AIR DATE:  February 23, 1996
Written by Vince Gilligan
Directed by Rob Bowman

	"Pusher", when I first watched it I just wasn't in the mood for
the X-Files so I didn't get into it. In viewing it a second time I really
quite enjoyed it, though not a great X-Files episode it was a good average
X-Files episode in the mode of "Young at Heart", "Dod Kalm", and "The
Walk".

	"Pusher" is a story in which a man has the ability to will people
into doing what he wants them to do.  Of course, this is something we have
seen before so there isn't anything new the X-Files could add to it except
it got a good menacing performance out of Robert Wisden who played the
Pusher.  You do get the sense from him as Scully said he was a little man
who was trying to be a big man, and his desire for this made him very
dangerous.  The way Wisden used his voice truly did have a mesmerizing
effect to it.  I couldn't help wondering if there couldn't have been
bigger ways for him to get people's attention than being a contract killer
and confessing to them in order to drive the F.B.I. nuts on who he was and
how he did it.  The funny thing is it did fit his personality because he
truly couldn't think of a bigger thing to do other than doing these
murders and bugging the F.B.I..  I wanted to write he had a bit of a death
wish on his part, but he just enjoyed it too damn much for me to believe
he wanted to die to stop himself from doing these things.  If this was the
case he would have had the tumor taking out ages ago where he would lose
all his power and go back to to being a nobody. Literally a man who was a
loser all his life.

	Now onto Scully and Mulder in this episode and how the case
affected them.  Okay, I've been one of the people who has been complaining
about the coldness that appears to be going on between Scully and Mulder
so this episode had some interesting interaction between them.  In
"Pusher" we get to see them actually touching each other in a caring way,
in ways we haven't seen them to do in, well, its been so long I can't even
remember the last time.  We get to see Scully actually admit that Mulder
might be right in what he is saying.  Not that she hasn't before except
this time she didn't act pigheaded to Mulder's assertion that the Pusher
was willing people to do things.  Also, I liked how she told Mulder in her
own way that they need more mundane things to get a conviction on the
Pusher and that his beliefs are not enough.  Once again she is there to
ground Mulder down.  The scenes at the hospital were great, especially
before Mulder heads into the hospital and we see things from the camera
attached to him, and he flashes to Scully who's leaning on some equipment
with her head down with the biggest worried looked on her face about what
Mulder's about ready to do.  Also, you can see the fear and concern for
each other on both of their faces on what he is about to do as he hands
her his gun since they both know the Pusher has the ability to make a
person kill themselves.  For all this caring though I thought it was too
much, so much so it didn't seem quite real since it had come out of the
blue after the past few months of coldness and lack of support for each
other.  The last scene when Mulder is in the Pusher's hospital room and
Scully touches Mulder's hand, it seemed out of place and awkward.  It just
didn't seem like the appropriate thing to do at the moment.  Boy, as the
old Steve Earle song put it "I Ain't Ever Satisfied".  Damn if they do and
damn if they don't. 

	A few general comments on "Pusher":

- Boy, Mulder sure is a crack shot when he's mad.  At least in "Homicide" 
when Frank Pembleton did shooting practice he only hit the target in the
shoulder which is a bit more realistic.

- We get two foreshadowing scenes in "Pusher".  When Holly explains she
was attacked over the weekend and the man hasn't been caught, and when
Mulder tells Scully as he hands over his gun he doesn't want to point it
at the wrong person.  The Holly one was a bit too contrived and obvious to
me for it to work as a set up for the Pusher to use her as a way to get
information on Mulder, and as a way to have her beat up Skinner. 

- The second one with Mulder telling Scully about not wanting to point the
gun at the wrong person worked quite well when we see him later on under
the Pusher's influence trying to fight shooting the gun as he has it
pointed at Scully.  We see that would have been the shot with the bullet
in it when he shoots the Pusher instead of Scully.  It was an intense
moment even though we knew nothing would truly happen to Scully and
Mulder, but once again Anderson and Duchovny make it believable through
their performances.  I liked when Pusher pointed out that Scully has shot
Mulder before as a way to encourage him to shoot the gun. 

- Once again Skinner gets beat up.  Gee, other than his fight with Mr. X
which appeared to end in a tie, he hasn't won a fight yet.  Let this man
kick some butt like we know he can do.

- Would Pusher have been in the last police car after he was caught in the
supermarket?  Wouldn't his car have been in the middle of all those cop
cars?

- Once again we get Mulder in court making a fool of himself by having it
appear he is the only one who believes in the Pusher ability.  I cringed
the second I saw him in the witness stand because I could see a mile away
what was going to happen in this scene.

- Loved it when Mulder got the Pusher to look to see if his shoe was untie.

- I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but having the Fluteman on the
cover of one of those supermarket tabloids was funny.  Made it even better
by having the Pusher laugh at the thought of a Fluteman actually existing.

- Lucky for the Pusher either he or the agent who set himself on fire had
a lighter with them.  Oh yeah, it was good to have Scully go get a fire
extinguisher when she saw what the agent was going to do.  It allowed to
show us Scully's foresight in being able to think quickly in a tense
situation.

- It really was convenient that the only foreign language dictionary that
happened to be around was a Japanese/American one.

- I loved it when the Lt. in charge of the SWAT unit asks Scully, "Why do
you keep giving him what he wants?" as she hands him her gun before she
goes in to find out what has happened to Mulder in the hospital.  Which
begs the question of whether Scully and Mulder knew what they were doing.
Maybe it would have been better to have sent in the SWAT team since it
seemed the Pusher couldn't use his abilities when there are a lot of
people focused on him.  This would explain why he didn't try to escape at
the supermarket instead of risking his life by having the officer pull in
front of a speeding truck. 

	The only problem with "Pusher" was our beloved agents didn't use
some common sense, and the plot was a bit predictable.  The scene that
stands out is after they burst into Pusher's apartment, and he calls them
up.  The first thought that came into my mind was that he was calling from
a pay phone and I couldn't believe when everyone there seemed surprised
that he was calling from one.  Also, the second he started talking to
Agent Frank Burst I knew he was going to make him do something to kill
himself.  We also knew there would be some kind of confrontation between
the Pusher and Mulder because this type of story demands that this happen. 
The only difference was that Mulder wasn't strong enough to fight the
Pusher except when it came to shooting Scully which was the mistake the
Pusher made because he didn't understand the strong bond between Scully
and Mulder. 

	"Pusher" was a fine X-Files episode in that it gave us a villian
who was menacing by his defect as a person.  Compare him to Clyde Bruckman
who had the ability to tell people how they would die, even though this
didn't give him the same the power to kill people as the Pusher did, it
did give him power over people by having the ability to tell them. Imagine
if Bruckman had the same ability as the Pusher, it would be hard to
believe he would use it the same way the Pusher did because of the person
he was.  He didn't have the self-esteem complex the Pusher did, making the
Pusher all the more dangerous.

	It would have been hard for "Pusher" to have been a great episode
since the track record after excellent two parters is the episode shown
the following week isn't too good. "Fearful Symmetry" after the
"Colony/End Game", "D.P.O." after the ABC trilogy and "Firewalker" after
the Scully abduction arc are all episodes that feel flat after a strong
two parter.  "Pusher" was saved from this fate by good interaction between
Scully and Mulder and a genuinely dangerous villian.

Claudia
E-Mail:  Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

2/25/96

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