AIR DATE: December
10, 2000
Teleplay by Steven
Maeda
Story by Steven
Maeda and Daniel Arkin
Directed by Peter
Markle
I don’t know what this says about the X-files when I like an episode and the two main characters are barely in the story. Maybe it was Joe Morton’s acting as Martin Wells or that I’m a sucker for a story that deals with time getting screwed up. Not that this story was anything new. It was your basic story of a person who is going back in time to correct a past mistake. When I say I liked an episode it means that I didn’t roll my eyes in disbelief at what the writers wanted us to swallow. The main problem with the story was there was hardly any Scully and Doggett and it didn’t matter whether they were in the episode or not because it could have easily been anyone in their place and it wouldn’t have affected the story outcome. We never find out how Martin Wells knows Dogget other than it has been 3 years since he last saw him so why did they stop seeing each other. This is what I want to know, not Wells going back in time to clear his name. Even the name of the episode, "Redrum", isn’t original. Why name an episode for one of the best known backwards words from the book and movie "The Shining"? These little things stopped this episode from being a great episode to being just an okay episode.
A very few comments on "Redrum":
The Baltimore Police sure know how to transfer their prisoners safely when Martin Wells’ father-in-Law easily shoots him 3 times and it had to be Doggett who was standing next to Wells to run over and take down the father-in-Law while the Baltiimore Police appear to be standing around drinking their coffee and eating their donuts.
I kept asking myself ¾ of the way through this episode why Scully and Doggett are involved in this case even after it was explained that Dogget was a friend of Wells.
I found it hard to believe at this point in the case that Baltimore Corrections would have Wells walking around with other prisoners considering there is a good chance he put them there and his life could be in danger.
Who didn’t guess the second we saw the spider web tattoo on Cesar Ocampo that he would somehow be involved in Wells’ wife’s death. They practically threw it in our face with the spider web in Wells prison cell to making damn sure we saw Ocampo’s tattoo.
Well, we briefly get to see Doggett’s apartment. Much nicer than Mulder’s, but Doggett should get ready for all kinds of weird stuff to happen there.
It was nice to know Baltimore PD treats city prosecutors like everyone else when they quickly leave his apartment after he called in to say his wife was in danger. Gee, nothing is going on so they just leave. I guess in Baltimore their prosecutors don’t have to worry about threats to their lives as the Baltimore PD appeared to not take it seriously when they leave Wells by himself.
Another obvious shot was the well-worn shot of the Murderer about to murder someone and at the last second he gets shot and killed by someone else as we see Ocampo get shot and killed by Doggett just as Ocampo is ready to do the final blow to Wells’ wife.
As long as I’ve been around I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prosecutor arrested for falsely putting someone in jail. I found that a little hard to swallow when Wells ended up in jail for falsely putting Ocampo’s relative in jail. If anything he would lose his job and maybe disbarred. If this came out then every case Wells had trialed would be questioned. This is something I’m sure the D.A.’s office would want to keep quiet.
Why would Wells be spending the night at a hotel when it is only a 30 to 45 minutes drive from Baltimore to D.C. I guess the D.A.’s office has extra money to spend on a hotel.
I think this is the first time a guest character does a voiceover when Wells does a voiceover at the end of the episode about his actions and the meaning of everything. Once again I don’t know what this says about the X-Files today when neither Scully or Doggett get to do a voiceover.
Maybe X-Files should become an anthology series since it seemed to work a lot better when they forget their two main characters for guest characters who we will never see again. This has been the problem with the X-Files the past few years because it seems they have forgotten how to write interesting stories for their two main characters so we have to hope the guest characters will be interesting to keep us watching. I still liked this episode because I did find it interesting with Wells waking up a day earlier each day trying to figure out what happened to him to get him in this situation. We get to see why he was going through this hell for falsely putting a kid in jail and the consequences he has to face for his actions. Now it might have been a better episode had they explored Doggett so we could learn who he is and what motivates him. Instead we get an episode about a one time acquaintance of Doggett who we will never see again.
Claudia
E-Mail: Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu
12/10/00
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