Claudia's Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip Comments
ANASAZI/THE BLESSING WAY/PAPER CLIP
AIR DATES: May 19, 1995 (Anasazi)
September 22, 1995 (The Blessing Way)
September 29, 1995 (Paper Clip)
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by R.W. Goodwin (Anasazi/The Blessing Way)
Rob Bowman (Paper Clip)
I thought with the repeat of "Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip"
I'll give some thoughts on them considering what has come after them.
Just don't be looking for any deep meaning because I'm just not in the
mood for doing that right now so basically I'm just giving a few thoughts
on the episodes.
These three episodes hold up pretty well considering what we have
learned in later conspiracy episodes from Scully's neck chip to Ratboy and
the digital tape. The funny thing is one of things that didn't bother me
the first time around, but bothered other people at the time now bothers
me because it does seems so out of place and slows down the pace of the
episodes. The thing I'm talking about is Albert Hosteen's voice overs.
The one half way through "Paper Clip" where he talks about the white
buffalo's mother dying stops the episode dead. I started reading the
paper during this scene, of course, it was easy for me to do this since I
knew ahead of time that this was basically filler.
Last September there were big discussions about Skinner not being
able to make any type of copies (print them up or onto another disk) of
the digital tape. There were long discussions where people thought of
every possible reason why this was the case when it was simply a case of
bad writing. Yes, it aggravates me when the writers (in this case Chris
Carter himself) does something this illogical just for plot convenience
since we saw Scully and Albert with hard copies of those damn files in
their hands which means they were able to make printed copies of the
files. The whole situation reminds me of a comment someone made on another
mailing list I belong to that deals with a musical group. Someone had
asked why some people think the producer of the group's last record did a
really bad job. Another person wrote back why he thought the producer did
a bad job and one of the examples that he gave was that one of the songs
on the album sounded like another band's song and the producer should have
pointed out this fact to the group. Well, my first thought at this
comment was maybe the reason it wasn't pointed out was because no one
thought of it. This is what I think happened in "Paper Clip", no one
thought about how Skinner's comment that he couldn't copy it would
contradict the fact we saw people with hard copies in their hands. Hell,
when Skinner said he couldn't make copies I yelled at the screen "Hey,
ever heard of the print screen button." The reason why we get
disappointed when this happens is we expect the people on the X-Files to
see this type of error when it is so obvious to us. Kind of like that
musical group, we, the fans, expect more from them because we think they
have the ability to put out a better product than everybody else and when
they disappoint us it drives us crazy.
A few general comments:
- I don't know about everyone else, but everytime they showed the
consortium's New York building the Odd Couple theme song starts going off
in my head. First they show the bottom part of the building, then they
pan up the building which was the standard shot during the Odd Couple.
- I liked how Skinner was driving a car made for Canada because when he
drove off after leaving Scully's house in "The Blessing Way" he drove off
with his daylights on in the middle of the day.
- Everytime I watch "Paper Clip" I find it really amazing how fast the sun
goes down when Scully and Mulder go into the abandoned coal mine. If we
were watching this in real time as it appears to be then Scully and Mulder
were only in there for about 20 to 30 minutes and it didn't look like it
was near sunset at all when they drove up. Oh well, at least it made for
a good shot of the mothership going over Mulder's head and the short time
they were in there helps explains why they didn't take either Scully's or
Samantha's record with them.
- We get to see for the first time the beginning of the recurring theme
for this season of Skinner getting beat up in some form or another. I
guess every season has to have a theme, the second season we had the
Scully getting kidnapped theme and in the first season we had the Mulder
sees everything but not Scully theme. Let's not forget the Mulder loses
his gun theme that has run through all three seasons.
- Scully's mother has to be one of the best mother's on tv. Even though
she only appears in a few episodes she always has an impact, from "Beyond
the Sea" where she buries her husband the way she believed he would have
wanted, to "One Breath" where she had the guts to take her daughter off
the respirator machine. Can't say the same for Scully's mysterious
brothers who once again don't show up for a family emergency. When the
nurse came into the hospital room to tell Mrs. Scully she has a vistor and
she finds out it isn't Scully I imagine Mrs. Scully next saying is it one
of those two good-for-nothing sons of mine.
- A great recurring line was having everyone call Cancerman a son of a
bitch except Scully, though she did get to say it to Skinner.
As I stated earlier I think these three episodes really hold up
well considering everything that has come after them. We find out about
the computer chip in Scully's neck which gave us that creepy scene in
"Nisei" where Scully is confronting her own denial about her abduction
when the group of women show Scully their own computer chips making Scully
realize there is more to her abduction than she wants to believe. In
"Piper Maru/Apocrypha" we find out what a ratboy Krycek really is when we
find out he is selling information from the digital tape to the highest
bidder.
It is stuff like this that makes me believe X-Files will be a show
10 years from now where we will not cringe in horror at the thought we
actually watched this and thought it was good. The scene in the coal mine
where there are miles and miles of files and Scully sees to her disbelief
that there is a file on her and Mulder finds one meant for him, but sees
he was replaced by his sister with a recent tissue attached to it. This
scene is scary because it hits our deepest fears of a Big Brother keeping
records on us without our knowledge or consent, and it brings up a hold
new meaning of the conspiracy for Scully and Mulder. Now the fascinating
thing for us to see is how they make sense out of all this when the series
ends.
Claudia
E-mail: Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu
7/26/96
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