mormon – it’s hard to tell since Mormon missionaries are usually in their late teens or early twenties, but these actors are clearly in their thirties) bike through a neighborhood in Kansas City delivering their missionary work. They separately approach two identical women – Betty Templeton and Lulu Pfeiffer (both played by Kathy Griffin) – and, when the second woman becomes agitated, the two men begin violently beating each other. Two local FBI agents (bearing a strong resemblance to Mulder and Scully) investigate the event on suspicion of hate crime activity. When Betty and Lulu cross paths, the two agents begin beating each other, eventually wrecking their car and causing serious bodily harm. The subsequent investigation by Mulder and Scully determines that both women were the product of a sperm donation by an extremely angry man (Jack McGee). Both women have also become involved with the same amateur wrestler (Randall “Tex” Cobb) and are entangled in a counterfeiting scheme. In the end, everyone beats the crap out of each other at a wrestling match, including Mulder and Scully.
The idea behind “Fight Club” is an intriguing one. That two identical half sisters could share not only a psychic connection so intense that their lives are carbon copies of each other but also an intangible force that inspires telekinetic and emotional damage around them. That, unfortunately, is where the good stuff stops. The primary blame for this scattershot episode has to be on Carter whose script sets up the scenario but, as many recent X-Files episodes do, allows it to deteriorate into whimsy and flights of fancy. Carter isn’t a naturally funny writer, so all of the humor here feels forced, particularly the off-key interactions between Mulder and Scully. Additionally, the meandering plot and indecipherable logic behind it all (the wrestler also has a psychic half brother with a super angry father?) ultimately makes no sense. There are lots of scenes included in the episode that go nowhere, particularly the agents’ need to explain the whole case to local boxing rigger Argyle Saperstein, a character that has no business in the episode at all.
What makes the episode even worse is that the characters of Betty and Lulu are entrusted to the untested acting talents of comic Kathy Griffin. When playing two different yet identical women, an actor has to maintain at least some differences between the two characters. It’s unreasonable to imagine that, even between two people who maintain a psychic link, their life experiences up to that point would have failed to provide even the slightest variation in their temperaments or personalities. Griffin plays Betty and Lulu as if they’re the same person with a slight variation – one of them smiles more than the other. As a result, they’re less damaged half sisters than the same woman comically walking into a scene from different doors. We’re even treated to a handful of “Didn’t you just leave through there?” scenes that fly straight out of a bad NBC sitcom about twins.
“Fight Club” is a perfect example of a script that needed a handful of revisions when the creative team had something else on their minds. It’s not quite the egregiously awful episode you’d expect given it’s reputation. It’s not a good one either. “Fight Club” exemplifies a series that has gone through the motions so many times that it’s become a complete parody of itself. It’s lost its ability to shock or scare, and the fact that there are two seasons left of this just becomes supremely depressing.