"A person who trusts no one can't be trusted."
-- Jerome Blattner
The Sixth Season opener of The X-Files, "The Beginning," tries to tie in the myriad aspects of the global conspiracy using elements from past episodes and this summer's feature film. Such a noble intent should not be judged too harshly. But let us not confuse effort with achievement.
Writer and series creator Chris Carter does his best to try to bring together such diverse aspects as the black oil, the DNA experiments, experiments in reproductive technology done on humans, the gray aliens of past and present lore and such episodes as "Max" and the vicious, violent entity that was the centerpiece of the movie. The Mythology has become so convoluted, so wrapped around its own axle, that Carter uses one of the characters on the Office of Professional Conduct (OPC) Board to recite what we have learned to date. It was like listening to "X-Files for Dummies." The scariest part of the entire show was that as guest star Wendie Malick recited the Mythology 101 lesson, I was nodding my head in agreement. Yup. That's the way it has played out over the last five years. It sounded even more absurd as I listened to it the second time. After the third time, I think it gave me an inner-ear infection.
For the first series episode shot in Los Angeles, Carter selected longtime associate Kim Manners to direct. I have maintained that Manners' forte is the Monster of the Week episodes, and his handling of "The Beginning" only served to reinforce my view.
Manners expertly directed the teaser, where an employee of Roush Industries, accidentally infected with the virus, gives birth to an alien entity similar to that depicted in the movie. Things slide downhill from there, to a climax that left me saying, "Huh?" Never one to use subtlety when a sledgehammer will do, Manners is at his worst with the close-up of Scully grabbing Mulder's hand in what was obviously supposed to be a return of serve from the hallway scene in the movie. Either that, or she had her eye on Mulder's priceless Timex watch. The cutaway to the hand-holding didn't even make sense in the framework of the conversational context. Step right up, Shippers, and get your fix. This travesty was outdone only by the Mulder/Spender morphing scene. While technically sound, the director's intent seemed to portend a Star Wars-ish, "Luke, I am your father," episode down the road. I shudder at the thought.
David Duchovny had a lot of screen time in "The Beginning." The X-Files is still Mulder's quest, his obsession, and, fortunately, the Mythology episodes have usually centered around him. But the stubbornness that dominates the characterization of Mulder seems to have been played out to the extreme. Mulder's been butting heads with the FBI brass for over 5 years now, starting with "Fallen Angel." You'd have thought that somewhere along the way, he would have become a little more adept at Bureau politics by now. But NOOOOOOOOOO! He's still antagonizing everyone who could possibly do him any good, including his partner and his AD. Mulder is not only emotionally stunted as far as personal relationships go; he's inept when it comes to professional relationships as well. Given these character limitations, David Duchovny does a fairly good job playing Mulder. Those moments of frustration with Scully don't necessarily burn up the screen with emotion, but he does manage to convey Mulder's intensity and determination, which are things I've always admired about Mulder.
Gillian Anderson, however, just seemed to be there. Her fawning over Gibson in the car was maternal enough without being too sappy. It was her interaction with Mulder that left me wanting -- I want the Scully from Seasons One through Three. I have no idea who this impostor is, the woman who wants to run more tests on Gibson and pretends to be shocked when he reads her mind and he tells her so. The Scully character is so wrapped up in her "quest for science" that she won't allow herself to believe what she knows to be true. She asks Mulder to trust her, but she doesn't trust him. Anderson's work in "The Beginning" was far from her best effort. She was sleepwalking with her eyes wide open.
Even in subordinate roles, guest stars Mimi Rogers (Diana Fowley) and Chris Owens (Jeffrey Spender) managed to take what was a pretty good story and irritate me like fingernails on a blackboard. There's something about Rogers that just doesn't seem to ring true. Her past relationship with Mulder appears to be something that looks good on paper but can't translate to the screen. There's just no chemistry whatsoever between Mulder and Fowley, and certainly nothing to suggest that they were more than "just friends" years ago.
Owens' Jeffrey Spender is just plain annoying. Watching him on screen is like seeing Eddie Haskell grown up and wearing a suit. As an adversary, Spender is no match for Mulder. Without help from his cigarette smoking daddy, Spender would have been ground up into mulch by Mulder by now. I'm reasonably sure it's not Owens' superior acting skills that bother me so much. Maybe it's his slight physical presence, especially when standing next to Mulder or CSM, that makes him seem so insignificant, so inconsequential, so non-threatening.
Usually, I comment on Mark Snow's music as it relates to the action on the screen, what kind of emotions it evokes, etc. If brevity is the soul of wit,then MARK SNOW'S MUSIC WAS LOUD!
"The Beginning" was plagued with many plot holes. Who in their right mind would go into an OPR session and claim that his partner had incontrovertible proof of the existence of extra-terrestrials without verifying it with his partner? Diana Fowley was in a coma the last time we saw her, in "The End." She was nowhere to be found in the movie; and when she appears in the doorway of the basement office, it's very obvious that this is the first time Mulder has seen her since before she was shot. Yet, while riding in the car to the nuclear power plant, Diana knows about the virus and how it spreads, gestates, etc. Unless CSM told her, there was no way she could have known that. Mulder the explorer reaches down and touches the goo on the floor without the benefit of latex. Obviously, Mulder doesn't feel the need to "rubber up" before he goes out to play. And despite the obvious signs warning of High Radiation Levels, Gibson and CSM's button man walk right into the reactor room, and Mulder's pounding on the door, desperately trying to get inside. For an Oxford scholar, he sure does some dumb things.
But I will give Chris Carter credit for at least moving the Mythology forward. He's actually managed to tie the Oiliens to the gestating movie alien to the grays, and linked in the bees for good measure. Scully's discovery about the DNA and the alien metamorphosis at the end at least spurred some interesting ideas. Maybe Carter's ultimate message is that it is we who are the aliens on our own planet. Perhaps the reason for the cloning experiments is to provide the grays with hosts who weren't really human, while caching away as many humans as the Consortium could. Maybe the aliens need the human hosts because giving birth is such a, uh, gut-wrenching experience. Or perhaps the Consortium is aiding the aliens because their species is dying out because they're suffering from hereditary sterility. You know what that is: if your father was sterile, chances are you will be, too. ;)
Hey, it makes about as much sense as anything else we've been given in the past five years.
My Score: 4 out of 10