BRAND X

AIR DATE: April 16, 2000
Written by Steven Maeda and Greg Walker
Directed by Kim Manners

"Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette
Puff, Puff, Puff even if you smoke yourself to death
Tell Saint Peter at the Golden Gate that you’ll hate to make him wait
But you just gotta have another cigarette"

Tex Williams - "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!"

        There is nothing more creepy than bugs especially bugs that get under one’s skin. Let me just say I have no fondness for bugs and I have no problem with bugs as a whole as long as I don’t see them. "Brand X", started off creepy and gross, but soon falls apart because it didn’t create a good enough story for us to suspend our disbeliefs.

1. Are we really to believe that a tobacco company after it finds out its experiment in creating safe cigarettes worked the opposite way would be so callous as to continue to give these dangerous cigarettes to a person they know smokes like a chimney. I have no doubt the cigarette company would try to cover it up with the help of their doctors, but come on, wouldn’t they have destroyed most of the cigarettes to help cover it up. The last thing one would want to do is continue to give these cigarettes to a man who has a total disregard for human life and is smoking these things in public which means he could have ended up infecting the population of Winston-Salem.

2. This brings up another thing: the inconsistency of how much exposure a person has to have to the cigarette smoke to become infected with these tobacco beetles. It appears Dr. Scobie and Weaver’s next door neighbor have to have long time exposure to the cigarette smoke for them to become infected while it takes Mulder and the Head of Morley’s Security a few minutes exposure to become infected. The only reason for this was to put Mulder at death’s door which is the type of manipulation I can’t stand because if it was this easy for Mulder to become infected then everywhere Weaver (who always had a cigarette in his month) went and anyone he had contact with would be at high risk of becoming infected. This would mean there would have been a lot more people affected by this bug and it would bring attention to the area because of an unknown plague was affecting the Winston-Salem area.

3. Are we to believe Dr. Scobie’s lawyer didn’t have any idea of what he was going to testify to the grand jury? The whole point of having a lawyer is to consult with you when you are about to give testimony that could put you in jail. It is hard for your lawyer to work out a deal with the DA if he doesn’t know what you plan on testifying. Also, it sounded as if the DA didn’t know what Dr. Scobie was going to testify and no self respecting DA would put a person on the stand if they didn’t know what their testimony was. The only reason this was done was so Scully and Mulder would have a reason to come down because if Skinner knew what Dr. Scobie was testifying then he would have known what and how Dr. Scobie died and the episode would have been done in 5 minutes. Should we even get into why Skinner was doing Witness Protection duty in the first place?

        The only decent thing in "Brand X" was Scully and Mulder who at least acted themselves and we got lots of angst on Scully’s part looking at Mulder’s sick and dying body. It was great that even after all this time Scully can still be grossed out by the photo of a dead Dr. Scobie and Mulder zeros in on who he thinks knows more than they are letting on from his suspicion of Dr. Voss (of course, it is hard to not be suspicious of a tobacco company). But even the few decent Scully and Mulder moments couldn’t save this episode.

        Now a few comments on "Brand X":

-  Skinner and his F.B.I. buddies might want to take Witness Protection 101 again since they left open the blinds which would make easy for any sharp-shooter to shoot at Dr. Scobie.

-  Dr. Scobie’s eaten up face and neck now ranks up there with the open chest cavity of the Russian seaman from "The Host" as one of the grossest things they have ever shown on the X-Files. Also, I liked how we saw the open chest in Scully’s glasses as she worked on it.

-  Favorite comment came from Mulder when he learns Dr. Scobie doesn’t smoke, he says that’s like a GM executive driving a Ford.

-  One more hard to believe scenario: Are they trying to tell us the reason why there weren’t any bugs where Dr. Scobie died was because they escape through an open bathroom window? With all the bugs we saw come from other victims it is hard to believe there wouldn’t have been any bugs still in the bathroom.

-  Favorite scene was Mulder ditching Skinner and Scully. Skinner looks over at Scully as if saying don’t you know where he’s going and she just looks back as if saying don’t look at me, he does this all the time.

-  Weaver lives in a dive and his next door neighbor is surprised he smokes though I totally understand because for a few months the person living in the apartment next to me smoked as much as Weaver and the smell would permeate my walls so much that my apartment smelled liked cigarette smoke.

-  Lucky for Mulder the first sign that you have been infected is throwing up blood. Too bad Dr. Scobie didn’t realize this even though he was going to testify to this fact. One could say Dr. Scobie realized he was dying and this is why he was testifying though why he wasn’t seeking medical help is a mystery if that was the case.

-  If I found out that cigarette smoke from a suspect cigarette is causing the infection the last thing I would do is enter into the apartment without some sort of face mask.

-  Ohh, Weaver is evil and dangerous, he lights a cigarette near a gas pump. Or maybe this is showing us what an idiot he is. He appears to be blackmailing the tobacco company, yet he doesn’t ask for any real money to get a decent place, instead he just wants those cigarettes. It could be said that the doctors were paying him off which wouldn’t make sense because it would be in their interest and the tobacco company’s best interest to keep him quiet, and the doctors would have to do a lot of work to cover up their failures.

-  Gee, why didn’t Scully take charge this time when Mulder went into cardiac arrest as she did last week with her former lover. I suppose that is reserved for former lovers or X-Files writers who know how improbable it was Scully would have been allowed to do emergency work on her ex-lover in "All Things".

-  Another one of those just for the plot’s sake moments is when Skinner enters into the tobacco company research lab without any backup. Where was the tobacco company’s security because at the beginning of the episode they sure were not going to let Scully and Mulder get beyond the front desk. Maybe Weaver who also got into the building fairly easy puffed in the security guards face and they became instantly infected.

-  If I were Scully I would have taken those cigarettes away from Mulder instead of letting him throw them into the garbage can. What would really be great is if in future episodes we see Mulder sneaking off to get a puff of that nasty nicotine. Now that would be funny.

        There we go, another mediocre outing of the X-Files that could have been a better episode if it wasn’t ruined by stressing our suspension of disbelief levels. Bugs are creepy and most people don’t like them near or in them and this episode didn’t make them creepy or scary.

Claudia

E-Mail: Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

04/18/00

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