"When I consider life, 't is all a cheat.
Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow 's falser than the former day;
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give."
-- John Dryden "Aurengzebe" Act iv. Sc. 1.
The title "Gethsemane," like last season's final episode "Talitha Cumi," has biblical roots. Gethsemane was the garden where Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot and delivered to the Romans prior to his crucifixion. This episode parallels that event by setting up Mulder to be betrayed, to be offered as a sacrificial lamb at the altar of public opinion. And it almost works.
The main problem with "Gethsemane" is that creator/writer/executive producer Chris Carter would have us believe that Mulder is dead as the episode concludes. If that was not his motive, then he's out to Deceive, Inveigle and Obfuscate. The new tag line "Believe the Lie" can be taken in many different contexts. Does Carter want us to believe the lie that Mulder is dead? Are we to believe that all of the encounters with alien life we've seen over the past 4 years are lies? Perhaps we're supposed to believe that Scully is not long for this world because of her cancer. Maybe the story of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson being under contract for next season is the biggest lie of all. Is CC trying to pull an Oliver Stone on us and have us accept the possibility that "Military Industrial Complex" has gone wild and is behind everything? Or in the grander scheme of things, that group of men we call "The Consortium" is really an international version of the Tri-Lateral Commission, with Well Manicured Man playing the part of Nelson Rockefeller?
The answer is "None of the Above." What "Gethsemane" is about is that Mulder and Scully are finally taking the metaphorical bull by the horns and trying to make the FBI powers that be believe that Mulder is dead. At least, that's the most logical explanation that I can propose. So, I guess that would make the real answer "Some of the Above. "
The opening teaser begins with Scully pushing her way past police into Mulder's apartment and ambiguously identifying a body as Mulder. This segues into Scully's reporting in front of our old friend Section Chief Blevins (from the pilot episode) and a large table full of extras who are ostensibly other higher-ups in the Bureau. Told in flashback, Scully weaves a tale of an alien corpse discovered in the mountains of the Yukon, perfectly preserved in ice. She has a reunion of sorts with her brother Bill who's come home from the Navy and who berates her for the way she's dealing with her cancer. There's some nice detective work by Scully as she tracks down an assailant and then as she convinces Mulder to listen to Kritschgau's story that says there are no alien life forms visiting the Earth. Scully's story would have us believe that Mulder, unable to face the fact that his quest has been all for naught, commits suicide as we fade to the closing credits.
What makes for a nice piece of deception is that the whole episode is Scully's narrative. Essentially, she can tell the PTB exactly what she wants to tell them, omitting whatever details suit her purposes and embellishing where it suits her. It's time for the shoe to be on the other foot. It appears that Scully has learned well from Deep Throat: "The best place to hide a lie is between two truths."
The scenes in the St. Elias Mountains were wonderfully brisk and breathtakingly stunning. I live in the foothills of the Rockies and I'm not easily impressed with mountain scenery on television. But these visuals were impressive. It was also nice to see people outside in a supposedly cold environment with foggy breaths. Joel Ransom exquisitely captured the beauty and majesty of the mountains with his daytime shots, and the isolation and desolation of the same location with his nighttime shots. Ransom also made me feel quite at home in the Scully residence, and I felt the cold sterility of the lab where the ice was analyzed. Ransom also gave us that marvelous shot from the top of the spiral staircase in the Smithsonian. It was a prophetic vision of how the lives of Mulder and Scully were metahorically spiraling downward. Mr. Ransom was at his very best in this episode.
Not so for director Bob Goodwin. The pace of the episode was uneven. It had its moments, but it was not even close to the roller coaster pace that is the trademark of my personal favorite director, Rob Bowman. In fairness, the script had a lot to do with this. The action sequences were fine, but there were times when the dialogue ground the story almost to a halt. Given the fact that the script was lackluster, it's hard to ascertain just who was the guilty party here.
Mark Snow's score blended well with the action. Always just right, setting the mood and anticipating action, the music enhanced rather than distracted from the episode.
It was nice to see what can only be described as a tribute to the late Dr. Carl Sagan. I'm not ashamed to admit that his book and PBS series "Cosmos" changed my life on a, well, cosmic scale. Sagan gave me pause to think about life on a grander scale, and his contribution to the human experience cannot be overstated. He made astronomy understandable to the average person, in terms anyone could understand. It is fitting and proper that he appear (albeit via a vintage TV clip) in an episode that purported to deal with irrefutable proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life.
The acting in "Gethsemane" was spotty. Gillian Anderson turned in her usual superb performance. She has become the master of facial expressions, and these added to her convincing portrayal. David Duchovny, however, seemed severely limited by a script that was, uh, nondescript. ;-) DD reverted to the stoic Mulder of seasons past as he acted out the scenario that Scully described. John Finn as Kritschgau was convincing as the "captured" conspiracy member who tries to make Scully and Mulder believe the lie. Sheila Larken was once again wasted with too little screen time to suit me. She's simply too good, too convincing as Margaret Scully to have what amounts to mere walk-on appearances.
But in the final analysis, we must view "Gethsemane" as the handiwork of series creator Chris Carter. I'm starting to think that without Frank Spotnitz to provide some balance, Carter will paint himself into a corner. Or worse, become a mere shell of his former self. "Gethsemane" was a jumble of flashbacks told from a single perspective with so much ambiguity thrown in that I've gone way beyond having a headache; my hair hurts. We've seen so much contradictory evidence that the conspiracy defies rational explanation. Back in the late '80s, ABC had a wonderful comedy called Sledge Hammer that ran opposite The Cosby Show. At the end of the first season, the producers, convinced that they would be canceled, had all the main characters destroyed by an atomic bomb. When, much to their surprise, ABC ordered more episodes, the writers had to turn the second season into Sledge Hammer: The Early Years, with the new episodes supposedly happening before the original series ending. I pray that CC doesn't try to foist this sort of nonsense on us. It was funny with Sledge Hammer; it would be the most pathetic of cop-outs for The X-Files.
My Score: 6 out of 10, giving CC the benefit of the doubt