PATIENCE

AIR DATE: November 19, 2000
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Chris Carter

        In order for the Monster of the Week episodes to work and for us to believe Scully and Doggett would just drop looking for Mulder, the monster has to be interesting and have a personality of some kind to have us forget about Mulder. "Patience" didn’t do this because the monster was your typical one-dimensional killing machine monster. A good comparison to a good Monster is Tooms who was creepy and had a simple motive on why he was killing these people. I couldn’t figure out what Bat Man’s motives were or who he was. Are we to believe he’s waited and lived for over 50 years to go after these people who killed his partner? I’m assuming it killed his partner since they both looked the same in the newspaper photo and the actual Bat Man we saw briefly in the episode. What, did he stay in his bat cave waiting for their scent to come back into the area. Hell, if that’s all it was the hunters who killed his partner might as well move to England instead of a nearby island then he never would catch up with them. I know Bat Man was supposed to have super abilities to pick up their scents, but no creature has that kind of smelling ability. He goes on a killing rampage because Ernie Stefuniak decided instead of burying his wife on the island he has been hiding on for 50 years he burns the body and dumps it in the river. Now that is respecting a person’s body. Urgh, this whole plot was just too convenient having people doing stupid things to move the plot along. The less said about this episode the better.

        Where were Scully and Doggett in all this? Chris Carter was busy trying to establish Scully as the new Mulder with somewhat mixed results. What did work was Scully having a hard time dealing with being the new Mulder in taking that giant leap into believing the impossible. What didn’t work was wondering if it is safe for Scully to be flying everywhere and risk getting attacked while pregnant. These are the kind of things I don’t like having to think about on a show that consistently puts its main characters in danger. It makes me question Scully’s judgment in having a child, but if Xena could still fight while pregnant then I guess Scully can too then again Xena isn’t grounded in reality as X-Files attempts to be. Robert Patrick as Doggett did a fine job with what he had which was having Doggett working and believing in Scully. Unfortunately, unlike the early days of Scully working with Mulder, Doggett appears to be more willing to believe Scully’s wild theories.

    A few comments on "Patience":

• You would think after 35 years of embalming the wife would be used to him coming home with that smell. After that time period it would become a part of him so that it would seem normal. But we had to know he was a funeral director who just did the job of Stefuniak’s wife. What really annoyed me the most was Bat Man going after everyone with Stefuniak’s scent on them even if they had very little contact with him. If he was just killing everyone who came in contact with the body then he is an even worse monster who worked only on instinct not cunning or intelligence. Boring.

• One big plus for the episode was Scully bringing out the old slide projector. Nice to know she knew where to find it.

• Good to see Scully still doesn’t drive as we see Doggett driving the car to the crime scene.

• Best line was Doggett holding a flashlight in front of Scully and asking her as he is holding it, "Do you carry one of these". This is what happens with Mulder’s not there to remind her to bring her flashlight.

• Worse thing was Doggett suddenly finding that 1955’s article about Bat Man’s partner who was killed by Stefuniak. I want to know how he found that article and what made him think in that direction. Also, who let him cut up their 1955 newspaper since most libraries store their newspaper articles on microfiche and it is doubtful the local newspaper would let him rip off the front page. Of course, if he never found that article they never would have figured out who they were looking for which makes it a major plot convenience for Carter to keep the story moving along.

• I still find it hard to believe they would exhume a body in the middle of the night. Somehow I don’t see the County paying for that overtime. The County should hire Bat Man as a grave digger since from what those two grave diggers said he did a good job digging up the grave.

• Are we to believe Bat Man was waiting in the cemetery for Detective Abbott? How did he know Detective Abbott was coming? Or was he just hanging around after digging up the grave to see who would pass by. Please! Did Bat Man really fit in that little hole in the tree trunk? You would think he would be spending his spare time looking for Stefuniak and not the people who weren’t involved in the killing.

• Where did Scully and Doggett find that rowboat? Did Bat Man, who seemed to be a mindless killer figure out if he followed Scully and Doggett they will take him to Stefuniak though you would think he would figured out that if kept an eye on Stefuniak’s brother it might have been easier to find him.

• Did we really need Doggett getting attacked by Bat Man? Not really. Did Doggett really need to leave? Not really, since Bat Man was only going after the ones who had recent physical contact with Stefuniak even though we saw Bat Man in Stefuniak’s brother’s barn. Also, we know Doggett wasn’t going to be killed so there was no suspense in that.

• More annoying things about this episode: 1) Scully shooting into the roof in the vain attempt to shoot Bat Man and going through her gun clip (of course, she had another one handy). 2) Scully going outside the building to look for Bat Man when it would have been better to stay inside the house where you control all the entrances. 3) Stefuniak putting down his gun to look into the chimney to see it Bat Man was coming from there then having Bat Man suddenly appear on the behind Stefuniak. 4) Making Bat Man super human so much so that mere bullets cannot kill him just to make it seem as if he is still out there. Worked well in "The Host", but not here. Somehow I don’t feel Scully and Doggett are in danger of being attacked by Bat Man.

• So is Scully going to put Samantha’s picture in the desk drawer along with Mulder’s name plate? Well, now we know Scully never had a place down there so where the hell was her office.

• Why exactly did Stefuniak burn his dead wife’s body and not bury it on the island. An X-Files friend said it was because she wanted to be buried in the cemetery, but then she asked how was burning the body and dumping it in the lake was a respectable to do this. I can only imagine how the wife’s mother felt with her daughter’s burned body showing up in a lake after being missing for 50 years.

Claudia

E-Mail: Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

11/23/00

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