"Who's gonna tell you when it's too late
Who's gonna tell you things aren't so great
You can't go on, thinking nothing's wrong
Who's gonna drive you home tonight?"
-- "Drive" by Rik Ocasek (The Cars)
The answer to the rhetorical question is, "Mulder's gonna drive you home," it would seem, for he spends most of the episode playing chauffeur to a redneck. Frankly, I expected better from Vince Gilligan, who has been the most consistent writer in the 1013 stable for the past three years. It must be the company he's keeping these days.
"Drive" begins with a videotaped version of a scene from the new FOX series, "When Good Drivers Explode." Disguised as a special bulletin replete with helicopter coverage, I must admit I was sucked in by the teaser. I'm sure I wasn't the only viewer who hit the Pause button on their VCR when the episode began.
There were just so many things about "Drive" that didn't sit right. I could buy into the premise that Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) waves were responsible for Crump's and his wife's condition. The government, in the form of the military, was behind it and covering up their culpability? Sure. That's been a recurring theme in the show since Day 1. Driving faster alleviates the eventually fatal condition caused by the ELF waves. Okay. But the anomaly that Mulder latched on to, that Crump headed east and then headed west with his wife, was never satisfactorily explained, except for some half-baked theory about the path of ELF waves traveling in a certain direction because of the earth's rotation. The point about heading west was addressed in a critical moment. Yet Crump neither explains why nor how he came to that realization. Gilligan usually doesn't leave his viewers grasping at plot points like this.
There was the ludicrous scene where Scully starts prodding around in Mrs. Crump's ear, sans goggles. A veteran forensic pathologist doing an autopsy on someone whose cause of death is unknown would never, ever start poking around without eye protection. I can't believe that Uber-Vince would make such a glaring gaffe in his script, or that none of the story editors would have picked up on this. I can only suppose that the blood spurt into Scully's face was meant to be more dramatic and graphic without her goggles, and that this would eventually lead her to the conclusion that they weren't dealing with a virulent entity.
"Drive" also attempted to provide some more back story to Mulder's character. There has been endless speculation that Mulder is Jewish, even though he displayed no knowledge of Hebrew or of the Kaddish ceremony during Season Four's episode of that same name. In a ham-handed confrontational scene, Crump "accuses" Mulder of being Jewish and of being part of some "International Jewish Conspiracy." In typical X-Files fashion, the answer as whether or not Mulder is or is not Jewish is left unanswered. My question is, "Why?" Why go to the trouble of asking the question if you're not going to provide the answer? This X-Files stock-in-trade, keep-'em-guessing routine is starting to wear a little thin. If Gilligan were going to seriously address Mulder's ethnicity, then why leave the question dangling? Mulder's heritage should have either been revealed or not brought up in the story. This was a simple plot device that is far beneath the talents of Vince Gilligan. It was pointless and a disservice to serious fans of the show.
The best acting in the episode was done by guest star Bryan Cranston as the doomed Crump. It was a meaty role that ranged from desperate husband to paranoiac to someone dependent upon making someone he mistrusted believe his fantastic story. Cranston even sounded like a sincere bigot when he challenged Mulder's heritage. It's no small feat for a character with many unlikeable characteristics to make a viewer feel sympathetic, but Cranston pulled it off.
David Duchovny is at his absolute best when playing comedy. But a close second is when Duchovny is reacting to those around him, those to whom an injustice has been done. As Mulder, Duchovny tends to play these scenes as the tough, wisecracking FBI agent, who, underneath it all, is affected by the unfairness thrust upon an unwilling and unwitting victim. He never relents, never gives in to Crump's racist baiting, but he's still able to empathize with someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I also liked Duchovny's sense of urgency when he had to make a NASCAR-like pit stop for gas, and then to carry the afflicted Crump into the car he had to, um, commandeer.
"Drive" is almost a metaphor for Mulder's FBI career. He sees the damage done, he knows that culpability can be assigned, but he never quite gets the proof he needs to be able to bring someone to justice for their misdeeds. He's been on this 5+ year ride, and he's getting nowhere. He is, however, making very good time. ;)
Gillian Anderson did some nice work as Scully. She was adept at taking charge in the autopsy room, instigating the quarantine, informing the Center for Disease Control (CDC) of the potential health hazard and leading the on-site investigation. There was nice Scully-Mulder interaction even in separate locales, thanks once again to the miracle of cellular technology. This techno-dependency was gleefully exploited by Gilligan in the scene where the CHiPs hand Mulder a replacement cell phone. Anderson was also in top form when called on the carpet in front of AD Kersh, as he read a laundry list of expenses that the two agents had rung up as a result of their excursion into Nevada.
Technically, "Drive" was beautiful to view. This is getting to be a redundancy with the show. The X-Files has one of the best filmed series on television almost since it began airing in September 1993. New Director of Photography Bill Roe did a nice job of alternating contrasting darkness and light. The scene in the farmer's (Junior Brown) house in Act I was nicely dark on the interior while bright sunshine bathed the background and streamed in through the structure's orifices. Mark Snow's score seemed to be stuck on the on foreboding base riffs that portended impending doom for Crump. The lack of variation on this theme was quite evident throughout the episode. Call it a one-note performance by Mark Snow.
With the aesthetically pleasing visuals, the Mulder-Scully interaction, good acting performances all around and my favorite director, Rob Bowman, at the helm, you'd think I'd be delighted with this episode. I wish I were. Vince Gilligan has delivered a, pardon the expression, pedestrian script with too many contrivances for "Drive" to be considered an exceptional episode. I hope this represents Gilligan's metaphorical "touching bottom," and that he has enough buoyancy to rise back to the top of the X-Files writing staff. I really wanted to like "Drive" better. I just couldn't.
My Score: 6 out of 10