s3 episode 9 thoughts
i have so much to say. i just copied and pasted my notes, and my thoughts were COMICALLY long. but it was SUCH a good episode so i have a LOT to point out. even more than usual, somehow.
(screams to let it all out and then tries to take a deep breath and gather myself)
okay. OKAY FUCK. okay. whew. we start from the top. the very very top, in which i click on the episode. and so begins an emotional rollercoaster.
this episode description mentions a train. as does the one after that!!! am i in for a two parter?!?! well, if so, at least i am prepared with this information, so i don’t get a massive shock like with duane barry! (author’s note: i was right!)
a train. huh. would love to ride one of those someday. unfortunately i’m american. we only really have cargo ones hanging about. but their noise is deeply familiar and comforting to me regardless.
(little did i know that this was the very kind of train to be featured in this episode!!)
camera opens on tennessee! children are riding bikes to watch a train. ah, good to know the desire to stop doing other things and instead watch a train go by is universal.
now it’s night at the train. is some graffiti action going to take place? the music is getting weirder as we look at the top of this train, and it appears we are in for no ordinary graffiti moment as some cars pull up.
and these people are from japan! in tenneseee! boarding the train…? which is full of science stuff!! this is odd on many levels.
(japan to tennessee… whew, that’s a long flight. give these men some caffeine now!)
caffeine seems to be ignored because they are in surgery looking gear cutting something open. and green stuff flows into a jar? hey. not liking that.
they are cutting into what looks like, in my opinion, some guts.
until people run in and start shooting!!! really truly shooting and killing everyone!!! what!!! what the hell!! who are these guys!! are they with cig man??? holy fuck, if that WAS an alien autopsy, way to ruin the scientific method with bullets in the lab!!
and they are zipping an alien into a bag!! so it was!!! the blatant disregard for learning here!! it’s appallingly american! who are these people?!!
bum bum bum bum… woo woo woo woo wooo wooo… woo woo woo woo WOOO woo… intro time.
mulder has his feet up on the desk. fiddling with… something. scully opens the door and he tells her to come on in, with the face of a man who is scheming. he has it all dark like a movie theatre!!!
LMAOOOO he ordered a video from a magazine of an alien autopsy. and that must be why he looks like a kid in a candy store. $29.95, plus shipping!!! THAT IS A LOT!!
she’s like, you literally cannot see what they are operating on. and she says it’s hokier than the one they aired on fox news. which means i have to google a few things to learn if that actually happened. actually i don’t want to even know.
he mentions the green goo and he says “it’s widely held that aliens don’t have blood, scully” <- girl how would she know that. also you literally almost died FROM alien blood. so explain.
they’re arguing the merits of what makes an authentic alien autopsy tape, and then he points out how the people burst in with guns right before the film cuts off. well, that could make it look more authentic, or less!
some guy in allentown got the tapes so they’re visiting LMAOOO road trip road trip!!!! to a very old looking house.
the studio is called “rat tail productions” okayyy. i kinda like that. but it’s all boarded up so they have to try and break in.
and they find a dead body!! that is still warm!!! what is going on!!!
someone else enters!! and mulder chases after them and jumps the fence yelling that he is a federal agent. zooooom that is a speedy man.
and just when it seems mulder has the guy, he starts kicking and punching and BOOM! down goes mulder. until he shoots something nearby to show he isn’t playing.
mulder is wet from falling into a bunch of garbage… king. and the language barrier is being a barrier!
(sidenote i’m surprised they didn’t make mulder learn another language in school or for the fbi?? like actually really shocked. you’d think he’d have at least one other one, or a few basic phrases, under his belt. idk, where i’m from higher education in humanities related fields requires language learning, but he somehow escaped)
mulder is pretty despite being covered in garbage and bringing a man to a police station
scully says they can’t find an interpreter! this is not really shocking because they are in pennsylvania.
“well look at this… a beacon in the night” says mulder whilst smiling, and who is it he glances upon but SKINNER?!?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?? are they in trouble?? does… skinner know japanese??
(mulder asks and he does not 💔)
skinner says they have to let the guy (kazuo sakurai) go because he is a high ranking diplomat. so if you’re a diplomat can you just… walk away from a murder scene and that isn’t a problem?? at all? i did not think it worked like this.
skinner asks what they’re doing and mulder says he’s tracking down a “video piracy thing” LMAOOOO least convincing lie ever.
skinner tells him to go back home, and then very purposefully brushes into his shoulder before walking away. yowch! that has got to sting. mulder looks like he just got caught and is trying to charm his way out of it
scully rightfully points out that this makes no sense, and asks if he wants to drop it, but mulder says he paid his $29.95 and he is gonna get his answers!!!
LMAOOO he “forgot” to turn in the suitcase kazuo was carrying. it has a list of members of a ufo society with a local woman’s name circled!! was she gonna be their next target…?
he tells her to get a motel and he is going to go back to D.C. and be “a good boy” for skinner… LMAOOO, and he’ll show the files to his besties
back in D.C., and woah, mulder looks like a real slut with his hands on his waist and his jeans and tucked in turtleneck sweater. i am NOT complaining. just merely observing. it’s kinda giving that one photo of the rock. i see where he took his style inspo from.
so the lone gunmen say that the japanese were looking for a sunken ship from wartime, and it looks like they found it, but they brought it to virginia? very weird. maybe they did not find a sub… but something else.
the diplomats are heading home. or not. because someone is beating up kazuo! huh?! WHAT!
scully on da scene in allentown pa. serving. knocking at a door of the person whose name was circled in the files.
but the person goes to answer the door and she says they know her. she’s like umm not sure about that?? until another person comes to the door and says “oh my god… she’s one” WHAT??
(is this like a secret society of people who were abducted or like. are they trying to scam her or something?)
she looks super freaked out. she’s trying to explain that she’s here for murder investigation reasons, but the lady in pink (penny) is calling and saying everyone needs to come over right away. this will surely make scully even more stressed.
they ask her if there was some unexplained event that happened last year. and also to please sit down. so you KNOW things are about to get wild.
mulder is asking about the ship that allegedly was returning through panama. and the boat was stopped! but then kept going? the guy he’s asking to look into this does not seem to be pleased to discuss this subject.
scully is freaking tf out but trying to gently explain that she does NOT KNOW THESE PEOPLE. but they’re talking about being taken to “the bright white place” and that she was only taken once, but these other women were taken many times. WHAT IS GOING ON.
they ask her about regression hypnosis and she’s like i do not want to talk about this. (and yes i even TRIED IT) and she looks around at all the other women and it is creepy. SAVE HER… save them all.
mulder is running away from the guy he asked for the files from. he’s always going somewhere. looking at a boat. looking at another boat. is he gonna sneak on the boat? YES HE IS. HE IS JUMPING ON IT. elbowing a window open to get in. this is a wild man!! he will break into your boat!!!
he’s going through drawers looking for stuff and i’m thinking, oh man i really hope the boat doesn’t start heading out to sea… he has nothing to survive on. and we’ve seen them kill people, so don’t say “accidental” boat abandonment with a guy on it is out of the realm of possibility. but it IS the boat he was hoping for. and now he’s sneaking about its underbelly.
NO! he has been caught. the boat is being swarmed by men with guns. he seems too tall to hide…. but he did!! AND HE JUMPS INTO THE HARBOR LMAOOOOO, NOOO, THE POLLUTANTS!!
back to scully. i was so caught up in the boat espionage i had forgotten about scully’s dilemma. and they say that she won’t remember what happened to her for a while. cut scene to her being blowed up again like we saw in s2.
and she is really freaking out now, because they point out that they all have the mark and she just wants to learn about this murder, damn it, not unpack trauma!!
but betsy, who she came to see, is dealing with very severe cancer. and they say that what she is dealing with is going to happen to all of them. WHAT??? “we’re all dying because of what they do to us” OH MY GOD??? she has tears in her eyes. WHAT!!! what.
back to the boat. do i look like i give a damn about the boat!! no!! but mulder is crawling- at night- from the harbor. so did he stay there all evening or….
so he’s once again on the run. and soaking wet. please take a shower, my friend. you know not what they do in that harbor.
he sees people pulling in to the warehouse nearby!! with guns!!! and we see him sneak by!!! no, mulder, consider going home and not getting caught!! but what if he finds something that can help scully…? and oh my gosh, he doesn’t even KNOW she’s slowly dying yet. oh my gosh wait i need to sit down (said by the girl who is literally sitting)
the orchestral score is popping off, too. he peeks in a window and sees a giant… thing? being gassed. with cameras out and about. like a blimp looking thing.
somehow he gets a change of clothes. and he goes home but his apartment door was unlocked! so he has his gun. is it skinner?
IT IS!! whew! that was best case scenario, so it was just wishful thinking on my part, but maybe i really am deeply attuned to this show. skinner is sitting there in the dark. we see some photos on mulder’s desk but they kinda just look like random places. one is some sort of field? and the other is a house, i think? not recognizable to me. but back to the plot at hand.
skinner tells him to put the gun down. sort of like you tell a dog to drop it. he obeys. aww, he is a good boy for skinner, like he mentioned earlier.
so skinner has some tea; kazuo’s body was found in a canal!!!! he didn’t make his flight!! and they government thinks he was killed over his BRIEFCASE!!!
mulder plays dumb. then he admits that scully has the briefcase in her car. he seems like he’s trying to play it cool but skinner is NOT having it. “this is bigger than me, you, or the FBI, agent mulder” okayyyy king of being vague. and he says he is not getting involved!!! woah!!!
so mulder goes to… a senator!!! yes, the senator we saw very briefly a few times before, whose name is richard matheson? i didn’t really understand that in the past, but maybe it was building up to this. richard says to return the photos, but mulder says he’ll be entangled in a murder investigation, which he cannot afford because he is so close to the truth!
this senator claims to be telling mulder the truth about what is going on. and he explains what happens in tennessee, how the japanese doctors were murdered doing a secret thing.
“what am i onto here?” , he asks. “monsters begetting monsters”, says the senator. ohhhhhhh that does not sound good.
(i hope he exposes the alien people and the torture and they blow up all the people that hurt scully and the rest of those women and then hold hands)
he’s back in his office with his glasses on. and i would be glad for a glasses mulder win under normal circumstances, but my heart is sick over scully. i take what i can get when i can get it, though, because he is a beautiful man in glasses.
SCULLY’S BACK!! and she is still freaking out. she relays the news that she might be dying, and he looks up at her so innocently and says “but you’re fine, aren’t you scully?” OHHHH BABY. BABY. GROWN MAN. BUT BABY. OHHHHHHH MY HEART. MY HEART ITS MELTING. MY EYES ARE TEARING. “but you’re fine, aren’t you?” oh lord… he cannot lose anymore people.
she is terrified- “am i? i don’t know, mulder” NOOOOOOOO MY BABY. STOP. DO NOT DO THIS TO HER.
he pulls up a photo and she says she knows someone in it, but that guy has been dead since 1965. mulder seems to find this difficult to believe, but last episode he was suggesting that someone was bleeding another person’s blood, so i feel he of all people should be open to this idea.
(oh…. they’re using unit 731 for the storyline here. and they have done that in the past as well but. wow. awful lot of baggage to dredge up there. very very painful and unhealed wounds)
((and i guess before they have done similar things involving nazis, right, remember victor? and his experiments? even if it was done before though, it doesn’t make it any less chilling to me. i’m not sure how i feel about using real horrific war crimes as plot points in an alien show))
but my reckoning with history aside, mulder says that four of the men in that photo were in the alien autopsy video. and they were murdered.
“murdered for what? or murdered by whom?” oh scully, you deserve none of the suffering that the world has given to you. NONE OF IT. if i were mulder, i would hug her and never let go ever. ever ever.
he thinks they’re still trying to make an alien-human hybrid, but she still isn’t buying it, even after everything; she needs proof. she says believing is the easy part, but he disagrees. “you think that believing is easy?” he asks, and it hangs in the air.
oh, i want to linger in that space forever. the tension it creates, the things it reveals about him. how belief is centered on hope, how he has to fight for it, that it doesn’t come as natural as breathing as he might have you thinking. it’s hope for a better future, it’s hope for righting old wrongs, it’s looking where no one else will go find the answers. it’s about getting family back. it’s about fighting and sneaking and learning and even killing to get what you need to know. but it’s never easy.
FUCK. I’M LIKE GONNA JUMP UP AND DOWN. THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!!!! THIS IS THE STUFF!!!
they hold eye contact for a bit, until she sighs and breaks it (fuck me, i’m emotional) and he points out that they DO have proof, as he reaches for her arms- the spy photos were tracking a ship that pulled a UFO out of the ocean, and the UFO is in that warehouse that he saw earlier!! that thing i said looked like a blimp!!!
he says the US has a secret railroad. i yearn so desperately for accessible transportation. if the government said tomorrow, yeah, we have a secret rail system, i’m not sure how i’d react. perhaps relief?
there is very very very charged eye contact.
okay, bringing the thingy from her neck to a guy who can understand it. it’s a “micro processor”, and there are a few companies that make them. and they are being used for many things. so was it made by ordinary people, and not alien tech…? who is doing the torturing and testing…? and to what end???
it’s all women in that room… is it for alien breeding purposes… oh, i shutter to imagine
back in west virginia!!! mulder has a leather jacket on and a dream as he climbs up into some sort of railroad building’s roof. his hair blows dreamily in the wind as he busts out some binoculars. if he were to be caught, he could probably convincingly claim he was a birder. i understand they go through a lot to find their birds.
people are showing up. they’re speaking japanese and getting what looks like a LIVING ALIEN onto the train? mulder is on the move. the train is taking off. is he gonna play subway surfers irl and try to jump on that thing? yes, he is SPRINTING. but he realizes he cannot outrun a train.
back to scully cam. she is watching footage. a japanese surgeon is taking off his surgical gear and she recognizes him!! OH MY GOSH SHE RECOGNIZES HIM FROM HER TESTING! NOOOOO!!! NOOOO!
she answers the phone like she wasn’t unpacking horrific information and mulder reports from west virginia. and she points out that she recognizes the doctor… but not from the video tape. NOOOOOOO. realization crosses his face, and i’m sure only adds fuel to his fire to get on that damn train.
so mulder is trying to catch up with the train. a handsome japanese man is being followed by the dude that killed the other guy earlier. AND NO!!!! the killer just killed the handsome japanese man and locked him in the bathroom. then adjusted his hair???
mulder JUST misses the train. perhaps this is for the best?
scully going home. WHY IS X THERE?!?!?!? he’s telling her to tell mulder to get OFF OF THE TRAIN. she rightly is suspicious but he is NOT playing around.
mulder is about to leap on top of the train when he gets the call from scully. and he asks who told her what he was doing and to stop it, and like me, she is also probably realizing she doesn’t know this dude X’s name.
and he jumps on the train!!! but loses his phone in the process!!!!!
TO BE CONTINUED!!!!
WHAT THE HELL.
okay, my yelling aside, THIS is when the show is at its best, imo. THIS is the blueprint for me. character driven. heart of the plot. reveal after reveal but vague enough to keep me wanting more. the government is evil and every conspiracy has more conspiracies. getting to know what is ACTUALLY going on in snippets. skinner is there. this episode truly had it all.
EXCEPT an ending, of course, because now i have to WAIT to watch the next part. SO TRULY DIABOLICAL!
no no, i jest, i can take a cliffhanger most of them time. i just better not have ANY distractions tomorrow.
whew, so much to unpack. i think there are two things that are sticking out the most to me here: scully’s terror and mulder’s belief.
her not knowing what to believe is true about herself and the world she has studied so carefully, being surrounded by strangers who claim to know her, that know things ABOUT her, and who tell her she is going to die slowly and horribly. how she tears up when she learns this. how she tried so hard to get control over the situation by pivoting to the murder case, only to be denied. how the reigns of control slip from her hands, and it is left to fate. and how horrific that is. how she cannot handle processing what was done to her, but is forced to, by seeing this guy who did unspeakable things to her again. how she says she needs proof. as if she’s biding her time, waiting for a full answer so that the reality of what she has gone through can sink in. if there’s never proof, maybe she’ll never have to process it.
and mulder, who thinks that belief is hard. who has sacrificed so much of his life to belief, put himself in danger countless times to find the truth that everyone around him either denies or ridicules him for. how he has little more than his work, because he needs there to be hope. if belief is terror for scully, to him it is a source of possibility. how they’re both wrapped into the same tragedy with entirely separate takes on what it means and how to proceed but whatever is bringing them together keeps weaving them tighter and tighter.
AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHH. i could scream.
i actually typed all of that, took way more notes than usual, and STILL feel like i’m barely scratching the surface. i feel like i need to give a lecture on this subject matter to even sort of drain the giant well within me of feelings regarding them. his face, how he insists she has to be okay, right? right? and her terror when she admits she doesn’t know.
now. i hate to say it, but i have seen vague spoilers about what happens in the next season, involving illness. and i have a feeling i’m gonna cry like a baby because i’m so messed up just by this. maybe it’s a sensitive topic for me, or maybe i’m just too deeply attached to these nerds and need them to be happy.
but the depth of my feeling is indicative of how amazing this episode was. it was fast-paced, but not too fast to follow. it explored our character’s hopes and dreams and fears. the dialogue and acting was excellent. how much can be said with just eye contact, and then it breaking, is stunning. i want to know what happens next, and despite my eagerness, i am too disciplined and sleepy to go onto the next episode.
(i have some thoughts that i need to gather and articulate at a later time regarding the use of unit 731 as a plot point, but they’re still loading, and frankly it would be better to make a post just on that subject once i can figure out how to verbalize them and if i feel that i can confidently tackle the subject matter)
goodnight world, i’m gonna scream.
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