"Eschew obfuscation."
-- Bon Mot from IBMTEXT Conference
"Teliko" is the first Season 4 effort from Executive Producer Howard Gordon. The opening sequence, wherein a black man on a plane from West Africa bound for the US is attacked and found drained of his pigmentation, offered a promising start. Sadly, it was all downhill from there. "Teliko" seemed to be a jumble of good ideas that never found the necessary coherence needed to make it a good X-File. The buzzwords after the opening sequence,
Deceive
Inveigle
Obfuscate
served little purpose than to increase the vocabulary of the average viewer by two. ;-)
There are bits and pieces of cutesy things that Gordon throws our way to try to make things interesting. For example, the date of the incident on the plane is May 17, 1996, or as we write it, 5/17. When Scully is called into ADA Skinner's office to meet Dr. Bruin from the CDC, it is 5:17 AM. It's cute, but not relevant; this tidbit goes nowhere. Scully uses her medical training to search for a reason why a black man has died. Mulder, as is true to form, looks for the answer outside of known medical science. This is the standard motif for our intrepid agents, and in this case they both end up being right. Scully remains the solid scientist when she tells Mulder that the victim died because his pituitary gland has been necrotized, meaning that the tissue has died. She says that she has identified the effect, but is still looking for the cause. Mulder then seeks out a less scientific explanation and flies off to NYC to meet with Ms. Kovrouvias (I'll get the exact spelling when she has a part that's big enough to get her character listed in TV Guide ;-) from the SRSG. The trail Mulder follows leads him to a diplomat at the Burkina Faso embassy where he hears the tale of the Teliko, the spirits of the air.
The action grinds almost to a halt from here. Samuel Aboah abducts another unsuspecting victim, brings him to his apartment, and eventually kills him in his quest to survive. Mulder and Scully chase Samuel into a blind alley, where he is discovered hiding in a confined space. I flashed back to Eugene Tooms at this point. After running a series of medical tests on Aboah, Scully eventually discovers that he has no pituitary gland. Meanwhile, Aboah has es caped from the hospital by squeezing himself into a drawer on the hospital food cart.
These sequences were singularly lacking in the suspense and drama that has become the hallmark of The X-Files. There was no portend of danger to the orderly when he removed the cart. There was a small foreshadowing of what was to come when we were watching a victim wait for his bus, but no suspenseful build-up. You just knew that this guy was a goner. Director James Charleston could only do just so much with the bland script, but he could have blended Mark Snow's music together with a little more visual effect to create an ominous air. I might have flashed to Aboah's eyes in the darkness behind the bus rider, as was shown on the plane in the opening sequence, to generate some tension for the moment.
The most exciting scene in the entire episode was when Scully went into the HVAC duct to try to find Samuel and Mulder. It was very claustrophobic and effective. The non-verbal communication between Mulder and Scully when Aboah was ready to pounce on Scully was a nice touch to an otherwise bland episode. It was good to see Scully fire her gun and and actually stop a criminal.
There was plenty of philosophizing in this episode, but it was essentially a re-hash of that espoused in "Herrenvolk." Scully looks for her answers in science; Mulder looks for his in the unexplainable. The similarities between Samuel Aboah and Eugene Tooms are too obvious to be ignored. Both required some essence from a living human being in order to survive, and self-preservation is an even stronger instinct than the need to propagate the species, as last week's "Home" would have us believe. Both can squeeze into small, confined spaces, and both were eventually captured. Both men are genetic mutations and both are alive at the end of the episode. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Morgan and Wong must have received a double shot of ego-boost from Howard Gordon's script this week. :-)
As predicted by nearly everyone on this list, the unflappable Ms. Covarrubias is stepping up to take the place of X as Mulder's inside connection. She would do well to ask Mulder what happened to her predecessors. ;-) The convenience of the missing black men being in Philadelphia made it easy for Mulder to drive to NY to meet with her. This may not be so easy in future episodes, when he's working in DC.
Director of photography Jon Joffin seems to have lightened up, as I suggested last week. There were many shots where the light was more than appropriate. The scene where when Marcus Duff (Carl Lumbly, late of M.A.N.T.I.S.) comes to visit was excellent. Samuel turns on a light and the room is bathed in a red glow that was very aesthetic. The lighting in the scene where Scully is crawling through the HVAC was just perfect: not too dark and not too light. I have high hopes for Mr. Joffin's future work.
The acting by both Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny was uninspired. There was no vitality in either one's performance, no passion, and I attribute this to Howard Gordon's uninspired script. Willie Amakye's Samuel Aboah was a one-note performance. For the better part of the episode, he either glared or nodded or smiled.
Guest star Carl Lumbly shone as the concerned social worker who tries to make life easier for the immigrants from his native land. His accent appeared genuine, and he never (to my ear) slipped out of character. His was easily the best performance in the episode. But this is roughly the equivalent of saying someone is the best snow skier in all of Jamaica. ;-) It loses some of its luster by the basis for the comparison.
All in all, Howard Gordon's "Teliko" was a tepid, derivative script with little to distinguish it. This was a big disappointment, since I felt that last season's "Grotesque," also penned by Gordon, was the scariest episode of the year. If this script had been submitted by a new staff writer, I believe that it would have rightfully been rejected. Since it came from an Executive Producer, it was filmed.
Last year, I expressed my concern that "the well was drying up" for The X-Files, that story ideas were becoming in short supply. The first three offerings of Season 4 have changed my concern to outright dread. Without good scripts and able direction, no amount of lighting, special effects, acting or background music can salvage this series. We desperately need an episode this season that generates a positive reaction from the viewers and a renewed confidence in the show. And we need it now.
My Score: 2 out of 10