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mulders-too-large-shirt · 11 months ago

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s3 episode 17 "pusher" thoughts

this episode took a few days to work... and it built up the suspense! i tried to watch it on thursday- i was ready for my scullynmulder time- but it wouldn't play. and then i finally had time to try again yesterday, and it STILL wouldn't work.

(i had to go on reddit and learned that i needed to change a single number in a random string of code, because apparently a new firefox update just killed any ability to use hulu? the hoops i jump through for these two...)

but, i really enjoyed this episode! it had cute lil moments and then also some soul-crushing angst, which is the way i like it. so allow me to begin, and all of my note taking shall begin below!

YAYYYYY it’s scullynmulder time… my heart is so happy

so we open in a grocery store in virginia. it’s a nice looking grocery store. would browse there.

a guy is buying like a billion cans of stuff that has a muscle on it. and then a magazine with the freaky worm baby from s2 on it! haha a nice callback! again. shoutout to the props team <3

but then, the scene of tranquil grocery shopping was interrupted, as the guy with all the cans grabs the jacket of the guy in front of him- and it turns out the whole thing was a sting operation!!! guy who wanted his cans is referred to as “pusher”. the FBI has a TON of guys dealing with him. 5 cars full. wow! he must be very scary.

he’s in the back of the last car. and going on about this officer’s uniform color.

he keeps saying cerulean over and over until somehow the guy driving the car stops seeing the big tractor trailer coming his way. and so when he drives straight ahead, he is immediately hit!!! is this some sort of hypnosis?

the intro was different again!! who do they think they are fooling by changing this?? not me!

mulder's office time. side note: it really is THEIR office as a collective. because we never see her at her desk. but anyway.

the police car’s driver died after hitting the tractor trailer that was magically invisible to him, but not before he unlocked the prisoner, pusher. pusher had confessed to contracted killings over two years that had been staged to look not like murders, if you catch my drift.

why would this otherwise great agent unlock this prisoner and also drive straight into a tractor trailer? a great question! one we can hopefully answer.

pusher had kept mumbling about cerulean until the driver ran into a truck for a business called cerulean. then he had written a clue at the scene of the crime! it says “nin or” which mulder flips backwards to read… ronin. ronin! i know that word!

mulder points out that this means a samurai without a master (nerd), and that this is the name of a… self defense magazine? so off to go read some magazines!

a young woman who we later learned is named holly brings them a big stack of the aforementioned magazines- maybe she's an archivist! maybe that should be my job!

she has a giant bruise on her face from getting mugged. mulder asks if they got whoever did this to her, and she says “do they ever? ….no offense” awww, holly, you're gonna make him sad. but seriously, poor girl, that is awful :(

she heads out, and scully is like, how did pusher do all of these killings? mulder says that he was probably utilizing the power of suggestion

so they find an advertisement for someone “who solves problems” in all of the ronin magazines since 1994- which was when the murders started! a clue! with a phone number to go with it!

and in the ad were the letters OSU, which they thought meant ohio state but no! it’s a japanese word that means “to push”! gasp! it's definitely their guy!

(there was very conveniently a japanese to english dictionary on the shelf of the room where they were reading the magazines. i guess it's important to keep your language learning tools around in the FBI, but it was funny because all the other books looked like boring legal stuff)

they call the number, and it goes to a phone in virginia. mulder is in a car nearby and scully is there too, but she is sleeping. ON HIS SHOULDER!!!!

he lightly taps her face to wake her up and says “i think you drooled on me” and she quickly apologizes... NOOO DON’T BE MEAN TO HER!!! SHE’S SLEEPY 😭😭😭 awwwwww oh my HEART <3

(i need to scream real quick, because that was so precious. AHHHHHHHHHhhhhhHHHH)

((nah i'm never gonna move on from this actually. never never. the way he tapped her face.......... how she seemed so embarrassed.... the intimacy of falling asleep on someone's shoulder, how long he must have sat there trying not to make any sudden movements while still keeping his attention on the case........... i need to collect myself))

but then the phone rings back!!! they sprint sprint sprint and they pick it up… to someone asking if they are just going to sit there all night!!!! the pusher!!!

oh he’s creepy… he comments on how mulder “and his pretty partner seem awfully close”. now, is he invested in whatever the hell it is they have going on like i am (which is valid), or is he just a creep (less valid)?

pusher seems to be a freak at least in some regards, saying that "they have to follow his breadcrumbs", and that the next one is right in front of mulder, who he keeps calling “g man”. he also says to let his fingers do the walking, which makes slim to no sense to me.

but they figure that it means to call the last number on the pay phone, and it reaches a golf course! they hold the phone up so they both can hear the message and it’s so CUTE AWWW

mulder calls her “g-woman” as they leave <- STOP I’M GONNA SCREAM!!!

off to the golf course. where pusher is golfing with a very beat up face from the accident. he spots snipers hiding in the grass, mumbles that it is “about time”, and tries to get out.

they have him cornered!!! but when he tells the dude with the gun on him to relax, he really does. and when pusher tells him to show him his face, he does. he knows the guy by name?!?

pusher tells this collins fellow to pour a ton of gasoline, which he does while crying. collins screams at the agents to stop him as he flicks on a lighter, but scully is fast and grabs a fire extinguisher, and mulder uses his jacket to induce a sort of stop drop and roll maneuver. huh, they really do work so well together!

a car horn is blaring, so mulder goes to see what is going on and it’s… a dude with his head on the horn. he says “bet you five bucks i get off”… it’s pusher! he was mumbling as if he was remotely controlling the dude who lit the flame... okay, weird.

mulder at da court. he is fidgeting as they question him about this pusher fellow and his 14 murders. mulder explains that he thinks pusher can talk his way into his victims hurting themselves, which is by far not the most outlandish thing we’ve heard on this television program, but the people in the court act like this is akin to spotting a unicorn, and scoff at mulder for proposing such a bizarre idea.

(usually i agree that mulder's ideas are bizarre, but this one seems entirely possible to me, with or without mind control. people can be talked into doing all sorts of things. mulder i am on your side and would not laugh at you like these fakes)

AND pusher had called and confessed to 14 murders, but his defense tries to write it off as a drunk prank call. while this is the most absurd thing we (both the viewer and the characters in court) have ever heard, and surely no one would ever believe it, pusher uses his mind power skills to get into the judge’s brain and make him be declared innocent.

pusher walks up to mulder and says he owes him five dollars. this dude majorly sucks.

cutscene to mulder practicing his aim. it’s pretty good!! he must be really unsettled by this whole situation to work on his marksmanship.

scully comes in (with the ear protection things on so mulder's firing doesn't blast her ears <3 queen of precautions) with more information on this pusher fellow. mulder starts reciting all the things he can guess about the pusher’s life, from his college to his military service to which branch and i'm thinking man, did he study up on this? is he that unsettled by this case? but ohhh yeah, mulder does profiling, seemingly very successfully.

but he didn’t know that the pusher applied to the FBI!!! and had flopped at the psych evaluation, where he had been ego-centric and lied and claimed to be trained by ninjas. mulder seems to think this could be true, but i don’t know if he knows the ninja lore and that they were not as historically common as media would make you think 💔

luckily, scully doesn't break this terrible news to him. man, this reminds me i need to get a good translation of the kojiki and the nihon shoki

(at this point i did a bit of a wikipedia rabbit hole into japanese medieval literature before remembering the plot at hand. focus!)

mulder says that they should have had enough evidence to at least get him in custody, and that the pusher “put the whammy” on the judge. to which scully deadpans “please explain to me the scientific nature of the whammy” <- HDHEJSNWJSKDMND i love her sooooo terribly.

mulder is still thinking this guy was a ninja, but scully points out that if he could control people’s minds, why wouldn’t he be an FBI agent like he wanted? a very good point! well, maybe it’s a new skill, mulder posits.

he seems very frustrated that scully isn’t buying his mind control theory, but she makes it very clear she believes he is guilty of murder!!! they just need to figure out what went down. queen of communicating her logic. she won’t communicate her feelings though, but that's okay we can work on that in the future.

pusher at da FBI. writes himself a note that says “pass” and sticks it in his lapel, goes in and asks for computer records. the guard immediately gives it to him. and he waltzes in!

no!! the poor girl with the bruised face from before, holly!!! he starts talking to her, and she gives him the keyboard to her super secret FBI computer. he asks for printouts and says he wants to hurt whoever did that to her face. hmm. well, maybe a little revenge on her behalf wouldn’t hurt...

but skinner is here! he heard an unfamiliar voice and walks in, asking if he can help this strange fellow. skinner realizes that he is up to no good, and grabs him, but the pusher convinces holly that skinner is the guy who mugged her!!! so she busts out her mace the minute that skinner manages to call for security and starts KICKING HIM??

things escalated very quickly there.

holly is in his office, apologizing profusely to skinner and whole bunch of other people for kicking the hell out of his face. scully is there too. okayyyyy, she’s moving up in the world, helping out when skinner gets attacked!!!! she is very calm about the whole thing though, which makes her a great choice, so she deserves it.

holly says that it was like the pusher was in her head, and she was watching herself do the things she did. creepy...

she’s crying, and skinner doesn’t honestly seem too mad about the whole thing. i would be very mad if one of my employees let a random guy have access to secret files and then pepper sprayed and kicked me, but clearly he understands something was afoot.

OH! scully agrees that it is the pusher’s persuasive powers that made holly attack him, even if she can’t explain why it is he can do that! wow! the evidence is undeniable, even if it is inexplicable!

the pusher left with mulder’s file… so now he knows where he lives. so they should have a sleepover at her place!!! and watch movies!!! <3 before they catch him ofc, because now that he was trespassing, they have him on hook for a crime

(sadly, i must report that no sleepover took place. but it would be nice to imagine that it did)

they go to the pusher's apartment to try and find him, and scully announces before she turns the lights on. okayyyy! giving everyone a warning.

something about her with a trench coat and a gun in investigation mode makes my stomach do flips. we don't have to unpack that right now. i just was very aware that it happened.

he left a movie on the tv, that scully immediately identified as svengali. hold on let me google something. okay, that is a book/movie about guy that uses mind control. fitting. a clue, perhaps…

and is she watching horror films on the regular to be able to identify the film after seeing like three frames….? love that for her <3

(wait, she did say before that the exorcist was one of her favorite movies! so this further proves that she is going to be seated for a spooky film <3)

mulder opens his fridge to find a million and a half of those protein cans from before. you think those are giving him psychic powers? hmm…

oh!!! scully found something in his cabinet: epilepsy medication!!! a clue, perhaps? i’m just gonna keep saying that about anything they find. so that means they know more about him, and that he will need medication, which could be a way to try and find him, because he’ll need to get more at some point probably… AND HE STARTED TAKING THE PILLS AT THE SAME TIME THE MURDERS STARTED!

mulder asks what can cause epilepsy late in life. her answers: head injury, neurological disease, a tumor…

mulder perks up because he thinks a tumor might give you psychic powers. which would be a bright side to an otherwise very dismal situation, i’m sure.

she says that if he had a brain tumor, he would not be well enough to do all of these shenanigans- a very valid point. mulder responds with: maybe he isn’t well at all!! he was too tired to escape at the driving range, after all, and he had confessed to murders he had gotten away with… maybe he wants to go out in a blaze of glory!

huh. bold theory.

phone rings as this theory is proposed. and the pusher is in fact on the phone. he asks for mulder and scully, who are sitting next to each other on a bed with their heads close, listening in. it’s endearing.

anyway, the pusher is going on and on with the dude on the phone named frank, saying he looks super unhealthy, and i get that they are trying to trace the call, but they also should know by now to not listen to a damn thing he says because of the mind control. but again, he could be offering a clue, so someone has to listen. agh! such a conundrum.

mulder says to hang up the phone, right as the pusher talks frank into having some sort of medical condition where his blood thickens (gag. gag gag gag bleurghhhh). mulder and scully are trying to get him to hang up the phone but he won’t, he keeps listening so they can get a trace on the call!! and then frank is dead.

scully’s trying to save his life, but mulder picks up the phone. the pusher says that he wants a real adversary, and he’s read up on mulder, who he deems worthy. okay just ignore scully at your own peril i guess...

scully realizes she can’t save frank :( and mulder is mad because he killed this dude for nothing!! but he says no no, all these people die by themselves.

they trace him to near a hospital, where he must be getting regular treatment for his condition. they find his car outside. and he’s scheduled for an MRI.

mulder says he should go in by himself, so that no one else gets hurt. a bold choice...

he gets all suited up with a camera and some fancy equipment to go in, then he gives scully his gun, so he won’t shoot anyone even if the pusher uses his mind games on him. and then they hold hands for a second. and look into each other’s eyes. and i will sob like a baby.

mulder is going into the hospital. scully is watching all of this from his fancy camera. the og live stream.

we hear two shots fired; the pusher made the guard shoot the technician and then himself. scully sees the monitor and asks mulder to get closer. and he does indeed have a tumor…. and is dying, so he has nothing to lose. which makes him even scarier!

scully is begging him to get out of there. but he turns and scully sees from the camera the pusher holding him at gun point!!! she yells “god!” and then runs into action. oh you know it’s serious when the catholic is yelling the name of the lord as an exclamation….

scully putting on a bullet proof vest to go in there and save him😳oh wow… i am learning so much about myself

she goes in, tells the SWAT team to wait for a signal. everything is very very very tense as she makes her way into the hospital. so slowly. she finally comes to the right door, and pushes it open.

mulder is seated with the pusher in the room of a patient, while the two stare at each other. they’re both very sweaty, and pusher has a gun in his hand. the pusher is going on about martial arts and a fight to the death and stuff. he gives mulder the gun and says to pull the trigger, one pull with a one in six chance to kill him.

scully is suspicious because they are, again, in a hospital, which has pure oxygen, and who knows what could happen if he pulls the trigger? but despite her very logical warning, he does pull the trigger, right away, and nothing happens.

but the pusher talks mulder into putting the gun against his own head. she is begging him not to do it, to listen to her, to get out of there together, and everything will be okay.

and despite scully’s best efforts, he DOES pull the trigger. no bullet this time, but she is FREAKING OUT that he did that. she yells, and that yell will probably haunt me forever, how furious and terrified she sounded to watch him do such a horrific thing.

and then he turns the gun on HER, she’s crying, telling him to fight this. terrified she's about to die at his hands.

(oh my gosh, i really hope he’s faking the mind control working on him, so he can turn the gun on the pusher at the last minute)

the pusher mentions that SHE SHOT HIM, he read it in his files, “PAYBACK TIME, SHOOT THE LITTLE SPY” <- OMFG???? this escalated SOSOSOSOSO fast????

he tells scully to RUN while he still has the gun pointed at her, but then once she gets out and pulls the fire alarm, mulder shoots him!!!!! he keeps clicking the gun over and over at him despite it being empty. and he looks so tired, handing the gun over to scully, holding his head in his hands.

man, he must have been horrified, to have someone in his mind, making him try to hurt himself and hurt scully, watching her scream at him after he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, watching her cry as the gun was pointed at her, fighting for access to his own mind... and after he had left his gun with her, just to make sure he wouldn't hurt anyone, he found himself in this situation...... how he kept firing even after the single bullet had been shot, just to ensure that no one else would be hurt..... woah. there is a lot to unpack here about the lack of agency and losing loved ones and mulder's deepest fears.... i will be gnawing on this in my head for a while...

so, the pusher is on a ventilation system, and mulder is watching. scully enters and says he will never regain consciousness. apparently, he had been refusing treatment, refused to have the tumor removed even though it was possible. mulder says that it’s like she had proposed, he was a little man, and this finally made him feel big.

they linger long enough for me to wonder if they’re actually going to kiss, right in front of this comatose murderer, but she does something just as intimate: grabs his hand and says to not let this dude take up another minute of their time. we end with mulder taking one last look and leaving the room.

oh, this episode was GOOD. REALLY GOOD. the suspense was killer, the mind games were trippy, and these two. these two.

scully falling asleep on his shoulder? the fluff of an indulgent fanfic writer. but it REALLY HAPPENED. them holding their heads close multiple times to listen to the phone... the hand grab at the end. listening and trusting each other's wild theories.

this episode showed how well they work as a team, and it made me so happy. it felt in very sharp contrast to a few episodes before where they were not working together at all. and i get that was cosmic opposite day, but still, this episode and their dynamic felt so right.

and then at the end, the level of angst was unexpected. and honestly, they go through a LOT on this show, but scully seeing him held at gunpoint and then watching him pull the trigger on his own head made me lose my MIND. how she begged him to stop, pleaded and yelled, how she cried as he pointed the gun on her, him using every ounce of energy he had to try and resist mind control to keep her safe. and the minute she is away, he unloads the gun into the pusher, again and again and again despite knowing it was empty, just to be sure no other bullets could hurt anyone else. how exhausted he was when he sat down at the end, his head in his hands; how he watched him in his comatose state until scully told him they should leave.

(insert prolonged muffled screaming as a way to comprehend the feelings i am experiencing)

and a massive shoutout to skinner for showing up for 5 minutes, realizing there was a problem, addressing the problem, and not being too mad when the girl in the computer department beat his ass because he was sympathetic to her mind control quandary. really a solid fellow. skinner, you and i have had our disagreements in the past, but i have come to see you as a friend. now, do i trust him fully? no. but can he come to a birthday party? yeah <3

wow. just wow. a really great episode. definitely making it onto the best episodes list! i'm trying to make a mental list of all the ones that stick out as the most enjoyable, especially the ones that are single episodes rather than the larger two or three part ones, and this is a contender surely.

"please explain to me the scientific nature of the whammy"... how could you not love her?

#very good episode and editing my notes to post them only made me more emotional than i already was which is impressive #sculllyyyyyyyyyyyyy #i just have to say if she fell asleep on my shoulder there would be no complaints from my end #sigh. so much to think about and unpack here.#very interesting exploration into mulder's fears without him ever outright saying he was terrified. but we could tell.#the shooting practice and the frustration at scully not believing him and the exhaustion at the end and long lingering glances #yeah he was frightened! didn't have to use his words but we could tell!#this one is gonna stick with me for a while i already know it!#also again no one tell him about ninjas being rare in terms of historical documentation... i can't bear to reveal this #juni's x files liveblog #3x17 #the x files #txf

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