ALL THINGS

AIR DATE: April 9, 2000
Written by Gillian Anderson
Directed by Gillian Anderson

        I was ready to like "All Things", but I couldn’t help thinking as I watched the episode, isn’t this something that should have been brought up a long time ago and isn’t it something that has been touched upon slightly in other episodes. It was just hard to believe that after everything she has gone through, from being kidnapped to almost dying of cancer it would be now in her life that she would re-examine it. Why would someone she hasn’t seen in 10 years trigger this kind of emotional response? Are we to believe Scully was going to run away with Dr. Daniel Waterston before she joined the F.B.I.? Or that she had a hot and heavy affair with an older man who was her teacher and mentor which brings up a whole different set of questions. Let’s not even get into the fact that this showed Scully as a home wrecker though she was young so I guess we can let it go as youthful indiscretion. The whole questioning of one’s decision in life and where one is going in life seemed too contrived and unbelievable. If anything, Scully should have been sharing these feelings with Mulder or have Mulder somehow involved in the episode and not running off to England. When an episode has one of the main characters hardly in it, it usually weakens the episode from the start and it has to try harder to make up for the loss of the character and Daniel Waterston’s character didn’t do it.

        There were many little things in the episode that added up to a weak episode. It began with the opening scene of having us see Scully getting dressed in Mulder’s bathroom then leaving and panning to a sleeping Mulder indicating something more happened along the way. Let’s not forget the Chris Carter type monologue about choices and stopping to think about where we would be if one made different choices. From there we get bitchy Scully throughout most of the episode making one feel like asking if she got out of the wrong side of the bed. One of the last scenes of her going after this woman in a hat and jacket and having it be Mulder was a cliché of the old this is where her life is meant to be with Mulder. There is nothing wrong with having Scully questioning her decisions in life, it just could have been done better and though it has been briefly touched upon in earlier episodes it has never been fully explored.

        A few miscellaneous comments on "All Things":

-  Couldn’t help thinking about all that water dripping from Mulder’s bathroom sink. Hey, Scully, tighten that knob next time, water is a precious resource not meant to be used as a metaphor.

-  As always it is fun to see Mulder bringing out the old slide projector, but what was weird was Mulder listening to music in his office, something we have never seen before. Guess we had to start early on that song meaning something to the overall plot.

-  I did enjoy Scully’s comment to Mulder about what is the point of all these crop cuttings, as in don’t you have better things to waste your time on.

-  Does Scully have a thing with having affairs with her teachers/mentors? We find out here she fell in love with an older teacher of hers and in the first season we found out she had an affair with an older teacher at the F.B.I. academy. Now if Mulder could only take on that role then he’ll be sure to win Scully’s heart. Hmm, maybe he already has and he doesn’t realize it.

-  Only in TV Land would the wrong paperwork that was put in an envelope you pick up be the X-Rays of a former lover. It sure was good to see Scully got some good old fashioned TV parking when we see her car is parked in front of the hospital though one would think the hospital would have a parking garage.

-  Let’s rub it in even more what Scully sacrificed by joining the F.B.I. when she accidentally walks into the hospital room with the smiling happy family.

-  Isn’t there a real practicing doctor at that hospital so that Scully wouldn’t be the only doctor who was qualified to zap Dr. Waterston. Would any hospital even allow Scully to take over as she did?

-  It is hard to believe that Dr. Waterston, who followed Scully to the D.C. area 10 years ago didn’t seem to know anything that happened to her in the past ten years or even tried to approach her. Just doesn’t make sense.

-  I couldn’t help thinking of the new tv show "The Others" when Scully brings those alternative healing people into Dr. Waterston’s hospital room where the main guy keeps saying Dr. Waterston is ready to move on but hasn’t because he has unfinished business. One of the most common lines in "The Others".

-  Could we have anymore slo-mo in this episode? Yeah, I get that it was supposed to mean Scully is slowing down to gather the meaning of life, but it was a little too much.

-  I couldn’t help thinking back to "Christmas Carol" where Scully flashbacks to a talk she has with her sister right before she left to join the F.B.I. about why she was joining the F.B.I.. No mention of Dr. Waterston and it is hard to believe from "All Things" that it was a casual love affair. Even though we know he wasn’t conceived at the time of "Christmas Carol" it is still something to consider when a new character is being introduced into a character’s life because when you rewatch "Christmas Carol" in the back of your mind is "what about Dr. Waterston?"

-  The worse executed scene was having Scully go up to who she thought was the woman she has been seeing throughout the episode and it ends up being Mulder. The reason it didn’t work is because there is no way in hell Mulder would be caught dead in that tan jacket and especially that tan hat with "Stonhenge Rocks" on it. Stick with your dark colors, Mulder, bright colors don’t work on you.

-  I’m with Mulder when he says to Scully that he is gone for two days and she has a life changing experience without him because Mulder should have been with her. Also, Scully sure seems to have the habit now of falling into a deep sleep and having men put her to bed.

        It was a good try on Gillian Anderson’s part to get deeper into Scully’s psyche, but it didn’t work because the set up wasn’t believable enough.

Claudia

E-Mail: Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

04/11/00

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