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mulders-too-large-shirt · 10 months ago

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s3 episode 21 "avatar" thoughts

a fantastic episode yesterday, and… a SKINNER episode today?!?! what kind of journey are we in for?!!!

LITTLE DID I KNOW!!! for i simply had no idea that a skinner episode is EXACTLY what i needed!!! it is the thing i did not order but that hit the spot precisely!!! it was a thing i couldn’t predict!!!

but who would have thought it? a glimpse into the life of such a secretive man… and a beautiful one, at that!! wow!! i’m emotional over WALTER SKINNER! how unexpected, but also inevitable….

let us begin this journey, which went in so many directions

let us read this episode description. skinner, a murderer…. hmm. it’s not really adding up to me... in this context, at least. has he killed people? yes, definitely. but a random person? seems sloppy. seems weird. seems that someone is framing him…

we open with our friend walter.

IS SKINNER GETTING A DIVORCE?????

this is not how i expected the episode to start!

oh, he won’t sign the papers. he says he’ll do it tomorrow. skinner is SAD :( he’s putting his coat on and leaving!!!!! he does not want to get divorced it seems.

wait, an emotional skinner like two minutes in……. woah. we’re in for a rollercoaster here, i can tell (author's note: op was correct)

noooo, sad skinner at a bar. someone sits next to him. this woman is pretty and sits next to him to escape a guy who wouldn’t stop talking to her. a gentleman!

she asks if being alone bothers him and OH! cutscene to sex. well. this escalated quickly.

PAUSE. is this the first sex scene in this show??? and it’s SKINNER??? if you would have told me that fact a few months ago when i started this show, i would have laughed at you…

omg yeah... i think it is the first on-camera sex scene in this show?? in the past there hasn’t been much (thinking of 3, which is an episode i purposely choose to forget except for right now, and i am ONLY thinking of it to remember how the precedent was established) and they just cut to waking up the next morning. but no, not here. here we get the full show.

well! he seems to be having fun, at least.

OH??? until an old lady is on top of him and screaming?

fun has been cancelled.

that seems to have been a terrible nightmare. but what is not a nightmare is that the woman next to him is DEAD!!!

huh???

my guess…. a slow acting poison??

poor skinner…… he literally cannot catch a break.

oh my goodness, how are our agents going to react to this news….? i would be so embarrassed if my employees knew who i was hooking up with……. and also that she died…..

mulder at da scene. he wants to talk to skinner but he isn’t allowed to talk to him!!!

his phone rings and scully is driving in absolute POURING RAIN and idk why it made me laugh. she was like in a damn flood and flooring it to get where she needed to be lmaoooo

skinner says not to get involved. yeah okay. unstoppable force (mulder on a quest for answers) meet immovable object (skinner)

OH! so it was NOT poison that killed her, and actually her neck was broken. so i guess i didn’t see that. which is probably good because i would have gagged.

this detective is being a jerk to mulder. saying that skinner is suspicious for not taking a lie detector test as if a lie detector test can prove a damn thing (hint: it cannot!) but mulder still gives him his card so they can call and chat

LMAOOOO he was on the phone with scully for all of that exchange with the detective, and she is STILL just trying to get through what looks like a hurricane!!! but she is on her way!!!! he says let’s go look at the body

still at the crime scene, mulder sees the body’s outline and sighs deeply, realizing his colleague is in trouble

scully is narrating the autopsy into her little voice recorder thing, and it always makes me think she’s vlogging, but i digress. she says the victim’s spine was crushed, and only skinner’s prints were on the body.

mulder makes a stupid remark about “at least they were having safe sex” because really, what DO you say when your boss is a murder suspect, and the body is right in front of you? well! many of us will never have to answer this question. funny how he needs to have a Quip to cope, though. don't think i haven't noticed.

her name was carina, and she was a legal secretary who was fired for working as an escort. they truly hate to see a woman get her side hustle on.

scully looks so sad and confused at all of this, but turns the light out and the body’s face is glowing in the dark around the mouth!!! so she pulls out her recorder and makes note of that. it’s like if you split the juice in a glow stick on there. so maybe there WAS poison afoot?!

(author's note: literally no poison at all in this ep idk i was just really convinced there would be... it is important i also include my predictions that flop so you know i have journalistic integrity)

mulder and scully at someone’s door. the person who answers says lorraine is busy, and he says “busy or not, we need to speak with her” and barges in and AGAIN. the way these two just enter a room so forcefully always makes me lose my mind. someone please make a youtube complication of this someday. they are NOT vampires they do not need to be invited in 😭

lorraine, the head of the escort agency, wants to do their questioning later and they break the news carina is dead. she does not want to tell them who hired her, for it goes against their practice. but mulder is ANGRY and gets her to confess that it was, in fact, skinner.

the agents are walking out, asking what was he thinking, and i am wondering the same thing!! she says they can’t ignore the evidence, but mulder is refusing to believe that skinner could be responsible. oh mulder, your faith in those you love really is admirable.

she brings up that they really don’t know much about skinner, but he says that we know he’s risked a lot for us, and that they owe it to him to find the truth. another case of both things being true, which happens often with these two.

oooo this is juicy, i’m INVESTED!!!

conveniently timed cell phone call! skinner has been released. mulder runs to go get him and skinner says it doesn’t concern him, but mulder says of course it does, and damn, i’m just now realizing how attached to skinner mulder must be, how he sounds like a scared little kid hoping against hope he’s innocent, because the people you love can’t do bad things, right? AUGHHHHH how mulder must look for safety in all the places he didn’t get it growing up. i’m gonna be sick. of course it concerns us! <- yeah. making note to analyze this in depth later because it felt like piercing me through the heart.

skinner is gagged by their revelation that carina was a sex worker, which means something is afoot here, because he was supposed to be the one that hired her...

but when he looks behind them, he sees that creepy old woman again!!! omg i had forgotten about her!!!! she’s in a bright red rain jacket.

and he runs into traffic after her (he does get hit by a car but it's the least of his worries) but when he goes to get her… it’s someone else?? with brown hair and blue eyes and not a creepy old lady at all. it’s his WIFE!!!!! WIFE REVEAL!!!!! 🎊

so the agents and sharon skinner are chatting. scully wants to know if he’s always been so private. “he lives under this misguided notion that silence is strength” is what his wife has to say, which is both poignant and read him for filth, sharon. so that is why they separated, and have been for about 8 months.

oh! mulder was one of the few people skinner ever mentioned from work!!! she knows he respects him, so she asks him if he really killed that woman. mulder says he doesn’t think skinner did it, but they have to go now.

some guy named special agent bonnecaze is at skinner’s desk. and the agents are wanted at a hearing for skinner’s ability to keep his job!!! this bonnecaze says they’re not allowed to go sleuthing about. mulder is very very angry.

(what separates a special agent from a regular agent? this is probably a simple internet search, but isn't it more fun to post your thoughts? google says pretty much everyone at the federal level involved in crime investigation is a special agent. so if they're ALL special agents it can't be that special)

back to the office, where mulder is chomping on his pen, and skinner won’t answer his phone. scully notes that he is “doing everything he shouldn’t be doing” which is probably on purpose, RIGHT?? RIGHT?!

and scully looks so beautiful…. she’s concerned about skinner's state of mind, and what else he might be capable of. mulder seems frustrated that she would suspect him, but she explains that genuinely she IS giving him the benefit of the doubt, in the sort of tone you use when you are deeply apologizing to someone, hand on her chest. she can clearly see how attached mulder is to this whole situation. an empath...

scully thinks that maybe something else is going on… she’s playing a video of a man who had REM sleep behavior disorder and relived getting hit by a train each night until he broke his wife’s arm. she is in doctor mode talking about sleep related stuff. and the clinic that film came from WAS WHERE SKINNER HAD BEEN RECEIVING TREATMENT FOR THE PAST 3 MONTHS!!! gasp!! for the same condition!

so he sees an old woman attacking him in his sleep, and maybe he had attacked carina thinking it was her. scully is playing with her necklace as this theory is proposed.

mulder is like, yes i have heard of something like this, a succubus. and he puts his pen in his mouth and grabs a big book off the shelf!!! wow i love that he has a book mentioning medieval spirits in his office :,) maybe need to get one of those for mine.

oh! and his book claims there can be residue left behind… like the stuff she found… scully is pulling a "mulder, you're never gonna believe this" mentally

back to the body. but now her mouth isn’t glowing in the dark! but she had taken a sample… and when sent to the lab for analysis, they found nothing!!!

mulder asks if she is SURE she saw something, and she is like yeah i wouldn’t make that up?? so new theory: skinner is running from all of this because he’s afraid.

skinner is sipping something strong and someone knocks at his door. it’s sharon in a big red raincoat! he didn’t get her calls because he unplugged his phone……. says he hasn't been sleeping....

this must be where he lives now since they separated, but he hasn’t unpacked at all. she wants to make sure he’s okay! but he’s pulling the you’re my ex card. and she says, well i only initiated the divorce because YOU were too scared to do it yourself, and he says “fair enough” <- OOOOO again sharon read him for filth. still, i do not enjoy seeing him so sad.

she wants him to let his walls down, but she knows he will never let her comfort him. so she says to take care of himself and leaves :(

he pulls out their wedding day photo and AWW they’re so young :(((((

AND HE FALLS ASLEEP HOLDING IT. STOP, AM I GOING TO CRY OVER A MAN NAMED WALTER?????????

sleepy time interrupted by screaming. it’s the old lady in the red rain coat just absolutely letting it out, and then she leaves. but there is a REAL knock at the door, and it’s the detective!!!

NO! he says sharon was in an accident!! WHAT IS GOING ON??? skinner’s terrified… and they want the keys to his car…. HE WAS SLEEPING ON THE COUCH!!! HE DID NOT DO THAT SHIT!!!

so he is at the police station and mulder is also here, reporting that sharon is in surgery. but he says they’re building a case against him!!!

mulder clarifies he doesn’t think that skinner did it, but scully doesn’t understand why he isn’t trying to defend himself. and mulder’s doing the angry man thing where he puts his hands on his hips and pushes his jacket back and hnhbbbbhmmmmmmppllhghgh

nooooo skinner :( he’s so angry :( he doesn’t know what is going on or what to believe :(

so mulder asks about the old woman- which they know about from reading his files- and yells that if he doesn’t start trusting someone, he doesn’t stand a chance. whew! he has had enough of this silence!!!

(oh my phone is gonna die hold on. break to procure a charger. charger secured. CHARGER ISN’T WORKING?? omg… now it is… crisis averted)

so skinner started seeing her “again” a few months ago… he’s talking about what happened to him in vietnam, how he was a sole survivor of an ambush. he says he got through the experience by numbing himself with whatever he could, and he “inhaled”, so he assumed she was another hallucination. and she watched him watch himself die, but she carried him back away from the light.

mulder proposes she was trying to protect him them and still is now. but he doesn’t know from what!! he is so sad!!

GASP!!! CUTSCENE TO CANCER MAN WATCHING THIS ALL GO DOWN?????

ANOTHER EVIL CIG MAN PLOT?!?!?

so skinner’s car matches the damage on sharon’s car, and allegedly the hood of his car was still warm when the detectives got to his house and brought him in for questioning. mulder asks for a flashlight and gets in the car despite the hearing being in a half hour. oh! he’s slicing out the air bag?

bringing the air bag to the lab guy, who can turn the air bag into a facial pattern of whoever it crashed into. is this a thing that can happen??? big if true.

scully at the hearing. mulder not there!! so they just begin.

she’s trying to explain the mouth glow situation, and special agent bonnecaze basically accuses her of hiding stuff; she says she’s reluctant to speak for mulder, but he thought it came from a “visitation”. she has no other explanation!

(wow, i love that she admits she has no idea here. you can tell who is intelligent by seeing who is willing to admit to not having all of the answers. it's a small thing but it says a lot about her character <3)

they ask her if she believes in paranormal phenomena, and she dodges the question by saying she views everything “through the lens of science”. a measured response. but they’re asking if skinner has become “enchanted by agent mulder’s notions” HUH?? what da hell does that mean? anyway, she says no.

bonnecaze accuses her of protecting skinner by exaggerating the unexplained elements of the case, which she ENTIRELY refutes. and when she tries to say that she is NOT finished, they say she is. OHHH the bastards.

scully calls mulder but he’s right behind her lololol. anyway, it’s no laughing matter that skinner is OUT OF A JOB. she says he would have had a better chance against a firing squad. and they used the x files to justify getting rid of him!! he thinks "they’re" doing it to hurt the x files, whoever they may be!!! (presumably cig man and his UN alien club??)

so mulder has a graph that looks like pixel art of whoever stole skinner's car that night and his sharon. "they" couldn’t try to kill him again, so a set up would be less obvious. it makes sense.

i think the lab guy’s name is danny?? well they can’t figure out who thief is, who must have also been the fellow who hired carina.

oh no! now they’re at the scene of another crime. it’s the lady who runs the escort agency! she jumped off a building :( or it was staged to look like that

but they see the woman who answered the door when they visited her place of work!!! her name is judy. and she says that the pixel art man who hired carina said no one would get hurt!!!! so this dude stole skinner’s card!!!

(is it krycek. i can’t stand him any longer!)

due to lorraine being dead, she can’t talk with this mystery client, so they ask judy to set up a meeting with him, to pretend she needs money to get out of town. she calls some unnamed men on the phone to arrange this meeting.

and the men on the phone are not krycek, but they ARE watching this all go down from their car!!!!!! WHO ARE THESE FREAKS!!!!

skinner is going to see sharon. and she can’t hear him but he’s telling her he’s not signing the divorce papers :( he says he can’t tell her the terrible things he has seen…. and that she was what got him through each day, knowing he had a reason to wake up :( NOOOOO

and as he smooches her forehead her monitor starts going off!!!!!!! but then he sees her turn into the scary old woman!!!!!! who looks out at him and beckons. so he goes back in and grabs the hand of the old woman but it’s actually his wife again!!!!!!! she says to listen to her. WHAT IS IT!!! what does she KNOW!!!

mulder at the bar where they planned the set up. sipping something and looking good, yeah yeah. the men who set this whole thing up are arriving.

while scully and judy are upstairs and oh my god scully. she is so beautiful. both of these bastards are so utterly beautiful.

sighs wistfully…….

well, whoever it is they’re waiting on isn’t showing up. but there’s a movement at the door! and she says mulder, get up here right now!!!

scully with her gun out in the hotel room……. the suspense…….. she finds judy in the bathroom but SOMEONE ELSE IS BEHIND HER!!!

it’s the guy from before, who was on the phone with judy!! and he’s firing his gun!! scully is on the ground but she seems unhurt beyond the head slamming??

WAIT! it isn’t that scary phone guy who fired his gun!! it was SKINNER!!! who shot whoever set this whole operation up!!!

SKINNER TELEPORTATION TO THE SCENE....

judy is crying and scully is on the floor still, but it seems all is well in the world?

back to skinner’s office!!! which is rightfully his office again!!!

they bring him the report on the case, and there are lots of unanswered questions, including who that dude who was shot was. there is no identity whatsoever.

OH! mulder points out that there is no explanation as to why skinner was at the hotel last night, so please fill out that line yourself. which he says he can’t do, because it has no place in a report.

so mulder asks skinner to tell him what happened, off the record, and scully is waiting with bated breath… and he says he has some catching up to do. mulder kind of looks like someone just kicked him but he walks away :(

(oh mulder, funny how you're trying to get him to break these walls down, but you have some pretty damn solid walls of your own. now you know how it must feel... i jest, but it is so sad to see him unable to connect to skinner in the way he wants to. nevertheless, this is a happy ending)

skinner puts his wedding ring back on!!! and gets back to work!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT!!!!!!!

omg. so much to unpack here. i kind of assumed we would never get any skinner lore beyond his vietnam story, so this was a deeply welcome surprise. earlier i was very suspicious of him- you may recall some posts where i repeatedly say things along the lines of "i don't trust this guy"- but you can see how the narrative is shifting, how now we are supposed to trust him after he has done so much for scully and mulder. and it is very interesting to see how he operates, how he tries to put on that strong facade, and how it needs to crumble for him to move forward.

so, i think that there are two things at play here: one, someone who was trying to frame skinner for the murder and the attempted killing of his wife, and two, the whole situation with the scary old lady. we know the scary old lady was the one he saw in vietnam, and the one he attributes to saving his life, so it makes sense to think that some sort of guardian angel spirit would show up to him as an attempt to make him realize that he was losing what really mattered to him (sharon) due to his own fear. so even though she is scary looking, she led him to sharon, and appeared when he was with another woman as if to scare sense into him.

now, what is LESS clear is who did the killing! we know his prints were found on her, but did they check everything? how does that even work? maybe he strangled her in his sleep on accident, but given that someone else paid her to be there that evening, it would make more sense that someone else did it, no? except they said there was no sign of any intruders... so perhaps whoever it was who set that whole scenario up knew enough about him to know that was a possibility. in that case, they must have access to his medical records and know about his visions.....

must be the work of the cig man and his cronies.

so, if you accidentally kill someone in your sleep... how do you proceed from there?

well, i guess it doesn't matter, because he got his job back.

interesting to explore the concept of a guardian angel sort of creature as a being of terror, to shock you out of the mistakes you make that ruin your life. and it doesn't explain the glowy mouth or succubus allegations, but hey, there's always some stuff that doesn't entirely add up!

overall, i thought this was a really great episode. it was very different from the last one, but the tone shift didn't feel drastic and uncomfortable. i'm really interested in how mulder handled this whole thing, how he clearly has these projections for what he wants skinner to be and how he wants him to act, as if he's idolizing him. i think that is very fascinating and i will be mentally chewing on that for a while. and scully being willing to admit what she does not know, and observe what she cannot explain... mmm, it's just delicious to me.

so huh! i'm pleased! shoutout to walter, sharon, and the sleep demon that saved their marriage

#lots of interesting stuff here and although the mystery beyond exactly what went down may not be solved #i am glad it had a nice ending tied up with a bow #sure mulder was sad he didn't open up but that was a bit of a stretch goal anyway and there is still plenty of time for more bonding!#still laughing at scully driving in that damn hurricane lmao #ahhh these agents. how they have grown to be a part of me.#juni's x files liveblog #3x21 #the x files #txf

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