The end of season six consists mostly of Scully and Mulder dreaming about their relationship and touching each other’s faces. Cheers.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Three of a Kind”

• Scully asks what time it is, and Mulder says “2:34 am” like “Why, is your clock broken? Why do you need to know the time? It’s perfectly normal for us to be talking at this hour.” I know his voice turns out to be a computer program, but it’s 1999, even hackers’ computers aren’t that good, and I’m choosing to believe that the Lone Gunmen swiped that audio from an actual conversation.
• “Yeah I trust YOU Mulder.”
• She’s been trying to reach him since she left DC, but as soon as the Gunmen tell her that Mulder’s just busy with the investigation, Scully stops worrying about him and jumps right on board. She knows they’re together whenever they’re working the same case, even if they aren’t literally with each other.
• “My medical opinion?”

Mulder would know this isn’t jet lag.

• IT’S HAPPENING, IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING.

“I just can’t decide who lights my fire!”

• Could’ve been you, Mulder.

• Can we just pause for Gillian Anderson’s face?

• “I am gonna kick their asses.”

“Field Trip”

• Writers’ room: “Hey so drugging Scully was really fun last week.” “Let’s drug Mulder this week.” “Yes but drugging Scully was REALLY fun.” “Fine we’ll drug Scully again too.”
• Welcome back, Mulder’s projector.
• “Sounds like crap when you say it.”
• “Scully, in six years, how often have I been wrong? No, seriously. I mean, every time I bring you a case we go through this perfunctory dance. You tell me I’m not being scientifically rigorous and that I’m off my nut, and then in the end who turns out to be right like 98.9% of the time? I just think I’ve earned the benefit of the doubt here.”

Do you even watch this show Scully

• She actually looks really stricken by the point Mulder is making, which is less about how often he’s right and more about how rarely he feels like she believes him.
• I had in my notes that Mulder looks hurt, but my phone autocorrected it to “He actually looks hot.” Which, yes. But that’s never surprising.

• Hi, please walk under my arm.

She doesn’t even have to stoop.

• He’s so cute and excited. This is the best day of Mulder’s life. He has his Scully and his alien.

I love the way he holds her like he’s guiding her blindfolded into a surprise party. A UFO party.

• The fungus makes Mulder hallucinate a world he wouldn’t want to escape, so he imagines a scenario where he talks to aliens and Scully believes him. And then he rejects it because Scully would NEVER make it so easy. Mulder likes that Scully always makes him earn it. He wants to do the hard work of proving himself to her.
• This fungus has to pay for making Scully cry.

• Scully must really feel bad about never giving Mulder the benefit of the doubt, because her hallucination puts her in exactly that position. Everyone keeps repeating her theory back to her, and it sounds like crap when they say it. Her science robs his death of any mystery. In the same way Mulder is afraid that his cause will cost Scully’s life, Scully is afraid that her logical explanation will cost Mulder’s cause. She can’t handle the thought that Mulder could die without ever finding the truth, that he could die for anything other than what he believes. She wants him to be right, even if it takes his last breath to prove it.
• “It’s what Agent Mulder would have thought.” “And you think he would have been right.”
• She also hallucinates Mulder not being at all surprised that she’s in his apartment.
• I love that Mulder’s palm is up when he reaches out to her in the ambulance, like he doesn’t just want to hold hands but to let her put her hand in his. It’s so gallant and Mulder-y to offer himself like that.

• Scully can barely even see him, but she know that his hand is there. When she can’t make it all the way, he grabs her fingers and they hold on to each other, because while he might want to be the one offering to take all of her problems, he needs her just as much. It’s not about one of them putting their entire hand in the other’s. It’s about the way their fingers interlock, each one of them equally reliant on their relationship.

• They don’t know that anything else is real, but they know the hands they reach out for are—and maybe not even literally, but more broadly. This experience has reinforced how much Scully and Mulder need each other. Scully depends on the mystery that Mulder believes is out there. She needs to know that that ordinary lives can by sheer force of will have extraordinary purpose. Mulder needs Scully to give his work weight. She makes him believe that he’s deserving of respect, and he relies on her estimation of him. They’re holding on to that: the truth that they’re here for each other, and that the partnership they’ve formed is enough to get them through.

“Biogenesis”

• Looking super comfortable in Skinner’s office (with themselves, with their life together, and with Mulder’s hair situation).

• “The man he’d come to meet made a similar claim in a SCIENCE journal.”

Science, Scully. Look how I give you what you need.

• Scully’s being downright flirty in that elevator, leaning into Mulder as she teases him about his interest in the case.

• Other people join them in the elevator and they briefly consider trying to act normal but still end up nose to nose. Well done, you two. Good cover.

• Scully wants Mulder to have a little victory. The Syndicate is destroyed, and he exposed them. He won. But when he says that he still has to find his sister, she can’t hide that she’s a little impressed by his persistence. The man in that hotel room who told her about his sister still hasn’t given up, and his work is just as personal to him as it was the day they met.

• I’m so proud of Mulder for being open with Scully from the start. He doesn’t hide that something is wrong with him, and he doesn’t keep her out of his theory on what’s behind it, even though he knows she’ll find it weird.
• “It was from outer space.”

• Scully dotes on Mulder, touches his arms when he’s in pain, and insists that she’s going to get help.
• “Scully you packin’ any latex?”
• Gazing and telling Mulder to go home is such a small step from gazing and going home together.

• DIANA GET OUT OF MULDER’S APARTMENT STOP CALLING HIM FOX STOP EVEN EXISTING IN HIS GENERAL VICINITY
• “He’s a danger to anyone.” “NOT TO ME.” Scully KNOWS that Mulder would never hurt her, even when he’s barely himself.
• When Diana says that Mulder thought she was the only one who would believe him, Scully doesn’t doubt for a second that Diana is lying. Scully is his one in five billion.

“The Sixth Extinction”

• “I came in search of something I did not believe existed. I’ve stayed on now, in spite of myself. In spite of everything I’ve ever held to be true.” She stayed for Mulder. She put Mulder ahead of her old ambitions, her old ideas, everything.
• “YOUR BEAUTIFUL MIND”
• “I feel this was meant not for me to find, but for you to make sense of, make the connections which cannot be ignored.” How far have we come to get here, where Scully does the finding and needs Mulder to make sense of it? And she goes with it. She keeps digging, as he would, and she trusts that he was on to something.
• “I’m here only to help my partner.” No really. She’s so far over everything else.

• As soon as Mulder has a voice, he asks for Scully.
• “I’m only here to help my friend.” She’s making it abundantly clear that her agenda is entirely personal. Nothing else matters while Mulder is in danger.
• “I have been on a plane for 22 hours. I HAVE to see him.” They need each other. They cross the earth for each other. She put continents between them because that’s what it took to save Mulder’s life, but she can’t be in D.C. and not be at his bedside.
• “He’s not dying. He is more alive than he has ever been. He’s more alive than his body can withstand, and what’s causing it may be extraterrestrial in origin.”

Even with everything she’s still fighting, Scully is certain of the work she’s done, and of the work Mulder was doing long before she met him. She believes in him so completely here.

• “They’re going to deny you access.” “Maybe as his partner, but not as his doctor.” YES. DOCTOR HIM.
• Mulder hears Scully’s voice through the din and over everything.
• “Mulder, it’s me. I know that you can hear me. If you can just give me some sign. I want you to know where I’ve been, what I found. I think that, if you know, that you could find a way to hold on. I need you to hold on. I found a key—the key, to every question that has ever been asked. It’s a puzzle, but the pieces are there for us to put together and I know that they can save you if you can just hold on. Mulder, please. Hold on.” I lost it at “Mulder, it’s me,” honestly.

She looks so young by his bed.

Scully starts to crack when she talks about the puzzle that she wants to put together with him. They’ve got work to do. But she doesn’t really break until she begs him to hold on, because she needs Mulder for so much more than this job.

It’s like Scully is willing Mulder’s hand to squeeze hers back.

“The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati”

• “Sir, this isn’t just a case. This is Agent Mulder we’re speaking about.”
• Even in a dream, Mulder has to tell Scully where he is. He keeps going back to his commitment to Scully.
• I’m dying at the way she storms into Kristschgau’s apartment. Scully is a woman on a mission.
• “Really? I could swear I smell cigarette smoke on you.”

This is the most beautiful Scullyface I’ve ever seen.

• “I just want you to think. Think of Mulder when you met him. Think of the promise and the life in front of him. Think of him now. And then try and stand there in front of me, look me in the eye, and tell me Mulder wouldn’t bust his ass trying to save you.” Scully believes in Mulder’s goodness. She knows that he would do everything to save Diana, and she admires that about him. She’s not threatened by Diana anymore, because the connection she and Mulder share is stronger. It’s based on MUTUAL goodness. Diana can’t say the same.
• CSM gives Diana the exact opposite instructions. He tells her not to think of the man, but only of the mission. I like to think that the contrast between the two was what made Diana realize that she had to help Scully save Mulder’s life. Mulder has never taken people out of the equation. For all of his single-mindedness, Mulder’s passion was personal from the start, and it made Scully’s personal too.

• Mulder dreams up a scenario right out of CSM’s playbook: one where he accepts that he’s just a puppet, settles down in the same neighborhood as his enemies, and raises a family with a woman who wants to keep him in line. CSM says that Mulder is dreaming “the dreams all men who are owned by the world have: a simpler life, full of small pleasures. Extraordinary men are always most tempted by the most ordinary things. Dreams are all he has now.” But even in Mulder’s dream, nothing is simple. He could have dreamed up a life where Samantha was never abducted. He could have dreamed up a life with Scully. He could have been actually happy. Instead, he sewed doubt into the lining of his dream, because he didn’t want to buy into it. He didn’t want the lie of a simple life. He wanted to fight the hard fight with Scully, so he dreamed up a world that didn’t include her in order to force his subconscious to resist it.

• Even then, Scully was his conscience. “You must get up, Mulder. You must get up and fight. Especially you. This isn’t your place.”

• Never forget Scully’s business walk.

• She lights up when Mulder shows the first sign of life.

• “No one can do it but you, Mulder. Mulder, help me.” I love that she puts the agency on him, but that everything Mulder does for himself is also for her.
• Mulder is revived by Scully’s tears so if you need me I’ll just be over here clinging to life.

• He just woke up, but everything’s fine because Scully’s here. “You help me.” It’s a request and a fact.

• They cling to each other.
• “I was just getting dressed to come see you, but I couldn’t find a tie to go with my victory cap.”

It looks like a brand new cap and I honestly can’t decide which idea I like better: Scully buying it for Mulder, or Mulder buying it to mess with Scully.

• Puppy dog is happy to be alive.

This should be illegal.

• “Oh, hey. Tie goes to the runner.” Let’s go back to the baseball diamond, Scully. Hips before hands.
• Scully is ready to comfort Mulder over Diana’s death, because Diana was his friend. Scully is better than all of us.
• “The end of my world was unrecognizable and upside down. There was one thing that remained the same. You were my friend, and you told me the truth. Even when the world was falling apart, you were my constant, my touchstone.”

• The present tense is doing everything for me right now. Scully got Mulder through this by telling him what he needed to hear, and now she needs him to know that he does the same for her, every day. He gives her a purpose that she no longer feels otherwise, not because she’s hardened, but because she’s learned not to trust the most obvious answers. Mulder makes that okay. She doesn’t know anymore who or what is real, but it’s clearer than ever that she’s in this for him. Whatever the truth is, they’ll make sense of it together.

wow you two are so platonic

• This is a much more lingering forehead kiss than any they’ve shared before. Getting there, getting there…

Bring on the season of secret sex.

Move over, Backstreet Boys; I have a new favorite Millennium.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Hungry”

• “We’ll have it our way.”

YEAH YOU WILL

• “What if this man’s brain was eaten?”

• Proboscis theory. She loves it.

Never ever stop suspecting people of having proboscises.

• “I’m sorry, but this is like good cop insane cop.”

“Millennium”

• Let’s proceed like this episode didn’t break us all.
• I’m actually pretty sure that things happened before the last two minutes.
• I took notes and everything.
• “Mulder, you been spreading rumors?” “Why, heard any good ones lately?”

Did you hear the one about how I’m gonna kiss you?

Yeah.

Exciting, right?

• She’s so pleasantly surprised when he wishes her a merry Christmas.
• “Well go ahead Scully, naysay me.”

He’s not just telling her that it’s all right; he’s asking her to challenge him. He loves it. It’s the next step in this little dance they do.

• Mulder says “Yuletide night” so seductively.
• Date night at the psych hospital.

• “Well if you’re gonna tell me that he stopped by the side of the road to raise the dead—which I hope you’re not—”

Actual married couple.

• Puppy humor.

• “So I’m going down to the county morgue.” “I absolutely think you should.” “And what are you gonna do?” Literally this entire conversation is the two of them trying to convince themselves not to shove each other into the nearest coat closet.

• NOW KISS.

It’s time. He looks almost amused by it. It’s actually time.

• I love everything about Scully and Mulder’s first kiss—how it happens at the most ordinary time, but on the edge of an extraordinary beginning. They’re just standing there in an empty hallway, watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, listening to Dick Clark’s countdown. It’s all familiar, but the whole point of our New Year’s Eve routine is that we do the same thing every year to ring in the hope of doing something NEW next year. We’re waiting for change. That was never more true than in 2000, when for all we knew we were headed for a meltdown. Mulder looks at Scully and figures that there’s no better time to tell her that whether they’re headed for something great or about to crash, he wants to be with her. It’s just a confirmation, really; they both already know what they are to each other. He doesn’t have to say anything, and she isn’t surprised. She’s just pleased. Even with her eyes on the TV, she’s waiting for him; she can feel him thinking about it.

Does she turn her head exactly as he’s going in for the kiss, or just before? Is he waiting for her to signal that she’s ready?

I live for the way she closes her eyes and leans into it.

Mulder does the same.

He’s adorable and happy and tentative all at once.

Scully’s proud of him, and proud of THEM, really. They got there.

• Now Mulder can finally really celebrate it.

• The world didn’t end, and neither did theirs. No bees this time. It’s a much sweeter and more innocent kiss than the one they would have shared in Fight the Future, which was really about the two of them finding their way back together and proving how much they need each other. None of that is at play here: not the big conspiracy, and not their own fears that they’re holding each other back. This isn’t about their FBI partnership. It’s just about Mulder and Scully. My friend Sage put it like this: “With no eminent death or blood or anyone running from anything, he just has to confirm to her finally, If the world were really ending, the last thing I’d do is kiss you.” The lack of death and blood and running is KEY. They’re not coming from a place of desperation; they just genuinely want each other, in an every day for the rest of their lives kind of way. And that’s actually possible, since the world didn’t end.

• A friend told me that she read something hesitant in Scully there, like Mulder’s joke set off a little red flag that maybe he didn’t take this seriously or something. After almost breaking my remote in an attempt to work through my turmoil, I still don’t see it like that. I see Scully as content but thoughtful, exactly where she wants to be, just considering what it means and where they’re going.

“Happy New Year, Scully.” “Happy New Year, Mulder.”

• Scully’s treating this with care because she likes it and wants it to be real. I think if either one of them is hesitant, it’s Mulder, but only because he sees Scully processing and wants to give her that space. This kiss is so completely THEM because their feelings are understood without expression, but the expression of those feelings is taken so seriously. The world didn’t end on January 1, 2000, but it did still enter a new era. (Not quite millennium, but no one likes a math geek.) In the same way that every New Year’s Eve is an ordinary night that looks toward a change, this kiss is completely natural, but it also opens a new door. They both want to get it right, and they’re going to do it together.

But after they took this little walk to their car to confirm that they still had each other’s backs, they definitely had sex.

“Rush”

• This is a Hey, last night was great face. Get on board or get out of the way.

Not sure who Scott Cooper is but I’d like to congratulate him on having his name forever attached to this great confirmation that Scully and Mulder are totally doing it.

• “I’d say that Tony eats his Wheaties.”

Was that bad joke for me?

• Puppy on a leash.

• Mulder introduces Scully before he introduces himself, which is made that much better by the fact that they’re going into an interrogation. Look at my partner. It’s your lucky day because you get to meet my partner. She’s great. She will end you.
• Scully PLAYS WITH MULDER’S TIE.

Could you BE any more domestic right now?

• Bedroom eyes and pouty lips will get you everywhere.

• “A Betty?” “Back in the day.”
• “I’ll show you my theory if you show me yours.”
• Another gruesome dead body pays silent witness to Scully and Mulder’s eye sex.

Are they sleeping together? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. XOXO dead body

• Gazing.

• Gazing.

• Gazing and thinking about how excited they are to tear each other’s clothes off.

SOON.

• “What if we’re too old?”

Mulder, we are just getting started.

“The Goldberg Variation”

• “Ohhh, AROUND.”

• Mulder is so entertained by Scully’s “What if he got really, really lucky?” theory. He loves how hard she clings to science.

Mood lighting.

• He’s actually doing the foot pop.

• Scully’s really working hard at this joke thing.

He’s so PROUD.

• Scully sees a future watching Mulder try to fix the plumbing, and she can’t hide how much she wants it.

• She’s really enjoying Mulder’s mishaps today.

“Yeah it’s all right, my ass broke the fall.”

• “So, here’s the plan as I see it: You change your clothes, we fly back to DC by sunset—”

She just wants to be on Mulder’s couch right now. Date night date night date night.

• “So Bellini kicks down the door, waa ka!”

I’ve already rewound this more times than I can count.

• Scully’s delighted by Mulder right now. Just everything about him.

Q.E.D. Thus we are sleeping together.

• HIPS BEFORE HANDS FOREVER.

Who wouldn’t?

• Daily reminder that Gillian Anderson could fit in David Duchovny’s pocket.

This is super casual, like he’s got his *get dressed next to Scully* routine down to a science.

• “Maybe everything does happen for a reason, whether we see it or not.”

LOOK AT THEIR SHINING FACES. BASK IN THE GLOW OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP.

“Orison”

• Mulder hasn’t forgotten the only killer to ever really rattle Scully. He hasn’t brought it up. It doesn’t make him think any less of her. He’s just remembered it: that there is a way to break her, and he doesn’t want to see her go through that again.
• When she says that she doesn’t have a choice but to stay on the case—she can’t let anyone else suffer like she did—he looks like he wants to kiss her right there, she’s so soft and tough at the same time.

• “I think if it was a make out song, I think it’d be ruined forever now, huh?” Someone knows Scully’s make out songs now.

Mulder kind of looks like Jonathan Taylor Thomas here. His badge number starts with JTT. #CONSPIRACY #TRUSTNO1

• He’s hard on Scully’s faith, but he respects her story, because he knows what it means to recognize real evil in the world.

• These two have a kind of sixth sense about when to check on each other. They’re almost always in danger, but they know when it’s urgent.
• I’m entirely against the fact that they brought Donald Pfaster back but entirely in favor of how badass Scully is when she fights him. He makes her fight for her life, and she has a lot to live for.
• “If you want to pack some things, we can get out of here.” There’s no question that Scully is going to stay with Mulder. They don’t even have to say it.
• He doesn’t want Scully to judge herself, and he assures her that he doesn’t. “The way I see it, he didn’t give you a choice. And my report will reflect that, in case you’re worried. Donny Pfaster would surely have killed again if given the chance.”

He’s so good at anticipating her own doubts and reminding her how he sees her.

• Now go to Mulder’s place, you two.

Season of secret sex is super secretively sexy.

GORDON GORDON: He wants what we all want. He wants to find out his place in the world.
BRENNAN: We can find a permanent place for him. Right?

I keep expecting to see Sweets in Booth’s doorway. He should still be sharing fries with Angela at the diner or carrying a box of files into the FBI conference room. Something’s off without him, and it’s sudden and unsettling and unreal in a way that real loss tends to be.

I don’t usually come to Bones for a realistic experience of grief. I’m in it for the redemption stories, the people with messed up lives who’ve found work worth doing. Sweets was a damaged kid. Lance Sweets, psychologist, boy genius, shipper, and Star Wars aficionado, was abused, then adopted at age six by an elderly couple, who died within weeks of each other just before he started at the FBI. He found his purpose through their kindness. “They gave you a good life,” says Gordon Gordon, “and that’s why you believe that people can be saved by other people with good hearts.”

It feels wrong that his son will never get to learn that from him. Sweets’s death is a little bit more senseless than I’m used to from this show, but I don’t feel the need to debate the fact that it happened. John Francis Daley has big things coming, which is great, and he needed the time off, so real life stepped in and made Bones a little more real than it normally is. I’m fine with that. The team’s grief has been well written and well handled. I’m just here to remember the baby duck.

Because while Sweets’s son will never get to know him, he will grow up with the biggest, smartest, most wonderful extended family. And while Sweets will never get to know his son, he did get to know Booth and Brennan. Brennan got it right away: Sweets was alone when he met her and Booth, and he imprinted on them as only baby ducks do. She didn’t hesitate to take him in and protect him. Remember when Sweets asked Brennan if he could call her Bones in moments of shared camaraderie? He needed so much to be a part of the inner circle. (“You liiiiike us.”) I love his early seasons for that. He would never admit it, but he was adorably desperate for B&B’s approval.

Sweets brought something light to this show at a time when it was really needed. He poked brains and asked the hard questions. (“Point of investigation: How do masters find their apprentices? Not on Craigslist. I checked.”) He played the Titanic theme on a hypothetical piano. (“Even not hearing it, I hate that song.” “Not the way I play it.”) He had the most convoluted and perfect metaphors. (“No, you’re the gay neighbor boy. Your love is the party wagon. Grayson is the tree. I’m Hodgins.”) Best of all, Sweets came to work excited every day. (“This is how we roll. Right guys?”)

Like Angela, Max, Caroline, and pretty much anyone with eyes, Sweets saw something between B&B as soon as he met them. Unlike everyone else, he had a professional obligation to talk to them about their relationship, which he promptly made unprofessional because they were so cute and they were his duck parents and he could not help himself. He was just supposed to help them function as FBI partners, but then he watched them struggle to explain who they’d be to each other if that partnership were taken away. (“So that’s clear, then. We’d have coffee. I mean, that’s our relationship. Coffee.”)

Sweets was the audience. He saw Booth and Brennan’s relationship, he articulated it, and he made them articulate it to each other. Even when he wasn’t around, B&B used Sweets as an excuse to have conversations they otherwise wouldn’t.

BOOTH: You know, I can see how Sweets would get confused.
BRENNAN: We both did tell him how we felt about each other. In the past.
BOOTH: In the past.
BRENNAN: And we’ve both thought about it. He knows that.
BOOTH: It?
BRENNAN: Sleeping together. It would be odd if we didn’t.
BOOTH: Right, so we’re talking about this now?
BRENNAN: We seem to be.

Sweets gave Booth and Brennan a place to talk about things that they hadn’t talked about with anyone. He made them acknowledge their brokenness and use it for good. Without Sweets, I’m not sure Booth would have been able to sit down with Brennan and burn a wish to be with her later, once he took the time to heal. I’m not sure Brennan would have been able to face her fear of loneliness, take a chance, turn her world upside down, and tell Booth that she didn’t want to have any regrets. Sweets pushed them. He pushed everyone. It didn’t always turn out well in the short term, but in the long term, they needed his nudging.

Cam came to Sweets when she needed a professional sounding board; she wasn’t his boss in the same way that she was everyone else’s, so she could open up to him when her hands were tied. Hodgins came to Sweets when he was afraid of his own anger, only to receive confirmation that his coping mechanism (“OF HATE”) was completely natural. Angela came to him sometimes to talk things out, but mostly she did the counseling, encouraging him with Daisy like he encouraged Booth and Brennan. Sweets and Daisy were all over the place, but in the end, they made each other grow up. (“I just want to say that I don’t want to spend any more time away from you than I have to.”) She’s going to be a great mom, and their son is going to hear so many great stories about his dad.

Sweets stepped it up so much over the years. He learned that people are more than questionnaires. He became a part of the family as he cared for Christine and helped Brennan move. He was field certified as an FBI agent. Sweets died fighting for himself because he wanted to make Booth proud. It’s huge for Booth to accept responsibility for another person, but he found eventually that he didn’t have to take responsibility for Sweets anymore. One of the last things Booth did for him was to shake his hand as an equal, and Brennan honored his memory by acknowledging what he taught her years ago: that she wasn’t alone.

“Sweets is a part of us. Our lives, who we all are at this moment, have been shaped by our relationships with Sweets. Each of us is like a delicate equation, and Sweets was the variable without which we wouldn’t be who we are. I might not have married Booth or had Christine. Daisy certainly wouldn’t be carrying his child. We are all who we are because we knew Sweets. So I don’t need a God to praise him or the universe he sprang from because I loved him.”

Despite everything that happened to him, or maybe because of it, Sweets was smart, insightful, and good, and he believed that other people were good too. He was killed helping his friends, and he used his last words to tell them that the world is a better place than they think it is. Not bad for a baby duck.

Posted by Jasmine

Note from Kelly: I’m so excited to announce that Jasmine is joining the team to recap Mike Schur’s latest gift to the TV world, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Check back every week for the latest on Holt’s smile (HAS HE EVER), the romantic stylings of Jake and Amy, and Gina’s very important sweaters.

AND. WE’RE BACK.

A couple things before I dive headfirst into the recap: I’ve missed this show like no other during its break; Andy Samberg has the best nose; Melissa Fumero’s hair is verging on Roz Doyle levels of luxuriousness; Rosa Diaz is still everything I want to be when I grow up; and this cast remains as awesome as ever. While I love those episodes where the precinct splits up into unusual pairings – tearing Jake away from Charles, for example – so that the audience can see how well everyone works with everyone, I’m glad the writers decided to, for the most part, stick with the familiar. Specifically, watching the expected hijinks that come from Jake and Charles teaming up, the escalating crazy from Amy and Terry, the glowering mutterings from Rosa, and the vapid deadpan from Gina.

The episode opens up six months after the last episode from season 1, with Jake at a mafia mob event: he’s making a speech at a wedding reception, and he is in his element. His hair is gloriously slicked back, he has on a gold chain necklace, and is wearing a shiny, shiny gray suit. In his speech he simultaneously shoots down his past work as a police and demonstrates the familiarity with which he’s insinuated himself with the mob. He’s obviously the darling here, and is soaking it all up, in typical Jake Peralta form.

The scene devolves into a bit, with Jake setting off a chain of kisses with the mafia heads of the family. He yammers on, seemingly mindless chatter, until he comments on how dry the meatballs were – and then the scene switches over to a fully decked out undercover van, its walls plastered with photos and notes, and crammed full of police officers and monitors. Of course Jake’s extraction line would be “dry meatballs.”

It’s high energy when the entire NYPD runs in: lots of throwing punches, running at mob members, and affronted yelling. Terry throws Jake down onto a table, crushing it, before hefting him over his shoulder. He rushes Jake into the police van, who maintains cover right up until the door slams shut. Then he wheels around and toothily smiles at Captain Holt, going in for a bear hug – and OMG WE GET TO SEE HIS EAR PIERCING GLINT IN THE LIGHT.

Time for opening credits; and can I say how much I love that they’ve remained the same?

It’s the next day, and we’re in the police station. Charles has got a prank in mind (which is to ignore Jake completely), but his preparatory speech is immediately undermined by the enthusiastic welcome he screams Jake’s way. That was a very enthusiastic welcome, indeed.

I like how in contrast to Charles’ buoyant reaction, a completely unimpressed Rosa catches Jake up on the three things that had happened at the precinct during Jake’s absence: Terry had a lisp for one week because he chipped a tooth; Amy and Charles wore the same outfit to work one day, a gray suit with a pink button up. Boyle’s version totally looked like something out of Miami Vice; and Gina and her headphones had an incident, because of course. She was appropriately jamming out to some Korean song – I wish I knew what it was, all I could catch was the word “milkshake” – while a crazy fight erupted behind her. (Also, for anyone unaware, I love Gina to pieces. TO PIECES. Anyone who disagrees can shift right on out.)

Holt allows Jake only 12 seconds to recap his undercover adventures. Which, like the actual undercover stint, was way too brief for my liking.

Amy and Jake are adorably awkward together. He tries to erase the potential awkwardness but can’t help himself but go in for the kill. And by “kill,” I mean elementary-school-style flirting. When she firmly tells his she’s still with Teddy, he just nods; writers, I laud you, this was great. Because yes, while Jake’s acknowledged that Amy is the one for him, she hasn’t quite made that transition from “work friends who flirt and unconsciously deal with their simmering UST” into “potential romantic life partners” yet.

And onto the best part of the episode: Rosa – and I assume the rest of the squad – has been undergoing impromptu drills, and gloriously, Terry acts as whatever subject/victim, with an identifying whiteboard helpfully hanging around his neck. Just in this episode, we got mentions of Terry as: an angry, sassy prostitute, 81-year-old woman Adelaide, an unattended backpack that has a suspicious ticking noise emanating from it, and 7-year-old Timmy.

Amy, Rosa, and Terry are all tired of these drills; they all have their specific way of expressing their concern, though. Amy goes the ass-kissing route, Rosa goes for the straightforward, and Terry hilariously takes issue with Timmy’s stilted dialogue. Which, OF COURSE, is lifted verbatim from Holt’s boyhood diary: “I am feeling trepidation at the prospect of a parentless existence.” WHICH OH DEAR CHARACTER BACKSTORY THAT MAKES ME CRY.

Switch over to the three of them playing with Legos in the staff room. It’s good to know that Rosa and Timmy are on the same wave of comebacks. Terry’s insistence on keeping up the façade culminates in him smashing his and Amy’s Lego castle onto the ground. Their next tactic is to blow up an inflatable bouncy castle and wear Timmy out. Hilariously, Rosa sounds threatening even when she’s assuring Timmy that they’re having fun. (Her eye makeup game is great, by the way.) Holt concedes that it is a good idea to keep a 7-year-old entertained while the precinct looks out for him, and then admits that his idea of fun at that age was looking at his father’s collection of antique globes. CUE EVEN MORE FEELINGS.

I totally had forgotten that Gina and Charles had drunkenly slept together at the end of last season! Gina’s been bracing herself for the inevitable fallout for Charles’s unfiltered word vomit, motivated mostly by his enduring love for Jake. To wit: the first thing Charles asks Jake is if he had a best friend while undercover, and he gets visibly upset when Jake admits that sure, he did lots of jobs with a guy named Derek.

Jake gets called into a meeting with Holt and Special Agent Mark, for congratulations and an overall briefing about the mafia arrest. Jake’s arc from purposefully disheveled, content with mediocrity to competent, relatively mature police officer is well underway. He’s upset that one out of 15 high ranking mafia mob members escaped. While he’s still as irreverent as ever, he’s crazy prepared concerning the mob.

But the fantastic upside to these turn of events is: YAY. RE-UNDERCOVER MONTAGE TIME. Jake quickly dons on a maroon velour jumpsuit, slicks back his hair, links on his gold chain necklace, and growls: “Welcome to the mafia!”

Jake’s plan on re-infiltrating the mob goes as such: visit the bar to talk to Benny to sniff out Frankie, and then Charles would swagger in and punch Jake in the face to prove Jake’s dirtiness. And while Charles initially didn’t want to hurt Jake at all, the level of fear that Jake found a new friend turned him into a pretty badass cop. He morphed into a “forthright and confident Boyle” and punched the crap out of Jake.

A bit of a nitpick: why on earth would Jake and Charles think that sitting in the same car would be good for their cover?

When Jake visits Bianca, Frankie’s girlfriend, the scene makes a nice callback to the pilot episode: he’s making the rounds at an apartment complex and a former SNL cast member greets him. OMG JENNY SLATE IS BIANCA. OMG. YES SHE’S SO HOT. THAT CROP TOP IS DOING THINGS TO MY INSIDES. And now we know that Jake’s nickname among the mob was “Jake Lady Hands,” not “Jake the Jew.” Bianca’s delivery of “shut up” to Jake’s rambling was terrific.

Bianca refuses to tell Jake where Frankie really went, on account of Frankie’s deep feelings for her, so to convince her that she was only one of his mistresses, Jake whips out the handy-dandy song that he made to keep track of everyone’s trysts. As expected, the song was ridiculous and awesome, as was the way Bianca got caught up with it.

Unfortunately, Jake and Charles were an hour too late to catch Frankie. So Jake mopes at his desk. Which, grossly, had been left untouched during his entire six month stint, per Charles’s orders, and is now overrun with maggots. Gag. Charles tells Jake that some stuff are just not under people’s control, reminding him that Jake actually did pretty awesomely during his undercover stint, and successfully manages to get Jake to the bar (has the show given the bar a name yet?).

There are a lot of precinct officers in the party scene at the end of the episode, and many of them are very attractive. Woof. To nicely bookend the start of the episode, Holt makes a pretty epic congratulatory speech for Jake. Most of the speech is devoted to Holt making clear what “on the house” means – a two-drink maximum, no trades, and no guest tabs can be covered.

Jake brings over a champagne-whiskey-tequila drink for him and Amy, and they have a little heart-to-heart about Jake’s feelings and Amy’s current relationship status; truthfully, that actually sounds pretty bomb. Minus the olive juice, of course. I may, or may not, be drinking a version of it as I type currently. Anyway, they both agree to go back to the way their relationship was before Jake’s admission, and I let out a sigh of relief, because this ship hasn’t been ruined, thank God.

Spoiler alert! Charles and Gina sleep together again. In a cute throwaway moment, Gina wakes up with her hand caressing Charles’ face. BUT WHAT. After spending an entire season building up the potential Charles and Rosa sexual tension, the writers are going with the Charles and Gina route? I don’t see it – I’m slowly warming up to the possible coupling of the overly earnest, hangdog Boyle and the filter-less, shameless Gina – and I do appreciate the writers getting rid of the whole Nice Guy aspect of Charles’ personality, but still. What’s happening? What’s the end goal?

END SCENE.

BEST LINES

(Since this a show that has amazing one-liners, all the characters must be highlighted)

Terry: HEY. This is a tight 240. Show Adelaide some damn respect.

Gina: I have spent years cultivating a reputation as someone who sleeps with bike messengers or better.

Holt: Yes, I’ve been a cop for 30 years. And I’ve watched movies. (In response to Jake’s attempts to sound all mysterious and smart when talking about the acronyms for FBI and RICO)

Rosa: Adelaide has successfully transformed back into a giant man, sir.

Amy: [after Holt deflates the inflatable bouncy castle] Turn on the pump! I’m very claustrophobic! (Amy’s face is great, here.)

Jake: Let me soak it in, oh yeah, stale coffee, fingerprinting ink, whatever Charles is fermenting in his desk. (Beans. Eurgh. )

EXTRA NOTES

• Jake’s dancing is fantastic. His velour sweatsuit, which he inevitably dons later on in the episode, is most equivocally NOT. Also – has Andy Samberg always been this chest hairy, or was that a mafia choice?

• Apparently, singing “Piano Man” bonds any group of people together. I’m not saying I disagree. Drunken karaoke is an incredible experience.

• Amy uses staples to put together Legos, and assures Timmy that there’s still lots to do because “the structure’s done but we haven’t even started on the landscaping.”

• I don’t know what it means about me that I actually think Jake has very attractive hands. All trim and full of veins… Yeah, that description just sounded weirdly cannibalistic. Next.

• The key clicker scene was predictable but still amusing.

• When Bianca goes “that son of a bitch” and waves her hand in front of her face, it totally reminded me of the scene from “Undateable,” where Danny Burton insisted that the proper, realistic Italian accent can only be done if it’s accompanied by appropriate hand motions.

• Gina’s naked mole rat sweater is DISGUSTING. I literally recoiled from the screen.

• Someone has got to start gauging Holt’s smiles. I swear I saw an imperceptible twitch, but upon re-watch, I totally can’t tell.

“You’ve helped me find my smile.”

• Holt explains to Terry that there’s going to be a new commissioner – isn’t that something that’s happened already?

• Jake’s delivery of “you ruined it” at the end of Holt’s bar speech was a little startling, because it made him morph into my good friend, Dan, and I was like…wut.

Follow Jasmine on Twitter @blueberryjelly. 

Posted by Jasmine

In short: we get a little more back story on Holt’s time as detective during the good ole seventies (always a pleasure), Terry and Jake clarify their relationship status, Amy gets to use her brown-nosing skills for good, Rosa helps Charles out of an extremely uncomfortable situation, and Gina once again shows off her palm-stinging BAMF-ness.

Now on to the recap! (Is this the first time a B99 episode opened with a “viewer discretion is advised” disclaimer?)

We open on Terry nervously confirming his doctor’s appointment for the next day. For a vasectomy. Immediately everyone puts their two cents in, starting with Jake, who sidles on over and puts on his best concerned face. Charles makes a weird reference to his own under-the-knife experience. Gina’s crush on Terry comes roaring back to life, hilariously inappropriately. Rosa sidles up to join in the joshing. Even Amy pipes up from her desk with a belated joke, which culminates in a roster of great lines right before the opening credits:

• Gina: “Oh, God. No need to be testes.”
• Rosa: “Guess you won’t be manning the tip line.” (emphasis all Rosa’s)
• Charles: “Sergeant, is this gonna go on your sperm-anent record?”
• Jake: “Now playing: Scrotum Recall!”

“Neither does your wife, I guess.”

Jake’s got a stabbed person case. The victim owns a chocolate milk restaurant, that is, in Jake’s words, “finally a dumb Brooklyn hipster trend my mouth and I can get behind.” (The irony with which Andy Samberg pokes fun at anything hipster is not lost on me.) This leads to a hysterical scene in which Jake, on a roll waxing about the dopeness of this case in an effort to get Terry to assist, calls Terry “chocolate” and himself “milk.” He quickly mumbles that he said Terry is chocolate because he’s so full of protein, not because of any racial similarities. Throughout this whole exchange, Terry just stares at Jake with his mouth quirked and brow furrowed, as if patiently waiting for Jake to finish sticking his accidentally racist foot into his mouth.

Terry reminds Jake that he needs to get back to the station early enough to make his vasectomy appointment, because he’s enlisted a friend to drive him to the hospital. Which brings us to the one of the two main tensions within the episode: Terry doesn’t consider Jake a close enough friend/the kind of friend who would drive him to get his vasectomy. (Cue a strangled shout of concern from me.) Which leads to Jake defending himself as any kind of friend to anyone, i.e., rattling off the main cast of Friends, excepting Monica and Joey. FOR SHAME, JAKE PERALTA, FOR SHAME. He can’t remember Ross’s name and merely dubs him “dinosaur guy,” which gets Terry shooting up from his desk shouting “Ross!”

To further the whole “new commissioner coming in to reorganize the department” plot thread from last week, this week’s B-plot revolves around sweet talking the deputy chief, who’s coming to evaluate the entire precinct. (I can’t be the only one who immediately thought of Jeremy Renner when Holt talked about a Deputy Chief Brandt. Am I?)

Anyway. Amy freaks out upon hearing that the evaluation will be graded, launching into a terrific spiel about numbered grading scales while both Rosa and Charles stare at her wordlessly: “What?! When? Are we going to be graded? Or is this just some pass/fail garbage?” [Holt answers that it will be on a scale from 1 to 5.] “That’s how many letter grades there are. I feel like they’re just being weird using numbers instead of letters.”

Rosa’s facial expressions are SO GREAT in this episode. Oh, and character backstory: Amy hasn’t gotten an F in anything since her second-grade teachers flunked her in recess.

Appropriately, Holt enlists Amy’s skills as teacher’s pet to greet the deputy chief and make a good impression on Brandt, who used to be Holt’s own captain. Charles jokes that that makes Brandt their grand-captain, and Holt tilts his head and tells him that that was amazingly funny, and Charles blushes and twitters with glee.

Back to Jake and Terry’s case: The owner of Drk Mlk, the old-timey soda shop-esque chocolate milk restaurant, who’s wearing a red plaid shirt, glasses, and has a perfectly coiffed undercut, earnestly describes his restaurant’s regulars as “milkers.” Jake’s revolted expression perfectly matches mine.

The stab victim (whose official name, says IMDb, is Duncan Traub) hilariously calls his stabber a “psycho wuss” and then offers Jake and Terry an incredibly bitter, teeth-staining, sour drink that offends Jake to his very core. Duncan defends his product by explaining – very patronizingly – that: “dark milk isn’t chocolate milk. This is teat-to-mouth raw cow’s milk. The bitterness of the chocolate brings out the sourness of the milk.” To which I say: EURGH. Is this all this restaurant sells?! HOW DOES DRK MLK STAY IN BUSINESS?

Also, I twitch a little bit every time the place is referred to as a restaurant, not a bar. If a place of business doesn’t offer food, it should NOT be considered a restaurant. Feel free to persuade me otherwise.

While Amy’s up to her brown-nosing ways – creating a perfect pear welcome basket – Rosa and Charles are in charge of organizing the evidence room “beyond reproach.” Things devolve into confession time: Charles needs a date to his ex-wife’s engagement party. Charles thought an appropriate, suitable date for said party was his sister, who unfortunately just canceled. His ex-wife’s fiancé’s name is Hercules. She and Hercules are Charles’ landlords. Because Charles lives in his ex-wife’s basement. Oddly, that doesn’t keep Charles from having neighbors, one of whom is a very nice lesbian named Joanne.

Even more hurdles are flung in our heroes’ way. Instead of Deputy Chief Brandt coming to the Nine-Nine, we’ve got beautiful, stoic Kyra Sedgwick stiffly walking into the precinct. Man, this season and their fantastic female casting. Bravo, show, bravo.

Sedgwick plays Deputy Chief Wuntch, nemesis to Holt. She’s just as literal and stone-faced as Holt, who seems more dynamic the minute he starts interacting with her.

Switch scene to the hospital, where the doctor wheels Terry out into the waiting room. Turns out, Terry’s body is so physically massive that the hospital wasn’t equipped with enough anesthesia and he needs to come back another time. So we just get to revel in a gloriously loopy Terry and it is SO GOOD. Any episode that showcases Terry is terrific; last season’s “The Ebony Falcon” was one of my favorites.

A noteworthy thing: when Terry is high, he reverts to a childlike state – an interesting choice by the writers, considering last week’s Terry-as-7-year-old-Timmy, who we find out is more of a mature than high-on-anesthesia-Terry. And I guess this is the episode of confessions, because Terry’s starts babbling the following things:

• Sometimes he can’t tell his twin baby girls apart, so he calls them both boo-boo.
• He thinks Holt should smoke some weed to loosen up.
• He thinks Jake as an incredibly tiny head. He’s concerned where Jake keeps his brains.
• High Terry is unable to brush his own teeth.
• High Terry is terrified of possible monsters under his bed.
• Terry doesn’t really want his vasectomy – he wants more kids. “I’m not done with my testicles yet. I’m gonna let them sing!”

“The doctors made me into a superhero!”

And because Jake has an unwaveringly loyalty to his team, with that last confession in mind, he is determined to keep sober Terry from going through with his vasectomy.

Back to the precinct: Holt uses two-toned graphs on a projector and Wuntch considers it a flashy presentation. THEY ARE SO GOOD TOGETHER I NEED MORE OF THEM. We get a flashback to their previous cozy friendship, the precursor to their current chilly detente; they were desk buddies who bonded over their mutual need to use the stapler. Cute giggles heralded a seemingly perfect friendship. Until: Wuntch visited Holt’s hotel room? House? with intentions to woo him per a tiny negligee; her efforts were stymied because of Holt’s confession that he is gay. That, he is certain, was the start to the end of their relationship. Amy’s shocked face transitions into a commercial.

Jake and Terry question Gregory Philips, Duncan’s former business partner and prime suspect in the case. In a nutshell, Gregory is finance-bro gross. He voluntarily admits that he and his business school buddies routinely go out for drinks at a bar, whose sole appeal lies in the fact that it faces a Pilates studio with a huge window across the street. He proudly uses the fact that he puked on a statue at 10 PM as his alibi. (Brent Morin is playing a character who is so vastly different from his Undateable character that I’m amazed.)

Gina and Charles are still sleeping with each other, apparently, and he grossly uses the euphemism “knocking boots” when talking about it. Because of that fact, Charles turns to her as a substitute date for his ex-wife’s engagement party. He wheedles that as “bone bros,” the least she could do is help him out. Gina rightly slaps Charles across the face because she “could not abide.” YOU GO, GIRL. Charles, how dare you. Her slap, by the way, sounded absolutely painful.

Back to Jake and Terry: Terry blows up at Jake for constantly getting in the way of his vasectomy. He argues that they’re not “friend” friends, just work acquaintances, and Jake’s face falls, and so does my heart. But a knockdown like that isn’t enough to keep Jake from doing what he believes is in his friend’s best interest, so he does his best physically overpower Terry. Spoiler alert: he isn’t strong enough.

Wuntch is almost finished evaluating the precinct, and mockingly asks Holt what he thinks she’s thinking. His answer is perfect: “From your expression, I would have guessed constipated, or chilly.” Writers, another kudo is getting lobbed your way. We finally get to see Holt’s literal match: like everyone else in the precinct who is unable to properly discern his variety of facial expressions, he is 50% sure of what is on Wuntch’s face.

Before the two of them can get into a word-stabby confrontation, Amy rushes into Holt’s office. She has managed to dig up Wuntch’s letter of recommendations, thanks to her relentlessly and overbearing wheedling, the source of Holt’s and Wuntch’s bad blood. Holt was sure that Wuntch had written a bad recommendation letter about him, purposely sabotaging his chances at becoming deputy chief, because of his sexual rejection of her. She retorts that “your sexual identity is the one thing I actually respect about you.”

They then go into detail about their feud, which can be summarized as such: she thought he was trying to get her thrown off the force. She shot him. He thought on purpose. She shot him because he was undermining her orders. She destroyed his personnel files while he was undercover. She maintains that she was protecting him from a potential mole. She believes he embarrassed her in front of Derek Jeter. “YOU EMBARRASSED YOURSELF IN FRONT OF DEREK JETER.” Dear Lord, this scene was fabulous. But I want to know what the Derek Jeter incident was. THE WRITERS DO NOT ELABORATE.

Amy is mentally exhausted from the stress of worrying about the grade the Nine-Nine will receive from Wuntch. She takes matters into her own hands and marches into Holt’s office. She’s determined to keep Holt as her captain as long as possible, but knows that if their precinct gets a failing grade, then Holt will be ousted, like the Nine-Oh’s captain was. She tells Holt to start apologizing for anything and everything necessary that will placate Wuntch. Amy’s outburst was FANTASTIC, and it clearly impresses him.

Holt reluctantly takes responsibility for the Derek Jeter incident, and Wuntch happily gives the Nine-Nine a grade of 2.7. As a thank you, Holt rewards Amy a Post-It with a quickly scrawled “A” on it, and she practically vibrates with happiness.

Gina and her sweater once again play an important role in a B99 episode. Sadly, said sweater is only mentioned, not shown. She tells Jake about how, one day, she found enlightenment concerning the cuteness of a sweater. The sweater that she thought was only work-cute also turned out to be as equally cute outside of work. Jake takes her nugget of wisdom as the metaphor Gina clearly did not plan for it to be, and runs to the hospital to prove his worth as “friend” friend to Terry.

Happily, Jake was able to keep Terry from getting his unwanted vasectomy; his police badge played a large role here. Unfortunately, Terry allegedly threw an EKG at Doctor Penis-Off before Jake was able to shut down the operation.

As the episode comes to a close, we get to see Rosa continue her awesome give-no-fucks attitude. She’s dressed in what I’m pretty sure is a giant Jamaican flag, so that she can go with Charles to his ex-wife’s engagement party, after which she will help him find a new apartment, away from his whole mess of baggage.

Coda scene: as a thank-you present for Jake, Terry gifts him a Tupperware full of baby carrots. Jake does not appreciate it. Terry headlocks Jake and shoves baby carrots into the smaller man’s mouth; this is the price of being “friend” friends with him.

Best Lines

Jake: [Stretches and screams.] “Sorry. Terry turned my spine into a mass of pebbles.”

Drk Mlk owner: “You don’t get into this business to make friends.”

Jake: “Really?” [Incredulous] “I would think making chocolate milk is a great way to make friends.”

Gina: “Where have you been? This is chaos. Gina’s been organizing evidence based on ‘perp hotness.'”

Holt: “They look ripe. And crispy.” [Holt is utterly confused at Amy’s basket of pears.]

Holt: [to Wuntch] “But if you’re here, who’s guarding Hades?”

Gina: “Jake, I am so scared that man is going to make a huge mistake re: his vast deferens.” (I died when Gina actually spelled out the “re:”)

Holt: I’m not a man of unlimited cajoling.

Amy: Cajole up, Captain.

Best Scenes

• Jake’s futile attempts to bodily muscle/physically overpower Terry away from his vasectomy appointment was gold.

• I don’t know if I would consider Charles’ and Rosa’s hideous Jamaican-flag suits a best scene, but it took my breath away, so I jot it down.

“Sebastian from The Little Mermaid!”

Extra Notes

• Charles’ jokes were on-point in this episode. Holt thought so too.

• Terry is apparently a Ross-head.

• It took me an inordinately long time for me to realize that the chocolate milk bar’s name is pronounced “Dark Milk.”

• I’m glad the writers are making an effort to showcase Gina’s and Jake’s friendship, and by doing so, making clear that despite Gina’s self-absorbed, airhead ways, she’s the more levelheaded and practical of the two.

• SO WEIRD, after I made an “Undateable” reference for the first episode, Brent Morin from it guest-starred on this week’s episode as Gregory Philips.

• Jake hates carrots. He only eats them in cake form. He also only drank chocolate milk when he was a baby.

• Steps are being taken to segue Charles and Rosa into a platonic relationship. This is still so weird to me, considering the PILOT episode set up Charles as having pined after her for the longest time.

• I NEED Gina’s denim hoodie. I found out that it retails at $60 from American Eagle – but they’re all currently sold out. WHY.

Posted by Sarah

Hello Arrow fans!
Quick note: This post will discuss items from Arrow’s season three premiere. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled, stop now (but come back after you watch it)!

I want to talk a little about Olicity, and I’m grateful to Kelly for letting me do that here at The TVMouse! This isn’t an episode recap or review; I just have some thoughts that won’t go away, and for me, that means I need to write about it.

I’m an Olicity-shipper; I was never really into the Oliver/Laurel storyline, and I have enjoyed how the character of Felicity has been developed over the past year or so. However, I do think the writers have a challenge on their hands in that they have made Felicity so likable that she’s almost too good for Oliver. Remember last season when Felicity was disappointed that Oliver slept with Isabel? He essentially told her it was just sex, and he couldn’t ‘really’ be with someone he truly cares about (I think Sara is another example of this) . Felicity responded by telling him he was worth more than that.

In that moment, the writers established that:
1. Oliver wouldn’t/couldn’t have ‘just sex’ with Felicity
2. Felicity isn’t the type to have ‘just sex’

Whether the second item is true or not, they gave the impression of it by indicating that she values more relational sex than recreational.  Fastforward to the premiere.

Honestly, at the beginning of the episode, when they were flirting and talking about houseplants and Felicity was touching his face, I thought they were already sleeping together! It’s clear Diggle has had enough jibbajabba as well, and he calls Oliver on it, leading Oliver to take a chance and ask Felicity out to dinner.  While on their dinner/date, Oliver reminds Felicity of that moment, asking her if she remembers when he told her that he couldn’t really be with someone he truly cared about. She says yes (and let’s face it, if she recalls chewing on a pen when they met, and all of his many, many, many shirtless moments, she probably does remember him saying that), and Oliver tells her that he’s been re-thinking that. We can see that Felicity knows he’s talking about her, and she’s pleased by that.

Fastforward again toward the end of the episode, and Oliver tells Felicity that he’s so sorry, they can’t be together because he can’t risk being distracted from The Arrow’s mission by focusing on Oliver Queen at the moment—and maybe never. Felicity tells him to “stop dangling maybes”, a great line, and (in my opinion), seems to just be done with it, telling him to just once and for all tell her that he doesn’t love her. Oliver kisses her and begs her not to make him say he doesn’t love her. Felicity is somewhat shaken, and she tells him it is over and walks away.

I feel like at this point, even though Oliver has made the distinction between one-night-stands and relationships, he can’t go back to having random hookups. It’s possible the show will focus less on Oliver’s personal life and more on The Arrow, and we won’t see him with anyone else at all—but it would be interesting to see him turn down some romantic or sexual offers from others. What do you think?

I liked the chemistry between Felicity and Ray (more than the Barry/Felicity chemistry), and I can see that developing into something. Ultimately, I still think Oliver and Felicity will end up together (if Oliver ends up with anyone), but this current storyline gives them more time to keep the slowburn going.

Thoughts from you?

Sorry for the delay; I met Gillian Anderson this past weekend and retroactively blacked out last week.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“The Amazing Maleeni”

• “Neat trick, huh?” “I can think of a neater one: how you convinced me to drop everything and get on the first plane to Los Angeles.” Was it a bedroom trick?

Yeah probably.

• It’s really cute how Scully continues to insist that there’s ANY place she’d rather be. Just to keep up appearances.
• They’re showing off for each other so hard in this episode. “Observe.”
• “Skeptic.”
• DEAD BODY IS HERE. VERY DECAPITATED. TIME FOR EYE SEX.

I have literally nothing to say about this screenshot.

• You know it’s a wild day when Fox Mulder laughs at how unbelievable a scenario is.

Scully, we might be looking for a guy who saws people’s heads off and then glues them back on really really quickly. Has our job always been this weird?

Yes.

Now get serious this is CRIME.

• “And yet he performed yesterday. What a trooper.”
• “Mr. and Mrs…” “AGENTS!” That could easily be the title of this show.
• She won’t admit it, but she really wants Mulder to appreciate this top hat.

Mulder check me ouuuuuttt.

• They’re making fun of someone together, so I assume another angel has received its wings.

• I love how obviously she’s enjoying Mulder’s magic show and how happy it makes him to entertain her.

• He taught himself this trick so he would have an excuse to touch her face.

• The way Scully says “AMAAAAzing!” is light and adorable and HAPPY and far and away my favorite moment of the whole episode.

Puppy’s first magic show.

• You just know he’s been practicing in front of his mirror since he met her.
• I hope all of my tax dollars help fund Mulder’s further adventures in magic.
• Scully has tricks too.

She’s so cute.

• I feel like Mulder learned all of that sleight of hand for Scully, but Scully did not learn how to do this for Mulder. She just knows things. She has secrets.

COME BACK I AM FLUSTERED.

• “Snakes.” “Lots and lots of snakes.” Is that anything like “lots and lots of files”?

Maybe “lots and lots” will be our “always.”

• Scully asks Mulder if he’s going to put evil snakes on their travel request, and he just smiles and says “No.” He’s been laughing at his theories more lately; he’s not discounting them, but he’s considering them more objectively, and he’s more aware of how they might look from the outside. Scully’s always been aware of it, and she never lets it stop her, and he just thinks she’s amazing for that.

• Mulder dresses the part to go talk to the priest. This shirt is like apple pie at a barn raising. It’s like rolling up your sleeves to play baseball in the street as the sun sets on a summer night. It smells like pine and old books. I can FEEL this SHIRT.

• “Where’s the light switch?” “The nearest one? Probably ten miles from here.” Joke!Scully is one of the best things about season seven so far.

Can’t tell who’s prouder.

• “Tennessee. Snakes. Thank you, Mulder. Thank you sooooo much.”

You miss aliens, don’t you Scully?

• Scully’s very into catching the next flight home with Mulder right now. I can’t imagine why.
• They always know when to check on each other.

His little “You okay?” nod is so cute. It’s not even really directed at Scully. He’s just reassuring himself.

• “I’d say it’s good news for you that she’s not here right now.”
• “You’re saying that you, Fox Mulder, would welcome someone telling you what to believe.” She knows him so well. He has to make up his own mind about things. But I love his very Conversation on the Rock-esque admission that he sees the appeal in being handed a set of answers, in not having to tear apart the world to find his own.
• Touching, followed by unbuttoning his shirt, followed by more touching.

• Scully thinks Mulder passed the test with flying colors, because he’s alive. Which is great, because she helped save him, so they passed the test together. She knew really early on that there was no cold dark place for him. Now she’s part of the reason why.

They love each other so much that a screenshot from an aggressively average episode is making me cry and it’s 12:21 am and this picture is ALL I KNOW. Please send help.

“Sein und Zeit”

• Mulder’s super casual “Come on in” to Scully, like he’s not lying there thinking about his sister, and she didn’t just fly across the country to tell him that he’s in trouble, and this is just a motel bed that they’re already sharing, kills me.

• He does not want Scully to turn on that light.
• I really appreciate the look that Scully gives Skinner as she sends Mulder through the door, like, Hello sir, I have retrieved him.

Also I am standing on my toes right now.

• “Did I say anything about aliens, Scully?”

I don’t want to be serious, so let me be charming.

• Scully will not let Mulder charm his way out of this. He’s probably counting on that. She worries about him, and she pushes him not to put himself through this.
• Even from the doorway of Skinner’s office, when Scully tells Mulder about his mom, it’s like there’s no one and no space between them. She’s not just dropping by to deliver the news; she’s in this with him.

“Mulder, your mom is dead.”

• “You’re my friend, and she’s your mother.” It’s so rare for them to label what they are to each other, but when they do, they always go with ‘friend.’ I love that. It’s their foundation. They were always friends, in every life. The rest is nice, but the friendship is essential.
• Mulder comes to Scully for the science. He wants her to help him find the truth; it’s why he needs her. Scully tells him later that his mom was just trying to take away his pain, but if she was, she went about it all wrong. Mulder’s mom kept everything from him. Scully is his friend, and she tells him the truth, and no matter what it is, she doesn’t let him process it alone.

I’m pretty sure the world never seems more unjust to Scully than it does when it hurts Mulder.

• When Mulder starts to lose control, he pulls back. He doesn’t ask anything from Scully. He tells her that he’s glad she’s there, but he doesn’t lean on her until she’s reached out to him. He’s always been a little more closed off where his sister is concerned, because Samantha has always been HIS quest, and he’s upset about her as much as he’s upset about his mother. Mulder trusts Scully to give him the truth—that’s what they do—but he’s not going to make her carry the emotional weight he’s been dragging for almost three decades unless she wants to. Which of course she does. She reaches out and literally pulls him to her until he lets himself give in. I love the way she grabs his hand as she does it.

• Scully stays with Mulder all night and does not care that Skinner knows it, thank you very much. Look at that shirt. She’s so casual and unblushing and at home there, and she’s in full-on protective mode from the minute she opens the door. Scully is Mulder’s bouncer.

“It’s been a hard night for him.”

• “Well then you better book three.”
• “She’s here to help.”
• They never did those trust exercises, but she can still find Mulder’s shoulder without having to look for it.

Hi there.

“Closure”

• Scully knows that he was hoping to find his sister. It’s like she’s inside Mulder’s head, and she doesn’t trust anyone else in there. She pulls him away from Harold Piller because she knows that Mulder is vulnerable, and she won’t let anyone to take advantage of that.

• “Mulder, you have been through so much in such a short time.”
• Scully goes back to DC so they can do their cross country tag team thing.
• She takes another look at his past, because “someone owes it to Mulder,” and who else is there? She won’t let anyone tell her to let it go, either. “This particular wound has never healed, and Mulder deserves closure just like anyone.”
• When Mulder can’t find the energy to fight the Smoking Man, Scully stands up for him.
• I like it when Scully and Mulder get domestic in homes that aren’t theirs.

Has anyone shown this to the people in charge of world peace?

• Of COURSE she comes along to investigate the Air Force Base. She has to challenge him and wear the heck out of a leather jacket first, but then she’s all his. The way she sighs resignedly in the diner says it all. She can’t not back him up.

How do you get anything done when you look this good, though?

• “Maybe afterwards we can play postman and spin the bottle.”
• Scully gives Mulder the time he needs, but she doesn’t let him drown. “Let’s get out of here.”

• “You know, I never stop to think. The light is billions of years old by the time we see it—the beginning of time, right past us into the future. Nothing is ancient in the universe.” I feel like Mulder and Scully are billions of years old by the time we see them, too. They’re connected across history, and they go forward together, no matter what. That’s the promise.

• He laughs like he forgot that sleep existed. He’d be so lost without her.

• They’re working the same case in the same town, and this is still how Mulder looks when he opens the door.

Oh hey, SCULLY’s here!

• Scully is so happy to have a lead on his sister’s case. She just wants to help him.

• “Do you want me to go talk to her myself?” I love that Scully volunteers to take this huge step for Mulder, knowing that he’ll trust her, and he does.
•  “I’m fine. I’m free.”

Let’s get back to being billion-year-old stars in strong jackets now.

“X-Cops”

• “Not who. What.” Mulder and Scully are just out there hunting a “what,” like they do every day. I find that reassuring.
• The camera loves them, and they don’t know what to do about it.

• “Agent Mulder?”

A word before you talk about werewolves in front of people?

• So lost.

Oh, my sweet summer child.

• I like how often the cameras follow Mulder and Scully away from the group, trying to mark off a private space for themselves. Most of the time, it feels like Scully and Mulder are just doing their own isolated thing because that’s the fate life handed them: the basement office. But they’re actually really intentional about living in their own world, which, as far as Scully is concerned, is not for display.

• Actual puppy dog Fox Mulder would stick his nose to the lens if Scully weren’t there to pull him back.
• “You want to talk about werewolves to me, you can knock yourself out. I may not agree with you, but at least I’m not gonna hold it against you.” That’s basically the exact compliment he’s been paying her from the start. Scully respects the process.
• “I don’t want ME looking foolish, Mulder.” This comes two seconds after she tells him that he might be ruining his career, so it’s really cute how she tries to pass it off like she’s not every bit as concerned for his name as she is for hers. Anyway, whatever reputation one of them gets, the other gets too. I like how they each assume that the country thinks like them. Scully sees their audience as rational people who’d judge anyone for believing in werewolves, while Mulder sees them as people who want to believe. He wants to share their work with the world. (“Oh I’M clear on that SCULLY.”) Scully wants it to just be theirs.

• “They turned out to be insect bites…Together they just looked like a larger pattern, especially when we want them to. Although it was an understandable conclusion that I’m sure anybody would have made.” Like that time I dropped my robe for you.

• Shut it down.

• “That’d be a good color for you, Scully.” Take how bad Mulder usually is at flirty jokes, then add a camera.
• “And the nature of these crimes, they’re notoriously hard to quantify at any kind of rigorous scientific level, as Agent Scully will tell you.” “Ohhhh yeah.”
• Mulder has no shame about his relationship with Scully or his crazy theories, but he still gets between the cameras and a young girl.
• “Okay, well, for the sake of this argument” is Scully’s way of saying, “You’re making sense to me. Tell no one.”
• The HORROR.

This is worse than the bees.

• “How’s somebody supposed to live that down?” “I don’t know, um, I guess just do good work.” That is so you, that is SO MULDER.
• Skinner just woke up in a cold sweat.

• “You weren’t afraid for your life.” Guys, Scully’s rationalism is literally keeping Mulder safe.

• Never calling off this feud.

• On the next…Arrested Development

Mulder fights a door for five hours.

Everyone! I missed you. I really am so sorry for missing last week’s post; in addition to New York Comic Con, real life intruded on the Friday before last, and I’m still dealing with it. But I’m okay, because this happened.

This is my Thing I’d Save in a Fire now.

I brought this print for Gillian to sign at NYCC because it amused me. She said it was funny (or a synonym of funny; I wasn’t processing details at that point), and then looked at it for a minute, and then she went freestyle. It’s better than I could have imagined. The period after “Scully” is what makes it. Scully. So final. So declarative. So matter of fact. Scully. aka. Gillian Anderson.

See you all next week! (I PROMISE.)

IT’S ALL HAPPENING.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“First Person Shooter”

• Scully’s wearing a black leather jacket and black mock turtleneck. That’s Mulder’s default stealth outfit.

Scully definitely woke up this morning and thought, What do people wear to mysterious tech fortresses? And then she thought, I only hang out with one person.

• He’s a catch.

Let it never be said that Mulder hides his interests from Scully. No matter how much she’ll judge him for it, if he’s into it, she knows.

• I love the way he points at her when she asks if he wants her to autopsy the body, like, Yep, we got it, there’s that unspoken communication,  you and me.

Tower of furniture.

• Hope the unspoken communicator can translate Scully’s side eye.

I am the only adult in this room.

• Sometimes when Scully is annoyed with Mulder, she takes it out on her autopsy notes. “No damn trace evidence whatsoever.”
• They’re talking about electric currents that cause virtual death. Literally nothing about this conversation topic warrants how flirty they’re being with each other.

• Mulder shows Scully everything about himself, regardless of what she thinks, but he WANTS her to appreciate what he’s into—or at the very least, think he’s cute.

• “Well that’s rather sexist, isn’t it?”

Oh, you wanna go?

• “Well that must be why men feel the great need to blast the crap out of stuff.” Scully is not having any of it today.

Nope, I’m here, you can appreciate me.

• “I don’t know about you, Scully, but I am feeling the great need to blast the crap out of something.” Even Mulder’s innuendos are also confirmation that he’s always listening to her.

This is the face of a woman who knows she’s Mulder’s number one person and isn’t afraid to wield that power.

• ARMS.

• “I SAW where he WENT. I wanna know where he IS.” Scully’s on a mission now.
• Put profit above Mulder, and “you’re gonna be counting teeth.”
• If Mulder would just take off those unfortunate sunglasses, I bet this whole game would implode.
•  “You don’t know what it’s like. Day in and day out, choking in a haze of rampant testosterone.” “Well, I wouldn’t be so sure.”

I work with this guy.

• Scully to the rescue.

His FACE. He loves that she saves him.

• Look at these two and their bedroom hair.

They got their ya-yas out.

• Finally the Mulder we deserve (free of sunglasses).

• I bet Mulder was so proud of his Sweet’N Low pun that he told it to Scully that night and she promptly took a vacation.

“Theef”

• “Mulder, why are we here?”—Mulder

His impression of Scully is adorably disapproving.

He’s so charmed by the way she challenges him.

That was a really good impression!

• “You see that, Scully, you always keep me guessing.”

The tongue click. HAVE MERCY.

• This amount of public bedroom whispering should be illegal.

Please get a room right now.

• Scully buys into Mulder’s theory, no questions. “I’ll always keep you guessing.”

Even as Scully finally admits, to herself and to Mulder, that this job has changed her perspective, the REALLY important thing, to both of them, is that she still finds ways to surprise him. He loves that she’s so unknowable, and she’s grateful to him for being drawn to her complication. The thrill is most definitely not gone.

• When Scully believes something, she owns it without apology, even when other doctors tell her that she should know better. This is one of the reasons she and Mulder work so well together; her skepticism has always been about her personal integrity as a scientist, not her standing within the scientific community. Everyone else can think what they want. She makes decisions for herself, and once she’s made up her mind, she doesn’t back down—because if Scully accepts it, then you know she’s done her research, and you should accept it too.

• WELCOME BACK, UMBRELLAS.

Scully’s umbrella is PLAID now, for fashion.

• Mulder hands Scully his umbrella, leans down to casually look inside a coffin, and then stands back so that he’s under her umbrella and she’s under his. That’s partnership. If it’s shelter for one of them, it’s shelter for both of them.
• Mulder restored Scully’s SIGHT. Casual date night activities.
• He always affirms her medical opinion, especially when she worries that she might have made the wrong call. “It seems pretty clear cut.”
• Now she’s really surprising him.

• “You do keep me guessing.” This is so far from the way he gazed at her at the murder scene or flirted with her in the lab. This is just Mulder, totally in awe of his partner, realizing that she’s not deep so he can spend the rest of his life puzzling her out. She just is.

“En Ami”

• Mulder greets Scully with the happiest “Good morning!” and tells her that he has a story to warm the cockles of her heart.

Dear Diary, Today I think Scully and I will drive to the country to buy each other sweaters and argue about who gets the last bite of apple pie.

• He isn’t even suspicious of the fact that someone wants them on this case; he’s just happy that someone wants them on the case TOGETHER.

An anonymous informant ships us.

• “So you want to use me to clear the slate, to make you a respectable person. It won’t work.”

Scully will never forget what CSM has taken from her, and from Mulder.

• Mulder doesn’t buy Scully’s excuse because he’s in on all of her family emergencies. Except maybe the ones involving Bill.
• “I’ve always trusted Mulder.”
• “There was a time when you feared for your future, for your career, when you were first partnered with this man.” And then she MET HIM. CSM saw the look on Scully’s face when she was first assigned to Mulder, and he based his entire opinion of their partnership on that look. For years, probably. It’s kind of cute how little they knew what they were doing when they put these two together.
• “You’re drawn to powerful men but you fear their power. You keep your guard up, a wall around your heart. How else do you explain that fearless devotion to a man obsessed, and, yet, a life alone? You’d die for Mulder, but you won’t allow yourself to love him.”

Okay fine, on the whole, that is accurate.

But maybe we’re already sleeping together. YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW.

• Of course Mulder called Mrs. Scully. They probably have monthly life chats anyway.
• “I know she can take care of herself. It’s just not like her to lie to me.” I love that it’s the lying that raises a red flag for Mulder, and not the sudden road trip. They’ve always trusted each other to work independently, and he doesn’t mind that she has secrets (she always keeps him guessing), but Scully doesn’t usually deceive him like this.
• Can we talk about the look on puppy’s face when he thinks that he’s going to get to talk to her? Like his world is right again.

• SKINNER: She said she’s fine. MULDER: She’s in trouble.
• Scully’s going to so much effort to keep Mulder in the loop, even when she can’t do it directly. She calls Skinner like she KNOWS that Mulder is already there, calling in every resource at his disposal. And there’s something so desperate about the way she speaks directly into the mic as she gets ready to mail the tape. She NEEDS to be in communication with him.
• “She knows that I’d find her no matter what.”
• “How do you take your coffee?” “Unadulterated, thank you.” No, Scully, thank YOU. Thank you for taking down a patronizing, sexist creep with the single greatest comeback ever imagined.
• Hold please.

Flawless.

• Mulder is so upset with Scully. She lied to him for the sake of their worst enemy. While he worried about her, she was out there road tripping with Cancer Man, choosing of her own free will to follow a liar. But she was trying to use him. She just wanted to wring every last bit of information out of CSM; Scully’s not the type to let others suffer because of her personal feelings toward anyone. It was risky, but she’s never let that stop her when there are people who need help.
• I keep coming back to the message that she tried to send Mulder. “Mulder, I’m trusting you’ll be able to make sense of what’s on this tape. I had no other way of contacting you. Please try to understand that I weighed the risks. I couldn’t divulge these plans without risking them, and I promise you that I weighed everything.” Scully knew that Mulder would question her, but she tried as hard as she could to reach out to him. If he’d received the tapes, would he feel differently? Even their fights are about how much they need each other.

• Scully takes Mulder with her the next time she goes to CSM’s office, because she’s learned her lesson on rogue investigations. The buddy system is key, and CSM doesn’t count as a buddy.

“Chimera”

• Scully shrugs at Mulder’s theories now, instead of debunking them.

• So how many nights have these two spent in this room, alone, sleep deprived, popping bubble gum, passing the time?
• Mulder doesn’t even bother with an umbrella when Scully’s not around to share it.

• “And, uh, keep warm. Bye.”
• Scully has every right to be annoyed by this situation, but she doesn’t take it out on Mulder, except jokingly.

• He loves it.

Look at his tongue.

• “Do you have a significant other?”

Look how he smiles when he thinks about what he DOES have.

But our definition’s pretty great too.

• Domestic Mulder is so awkward. He and Scully would never want a life like this.
• Scully is punchy with exhaustion and all she wants to do is be cute for Mulder.

“I’m going to go home, take a shower for, I don’t know eight or nine hours, burn the clothes that I’m wearing, and then sleep until late spring.”

“all things”

• I was told to prepare myself for the green sweater of sex, but I thought that was a figurative term. It wasn’t. It was real. We have our confirmation.

2000, year of the side zipper

THEY’RE SLEEPING TOGETHER AND IT’S CANON AND WE KNOW IT HAPPENED BECAUSE MULDER NEVER SLEEPS IN A BED

• I love the way he raises his hand to her as he bops to the music, like, Join me in the club.

• “I heard you Scully!”
• Puppy wants attention.

Scully, if you don’t look at me, I can’t call this a lunch date.

That’ll do the trick.

• “Mulder, look, we’re always running. We’re always chasing the next big thing. Why don’t you ever just stay still?” “I wouldn’t know what I’d be missing.” Scully’s going to slow down if she needs to, but it’s because she needs a break from the life that she and Mulder lead, not because she needs a break from Mulder himself. She’d be happy if he slowed down with her, and she thinks it might do him some good. But he can’t. There’s always more truth out there.
• He’s watching a sad black and white movie while he packs and I’ve been laughing about it for ten minutes.

“I’LL NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN. YOU’RE BREAKING MY HEART.”

• As much as Mulder is moping right now, he still checks to make sure that he hasn’t caught Scully at a bad time.
• First clue that Daniel doesn’t really know Scully: he thinks the FBI isn’t really her passion. He doesn’t understand how she chooses to make a difference, and he tries to tell her what she wants. He thinks that he knows what she “secretly longs for.” Mulder just accepts that Scully is full of mysteries and loves her for it.
• “You’ve come at such a strange time.” “I know, you have a life.” “I don’t know what I have.”

• Scully wants a LIFE. She might already have one—she’s not ruling it out—but she’d like to know that it’s a life she’s chosen. Mulder gives her the space to figure that out, and Daniel doesn’t. Daniel is one of those powerful men CSM talked about, and unlike Mulder, he wants to hold it over her. He thinks that he knows what’s best. For all of the influence Mulder has on Scully, and for as much as she’s let herself get drawn into his purpose, he respects her when she needs to pull back. From as early as their first case with Tooms, he’s always protected her independence. He needs to know that her career is her choice, because it’s the only way he can live with everything that this job has taken from her.
• Scully’s vision is so full of Mulder. He’s right in there with all of the people she loves.

In beautiful Y2K graphics.

• Daniel is set apart, and when his eyes open, hers do. Daniel matters to Scully as a reflection of herself, of the person she was and how far she’s come.

• “It’s time that you took responsibility for the hurt you caused in your family.” This is why we need Scully. She was young, and she slept with her married professor, and it was a mistake. She realized it was a mistake, so she got out. Now, a decade later, she finds out that their relationship broke up the family. She does everything she can to make amends with his daughter while Daniel does nothing. This is not all on her. Daniel should have known better. I love her for saying so, and I love her for the fact that it might have taken years to become the kind of person who could.
• “I’m not the same person,  Daniel. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t seen you again.”

I CHOOSE MULDER. IT’S OFFICIAL, I LIKE MY CHOICES.

• “Maybe sometimes nothing happens for a reason, Mulder.” “And what is that supposed to mean?” It MEANS she’s glad you’re back, because now you can sleep together.
• So domestic.

• “I go away for two days and your whole life changes.” “I didn’t say my whole life changed.” If Scully’s life is as it was, but her perspective on her life is new, then is her life new with it? Is this the first time they have sex? I like that it works either way. They’ve had an easy, flirty vibe with each other ever since that kiss, and they could easily have been sleeping together. This could be just another night, made important by the fact that Scully stopped to take stock of her life and realized that she liked it. But it could also be the first night, BECAUSE of that realization. And anyway, they’ve had an easy, flirty, how-are-you-not-sleeping-together vibe SINCE THEY MET. But the tie straightening scene still screams sex. Choose your own adventure, basically.
• “What I would have missed.” She’s sure now that her life with Mulder is the one she wouldn’t want to miss out on.
• “What if there was only one choice and all the other ones were wrong?”

• “Mmm. And all the choices would then lead to this very moment.”

“Now that says a lot.”

• They’re both so aware of everything that had to happen to bring them here. The fact that they’re with each other is like a miracle to them—but a human miracle, the kind that they made possible.
• Now go sleep together.

“Brand X”

• I’m pretty sure Scully just SENSES that Mulder is near, because she looks to the door way before you can hear his footsteps coming.

Honey, I’m home.

• I love it when she doctors him.

• No matter how bad it is, they’re always happy to be able to talk to each other.

• Scully: saving Mulder from addiction since 1993, just by saying his name.

“Hollywood AD”

• “I love you Scully, no ifs, ands, or—” “Bee!”

Our boss is watching this.

YASSSSS

• “He’s like a Jehovah’s Witness meets Harrison Ford’s Witness.”
• “Sir, have I pissed you off in a way that’s more than normal?”
• “Micah Hoffman, Willie Mays, and Frank Serpico. That’s my Holy Trinity, Scully.” He just wants her to know everything about him.

• “Of course I’m too young to remember.” Scully with the age jab.
• You can see the EXACT moment at which Federman becomes a Scully-Skinner shipper.

Paperwork, eh?

• “I like the way you guys work—no warrants, no permission, no research. You’re like studio executives with guns.” Sometimes they do enough research to put together a nice slide show.
• Mulder cannot understand how Federman could walk away before the case is solved. Doesn’t he care? That’s what sets Mulder and Scully apart from Hollywood: they won’t stop until they know the truth.
• “Well, you’re crazy for believing what you believe, and you’re crazy for not believing what he believes.” David Duchovny gets it.

“I miss him already.”

• “That is a VERY COOL STORY coming from you, Scully.”

So much flirting.

• “Agent Scully, if I’m carrying Marilyn Monroe’s purse, do you assume I slept with JFK?”

Mulder would have so much to say to that if they weren’t in trouble right now. He’s just watching all of his jokes sink to the floor.

• “I think this whole Richard Gere thing is going to Skinner’s head.”
• “I am become skeptical.” Now Mulder knows how Scully feels all the time.
• You’d think that he might stop reciting every line of Plan 9 from Outer Space when Scully walks in (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. BECAUSE SHE CAN’T SLEEP) but he just keeps right on going. He doesn’t care how much dirt Scully has on him.
• “How about Hoffman’s Roadrunner to O’Fallon’s Wile E. Coyote?”

Joke!Scully is at it again.

• “Crazy people can be very persuasive.”

• He keeps thinking that she’s making fun of him, and she keeps insisting, totally seriously (and a little wounded that he would even think so) that she’s not. She’s directing it at herself. Their fears and insecurities just happen to line up.
• She gets exactly one word out, and he knows exactly what she’s going to ask. “How—” “42.”

“You’ve seen this movie 42 times?”

• “Doesn’t that make you SAD? It makes ME sad.”

That is genuine concern on her face.

• When Mulder flirts with Téa Leoni (I see what you did there, David), Scully’s not even jealous so much as VERY excited to see how this plays out.

Someone’s got a laminated list.

• And then Scully runs around in the background for the rest of the scene.
• THIS EPISODE IS A GIFT.

• “Repressed cannibalistic and sexual fears and desires.”
• Mulder thinks that human nature, at every stage, tends toward dancing and making love.
• A GIFT.

• Boop.

• Of course Skinner is the only one who’s honest about what he’s doing.

• Can’t handle this fictional make out scene.

They’re onto us.

• The last straw for Mulder is that movie Scully doesn’t even love him back. “They got it so wrong, Scully.” Oh puppy.
• Mulder is worried about the oversimplification of “complicated, flawed, beautiful people” into one-note characters. He’s worried about the dead people who can’t tell their own stories. He wants people to be able to define for themselves how they’re remembered. I really love him.
• “I think the dead are beyond caring what people think about them. Hopefully we can adopt the same attitude.” Why does this actually inspire me?
• Scully hasn’t been able to stop smiling this whole case—and this case has been going on for a long time. She’s so happy and relaxed by the end. Things are obviously going great between them.

She’s getting some.

• “Well, we’re alive, and we’re relatively young.”
• Date night on the Bureau’s dime.

• Joking about it already. And also holding hands.

“I’m in love with Associate Producer Walter Skinner.”

This week’s batch was TOO PACKED WITH EMOTIONS to fit in one post, so I’ll be back with the end of season seven/ beginning of season eight as soon as I can! Probably at some weird hour tonight. Which is the time I usually reserve for lying awake and thinking about Mulder and Scully anyway.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the floor since the season seven finale. I’m just working through some things.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Fight Club”

• Mulder knows what Scully will expect him to say, because they basically read each other’s minds at this point.

This is the face Scully makes when the answer is NOT psychokinesis. We’ve come so far.

• “The interesting thing about these agents is that they had worked together for seven years previously without any incident.”

BECAUSE EXPERIENCE HAS NOW TAUGHT YOU THAT SEVEN YEARS IS THE MAGIC NUMBER.

• “Playing Watson to your Sherlock.”

From Sage: “Never forget that Mulder had sex on Arthur Conan Doyle’s grave. That’s canon.”

• They love it.

Scully’s just rattling off the most Muldery theories imaginable.

• “Mulder, the slide please!”

Mulder: WHO EVEN ARE YOU

• That’s a very familiar celebration there, Scully.

• “Don’t go thinking I’m going to start doing the autopsies.” Mulder is so flustered by the fact that Scully’s learned to think like him.
• Sometimes she thinks like him even when he doesn’t. “Well, I guess that’s why they put the I in the FBI.”

OH NO. HELP. IT HURTS.

• “So I take it from your posture, Mulder, you’ve solved the case.”

You mean THIS posture?

Oh yeah.

• How to Enjoy a Romantic Getaway on an FBI Budget, by Fox Mulder: “Well, there’s lots to do here, and the barbecue’s second to none, right Mr. Saperstein? Plus Mr. Saperstein’s going to show me some in-your-face, smack-down moves so I can quit getting my ass kicked so often, right? Oh, and there’s an art exhibit that traces the influence of Soviet art on the American pop culture, right?”

Five stars.

• “The lady knows her stuff.”
• “No s(static)t, Sherlock.” Brilliant. Also, Mulder’s never seen Scully as his Watson.
• “You’re the one who’s supposed to have all the answers.”
• Fight scene eye sex.

To quote another Watson, “I always hear ‘Punch me in the face’ when you’re speaking, but usually it’s subtext.”

• They’re like a married couple with an unexpected house guest.

Morning make out sesh: postponed. Pointing at people: still on schedule.

• Puppy has befriended a tiny little orphan mouse.

• “Mulder, that’s a little out of place, wouldn’t you say?”  Just how they like it.

At one point they blinked in perfect unison while I was taking this screen shot, so I think if onscreen chemistry has never been listed as a cause of death before, the medical journals are about to learn something new.

• Beautiful.

• “You still have both your lips.” I’m sure she couldn’t tell that on her own.
• “Oh, well you wanna hit some yard sales while you’re out here?” Either they’re getting a place together, or he’s helping her decorate hers.
• Invisible evidence. Science meets X-file in perfect harmony, and Scully is a kid in a candy store.

• “And he’s invisible!” “Yes he is.”

They’re making the exact same face. There’s no “I told you so” from Mulder and no scientific explanation from Scully. They’re just two people appreciating something unbelievable right in front of them.

• “Schwing!”
• “I think that I should stay here with the body.”

You do your thing, scientist.

• Scully looks like she just got everything on every Christmas list she ever wrote.

• When she’s happy, Mulder’s happy.

• Scully wears the green sweater of sex to meet the Harvard researchers, because it’s a sweater for winners.

• “Yeah, it’s always, ‘Give me money. Give me big boobs. Give me a big hoo-hoo. Make me cool like the Fonz.'”

This is what they call a “knowing glance.”

• Of course Mulder wishes for world peace. OF COURSE HE DOES.
• The world is totally empty, but Scully’s still here, right?

• Found her.

• “You don’t remember disappearing off the face of the earth for about an hour this morning?”

“Then I guess everything’s okay.”

• “Could you give us a minute please? Like, TODAY?”
• Just when he thought she was really starting to believe, she’s back to skepticism. He loves it. Points for melodrama.

“OHHHHHHH!”

• “It’s going to be a safer world, a happier world. There’s going to be food for everyone, freedom for everyone, the end of the tyranny, of the powerful over the weak.” “Maybe it’s the whole point of our lives here, Mulder: to achieve that.”
• They have movie night all the time now, and they never agree on the movie, because they’re such a couple.
• “When you invite me over to your place, we can watch Steel Magnolias.” Scully is probably totally into Caddyshack and was just fishing for Mulder to agree to go to her place.

• She’s “fairly happy,” and she gives Mulder the credit for it. She’s thanking him for what he’s brought to her life.

These two have life-and-death conversations all the time, but they have no idea what to say about happiness. It’s new for them.

“Requiem”

• “We could start sharing rooms.”

Which is to say that that’s already happening.

• “But at the end of the day, you’d say aliens are your real focus.” First of all, this is just a great line that I’d like to incorporate into my everyday life. But Mulder’s response (emphasizing that aliens are the reason he got started) also hints at how far he’s come. His focus has broadened.

• “We open doors with the X-files, which lead to other doors.” That kind of job description would have driven baby Scully crazy, but now she’s fine with it.

I remember spending the first few episodes trying to get a handle on Mulder, because he’s probably the most chill passionate person I’ve ever (fictionally) encountered—like, “We’re going to do this thing at the expense of everything else, but we’re not going to raise our voices or drive above the speed limit.” Scully is SO CHILL HERE, even more than Mulder. This FBI budget guy doesn’t run her life.

• “I’ve seen things that I cannot deny.”

No shame.

• “I’m not looking in outer space.” Sometimes foreshadowing is the worst.

Really.

• Scully kind of likes the idea of Mulder hurting this guy who wants to take their job away, even if he’s only punning on the idea of reduced vision. I think.

• “I don’t know how we could possibly justify the expense.” Now Scully’s the one leading Mulder into mischief.

“Let’s go waste some money.”

• They’re like proud parents.

• Remember how excited he was when he painted this?

GOOD BECAUSE NOW EVERYTHING THAT EVER MADE YOU HAPPY CAN BE USED TO DESTROY YOU

• THEY BROUGHT BABIES INTO THIS.

His face kills me. Mulder loves Scully so much. He wants this life with her, but mostly he wants this life FOR her, regardless of whether he’s involved, because she deserves it. Scully would be such a good mom. He’s just gutted that this possibility was taken from her, and he still carries the guilt of knowing that he dragged her into this life. She doesn’t want him to blame himself—she chose to join him—but he wouldn’t be Mulder if he didn’t worry about it. He never wanted his work to touch Scully like this.

• There are no candles this time, and no robe, but in seven years, Scully’s first instinct hasn’t changed. She still goes to Mulder when she thinks something is wrong.

• Mulder very decisively pulls Scully into his room and listens to her with such concern and interest.

UNF.

• When Mulder pulls back the covers on his bed, Scully starts to crawl under, and then she pauses. Mulder takes off her shoes. She doesn’t have to ask. She just waits for him to do it, and he already is. I’m not crying.

• There are no walls between these two whatsoever.

You are sad spooning right now, and I want you to be happy spooning.

• Her “Thank you” is so vulnerable.
• “It’s not worth it, Scully.” She says that she’s going to be fine, but it’s not about that anymore. Short-term fine isn’t good enough.
• “No, I’ve been thinking about it. Looking at you tonight, holding that baby, knowing everything that’s been taken away from you. A chance for motherhood and your health and that baby. I think that, I don’t know, maybe they’re right…The FBI. Maybe what they say is true, though for all the wrong reasons. It’s the personal costs that are too high. There so much more you need to do with your life.”

• “There has to be an end, Scully.”

• The last time they sat in a motel room in this town, they were just getting to know each other. Scully curled up on top of the covers; Mulder leaned against the side of the bed. He told her that nothing mattered to him but finding the truth about his sister. Now they’re wrapped up in each other, completely comfortable with cheek kisses and forehead stroking, and Mulder knows life can be bigger than what he’s made it. He got into this because of his sister, but he lost track of the fact that if a relationship started this, then a relationship was worth pulling him out of it. Scully reminds him that he deserves more. He wants SO MUCH for her. And she’s so SAFE with him. They love each other more deeply than anything, and that’s the only thing I’ve been able to articulate with any clarity since watching these episodes.
• They do look really good solving crime together, though.

• There he goes again just knowing that Scully is in trouble.

• “Here, lie still.”

He’s so tender with her. Even the way he says her name is so soft.

• Please don’t leave me.

Glad that’s settled.

• “You could bring home a flying saucer and have an alien shake hands with the President. What it comes down to, Agent Mulder, is they don’t like you.” At least Scully likes him. And so does Skinner. He’s got two FBI agents in his corner, and that’s two more than he had seven years ago.
• Scully’s corner isn’t much bigger, because following Mulder had its consequences, but he follows her right back, and he’s always watching out for her.

• “You’re not going back out there. I’m not going to let you go back out there.”

• He’s as sure of himself now as he was the last time they had a hallway heart-to-heart, when he called Scully back to him by talking her into staying on the job. They’re so much stronger now; they don’t need work as an excuse to be with each other, and the best thing she can do for herself is walk away from this case.
• “Scully, you have to understand that they’re taking abductees. You’re an abductee.”

PUPPYYYY

• Why are these two so good at hallways?

This is the exact same way she stepped toward him after he told her that she made him a whole person. Now it’s his turn to do that for her. He gives her perspective. Who ever thought Mulder would play that part?

• Even when Scully accepts that the safest thing she can do is stay behind, she won’t let Mulder face danger alone. He was alone for way too long. She’s his backup, and it’s going to stay that way, even if she has to send Skinner in her place.

They’re CLINGING to each other. IS THIS THEIR LAST HUG FOR A VERY LONG TIME? Don’t look at me.

• It’s so fitting, in a devastating kind of way, that Mulder would overlook his own safety to ensure Scully’s, that it wouldn’t even occur to him that he could be the one at risk, that protecting her might be what kills him.
• Scully’s the one who realizes, from across the country, that Mulder is in danger. Skinner doesn’t have that unspoken communication thing. He’s doing everything he can, putting himself on the line, but he doesn’t notice that Mulder is gone until it’s too late.

He has his proof.

• I was not prepared for Skinner’s tears.

“I’ll be asked what I saw. And what I saw I can’t deny. I won’t.”

• The last thing Scully wanted was for Mulder to have to face something painful on his own.

“I have to.” She’s never giving up. She’s so certain that they’ll fight their way back to each other, because they just HAVE to.

• “Sir, um, there’s something else I need to tell you. Something that I need for you to keep to yourself.” Thank goodness she has Skinner in this, to be her confidante like Mulder would be.
• “I’m having a hard time explaining it. Or believing it.”

She can’t not smile.

She can barely get the word out.

GILLIAN ANDERSON

• HOW. How on every level. How is Gillian Anderson so exquisite? How is Scully pregnant? (I know there are extensive, often medical theories online; thank you fandom.) How could they do this to us now? How could they do this to Scully? Her emotions are all crashing together at once: she’s so happy, but so hesitant to even believe it, and behind all of those smiles, you can still see how much it breaks her that Mulder isn’t here for this. She’s going to carry this reminder of him with her every day, proof of their connection, but she won’t have him. I wasn’t exactly sure when the pregnancy was coming, but here it is. It hurts.

“Within”

• When she dreams about Mulder, she imagines him going through the same thing she did, but since she still doesn’t really remember the abduction, she defaults to the bee. It always comes back to the bee, and to things being planted inside her stomach, and to not being able to kiss Mulder.
• All she has is her own reflection. I’m fine.

She can’t even move. She doesn’t know how to start the day without him. And then we stay with her until she DOES move, because she has no choice. She has to find the strength to keep going.

• She panics when she finds agents combing through the office. It’s such a violation.
• “They’re not going to find Mulder this way. You know that and I know that.” There is no time and no room in Scully’s life for skepticism now. She’s becoming Mulder FOR him—not only to get him back, but to honor his life’s work. She still calls it “Mulder’s office.”
• Skinner is so protective of Scully’s pregnancy.
• Kersch implies that Skinner and Scully are “cooperating” in the investigation. Nice try.

Excuse you, we will be running this whether you like it or not.

• “They can hang me with a lie, too. I’m not going to sell Mulder out.” Look how much Mulder has changed the people around him. He made Scully believe. He made Skinner unafraid to speak the truth to the people who could ruin his career.
• “I’d say they have all the character profile they need on him.”

She’s his human credential. She doesn’t ever doubt that. It’s pointless to try. The FBI partnered her with Mulder hoping that she’d debunk his work; seven years later, and they still don’t understand people.

• This is a great introduction to Doggett, because we aren’t asked to like him right away. We’re allowed to resent him. We need that.

All hail the queen.

• “But I really need to see you and talk to you. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on with me right now and, um, and I just really need to talk.” I think we ALL could really use a chat with Margaret Scully right about now.

• She lights up at even the possibility that Mulder might be back.

• Since he’s not at her place, she goes to his. She just needs to be close to him.

Nope. Can’t handle this. It’s like when Mulder wore Scully’s cross necklace. They need to touch each other. He should have his arm around her in this bed like he did in Oregon.

•  HELP.

I’m so sorry, puppy.

• She stayed there all night.

• With Doggett as spectator, Scully and Mulder’s relationship seems all the more intimate and that much harder to explain—but at the same time, it’s impossible to hide that they’re close.

I never had sex with anyone anywhere. It’s none of your…You have the nerve, the audacity…Mulder is my partner, technically, and he is terrible, face-wise, and how…how do I know, frankly, that you are not sleeping with him. Maybe you are, maybe you are trying to throw me off. Hmm? Check and mate. This is an outrage! Who do I call?

• “You’re talking to a fellow FBI agent now, and I’d appreciate some respect.” Get it, Scully.
• “I will go on record to say this: that I have seen things that I cannot explain. I have observed phenomena that I cannot deny. And that as a scientist and a serious person, it is a badge of honor not to dismiss these things because someone thinks they’re B.S.” And that’s how our little fresh-faced, skeptical baby Scully became the agent chasing UFOs. Science is the reason BEHIND Scully’s open mind. She won’t believe without proof, but if she has experienced something, as a scientist, it’s her duty to incorporate that tangible experience into her understanding of the universe as best she can.
• UM.

• Did Mulder do this? Was he dying? Was he creating a diversion? Is someone setting him up? I have to assume that he would have told Scully if he were dying, but that’s about all I know. That, and Scully’s face.

This is the most real it’s been for her. She isn’t ready.

• “Because, maybe, if there are aliens, they’re simply going around and they’re removing all of the evidence before it becomes proof. This isn’t Mulder who’s going around and collecting this stuff. It’s them.” This is probably the most she’s ever sounded like Mulder, because there’s no science here whatsoever; this is all instinct. I wrote a while back that Scully and Mulder complete each other so much that when they’re apart, they become each other rather than lose that part of themselves. That’s never been more true, and it might just save his life.

• Is her dream about Mulder actually what’s happening to him? Are they that connected? The first dream was off, with the bee, but the second one seemes pretty dead on, except possibly for the fact that they’re cutting into his chest. Please tell me they’re not cutting into his chest.
• I would not object to a season of The X-Files that’s just everyone road tripping for happy reasons.

Stunning.

“Without”

• Mulder looks terrible, which is how we know it’s not actually him.

• “It’s too hot for this B.S.” is the exact moment at which I decided I like Doggett.

Can we not do the Les Miserables thing right now? It’s like a hundred degrees outside.

• Scully knows it wasn’t Mulder even without seeing him, just based on his actions. Now she’s the one who gets to tell people about alien bounty hunters and part-alien kids. It’s tough work being Mulder, but she’s not ashamed to do it.

“You know Agent Scully, you’re starting to remind me a lot of Agent Mulder yourself.”

• “Wherever Mulder is right now, he better damn well be smiling.”
• Look at these two and their friendship. Look at Scully’s perfectly windblown hair.

• I guess I’ll just have to turn this blog into a salute to Scully’s beauty.

• What a shame.

Desert Rose Scully (copyright the friends who patted my head throughout this episode and then took pictures of me curled up on the floor)

• “All right, you’ve painted me the picture, now put it in a frame.” Doggett refuses to be manipulated, and he like metaphors. I think this is going to work out.
• Desert Rose Scully doesn’t waste any time trying to prove that she’s the real Scully, which is basically proof in and of itself. She knows who she is.

“From who? From ME?” But I’m out here! Let’s go get her.

• “I don’t like pointing guns at pregnant women any more than I like them pointing guns at me.” Imagine a world without Skinner’s perpetual crush on Scully. I don’t want to.

She puts everything on the line for Mulder. She has to find him.

• They still call out their names in times of danger, even when they’re nowhere near each other. Even from the spaceship, he’s calling Scully’s name. They’re pulled to each other, and just the act of reaching out makes them feel like they’re heading in the right direction.

Nope.

I miss it.

• “Hey, you’re where the action is.” “Yeah, what does that tell ya? That I’m crazy, or that I’m right?”

Mulder inspires her. She wouldn’t even know how to conduct this search if it weren’t for him. By working with her, he saved himself.

• I can’t talk about how close she came to finding him. Forever holding a grudge against invisible force fields.
• How does anyone survive what Scully is being asked to survive right now?

• Scully NEVER breaks like this, because she always has her relationship with Mulder to hold her together. She’s finally letting herself mourn him and mourn the fact that, if only for now, they don’t have each other. She’s never going to stop searching for Mulder, but for all of her insistence that she’ll find him, she’s terrified that she never will. I like that Doggett holds her and lets her cry and looks appropriately concerned, but it’s also fitting that Scully stays in her own world.
• Thanks Doggett.

Here, have this card, which I have opened and put directly into your hand.

• It’s no Superstars of the Super Bowls. We’re at a totally different place now than we were when Scully was abducted and she actually had to think about what she was living for. Now, there’s no doubt. They love each other, in every sense, and they know each other as well as anyone else ever has. Grief sex with a stranger has been replaced by a pregnancy and a firm emotional commitment. But in a lot of ways, her abduction is how they became what they are now. It’s how they realized how much they needed each other, and, without realizing it, set the stage then for the relationship they would have moving forward.
• In each case, they’ve tried to find each other by becoming each other. It’s much more intense and complete now (like their relationship), but to a certain extent, Mulder had to ground himself to find her, just as she’s had to open up in search of him. Mulder’s best hope for finding Scully was to believe that she was taken by men alone, and not the aliens that Duane Barry claimed were coming. He investigated on the ground, and he only saved her when he went against his instincts, abandoned his quest, and stayed by her side. I don’t know what decision Scully’s going to have to make for Mulder. I’m sure it will destroy me.

They just love each other. That’s what I keep coming back to.  Scully and Mulder love each other, and they have to go on alone for much longer than I know how to take. I’ll just be over here on the floor for a while longer.

At least pregnant Scully is going to be adorable.

Because they SHOULD still be making out.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out (but it’s possible that they weren’t on the same planet, so let’s talk about what happened instead) in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Patience”

• I appreciate the fact that the new opening credits have the same “we made this on a computer from 1993″ aesthetic.
• Oh look, it hurts.

• Scully is about to put the nameplate away, like she can’t look at it if she expects to get her job done, like if she doesn’t do this now, she never will. But then Doggett strolls in with his FBI bros, who just want to tap the glass on the fish tank, and Scully remembers how long Mulder put up with the same treatment. The name plate isn’t a distraction anymore; it’s a reminder of how he got by and why she has to. “I’m not here to be a curiosity, Agent Doggett. I’m here to work.”
• Scully never got a desk. Her area was Mulder’s area, in the sense that most of the space she found for herself already had him in it. Lately, especially since the destruction of the Syndicate, she’s been in this more for Mulder than for the work itself, so when Scully takes over the X-files, she does it for him. She still wants to sign Mulder’s name to everything she does. “This is my partner’s office, Agent Doggett. You and I will just be using it for a while.” For a while. She can’t think any further.
• There’s a very dry, Mulder-esque authority to the way she dives right into that slide show. I miss the six dead cows.

“Cause of death was blood loss. From numerous deep wounds. From BITES.” That is essentially exactly the way it happened, and don’t tell me she’s not thinking about Texas.

• “I can assure you that there’s nothing baffling about human bite marks.”

I am a medical doctor and I have the scientific answers. I’m also holding all of the weird answers for my partner. Not this confused baby goat with a badge, my real partner.

• Doggett brings up how many homicides he’s worked, in case you weren’t clear on the fact that he was a cop. He wants to feel he’s bringing something to the table, but this is an ego-less game.

Your experience means nothing to me.

• “Agent Mulder used to refer to it as ‘Occam’s Principle of Limited Imagination.'” That sounds like Mulder. Why try to make the facts fit a known pattern when there are so many new ones?
• “You ever carry one of these?” “Never.”

Congratulations, you’ve discovered the flashlight.

• This push-pull we’ve got with Doggett right now is great. He does his research even when he’s not sure what he’s looking for, and he is not here for victim blaming, thank you. (“Nobody’s responsible for this except for whoever or whatever did it.”) He also asks the detective to join him in taking a pretty significant leap for Scully—but he asks in a whisper, by stepping in front of her, like he’s doing her a favor, which is weird and patronizing and not at all like how Mulder and Scully publicly gave each other permission to fight for themselves.
• “Maybe I’m just trying too hard.” “To do what? To be Mulder?” There we go. Scully’s in an impossible situation. She has to believe, not only because Mulder has earned it from her, but because it’s the only chance she has to get him back. But Mulder needs Scully to balance him. Doggett can’t quite be for Scully what she’s been for Mulder, because he’s a different person. But he reassures her that while she might feel like she’s doing it all wrong, she’s on the right track. In the process, he compliments Mulder’s intelligence and Scully’s work ethic, which is great, since Mulder is usually praised for his work ethic. Most agents try to overlook his intelligence. That’s Scully’s domain. She’s already Mulder-ing more than she knows.

• Not today, giant bat creature.—Doggett, basically. I can dig it.
• Scully does the neck check, so she’s definitely got Texan vampires on the brain.

• “They’ll get used to it.”

Scully quietly adds crop circles to every field report just to screw with the boys upstairs.

• “I never had a desk in here, Agent Doggett, but I’ll see that you get one.”

Step one in Scully’s attempt to make sure that she doesn’t lose herself trying to be Mulder: make sure Doggett doesn’t get lost either. He’s his own person. Also it’s a CRIME that Scully never had a desk.

• Baby goat is pleased.

heart eyes

• “And I just—I just want to say, um, thank you for watching my back.”

LIKE MULDER WOULD

• Scully has to struggle to get that out, because it’s an admission that someone else can do partner things with her. Doggett chalks it up to the job description, but saving each other’s lives is always a little bit personal. She’s finally accepting that this job is HERS, and not just through Mulder. She didn’t have his name plate to hide behind out there in the field. Scully has to own the X-files.

Not that that makes this any easier. Especially since she’s wearing the Green Sweater of Sex.

“Roadrunners”

• “Hey, it’s Scully” just feels wrong.

• Taking down men who don’t expect women to be doctors, one gas station attendant at a time.

• Her moment has come.

SAY NO. JUST THIS ONCE. YOU CAN APOLOGIZE TO YOUR DIPLOMA LATER.

• “Oh and it rains a lot here, does it? Seeing as how it’s basically the DESERT?”

Scully’s instincts, like her desert-appropriate button downs, are on point.

• She might not be talking about the baby, but she’s thinking about the baby.

• Trust no one, Desert Rose.

One of my favorite things about Scully is that she scrapes up whatever agency she has and clings to its rough edges for all her life. She might be stranded in a town of soft-spoken manipulators, but she’s still got her gun.

• She’s still got someone to help, too.

A doctor’s gotta doctor.

• “I don’t even know what’s going on with you right now.”—Dana Scully, M.D.
• What is it with this show and things crawling around inside people’s necks?
• “Are you canvassing? Talking to neighbors?” You RUN that Scully search, Doggett.
• Scully is never too busy fighting for her life to yell in defense of someone else’s.

• There’s no last-minute rescue and no way for her to fight her way out. All Scully can do is plead for her baby, but these people don’t have enough humanity left to care. This episode is TERRIFYING.

“I’m pregnant! No! No, don’t do this! I’m gonna have a baby!”

• Still flawless with a giant worm in her back.

• “THAT THING IN MY SPINE IS A HIM?”

My queen.

• She sets the place on FIRE to get attention.
• “Hurry. I can’t wait for you.” Doggett’s got a partner to save.
• “HEY.”

YESSSS

• His hand is on her abs and he helps her swing her arm around his shoulder and it’s okay if I’m into this in an “every guy in Scully’s life has a non-threatening Skinner-level crush on her” sort of way, right?

Pretty sure he could pick her up with one hand.

• “Agent Scully, TALK TO ME.” I love that Doggett has approximately no idea what’s going on, but he knows that he’s got to keep her with him. If Scully’s not communicating, something is wrong.
• When she tells Doggett to cut it out of her,  he doesn’t ask any questions, and he doesn’t waste any time.

SCULLY MAYBE THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO MENTION THAT YOU’RE PREGNANT

• Sorry, couldn’t hear you over how manly this is.

• Scully apologizes for leaving Doggett out of the case, and Doggett agrees that she screwed up. He’s not going to let her off easy, and she respects that. Mulder never would, either.

• He takes her bag, and now they’re really partners.

“Invocation”

• “Maybe you think bad things happen to you because you’ve been a bad boy.” Doggett is never down for victim blaming. We know that much.
• Scully has to pause and prepare herself before she can talk about alien abductions and what the X-files say they can do to people. Part of that is just our old skeptical scientist shining through—they’re not in the desert on a life-or-death Mulder chase, so she can afford to measure her words—but abductions are also a pretty raw deal for her right now.

• “You know, these words: anomalous, supernatural, paranormal. They purport to explain something by not explaining it. It’s lazy.” I think Scully remembers when Mulder looked at her with wide eyes and said, “You think that believing is easy?” She knows better now.

• “Yeah, and you’re BREAKING the LAW.” Which I have never done for Mulder EVER how DARE YOU
• Is it time for Doggett’s backstory?

Hold up, you’ve got things going on besides “COP” and “ACCENT”?

• Pause to salute Scully’s beauty.

• SCULLY: Look, I know where you are with this. I have been there. I know what you’re feeling—that you’ve failed and that you have to explain this somehow. And maybe you can.
  DOGGETT: Not if that’s Billy’s body, I can’t.
  SCULLY: But maybe that’s explanation enough. That that’s not Billy’s brother lying in that grave, too. That that man who did this is never going to be able to do it again. Isn’t that what you wanted, Agent Doggett?
  DOGGETT: Agent Scully, don’t ask me to believe that this is some kind of justice from beyond the grave.
  SCULLY: All I’m saying is that maybe you succeeded, whether you’re willing to see that or not.
• She’s come SO FAR from the little medical doctor who sat in meetings with her back straight and wanted to have all of the facts. Scully’s time with Mulder has taught her that this job, which she got into to help people, is somehow even more people-oriented than she expected. It’s not always about finding answers. Sometimes, all you have to hold on to is the knowledge that you saved someone.

“Redrum”

• It’s the future first lady.

Hair in place and ready to fight the system.

• “Maybe you already have the answer within you.” I’ve been thinking lately about how much earlier Scully might have bought into Mulder’s theories than she actually admitted. Someone had to pull him down to earth, and she knew that it had to be her, even after she had reason to trust his instincts. If Scully and Mulder become each other when they’re apart, then it’s also true that they’re more themselves when they’re together.
• Doggett: the friend who lets you sleep on his couch when he hasn’t seen you for three years.
• “The passage of time in prisons is not in a cell of brick and mortar but in one of hopes dashed and tragedies unaverted. How precious, then, the chance to go back, only to discover that in facing the past you must face up to yourself, that exiting the prison of time doesn’t free you from the prison of your own character—one from which there is no escape.” Okay who copied this from one of Rod Serling’s diaries?

“Via Negativa”

• Scully’s going to be holding this baby in her arms before she tells Doggett anything.

It’s like she’s waiting to tell Mulder and I hurt everywhere.

• Doggett is appropriately concerned, and he covers for her without knowing any details. Well done, baby goat.

I’m aware that baby goats are called “kids,” but that’s just confusing.

• Skinner supplies the “X-file explanation.” He’s in the club. He’s got a fever. The only cure is more aliens [CUT TO THEME SONG].
• “She’s taking some personal time.” “I’ve got 22 people dead.”

And?

• “You want me to think like Scully and Mulder would.” To the outside perspective, Scully and Mulder think the same, when really it’s just that they each know how the other thinks. But maybe that’s the same thing in the end.
• “I know that you covered for me; you didn’t have to do that.” Scully appreciates Doggett’s respect for their partnership, and she returns it when she tells him that he can trust his instincts; he’s a good cop.

Scully’s health is not allowed to falter I CAN’T TAKE IT

• Scully refers to the Lone Gunmen as “Mulder’s friends,” because she’s being very possessive of his territory on his behalf. Her relationship with Mulder seems uneven at times, since she made his work hers (and she never got a desk), but it was her choice, and it’s a choice that she continues to affirm. She likes asserting Mulder’s right to take up space. His name isn’t even on the basement door anymore. Scully claims Mulder’s life for him when the FBI wants to take it away, and by affirming his place, she makes a place for herself. Byers says it. “These files are theirs. They’re private.” THEIRS. Even people who were Mulder’s first can see that Scully and Mulder now have equal claim to this work.
• I think we’ve all had this moment with Doggett.

• “Not bad for a beginner.”
• This isn’t okay. I’m afraid.

Scully wakes up with another Get Well Soon card placed directly in her hand.

• Doggett wants the truth, so he can be in the club too.
• “When you get this message, if you feel up to it, you give me a call.” He needs Scully because he respects her, but he also respects that she’s got things going on beyond his needs. Very cool.
• “What do you want me to do? Pinch you?” Skinner has so many layers.
• Doggett wants to protect Scully, and he’s afraid that she’ll die. But that’s really a fear of himself, somehow, that he’s not good enough at nurturing and too good at violence. I’m betting that this relates to the boy in the photo.

• “You just saved my life, Agent Scully.” “I just woke you up, Agent Doggett.”
• Scully’s Mulder mode is both fascinating and delightful, but it’s still comforting to see that when she isn’t on a case, she lets herself dig in those skeptical heels a little.

“Surekill”

• And now she’s back to having a Mulder theory and being energized by the possibility of it all.

The world is her runway.

• “Call in Clark Kent.”

He likes it too.

• “He must have seen something in her she couldn’t see in herself.” Mulder and Scully find a lesson in everything. They consider the human aspect of the most bizarre cases.

“Salvage”

• Scully stands in the wreckage of a car that’s nearly split down the middle and tries to make a joke. Doggett doesn’t even register.

She’s so proud of herself. Mulder would have smiled like the sun.

• “You know, I hate to ruin your beautiful theory with ugly facts.” That is so you. That is so SCULLY. (But it’s Doggett.)
• “That seems humanly impossible.”

Yes but I’m a medical doctor.

• “Well maybe the question is not how, but why.” Doggett really does throw Scully and Mulder’s way of thinking into relief—not only the way Mulder changed Scully, showing her that the human will can sometimes go beyond all scientific explanation, but the way he and Scully have always been alike. They both see answers as less important than asking the right questions.
• We’re in such good hands.

And then she backs him immediately when he wants the door opened. PARTNERSHIP.

• I’m afraid of people who make turtlenecks look this good.

“Badlaa”

• “The things that land in your inbox, huh Agent Scully?” Oh you mean LITERAL NIGHTMARES?
• Scully’s very hushed and deliberate and thoughtful when she shares her theory, because sometimes theorizing like Mulder is a fun game you play standing in the rain by an empty grave, and sometimes it’s a squeaky cart on the fast track to a dark and hopeless world where people crawl inside other people.

Is this what it’s like in Mulder’s head? HE NEEDS A GROUNDING FORCE LIKE SCULLY SO MUCH

• “I appreciate your resistance” is both “I’ve been there,” and, “No really, thank you for having faith in humanity.”
• Her eyes match her shirt, her shirt matches the morgue, and I am here for all of it.

• “It’s hard to believe in something when you can’t understand it.” Oh, she knows.

Good thing Scully’s not afraid of a challenge.

• I should be packing for a flight but instead I’m inventing origin stories for this mug.

(1) She bought it to remind her of Mulder. (2) Mulder got it for Scully to tease her. (3) Scully got it for Mulder to tease him. (4) Mulder kept it at his apartment and made it her designated coffee mug when she spent the night, and it was her designated hot cocoa mug when they watched Christmas movies, and she put up about 3% of a fight, because she loved it. (5) Someone gave it to Scully to make fun of Mrs. Spooky and she carries it like a badge of honor. (6) Skinner.

• She finally has a desk! But look how she perches at the front of the seat like it’s not really hers. Look how she keeps herself small. The work is all over the desk, because it belongs there, but Scully is small and ready to jump out of her seat. Bye.

• Chuck isn’t sure where Scully stands, since it was always Mulder who called him. Scully’s face just falls at the mention of Mulder’s name.

• “This case. I’m trying to see it the way that Mulder would.”
• These boys and their walkie talkies are gems. Mulder would be out there with them in a heartbeat.
• Is this Doggett’s first time calling her Scully?
• “I shot a young boy.” “The good news is you’re wrong.” Doggett can accept the facts, strange as they are, once they’re confirmed, but that’s different than taking a leap to confirm them. Believing isn’t easy.
• “Do you know what it’s like not to be able to trust your own eyes?” Scully still leans on science. She wants the facts, even if they don’t add up to anything she’s ever seen before. Her eyes just told her that she was shooting a young boy. Anyone would falter in that position, but Mulder made it look easy, because his mind is just beautiful like that. “And in an instant, I realized that it’s what Mulder would have seen or understood. Because that’s just how he came at things: without judgment and without prejudice and with an open mind that I am just not capable of.” Scully has so much respect for Mulder. She doesn’t believe that she can think like he does, and she puts so much pressure on herself to do him proud. It’s a daily effort; every time she asks Doggett to keep an open mind, she’s really reminding herself. I just want to wrap her in a blanket and hand her a carton of ice cream and tells her that she’s doing such a good job. It’s okay to keep herself honest.

“The Gift”

• PUPPY?

• I didn’t even question the fact that he killed someone, which I hope is because I trust his character and not because absence makes the heart grow more tolerant of murder.
• This head rubbing, though. It is not a good sign.

• Oh STOP, you softie.

Scully cares about Mulder’s fish, so Doggett cares about Mulder’s fish. Also I feel like these fish probably have a small army of people looking out for them and are going to get fat off of how loved Mulder is.

• “If Mulder did these things, he would’ve reported them.” Skinner has Monday night fish duty.
• “I’m not taking it to OPR. I’m taking it to you.”
• So we’re really going with the secret undiagnosed brain disease, then? I hope he had a solid reason for keeping this from Scully.
• I’ve missed this shirtless man who looks at the unknown with wild eyes and tries to know it: not what or how it is, but how it feels. This is what Scully meant about his open-mindedness.

• “Agent Mulder saw how it suffered. He saw it in its eyes…He couldn’t bear to add to its pain.” Even if it meant his own death. I LOVE HIM.
• “She doesn’t know anything about this, sir. Of that I’m certain.”
• I actually swooned.

This is still Mulder’s basement. He looks so RIGHT there, just waiting for someone to find the truth.

• Everyone’s coming for you, Mulder.

So sorry for the delay on this post! I start a new job tomorrow, so to get the most out of my week off, I booked a ridiculously spontaneous flight to visit my family and then spent the ENTIRE trip introducing my mom to Mulder and Scully. She’s very into it and texted me today that “it’s as if one cannot be complete without the other.” Also she loves Skinner. I am so proud. You should all be proud too. Another post will be coming this week, so please think of me as I continue to share my feelings with the floor.

Until then!

I watched the last four of these back to back, and it was the most destructive decision I’ve ever made in my life.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Medusa”

• I love it when people introduce Scully as a medical doctor.
• She has such a scientific answer for what she investigates. “Deaths for which there may be many explanations or for which an explanation may be hard to find.” I’m so proud. She’s owning the work her way. It’s Mulder in Scully terms.
• “I’m just a good shot.”

The most humble of all the baby goats.

• Scully won’t be joining everyone in the tunnels; she won’t say why, but it’s the baby. She’s always thinking about her baby. She’s such a good mom already, and she has endlessly stubborn respect for her relationship with Mulder, and for the things she should really tell him first.

• “I’m just a tag-along here. This is your thing. You’ve got all the experience.” Sometimes Doggett’s humility is also insecurity, because he still hasn’t found his place, and it makes me sad for him. It’s also a reminder of how unlikely and perfect and wonderful it was that Scully found her place when she was in the same position. The work wasn’t her mission for a long time (no desk still not over it), but unlike Doggett, she had Mulder. When the work wasn’t her home, he was.
• I also like the idea that Scully is where she is now because of experience. Her willingness to believe is written as the product of her WORK: the actual hard gritty stuff. The years she spent with Mulder are her credentials.
• “We got you every step of the way.” I keep thinking of Duane Barry, when Scully flew to Mulder in order to be the voice in his head. Now, instead of flying to Doggett, she guides him by stepping back from him, but in each case, she’s so very good at being the steady voice of reason.

“Like a songbird.”

• So basically what I’m getting from this is that the Big Dig was an X-file, and taking the T is like speeding blindly into a pool of electric chemicals while Bob Kelso yells at you.
• “UHHHH OKAY.”

• “I’m gonna need some data.” “AGENT SCULLY NEEDS SOME DATA.”
• Doggett is so baffled by Scully’s ability to tackle these cases, and he’s so loyal to her for that same reason.
• “You are being irrational here.”

And you can dump yourself in the harbor.

• Is this the first time she’s called Doggett her partner when he’s not around? Because I’m pretty sure the minute you declare your intention to fight for someone’s life in his absence, the word “partner” becomes more than an assignment.

• “I’m looking for an FBI Agent Dana Scully. Do you know where I can find him?” “No. Yes. I mean, I’m she.”

• “I started fearing the worst.” She’s relieved, but she’s not Mulder I told your mother that you were going to be okay relieved.  Doggett is her partner, but he’s not her PARTNER. With Mulder, Scully would have been in that tunnel in a heartbeat.
• Doggett likes baths. He’s totally in this club.
• DOGGETT HEROISM.

• Now Scully really is relieved.

FRIENDSHIP

• This is the best moment they’ve ever shared.

• Doggett saved lives, but it came at the cost of proving the crime and convicting the people responsible. Work on the X-files is so intangible. Personal victories are the only ones they have.
• Scully tells Doggett that these people have him to thank, and he gives the credit back to her. He was just her eyes and ears. He can tell that she feels bad for not going down there with him. Scully looks for a second like she thinks he deserves to know why, but she still can’t say it.

“Let’s go home.”

“Per Manum”

• This is the saddest episode of anything.
• I’ve taken like five naps to put off feeling this kind of pain again.
• Here we go.
• HELP.
• No wait sorry I just found some emotionally compromising .gifs and then had to go eat a cookie.
• I CAN’T DO THIS.
• HOW DOES SCULLY GO ON WITH HER LIFE WHEN I CAN’T EVEN GO ON WITH THIS POST.

Even her happiness is painful. Mulder should be here for this.

• She has to believe that Haskell’s story is preposterous. To accept it as plausible is to admit that it could happen to her, and she can’t do that. Scully is SO afraid of whatever led to this pregnancy. She can’t let herself consider the possibility that her one shred of happiness is just a part of the conspiracy.
• “That’s your story, Agent Scully … I mean, except for the pregnancy. It’s all right there in the X-files.” It’s awful to think that Scully’s life is on file, that someone can read about it clinically without ever having felt the reality of her abduction or her cancer. Files can’t capture how close she came to the death and how desperately she needed Mulder to pull her back. He found her name on folders and index cards and vials that the Syndicate kept hidden away, but his presence softened it somehow, because he was so indignant to see her broken down into pieces like that. Mulder brought the evidence into the light and used it to save Scully’s life. Without him, the Syndicate wins. She’s a case number at the FBI, and Mulder’s not here to protest it.
• Scully has to protest on her own. “My personal files are my personal files. Okay?”

• Doggett gets it. He knows as soon as Scully goes all ‘Well thanks for being such a GREAT AGENT’ on him. There’s a lot that Scully values more than going by the book.

I’ve made a huge mistake.

• He accepts right away that he messed up. “Of course.”
• “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!” THE FEELING IS MUTUAL, PUPPY.

He’s making that face he made when they found each other in the cornfield. He’s home again. Everything is okay now. They were apart for at MOST three hours, but he genuinely is so lost when he doesn’t know where she is. I hope he knows that it’s the same for her.

• Remember when Scully smiled all the time? She couldn’t help it. Just being with Mulder made her feel better.

• He gets worried when Scully talks about doctors. “Is anything the matter?”

He’s so focused on her. There is nothing in the world right now but Scully’s health.

• She tells him that everything’s fine, and he asks what’s wrong.  He knows her. I miss the way he just KNOWS.

• “I’m sorry I haven’t told you. I don’t know why I haven’t. I mean, you were always there for me during my illness.” Scully never doubts that she CAN trust Mulder, even with the things she chooses to keep to herself. She hasn’t forgotten the way he supported her. He put her before every quest he ever had, and she understood how significant that was, because she knows him too.
• “Don’t make me guess.” He smiles, because they both just unconsciously smile at each other all the time and I think I’ll just lie here and let the waves carry me out to sea, but there is absolutely no smile in his voice.

All of Mulder’s guesses are bad. You can see it in his eyes.

• “I am not ready to accept that I will never have children.” It’s like if she can just have this one victory, she won’t be a pawn in the game. She wants to be a mom.
• And now she finds out that even Mulder has been maneuvering behind the scenes of her life.

I’ve missed his sincerity so much.

• Mulder should have told Scully that he found her ova and had them tested. That’s ENTIRELY hers to know. By keeping it from her, he became a part of this system that takes Scully’s reproductive rights out of her hands. But I do understand that the timing was the absolute worst. “You were deathly ill, and I couldn’t bear to give you another piece of bad news.” It’s interesting that the man who puts truth first couldn’t put it above Scully’s well-being at any point while she had cancer. He wanted to protect her. Again, he went about it wrong, but his instincts are so sweet, and I’ve missed his face, and I already let myself get mad at him for this when they found Emily, so right now I mostly just want him back.
• Also he’s keeping his brain disease from her. Mulder really doesn’t like to talk about health. How about those Yankees.
• Scully needs some time, and he respects that.

[Mulder wanders the halls like a lost puppy, then reunites with her 45 minutes later and gives her that look again.]

• Her FACE when she learns that she might be able to have kids after all.

DO NOT TAKE THIS HAPPINESS FROM HER, SHOW.

• “Oh, it’s too good to be true.”
• “Unless you already have someone in mind?” “Yeah.”

Scully knows without a doubt that she wants Mulder to be the father of her child, that he completes her, that a kid couldn’t do any better. They’re already a family. Scully chooses Mulder as her one in five billion. She is deeply and comfortably in love with him.

• Mulder’s looking at the woman who wants to have a kid with him. He wants it too. He makes this face.

• “This sounds really weird, I know, but I—I just wouldn’t want this to come between us.” That’s adorable. He holds their relationship so carefully. His only concern is how sharing a child would shift their dynamic.
• Mulder can tell that Scully assumes he’s saying no, so he reaches out to draw her back to him, and she responds before he’s even touched her. They just move together.

• They can take this. And even if somehow they can’t, he still has to do this for her.

Mulder loves giving Scully good news, and he’s so sheepishly excited to father her child, because of course he is.

• Scully looks at him like she’s relieved and surprised and not at all surprised at the same time. This is exactly what she believed they were to each other, but what they are to each other continues to amaze her. It’s like there’s nothing more familiar and dependable to Scully than the idea that Mulder will take these incredible leaps with her.

NEVER LET GO. (She doesn’t want to.)

• What really gets me, on top of everything else that also gets me, is that Scully doesn’t even say thank you, because she doesn’t have to. She just hugs him, and they’re in this. They don’t keep a balance sheet.
• This is like Mulder’s version of the look Scully gave him when he said yes: shy but comfy.

• Mulder is still everywhere for Scully. She sees him in the halls and in the elevator and in her apartment. This episode eases into the past the way she slips into those memories, and then it jolts back to the reality she doesn’t want.

gooooodbye

• “You gotta tell him, Scully.” “I can’t.” She just can’t. It’s theirs. She can’t let go.

Scully is so much more beaten down now than she was with Mulder, even at her lowest.

• “If I was putting you at risk in any way, you can be sure that I wouldn’t let you down. I hope you know that.” The nature of risk is that you can’t make guarantees, but it’s so like Scully to try anyway.
• Is this Doggett’s car? Should we talk about it?

• Wow, trust NO ONE.

• On top of losing Mulder, on top of how hard it was for her to get pregnant and how badly she wanted to, on top of the fear that even her BABY is a lie and a conspiracy, now Scully has to deal with the fact that there’s absolutely no one who can take that fear away. There’s no way out of this system. Even if no one did anything to her baby, the people who led her here still win, because they’ve made it so that she’ll never believe any good news about her pregnancy. What they haven’t destroyed, they’ve set to self destruct.
• “Look, this involves doctors: doctors who may have killed pregnant women. Now a hospital could be the worst place in the world for her. Tell me where Scully is.” Baby goat figured it out.
• NO REALLY, TRUST NO ONE.

• “You’re okay. You’re fine. And your baby’s fine.”

At least we have short-term good news.

• “We can prove this.” “We can’t prove anything.” Not that Doggett is on board with the alien baby theory, but he knows a conspiracy is at play. Someone is using them and covering it up. Scully’s not being paranoid about that. This is validating.

• Doggett sounds like he’s not sure what to believe any more than Scully is. All Scully has is that one cassette, which they could have easily been taping over with her ultrasound, and the alien sound of Ms. Hendershot’s baby before Scully was knocked out. At least part of this story is an illusion, but which part? And but for what purpose? And how is Scully’s baby doing at this very moment?
• “They say they saved your life. How can I question that, standing here?”

“At least you’re okay.” He repeats it. Like he’s making sure.

• “Why didn’t you tell me?” “I was afraid. Afraid that they’d use it against me to take me off the X-files so that I couldn’t find Mulder.” Everything makes more sense now. Scully wasn’t just keeping quiet out of loyalty to Mulder—she was doing it because she believed it was the only way to save him. The FBI tends to use her personal information against her. She couldn’t take that chance.
• “I told you I’d help you. I said we’d find him.” Doggett would have kept the secret. He has a sense of how much this means to her, and he wants to help. But Doggett says We, and Scully can’t stop saying I. Remember when Mulder did the same thing to Scully? She has to learn to share her quest just like he did.
• My only notes for this scene are “COUCH MULDER” because it’s possible I went into some sort of feelings blackout.

Her bed is his bed.

• He says Scully’s name the minute she walks in. She’s his only thought. Just like in the elevator, all he has to do is look at her, and he knows.

• Mulder shakes his head before he pulls her into a hug, because he LIVES on hope, and he doesn’t want Scully to ever put limits on hers. He won’t let her regret chasing this possibility with him.

Scully’s LIFE, you guys. It hurts.

The forehead kiss is how they promise to fight for each other. The forehead touch is how they promise to be with each other.

• The space between them is honestly the most intimate thing about this scene. Every touch is deliberate. They respect that they’re each experiencing this differently, but they’re drawn to each other anyway.

Who here can paint this on my ceiling?

• “Never give up on a miracle.” Mulder hopes, always. He never stops, no matter how many times he’s beaten down, because everything he’s seen tells him that anything is possible. Science can pretty much shove it on this one. Scully and Mulder are making that baby. (Tonight.)

She kisses his NECK. I mean.

• And science can pretty much shove it on the search for Mulder, too.

“This Is Not Happening”

• His nameplate is still at the top of the drawer, which means that every time Scully puts anything in that desk, she picks up Mulder’s name to do it. She won’t let his memory get buried.

• “She’ll be flying with us.” There’s no way Skinner is leaving Scully out or leaving her alone.
• Anything that even hints at Mulder’s suffering is enough to make her cry.

• “What we’ve got is hope. But let’s be honest, Agent Scully, about what no one wants to say. Bad as you want to find Mulder, you’re afraid to find him too.” She’s terrified. Mulder is the one who taught her how to hope like this, and now hope is all she has. What if she’s wrong? It’s like losing Mulder twice.
• They’re so connected. She’s dreaming about his actual situation.

I prefer my dream Mulder framed in scruff and stars and broody button-downs, thanks.

• “What if he’s dead?” SHE SAID IT OUT LOUD. It kills me, but it was about time. She needs someone she can be real with, and I’m so glad she has that in Skinner.

• “I once had a talk with Mulder about starlight. How it’s billions of years old: stars that are now long dead whose light is still traveling through time. It won’t die, that light. Maybe that’s the only thing that never does. He said that’s where souls reside. I hope he’s right.”

All I can think is, “Mulder, I had the strength of your beliefs.”

• “If you’re trying to prepare yourself, I want you to stop. Nothing says that we’re going to stumble over him in some field. Nothing says he won’t be fine.” I mean, a few things say that. But Skinner knows that Scully could never really prepare herself—if the worst happens, nothing is ever going to make it hurt less—so she might as well stick with hope. Mulder gave that to Skinner like he gave it to Scully.

She’s so small.

• Hey meet my friend this is my friend do you like her—Doggett

Doggett makes exceptions for Reyes like Scully does for Mulder.

• “If this is about people staging their own abductions…” Mulder would never leave Scully like that, and she knows it.
• “You believe in extraterrestrials?”

Answer correctly and we get to spend nine seasons and multiple franchise movies together.

• I’ve only been waiting eight years for Scully to have a female friend.

“We should talk sometime.”

• And the pain just keeps coming.

She sees Mulder in every victim, and it’s getting harder to stay positive. Someone wrap her in a blanket.

• “I don’t know how she’s doing it in there. Everything she’s feeling. What she’s afraid of.” Doggett hurts for Scully. He’s so in awe of her ability to keep going.
• DOGGETT LOST HIS SON? Baby goat, no. He knows exactly what it means to be afraid of finding someone.

Doggett and Reyes bonded together in the time of his DEEPEST TRAGEDY. I ship it.

• Scully is desperate. She doesn’t want to consider the possibility that Mulder would leave by choice, but she follows every avenue. She’s always been strong enough to risk her own beliefs for the sake of the truth. Mulder too.

• Given her experience, Scully knows when she sees Mulder that it’s probably not a good sign, but she looks SO HOPEFUL anyway.

He’s pretty even when he’s transparent.

• Scully has negative amounts of patience for Jeremiah, the man with the power to heal and no urgency to do it. But she still respects his right to stay silent, and Mulder would have done the same.
• “It’s Mulder.”

She can’t even breathe.

• “How bad is he? HOW BAD IS HE HURT?”She’s clinging to the hope that this is something he can come back from.

The way she strokes his face is so familiar, like if she can just make him feel her, he’ll come back.

• “HE NEEDS HELP.” Scully is FIGHTING THIS. She’s going to storm her way out of this reality and into one where Mulder can be saved, because she needs him. No one gets to stand in her way.

Shout out to Doggett because I know he’s only trying to keep her from torturing herself.

• It’s so important that over Mark Snow’s devastatingly urgent score, we can still hear Scully’s feet as she runs. We can hear the effort she’s taking, and we can hear that she’s alone in it.

• “This is NOT HAPPENING.” Scully watches her last hope vanish before she can reach it, and her legs just give out. She has nothing to stand on anymore. She still can’t believe, even after everything she’s lost, that she lives in a world harsh enough to take Mulder.

This is the story of how I died.

“Deadalive”

• My deepest sympathies to everyone who had to wait five weeks before this episode.
• “And to resolve the deep mysteries Fox Mulder sought so tirelessly to uncover.”
• Mulder was alone for so much of his life, but look how many people he affected.

Not Kersch though.

• Of course Mrs. Scully is there.

Scully clutches her belly like the only thing keeping her going is the part of him that she hopes is in her.

• She doesn’t give her speech to the group. She gives it to Skinner. What she and Mulder had in that basement was private, and her grief isn’t for anyone else: just Scully, Mulder, and the man who defended their right to work.

• “He was the last. His father and mother, his sister… all gone. I think the real tragedy is that for all of his pain and searching, the truth that he worked so hard to find was never truly revealed to him.”

• The REAL tragedy—the one thing Scully thinks is worse than the fact that she doesn’t get to spend the rest of her life with him—is that Mulder didn’t find everything he was looking for. She wanted him to succeed. Before she believed a word of it, she wanted him to win.

She’s the only one who thinks to follow Jewish custom for him. She knows all of the hidden things about Mulder.

• “I don’t truly believe that Mulder’s the last.” Skinner, you beautiful, bald champion of Scully’s baby.

Make him the godfather, Scully.

• Just in case you were worried that Scully hadn’t already spent enough months in pain, it’s been three since she buried the love of her life. Carry on.
• “Sir, the Assistant Director here deserves more credit than I do.” Humility should be renamed in Doggett’s honor.
• “Thank you for your support, sir, but all things being equal, I’d like to give any transfer some thought.” Either our baby goat has found his place with the X-files in the last few months, he’s acting out of loyalty to Scully, or he’s come to believe that the FBI is one big power game and the basement is the best place for people who don’t want to play. Maybe a bit of all three.
• Pregnant Scully literally comes to me in my dreams.

• “Hey, good morning Agent Scully. How are you feeling today?” “I’m fine. How are you feeling?”

Oh were you just asking because I’m pregnant?

• Doggett calls the baby “a little J. Edgar” and I’m flashing back to that moment three episodes in when Mulder said that Scully would be head of the bureau by 2023. Everyone in her life knows that anything Scully touches is gold.
• “Well, whatever he told you, I’m still gonna be here to drive you crazy with questions and nagging doubt.” That’s the most Scully-to-Mulder thing that’s ever been said by someone not Scully to someone not technically Mulder.
• Kersch is gunning for a chance to shut down the X-files, and Doggett wants to protect them.
• “Get out while you can, Agent Doggett, or you may never get out at all.” Scully once said that she wouldn’t change a day except for the Flukeman, but Mulder’s dead now. She’d change that day.

• Remember when Skinner was afraid to look any further beyond his experience in Vietnam? Remember when he was as hesitant to believe as Scully was, and even less inclined to go rogue? Now he’s digging Mulder’s body out of the ground after three months because he has a hunch that Mulder might still be alive, and “personally, I couldn’t live with the doubt.”

Really going above and beyond those godfather duties.

• “Is is true? … I want to see him. No, I need to see him, dammit!” Scully doesn’t need protecting. She just needs Mulder, in whatever shape he’s in.

• “Tell me it’s true.” She wants her hope back.
• Every time Scully gets emotional about Mulder, she touches her belly.

• “I need to see him.” She whispers it. It’s not a protest or even an order now. It’s an admission that she’s still lost without Mulder.

• The first place she touches him is on his heart.

She loves him so much.

• “The man down the hall was my—is my partner.” Welcome back, present tense.
• Scully’s never letting go. She’s moved in to this chair, and she’s working on becoming left handed, just for basic things like writing love notes to Mulder while she never lets go of his hand.

• “I hope you’re not asking me to leave.”

It would not end well for you.

• “My concern’s for your well-being, Agent Scully. That’s all it’s ever for.”

Aw, Doggs.

• “Agent Doggett, however I felt about you when we first met, you changed my opinion with the quality of your character and of your work. Now, I am thankful to know you and I am thankful for your concern. But no matter what Mulder’s chances are, the choice not to open up that grave was wrong. And not because of me personally, but as my partner on the X-files. Now the truth may hurt, but it’s all that matters.” Scully throws down the Mulder morality.
• Doggett just… runs alongside Krycek’s car and punches him through the window.

• Doggett take the wheel.

PERSONAL SPACE

• This is beautiful.

• Do not threaten Mulder in front of Doggett. He will end you.

• Doctor Scully figured it out. Scully the medical doctor. Mulder needs that part of her. Everything she was before she met him, her degree, her thesis, everything she brought to the table as a scientist, is still literally saving him.

With Skinner’s help.

• Baby goat picked the right side. His back is so straight.

• Mulder responds when Scully takes his hand, and she hasn’t been this alive in months.

Miracles are happening.

• I feel like “Hi” is actually the perfect word to pop out of Scully’s mouth right now. It’s the most everyday thing. She never thought she’d have an everyday thing with Mulder again. “Hi” holds the promise of all of the days going forward: keychain presents, New Year’s Eve kisses, stakeout root beers, bubble baths, waking up, going to bed, writing reports, six dead cows. Even though he pulled her into this life, Mulder is also the one who makes sense of it all. The one normal thing Scully and Mulder have is their relationship with each other. This is normal. That makes it big. “Hi” says it all.

• Also normal: Mulder pranking Scully at inappropriate times.

This is her nightmare.

HAD YOU BIG TIME

• He has to be punished. But even that’s a familiar experience; Mulder tends to default to bad jokes when things get serious. He’s hit the reset button for a minute. After everything Scully and Mulder have been through and before all of the readjustment still to come, for one minute, it’s like they’re back in that haunted house on Christmas Eve. Mulder puts a flashlight to his face and stops her heart, and Scully wants to slap him for it.

• “Do you know—do you have any idea what you’ve been through?” “Only what I see in your face.” Mulder can’t feel his own pain, but he can feel Scully’s, and she carries his pain on his behalf. They’re so connected that they understand themselves by focusing on each other.

Scully’s doing that hair thing that Mulder always does. He doesn’t have any hair in his face, but that’s fine. She just wants to touch him.

• She doesn’t actually need to write him love notes; she can just do this forever.

YEAH I THINK SO

• When’s the last time Scully laughed?

• Come back later, baby goat. It’s private time.

I love that Scully doesn’t hesitate to make that clear that she wants to be alone with Mulder. There will be time for everything else later.

• The world is right again.

“Three Words”

• I bet the president does want a copy of Fight the Future on Blu-ray.

• It’s important that we see upfront how traumatized Mulder is, because that informs everything.

Puppy I am so sorry.

• “Mulder, you okay?” The actual most significant “three words” in this episode.

• “For a guy who was in a coffin not too long ago, I think I’m doing pretty damn good.” Optimism and denial go hand in hand with Mulder.
• He’s in perfect health. Scully’s getting all kinds of miracles lately.

• “Something looks different.” “It’s clean.”

Joke!Scully, I’ve missed you.

MULDER HAS MISSED YOU MORE.

• Scully wants him to understand what it was like for her. There’s no way to describe it, but she tries anyway, because she wants to share all of her experiences with him.

Mulder, what does this even MEAN? You were BURIED. SCIENCE IS SURPRISED.

• She prayed a lot. She couldn’t just do nothing in those months without a lead.

He is every goal she has.

• Mulder is so disoriented by Scully’s pregnancy, but he tries to be supportive, and he doesn’t press to find out how it happened. Not that she knows. If she could say 100% that the baby is his, it might help some of the confusion, but neither one of them can say for sure at the moment. It’s just this inexplicable thing. Usually they experience those together.

He THINKS he knows. He’s not certain of anything right now.

“I’m just… I’m having a little trouble processing… everything.”

• Mulder was tortured and buried, and now he’s awake, and everything’s different. He’s allowed to be a little off.
• “Well, somebody’s very anxious for him to get back to work.” Scully submitted an application for Mulder’s reinstatement on his behalf, because she wants him to have his place back, and his place is in that basement hunting aliens with her.
• Skinner stands up for Mulder and Scully’s success rate.

• “You sent me to find Mulder. I found him. Don’t charge me with driving a stake through his heart.” Doggett, you prince.
• And back at apartment 42, Mulder makes up for lost time with his couch.

• “He wants to punish you.” “And you by putting you in this position. And Agent Scully, for not giving up on me.” Even when he’s traumatized, he still notices and appreciates the people who put themselves on the line for him. He never doubts Scully’s dedication.
• Scully asks if they’re just going to sit here and let this happen, and he looks amazed all over again by his very pregnant partner who just wants to fight for him.

• “I’ve had a partner for the last several months.” There’s no way to not make that sound a little bit like she was partner-cheating, even though she was all for Mulder the whole time. So she adds that Doggett was assigned—it wasn’t her call—and that he was assigned to find Mulder.
• Mulder doesn’t feel like getting back to work until he has a system to challenge. He’s excited to be the FBI’s most unwanted.
• My heart just grew three sizes.

• “Hey, I am just down here visiting my buds.” Mulder, you couldn’t nineties even when it was the nineties.
• “Absolom abductee class picture.”
• “He’s right. You’re right.” I love it when Scully speaks for Mulder and with Mulder at the same time.
• Bedroom talk: conspiracy edition.

“Oooh, there’s that word again.”

• “Do you want to hear something really paranoid? The FBI gets its way, there’s going to be nobody down here to ask the paranoid questions.” Yes, babies. Fight the system.
• Okay but has no one thought to check Doggett’s house? Where he lives?
• I will continue to get emotional about Scully closing the door at Mulder’s request to hide his rogue activities. I know it’s just a door. I don’t care.

• “Because if I can’t stop it, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you.” Everything Mulder does is for the big, ideal Anyone—the everyday citizen. But really, it’s always for Scully.
• Scully knows she should walk away, but Mulder is investigating. He’s digging in the desert with a backhoe, and it’s her favorite thing to watch.

• She grabs the tape out of Mulder’s hand, because if he’s going to do something wildly illegal, the least she can do is help.

DANCING INSIDE

• Baby goat is excited.

• Mulder, no.

• “You gotta understand what he’s been through.” Good effort, Skinner. (Although really, you do.)

Could’ve been at home shirtless right now.

• GUYS

Do you hear the people sing?

• “And not just because we got big questions about your involvement in a certain blessed event.”

Wait there are questions? What questions? Am I the answer to the questions?

Yes please.

• Doggett still just wants to help.
• The way Mulder says, “Scully, what are you doing back?” is so domestic. And he’s sitting in the dark puzzling out a conspiracy, so it’s Mulder’s kind of domestic.

HE STILL MAKES THE LOST PUPPY FACE

• “Get out of here. Get going.” “I can’t do that to him.” Scully doesn’t leave Mulder behind, especially now.
• I’ve missed puppy’s bouncy stealth run.
• “Agent Mulder, I don’t even know what that information is.”

Do you KNOW how confused I am by this job?

• “GET HIM OUT OF THERE, GUNMEN” Protective Scully is my light.
• Now I need you two to bond in the ceiling.

Thanks for bearing with me as I processed all of this. Season eight does not pull any punches. Stay tuned for more adventures of dog and goat! (Spin-off children’s book series: I call it.)

Welcome to the end of season eight. Stuff a bunch of pillows into your shirt. Now fall down. Fall down repeatedly.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Empedocles”

• Scully lightly scolds Mulder for no reason but is still really happy that he’s here. Getting back to normal, getting back to normal.

• Also normal: Mulder’s inability to express fear without jokes.

• If Scully ever were to have a fling with anyone, it would be for the pizza.
• “I feel like I’m stuck in an episode of Mad About You.” “Well, uh, yeah, but small technicality: Mad About You was about a married couple, and we just work together.” Mulder she is literally pregnant with your miracle baby.

• Is he trying to tease out whether the baby is his? Trying to get Scully to clarify where exactly they stand? I think the important thing here is that he doesn’t believe a word of it and he’s giving her a present anyway. He’s putting on a show—what are you talking about I have no reason to give you a BOX—while knowingly and adorably stashing the truth, waiting for her to find it, well aware that there was nothing ‘just’ about them working together in the first place.
• “What I’m trying to say is that, uh—” (I WANT YOUR BABY TO ALSO BE MINE) “—we have no good, reliable information on this man. I mean, what I’m saying is that the pizza man is not above suspicion.”

Subtle.

• Mulder can’t just come right out and ask about Scully’s pregnancy, because he’s afraid that it’s not his business. He’s also afraid that it’s entirely his business. What if the baby is his and she hasn’t told him? What if she doesn’t want to let him in? What if they’re not where they were when Scully asked him to be the father, and what did she expect from him even then? Mulder doesn’t ask because he’s afraid that the role he pictures in this is bigger than the one she pictures for him. Scully doesn’t answer, because she’s afraid that she’s carrying an alien. Welcome to The X-Files, always blame aliens.
• But here’s the thing again: as much as it matters to both of them, there’s no answer that could stop him from giving her this gift right now. Whatever else they are and wherever they stand, he’s always going to be the one who shows up at her door with old family keepsakes. Everything else can wait.

Bedroom eyes all around.

• She’s so excited.
• “Nice package.” “Thank youuuuu.”
• The best Mulder face is the one he makes when he looks right at her. The best Scully face is the one she makes when Mulder isn’t looking.

YEAH it’s for you I LOVE YOU

He loves me.

•  Concerned puppy.

• Mulder knows everything about Scully’s doctor and has probably already intimidated her multiple times.
• Screw hospitals and their “husbands only” rules. NOT EVERYTHING IS MAD ABOUT YOU, HOSPITALS.
• It’s like The X-Files is having Thanksgiving dinner with itself.

• “You’re taller than I thought.”
• Mulder wants to get back to Scully, but he can’t turn down people who need help.

• Now it’s definitely Thanksgiving.

Family drama.

• Mulder stays calm when Doggett grabs him, and he doesn’t fight back—partly because he knows what it feels like to have people in his personal files, and partly because the score is even now. One shove each.
• “I feel all druggy.” Precious.
• “We’ve been worried about you.” “Who’s we?” “You know. Me and Agent Mulder.” You know. Of course Mulder’s worried.

Are you two playing nice?

• Doggett looks at Scully and thinks about how long she doubted Mulder. He wants to know what made her believe in all of this, and she tells him that she realized she was holding herself back. She was afraid to believe. I think that’s why she was drawn to Mulder from the start: while everyone else saw him as spooky, she saw him as brave.
• This is the first time we’ve seen Doggett think about Scully as a skeptic. He’s never considered who she was before or how she became the person he knows now. Mulder makes him consider it. Doggett is finally starting to see Scully for everything she is, the full picture, and all it took was Mulder. You can’t know one of them without the other. To quote my friend Sage, “I think what it is about this show is that the idea that you are one half of a whole is so appealing and so desperately sad at the same time.” That’s why Scully and Mulder’s relationship hurts so much even when they’re happy. They NEED each other. It’s gorgeous, but it’s fragile. They’re completely dependent, not only on one another, but on circumstances totally outside their control. His abduction only made it more real. The act of making themselves so vulnerable to each other wouldn’t be so bold if they were never at risk to lose each other.
• And look what we have to lose.

When Mulder goes against orders, he doesn’t go halfway. He puts his feet on the desk. He eats pencils.

• This is beautiful.

• “Old habits die hard.”

• He could sit here and defend his life’s work all day, but he has more important places to be.

Friend. They’re always friends first.

• Claiming coincidence is anything but an old habit for Mulder, and Reyes calls him on it. The fastest way to challenge Mulder is to accuse him of not having an open mind.

“You’ll say anything, won’t you?”

• Mulder and Doggett are united by the shared experience of being totally whipped by Monica Reyes.
• Puppy sticks his nose in.

thanks that’s really helpful

•  “You awake?” he says, in that whisper people use when they don’t want to wake you from a deep sleep, but they do want to maybe nudge you out of a nap if they can.

He wants so much to talk to her.

• The way Mulder’s world always shrinks to the size of Scully’s health makes me want to roll down a hill somewhere.

“But you’re gonna be fine?”

• Hearing that she’s okay, it’s like it gives him permission to celebrate with her. It’s like he woke up and the world was one of his slide shows, images coming at him, a clean apartment, Doggett, Scully’s pregnancy, a desk without his name on it. He took in the fact that she’s pregnant as one of the many things that are different now, and he thought about it, but he didn’t get THIS: a silent moment to just be happy with her. Scully’s having a baby.
• In his relief and in his happiness, Mulder reaches out to touch Scully’s belly. I love that as shy as he is, he’s comfortable enough to go for it, and of course she doesn’t even bat an eye. He belongs there. It’s so intimate.

I almost threw my phone across the room.

• Scully just starts carrying on a normal conversation with him. She asks about his day. His hand is on her stomach. It’s casual.
• “Agent Reyes. I like her.” Yeah you do.
• Mulder looks surprised that Scully equates him with Reyes and surprised that she likes people for the Mulder she sees in them.

• Doggett IS worth the effort. And he took effort in a way that Scully and Mulder did not. Mulder is still getting to the bottom of all of Scully’s mysteries. Scully shot him, drugged him, and drove him across the country to save his life once. They’ve both risked everything they believe for one another. Plenty of work has gone into this partnership, but LIKING each other was effortless. Respecting each other came easily.
• Meanwhile Doggett’s at his desk like, “Feelings don’t solve crimes.” Which, given Scully and Mulder’s success rate, is probably fair.
• Doggett’s afraid to believe, too, because if the world is full of infinite possibilities, then he could have missed the one to save his son. Aw, baby goat.
• He and Reyes are on a first name basis all the time already, so I presume in times of great emotion they’ll just have to use their words to say nice things to one another? I don’t know, I’ve forgotten how it works when first names don’t carry the weight of the world.

• Reyes defines success the way Mulder and Scully have come to define it: sometimes you don’t get the answers you want. Sometimes you just save one kid, and that’s enough.
• Hey there bodyguard.

• “But I think it’s possible that there’s an occurrence in somebody’s life, a tragedy or a loss that leaves them vulnerable, hurts their immunity to evil, and all of a sudden at that point in their lives when they’re weakened, they’re open to evil and they can become evil.” But it’s only ever made Scully and Mulder kind.

He’s being self-aware and self-deprecating to put Doggett at ease, and it’s really very sweet, but I love that he’s never had to do that with Scully. Mulder doesn’t feel the need to apologize for himself when Scully’s around.

• “Mulder, you never fail to surprise me.” Not because of the present, but because he got her pizza. Priorities.
• The best thing about joke!Scully is that she comes from Mulder, so she delights him but can also destroy him.

WAIT I THOUGHT WE WERE KIDDING ABOUT THE PIZZA MAN

Nailed it.

• Of course she didn’t forget about Mulder’s package. “I thought about it a lot.”
• He gave her a doll, because his inheritance is Scully’s inheritance is this child’s inheritance don’t look at me.

She’s so genuinely into it. This doll is super weird and she LOVES it.

• Dorks.

• Scully knows herself more after losing Mulder, because when she was alone, she saw how he’d changed her. And now she gets to thank him for it. “But then that’s the other gift that you gave me, Mulder. Courage. To believe. And I hope that’s a gift I can pass on.”

Pass it on together.

• We interrupt your regularly scheduled sexual tension to bring you a puppy and a goat.
• I feel this.

• Doggett really knows his black oil.

• “And you’d love to help, but you left your lightsaber at home.” There he goes again, joking about himself to show Doggett that he gets it. It kills me that this is how Mulder has learned to show his respect for people—telling them that they’re better than the life he’s chosen. He’s even done it to Scully, and I don’t think he really stopped until she woke up from an alien virus in Antarctica, took his hand, and told him that her work was with him now.

The basement is where other agents get stuck, and he’d do anything to have it back.

• Scully will always look a little bit pleased when Mulder shows up in places he shouldn’t be.

• “You’re talking about an oil rig that’s 150 miles out at sea. You can’t send a pregnant woman.” This man has a degree from Oxford.
• For those keeping track, the puppy and the baby goat are now on an oil rig.
• “Wow, you really got me pegged. Anything that doesn’t fit in my narrow field of vision might as well not exist, is that right Agent Mulder?”

You don’t know me. I have layers.

• And Doggett doesn’t know Mulder either. ‘More than one person is covering up this murder’ probably isn’t the most insane conspiracy theory he’s had this MORNING.

No really, what church.

• Be right back, every child with a dream needs a photo of pregnant Scully conducting rogue autopsies.

• “I found it by accident in the third ventricle of his brain.” I didn’t MEAN to be there. I thought it was the closet.
• Skinner and Scully are still really protective of each other and I still lowkey ship it.
• She’s never more sure of herself than when all of her experience with aliens backs up all of the science in her lab.

• “I’m sorry, Agent Doggett’s gone fishing. Can I take a message please?”

Also I am borderline making out with this microphone because it sounds like you.

I’m a little turned on by all of this rule flouting.

• “It’s not like old times.” They’re both nostalgic for working together, especially when it involves going rogue.
• She is worried for his career, though.
• “You need me out there, Scully. You know that better than anyone.” Always.
• “WHO’S flouting orders.” That started not as a sentence, but as the deep exhale of a man who considers this foreplay.
• Mulder would rather be quarantined and at risk than risk endangering the country.
• Who okayed this?

THAT IS A FATHER TALKING ABOUT HIS UNBORN CHILD RIGHT THERE

• He won’t let Scully talk to Doggett, because he doesn’t want anyone to talk him out of his plan, and also because everyone here is very mature.
• Even without Scully’s input, Doggett trusts Mulder’s instincts enough to quarantine the rig.
• Puppy and baby goat are really on a high seas adventure now.

But their greatest adventure is Getting to Know Each Other.

• “I didn’t come out here just to bust your ass.” That was at most 75% of it.
• I like that Doggett gets to see Mulder put all of the pieces together. He gets to see the moment when the crazy theory suddenly turns into their best shot at saving lives.

• Skinner takes the blame to protect his people. We don’t deserve him.
• Doggett can place the word “rojo” in a sentence, so he already speaks twice as much Spanish as Mulder.
• They have each other’s backs.

• Now is not the time to fight over the radio, boys.

Tunes for aliens to dance to.

• “That issue is rapidly becoming moot!”
• Doggett can’t leave Diego behind, and when he finds his body, he and Mulder take a moment to nod at each other in shared understanding of a tragedy.

• Mulder’s last words will be an ill-timed joke, I know it. “How about a 20 count?”
• NOOOOO

• “So you’re taking the fall. Not for me?” “For you. For the X-files. You’re all the credibility this office has left.” The credibility of the X-files has always come from the people investigating them. That was Mulder for a long time, and then it was Mulder and Scully. The work was his until Scully decided to share it; she legitimized the project to the extent that Mulder can now save his office by leaving it. It’s devastatingly self-sacrificial, but it’s nice to know that he created something that will outlast him. The Bureau locked him in the basement and waited for their chance, and they took it, but they didn’t win the war. The X-files can be carried on by people with integrity. Mulder, who always believed his work was bigger than him but still kept it so close to his chest, finally has the people to MAKE it bigger—and Scully to help him let go.

Apparently this is the last time we see Mulder in the basement office. I’m a little inconsolable about it.

“Alone”

• Scully has an X-files memory box.

And the things she can’t explain are the ones she wants to hold on to.

• Poor Queequg.
• Doggett catches her thinking about Mulder, but she doesn’t have to be defensive anymore.

• Scully only stops working when her doctor literally insists on it, and even then, no.
• When she tells Doggett that the Apollo 11 keychain was a gift from Mulder, she gets the same look on her face that she got when Mulder GAVE her the Apollo 11 keychain.

“I’m touched.”

• But she really is touched. She loves his funny little gifts.

• The keychain is the perfect thing for her to give Doggett, because what she loves about it isn’t what she holds in her hand. It’s the meaning she applied. She took “a pretty cool keychain” and made it stand for teamwork, and the more she passes that along, the truer it becomes. “It means no one gets there alone. And after this past year and everything we’ve been through—I wouldn’t be here without you.”

It took her so long to admit that. I’m glad Scully and Mulder can expand their definition of “not alone” to include more than each other.

He REALLY cares for her, you guys.

• Bit of a height difference.

• “It’s just a leave, right? I mean, you are coming back eventually?”

Baby goats get as lost as puppies in this office.

Is she coming back? Mulder’s out. What’s holding Scully to the FBI, and what’s holding her to the X-files?

• Doggett almost bounces to the door when he thinks Scully is back. She’s been his anchor in a job that he knows is worth doing but still doesn’t make any sense to him. He IS a stranger in his own office right now.
• He tells Harrison that she’s “filling in for Agent Scully,” and it sounds a lot like what Scully said to Doggett after Mulder’s abduction.
• What I wouldn’t give to see Scully and Mulder’s travel expenses.
• Harrison is a Mulder/Scully fangirl, and I love it. I like the idea that in a job with so few tangible wins, they were still leaving traces of themselves all over the place, and there were still people rooting for them.
• I hope someone stole this pillow from the set and sleeps with it every night. I hope it’s Gillian.

• Of course he’s coming with Scully to her class. Of course he watched Oprah to prepare himself. He’s expectant father-ing all over the place.
• Scully feels like she’s deserting her post, because her whole life these past eight years has been about supporting Mulder in that basement (and he tells her that she’s “more than paid” her dues. He’s still in awe of what she’s done for him). Where do they take a stand now? All she has left at the FBI is her partnership with Doggett.
• “You’re concerned about Agent Doggett?”

Mulder’s always a little bit insecure, but if she didn’t stand by her friends, she wouldn’t be the Scully who’s always stood by him.

• “The entire time that I was down there, I had someone to watch my back.”
• “You gotta worry about the little boy. Or little girl. Boy? Or girl.”

how do you feel about baby aliens

• Maternity leave or no maternity leave, you TELL Scully when her partner goes missing.
• “Sir, are you ordering me not to go looking for Agent Doggett?”

That’s so WEIRD, it’s like you think you can tell me not to do things.

• These two are painfully obsessed with old times. (So am I.) (The visitor’s badge cuts deep.)

• Pregnant rogue autopsy Scully is at it again.
• Mulder’s just thinking about the baby.

• “This is an X-file, Mulder, and you are out of the Bureau. If I go home, where is Skinner gonna find someone qualified to look into this?” As far as Scully is concerned, she’s doing this for both of them. They’re the only two people who know how to work this case. They’re cool and elite like that.
• Puppy’s off the leash.

And literally nothing else has changed.

• Scully prefaces her reptile attack theory with, “I know this may be hard to believe coming from me,” because Mulder hasn’t seen her go full Mulder.
• “You re-gifted.” Aww. You’ll get through this.
• Sometimes it’s like Doggett is starring in an old Western in his head. “You’re doing fine, Agent Harrison. Hang tough.”
• It wouldn’t really be old times if Mulder didn’t say something vague, hang up with no warning, and leave Scully yelling his name into the phone.

• Mulder never did those trust exercises with Scully (they never needed them), but asking a half-blind Doggett to aim at the sound of his voice? That’s a trust exercise. Doggett doesn’t want to take the chance, but he does. And it works. And Mulder puts his hand on Doggett’s shoulder. We could’ve had it all.

A+ partnership

• This hospital isn’t ready for Scully and Mulder’s domesticity.
• “Is this it?”

They’re a family. He’s their friend. Everyone’s happy.

SUCH expectant parents (Mulder’s excited and Scully’s just over there like ‘NO I am not pushing this child out of me yet’)

There’s no question that this whole experience belongs to the pair of them.

• Mulder wants Doggett in the Apollo 11 club.
• Everyone’s re-gifting the keychain.
• Only a fangirl can truly appreciate it, anyway.
• Would you like a long-standing plot hole filled in? Too bad. Have some banter instead.

That is so YOU. That is so SCULLY.

• “You don’t have a picture of it or anything.”
• Scully believes in all kinds of things now, but science is still number one. Playfully challenging Mulder is a close second.
• He loves it.

• “And you were frozen, and I hugged you until you were not frozen anymore.”

“Essence”

• “How did this child come to be? What set its heart beating? Is it the product of a union? Or the work of a divine hand? An answered prayer? A true miracle? Or is it a wonder of technology—the intervention of other hands? What do I tell this child about to be born? What do I tell Scully? What do I tell myself?”
• PREVIOUSLY ON THE X-FILES: (45 minutes of Mulder asking more questions)
• Mulder can wait. He knows all of the possibilities, and he’ll be involved whatever the outcome. He can wait, like Scully, to find out the truth. But Margaret Scully deserves so much more than this. I don’t want to live in a world that keeps Margaret Scully waiting.

DO NOT KEEP SECRETS FROM THIS WOMAN

• “This has got to be a conspiracy.” It’s a gift box with two plush dolls in it. And Doggett said Mulder could find a conspiracy at a church picnic.
• Who are most of these people?

Skinner’s assistant can stay. Swap out everyone else for Reyes.

• Meanwhile, Doggett cleans his gun and watches Nascar.
• “You can drop the ‘Agent,’ Agent Doggett. It’s just plain old Fox Mulder now.” No.
• Doggett follows Mulder’s instincts and defends his ideas. He doesn’t have to answer to Mulder, but he’s seen enough to know that he should.
• “Pissing people off comes with the territory, Agent Doggett. It’s part of working on the X-files.” The more people are afraid of them, the more they’re onto something.
• “It’s Saturday anyway, right? We’re just having a look around.” I’m sorry, is that the ‘It’s not breaking and entering on weekends’ defense?

• There is no logical reason to pronounce “Parenti” as Doggett does, but Mulder gradually adopts it anyway because he thinks Doggett is pretty cool.
• “From a friend of mine.”
• Mulder will end Parenti if he did anything to Scully’s pregnancy, but his voice gets soft when he asks if she’s carrying a healthy baby. There’s no fire in this. He’s not looking for justifiable anger. He just wants Scully to be okay.
• She’s his medical doctor.

They’re both enjoying this too much.

I thought maybe the aliens taught Mulder some Spanish, but I looked this up and it’s a boxer’s nickname.

Children.

• “Same thing would’ve happened to me if I’d been left alone, if Scully hadn’t treated me.” He’ll never stop being amazed by all of the ways that Scully’s intellect and ability have saved him.
• Mulder’s sleeves are really tight. Cheers.

• What happens to Scully’s baby happens to Scully, and what happens to Scully happens to Mulder.

“That this baby you’re carrying is born without any surprises.”

• Agh. The guys at the FBI are placing bets on the father of Scully’s baby. #YesAllWomen
• “I’ve had my suspicions.” Skinner is the only one allowed to think about this, and only because he was thinking about it long before Scully got pregnant.

• Somewhere along the way, Mulder’s gotten comfortable—not with the fact that he knows exactly how this baby came about, but with the fact that he knows about as much as Scully knows. He’s pretty sure that he’s the only non-alien/ non-government chip option. He and Scully have both just accepted without question that he’ll be in this kid’s life. His main question now is “how a woman who was diagnosed as barren and unable to conceive is about to give birth in a couple days,” and that Scully’s question too. But even if he is the father, it’s not for him to say. This is Scully’s business and Scully’s alone.
• If someone really does have to ask her, Mulder won’t let it be anyone but him.
• Concerned glances all around.

• Mulder’s out of the Bureau, but when a case concerns Scully, he’s not really out of the Bureau.

• This woman starts talking about Scully like she’s nothing more than a carrier of some scientific marvel, and Mulder walks. He’s heard everything he needs to know.
• Run away together, babies.

• “I can’t take this! I can’t live like this, as the object of some unending X-file.”

• This job has broken Scully into pieces and filed her away, but the absolute worst thing it could do would be to convince her that that this is what Mulder is here for—the puzzle that her life has become. Because if it can take Scully from Mulder, then it’s taken her from herself. But Scully is bigger than everything to him, and he always only sees her.

• As they sneak out of the apartment (and this is definitely not the first time Mulder’s taken the back way out of Scully’s apartment), he just barely reaches out to her, and she’s already putting the car keys in his hand. They can read each other’s minds.

• “You realize we’re listening to someone who tried to kill me. He left you for dead.” Welcome to the job, Agent Doggett.
• Say “barren” ONE MORE TIME.

• Mulder hands Scully over to Krycek, because people will be looking for her with him. Everything good they have gets twisted: the more connected they are, the less they can be together. But Mulder’s connection to Scully is also what saves her, because he knows how to use their relationship as a threat. If he tells you to protect her, you protect her, or he literally buries you.
• “Drive safely.”

Don’t tell me what to do.

“Existence”

• I’m still waiting on that happy, non-life-threatening road trip. This isn’t it.

It is, however, a badass lady road trip, and that’s good too.

• “I’ve never delivered a baby before.” “Well I’ve never had one. That makes us both beginners.” And that is not comforting, Scully.

I love that she genuinely thinks that it is. If she can do it, Reyes can do it. They’re badasses. They’ve got this.

• Mulder does not appreciate the suggestion that Scully’s pregnancy was triggered by the chip in her neck. He’s already carrying enough guilt for what she’s lost following him. He wants to be responsible for something good for once—for making something with her instead of making something out of her.
• He trusts Doggett to be the only one who knows Scully’s location. Mulder’s got PEOPLE.
• Sisters are doing it for themselves.

• I’m so glad we get to keep her.

I’ve never heard anyone sound so excited about whale songs, and I lived in Alaska for a year, and they had a WHALE FESTIVAL.

hipster Dory

Scully loves people who own how weird they are.

• Reyes IS a lot like Melissa. There’s something sad but really sweet about how cyclical this season has felt, the way people keep coming back to Scully in new ways.
• I love it when she greets people with her badge, like the badge can actually explain half of what she finds herself doing.

“I’m sure that this looks untoward.” I’ve taken up residence in these old hot springs to give birth but don’t worry, I’m with the FBI.

• “And then what? How long can you keep this up? How long until the next Billy Miles rears his head? The next threat? The next phantom? You ever stop to ask yourself? All the sacrifice, the blood spilled. You’ve given nearly a decade of your life. Where the hell is it all going to end?” Mulder’s as quiet as he was looking up at Scully’s brother in the hospital hallway or burying his nose in Scully’s hair in that bed in Oregon. “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t.”

He knows it isn’t worth it anymore, but he doesn’t have a choice. Mulder and Scully never stop fighting.

• I’m not sure I trust anyone who wouldn’t respond this way to Scully.

• We had Thanksgiving; time for Christmas.

Silent night?

• “I’ve got to get to Scully.” FINALLY.
• The friends who introduced me to this show pointed out that we tend to refer to the men as baby animals and the women as radiant marble pillars lit from within. Skinner is the exception. Skinner can be a marble pillar.

Killing Krycek in his dad sweater.

• “How’s this?” Is that Mulder’s shirt? Does Scully wear Mulder’s shirt to give birth? Did he switch to almost exclusively heather gray shirts a few years back all so we’d get to this moment and know that Scully is wearing Mulder’s shirt to keep him with her when she brings their kid into the world?

YES.

• Reyes is a genius and a scholar, and she wields buckets of boiling water like a pro.
• Hi.

Excuse me sir do you have a minute to talk about replicant aliens?

• “This is my baby! Please don’t let them take it!” SCULLY MY HEART
• It would be all right if they stopped playing the “This Is Not Happening” theme.
• GO, MULDER, GO.

The way he CALLS OUT HER NAME like it’s a promise he keeps making. He knows they always echo back to each other.

• The X-files are in such good hands.

Basement out.

• It is beyond appropriate that the Lone Gunmen are the three wise men.
• “There was a light. I followed it.”

I would be lying if I said I didn’t cry while taking this screen shot. They’re the light in the dark places.

• Taking it all in.

• “How’s everybody doing?” SAYS DAD MULDER, LIKE A DAD.
• “We’re doing just fine.”

She has everything she wants. You can see it in her face.

• “Hey now. None of that.”

ldkfjdfkjdofdjkl

• Scully lights up to see Mulder with the baby.

• She can’t stop looking at him.

• Everyone is so content. I want to find a frozen pond in the middle of the woods and skate their names into the ice in cursive and then lie down and let the snow take me.

• “What are you gonna call him?” “William. After your father.” Scully’s father was also named William (and brother. Lots of Willams. Are there other names?), but by aligning him with Mulder’s father, Scully makes it clear that this baby is Mulder’s legacy too. She’s tying them together.

• “I don’t know. He’s got your coloring and your eyes, but he looks suspiciously like Assistant Director Skinner.” Mulder’s time has come. His jokes are dad jokes now.

LOOK AT THIS FAMILY

• “I don’t understand, Mulder. They came to take him from us.” US.
• I accept the “he isn’t what they thought he was” thesis but would also have accepted “Scully looked at them.”
• “That doesn’t make him any less of a miracle, though, does it?” Mulder told Scully never to give up on a miracle, and then they made that miracle. Their relationship is the happy impossible thing that cancels out all of the terrible impossibilities they’ve fought together.

• “From the moment I became pregnant, I feared the truth—about how, and why. And I know that you feared it, too.” “I think what we feared were the possibilities. The truth we both know.” “Which is what?”

US.

• There’s something really simple about this moment, which is the point. The truth of them was simple in the end; it’s just that this relationship is so far beyond what anyone else has ever had that they didn’t know what to do about it. It’s love. It looked like it took forever, but I think that’s because the rest of us are just catching up. Scully and Mulder have always held on to each other in a world of aliens and monsters and old guys in suits, and they always will. They’re the most normal thing they have, so we leave them on a normal night they’ve earned a thousand times over.

I like that everyone basically would have walked off the set if this ended in another forehead kiss. This moment isn’t about protecting each other. It’s about how much they love each other.

Can we just end it here? This feels right.  This is appropriate. Not that I won’t take another season of The X-Files in any form, but season nine is going to break me and this is nice and let’s just all stay here for a while, like David and Gillian did when they held each other forever after filming this scene.

THEY’RE A FAMILY. DON’T TOUCH THEM, CHRIS CARTER.

See you all for season nine.

Season nine, let’s do this.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Nothing Important Happened Today”

• THE NEW THEME MUSIC IS VERY LOUD.

• I didn’t ask for this.
• Did anyone ask for this? What did they ask? Can we make it higher pitched? I don’t think the aliens can hear us FROM SPACE
• Look at this—a beacon in the night.

If you squint, it basically says “bitch please.”

• 2001: A WordArt Odyssey

I think we’d all like to deny knowledge of this.

• The flashback to the kiss makes it so much sadder. Can’t we have it back? Can’t Scully and Mulder have something good for just a little bit longer?

NOPE.

• We’ve been deprived of Duchovny’s Ben Affleck-in-Gone Girl moment here.

• Look at all of this domesticity. He’s showering. The baby’s crying. They’re a family. They’re a family, show. Like they should be. It’s so comfortable and obvious between them now, and maybe we’re only getting this because they’re about to be ripped apart again, but I’ll take it.

William can tell that something’s wrong. This baby gets it.

• I love that Scully and Mulder are together until the last possible second. I love that he packed up his apartment and took it all to Scully’s place, because he had to be with her before he left. She had to be his jumping off point. She’s his touchstone. He knew she’d talk him out of it if he was making a mistake.

• For the record, I don’t believe that Mulder would leave Scully, and I don’t believe that Scully would let him go alone. She’d take William and go with him if she had to, or he’d stay and fight from here. They’ve split out of necessity before, but they have a baby now, and she just got Mulder back after burying him, and that changes things. But I get that the writers were backed into a corner, and there is something tragically appropriate about the fact that Scully and Mulder’s connection continues to be something they believe can be used against them. They’ve put each other before their own desire to be together, with the faith that they’ll be reunited in the end if they work this case from opposite ends, like they always have.
• We’re being placated with shirtlessness. I accept.

Heal quickly, baby goat.

• Somebody’s on the same wavelength.

• You do you, Monica.

• Seeking insight on whether Cary Elwes’s American accent is bad or whether I’m just super aware of it.
• Doggett’s really going after Kersh, and “hell no it isn’t” going to be easy. Tenacious little goat.
• “Knowle Rohrer.”

• It’s been two days? That’s all the time they had as a family? That’s how quickly Scully’s hair grows?
• Doggett goes to Mulder for help because they’re friends now, and because he knows that Mulder won’t let anyone cover up the truth.
• I feel all empty inside.

• All of the evidence of Mulder’s time in this apartment is gone. When he was abducted, Scully kept his fish fed and his place in order, waiting for him to come back. Now there’s nothing—no trace of the couch he slept on, the blanket he wrapped around his partner, the 3:00 am Plan 9 from Outer Space marathons, the tape in the shape of an X in the window. For eight years, it was his office and his desk, and they met in his apartment when they wanted to hang out, but when he left, Mulder left the entire imprint of his life in Scully. After all of the time she spent defending his right to take up space, she became the only mark he needed to leave behind. His bedroom was wall-to-wall files when he met her.
• “I got panicked you weren’t gonna be here, that you left too.”

My favorite thing about the fact that she stayed is that it saves Doggett from a total internal collapse.

• Doggett fully expected Scully to leave with Mulder, because that would make sense, and he knows that, at the very least, Mulder wouldn’t leave without telling her.
• “Dana.” That sounds about right. He can’t keep calling her “Agent Scully,” but “Scully” is Mulder’s thing.
• “He’s gone.”

Hope everyone’s ready for another season of Scully trying to keep it controlled until she breaks!

• “I don’t know where Mulder is. I don’t know that I’d tell you if I did.” Remember how long it took Skinner to lay it down for the right side? It’s easy now. Scully and Mulder come first.
• He’s not sorry he shot Krycek in his dad sweater.
• “You wanna know what I fear? I fear for Mulder and Scully. I fear for the life of that child if you don’t stop pushing it, John.”
• Doggett can’t stop pushing it, and Monica won’t let him fight alone. They’re in full Scully-and-Mulder mode. The truth is out there, and they’re willing to risk everything but each other in order to find it.
• “You make it sound like I go home from work with Post-Its on my ass. It’s nothing like that.”

It’s a deep bond forged in a tiny basement and it’s BEAUTIFUL.

• Monica is good. She’s playing Brad for all he’s worth and ensuring that he’ll be in her corner when she needs him.
• “It just doesn’t make any sense. Mulder leaving you here all alone, just walking out on you, not telling you where and why.” Doggett speaks for us all. And he’s right again, on everything except the idea that Mulder wouldn’t tell her why. Of course she knows why. He wouldn’t leave if she weren’t on board with his plan.
• “It makes sense in its own way. That’s all I can tell you.” Scully has a whole different logic system just for Mulder.
• “Then tell me why you can’t trust me. Everything I did to try and protect you when you thought your baby was in danger. What changed? Why is it suddenly I’m now the enemy?”

She’s buttoning her shirt in front of you, John. She trusts you.

• Scully trusts Doggett as much as she trusts anyone who isn’t Mulder, Skinner excepted. She just can’t take any risks where Mulder is concerned. These people are still out there, “and they are unstoppable, and they are inside the FBI.” Everyone in Scully’s life is in danger, and she doesn’t have the luxury of vulnerability right now. Keeping people at a distance is the best way to keep them safe.
• “Knowle Rohrer, this old military buddy of mine.”

• “My baby—my son—is fine.” Oh Scullbags, we all hope that’s true.

• “I’m gonna ask you to leave. I’m gonna ask you to leave and not come back here.” I know Scully wants to keep Mulder safe and keep everyone else safe by extension. I know Doggett’s very Muldery curiosity could put Mulder’s life at risk. I know he just brought up a really sensitive subject. But I still feel bad for the baby goat. He needs Scully, and she could really use his help too.

That was way harsh, Scull.

Scully will ice everyone she loves out of her life if that’s what it takes to protect Mulder. The More You Know

• There are some parts that only Lucy Lawless can play, like Ron Swanson’s wife and hot super soldiers who get naked and drown people.

• You can’t tell me Monica’s not checking that out.

• Scully is the most gentle mom. I have to go punch a hole in a wall.

“Sleepy time, sweet William.”

• And there’s a blanket where Mulder’s arms should be. Again.

• Bring him back.

We thought he was messing around, but he was really just lending a hand to the agents of the future.

• The mobile is stars. It’s starlight. It’s where souls reside. Bye.

• Is any part of Scully’s life not an X-file at this point? Is there anything good?

Probably shouldn’t have been so harsh with Doggett.

• Doggett’s not even mad. And he didn’t listen to her when she told him to drop it, which turned out to be the right move, so this partnership is back in business.
• “You’re the only person we can trust.” The secrets don’t change anything he thinks about her. She’s always put Mulder first anyway.
• Rogue autopsy Scully is one of the few things I know to be true.
• “I’m just impressed that you can do this.” “This is what I do, Agent Reyes.”

I examine bodies and bury my feelings.

• Look how afraid she is to be told that she isn’t fine. She can admit that she was wrong about pursuing this case (she’s had that conversation more than once with Mulder), but she can’t admit her fears about her baby.

• “If you ever feel the need to talk to someone, Dana, I’m here. I’d never betray a confidence.” Take the friendship, Scully.
• “There is something.”

This is it we’re gonna BOND

• “Right here on the ankle.”

Fine.

I like this friendship.

• Margaret Scully just successfully out-mommed a super soldier.

• The purposeful hallway walk has met its match, and it is so good.

• I’m pretty emotional about this.

It’s the one thing this show was missing: badass ladies being badass together.

• Scully’s foolproof plan to avoid being caught in a lie is to leave. Bless her integrity.
• “Forget the X-files. He’ll take you down with him.” How many times did people say this to Scully? Monica won’t fall for it.
• Skinner’s adventure outfit is the most ‘dad raking leaves before a football game’ outfit imaginable.

“This is madness!”

“Nothing Important Happened Today, Part 2″

• “What did you do at work today, Robert?” “Made out with Lucy Lawless underwater, but no one will believe me because the lighting was so bad.”

• Elwes is really bro-ing it out right now. He might not have the accent on lock, but he’s definitely nailed ‘American frat boy in a position of power.’

• Ask Monica to distance herself from Doggett, and she’ll distance herself from you.
• “How do you know what I know, what Knowle Rohrer told me?”

• “Knowle Rohrer” FIVE TIMES IN FORTY SECONDS

• Of course Skinner is the one person they brought into their confidence. “I was told to leave this alone. You and Mulder asked me to leave it be. To let Mulder disappear. We were concerned for the safety of the baby and for Mulder.” If people strike at what binds Scully and Mulder, then William makes that literal. He’s an entire person who exists because Scully and Mulder love each other. He’s the reason they have to be together, but he’s also the reason they’re afraid to be together, as if they’re protecting their connection by not even giving in to it in the first place—life can’t take this family from them if they’ve never had it. But I think they know at some level that they’re just holding chaos at bay. The pull between them is as strong as whatever pulls the shadows toward them. William is the reason they want out of this life, but he’s also the reason they’ll always be drawn back in.

It’s hard to disappear when you need answers as much as Scully and Mulder do.

• Doggett is “hellbent, and Agent Reyes is following right in his tracks.” I’m getting so many flashbacks to baby Scully trailing after Mulder. Come on, agents, get those little legs moving.
• “If you can’t tell me, tell Mulder.” Skinner continues to captain this ship.
• Scully thinks it’s too dangerous to bring Mulder into this, but “it’s too dangerous for everyone.” Whether they meant to or not, Scully and Mulder have people now. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be so hard to walk away.

Agent Mulder, every life, every day, is in danger. That’s just life.

• I just want her to live in a world where she can sniff her baby’s bald little head in peace.

• “Look, I’ve had my fair share of outrageous conspiracy theories, okay? So let’s cut the mystery crap and get to the science.” Scully likes science.
• Scully likes leather jackets.

damn

• She won’t apologize for her priorities or make her friends apologize for theirs. “Well, for your sake I hope so, but not for mine.”
• Baby goat really has gone full Mulder, like Scully did when Mulder was abducted. People are always compensating for his absence; Mulder always leaves a hole. It’s interesting to think how this job changes you if you let it, but you have to be the right type of person first—fearless, curious, willing to ask the right questions, and the strong enough to handle the answers.
• “I don’t answer to you. I answer to AD Skinner.” What we have here is a TEAM.
• Monica will just be over here saving the day by being really patient with Brad.
• Look at these three.

It would be a privilege just to have them walk toward me.

• I’m not singing Knowle Rohrer’s swan song just yet, because I’m pretty sure that if being headless can’t kill him, drowning can’t either.
• Scully’s getting reckless because she’s so desperate to know that William is all right (the way she whispers “my baby’s name” just HURTS), and it’s Doggett who talks her down. “We will find another way.”
• “Revolutions start, things that change the world forever, and even kings can miss them if they’re not paying attention.” Scully and Mulder always seem to find themselves at the center of something that will change the world. Maybe because they are that something.
• I’m not sure how to feel about this whole ‘Kersch is a human being’ development.
• Scully persuaded Mulder to go. It kills me how convinced she is that she doesn’t get to be happy.

But she can’t help but smile just a little when she looks at her baby.

• “Everything’s going to be okay.” That would be really nice.

“Daemonicus”

•  First things first, I’m never playing Scrabble again.
• “And it’s worth 50 extra points.” Forget paranoia; the jokes are what really come with this job.
• Chalkboards look good on Scully.

• It makes sense that she’s been reassigned. The X-files are in good hands, and I’m sure the FBI isn’t going to pay three people to work in that basement when they’d rather lock it up. As a forensic investigator, it’s easier for Scully to keep herself safe—not just physically, but emotionally. To get back to Mulder, she had to practically become him, but when she’s not supposed to find him, when they have to stay apart, she has to be the person she was before they met. It’s the best way for her to deal with the fact that Mulder isn’t here.
• But she’s still being looked down on for the work they did together, and she’s still prepared to own it.
• “Ever slay a vampire?”

I am about to slay you. Pay attention.

• “Sorry to disappoint you, but this is a course in forensic pathology. Hard science. An X-file is a case that has been deemed unsolvable by the Bureau. Because such a case cannot be solved, it may beg other explanations—a vampire, perhaps. Science, however, tells us that evil comes not from monsters, but from men. It offers us the methodology to catch these men, and only after we have exhausted these methods should we leave science behind to consider more extreme possibilities.” Nailed it. Vintage Scully after eight years of Mulder. Science comes first, but when it falls short, she’s ready.

Let’s talk about how turned on she is by the words “extreme possibilities.”

• She can tell that Monica’s holding something back.
• “I’ve felt things that I couldn’t understand, things that I was afraid to admit even to myself … I learned not to ignore it. To trust my instincts.” Ladies supporting ladies, all the way. And I don’t think she’s just talking about her cases here. Scully learned to trust her feelings for Mulder, too.
• You’re not really on the X-files until you flirt with your partner about institutionalization.

“You know, Monica, a room here just came open.”

• “Or are they both of one mind, like a snake eating its own tail?” You mean this snake?

Scully’s tattoo was a symbol of her one mind with Mulder this whole time. I’ll take this headcanon.

• Help, he meant “grinding up six coeds” literally.
• Scully hasn’t formed an opinion yet, because of science, but also because she’s fair to her friends. While she may not be inclined to believe Monica, Doggett’s not exactly keeping an open mind right now.
• “Perhaps you feel that chasing ghosts will answer the questions which damn you.” I think that’s true of all of them. For a job that offers so few concrete facts, just the act of doing the work seems to clarify what matters. Learning to ask the right questions is its own kind of answer.
• “I know what you’re feeling.” I love it when Scully lets herself be Doggett’s friend. She was scared to be anything other than Mulder when they were partners, but she and Doggett are actually so like minded, and her experience puts her in the best position to encourage him.

Of course he’s still crushing on her.

• “You can’t compete with the long-lost Agent Mulder.” Padgett knew she was in love with Mulder when she reached for Mulder’s arm. Kobold knows that she’s in love with Mulder when she does the same to Doggett. We can’t take her anywhere.
• She’s really working this friendship with Monica right now. “Agent Reyes is just trying to get to the truth, okay?” That’s the moral compass of this office. If you’re not chasing the truth, you’re probably doing it wrong.
• Baby goat is so worried for Scully.

• HE DOTS HIS “i” and I can’t handle it.

“4-D”

• AU Monica’s bike-fixing updo is on point.

• Let’s set the whole season in Monica’s new apartment with the exposed brick walls.

• Words can’t express how glad I am that this is our Doggett. He missed the movers, but he brought sausage!

• WHY IS HE SO CUTE

• She’s into it.

Baby goat seduces with food, and it is good.

• I was promised a moment between these two that turned my friends into shippers (and almost broke their rewind button). As soon as she stepped toward him, I knew this was it.

GET IT REYES. GO FOR WHAT YOU WANT.

This is couple-y. This is a couple thing.

Not shy about how intimate this is.

The unbroken eye contact!

• The way Scully tells Monica that she’s sorry about Doggett, it’s like she’s already picked up on the attraction between them. Scully knows partner chemistry when she sees it.
• A madness shared by two?

• “I saw something once. It’s only been the last couple of years that I’ve fully come to terms with it. In ’94 my father passed away, and that night, at the very moment that it happened, he came to me. I like to believe that he came to say goodbye.” She’s not afraid to believe anymore.

• Skinner knows that Monica wouldn’t do this, and he’s willing to break the rules to help her. He’s such a good team leader.
• Doggett won’t talk to anyone but his partner.
• She’s glad to see him awake in any condition.

• “TOO MUCH STAR TREK”
• “My Doggett.” MY.
• He trusts her even when she “sounds crazy,” and he’s willing to die if it means she can have her Doggett back. He DIES for her. And for their partnership.

Monica wraps her hands around his so protectively, like she’s holding on to something fragile and trying to keep it safe.

• YAY.

Welcome back, baby goat.

• And this is how much she loves him.

• The universe made sure to bring him back right after the mustard wipe. The mustard wipe stands.
• Doggett is basically kissing her hair right now.

• “I’m good.” Yes you are.

“Lord of the Flies”

• Little Aaron Paul’s first line is “yeah dudes,” which is just…so close.
• “We work on the X-files. Our expertise is the unexplained.” One requirement of this job is that you must have at least five different ways to say, “We can’t promise any answers.”
• They fall in step behind Scully like her two-person army. It’s beautiful.

Stand at attention.

Maintain a respectful distance at all times. Always walk at least one full pace behind Scully. Do not touch her hair.

• “Is she the expert?” Always and on everything.
• “I glance at ‘em for amusement.”

I glance at you for amusement.

• “I don’t think the science works that way.” We’re really filling in that Scully Likes Science bingo card today.
• Don’t flirt with Scully if you’re not Mulder. It’s like rule one.

You’re so unworthy.

• “And you can call me Sheriff John when I haul your dumb ass off to jail.”
• “How does one direct bugs?” Do you ever just think about Scully’s life?
• Sometimes I hear Scully’s inner monologue in the voice of Maggie Smith on Downton Abbey.

I will applaud your discretion when you leave.

• “You know, Rocky, I’m a mother.” With so many ways to end you.
• Fall in.

Surreptitious glances are permitted.

• “I’ve never had a partner before.” “I have!”

And you’re not him.

• She sounds so grateful just to have had Mulder in the first place.
• This guy does not get to tell Scully that she completes him. Although, to be fair, she completes us all.
• “You got my number, partner.”

How is she even MORE dismissive when she’s cheerful?

• Rocky is the worst, and I’m pretty sure that as a medical doctor, Scully can tell when someone is BREATHING.
• I’ve missed a good Scully voiceover.
• “In the struggle between our desire to determine who and what we will be and the identity which biology defines for us, there can only be one outcome. But even in victory, there are forces biology can not defeat—the stirring of the soul, the mysteries of desire, the simple truth that the heart wants what the heart wants.” She knows a little something about this.

“Trust No 1″

• “One day, you’ll ask me to speak of a truth, of the miracle of your birth. To explain what is unexplained. And if I falter or fail on this day, know there is an answer, my child—a sacred, imperishable truth, but one you may never hope to find alone. Chance meeting your perfect other, your perfect opposite. Your protector and endangerer. Chance embarking with this other on the greatest of journeys, a search for truths fugitive and imponderable. If one day this chance may befall you, my son, do not fail or falter to seize it. The truths are out there. And if one day you should behold a miracle, as I have in you, you will learn the truth is not found in science, or on some unseen plane, but by looking into your own heart. And in that moment you will be blessed—and stricken. For the truest truths are what hold us together, or keep us painfully, desperately apart.”
• Literally weeping.
• MULDER IS SCULLY’S PERFECT OPPOSITE.
• It has been “the greatest of journeys.” She wouldn’t change a day, even with everything it’s taken from them both. And the greatness is not in the truths, but in the search for them—a search that can’t be conducted alone, because the real truth is found in the people we choose to search with. It’s like Melissa told Scully on the Christmas Eve before she joined the Bureau: the path doesn’t matter as much as the people.
• Scully’s truest truth is her relationship with Mulder, which ties them forever together but which, for now, means putting his well-being above her own desires.
• Blessed and stricken by this montage.

I never thought I’d feel so much for a pair of umbrellas.

Yes, but it’s my…

This whole scene is just the editors admitting that they ship it.

I miss this height difference.

“And in that moment, you will be blessed.”

This is “the truest truth”–that he’ll call her when he’s lost, and she’ll come for him.

And what holds them together is that they won’t let each other fight alone.

•  She wants that email.

• “Dearest Dana.” I’m not sure that Mulder would ever say that to her face, but I’m 100% sure that it’s exactly how he writes about her in his diary. At Mulder’s request, Scully never calls him Fox, but he calls her Dana when things get serious, and this separation has them both feeling pretty seriously. And she IS dearest to him. They’re getting real with each other. Mulder and Scully are both so sure that they don’t deserve happiness that it’s easier for them to admit to loving what they’ve already lost, but at least they’re admitting it.
• “I’m lonely, Dana, uncertain of my ability to live like this. I want to come home. To you, and to William.” Scully and William are his home.

Same.

• “I am physically shaking right now seeing your words. Wishing it were you speaking them to me. I want so badly to see you too, but you are still not safe here.” More getting real with each other! This is a great day for communication. Let’s make it safe here as soon as possible, so they can communicate with kisses.
• She printed the email. She needed to carry his words in her pocket. Nooope.
• Monica and Doggett both know that Scully knows how to contact Mulder.

Gurl please.

• “This is somebody giving us a way that can make it safe for Mulder to come home.” It’s no secret that Scully is Mulder’s home. That’s why they believe people will come for them, and it’s why she’s afraid to take any chances. Scully’s doing exactly what Mulder did when the FBI first split them up and he would only communicate through picture frames and secret meetings. “Before, I could only trust myself. Now I can only trust you. And they’ve taken you away from me.”
• When he was gone, Scully had to think like Mulder. Now she has to live like him. But Mulder said it then: “That’s hard, Scully—suspecting everyone, everything. It wears you down. You even begin to doubt what you know is the truth.” There’s a cost to living like Mulder, because it means missing out on a few genuine friendships. Mulder figured out eventually that he couldn’t live that way, that it was time to shake Doggett’s hand and accept that he’s got people now. No one gets there alone. Doggett is right; it’s going to take all of team Apollo 11 to bring Mulder back. Scully doesn’t need to trust this informant, but she needs to at least trust her friends. If she doesn’t talk to them, they’ll just go rogue and maybe cause more trouble anyway.

• It’s so like her to keep Doggett at bay but invite a random mother into her home. Scully wants to help, and it really is in her nature to be trusting. She’s just afraid of getting legitimately close to friends who aren’t going anywhere.
• “You don’t have anyone, do you?” “No, but I wish I did.”

LET ME HUG YOU

• This is how she smiles at the thought of him coming back. Scully still has hope.

• For someone who barely knows him, Monica is adorably worried about compromising Mulder’s return. She just wants everyone to be happy.
• A little bummed she and Doggett aren’t listening to whale noises on their stakeout.
• “I don’t plan on getting caught.” Oh well then carry on, baby goat.
• Terry O’Quinn’s mustache is the MVP of this show. How does he play three separate characters and have a tiny mustache for all of them?
• Very into this whole thing where Doggett and Monica pin a stranger to the floor of Scully’s hallway, Scully opens the door with her gun trained on Patti, and they all have a little chat. They’re such a good team.
• Every time Scully cries, an angel takes a day off work to stay in bed, eat ice cream, and binge on Netflix.

• “Mulder is the only one capable of making the connections.” What a way to draw him out. What a way to prompt Scully to draw him out—by appealing to what she knows to be true. No one’s mind works like Mulder’s.
• “I’m not going to give you anything unless I can meet you. Unless I—unless I can see your face. Are you still there?”

Answer me when I threaten you.

• “You said I had to trust someone, right? Well that’s what I’m doing.” Potentially the wrong someone, but she’s got to try. This is probably why Scully wouldn’t even hear it from Doggett and Monica; she knew that if she let herself get close to this, if she actually talked to the man who offered a way to save Mulder, she wouldn’t be able to say no, even with the risks. But she also trusts Monica to watch William, so at least she’s not completely shutting them out.
• “Is it absolutely necessary to get innocent people hurt?” Being a shadowy government figure is no excuse not to have a little decency.
• Goodbye, Scully’s clothes.

You’ll be fine you have like eight black coats.

• “How the hell do you know my size?” For whatever reason, “how the hell”/ “why the hell not” is one of my favorite Scully-isms. She always says it like she’s going to kick down a door. She’s not happy, and she’s going to make it known, no matter how much she needs what this guy can offer.
• “Your true hair color.” Red? We’ve seen the flashbacks. He’s clearly trying to rattle her.
• “And I know that on one lonely night, you invited Mulder to your bed.” [Cue the friend who introduced me to this show silently getting up and walking out of her apartment. Because we’re talking about that night, but we still can’t see it.]

• I don’t think Shadow Man is implying that it only happened once—only that it started one lonely night. Also, this means it’s canon that their first night was at her place, as if we needed more proof that they were doing it before “all things.”
• Don’t call her “lady.”
• “I’m worried now about what it is I’ve gotten you into.” Doggett isn’t used to Scully taking his advice. I don’t think he expected to get this far. Like Mulder, Doggett might need her to question him more than he realized.
• “Cause this guy knows Mulder resurfaces only if the one person he trusts asks him to.” The one person he trusts. Their privacy goes both ways.

Sweet low ponytail, Scull.

• Scully and Mulder worked out his return before he even left. They can’t be apart without knowing they have a way back to each other.
• “Mulder’s on a train. He’ll be here at midnight.”

SO READY

• “I wanna see him so bad.” Scully’s case reports are like novels, but she’s so raw right now that it’s got her sounding like a teenager. She doesn’t have her usual eloquent filter. She just wants Mulder.

• She wore lighter clothes to see him again, like she was coming out of mourning.
• Nothing about this is fair.

The way she shouts his name at the train kills me. He’s right there. She’s so close, and all she can do is watch as he passes by.

• More Scully tears.

• “He fell in front of a frickin’ moving train.” Never change, confused baby goat.
• Someone really nailed puppy’s bouncy stealth run.
• Why does it have to be Mulder or William? What is going on here?
• “I hold no hope you can respond to this. Or that it reaches you. I only hope that you are alive.” But she writes to him anyway. These two can’t stop shouting each other’s names, no matter how far apart they are. It centers them. Just the act of reaching out makes them feel like they’re moving in the right direction.
• “I am scared for you, Mulder. And for William. The forces against us are unrelenting. But so is my determination. To see you again. To regain the comfort and safety we shared for so brief a time.” WAY TOO BRIEF. Mulder and Scully were comfortable and safe for too short a time. They were happy. But they’re not giving up.
• “Until then, I remain forever yours… Dana.” Scully really has been Mulder’s since the beginning. She’s his biggest defender. She’s the one who chose to stay with him. She’s always in his camp, and he’s always her motivation. Her loyalty lies with him, and now with their family, before anyone else.

Look who got adorable.

“John Doe”

• Even when he doesn’t know who he is, Doggett is not down for police violence.

• “Maybe I like to hop.”
• This t-shirt is WORKING.

• You can’t buy Doggett’s allegiance. No amount of lost memory can change that.

• Good news: Scully and Skinner are on this.

Never leave a partner behind.

• To quote one of the friends who introduced me to this show, “And Reyes is all, ‘Hell yeah I speak Spanish, dumbasses.'”

I also like leather jackets, and I really like my partner.

• “Pillar of the community? Does anyone actually use that phrase except mob lawyers?” Monica Reyes does not play.
• “Your only personal hope for the future is that I find him alive.” She is getting her partner back or sending this guy’s John Deere off a cliff with him on it.
• Doggett is so endearingly desperate on the phone. He’s less concerned for himself than he is for the people who are probably missing him.
• I hope Monica can sense that he’s wearing this striped button down.

• “He’s different.” He IS, and it’s why this episode could only be about Doggett. Mulder follows his ideals; Scully follows Mulder; Monica follows her instincts. They’ve all got integrity, but it’s deeply personal, defined by what they’ve loved. Doggett’s integrity seems to exist outside of his personal experience, which he tries to keep out of the field anyway. He’s obviously shaped by the love of his son, so much so that it brings him back to himself, but that’s not what gives him his backbone. He does what’s right because it’s right. The first promise he made Scully was that he’d find Mulder “whatever they may differ on.” Doggett doesn’t like to focus on himself, which means losing himself changes very little about how he operates.
• “Well, actually he doesn’t know that I’m here. Nor does he know that Skinner is headed to Mexico to consult with the Federal Police.” Rogue friend-finding Scully is at least as good as rogue autopsy Scully. She’s so excited to help.

• The dirtier and angrier he gets, the more I’m into it.

• Maybe not the context in which I most want these two to push each other against a bus, but at least they’re reunited.

• “I’m your partner, Monica. Your name is John Doggett. You’re an FBI agent. Do you remember?” I would not be this calm if a man brought me Polish sausage and then got amnesia, but this is why I am not Monica Reyes.
• He totally trusts her instinctively.
• The way she looks at Doggett is just begging him to recognize her.

• “They’re gonna kill us.” “They’re gonna try.” Why are you so COOL, Reyes?

• She makes sure to tell Doggett that even though they haven’t worked together long, they’ve known each other for years. She doesn’t frame it as a work thing. Their relationship is personal before it’s professional.
• “Luke. How old is Luke?” Ohhhh, baby goat. I am so sorry.
• She doesn’t even have to say what happened, because he remembers his pain just by looking at her face. Doggett comes back to himself because Monica feels for him so completely. I’m FINE.

• This breakdown is devastating.

Baby goaaaaaat

• There might be a part of Monica that’s relieved to see him coming back, but there’s no part of her that’s happy to see him face his worst nightmare again.

• I love the way she touches his arm before she runs off, like, Hey friend, not abandoning you, just going to save our lives.

• “If we’re going to die in here, you’re going to die on your feet. You hear me?”

YES I HEAR EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING AND WOULD LIKE A RECORD OF EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER SAID BECAUSE I THINK IT WOULD HELP ME LIVE MY LIFE BETTER

• “Get in the bus.”
  

Nobody puts baby goat in a corner.

• Doggett really loves hotwiring buses.
• Skinner to the rescue.
• You can kiss now, if you want.

• “You failed, you son of a bitch.”
• “Why would you want to remember? You can’t tell me you’re happier now, because you recall your life. I saw it all. So much pain. Why would you want to struggle, so long, and hard, to get that pain back?” “Because it’s mine.” Doggett plays his past so close to his chest. It’s a big deal for him to own it like this. I don’t think even he realized how much he was defined by what he went through.
• And Monica is once again completely focused on his pain. The first thing she says isn’t that she’s glad he’s back, but that she’s sorry he had to relive it.

• “I’ll take the bad as long as I remember the good.” Oh look, it’s the thesis of the entire ninth season.

Hi everyone! I’m back (like Doggett’s memories). I can’t tell you how sorry I am for this unexpected hiatus. December’s been a very full month. It’s mostly been full of good things. Maybe I watched 37 episodes of The X-Files (and one Fight the Future) with my mom when I went home for Christmas. I’m also on call for my job every weekend, and I have a cold I can’t shake, but let’s not get mired in excuses. I missed you. I’m back now. I’m just as in love with this show as ever, even if this season is messed up. And in the spirit of the coming new year, please send Mulder to kiss me as the ball drops let me just say that I could not be more grateful to have spent so much of 2014 with all of you. These characters and their refusal to make out have changed my life in more ways than one, and you along with them. I hope you’ve all had happy holidays.

And may Scully be everyone’s New Year’s resolution.

Welcome to 2015! Friends is on Netflix. Broadchurch is almost back. Parks and Rec is never leaving us, ever. I’m going to finish The X-Files, cry about it, watch The Fall and Hannibal and everything Gillian Anderson has ever done, and then watch The West Wing for real this time. All of my resolutions are pop culture resolutions.

It’s been ten years since the Doctor told Rose that she was going to have a really great year, five since we saw it happen, and fifteen since Mulder and Scully’s world didn’t end, so if history repeats itself, it’s safe to say that we’re in for some feelings. I’m ready. But before we jump into the new year, let’s look back on the best of the last.

Best comedic episode: “Moving Up” (Parks and Rec)

This show and its characters have come so far, and that was never clearer than at the Pawnee/ Eagleton Unity Concert. Ginuwine honored Li’l Sebastian, Ron went public as Duke Silver, Andy performed with Mouse Rat one more time, and all of Leslie’s hard work — the years she’s spent improving her town — finally paid off. She got Pawnee and her big promotion. In a show so insistent that nobody achieves anything alone, it’s fitting to think that success doesn’t always have to be lonely. If people will fight for us, sometimes we get one more night onstage with our band. Or in Leslie’s case, three years. I still get a rush of joy when I think about it.

Best dramatic episode: “Bad Blood” (Sleepy Hollow)

If episode titles could be retired, “Bad Blood” would be off limits by now. There would be a whole wing of the TV Hall of Fame called “Vince Gilligan Is So Much Better Than You,” and it would just play “Bad Blood” on a loop. But Sleepy Hollow did The X-Files proud with its first season finale, which changed the game for every character. Abbie was left in Purgatory. Ichabod was buried alive. VICTOR GARBER ATE GLASS WITH A BRITISH ACCENT. It was the best kind of madness, and it had me wishing away all of the months that stood between this and the next chapter.

Best comedic episode of a dramatic series: “The Sign of Three” (Sherlock)

In a season of gifts to the fandom, Sherlock’s speech at John’s wedding was the greatest gift of all. Spanning most of the episode, it looked back on intriguing cases and stag night shenanigans before turning abruptly into a gorgeous tribute to their friendship. Sherlock “will solve your murder, but it takes John Watson to save a life.” The wedding itself proved that, as Sherlock recognized all the signs of a murder plot in progress and solved the case in time for John to bust through a door and be a doctor. The evening ended on a bittersweet note, questioning whether every marriage must necessarily come between friends, but not before Benedict Cumberbatch did a pirouette.

Best dramatic episode of a comedic series: “Cooperative Polygraphy” (Community)

Pierce’s Last Will and Testament turned out to be one affirmation after the next, which is fitting. He always had a knack for seeing people’s hidden insecurities, and while he sometimes used his friends’ weaknesses against them, in the end, he just wanted to build them up. He wanted them to be better than he was. Community is a show about realizing potential, which is easier to see in others than in ourselves, and this episode summed it up perfectly.

Best dramatic performance: Eva Green (Penny Dreadful)

I was going to give this one to Martin “Am I a pretty lady?” Freeman, but the ladies of Head Over Feels just honored him so thoroughly that I’m going to direct you to their Showman of the Year post and take this opportunity to give a shout out to Eva Green, who terrifies me.

Best comedic performance: the cast of Parks and Rec

To quote Ron Swanson, “I still think awards are stupid, but they’d be less stupid if they went to the right people.” Like these people.

Strongest start to a new comedy: Enlisted

The Hill brothers had a sweetly competitive dynamic that worked from the start. Randy couldn’t raise his voice except to defend Pixar characters. Derrick instigated at a level most of us can only dream of. Pete had a chip on his shoulder and PTSD that was written and portrayed with respect. Enlisted started a conversation that we need to have. This was a show about our duties to our literal family, but it was also a show about how far we’ll go for the people who become our family. I would welcome it back with a glittery sign if I could.

Canceled show I’ll miss the most: Selfie

As Eliza, Karen Gillan took a character who could be a one-note punchline and turned her into someone endearingly oblivious and deceptively big-hearted. As Henry, John Cho was charming and uptight and totally smitten. They needed each other, their chemistry was obvious, and I wanted more time with them both.

Best musical moment (dance): Danny Castellano’s Diamond Dan striptease (The Mindy Project, “We’re a Couple Now, Haters”)

Danny Castellano has moves, and he’s not afraid to use them on his girlfriend — which is great not only because he is dead serious about pleasing her, but because it puts Mindy in the position most shows save for men. (See Vanity Fair’s great piece on this show and the female gaze.) Also it’s hot. It’s just really, really hot, and it can be set to any piece of music ever composed, because art knows no borders.

Best musical moment (song): Eliza sings Sia’s “Chandelier” (Selfie, “Imperfect Harmony”)

When Henry backed away from a potential relationship with Eliza, what started as a vulnerable karaoke performance spiraled into one of the most devastating breakdowns on TV this year. Eliza fell back on old habits, and Selfie sent the message that it wasn’t here to pretend. Change isn’t easy. If this show goes no further, let’s at least make sure that this scene makes Karen Gillan a star.

Best relationship arc: Clara and the Twelfth Doctor (Doctor Who)

It may have taken a while for the new Doctor to find himself, but while he did, Clara stepped up to run the show, proving herself to be bolder and more caring and more sure of herself than she ever was before. She and the Doctor made each other better, and they look SO GOOD together, and just try to tell me that you’re not still broken up about their brief goodbye. (“Thank you for making me feel special.” “Thank you for exactly the same.”) Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman sparkle, and I’m delighted to know that we’re not through with them yet.

Best line delivery: Ben Schwartz’s “The Closer? Foof.” (Parks and Rec)

It works for everything.

What were your favorite moments of the past year? What are your pop culture resolutions? Let’s discuss! And check out Give Me My Remote for my complete list of Top Shows and Top Episodes of 2014. Here’s to a new year.

Just as I was starting to get really emotional about how close I was to the end of the line, it rained sleeping bags.

How are we all doing? We still breathing?

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Hellbound”

• This is a velour jacket.

Baby goat likes the softness.

• Based on his sitter comment, I feel like Doggett worries about baby William a lot more than he usually lets on. Monica just wants to be close to Scully. So they’ve each got their priorities in line.

File says you should touch my jacket.

Okay.

• “Agent Doggett.” “Agent Scully.” What are these looks? Is this the first time they’ve seen each other since he lost his memory in Mexico? She sounds like she’s welcoming him back.

And he is so glad to be back.

• “And?” “That was my question.” It’s a pretty common question, Scully, but please do carry on lowkey bonding with your old partner.

Everyone’s jacket game is on point tonight.

• “There’s justice to be served here. You can’t forget that.” “I’m sure Agent Reyes won’t let me. Probably won’t let anybody.” You can’t do this job unless you have the kind of tenacity that annoys people as much as it impresses them.
• “Here you go, Dr. Scully. Everything you ever wanted to know about skinning people but were afraid to ask.” She went to med school for this.
• Scully sees the connection between this case and the case from 1960, and she doesn’t write it off just because the timeline makes no sense. Baby Scully, look at your future.

• She even listens on a higher level than the rest of us.

• Doggett is at Monica’s place in the middle of the night making phone calls while she sleeps, and it’s definitely a regular thing for them, and his only comment when she wakes up gasping from a nightmare is, “Monica, what the hell are you dreaming about?” Which I think is hilarious. Have happier dreams, Monica. Get it together.

• Never let a partner fight alone.

• He wants to keep her close to him, but he respects that she needs some space.
• Scully is also careful not to push; she just tells Monica that she has the case files if she’s up for it.

• Scully is doing some really interesting things with names right now. When she first gets out of the car, she calls Monica “Agent Reyes.” As soon as she realizes that something is wrong, it’s, “You okay, Monica?” Later, on the phone, she calls her Monica, but when Monica greets her with “Agent Scully,” Scully goes back to calling her Agent Reyes. She’s very deliberate with names and with meeting people wherever they want to be met, which is why when Mulder told her not to call him Fox, she accepted it without question. But because he also told her what he wanted her to call him, he gave Scully a way to always know where she stands, to always have this one thing about their relationship figured out. No matter what, he will always be Mulder. With Doggett and Reyes, there’s push and pull—sometimes first name, sometimes last name, sometimes Agent, sometimes not, like she’s always stepping toward and away from them just to make sure that she’s keeping the right boundaries. But Mulder is Mulder, all the time, which I think is why they say each other’s names like vows. There’s no stepping back from this.

• Monica and Doggett haven’t figured this out with each other any more than Scully’s figured it out with them, but they’re getting there. When Monica’s in trouble, it takes Doggett about two seconds to go from last name to first, because this is personal. Tell her how you feel, baby goat.
• I am 100% here for partners who stare down danger together and make the same face without realizing it.

• “What matters here is that you saved a woman’s life.” Remember how much Doggett fought against this job’s definition of success, how much he wanted justice and facts? He’s got it figured out now. The big questions rarely get answered, but it’s the individual lives that really matter.
• “He’s trying. We all are.” Scully wants Monica to understand where Doggett is coming from because she’s been there. She knows as well as anyone that doubt and disagreement can be signs of love. They have to keep each other honest.

That also goes for these two, who need to keep each other honest in their work but also BE honest about HOW MUCH THEY LIKE GAZING AT EACH OTHER’S LIPS just admit it you love it

• The real difference between Scully and Doggett—between Scully as she is now and Scully as she used to be—is just that she’s learned to be as critical of her own instincts as she always was of Mulder’s. She doesn’t have to believe right away, but she’s no longer afraid to believe if that’s what it comes down to. “Maybe in this life you succeed.”

“Provenance”

• The face Scully makes at Kersch is the same face I make at this myth arc.

I just spent half an hour taking screenshots of this scene’s many Scullyfaces and I intend to use every last one of them to express my feelings.

• “Well if this is an X-file, then why don’t you ask somebody who’s working on the X-files?”

I’m legitimate now. I’m in the teaching business.

• “I just WISH that you would tell me WHO or WHAT you are investigating.”

Line up and tell me your secrets.

• You know the basement is in good hands because it still has that ‘teenage boy who sleeps in an attic’ aesthetic.

And of course they know better than to touch the poster.

• “A spacecraft, Agent Doggett, if you can wrap your brain around that.” Damn, girl, misdirect that impatience.
• She even doubts the story of how the FBI got the rubbings. Trust no one, Sculls.
• “We’re talking about pieces of paper with marks on it.” Doggett carries on the grand tradition of, “What he’s given us, Mulder, is a rock.”
• But he goes after the whole story anyway/ looks for James Dean in the distance.

DOGGS WHAT IS THIS WINDBREAKER AND WHY HAVE YOU BEEN HOLDING OUT ON US

• Dana Scully School of Eyebrow Sass

Thinking about an FBI cover-up? Thinking about pizza? You’ll never know.

• No one tells baby goat not to stick his nose in.

• “I needed to talk to you about this in person.” Alien markings don’t have quite the same impact over the phone. Or during the day, or in a room that’s not candlelit, or without wine. (Suggestions for next time.)
• It feels right that this is one of the last texts I sent in 2014.

• I mean.

• Is this even talking or just BREATHING

• Are we sure this room is not presently candlelit?
• I actually thought before I rewatched this scene that there were candles so apparently I just felt them
• “I know you’ve become more open minded about these things.”
• Scully tells Monica that she has no one else to say this to, and I break apart inside a little bit, because she should be saying it to Mulder. She’s putting all of her beliefs on the line, and he knows what that feels like. He should be here for this.
• “I was meant to find these. Somehow, these were meant for me.” Of course Scully takes this leap by making it personal. Even Mulder never saw their work like that. He was in it because of his sister, but the answers were for everyone. The truth just fell to him because he was the only one looking for it. Everything is more intimate for Scully, who spent years refusing to consider the implications of her own work, focusing only on the relationship right in front of her. Her only thought in Africa was to save her partner, and ever since, he’s been her only articulated mission. Now, faced with what could be the missing piece between religion and science—the two defining institutions in her life—the only answer she needs is the answer to her son. Their son. Hers and Mulder’s. For all of her strict science and rationalism, that’s the first way she saved him: she saw him as a whole person, and that made him one. It’s also how he saved her: he became someone who gave meaning to the vague ideas.
• “Mulder Doggett, what are you doing sitting here in the dark?”

The basement boys love waiting for people in low lighting.

• “And if you don’t owe it to me, you owe it to Agent Scully.”
• Doggett’s after answers now. He doesn’t have to wrap his brain around a spacecraft in order to wrap his brain around the fact that he’s being lied to, and that won’t stand. He’s so excited when he shows up at Monica’s place at night with everything he stole from Skinner’s office. “What they’ve been keeping a secret. What they won’t tell Scully. What they wouldn’t tell us.”

This is the part where you say you could just kiss me.

• “I know you’re worried about him, that there are things about him that you just can’t explain.” Scully finally told her mom about William. I’m so proud.
• “But even if you were to get those answers, what would it change?” That’s a question Scully’s asked of Mulder in the past, and it’s the way in which she’s most like him right now. She can’t know if the truth is worth the cost until she’s risked everything to find out what it is.

• “And you have to love him and raise him in spite of everything.” Does Chris Carter even listen to his show
• This is a great Catholic mom talk happening right now.
• “I’m not sure even the FBI is aware of it. How could they be without access to your files?” That’s what they get for keeping her in the dark.

–Scully

• “I’ll kill you if you touch my baby.” She really, really will.
• Margaret Scully saves the day.

Dana you’re an FBI agent, you have a gun in every room of your house

• It is impossible not to love her.

Gotta save the Scullys.

• I wish it didn’t have to happen in these circumstances, but I’m glad Scully goes to Monica and Doggett for help.
• Not sorry about the guy bleeding out on her floor.

There’s a guy bleeding out on your floor.

And?

• Doggett is understandably hung up on not wanting Scully to get charged for murder.
• “You gotta help this man.” “No. Not until he tells me why.”

We’re in love with a crazy person.

• Doggett won’t put down the phone. Scully needs people in her life who don’t intimidate easily; I’d just do everything she told me to do throughout history until the end of time forever.
• She’s got no reason to trust the FBI right now. They’ve taken everything from her and buried it all—including Mulder. Now this guy’s telling her that her son has to die. What does that do? Why can’t Scully have even one nice thing?

“HE’S MY SON.”

Let me hug you.

• “If this is just gonna be another interrogation, I’d prefer to stand.”

Bow to your queen.

• “Another secret investigation? Or one where I’m given advance warning that my family’s life is in danger?” Her family.

Burn this office to the ground, Scully.

• People keep talking.

• “I wouldn’t tell them anything.” Baby goat still has her back. That’s how Scully and Mulder always do it too; they challenge each other when they’re alone but stand by each other when they’re called before the Bureau.
• She wants to know why she wasn’t told, but she also wants to know why Doggett and Monica weren’t told, because the three of them are a team.
• “I was afraid after all that you’d been through, it just might break you.” Skinner, there are things I can’t handle, and men being withholding are 30 of them.

If there were threats made on Mulder’s life, Scully should have been the first to know. Look how broken up she is at the suggestion that Mulder might be dead. Does Skinner really think there’s a good time to break that news? This plan makes no sense.

• Just give her the one precious thing in her life and let her hold on.

That SMILE

• She’s desperate. The more she thinks about Mulder, the more she clings to William.

I know, baby, this plotline makes me want to punch the sky, too

• “Just tell me the boy’s okay.” AW DOGGS.
• X-Files family road trip

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

Are we there yet?

FIVE MORE MINUTES

• The Lone Gunmen are the only ones left Scully can trust, and only because Mulder trusts them. She’s always validating his life. His people are hers now. He didn’t even think he had people, but he did; he just chose them with care.

When did I grow to love these guys so much??

• Campaign to Give Scully and William One Nice Day Together 2k2

• No. No one is allowed to hit Doggett with a car. The only thing John Doggett is allowed to do with a car is hang out the window while punching Krycek in the face.
• Skinner knows Monica has feelings for Doggett.

What does that basement do to you people?

• He also knows better than to stand in Scully’s way when her baby’s in danger.

“Providence”

• Scully turns and waits for Skinner in the hallway, because she still wants him to be on her side.
• “Go home.” “To what?” I AM SAD.

• “You see a task force in there. I see a whitewash.” There may never be a more perfect summary of this show’s attitude toward the FBI.
• “You call it protection. I call it a systematic effort inside the FBI to eliminate us.” She and Mulder are still a package deal, it’s still them against the rest of the world, and she still doesn’t need protecting, thank you very much.
• It’s been a long time since Skinner was so resistant to the idea that the system might be stacked against them. Someone’s been without Mulder for too long.

Save Skinner

• “You accuse anyone of anything in the FBI, you have to accuse me along with them.” She’s literally already done that from her deathbed, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

SIZING HIM UP

• Dad Skinner goes to check on Monica and Doggett.

• Every one of his war stories takes me back to the first. “I’m afraid to look any further beyond that experience. You? You are not.”

“I’d hold their hands just like you’re doing. Tell them it was going to be okay.”

• Scully is basically running her own FBI, and it’s amazing. So much better than the actual FBI.

I could command this country in my pajamas.

• “You coming with me, or am I going alone?” Scully will go at this on her own. She will scorch this earth by herself if that’s what it takes, because she gets reckless for the people she loves, and everything is already stacked against her. She really doesn’t have a lot of other options. But she does have one, and it’s the people in this room—and she trusts that they won’t let her go alone any more than she’d let Mulder do the same.
• Mark Snow wants to destroy us all, and he’s using the “This Is Not Happening” theme to do it.
• “Maybe when you’re lost, you knock at the door with the porch light on.”

So Monica’s lost without Doggett. We’ve got that on record.

• In Follmer’s mind, the people working against him from inside the FBI are Monica and Scully.

That is so you. That is so FOLLMER.

• Scully and Monica skirt their way around the rules and refuse to make liars out of each other in the process. Ladies supporting ladies, cult conspiracy takedown edition.
• She tells Monica to turn off the hospital monitors so they’re not interrupted, and Monica just does it, and I’m flashing back to all of the times Scully shut the door for Mulder so he could break some rules.
• Monica does draw the line at killing this guy. Basement 2.0 is not down for murder.

• “Josepho believes your son will follow in his father’s paths and try and stop the aliens’ return. Unless his father was to be killed. That is the prophesy.” What does that even mean? His father’s paths? Mulder has more than one path now? Don’t they know how single-minded he is? Have they considered what Scully would do to them if Mulder were killed? And that really should be in the subjunctive. This prophesy is weak.

• “It’s exactly what I feared. That there’s something terribly wrong. From the very moment that he was conceived.” Maybe without even meaning to, this cult is using all of Scully’s fears against her: not only her fear of losing Mulder, but her fear of what’s different about William. At least if she accepts this version of the story, she’s closer to knowing what that is, but she acts so hopeless in the face of it, which is how we know she’s really at her lowest. It’s thoughtful of Monica to use a religious argument to talk her down. But won’t these people keep coming for William—and for Mulder, if they haven’t already—regardless of whether Scully believes them? She still has reason to be upset.

No stop shhhhhh friendship is happening

• Skinner’s finally decided to help.
• “I never meant to put you at risk—to risk losing you, too.” It kills me that she’s lost so many people and that she feels so responsible for the risks people take on her behalf. That’s another way her life has turned into Mulder’s.

But I do love when she admits how much she cares for Doggett.

• “She’s fighting for you. Monica’s out there trying to find a way. And she’s not going to let you go.” Scully ships it.
• Hospital bedside Scully is my catnip.

• “Yeah, that was me! That was me talking to you!”

BE MORE ADORABLE.

• Everybody’s happy.

• Maybe when a guy wakes up from a coma specifically to tell you that someone’s coming for you, you don’t go taking meetings with the cult leader who kidnapped your child.
• “I came here to take him back.”

BUSINESS

• “You killed Mulder.” I think she really thinks he did. It’s like something sparks back to life in her when she realizes that Mulder might still be out there.

• This guy lied to her, then gave her hope, then tried to tell her to fetch Mulder’s head. Does he know nothing about Scully? She could destroy him with her right eyebrow.

Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cult

• She brought backup, so he failed at that too.
• “This Is Not Happening” wasn’t sad enough the first time. It really needed a crying baby.

That burning, deflating tent is my heart.

• I’ll take this.

• BEAUTIFUL MIRACLE CHILD.

SOMETHING NICE FOR SCULLY

• You’re in the chapel already; just get married.

• “I only prayed for your life.” When Monica and Doggett are in danger, they start asking big questions. They pray despite not being sure what they believe in; they consider possibilities they otherwise wouldn’t; they refer to themselves as lost. When Mulder and Scully are in danger, when they’re fighting for each other, that’s the only time they let themselves be really sure of anything. Scully lays it down for aliens. Mulder chases men in suits. He sits by her bedside and holds on to the strength of her beliefs, and she comes back thanks to the strength of his. Mulder and Scully ask the big questions only when they’re together. They give each other permission to doubt because they know they can lean on each other in the process. Monica and Doggett are vulnerable without each other; Scully and Mulder are vulnerable with each other. It’s not normal. Not everyone can do that.
• Now Follmer has a conscience. Are we changing the FBI from the inside?

“Audrey Pauley”

• Monica and Doggett went out for drinks after work. Date date date date date.
• His weekend plans are TV and microwave pizza. 10/10 would join.
• They can’t stop smiling at each other.

“You are a dog person, John.”

• “You’re faithful, you’re dependable, you’re without guile, you’re very comfortable to be around.”

It just got really quiet in this car.

• GET A GOLDEN RETRIEVER TOGETHER RIGHT NOW.

• It’s true, though; that’s Doggett’s brand of morality. He’s not driven by passion. He just does everything he can not to let down the people directly around him.
• Monica drives off repeating “John,” like she’s finally figured out this name thing. She knows who they are to each other.
• Baby goat’s crying.

You’re going to have to walk me through this; when Mulder is sad I just undress him and put him to bed.

• Scully won’t let him blame himself or wonder what if.
• “She’s gone.”

And Scully loses yet another person she cares about and promptly retreats to science.

• If you’d like to know how many neighbors I startled when Doggett said, “I don’t accept that,” the answer is, “Probably all of them.”

He won’t give up, because he can’t imagine life without his partner; sound familiar?

• “There’s gotta be hope.” Always.
• “Brain death is indeed death, John.”

She can’t even look at him. She can Medical Doctor all she wants, but she’s feeling it too.

• “I’m sorry.” It’s easier to focus on his pain.

• Doggett makes a good point about how this doesn’t add up, but Scully doesn’t want to hear it. Mulder’s not here to ask the big questions with her, and I think she’s worn out—worn out from asking how and why, and from hoping that Mulder is alive. It might be too much to hope to save anyone else.
• “This seem like heaven to you? A big, deserted Catholic hospital?” No.
• This episode of The X-Files and this episode of Alias aired at the same hour of the same day. [THEME SONG INTENSIFIES]

We all live in Audrey’s mind palace.

• Scully looks into Monica’s brain activity anyway, for Doggett.
• He swings open the door like he can’t even support his own weight, which is far too devastating to be so cowboy-in-a-saloon hot.

• “They’re burning up the phone lines down there. Arranging with all these other hospitals how to divvy up Monica.” BABY GOAT.

He can’t see her broken down like that. She’s a whole person.

• “I just want the facts.” Doggett doesn’t care about revenge or blame. He’s after the truth, because that’s what you need when you work on the X-files.
• And his instincts are good. Something is off. He always knows when he’s being kept in the dark.
• You’re not officially a will-they-won’t-they couple until someone assumes you’re married.
• “You love her, though.”

How’d you get inside my head?

• Audrey tells him that Monica’s “not dead, not her soul,” and just like that, he’s got a reason to keep fighting.

• “I wish I could talk to her. I wish I could tell her—” TELL HER WHAT, JOHN
• Monica’s great with Audrey.
• “I came to tell you, your friend loves you very much.” “My friend. Did you talk to John?” Because of course it’s John.

Tell me more about how he loves me.

• They have a secret code now, and it’s built on their respect for each other. “Tell him he’s a dog person.”
• Baby goat misses his partner.

• He’s finally coming to terms with how badly he wants to make out with his partner.

This show has never met a kiss that can’t be poorly lit, rudely interrupted, and actually a dream.

• Doggett knows Scully is capable of killing and covering it up.
• She’s thought about it.
• “That’s why you’re perfect for the job.” A+ murderer’s instinct, Sculls. Saving lives with that finely directed rage every day.
• “Agent Doggett, I’m happy to do this for you. Just don’t kid yourself that this is going to somehow bring her back.” She knows what it feels like to want someone so badly that you can’t hear reason. She wants to spare him the letdown, but she’d never, as a friend or a scientist, spare him the right to follow every lead.

• Vintage Mulder

• “She has a message for you. She says you’re a dog person.”

Jim Dale “oh hell no”s in the distance

• This episode is a study in Robert Patrick looking dramatically over his shoulder.
• Baby goat is so sure of himself now. “They’re coming to say goodbye.” “They can say hello instead.”
• Doggett hands the file to Scully and confidently guides her to a more private location, which is very ‘Mulder asking Scully to shut the door’ of him. They’ve got rules to break and a conspiracy to uncover, and this is something they know how to do—fight a system that would rather block them out. When Mulder puts his hand on Scully’s back, I think he’s saying the same thing: it’s just the two of them now, but they can do it.

• Doggett worries that if he tells Scully where he got this information, she’ll think he’s crazy. Doesn’t he know that he’s talking to the woman who listened to Mulder’s theories all those years, who eventually started talking like Mulder herself, only to get from Doggett the same looks she always gave Mulder? Baby goat. This is a safe space for crazy.
• She wants to believe.

• I love that he’s out to save Murdoch too. He just wants to help people.
• But he needs Monica.

The last time Doggett broke down like this, it was over his son, and Monica was the one who brought him back. He leans on her more than even he realized.

• She doesn’t accept “I can’t help anyone” as an argument. “And that means you can make the rules work any damn way that you want them to.”

• Monica only finds her way back to Doggett because neither one of them is willing to give up on anyone. If they ever let Audrey walk away, that would have been it.
• “John, I’m still waiting for your argument.” Scully wants there to be one; she just hasn’t seen what he’s seen, and he clearly hasn’t told her what he’s experienced with Audrey. Given what she knows, Scully’s resistance is understandable, but it didn’t have to be this way. She could have met Audrey; John could have told her that this woman somehow knew about a conversation he had with Monica earlier that night. Scully worked with Mulder for eight years. She would have followed. But what made this show work for so long is what it can’t seem to break out of now: The X-Files is about partners. It’s better than any show out there at two people against the world, friends who’d do anything to save each other—and in order to give that fight to Monica and Doggett, Scully had to stay on the outside this time. She could have taken a different role if she’d just been given the chance.

But this show is really great at partners.

• And NO ONE HERE KNOWS HOW TO ACT ON THEIR FEELINGS.

Will you two just kiss already?

Go. Back. Go down the stairs. Go up the stairs. Meet in the middle. JUST MAKE OUT.

•  Doggett wants this case done right, and the first person he calls is Scully.

• He asks her to run the reports again, and she starts to protest but then just kind of sighs. Of course she’ll do it.
• “Look, I get it. Enough people tell you you’re drunk, it’s time to lie down.” Love a good Doggett colloquialism.
• These people all know the power of “I could really use your help.”
• The minute someone tries to stand in Doggett’s way, Scully backs him up. No one stops her from getting the facts.

No one should even try.

• She doesn’t want Doggett to doubt himself. He’s a good cop. He probably already questions that every day on the X-files, and she knows how that feels.

FRIENDSHIP

• What keeps Doggett awake at night isn’t a blemish on his record; it’s the thought of letting a murderer go free.
• Scully knows he’s after the truth for the right reasons. She just worries that he puts too much on his shoulders.
• This is also very close talking, and I’m fine with it?

• “A cop I know, a man I respect deeply, he told me one time, ‘You don’t clock out at the end of your shift unless you know you did everything you could.’ That’s what this is about. Me not clocking out.” That’s an entirely Mulder-y sentiment—don’t give up—expressed in the kind of immediate, day-to-day terms Mulder would never use. Mulder’s all about changing the big picture; if he quits now, they win. Doggett just looks straight ahead and keeps going. But it’s the same idea. They’d both work all night.
• “You know that what you’re saying is impossible.” “And yet, somehow, it’s true.” Scully and Doggett are in this weird case together now.
• “Thank you. That’s an extremely helpful attitude. What’s your reason for it?”

So confused. No one helps us ever.

• Look at these two hunkered down.

Baby goat needs coffee. Someone get him some coffee.

• “This isn’t about the truth.”

You take that back.

• Scully will just be over here reading files while Monica and Doggett dance around their feelings.

• “Like Casper the Friendly Ghost?”
• “ZZ Top here.”

(I rewound this three times.)

• “Monica, for God’s sakes, this is not an X-file!”

Monica, I still don’t know what show I’m on!

• “I am simply stating the facts, okay?”

Can’t be angry with science.

• Doggett is so betrayed by the fact that this guy broke the rules to make the law fit his version of the truth, which makes it even more impressive that he’ll occasionally go rogue for the X-files. He’s not inclined to go against the system, but he’ll do it when the system is corrupt.

“You break my heart.”

• He won’t ask Scully to lie. He values her integrity.
• The way Scully notices Bob’s Rosary and steers the conversation to something more personal, making it a point to bond with him over Catholicism, is very much how Mulder interrogates. His default mode, at least with people who haven’t hurt Scully, is to be gentle and open and trusting, because that’s how he sees the world. Everyone is the victim of something.

• Monica wins coolest theory.
• “I’ve slept through my share of Sunday schools, but I never heard the story about the guy becoming another guy.” Protect John Doggett at all costs.
• Please tell me there’s an iced tea in this car.

• “And that’s enough. And the day that’s not enough? Then I don’t know what to tell you. ‘Cause I got nothing else.” Doggett believes in the work. But I think he’s also resisting because he’s afraid that there’s nothing else to him, that his mind just can’t work the way Monica’s does. He relies on the fact that he’s a good cop, and accepting the paranormal would mean accepting that he’s been working without the full picture. It would mean that he didn’t consider every angle of his son’s case, and maybe he clocked out too soon one day without realizing it.

“Improbable”

• “I want to ask you to open your mind to something.” Monica finds it best to ease Scully into her theories gently. She gets it.

• “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy, all right?” “Why would I think that you’re crazy?”

No promises.

• Scully doesn’t believe that the universe can be summed up in a single equation; she doesn’t think that “its complexity allows for it to be reduced so simply.” And that’s the show, really. There are no easy answers, and if there are, they’re not worth it. The bravest thing we can do is come to terms with uncertainty and with the fact that sometimes we have to pull ourselves up and keep going when there’s nothing to put our backs up against.
• But look how much Scully loves science.

hard hard science

• She’s so amused by Monica’s numerology. Scully likes people who see the world differently and don’t apologize for it.

okay now you’re just flirting

• Baby goat is really excited to talk to Monica.

I called Monica and Monica picked up! What a great day

• “Now I knew you were good, but this? This is career launching.” Is this episode a dream? I’m not convinced Monica’s not dreaming.

Definitely a dream. Although there is something appropriate in the idea that the FBI is actually a really supportive and encouraging environment for EVERYONE WHO IS NOT MULDER AND SCULLY.

• Doggett, re: any personality test: “That describes pretty much anyone.”
• “How’d you figure that?” “I didn’t.” “Then how’d you discover it?” “Completely by accident.”

Don’t look at me; I was doing science.

• Scully looks into the abyss that is “numerology for fun.”

• “I don’t think she should be so easily dismissed.” Doggett always backs Monica and defends her right to be taken seriously, even when he doesn’t agree with her theories. But he might actually agree with this theory.

Dream. I am telling you, dream.

• There’s our queen.

• “We’re federal agents and we’re armed” and we are total badasses and everything we do is perfectly in sync.

• “Sir, does it look like we’re here to play checkers?”

Honestly at this point I don’t even know.

• Monica talks music with Burt Reynolds. Scully considers her escape route.

• She doesn’t even want to play checkers, and she still gets indignant when she loses.
• “How did we get ourselves into this?”

Like, existentially.

FREE SCULLY

• This is it. This is our inevitable end. We will all one day be forced into a game of checkers while Burt Reynolds dances around us. Choice is an illusion and hope is gone.

• Definitely Monica’s dream.

• “Keep your hands up.” “Why?” “I don’t know.”

Today got away from me

• Scully’s really losing it.

• “That’s a good question.”

Not sure if good questions exist anymore.

• “You’re a scientist, Agent Scully.” Finally an undisputed truth.
• Scully once said that science only teaches how, not why. She believes that the world can be broken down into numbers, but not that our lives are defined by them. “You can’t reduce all of life, all creation, every piece of art, architecture, music, literature, into a game of win or lose.” Mulder proved that every day. He made her see the mystery in everything.
• “God does not play dice with the universe.” “Nor does he play checkers.”

Pretty proud of that one.

• So the killer just sat around all night and watched this one-act Beckett play unfold? I get that.
• Doggett’s here.

It’s cute that he cares. But I mean, the ladies could’ve handled themselves.

• I BRING GOOD NEWS, BABY WILLIAM IS STILL PRECIOUS.

• Scully’s happy. She’s actually happy.

It’s so beautiful.

• Like she hasn’t been dying to know her number this whole time.
• “Nine is completion. You’ve evolved through the experiences of all the other numbers to a spiritual realization that this life is only part of a larger whole.” That’s Scully. The baby who marched into the FBI in her oversize plaid suit is after something so much bigger than the difference she thought she could make—but so much more intimate too. She’s after Mulder. She doesn’t need all of the answers; she just wants to ask the right questions.

She loves it.

In other news, I rang in the new year with The X-Files (which I think means that nothing can go wrong ever) and I got an Apollo 11 keychain for my birthday. And you are all too good to be so patient with these posts. Blame my job. (But speaking of my job, starting next week, my coworker and I will be doing X-Files nostalgia recaps over at the EW Community. Can’t stop won’t stop. Please join!)

“2017”/ “Ron and Jammy”—Aired Jan. 13, 2015

I don’t have a list of things I want from the final season of Parks and Rec. I think Mike Schur knows what I need better than I do, so I haven’t worried about this season beyond worrying what will happen to me when it’s over. But even if I had expectations, I never would have seen this coming. Ron Swanson and Leslie Knope have had a falling out.

It hurts. It’s wrong. The relationship between Ron and Leslie defines Parks and Rec as a show about people who like each other not only in spite of their differences, but because of them. It’s a friendship built on respect and a platonic love that shows itself in action, which is exactly the kind of love that Leslie extends to her town. Ron and Leslie’s ability to bridge the gap between them, and their desire to bridge it, makes this show what it is.

I absolutely believe that the same stubborn conviction that Ron and Leslie admire in each other could come between them, but this fight cannot stand. Their relationship has to be fixed. Save Ron and Leslie, save Pawnee, save the world.

And save the world’s cakes.

So how did we get here? What turned 2017 into a future I want no part of? Nobody’s saying much, but we know that after Leslie took her job with the National Parks Service, Ron eventually left the Parks Department to start his own company, Very Good Building and Development Company (“I wanted to convey the quality of our work without seeming flashy”). We know that Leslie is very upset about something called Morningstar, which Ron says happened two years ago. He seems to want her to let it go. Leslie’s still fired up, but Ron just looks sad.

If he wants to patch things up, he’s going to have to get past the latest bump in the road: Jessica Wicks. I never expected the former Miss Pawnee to hold this town’s fate in her hands like a small bird, but everyone on this show goes places and even characters who seem minor keep coming back until they suddenly mean something and that’s LIFE. On behalf of the Newport family trust, Jessica is selling 25 square miles of undeveloped land, because real estate prices are booming, and “it’s time to trade those dumb old trees for a buttload of cash.” (“It is. it truly is.”) Tech company Gryzzl, here to legitimize your fear of fake-chill startup bros, is the number one contender, as it is apparently now running the world. Gryzzl wants to open a campus (oh dear God why is everything called a campus) in Pawnee, and they’ve hired Ron’s company to plan and build it. I look forward to many months of Ron looking on in horror as these guys present their ideas in word clouds.

Leslie wants the land for a national park, but she needs money, so Ben suggests that she ask for donations at the bicentennial gala being held in his honor. I’m just so proud of both of them. He’s a respected public official; she’s the reason this town can now hold fancy galas populated by the kind of people who once ate crepes at Eagleton town hall meetings. But those same people aren’t big on the idea of handing Leslie their money, even when she offers to buy Ken Hotate’s bolo ties in exchange. (“My son sells them on etsy. He is a huge disappointment.”) Leslie is a force, but no one gets there alone, and she doesn’t have her team by her side. This is exactly how the “Emergency Response” gala would have gone down if she’d tried to make it happen on her own. She wants to get the band back together, but Ron already promised Tom that he could build a restaurant on the Gryzzl campus, and he hired Donna’s real estate agency to broker the deal.

“I simply took a skewer for one shrimp and added many shrimp to it.”

Everyone on the team is doing so well for themselves. Tom is a restaurant mogul now, and Donna’s killing it with Regal Meagle Realty. She’s also getting married. Donna Meagle, who once confused drama with happiness, is settling down with Joe. He proposed a few days ago, and she kept everything off social media so she could tell Leslie in person.

There’s no ill will between Leslie and Donna or Leslie and Tom. They didn’t have a fight; they’ve just all been busy with their lives, and they don’t see each other as often as they used to. That’s sadder somehow. It’s so much harder to fix a busy life, and now Leslie can’t even count on her friends’ support in this fight. She accuses Ron of stealing her team, and it ends in cake. (“They’re still gonna serve that cake, right?”)

It isn’t Leslie’s proudest moment, but there’s no one better at pulling herself together and getting the job done. She meets with Jessica Wicks and makes an impassioned case for the land. The Newports have been in Pawnee since the beginning. Now, on the town’s 200th anniversary, what better way to celebrate that legacy than to help found Newport National Park? “Your name will stand for something good for generations to come,” says Leslie, and I flash back to that time when she decided to take this job after looking at a name on a sign. Leslie wants to create something that lasts. She believes that’s all anyone should ever want.

This park could be the sign with Leslie’s name on it, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’s thought so. She thought the pit would be her legacy once, and now it’s just a stop along the road. She and Ben can look back on “turning a pit into a cool little park” like it was a Saturday afternoon project. She’s still immensely proud of it, but it’s no longer the height of her accomplishments, and that’s precisely because she treated it like it would be. Leslie approaches everything in front of her like it’s the most important work she’ll ever do. There was nothing bigger than the pit, so she made it happen. Now there’s nothing bigger than this park. What’s next?

Her bid to Jessica is zero dollars (“I have to say, that’s one of the lower ones we’ve seen”), but her passion keeps her in the running. The Newports announce that they’ve narrowed down their offers to Gryzzl and the National Parks Service, giving Leslie time to plan her next move, which involves dessert. She marches into Ron’s office with a basket full of cookies. “They say ‘Prepare for war’ on them, but the o in the word ‘for’ is a heart.” That sums her up. Leslie’s battles are personal, but she doesn’t take them personally. That’s why she and Ron were able to work so well together in the first place. The cookies are for Tom and Donna, but Ron eats one too, because he totally wants their friendship back.

Progress on that front comes from an unlikely ally: Jeremy Jamm. Jamm is still on City Council, which is both inexplicable (who votes for him?) and perfect (Leslie’s out there changing the world, and he’s just spinning his wheels in that same desk chair). The Council is voting on whether to rezone the Newport land for commercial use, so Leslie reaches out to convince Jamm to vote on her side. She finds a different problem entirely. Jamm is dating Tammy 2, and he is broken.

Tammy doesn’t care about Jamm’s health. She definitely doesn’t care about his emotional stability. She wants Ron back, and as long as that’s off the table in JJ’s diner where they had sex once, she’ll settle for turning Jamm into Ron instead. When she had the actual Ron in her clutches, she turned him into someone else, but she wants Jamm to be the Ron we know—the Ron not under her spell. Tammy doesn’t actually like being with Ron. She just likes what she can’t have.

That makes Tammy the enemy to unite all other enemies. She’s all about the games, and our characters are all about the people. Leslie can’t let Jamm go down like this. To get him the help he needs, Leslie demands an uneasy truce with Ron, which he accepts only after he sees the shape Jamm is in. Together, the once and future friends train Jamm in the art of Tammy resistance (“In this scenario, she will be coming at you pantsless”), and he breaks up with her while she stands naked in a library. He then refuses to choose between Ron and Leslie, so there will be no tie-breaking vote. The fight for the land goes on.

Ron and Leslie are far from fixed, but they’re at least reminded that they can still come together for a cause they believe in. More importantly, they’re reminded of the integrity that they respect so much in one another. Leslie could have accepted Tammy’s offer to throw the vote her way if she’d leave them alone, but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. This is the same woman who refused to owe her career to a wrongly convicted possum. Ron didn’t have to help Jamm, but he did. They’re still good people who put others first. They’ll get there.

Elsewhere in Pawnee, April Roberta Ludgate-Dwyer is having a crisis. She’s happily married to Andy (who has a Johnny Karate TV show, because at least one thing about 2017 has to be beautiful), but she’s afraid of what they’ve become. They used to eat turkey chili out of frisbees, and now they’re planning crock pot meals. Even when they set out to get into trouble, they find reasons to talk themselves out of it. Adulthood found them when they weren’t looking.

In a lot of ways, that’s for the best. Back in the day, April and Andy couldn’t visit Bed Bath & Beyond without, like, a 30% chance they’d both die. They kept their bills in the freezer. That life was never going to last. But for two people who resisted responsibility so fiercely, it’s easy to mistake growing up for selling out. April is still in panic mode when she and Andy come across a creepy old house with the perfect backstory. (“Remember the Pawnee dollhead factory?” “This was the dollhead factory?” “No. This was the holding cell for people who went insane on the assembly line.”) On a whim, they buy it—because it excites them, and because they’re still those spontaneous kids who got married within a month. Being a financially stable couple just gives them new ways to be weird.

With one freak-out taken care of, April moves on to the next: Does she even like her job? It’s a question that she never thought to ask until Joan Callamezzo’s book signing. Joan has multiple books now, and she’s gone off the deep end. (“Last year, she did a show where she called all of her ex-boyfriends while sitting on a washing machine.”) She credits her success, such as it is, to the fact that she knew what she wanted to do with her life at age 10. Joan believes that loving what we do is what makes life worth living.

April hasn’t really thought about it like that before. I don’t think she’s just now realizing that she might not be happy at her job. I think she never thought liking her job was an option. She kind of hates most things, so she always figured that she was meant to hate her job, too. She goes to Ben for advice, because they’re friends who went to Washington together, and it’s about time they get back to that. April saw Ben take a leap for something he really wanted to do; maybe he can help her do the same.

and ask people riddles before they cross.

Ben suggests that April think back to her goals when she was 10. She wanted to be a mortician, which sounds about right. They pay a visit to the local funeral home, but April walks when she realizes that the job requires training and starts with paperwork. That does seem to be the problem with most jobs. She’s immediately discouraged, but Ben won’t let her give in, promising not to stop until they’ve found the job for her. Everyone fits somewhere, and everyone deserves to be happy.

The key is just in recognizing that happiness might not look the way we always expected it to, and that what once made us happy might change over time. Tom is the entrepreneur he always wanted to be, but he’s sad. (“I must be the first person ever to have money, power, and notoriety but still feel empty.”) He wants someone to share his life with. Andy helps Tom go through his old Gryzzl contacts, and when Lucy—handshake queen/ all-around wonderful person—sends him a message, the guys are just drunk enough to go to Chicago and find her. Tom asks her to come work with him, and she’s in. She has a boyfriend, but like Andy’s food, he’ll be gone soon.

Tom is ready to commit now in a way that he wasn’t when he first dated Lucy. His swagger was always for show, but it no longer covers insecurity or neediness. He just cares more than he knows how to express. When Tom uses Ben’s gala as an excuse to talk about his accomplishments, he seems for a minute like his old self, like maybe these people lose themselves when they lose each other. They don’t. They’ve spent so much time together that even falling out of touch can’t undo all of the ways they’ve made each other better.

Bicentennial snaps:

“I’m already so bored thinking about that one day off.” We should all be Leslie Knope.

“Yes, the land has good sky.”

Pick a time, Jon Hamm.

“I only have two million dollars in the discretionary fund, and I’ve already used some of it to make Thomas Jefferson sexier in those Mt. Rushmore promotions.”

My favorite thing is how turned on Leslie gets by hard work and intelligence.

“Bacon-wrapped shrimp? I fit seven on this one. It’s a masterpiece.”

“Meanwhile you and I are already on a boat. To the airport.”

“Is Oprah involved in your bid?”

“People seem to be scared off, on account of it being haunted. And disgusting.”

“After 47 years living here, I decided to move to Orlando to be closer to Disney World.” CUT TO: multiple people informing me that this is my future.

“When did you, why would either one of you, you know, why? Dear God why?”

“She saw me nail ‘Gangstas Paradise'; I saw her bite the door guy.”

We need Game of Joans.

• “I estimate that all pop songs were written about me.”
• “I once fell asleep while falling out the window of Mr. Belvedere’s apartment.”
• “I have Randy Quaid’s email address.” (“That’s how it ends!”)

“On a separate note, I think that America should have a purge night. Let me explain why.”

“No, he’s, uh, working at a nonprofit.” “No, what? Am I? Oh that sucks.”

Ron still has his burger cook-off award, and he still hasn’t given up on Mulligan’s.

“Uhhhh, have you ever seen Monsters Inc?”

“When it comes to Tammy, the code is the same as that of the battlefield. First, you leave no man behind. Second, you must protect yourself against chemical warfare. Tammy does not abide by the Geneva Convention.”

I HOPE AMY POEHLER’S IMPRESSION OF MEGAN MULLALLY IS MY REAL MOM.

“When I was your age, I got banned from every riverboat in Germany.”

There’s no wrong time to find Parks and Rec, but I like to think I found it at the right time. I saw my first few episodes at the end of senior year of college. A month later, I left to volunteer for a year in Alaska, Parks and Rec DVDs tucked between my rain boots. I’d been told to pack lightly, but this show was already a necessity.

Within the first week, I’d introduced it to my roommates, so we knew Leslie Knope before we really even knew each other. The show was our language. We wrote Ron Swanson quotes on the bathroom mirror (“Never half ass two things. Whole ass one thing”) and Tom Haverford quotes on the fridge. We said yes with “I think I will, good lady” and yelled “MAKE YOUR FACE BETTER” before every photo. Whatever we knew for sure, we attributed to “school.” Any show could have done this. Any good TV series can bring people together. But Parks and Rec also happens to be about bringing people together, and that made it kind of perfect.

Parks is about people who “like to hold hands and jump off cliffs together, into the great unknown.” I felt a bit like that’s what I had done. The image of the Parks Department forcefully pushing Leslie Knope onto her campaign platform in the middle of an ice rink defines that year for me, and not just because of the ice. These people were struggling and underfunded and determined not to let each other stay down. Leslie founded Galentine’s Day and led the Pawnee Goddesses; I worked with girls who needed to be told and told again that they were worth it, that they could make something of themselves. Andy and April drove to the Grand Canyon in the middle of the night because that’s what they’d want to do at the end of the world. We drove to the end of the road in the middle of the night to chase the northern lights (no luck, but the company was unbeatable).

The show mirrored our lives in ways I didn’t even notice at the time, because I was living it, and I’d forgotten that the whole world wasn’t an offbeat small town. Now, saying goodbye to Parks and Rec means losing the most concrete attachment I have to that place, which is Pawnee as much as it is Alaska. Pawnee gives a fence as a beauty pageant prize; a friend in Alaska once ran things through a juicer at the monthly talent show. I like to think that Ben Wyatt would make a face at the camera but secretly really love it.

Leslie made Ben want to put down roots in Pawnee. She taught him how to build something, and he wanted to build it with her, because ultimately, the place is the people. (“The town has really nice blonde hair.”) Parks and Recreation invites us to see a whole world in people and warns us against only seeing other people for what they can add to our world.

“He’s a tourist. He vacations in people’s lives, takes pictures, puts them in his scrapbook, and moves on. All he’s interested in are stories. Basically, Leslie, he’s selfish. And you’re not. That’s why you don’t like him.”

Parks is not a show about passing through. It’s a show about staying a while, doing the hard work, and fighting tirelessly without applause or acclaim. But it never asks us to get so caught up on the problems that need fixing that we forget to stop and look up.

“In times of stress or in moments of transition, sometimes it can feel like the whole world is closing in on you. When that happens, you should close your eyes, take a deep breath, listen to the people that love you when they’re giving advice, and remember what really matters.”

The people are the place. As long as we know that, we don’t have to be afraid to keep moving—to new jobs, to new cities, to all of those big opportunities that would kill lesser comedies but only ever made Parks stronger. When Leslie lost her seat on City Council, Jen told her to dream bigger.

“Look, you love this town. It’s being run by monsters and morons? Get a better job! Rise above their heads! Effect change at a higher level! … Pawnee has done you a favor. You’ve outgrown them. You’ve got talent, you’ve got name recognition, which means that you have a bright, wide open future with a thousand options.”

There was always tension between Leslie’s big time dreams and her small town pride. She saw herself in the White House but couldn’t see any reason to leave Pawnee. She wanted to sit in the big leather chairs in the important halls of this country, but her best self came out when she was knee deep in dirty river water, or bent over a woman’s garden, or sitting patiently with the concerns of her fellow townspeople, or fighting to save a gazebo. But word of her hard work in Pawnee got back to people in Washington, and her work in Washington can change life in Pawnee. Her very grounded sense of loyalty doesn’t have to ground her career. Everything connects.

I’ve always loved that so many of the characters on this show were created for the actors, tailored to their specific brand of comedy. This is a show about doing what you do best—not to be selfish, but because you never know who might need it. The whole town celebrates Li’l Sebastian because “he does being a mini-horse, and he does it better than anyone.” Even April, so worried that she’s destined to hate everything she tries, took a risk this season to find a career that nurtured her talents, and the whole team supported her in that.

Losing Parks and Rec feels a bit like losing young adulthood, maybe not in terms of age, but in terms of the permission to fall hard. Fall for people, fall for the town you grew up in, fall for Paris, fall on your face, get up, keep going. Don’t settle unless you want to. Don’t be ashamed to settle when you do. Parks is the voice that tells me that this is okay. I’m afraid to lose it. It has more to tell me. I’m afraid that life without Parks and Recreation is colder and less welcoming.

I came home from work last night to a list of scattered feelings I’ve been compiling since I thought about the finale a few months ago at 2:43 am and realized I was so far from ready. I didn’t know where to start, so I picked an episode at random and went from there. Episode 4×13: “Bowling for Votes,” in which Leslie obsessively tries to be all things to everyone, until finally she lets go and lets the ones who love her fight by her side, which is all any of us can ask for when we’re losing control. That’s fitting.

But any episode would have been. I found this show at the right time, but there is no wrong time. Anyone feeling unsettled can take Parks and Rec as encouragement to go on, to dream bigger. Anyone feeling at home can learn from Leslie Knope how to dig deep and stay dedicated until the last light in City Hall goes out. The desire to love is in every stroke of that wildflower mural up on the second floor, and the willingness to bridge gaps between people lives in the doorway of Ron Swanson’s office.

“Look, I’m not crazy. I know Pawnee isn’t Paris or London or Chicago, but it’s a great place to live and work. And serving the goofballs in this town is an honor and a privilege. And yes, every town claims its diner’s waffles are the best in the world, but somewhere in some town there really are the best waffles in the world. So delicious, and rich, and golden brown that anyone who tasted them would decide never leave that town. Somewhere those waffles exist. Why can’t it be here?”

Thanks for the waffles, Parks and Rec. I love you and I like you.

In the middle of February, I left the snow behind to spend Galentine’s Day in Los Angeles with some of the finest Doctor Who fans out there, and I’ll be teaming up with Kim and Sage of Head Over Feels to bring you all of the details. First up, Sage takes us inside the start of the con.

Posted by Sage

Disney may think they’ve got that “happiest place on Earth” business on lock, but allow me to disagree. I see your long lines and $8 ice cream bars and I raise you 3.5 FULL DAYS of programming; 3600 Whovian compatriots; and one healthy grope by John Scot Barrowman. This…is Gallifrey One.

Gally support team! From left: Sage, Gillian, Kim, Kelly (bottom), Michelle (top), Shannon.

Last year was a milestone: this blog’s first trip to the con, which is America’s largest Who-fest. But this year was our first SECOND trip, significant because of what was the same. The LAX Marriott lobby was just as we left it (except for the Starbucks finally accepting gift cards – IMPORTANT); we already knew how to best tackle the schedule and the floor plan; and – this is the raddest part – we were reunited with so many fandom friends. Gally is going to feel more and more like home every year; and I pity anyone who would dare try to stand between us and our annual pilgrimage.

There’s almost too much to report, so we’ve again joined forces with Kelly of TVmouse to bring you OT3 coverage of the convention. (For more goodies, make sure to hit up ourInstagram feed. It gets a serious workout at cons, because cosplay. Cosplay everywhere.) Ready for a run-down of Thursday and Friday? Then Al-to-the-friggin’-lons-y.

Thursday Night:

Ice Cream Social/Lobby Con:

We learned many things – about snow, about airports, about ourselves – in last year’s mid-blizzard dash to Gally 1. The most important lesson? LEAVE A BUFFER DAY. The east coasters of our party peaced out of sub-zero NYC early Wednesday morning, leaving us plenty of time to get to LA, buy all the boxed wine, house some Griddle pancakes, have a ladies night on the town, and settle in to our home base, all before the convention even started. By the time the first official Lobby Con rolled around, we were well-rested and even tan-lined. (Side effect of sunbathing next to Doctor Who producers – a thing that happens at Gally.)

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m not your boyfriend.”

What IS a Lobby Con? I’m glad you asked. Lobby Con is an amorphous group hang. It’s anywhere and everywhere (not just limited to the lobby, as you might assume); anything that’s unstructured fan-ish chill time can safely be called Lobby Con. Lobby Con is where you and yours make yourselves available to reunite with old friends, meet new ones, and exchange Gally’s most valuable currency: badge ribbons. Thursday is a veritable feeding frenzy for badge ribbons, since most attendees have a bag or two of freshly printed ones burning holes in their pockets. (And maybe some Twelfth Doctor valentines.) Word to potential future Gallifreyans: ORDER THEM. Ribbons are not an inner-circle kind of deal; if you come without any to trade, I guarantee you will regret it. Decide on your content (most are graced with Doctor Who quotes, but it’s not unusual to receive a few with Torchwood, Sherlock, or even Firefly references) and use RibbonsGalore to lay out the badge ribbon of your dreams. With your own shinies to exchange, you’ll end up with a train as long as the Fourth Doctor’s scarf. (Another piece of advice: bring duct tape to reinforce those suckers!) By the way, shout out to the LAX Marriott for so many things, but especially for being so cool about hundreds of costumed weirdos taking over their common space, often until dawn. You the illest.

On night 1, Lobby Con spills over into a new-ish Gally tradition: the ice cream social. There are few better ways to meet your social media buddies IRL than over some free dessert.

FRONDS

Strengthened by our chocolate chip and sprinkles, we resolved ourselves to brave the karaoke room. Always a mistake. Despite signing up early in the night, we spent much of the evening lolling around on the conference room floor, waiting for our song and watching the same table of locals sing over and over again. For such an inclusive con, the karaoke room is a clique-y anomaly. And our frustration over the reliable shenanigans had a negative effect on Gillian and my duet of “Take Me or Leave Me.” (Yep, it was the “frustration.” I’m going with that.)

What makes this all bearable? CON CUPS. Gally is about as family-friendly a con as you can get; and by no means will anyone who’s not imbibing be laughed out of the hotel. But if you do choose to booze, bring your own. (I recommend the Trader Joe’s boxed red— affordable and tasty.) We were unable to snag a room in the actual Gally hotel, so each night before we left the Embassy Suites across the street, we filled up our plastic mason jar sippy cups from CommuniCon (THANK YOU BRITTLES) with that sweet nectar. Alternatives are the lobby sports bar for a decent list of draft beers; or the limited selection at the Marriott’s pop-up bars. Both can be pricey. An alternative alternative is to make nice with the major league Gallifreyans, who never travel without a full bar set-up. (They’re real and they’re spectacular.)

Friday:

MILES TO GO BEFORE WE SLEEP

ALL THE COFFEE, ’cause it’s the first full day of Gally 1!

That Impossible Girl swag.

Your OT3 bloggers were up and at ‘em early on Friday to get a decent spot in the Kaffeeklatsch line. Kaffeeklatsches are otherwise known as “Are You Shitting Me?” sessions (by me alone), because they are included with your badge and give you intimate access to some of the coolest creative people at the convention. (Are you shitting me?) The programming track takes place in the Marriott board room; attendees can sign up to join an hour-long roundtable chat with the guest of their choice. (Plus, sign up as an alternative for another.) The attendance is limited to twelve people, so the experience is rich and unique. Our #1 choice was to be in the room with series 8 writers Jamie Mathieson (“Mummy on the Orient Express”, “Flatline”) and Peter Harness (“Kill the Moon.”) Unfortunately, Peter fell ill before Gally and had to cancel, so he was spared our grilling over an episode that put the “problem” in “problematic.” (You get off easy this time, Harness. Hope you got well soon though, kisses.) Our spots secured in Jamie’s sesh, I also opted to list as an alternate for the conversation with Arwel Wyn Jones, only the imagination behind the entire visual identity of Modern Who and Sherlock. More on that later.

Morning Sessions:

From there, we took spots in the Main Ballroom for the welcome session, “Good Morning Gallifrey One.” Organizer Shaun Lyons took the stage to say hey, pre-preemptively thank the guests, and tease some “changes” to next year’s ticket process. (GULP.) That led nicely into the Radio Free Skaro panel, where the popular podcasters chatted with Jamie, writer Phil Ford (“Into the Dalek”), special effects supervisor Danny Hargraeves, and more. Some highlights:

• Phil and Jamie spoke about attacking their scripts without the benefit of Twelfth Doctor casting knowledge. After a few drafts, Moffatt hinted to Jamie that the new guy would be a bit of a grump and slightly older, so – as anyone would – he started to write for Gregory House.
• Peter Capaldi hung out on set even on days that he wasn’t working. He’s so excited to be our Doctor, you guys.
• Danny is well aware that he has the “coolest job in the world.” Though maybe Peter would fight him on that.
• Danny made everyone feel the feelings when he told us that during the filming of “End of Time,” the set was cleared for an hour so that David Tennant could privately welcome Matt Smith to the TARDIS. Oh, to be a fly on the round things.
• Matt Smith’s first job as the last of the Time Lords was to not die. Danny set up the console room explosions and then gave him the directive that had to be this post’s title: “Just stand still, and welcome to Doctor Who.”
• To no one’s surprise, the drunken giraffe is a klutz. “Matt Smith broke everything. You would give him a cup of tea and he would break it.”
• Capaldi was the one to suggest the jelly baby line in “Mummy.” He is truly the chosen one.

“The Impossible Girl” Panel

Let’s talk about Clara, man.

Kim and Kelly were panelists for this session, joining Nerdist’s Kyle Anderson, Karen Park, and star moderator/Verity Deb Stanish. The topic was Miss Oswald, who is about to become the longest serving modern companion. She’s a polarizing figure in the fandom because she (gasp) dares exercise her free will, without permission and with varying results. Most of the panel agreed that her complexity makes her a compelling character; the dreaded “U” word raised its ugly head. The theme of the conversation became: Is Clara Oswald “unlikable?” What does that word even mean? And if she is, by that definition, why should we care?

• Let me say (with considerable bias that you should ignore) that Kim and Kelly were persuasive and articulate up on that dais, even when the conversation’s tone got a little dicey. Whether you believe that Clara takes advantage of the Doctor or nah (though how a human takes advantage of a 1200 god-like being you’ll have to explain to me), that relationship should absolutely not be compared to one of physical and emotional abuse.
• After that comparison was made, a guy in the front row suggested that blood was visibly coming out of Kim’s ears, which is entirely possible.
• Kyle put the main reason for my newly re-invigorated love of this show into words by comparing the “plot twist” who traveled in the TARDIS in series 7B to the living, breathing human we got to know in series 8.
• Kim postulated that Clara is so hurt by the Doctor abandoning her in “Kill the Moon” becauseshe chose to stand by him while he pressed the button in “Day of the Doctor.”
• Karen did have a point that much of the room agreed with when she protested that Clara and Danny’s relationship was never quite believable. I lean towards Kelly’s interpretation of it, which is that Clara assigned more meaning to that relationship than it really deserved so that she could claim a grip on her “real life.”
• Kim talked about what being a teacher tells us about who Clara Oswald actually is. This occupation ties in with her identity like being a nanny absolutely didn’t. (Remember how Amy Pond was a MODEL? Sigh.)
• When asked by an audience member why the Doctor continues to forgive and help Clara after she “betrays” him, Kelly drops the mic with, “I never know why, I only know who.”
• I’m impressed at how calm Kim was when answering the audience member who asked if anyone on the panel ships the Doctor and Clara. (“And see me after for fan video recommendations.”) I’m also impressed with me, Whouffaldi Patient Zero of our friends group, for trapping you all in my web.

Clara drama continued throughout the weekend. More on that from Kelly and Kim. A preview: we get heated defending a lady’s right to be the main character in her own life story.

Ladies love Clara Oswald.

Read the rest at Head Over Feels…

I’ve teamed up with Kim and Sage of Head Over Feels to bring you the full story on our trip to Los Angeles to mingle with Doctor Who‘s best and brightest. Next up, Kim takes us inside Saturday’s events.

Posted by Kim

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.  Unless you count being groped by John Barrowman, which we very much do.

After turning in (read: passing out as soon as we queued up “Galentine’s Day” on Sage’s computer) at a decent hour on Friday night, we woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to take on Saturday.  Note to future Gally attendees: you may feel pressure to stay up until the wee hours of the morning (many DO every single night of the con) but don’t be afraid to go to sleep.  Seriously, the minute I made peace with the fact that it was okay to go to bed, the happier I was.

After I spent a couple of hours studying the schedule when Gally released it a few weeks before the convention, it turned out that Saturday was our lightest day when it came to official panels and interviews. (Me in an email: By no means do you have to do everything I say but I’m pretty certain this is what everyone will want to do. #Monica)  But that’s the wonderful thing about this con: even when you DON’T go to panels, there is an abundance of things to do.

We took advantage of our free morning to both mentally prepare ourselves for our photo-op with John Barrowman and to make the rounds of the autograph tables.  The great thing about the autograph tables, as opposed to photo-ops, is that you get the chance to have an actual conversation with them.  Our first stop was the LOVELY Naoko Mori.  We caught Naoko when she didn’t have a line at her table, which lead to us being able to chat with her for as long as we wanted.  We congratulated her on unbuttoning her pants in the middle of her interview on Friday (“Guys, I had to.”) and commiserated about the weather on the East Coast, regaling her with the story of our dramatic race to LA the previous year (it never gets old).  Sage promised to make a shrine for Tosh when she visits Cardiff later this year prompting Naoko to once again throw shade at the Torchwood-ian devotion to Ianto.  (I genuinely wish that we had audio of the way she would say “Iantoooooooooooooooo.”)  She signed Sage’s photo with a “Saaaaaaaage”, so clearly she knows how Paul McGann pronounces Sage’s name.  As we said goodbye, Naoko chirped some incredibly sage advice, proving that she really knows what cons are all about.  “Have fun! Get drunk! Kiss boys!”  WE’RE DOING OUR BEST, GURL, BELIEVE ME.

These two were thick as thieves all weekend.

Next, we moved on to Eve Myles’ table, where naturally we did some flailing over her work in season two of Broadchurch (SHE IS SO GOOD ON IT).  Strangely, we did not ask her things like “Tell us EXACTLY how David Tennant smells” (HOW? We are failures).  Instead, we spent most of our time gushing over James D’Arcy, who had been confusing/enticing us on a weekly basis with his dual performances as the shady Lee Ashworth on Broadchurch and the bumblingly adorable Jarvis on Agent Carter.  She assured us that he is a delightful man and also thanked us for reminding her to watch Agent Carter.  Our work is never done. She signed the Torchwood cast 8x10s by putting a halo over Gwen’s head and WANTING to draw devil horns on Jack (she also commented that Naoko’s signing of Sage’s name looked like “sausage”), so essentially, she’s a perfect human being and we want to be best friends with her.

Then it was onto the table belonging to our official con crush (aka the “Paul McGann Award”), Burn Gorman.  This is why the Torchwood trio is perfect: Burn unknowingly landed the punchline to the joke unknowingly set up by Naoko.  As Sage handed him her picture, he also read the way Naoko had drawn out writing her name.  “Eve said it looked like she wrote ‘sausage’ instead of ‘Sage’,” Sage said.  “Well, you know—” Burn began.  “Oh no, this is boring.” “TELL US,” we shouted, and it’s a testament to his character that Burn did not flinch.  “We’re anglophiles, we promise we won’t be bored,” Sage implored.  “Well, we DO put sage in our sausages, so it’s very fitting,” he said bashfully, earning our love for life.   After that, we geeked out about theatre with him, as he’s been living in New York while shooting Forever (and to THINK I quit watching, sigh) and seeing a good amount of shows.  Sage continued her campaign to get every Whovian actor to do New York Theatre, while I commented on his somewhat unconventional casting as Bill Sikes in Oliver! on the West End.  “Yeah, Cameron (as in McIntosh) wanted to go a whole different direction with the show and about halfway through changed his mind.  I did bulk up quite a bit for that part though.”  Then I told him that I had played Nancy in high school, and his response was “Of course you did!  Look at you!”.  I may have to get that compliment etched on my tombstone.

Lastly, it was off to Hurricane Barrowman’s line. We got to the table right as he was taking this picture. His assistant made fun of him because his tummy was hanging out…to which he retorted “HOW DARE YOU!  I DON’T HAVE A TUMMY!  IT’S FLAT!!” Because of course. We listened as he started composing his tweet, pondering exactly what to say. He settled on “I have a really long one but I want it longer.” Then *I* said, you should hashtag it “RibbonWhore”. He laughed and did that very thing. And proceeded to do so the rest of the weekend. You’re welcome, America.  As he was signing for us, we showed him the picture we took with him at NYCC 2013 (the infamous BOOBIES picture) and warned him that we had a photo-op coming later and we needed to top it.  He studied the picture and said “I might just have to grab them.” CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.  We did our requisite flailing about Arrow (with John’s assistant pointing out Sage’s “Bitch with Wi-Fi” shirt to him) and told John we would see him for our photo-op.  And boy, did we.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

We’ve said it before, but the photo-ops are quick and dirty.  There are a LOT of people to go through in a limited amount of time, so you have to go into your photo knowing EXACTLY what you want to do, be it something ridiculous or just having a good snuggle.  We highly advise that when it comes to John Barrowman, you do something fun…because he’ll do everything short of kissing you.  Gillian’s Lady Ten flashed him.  Shannon wrapped her Fourth Doctor Scarf around him.  Obviously Sage and I went for the boob and pec grab (with John being smart enough to change his expression to be different in our two pictures).  He simply said “Turn around” to Michelle and then grabbed her boobs.  And Kelly?  Well she just said “Do whatever you want, John.”  He replied with “Give me your leg,” and that’s how Kelly’s picture became the cover of a bodice-ripping romance novel.  Where do we go from this collage, you guys?  Only down.

Post-Barrowman glow

Read the rest at Head Over Feels…

This is getting entirely too real.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in this week’s batch of episodes:

“Scary Monsters”

• Sandwich is the new bubble bath.

• LEYLA: X-File? SCULLY: Sandwich.

What a mom.

• It’s a self-preservation thing. The more Scully gets drawn into the X-Files, the more she’s reminded of what she’s lost. She can’t even have Mulder by her side, much less in her office, and that’s easier to deal with if she avoids the life they built together. She’ll help Monica and Doggett as a friend, but she won’t go chasing down every dead end just to make sure it doesn’t lead anywhere. She’s trying to be who she was before Mulder. It’s all she can do.
• “Well unless you bring me Spanky…” AU where Mulder is here to make a face.

• Monica and Doggett trust Scully’s judgment so completely that they turn around the minute she tells them there’s nothing out there.
• “‘How’d you spend your Friday night, John?’ ‘Driving around like an idiot.'” Bless.
• All Monica and Doggett need is the reminder that “if Agent Mulder were here, he’d keep going.” They’re still protecting his legacy with the X-Files, which has nothing to do with being Spooky and everything to do with tenacity. That’s how people know Mulder when they know him through Scully.
• “Look, I’m gonna be straight with you. We drove a long way.” Baby goat does not do leisurely drives through the countryside.
• “Agent Doggett is very stubborn.”

She loves it. He’s like her little attack goat. She just carries him around and sets him loose to eat people’s shoelaces.

“Something’s going on here.”

You can’t work the X-Files unless that phrase turns you on.

• Give her strength.

• Every decision Scully’s ever made is flashing before her eyes.

Can we get a remix of this scene? For the clubs.

Song of my liiiiiife

• “I am going to be exceptionally polite. Leave. Now.”

• Scully’s face is so animated this season, even though I think her voice is always a little less animated when Mulder’s not around. She’s lost that spark on the inside. It’s almost like she’s compensating with her face, like she’s trying to make herself feel and respond to things at the same level even when something is missing.
• Against all of her better judgment, once she’s had her “something’s going on here” moment, Scully’s on this case. She can’t help herself.
• Put this on a t-shirt:

• “Agents Mulder and Scully aren’t in this situation. Agents Doggett and Reyes are. And I don’t know about Agent Reyes…”

I hope all of Doggett’s case reports are in the third person and sound exactly like this.

• Monica translates her partner’s half-joke by explaining that he means he’s settling in to keep watch. I think he just thought it was a pretty cool keychain couch, but I like that she hears the best in everything he says. And she’s right, in a way; even if all Doggett means is that he wants to sit down, he jumps up the minute there’s trouble. Basement partners have a way of seeing truths in each other that the others don’t call attention to, because that’s how they look at every X-File—searching for an unacknowledged reality.
• I would like to know how this apron went unacknowledged for so long, because Scully doing a cat autopsy in a “Something Smells Goo-ood” apron is the realest thing in my life right now.

style goals

• “Would you keep your voice down, please? You’re gonna wake my baby.” This is not the weirdest thing to happen in Scully’s kitchen.
• “And if we figure out why, well then, you’re gonna have something really good to share with your good friend Leyla Harrison, won’t you?” Take notes, Gabe. No one knows better than Scully what it means to share “figuring out why” with someone.
• She expects that Sheriff to find a way to check in on her people. No excuses.
• A resigned “uh-huh” will probably be the title of Doggett’s autobiography.
• I was not prepared for this.

• Scully is literally holding on to Mulder’s name, and everything we know about the two of them tells me it was her idea. When Mulder cleaned out his apartment, he took his suitcases to Scully’s and left from there, because she’s his touchstone. Scully is his proof that it happened, that it mattered. He was there. He doesn’t need a badge as long as he’s got her. But I think she likes having it, because she likes making room for him. Mulder always only needs Scully, but Scully is always there to push back a bit, to insist that Mulder has a right to take up space. They depend on each other to affirm each other’s independence.

Not for you.

• “That’s all Leyla ever talks about: ‘Mulder and Scully, Scully and Mulder.'” I am so proud that she’s ours.
• Doggett remembers the old cases too. He did his research. Baby goat works so hard to be prepared for this job; he wants to help, even when he feels completely out of his element.

She loves it.

• “Maybe Mulder and Scully would see something that we don’t.” They do a lot of seeing, don’t they? Mulder and Scully always have their eyes open. He sees X-Files where she sees science, but that doesn’t matter. They have a way of drawing opposite conclusions from the same evidence and then following each other anyway, so it looks to from the outside like they’re on the same page—which they are, in the end. They just want the truth.
•  The Sheriff tells Scully that there’s no way to get to her friends and it does not compute.

They’re in DANGER and also what does “no” mean?

• Why does the touching always happen for the wrong reasons?

• The X-Files really have it out for Leyla’s eyesight.
• “Scared yet?” YES, but I’m into it?

• John Doggett is a stone cold genius.
• Don’t think. Just put a plow on your car and make it happen.

•  “I’m a medical doctor.”

• They’re like the opposite of two expectant parents making sure the baby’s okay.

The partnership IS the baby.

• I need a warning the next time the camera plans to linger over our poster.

• “So this is where the magic happened, huh?” Do you ever physically hurt for the people who haven’t experienced this show?
• “Still happens.” It is still happening. It’s not the same magic, but it’s still, in essence, the work Mulder fought so hard to preserve. He did it. He and Scully built something that lasts. “I’m happy it’s in good hands.”

AND EVEN BETTER PINSTRIPE SUITS

• “It’s clear to me now that you were better equipped for this challenge than even Agent Mulder would have been.” This is Doggett’s “X-Cops” moment. Just as Scully’s unwillingness to give in to fear kept her and Mulder safe, Doggett’s unwavering practicality saved all of their lives. This job needs a skeptic as well as a believer. It relies on that tension between people and on the tension we hold within ourselves, which is, somehow, only resolved in relation to others. Scully is never more skeptical than when she’s with Mulder, because he needs her as she is, but their long dance, those eight years of resistance and partnership, opened her mind anyway. She and Mulder are part of each other now. As they balanced each other out as a team, they became more complete as individuals.

“Jump the Shark”

• This is going to hurt.

• “Those who fight the good fight don’t always win.” There’s something about this show that doesn’t leave you, or at least, for me, something that sits in me and doesn’t stop aching, and this is so much of the reason why. There are no answers but the fight. Nothing is guaranteed, and no rough edges are dulled.
• “You must be Reyes. Enchanté.” “Yeah.”
• “Up fudge creek.” Never change, Doggett.
• I have to keep reminding myself that Morris doesn’t know he switched bodies with Mulder, because he’s definitely the type of person who would keep that to himself.
• Doggett doesn’t enjoy anything as much as he enjoys watching Monica take people to task.

• I’m not convinced that they can’t read each other’s minds.

• Not only is the Ramones shirt a sweet tribute, but it proves Langly’s point: “He never gave in, never gave up, and never sold out … Guys like that? They live forever.” Just the fact that he’s still talking about him proves that people can be remembered for the right reasons. If our team and Morris have anything in common, it’s that they all work in the shadows. But Morris is destined for oblivion; he’ll always be the guy in the interrogation room bragging about a job that can’t be traced back to him. Mulder and Scully (and Doggett and Monica, and the Lone Gunmen) didn’t do this job to be remembered. They did it because they believed in it, which eventually led them to the people who would remember them for that. This show doesn’t pretend that the right people always win, but it also insists that integrity and perseverance leave the more permanent impression.
• “Saving the world doesn’t pay the bills.” This episode is dropping hard truths all over the place.
• Morris says that he’s going to miss the old newspaper, which reminds me of all of the times we’ve seen men in suits use people like Mulder or the Gunmen to their own ends, letting them put the truth out there because it’s too crazy to be believed, fanning the flame to keep people distracted. Everything is relative and anything can be manipulated—but that’s the solution as much as it is the problem. The Syndicate put Scully with Mulder to remove a roadblock to their endgame. Look how well that turned out for them.

• “We never gave up. We never will. In the end, if that’s the best they can say about us, it’ll do.”
• “Agent Reyes and I are lookin’ like a couple of fools on this one.” I honestly want Doggett to never stop talking.
• “Whatever it takes.” But did it have to take this?

NO

• We never see them die. I’m convinced this is a long con. The geniuses are playing with us (also something I say about the writers sometimes).
• Skinner got the Gunmen into Arlington. He didn’t even know them that well, but he knew what they did for the X-Files. This job is nothing but sacrifice in service of ideals, and Skinner acknowledges that in a way that few individuals—and definitely no government authorities—ever have before. No matter what the other men in suits might say, Mulder and his people have been working for the good of the country. It’s fitting that the Gunmen should get this honor, while Mulder’s burial plot is in North Carolina with his family, because the Gunmen literally slept in their headquarters. They had nothing else but this cause. Mulder, for all of his big ideas, operates on an individual level. He got into this for his sister.
• I do love it when Skinner calls Scully “Dana,” and I do still lowkey ship him with pretty much everyone.
• “They meant so much to me. I’m not sure if they ever really knew.” Scully loved those guys. She saw what Mulder saw in them, and I think she saw Mulder in them. They were the first support system she and Mulder really had.
• “They’re gone, but they live on through us all.”

But also they’re not gone, right?

• A fun coping mechanism I’ve found for this episode is to yell “NO” at the screen while also typing “NOOOOOOO” repeatedly into your notes in case you forget later how you’re feeling at this moment.
• It doesn’t help.
• There should be a law against this hat. You can’t just put a baby in this hat and then take the baby away. That’s the least of the reasons why you can’t take the baby away, and it is still enough of a reason.

• I’m sure that hour of advance warning really helped prepare people, because I’ve known this was coming for months and I’M TOTALLY FINE.
• GOD HELP US WE’VE REACHED PEAK HAT

• Scully hasn’t forgotten what it felt like to pull Mulder into her arms, not to keep away the darkness, but to promise that she’d be there to face it with him, because that’s what he asked her to do. She just wants to protect William like she protected Mulder.
• Whole episode of this please:

“1,492 … 1,493 … 20.”

• “They don’t pay me enough.” No they don’t, baby goat. Especially if people are going to kick you in the face.
• Duchovny was here.

• It’s just a flash in her eyes, but when Scully hears Mulder’s name, she looks as hopeful as she is afraid of that hope. If he sent someone to the FBI, it means he’s not laying low enough to stay out of danger—but when has he ever done that? And she has to know. Like the Gunmen’s paper, Mulder and Scully’s relationship is tied up in both sides of the conspiracy. The answers are the problems, and the problems can be the answer.

• “Mulder doesn’t want to be found.” Joke’s on you, Spender. He doesn’t want to be found by people like you. Scully is a different story.
• Like I haven’t watched the end of “The Post-Modern Prometheus” enough to recognize Chris Owens doing a voice.
• Scully just dismisses the idea that this could be Mulder. She’s the authority on Mulder here, and he wouldn’t come back like this. But that laugh is for her every bit as much as it’s for Doggett. She’s laughing off her own fear of an idea too terrifying to take seriously.

• “What is true and what we want to be true aren’t always the same.” Translate that into Latin and inscribe it on the official seal of The X-Files.
• Doggett’s acting awfully sure about this. I think he’s projecting certainty as much as Scully is, because he knows that she’ll resist and he needs to force her to take the idea seriously. He’s going to be immovable on this in order to make her push harder. I love how these people instinctively compensate for each other; the best way for them to form a complete team is to think about what they each need most as individuals.
• Spender can’t grasp Mulder’s relationship with Scully, his puppy bashfulness, or his reticence to hurt anyone, but he’s all over the ill-timed dad jokes.

It softens her. She almost smiles for a second, because as maddening as Mulder’s jokes are, they’re part of him. If this were Mulder, she would want to know that he’s still the kind of person who tries to make light of his life.

• “Are you going to help me?” “I don’t know how I can.” Scully’s always been inclined to trust people who need help, and after everything she’s been through, she still hasn’t lost that inclination. But she worries that anything she does for this man could put Mulder in danger, and Mulder trumps everything.
• Scully sees Mulder as someone who wants to look for answers with her. Just the act of searching brings him back.

She’s starting to doubt herself now.

• “It’s not him.” Doggett and Monica are still halfway across the hall, but Scully can’t hold back. She has to get it out there; she has to keep getting it out there; it’s probably the title of her case report already.

I am a medical doctor and my word is final.

• Be right back I have to gather crumbs from the table of Scully’s sexually charged interactions with people.

• She and Mulder went rogue and stole files and I bet it was so hot until he started humming some ‘going rogue’ theme music that he made up himself.
• “Tell me where he is!” “I have to know.” Scully needs him so badly. The closer she is to this case, the harder it is to accept.
• “He’s in pain. Terrible pain.”

• Her voice BREAKS.

“Then let me go to him.”

• It’s killing her to be so helpless; Scully doesn’t need anyone to let her do anything. Spender gets it all wrong when he says that it’s Mulder’s decision. Mulder wouldn’t leave until she told him to, and she wouldn’t do that until they’d planned his return together. But everything’s off the rails now, and if Mulder is reaching out, Scully has to be able to reach back.
• What Spender lacks in emotional intuition, he makes up for in theatrics.

• Scully and Mulder’s baby would come out ready to punch the world.

• She believes this could be Mulder. She gives him the baby because she would want Mulder to be able to hold his son. I’m okay.

• Skinner’s looking for proof that it isn’t him.

Thanks office dad.

• “Mulder knows those files inside out.” His passion is his alibi.
• “I don’t know what you mean.” “I think you do.”

Here we go.

• She thinks it’s Mulder. She thinks Mulder is sitting in front of her burned and lying, and there’s suddenly this whole new familiarity to her voice, but it’s not that new, because this is the way Scully always talks to Mulder, intimate and in his face.

• “I want the truth from you … The truth that you won’t speak.” The truth we both know. 
• “Don’t do this to me. Not you.” He’s her friend, and he tells her the truth.
• Scully can go to Mulder with fears she can’t take to anyone else, even if those fears are about him or are him.

“How do you know my life?”

• But Mulder would never be so cold and clinical about William. All he has to do is say, “Your child is part alien,” and that switch flicks. Even when Monica and Doggett tell her the ID is a match, she can’t hear it.

•  Scully “always held science as sacred” before Mulder taught her that some truths go deeper. What does she have left if science invalidates that too? Proving Mulder’s identity would disprove everything she knows to be true about him.

• “Can we get you anything?”

A word with the writers? Ice cream?

• Scully’s shut down. Her whole life is upended but don’t worry, she just needs a minute.
• If Mulder’s the one who kicked Doggett in the face, then all is forgiven. He obviously has a lot going on, and he needs protection. “You’re going to live, buddy.”

Here’s the thing, baby goat: I might not live, because your kindness might kill me.

• “What do you want to do?” She can’t do it anymore. Scully can’t make any decisions. What kills me the most is that she doesn’t say it like she’s defeated. She sounds less hollow in this moment than she did when Mulder was abducted or on the run. It isn’t Mulder that she’s lost; it’s hope. For just that second, she’s not fighting back, and it’s a reminder that Scully isn’t defined by what she has, but by what she fights for.

This isn’t okay, because she looks like she’s okay.

This IS okay, because she looks like she’s clinging to the edge of a cliff. We need the pain in Scully’s eyes right now. We need her brittle and focused and scraping up what agency she has.

• Knowing Mulder brings her back. “If he’s so afraid, then why did he run?” Mulder runs straight at his fears, and whenever possible, he does it with Scully. He wouldn’t pull her into this only to leave.
• “You know a person in so many ways. Ways that a test can’t even begin to know.” Scully trusts Mulder more than she trusts science.

And one of those ways is sex.

• Should we talk about how much Doggett hurts on her behalf?

He’d be happy to run that DNA test again.

• “If that was Mulder, I wouldn’t care.” [Closes laptop, curls up under blanket, naps for three weeks]
• Doggett believes Mulder might be ashamed that he couldn’t protect himself, which Scully thinks is a stretch. She knows he can handle himself, but he’s also never been insecure about needing her help.
• Team Apollo 11 is here.

Scully is in her head, and Monica and Doggett are looking to each other, but they’re all in this together.

• Confirmed fish tank sighting, shut it down.

Scully’s literally keeping Mulder’s interests alive and making a place for what he raised to keep growing. It takes so little to destroy me.

• This is a sad Renaissance painting that I would like to set ablaze.

• Petition against Scully saying she’s a medical doctor when she’s crying.

• Nobody, even Mulder, touches that baby on Doggett’s watch. But just the fact that this guy hurt William makes Doggett a little less certain that it is Mulder. There’s room for doubt in “I don’t care who the hell you are.”

He barely knows Mulder, but he knows this isn’t like him.

• At least we have this friendship.