REQUIEM

AIR DATE: May 21, 2000
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Kim Manners

        If this wasn’t a greedy world this would have been the last episode of the X-Files and the X-Files would have faded into the sunset with a somewhat tattered reputation and not having developed the feeling it had over stayed its welcome. But this is a greedy world and because FOX hasn’t develop a decent drama in 5 years and Chris Carter hasn’t produced anything as good as the X-Files we will be getting an 8th season which "Requiem" leads into. What do we get in "Requiem"? Mulder abducted and Scully pregnant. The only thing we have to worry about with these two things is there isn’t an actual point to them other than they were done just for the sake of doing it. I have this horrible thought that Scully’s baby will be some alien/hybrid that is supposed to save humanity from the alien invaders. A fellow X-Files fan commented to me that she couldn’t stop thinking about the old TV show "V" and the human/lizard hybrid of that show when she heard Scully was pregnant. Needless to say I don’t think too highly of the idea of Scully being pregnant (who is the father?) and I think the same about having Mulder abducted. Didn’t we do this bit a few years ago with Scully kidnapped (better executed and written, too) and Mulder looking for her which seems how the 8th season is going to end up. At least we get the fun of watching a pregnant Scully running around chasing aliens. Nothing like a pregnant woman chasing crooks.

        At least "Requiem" wasn’t as bad as recent conspiracy episodes. It goes back to the beginning of the X-Files where Scully and Mulder investigate the apparent abductions of some Oregon teenagers. Even though I hate Scully being pregnant and Mulder being abducted this episode wasn’t too bad for a conspiracy episode. I only groaned twice during the motel bedroom scene with Scully and Mulder in bed and Mulder’s abduction. It was interesting revisiting Scully and Mulder’s first case and what had happened to some of the people they were involved with. Billy Miles is now a cop and Teresa Hoese (bleeding nose girl in pilot episode) is married with baby. They seemed to be living a normal life until an alien ship crash lands near their town and weird things start to a happen so Billy Miles calls in Scully and Mulder. As always Scully and Mulder don’t really solve anything and get more than what they bargained for.

        Now some miscellaneous comments on "Requiem":

-  So where does Gibson Praise, bees, aliens with their eyes, mouth and ears closed, clones of Mulder’s sister, Jeremiah Smith and the black oil aliens fall into the grand scheme of things? As always every time a conspiracy episode is shown it showcases the weakness of the mythology episodes and X-Files itself and that there is no logical way to work them into one coherent alien story. It feels as if they are still making up things as they go along, but at least Carter didn’t introduce any new aliens.

-  All I could think of as I watched the flames come up in the dark forest was I hope that is a controlled fire and not one that could go out of control. As long as it isn’t the Park Service doing it.

-  Surprised there wasn’t a different opening tagline at the beginning of the episode. Guess they couldn’t come up with a clever one.

-  What took the F.B.I. so long to catch up with Mulder and his expenses? I guess they finally caught up with that trip to Antarctica a few years ago. Of course, you would think the Conspiracy guys would have thought this one up a long time ago since it is so obvious that sending the bureaucracy after Mulder is the best way to stop him.

-   Is there anyone the X-Files people didn’t put on this week’s opening credits. I think we were 15 minutes into the episode before we got to who directed the episode.

-  I appreciated the scene between Scully and the F.B.I. auditor as a way to remind us what has happened to Scully in case we forgot she was kidnapped, experimented with and made barren by the ordeal. Also, the barren quote was a cue to what would be revealed later in the episode.

-  Funniest line was the Auditor saying one of the reasons we send unmanned probes into space is because it is cheaper and just as efficient as sending men. I felt like saying back to him, "Yeah, those two Mars probes worked really well." As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

-  Who would have guessed Mulder’s phone was a speaker phone in his office since we have never seen him use it before and he had to because the script demanded Scully and Mulder talk to Buddy Miles.

-  Nice to see Cigarette Smoking Man is weaker than the last time we saw him. Sorry, nothing beats seeing Andy Garcia from the movie "Dead Again" smoking from his neck especially after we see he has to cover up the hole in order to be able to speak. Too bad they didn’t do that with CSM, it would have been creepier and grosser.

-  How will rebuilding the project save CSM’s life? Considering he had his cure in his hands only a few episodes earlier with the disk from the scientist. The fact he has to get Ratboy and Maria Covarrubias to help him makes it doubtful he has the complete cooperative of the government and hence no access to the resources he used to since people in the government, just like the F.B.I. auditor, start questioning spending and the results of that spending.

-  Also, are we to believe the military isn’t all over that area looking for the UFO because it is the local sheriff’s department job to coordinate the search. They know their plane hit another aircraft so one would think there would be search planes all over the place looking for it.

-  Shouldn’t Billy Miles’s dead father’s body have been getting a little ripe in the trunk of his police car. I guess they don’t have a state police force in Oregon to investigate disappearing Deputies or police car crashes.

-  I’m still trying to figure out exactly how Teresa Hoese lost it when Scully and Mulder introduce themselves because she seemed calm to me the whole time she was with them.

-  Was Chris Carter trying to relive that scene in the "Pilot" episode where Scully comes to Mulder’s room for him to look at her back for the signs of abduction. Now that scene in the "Pilot" was filled with sexual tension because it is their first case together and it showed a level of trust between Mulder on Scully. In "Requiem" it didn’t work because it didn’t make sense and it was just another scene to mess the fans around about their relationship. As if at a story meeting they came up with this idea of getting them together and in bed for the first time. Scully comes to Mulder’s room and says she is cold and gets into his bed so they can have this intimate talk. Heck, it would have worked just as well if they didn’t have it in Mulder’s bed. It was a good talk and dealt with things that should have been dealt with a long time ago.

-  Krycek is the Machiavellian of the bunch since CSM believes he will sell him out in a heartbeat though who could blame him since CSM has betrayed him over and over. How did Ratboy get stuck in a Tunisian prison? Does this mean he doesn’t have that device to punish Skinner? Do they even remember Ratboy has such a device? I was really hoping Ratboy and Maria Covarrubias would have thrown CSM over the balcony instead of down a flight of stairs because as least if they had he would definitely be dead and as it is now he might not be dead. Which is one of my pet peeves about TV shows, almost killing off a bad guy only to have him reappear a few episodes later with a far fetched story on how he is alive.

-  CSM tells Covarrubias that the ship has the answer to everything. Isn’t that what he said about the disk he recovered from the scientist? Maybe I misheard him both times.

-  As always Mulder is a good Boy Scout because he thought ahead to pack water in the car so when Scully was knocked down by the alien ship’s shield he had water on hand.

-  Did it seem to anyone else that Scully and Mulder just gave up on the case after Billy Miles and Teresa Hoese disappear? One moment they are going into Billy Miles’ house looking for him and the next scene Mulder is back in his office making wise comments to Skinner.

-  The conversion I did enjoy was the one in the hallway when Mulder tells Scully that her risking everything for his quest stops here because he believed she would be taken again if she came back to Oregon with him and didn’t want to risk that indicating it would be hard for him to be taken for a third time.

-  Why didn’t Ratboy or Covarrubias go with Skinner and Mulder to Oregon? You would think they would want to be there.

-  Was that Mulder looking happy getting into the light from the ship or Duchovny knowing this is the last scene he will have to do as Mulder for a while.

        In the end "Requiem" was an enjoyable episode because it is sometimes fun to see what they try to get us to believe since anything to do with the mythology episodes has been ruined by becoming so unbelievable. This episode was doing fine until Scully’s pregnancy and Mulder’s abduction. All our old favorites were back, Uniblonder (Maria Covarrubias), Ratboy (Alex Krycek), Cigarette-Smoking Man, Lone Gunmen, Walter Skinner and Alien Bounty Hunter. It doesn’t get more fun than that in an X-Files episode.

Claudia

E-Mail: Claudia.Cauchon@unh.edu

05/23/00

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