AIR DATE:  May 10, 1996
Written by Mat Beck
Directed by Rob Bowman

	I have stated before when I wrote about "Syzygy" that I really do
not like any tv show where the main characters are affected by some
outside force.  I don't know why I have a hard time believing in them, but
I just do.  As the Boston Globe critic jokingly pointed out "The Lone
Gunmen plus a homicidally paranoid Scully?  Sounds like a sweeps-month
episode of The X-Files."  This really does seem like the reason behind
this episode's existence.  You can almost see the meeting where they are
discussing ideas for upcoming episodes and someone goes "Hey, why don't we
do something with the good old subliminal message idea via the tv set that
makes people murder out of paranoid fear, and why don't we have it affect
Scully or Mulder somehow to put their partnership to the test.  We know
those X-Philes out there will love it."  "Wetwired" though wasn't all that
bad.  It was a fine average episode in which our two heros have to deal
with a difficult situation between them.

	Let's start off with the good part of "Wetwired" and that of
course is Mulder and Scully.  Now we all know what Scully is afraid of the
most is finding out someone close to her has betrayed her, and boy watch
out for a paranoid Scully because she can be deadly.  Remember how she was
at the end of "The Blessing Way" when she had her gun pointed at Skinner,
you could sense she could have shot him because she thought he was
involved in the conspiracy.  Notice though how when Scully shot at the
motel door she shot at the top of the door way above anybody's head so the
subconscious Scully was still there knowing what she was doing was wrong,
but unable to stop herself.  It was Mulder's reaction to this happening to
his partner that was the best thing about the whole premise.  You could
see the worried look in his eyes when he realizes it appears Scully has
gone off the deep end, and maybe thinking he is partly at fault.  Also, it
shows Mulder has two weaknesses:  1) his sister, where we have seen him do
reckless things regardless of the consequences in his attempt to find her,
and 2) Scully, where we see he doesn't give a damn about finding evidence
against the consortium if it takes him away from finding out where Scully
has run off to.  It wasn't until she was found that Mulder went full force
into investigating the reasons behind the murders in order to get some
justice for what was done to his partner and the others.  The scene in the
county morgue garage said it all when after Mulder parks his car he leans
his head against the steering wheel in quiet resignation that his partner
could be dead and there wasn't a thing he could do to prevent it.  It was
such a quiet and potent scene played nicely by Duchovny.

	Okay, now the bad:  as I've stated earlier I have a real problem
with any tv show where the characters stop acting like themselves because
of some outside force, and in "Wetwired" it was obvious it was done to
have one of the main characters go nuts .  The whole idea of only having
Scully affected and not Mulder because of his color blindness was one of
those sudden plot devices we see every now and then where we find out a
character has something wrong with them.  At least it was a logical reason
on why he wasn't effected and explains his taste in ties.  Another problem
I had with it was I couldn't see why the cable guy would always seem to
wait until Mulder and Scully were at the scene of the crime to take the
device out of the cable box.  If secrecy was so important why wait so long
to take some of them out?  Was it so Mulder would see the cable man doing
it?  Just one of those plot conveniences. 

	Who here wasn't surprised when we see Mr. X step into the car with
Smoking Man at the end?  This scene didn't seem necessary because we
already suspected Mr. X either worked for or with Smoking Man so if this
was supposed to be a shocking revelation it wasn't.  They should have left
it with Mr. X leaving Mulder in the house with the two dead men since that
scene implied that Mr. X was working with Smoking Man to clean up the
mess.  By having Mr. X explain to Mulder he was hoping Mulder would get to
the truth in order to expose what was going on before he had to kill them
said quite a bit about Mr. X.  Mulder had it right for all of Mr. X's
posturing.  Mr. X is a coward for not exposing it himself if he felt what
they were doing was wrong.  Mulder himself would have had no problem
exposing what the secret government operatives have been doing since
exposing the truth is more important to him than his life.  This scene
said more about Mr. X's character than the last scene with us seeing him
working for Smoking Man.

	Now for the general comments on "Wetwired":

- Mrs. Scully must not like her sons much since their pictures weren't on
her night stand as compared to her daughters.  I guess we know who were
the favorites in the family.  Let's talk about Mrs. Scully and what a
strong mother she is for Scully.  Mrs. Scully definitely is the center
point of the Scully family, without her the family would most likely fall
apart. Who did Scully run to when she felt her life was in danger, and who
convinced Scully that Mulder wasn't there to kill her?  If she wasn't
there Scully most likely would have killed Mulder. Oh yeah, I like how
Mulder still calls her Mrs. Scully and she calls him Fox.  One of those
parent things where one does not call a friend's parent by their first
name.  I could never imagine calling a friend's parent by their first
name, hell, I can't imagine calling my elderly next door neighbor by his
first name. 

- The first person to do all the murders reminded me of the guy in those
milk commercials especially the scene where they show him watching tv in
the psych ward and they show a weird closeup shot of his face.  I don't
know if it was the same actor as in the milk commercial, but I kept
thinking "Got milk".

- Boy, those cable companies don't wait to shut off a person's cable. 
Well, it was at the end of the month so I guess with that guy killing
everyone in sight he must have forgot to pay his cable bill.

- I thought those kids watching tv in the murderer's house was funny since
it's just the type of thing kids would do when playing hooky.  The
question is since the kids were watching tv and the device hadn't been
taken out yet will they turn into homicidal maniacs too or do you have to
watch it for a certain amount of time before it hits.  It seemed as if
people got addicted to watching the tv so much so they would start video
taping everything they were watching.  Of course, the more they watched it
the more paranoid they became to everything around them.

- I do have one question, how far away were Scully and Mulder that they
had to stay at a motel instead of going back to their apartments?  Damn,
they were pretty nice motel rooms too (not like the ones I usually end up
having to stay in) with its big room, vcr, couch and back door through the
bathroom.  I'd like to know who is going to pay for that motel room Scully
trashed, her or the F.B.I.? 

- I loved how they showed Scully growing paranoid about Mulder when she
goes to see what Mulder is up to on the telephone pole by having her bring
two policemen with her. 


	"Wetwired" was a fine episode which would have worked better if it
didn't use the old standby of evil subliminal messages via the tv set and
have it somehow affect one of the main characters.  As one can tell I'm
kind of conflicted on this episode on how much I liked it.  On one end I
really liked how it deals with Mulder's feelings toward Scully and how
Scully's mother was worked into the episode, but on the other end I didn't
like the old mind manipulation trick used to make Scully become paranoid
about Mulder.  Overall the episode was good in exploring the full depth of
Mulder's relationship to Scully.  We see how far Mulder will go to protect
her even at the cost of finding evidence to expose the consortium's evil
doings, and we see a bit of how much he would blame himself if anything
happened to Scully. 


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

5/12/96

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