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s2 episode 8 thoughts

tears. in my eyes. shaky breathing. oh. okay.

well. no place to start but the beginning.

stares at my laptop screen for a long, long time before typing. give me a minute. allow to me collect myself.

okay. we start with scully's mom narrating. and we learn, thanks to the subtitles, that her mom's name is margaret. this is information i will also be storing in my useless scully facts book.

so we knew she had two brothers, but a sister is also mentioned, named melissa. and we get this story from her childhood, about how dana- which feels wrong for me to type, but i will- was given a bb gun by her brothers, and she joined in with them shooting a snake. but then she realized it was bleeding and she cried as it bled out in her hands and held it while it died. which is already So much to handle. and her mom is saying that she feels how her daughter felt that day watching the animal die.

the next thing we see is mulder is there, and. he's saying it's still too early to know if she's gone. but. well.

we see a gentleman bring something out. and it is a gravestone with her name carved into it.

he turns away like he was burned from even looking at it. and man. that hurt. very badly.

we see that her middle name is katherine. and we learn this because we see it on her gravestone.

he goes back to his place (where he still sleeps on the couch) but then he gets a phone call that they've found her. and he busts into the door when the nurse says he can't go in there. that's our man!

he's screaming at these poor healthcare workers, somewhat rightfully suspicious they're involved with the government who took her, but also man. they don't get paid enough. however, i understand the emotional explosiveness this had to have provoked. so he is really just screaming, at the nurse, at the doctor, demanding to know what the hell happened, where she came from, and he says "i swear i'll do anything, i'll find out what they did to her" while being escorted out

then there is a very tense conversation between the doctor and her mother and him. the doctor must have already have been in quite a state, because mere minutes ago a raving angry man accused him of stealing his friend, and now he's sitting with said angry man explaining that they genuinely have no idea how she got here, and that she has no indication of injury.

we also learn that she had no desire to remain on life support past a certain point. and mulder knows this because. he. he. he uh. well he signed her will.

now i think maybe that's just something you have to do at the fbi and i can see them making a little joke out of it- a nice little trip to get each other's will signed, make a day of it, keep it light and funny- but man. man in this context. oh i'm gonna be Sick.

so we see a woman holding a crystal over her body and we learn it is her sister melissa!!! she's really pretty. she tries to show mulder that you can feel her energy by holding his hands over her but he gets angry and leaves.

(i love this dichotomy here, that somehow the ultra skeptic has a sister who is into talking about spirits and crystals. truly i feel this is what happens to people raised catholic)

at this point i wrote "girl i'm stressed tf out" and yeah. kinda the whole mood.

melissa is saying that his anger and fear is blocking the positive emotions she needs to feel, which echoes my statements about how he has been too cranky this season. but i can't even laugh because the man is in Distress.

he goes back to his place after saying he needs "to do more than just wave his hands", and he's bouncing a basketball and putting tape on his windows. i get it. that oppressive feeling of being unable to sit still. every moment dragging like a lifetime. bounce bounce bounce. he wakes up and rips the tape off his windows.

and back to attending to her bedside. i do not think this man has been clocking into his shift at the fbi.

we see a fellow enter wearing a suit and carrying flowers and i was like oh shit is it last rites time? um. so maybe i don't know what gets worn to a last rites event. i realize my weakness in this area and will do some research when we're done here.

but it's not anyone here to do that- it's frohike, the guy from the lone gunman who was making weird comments about scully! he must have come to pay his last respects. he picks up a clipboard and i thought oh my gosh he's gonna start reciting poetry- but he notices something weird on her chart and sneaks it out

it seems the whole thing was orchestrated, because mulder goes back to the freaks at the lone gunman, who invite him to come over and watch earth 2 and point out the factual inaccuracies- which, all things considered, is very sweet- but they send her blood data to a hacker that uses a richard nixon persona and he says that yeah, her blood is weird. and mulder's like, is she gonna make it, and they say no. it got very somber.

in terms of scully view, we see her on this dock of a boat between life and death. i thought that was nice imagery, and extremely eerie. those around her bedside are on one side of the dock, and it looks like the rope could snap and drift away at any moment.

the nurse comes in to do some blood work and i have another "augh blood" moment. so i look away. and mulder is REALLY pondering her blood. i thought he was honestly gonna take it for himself, maybe bring it in for testing or keep it like an emo.

but no! a strange man in a suit STEALS the blood!

so mulder is back into track star mode and is SPRINTING after this guy. i always forget that he is a runner. and he is RUNNING around this hospital and makes it to the parking lot until...

he is stopped by deep throat 2.0, a man for whom i realize i have no other name. but you know who i'm referring to, right? so i guess that name will work for now. deep throat 2.0 says that mulder needs to stop NOW, and that HE got deep throat 1.0 AND scully killed by looking into things too hard. which is an absolutely awful thing to say btw. deep throat 2.0 has a gun to mulder's head and says to stop searching.

mulder proceeds to run after the blood thief despite these warnings. can't say i blame him. he finds the blood thief!!! and they have a bit of a fight until...

deep throat 2.0, who earlier said he wanted to remain out of this mess, rolls up? so we're getting mixed messages here. and he says i'll take care of this and SHOOTS THE BLOOD THIEF?????? in the head.

back to the hospital. mulder is not pleased about the prospect of life support being removed but melissa says he has to honor her wishes. and he's going on about the blood protein and the doctor is like "why do you think this has anything to do with blood protein" and he Does Not Explain

her mom calls him "fox" again and says this is a moment for the family, but he can come too. and he won't come in. he's the wettest and saddest a man has ever looked as they go in there. and then the rope holding her to the dock of the afterlife is severed.

man. if i had been a contemporary viewer i would have been sobbing. thank god i've seen gifsets that prove this wasn't the end for her. because if i hadn't, i would have been in shambles. i mean i Was in shambles but like i would have been bawling on the floor.

cig man is with skinner. i honestly didn't think we'd get up to any sort of fbi related tasks in this episode, but he hands skinner a report and leaves. and then mulder comes in and denies being involved with the shootout at the hospital

(it's worth noting that he is doing all the denying to be an ass to skinner, and yells about "how does it feel, all the denial")

and he says that it was "cancer man" who took scully. i had been calling him cigarette man, but cancer man is very comparable.

the next thing i wrote was "SKINNER IS A BITCH????" this was because he said that mulder is "just as responsible" as cancer man for scully's situation if he knew the risks of this line of work and didn't warn her.

skinner baby YOU CAN'T SAY THAT? seriously i cannot figure this guy out. every time i think i have a read on him he does something like this that shifts my interpretation. what a horrible thing to say to someone.

cut to scully cam. she's on a table in metaphysical land. and her dad is there. he calls her starbuck and refers to himself as ahab- so the first mate and the captain. and he's monologuing about how he never knew how much he loved her until he realized he could never be with her again, and he says they'll be together "soon", but not now. so i'm wondering if she can hear all of this going on. i would guess so.

mulder is in the cafeteria with melissa and she is trying to talk a bit of sense into him. she says "you could spend the rest of your life finding every person that's responsible and its still not gonna bring her back" and he replies "including myself?"

now usually i would say that mulder taking the blame upon himself is tragic and typical, but here, having it also been implied by skinner AND deep throat 2.0, i am thinking, man, he's got to really believe it, even more so than all the other times he couldn't save everyone. which is. fucked up. so immensely fucked up. i'm sorry you pissed me off last episode baby but we can go to the zoo again like i planned. let's go see some tigers and cheer you up.

a woman walks in and asks him for change for the "cigarette machine", which was the first time in my life i have ever heard the term "cigarette machine", so maybe the earth really is healing

but he finds a pack with an address in it, and then, straight from my notes:

"CIG MAN'S HOUSE. OH MULDER IS THERE AND POINTING A GUN AT HIM. AND ALSO SCREAMING. "why her" oh his finger gets very close to the trigger"

cig man says he likes her and mulder, and. wow. what a despicable human being. he says that he likes mulder more for showing up to his place with a gun. says he's playing the game. mulder seems to have a realization he is acting just like those he swore to destroy and puts the gun down. cig man says it'll be their secret. and also that he was the one that told skinner that mulder shot the guy in the hospital even though he didn't think it was true.

we next see mulder sadly tapping at his computer. he prints a one sentence resignation letter "effective immediately" NOT even a two week's notice, that's how bad they fucked this man up

skinner comes by and says it's unacceptable while mulder is packing all of his things. and mulder says:

"i hate what i've become"

man. fuck. he hates the rage he has been driven to. the loss of control. the way he sees himself as being responsible for deep throat and scully. and all of it stemming from his need for answers, to track down his sister. he hates what that feeling of insufficiency has led him to and the path he now walks upon. hates it. hates his situation and himself and the world.

skinner decides to share some personal story time: he went off to vietnam- willingly enlisting on his 18th birthday. and then while he was there he shot a kid who was covered in grenades. the camera glances back at mulder occasionally, who, despite all of his grief, seems to be consulting his oxford training to try and remember what you're supposed to say to a guy who just told you he killed a child in vietnam.

and then he says he watched all his friends die and that he almost died- he was put in a body bag, and was in a coma for two weeks- and he was too scared to learn what happens next. but mulder isn't. and that's why his resignation is unacceptable.

mulder adds things up and realizes that it was skinner that gave him cancer man's location. again. complicating the vibe i get from skinner in doing something positive now. he says that every day is a risk.

deep throat 2.0 rolls up, saying that the people who did this to scully are going to break into his apartment tonight, and he'll have to kill them. he looks displeased by this- aversion to taking any sort of lives- but resigns himself to it.

so he's in his place in the dark ready to start blasting, when he gets a knock on the door. and it's melissa.

this is where we get the iconic exchange "why is it so dark in here?" "because the lights aren't on" which made me laugh so thoroughly seeing it out of context before i ever decided to watch this show

and melissa is MAD. scully is weakening, and she came to get him to say his goodbyes, but he won't go because. well. shootout is about to go down. this is his ONE chance to learn who did this to scully. but she doesn't know that is why he won't leave, so she YELLS at him, about being in a place even darker than her sister, and asks "why is it so much easier for you to run around trying to get even than just expressing to her how you feel? i expect more from you. dana expects more from you"

and man. those words are heavy. he locks the door, knowing that his place is gonna be robbed, and that he'll never know who hurt her, and comes down to see her.

and he's talking to her. holding her hand. saying he's here. he doesn't know if it'll change anything, but he's here.

when he goes home, his place is entirely ransacked, and he falls to the ground crying. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. i can't even put into words how bad this broke me. big strong mulder weeping on the ground, his career in shambles and his best friend dead.

i feel like i need to pause there just for how heavy it was. like this was his lowest low. lower than even vampire sex.

but he soon gets a call and he smiles so wide!!! and we learn her eyes are open!! it is the sweetest smile i have ever seen!!!!!!

he gets down to the hospital and she's awake and talking- but she doesn't remember anything- and he, being the insufferable man that he is, says the following:

"i brought you a present (holds up a vhs tape) superstars of the superbowls"

man. man. man. man. she deadpans so quickly. "i knew there was a reason to live"

he must have grabbed a random tape off his shelf and brought it to her with the express intent of antagonizing her back in the realm of the living. and he thought of something to say along with it on the car ride down, his hands shaking. something, anything to make her laugh. a stupid vhs tape. his constant sports references. her quick tongue. oh dear lord help me these two have ruined me.

he gives scully her necklace back, which i wrote about in all caps, while her mother and sister watch

and then we learn that the nurse who was taking special care of her was never actually there when scully wants to thank her and the other nurse is like "um no one who works here has that name" so. SCULLY PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE (POSITIVE)??!?!?!?

overall. man. i am experiencing such a volume of emotions. what the hell. she's back, though. and we saw how much she means to him. and i feel like i could type a million words on the subject but i don't even know what to say because they're still all stuck in my chest. they love each other sososo much.

will he ever tell her what he did in her absence? how he tried to quit? how he broke every rule trying to save her? how he screamed at the doctors, how he broke into cigarette man's house, how he almost pulled the trigger? how he watched a man die when deep throat 2.0 shot him? how he was blamed for her condition by himself and by others? how he left his apartment to be ransacked, giving up his one chance to catch whoever did this to her, to try and let go of his grief and be with her instead? or will he keep quiet except for the latest witticisms and frequent visits and presents and stories by her bedside while she gains strength and recovers?

and how he left, too, when he knew she was okay. how he must have wanted to be there more than anything in the world, but knew she needed to rest, so he left her with her family. how he could breathe easy again. how he had to make it seem like it was cool, and everything was contained.

man. this tv show. i just typed all of those words out and i still feel like i didn't even begin to cover the things i'm feeling. i feel like i need to shake them up and down.

but this should be good, because the x files are reopened... so are we seriously, as the kids say, so back? only time will tell!

#neeeeeed to know what happens while she's getting better #need an incredibly detailed oneshot. because i KNOW they are gonna jump back into the shenanigans in the next episode #and we're not gonna get to see all the time it takes for her to gain strength and how she struggles through it and everyone's reactions #no i know this too well by now. we're gonna get another case next episode and not an analysis into this.#BRING ME THE FIC i bellow from the comfort of my bedroom.#this whole experience had such an emotional effect on me i know that perhaps it can be ME who comes back and writes the fic someday #which is why i'm glad i take detailed notes. so i can jump back in.#i also wanted a fic post episode 20 after they had been eaten by the bugs because i'm a sucker for whump basically #so maybe i'll come back to that someday as well #anyway. this is why we watch this show. not for awkward vampire sex. i forgive u mulder. you're my special meow meow again #but scully can do no wrong so keep that in mind moving forward.#juni's x files liveblog #txf #the x files

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