Just before we left for Los Angeles, Sage sent us the following gif. Caption? “Us by day three.” Accuracy? Astounding.

Con life is a commitment. If you don’t throw your body and soul into it, you’re not doing it right. This is as true for guests as it is for attendees, because while we were “Uptown Funk”-ing you up to the bitter end on Saturday night, John Barrowman was stuck in a bathtub. If he could wake up the next day and command an auditorium full of Whovians, we could certainly get out of bed to watch him. So we did. And when we turned on the television, Burn Gorman was there. You know you’re at Gally when real life is better than your dreams.

Every Christmas is “Last Christmas”

Our day began with “Last Christmas” playing in the big auditorium, which was a nice way to ease gradually into the morning with DEBILITATING FEELS OH HELP CLARA’S OLD BUT SHE’LL NEVER LOOK ANY DIFFERENT TO THE DOCTOR. IT’S TOO EARLY FOR THIS.

“Mummy on the Orient Express” live commentary 

New honorary member of our club Jamie Mathieson took the mic first for a live commentary on his rollicking, Agatha Christie-inspired train adventure, also known as Sage’s entire bucket list. He was moderated by Who’s 50 author Robert Smith?, who stepped up and knocked it out of the park when writing partner (and, yes, one-time Head Over Feels guest contributor) Graeme Burk came down with a cold. (Feel better, Graeme!) Our sparkling kaffeeklatsch conversation with Jamie obviously helped him prepare to discuss the episode, because he hit on a lot of the same points, but with added shippiness.

• Jamie on the Doctor and Clara’s early conversation in the corridor (but really any scene): “They said there was gonna be no flirting, but you look at this, and it’s sizzling.”
• He didn’t specify in the script that Clara would wake up on that beach so far from the TARDIS, but obviously the Doctor carried her until he found the perfect spot.
• Clara’s “I love you” was also not scripted toward the Doctor, so we can thank the director for that glorious moment of tension, and we can thank Kim for asking about it at the kaffeeklatsch in the first place.

In conclusion, Jamie Mathieson is one of us, Jenna and Peter know exactly what they’re doing, the directors ship it, get on this literal space train.

An interview with John Barrowman

We were already girding our loins for Barrowman’s arrival when we saw his tweets.

No objections.

The first thing he did when he took the stage was lead us in the wave, which came with a story. He did a benefit once—not naming names—that started with the wave, which John felt was an odd and slightly inappropriate way to commemorate the funds they’d raised for tsunami relief.

The whole interview was like that: thoughtful, shocking, rousing, and requiring plenty of audience participation. John Barrowman is living his dream. He’s a lifelong Whovian who knows what it means to love this show and wants to give people a safe space to share it. When con-goers lined up for questions, he generally asked their questions back to them, especially with kids: “Who’s your favorite villain?” “What do you love about the Doctor?” No YOU cried about it. By default, his position in the fandom has made him an advocate, and while that’s not why he got into the business, he’s honored to put his platform to good use. “I can be your voice,” he said to the first person who approached the mic, “and I am proud to be your voice, and I will speak up for you.” He held court for an hour and it felt like a revival.

Some highlights:

• Relationship advice from John Barrowman: “Forgive each other, and don’t try to change each other.” Also role play.
• To that end, he said he only let his husband get his pilot’s license because of the uniform.
• Barrowman’s husband, Scott, once called him while flying a plane to inform him that he could see meth labs blowing up on the ground below and it was “BEAUTIFUL.” When Barrowman told him to please hang up and fly the plane, Scott replied, “Okay, I’ll take a picture!”
• John Barrowman, Elisabeth Sladen, and David Tennant all lived in the same building in Cardiff. They called it Who Towers.
• He first met Elisabeth Sladen in an elevator of that building; his episodes hadn’t aired yet, but she knew him. (“I know who you are, Jack Harkness.”) Then she offered up Sarah Jane to spank Captain Jack. We all miss her.
• As he left the elevator, Barrowman got flustered and called out, “Say hi to K-9 for me!”
• He and Elisabeth held hands when Davros came back.
• “And those are cherished moments.”—John Barrowman on going pants-less on set
• He put a lot of props in a lot of inappropriate places, and he did not wash them.

• He’d like to be on Game of Thrones. “Jon Snow… Barrowman is coming.”
• He’ll do anything but sing on command. “Download it. iTunes. 99 cents. Part of that goes to me, love yaaaaaaaa.”
• At the start of the hour, he warned parents that if they let their kids stick around, they knew what they were getting themselves into. Still, it didn’t take long for a crowd of children to gather at the front of the room. “Whose kids are these down in front?” Barrowman yelled at one point. “NOBODY’S? How’d you like to live with Uncle John?” Yes please.
• Like the rest of us, he’d love to see Captain Jack meet the Twelfth Doctor. He’s already got the perfect opening line: “So that’s what you look like now… daddy.”
• Barrowman has told both Burn Gorman and David Tennant that they too can get groped in con photos if they pretend to be gay, which Sage submits is “wholly unnecessary.”
• Sage also fueled my need to relate everything to The X-Files when we speculated on how often Barrowman and Tennant email each other, quoting this classic David Duchovny/ Gillian Anderson exchange: “Five times a year.” “That’s what you tell people.”
• John Barrowman doesn’t act like this on the set of Arrow. Something about getting fired? Excuses.

An interview with Burn Gorman and Eve Myles

Barrowman’s Torchwood costars are probably the only people who could follow him onstage, not only because they know him, but because they’re quietly unhinged in their own right. Did John rub off on them, or are they just like this? What does prolonged Barrowman exposure do to people? For that matter, what did this to Barrowman? Naoko says he didn’t used to be like this. “Something happened to him.” Was it Tennant? Who triggered this entire cast’s descent into madness? What I’m saying is that if someone structured a psychology class around the extended family of Doctor Who, I’d be all over it.

• Eve has publicly discussed John Barrowman’s anatomy so much that she doesn’t know what’s real anymore. “Honestly, sometimes I think I’m in a dream.”
• She met Burn when she chased him down the street after an audition to tell him that she liked his work in Bleak House (which also stars Queen Gillian Anderson, so Eve and Gillian should probably work together next).
• Eve auditioned for her role in season one of Doctor Who in “her favorite shirt,” which features “naked sexy ladies making out,” so of course she got the part.
• Working with Chris Eccleston was “a dream.” NINE, WE MISS YOU.
• If Captain Jack ever showed up at Eve’s door, she would not turn him away. “Come in and have a piece of cake.”
• After so many years playing hard-to-love characters, Burn has developed a complex, and Eve will not have it. She even got the audience involved: “So guys, Burn is gorgeous, right?” When we answered with catcalls, she told him to shut his face.
• Burn left the stage to hug an Owen cosplayer. He must be stopped.
• At one point, Eve and Burn giggled so much at the thought of a prank that I thought we’d never learn what it was. (It was stuffing Barrowman’s boots with sausages.)

• Eve and Burn made up a song about her audition t-shirt. The lyrics are “naked sexy ladies/ naked sexy ladies/ naked sexy ladies/ makin’ out,” and I never, ever want to stop singing it.
• “Just let me get the rocket launcher. I don’t care that you’re seven months old. Grow up.”—Eve on filming as a mother
• Her five year old wanted to name their dog Jesus. (Burn: “That’s a catchy name.”)
• No but really, Eve and Burn showered each other with praise.
• American craft services were such a revelation to her that she could not stop eating on set, to the point where a production assistant had to come into her dressing room and gently ask, “Have you met our friend Spanx?” Eve wasn’t even mad, because she hadn’t met Spanx, and now she could eat more food.
• It’s also possible that she told that entire story in the hopes that Spanx would send her free merch.

“The Pen is Mightier” panel

With that song planted firmly in our heads, we stretched our legs in the dealers’ room before Sage’s panel. I bought this.

And I cradled it with respect as Sage dropped the mic.

Sage and fellow panelists Erik Stadnik, Willow Polson, and Nicole Carlson were tasked with leading a discussion on the importance of female voices in Doctor Who‘s creative universe. The pool of writers has so far been dominated by men; next season will be the first time a woman has written for the show since 2008. We need to talk about this.

• The debate over shipping is one of the most frustratingly sexist rifts in the Doctor Who fandom, so let’s clear this up: Wanting the Doctor and his companion to get together does not make you less of a fan. David Tennant loves this show more than any of us (fine, maybe he and Capaldi are tied), and he called Rose the Doctor’s girlfriend this weekend. And we need to do away with the idea that fans either always or never want sexual tension in the TARDIS. It’s possible to embrace the romance when it makes sense for the characters without forcing it on every companion. As Sage put it, “If Capaldi takes me away, I’m going to fall in love with him, but I also love the Doctor and Donna BFF-ing in space.”
• Erik succinctly pointed out that “that idea that men will go away from something women find appealing is just bollocks.” (Feminism helps everyone, you guys. Common sense.)
• At one point, the whole room turned on a guy who said Martha Jones wasn’t a strong character.
• The question shifted from, “How would Doctor Who look different with more female writers?” to the much more difficult, “How do we get more female writers on Doctor Who?” We all know that fan involvement makes a difference. The Veronica Mars movie is basically the new Remember the Alamo. But it’s also important to remember that the project only started because cast and creator were free and willing. Change requires work behind the scenes, it moves slowly, and there are a lot of extenuating circumstances to consider. As Kim explained, Rachel Talalay’s directorial gig would never have been possible without a British passport.
• So when the conversation inevitably turned toward Moffat’s responsibility as a showrunner, Sage kept everyone on topic: “This is where the argument derails: We’re putting the entire history of institutional misogyny on Steven Moffat.” Moffat doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to writing fully realized female characters (though Clara gives me hope that he’s learning), and he’s made comments about his female characters and actresses that I’m not on board with. But if we try to pin the show’s lack of female creatives entirely on Moffat, we’re doing it because we want someone to blame, and because we’d like to pretend that there’s an easy solution to what’s actually a complicated, industry-wide problem.
• There’s no perfect way to fix it. Sage acknowledged that any initiative to hire female writers will bring up accusations of tokenism, but that’s not enough of a reason not to hire.
• In short, as she pointed out (can you tell she killed it up there?), “Doctor Who should be about the entire human experience, not just a part of it.”

Please imagine having this whole discussion with “naked sexy ladies makin’ out” in the background of your subconscious.

Closing ceremonies

Sage’s birthday hit just after Gally, so Michelle treated her to the best surprise present of all: a photo with Burn Gorman.

STAY WITH US BURN

While they shared a moment, the rest of us settled back into the main room for the final festivities. We caught most of “Previously on Doctor Who,” a conversation with the series’ more recent cast and crew. Ellis George stole the show, cementing her place in our pantheon of personal heroes when she said that if she had a TARDIS, she’d go back and audition for season one of Sherlock. “I can be Watson. It’s okay.” Get it, Ellis.

The next big thing.

The discussion was followed by “The Year in Review,” which I suppose is a more official way of saying, “We made you a 55-minute fan video because we love you.” And I love YOU, Gally. This isn’t even just a montage of moments from the show—it’s also a compilation of the past year of Doctor Who media coverage, because remember that time when a young Peter Capaldi sort of leaned on a stool?

Closing ceremonies gave the con’s organizers and guests a chance to gush about each other, which just made leaving even harder. Fortunately, we still had one more night to eat Thai food, trade ribbons, and talk about the show. Also a BAFTA-winning member of the Doctor Who production team was stopped for riding a scooter in the lobby.

Thanks for the memories, Gallifrey One. We touched John Barrowman, so by the transitive property, we touched the world.

Bring me your finest water guns and take me to the desert.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in “The Truth,” which is not the final episode of The X-Files:

• PUPPY’S HERE.

YESSSSSS

• So glad he still hasn’t figured out his stealth run.

bounce bounce bounce

• Mulder attacks a super-soldier; Mulder goes flying through a sheet of glass.

• That is so perfectly, stupidly, beautifully Mulder anyway—so noble and ill advised. He has to know that he’s done everything he could. He wouldn’t be Mulder if he didn’t keep fighting against impossible odds. The impossible is his whole life.
• He doesn’t have Scully and he’s losing his mind.

This is because David Duchovny wanted secret underground bunker slash fic, isn’t it?

• Party in the opening credits and literally everyone’s invited.
• WHY ARE THEY MAKING US FEEL THESE THINGS

“His mother.” This is what Mulder holds on to: the idea of the family he almost had.

• Scully can tell that something is wrong just by looking at Mulder’s back.

What are you still doing over there?

• “Dana.” He would never call her Dana so casually.

Look how thoroughly he’s disappeared into his act. There’s no recognizable Mulder in this blank face; even the way he holds his hands is different. Mulder, who is all about the truth, who will stand up in court and declare without apology that the man on trial can squeeze through an air vent or push his will onto people, can lie after all—but he’ll only do it for Scully, to keep her safe and get back to her in one piece.

• Mulder once joked that Scully must have seen this coming, that she always knew his delusions would catch up with him eventually. His open mind is easily manipulated. He knows that he can get her to believe that he’s been brainwashed because she’s seen him lose himself in the promises and criticism of others. But he said it when the FBI first tried to split them up: Scully is the only one he trusts, more than he trusts himself. Mulder never gave in to the voice that told him he was guilty because he knew she would never believe it. She’s his touchstone. Scully is the reason Mulder can’t be broken anymore and the reason he has to act like he was. But there’s the old tragedy again—that what saves them is what keeps them apart, that she won’t know she’s the one he held on to, that he can keep from her just how completely he needs her.
• Fine then, Mulder; Scully’s coming to you.

• This is killing him.

must not make out with Scully, must not make out with Scully

NOPE.

• Her case reports are meditations on the human spirit and she’s roused to eloquence when she’s mad, but Scully doesn’t have a language strong enough for Mulder. Everything comes out as passionate understatement.

Also the face stroking, PLEASE.

• “Oh hey Walter. Good to see you man.”

Don’t you dare.

• “We’re going to get you out of here” is a promise to get him out of jail, but more than that, it’s a promise to get the real Mulder out of the person he currently is. Mulder is never a lost cause to Scully.
• Okay, excusing himself to turn around and stare at the wall might be taking it too far.

(surreptitiously checks neck for Alaskan ice worms)

• Skinner puts his hand on Scully’s lower back like Mulder usually would.
• “And they have him believing that he did it.” Scully doesn’t doubt Mulder’s innocence, but she also doesn’t blame him for getting drawn in to the military’s lies. The only people at fault here are the ones accusing him, and she’s going to take them down.
• “Knowle Rohrer” FOUR TIMES IN NINE SECONDS thank you finale.

• Scully’s calling in every resource, Kersh included. I’ve always loved the way she shows up at his office in “Triangle” to ask for his help, because she knows that she’s hard to say no to and she’ll do whatever it takes for Mulder, but also because she genuinely hopes that it’s possible to find good in almost anyone. Scully has learned Mulder’s wariness, but she still wants to believe that people are capable of doing the right thing if given the opportunity. She’s seen what their friends have done in Mulder’s name, and she believes in his ability to change people even more than he does.
• “I’ve been asked by a female agent, Mulder’s closest associate, to beg mercy of the military court to give Mulder every consideration based on his good character.” She’s not even trying to prove that Knowle Rohrer can’t be killed. It’s not about that. The only truth Scully has any interest in right now is the truth of Mulder’s integrity. That’s why she became his closest associate in the first place.
• It definitely wasn’t because she loves being trolled at inappropriate times.

I’m not even on that show yet.

Anybody miss me?

Gonna make him pay.

• This is how Mulder likes to show that he’s okay—by messing with Scully—and the more it becomes his habit, the more effectively it proves that he’s still himself. But at this point, kissing Scully would prove that just as well.
• Nothing stands between them anymore.

Skinner out.

• Mulder never breaks eye contact. He’s not worried that the world will end if he kisses her; he’s a little worried that it will if he doesn’t.
• Scully NEEDS THIS.

• I just ate a whole pint of ice cream because of what they’re doing with their thumbs. It’s “Come on back” meets “You were my constant.” It’s the two of them saying in tandem that they love what they have and they’re going to be okay.

• The kiss goes into a hug and then back to a kiss and then into a series of neck kisses and then into a full hug. This is Mulder and Scully summed up: a messy entanglement of friend love and romantic love and the urge to go at it right here on the prison floor. This kiss has it all.

• Including Walter Skinner

In better lighting, so we don’t forget what show we’re watching

• “Come here, you big, bald, beautiful man.”

This is how I greet Skinner in my dreams.

• “The only thing you’re going to be kissing, Mulder, is your sweet ass goodbye, the trouble you’re in.” Ass kissing! Unprompted! Finale gives the people what they want.
• Mulder can’t talk about the trouble he’s in without taking Scully’s hand and kissing it, but he’d do the same thing if they were talking about baseball stats.

After everything he’s been through, he’s as soft and in love with her as ever, and Scully is as relieved as she is sad for him.

• “What’s really on trial here is the truth.” MULDER
• When Mulder points out that you can’t kill a man who won’t die, Scully somehow looks even more in love with him, because he doesn’t think he’s guilty and he still believes in super-soldiers and in some ways that’s more proof of this man than even his inability to let go of her.

But don’t worry, he’s still holding Scully’s hand to his heart.

• “Skinner can defend me.” Mulder isn’t even asking. He’s not demanding, either; he’s just telling Skinner what he knows he’s capable of and trusting that his friend will come through. It’s hard for Mulder to put such complete faith in someone else, but it’s even harder for him to believe that others will want to put their faith in him—that he’s worth the sacrifice. He never could have done that before Scully.
• I am living for Mulder and Doggett’s begrudgingly respectful nods. Mulder isn’t in focus and I don’t even care. Remember when puppy and baby goat went on a high seas adventure together? I watched it again last week, you can’t stop me.

• “You ready for this? I know this is impossible.” Doggett has to make it clear that he believes in Mulder’s innocence.
• “Mulder, it’s me.”

We’ve lost the couch and apartment 42 and the big cell phones, but we’ll never lose “Mulder, it’s me,” which is really just Scully reaching out to Mulder to tell him what he already knows: that she’s here. She loves being expected as much as he loves having someone to expect.

• Scully keeps coming back. She came back when she thought Mulder was brainwashed, and now here she is again. She can’t stay away. “Mulder, I’m so scared that I’ve just got you back and now I’m going to lose you again.”

• “I need you to talk to me. Confide in me. Or we’ll lose.” The kissing is great and all, but it won’t win this court case. Their only shot against the military is the first advantage they ever had—their willingness to trust each other. But Mulder’s seen that advantage ripped away from them both, and he’s just waiting for it to happen again. This is trauma; this is the aftereffect of solitude and torture; this is where he’s landed after years of getting burned by the government. It’s Mulder’s turn to be afraid to believe. “We can’t win, Scully. We can only hope to go down fighting.”
• Skinner told Mulder that he doesn’t get to see his son anymore, so we can just sweep that emotional fallout under the rug as quickly as possible. But I do appreciate that Skinner wanted to spare Scully at least that much pain, to try to keep it from coming between her and Mulder. He’s always protecting their relationship.

Look at his eyes. Mulder is IN this with her.

• “Our son, Mulder. I gave him up. Our son. I’m so afraid you could never forgive me.”

That is so much to carry: not only the pain of losing William but the fear of losing Mulder with him. She’s been shouldering it all on her own.

• “I know you had no choice. I just missed you both so much.” Scully did technically have a choice, however much she believed that the outcome was inevitable, but all Mulder has is this one helpless admission that he missed his child as much as he missed Scully. His whole life is just being forced to brush off loss after loss.
• “Looking for the truth,” he says, buried in Scully.

Mulder sounds so self-conscious, still wishing for that peg leg to make him more content, but his refusal to settle is a part of him, and Scully loves it all. As long as she can follow him, she’ll be fine.

• “I can’t tell you.” “That doesn’t make any sense.” Yes.
• Look who’s picked up Scully’s “can’t keep my mouth closed when I look at my partner” thing.

Mulder, compose yourself.

• COURTROOM: (is definitely where they play Tuesday night Bingo) SKINNER: Well, this feels right.

• Walter Skinner, though. Remember when the Smoking Man loomed in the corners of his office? The boss with questionable loyalties is now Mulder’s top defender. The man who didn’t want to rock the boat put out a “Thank You for Not Smoking” sign. He told Mulder that his resignation was unacceptable. He told CSM to pucker up and kiss his ass. Skinner helped. He cared about Mulder and Scully. And he did it imperfectly, sometimes falling back on the company line, because he never entirely lost his fear of what would happen to him when he made his allegiances known. He just decided to make them known anyway. Skinner stopped letting the fear stop him. Like most of us, he found it hard to live as unapologetically as Mulder and Scully, but he kept trying to do the right thing. He made his “wayward kids” feel less alone, with their help. Skinner is the clearest indicator of what Mulder and Scully can do—not find answers or take down the system, but change individual lives.
• “How did you get this assignment?” A lot of good people get assigned a lot of questionable tasks in this business. Skinner knows; he was one of them. Skinner is so aware that the system makes pawns out of people, and before he can plot his next move, he has to know if there’s a chance that his opponent can be swayed. He asked the same thing of Doggett, and his instinct was right: Doggett didn’t know whose dirty work he was doing.
• Kallenbrunner asks how Skinner got his assignment; Skinner stares into the abyss.

NOTE TO SELF KICK MULDER’S BUTT

• “It’s okay. Try your case.” YOUR case. Mulder’s just handing it all over, trusting Skinner to fight on his behalf. If he really believes that he’s a lost cause, then this is Mulder choosing his successors. Scully gets his personal quest; Skinner gets his professional one.

loyal puppy

• Because this episode is a love letter to us all, “Dana Katherine Scully” is followed almost immediately by “medical doctor.”
• “I was assigned nine years ago to the X-Files to spy on Agent Mulder, whose methods the FBI distrusted.” Four years ago, while working on an assignment outside the FBI mainstream, I was paired with Special Agent Dana Scully, who I believed was sent to spy on me—to debunk my investigations into the paranormal. That Agent Scully did not follow these orders is a testament to her integrity as an investigator, a scientist, and a human being. She has paid dearly for this integrity.

• Scully is now forced to sit before a committee with her partner’s life on the line, as Mulder did when she had cancer. But while this hearing is to save Mulder’s life, Mulder’s hearing was not technically to save hers. It was his own career on the line. To save himself, Mulder chose to talk about Scully—because her “goddamned strict rationalism and science” have saved him a thousand times over, because he can’t do this alone, and because her life was wrapped up in the government’s plot against him but was so much more important. But to save Mulder, Scully chooses to talk about conspiracy and aliens.
• It’s not like she’s suddenly decided that the conspiracy is her top priority here. Scully’s only concern in this trial is Mulder. Mulder is the one who keeps falling back on the truth about aliens as the most important—more important even than their relationship, because it’s more important than his life. Only Scully’s life has ever trumped this conspiracy for him, and after spending so much time away from her, convincing himself that their separation is worth the cost, there’s a chance that he’s forgotten how useless his quest felt when it looked like she might die from it.
• But Scully’s humanity can bring Mulder back, as it has since day one. The FBI sent her to spy on him, and she didn’t listen. Her testimony hinges on that fact—on the fact that she refused to be a part of the agenda. What saved him personally was her willingness to challenge him, but what saved him professionally was that she followed him anyway. Scully followed Mulder until he convinced her. Now she believes too, and that’s his credential.
• I love that Mulder is so caught up in his work that the only way to save him is to prove the alien conspiracy. His life depends on being told that he’s right after years of hearing he was wrong. And I love that the finale gathers everyone together to defend the man the FBI hid in a basement, because while his actual life is found in his work, the worth of that life is found in the people who’ll fight for it. The entire concept behind this episode just feels right to me.
• MONTAGE, NO.

actual child

• Scully’s talking about Roswell, and Mulder couldn’t be prouder.

They have communication like that, unspoken.

• “Is this all leading anywhere?” “YEAH. The destruction of mankind.” Marry me.

This is his “the virus may be extraterrestrial” face. Spooky Mulder, reporting for duty again.

• Meanwhile, Skinner.

• “Agent Scully, isn’t it true that you and Mulder were lovers, and you got pregnant and had his love child?” WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT

Do we kill him?

Not here.

• Dating app for people who are sexually frustrated by the way Skinner says “mockery”
• “I hope this isn’t the entire basis of your defense, Mr. Skinner.”

Scale of 1 to 10, how much would you mind if it is

• The “Paper Clip” shirt is still the best possible thing Mulder could have worn for four days straight.

• I know the finale needs puppy’s sad Samantha face, but it still kills me.

• He’s broken up about what Spender’s been through, too. Mulder doesn’t like the thought of anyone suffering, especially when they’ve suffered in his place.

• “I know why you’re here and what you want.” And he knows she’ll talk him out of it if he’s making a mistake.
• “I’d rather die, Scully.”

This is your one in five billion speaking.

• “Because this is greater than you or me. This is about everything we worked for for nine years—the truth that we both sacrificed so much to uncover and to expose.” Mulder needs to believe that he and Scully have been working toward something worth dying for, because if they haven’t, then what’s the point of everything they’ve already lost? Maybe he can make it all mean something if he goes down fighting for it—if he tells the truth about super-soldiers and doesn’t back down. Deep Throat saw years ago that this was the difference Mulder could make: “And maybe sometime, through you, the truth will be known.”
• Scully gets where he’s coming from, because she gets him. But if he’s going to risk it all for the truth, then shouldn’t it be for the whole truth? “Then expose it, Mulder! Take the stand. Whatever it is that you’re withholding, take the stand and hit them full force.”
• “I can’t.” The colonization date is one truth that he doesn’t want to speak aloud, not to Scully, because if he tells her, they’re going to have to do something about it. What if there’s nothing to be done? Or what if he can do it on his own? After a year of trying to handle things by himself—when what kept him going was the thought of a family waiting back home—Mulder doesn’t want this quest to be Scully’s life. He refuses to accept that she’s made it her life too, that she’s in this with him, that “how about those Yankees?” can’t actually keep her safe. Everything Mulder can’t accept comes down to Scully’s life being at risk.

• He might die for what he believes in—a part of him welcomes the easy idealism of it—and if he doesn’t die for the truth, then he’ll keep fighting for it. That’s what he does. But he’s always been so aware of what Scully has sacrificed for this job, and he wants her to have an end to all this. Scully can represent his end to all this—a corner of his world the conspiracy can’t touch, a life waiting for him if he can finish what he started in the desert. And if there’s nothing to be done, at least she won’t lose the next 10 years trying.
• Mulder told her before his abduction that the personal costs were too high. He was right. He just has no idea that for Scully, the steepest cost is a life without him. This isn’t about ideals or theoretical victories. Scully doesn’t give a damn about finding a hill to die on. They’ve already lost what they’ve lost, and nothing can make it any easier. Reasons are a terrible thing to be left with after losing someone you love. Life is just hard. That’s all it is. And all they have is them. This is about holding on to their relationship—their one good thing—with everything they’ve got and not letting go.

• “You say this is greater than us, and maybe it is, but this is us fighting this fight, Mulder, not you. It’s you and me. That’s what I’m fighting for, Mulder. You and me.” Scully’s only concern is Mulder, but her priorities are compatible with his. She’s not telling him to stop fighting. She’s telling him to remember that this fight is only possible together. He has to know that this dream of keeping her out of it is futile, anyway. She won’t let him go alone.
• “I’m putting the truth on trial.” MULDER.

Look at him, he’s nuts, I love him

• “What truth? Whose truth?” Even his subconscious knows he’s idealizing something that might not exist.
• Mulder lets hallucinations help him more than actual people, because he can’t do anything more to ruin their lives I’m okay.

Ghosts holding tangible items is one of my favorite X-Files.

•  “The son of a bitch hung up on me!” Don’t hang up on baby goat!

His shirt shrinks when he’s angry.

• Here, have some casual domesticity.

• “Skulking.”
• Do I ship Marita and Ghost Krycek?

Maybe.

• Mulder is ready to die for the truth, but he won’t ask anyone else to.

• The best of them just do as Scully does, ignore him, and risk their lives anyway.

• ‘Do you know this human puppy?’

• Guys.

Propose to me like this or don’t propose to me at all.

• Mulder has two modes: ‘So chill you think I’m asleep right now’ and ‘I am in the presence of an alien, let’s flip some tables.’

For the first time in this trial, he’s not aimless. He can do something more than watch his friends put themselves in danger for him.

• Whenever Mulder struggles against people who try to hold him back, I think of the opening of “One Breath” and how Scully’s life became his reason to fight.
• “We were never gonna win.” He is so convinced that this is how he dies.
• We go a whole season without Mulder’s smile, and this is how they make it up to us.

A plague on the house of the lighting department.

• Mulder is so selfless. I want to punch him in his beautiful, half-shadow face. Monica and Doggett are volunteering to risk their lives, which is not the same as forcing Marita to risk hers. He has people now. It’s okay to let them help.
• “What’s left for us on the X-Files?” Doggett is the Scully of Basement 2.0, and not just because he’s a skeptic. He’s in this to bring Mulder back. Mulder’s life depends on proving the worth of his work on the X-Files, but it’s also pulling further away from the X-Files every time: First, he could save the work by leaving it, and now the people he trusted to carry it on can only save him by leaving it behind. His life keeps outgrowing and outpacing this job, because people like Scully refuse to listen to the idea that he’s any less important.
• “We came to this job to give it our best. It’s the way we’re gonna leave.” Mulder and Scully attract such quality people.

• “They control the game. They own it.” “Then let’s shove it up their ass.” Imagine a whole season of Mulder and Doggett just talking to each other.
•  Mulder looks almost sad when Doggett puts himself on the line and says that Mulder couldn’t have killed Knowle Rohrer, but he respects it, too.

• Kallenbrunner spends this whole trial tearing down Mulder’s work only to praise Doggett for having a distinguished record. What he really means is that until recently, Doggett didn’t step outside the box. He’s applauding Doggett to shame Mulder, and Doggett is having none of it.

• Doggett says “thank you” like he’s going to rip this guy’s head off.
• He doesn’t doubt Mulder’s integrity, even though they disagree. The ability to hold that tension is the basis of the show. That’s why Scully became Mulder’s partner.
• How dare anyone use baby goat’s sincerity against him?
• “We’re trying a man for murder, not taking a trip down memory lane.” Speak for yourself, Kallenbrunner, this is a finale.
• What are finales for if not watching Mulder struggle to hold it together at the thought of his son? Never mind, I want the murder trial back.

• Solid NO to this pain.

• “You don’t care about that child or what Scully had to sacrifice. You’re only too happy she had to give it up so there’s no proof… You don’t care what these people have sacrificed over the last nine years—what’s been lost to their cause. You make a mockery of it, gladdened it proves your point.”

“To destroy a man who seeks the truth, or to destroy the truth so no man can seek it? Either way, you lose.”

• SLAY, MONICA. She’s right, obviously, and she’s applying a Scully point to a Mulder problem. Scully’s argument hinges on the fact that right now, the people right in front of them outweigh any other objective. But for Mulder, even the most far-reaching objectives of this fight are still very personal, because the men they’re up against don’t care about the lives in their way. They’d use a baby to their own ends.

Mulder gets why Scully likes her.

•  Scully doesn’t care what Monica does or who she does or who she has to grease; she needs those records for Mulder.
• “I found it.”

She’s so excited. And her hair looks flawless and she’s not even trying.

• “You’re in contempt!” Good comeback, Sculls.

• Mulder (literally) won’t stand for these guys. They don’t deserve it.

Skinner looks so confused.

• “I’d like to congratulate you on succeeding where so many before you have failed. A bullet between the eyes would have been preferable to this charade. But I’ve learned to pretend over the past nine years—to pretend that my victories mattered only to realize that no one was keeping score. To realize that liars do not fear the truth if there are enough liars. That the devil is just one man with a plan but evil, true evil, is a collaboration of men, which is what we have here today. If I am a guilty man, my crime is in daring to believe that the truth will out and that no one lie can live forever. I believe it still. Much as you try to bury it, the truth is out there. Greater than your lies, the truth wants to be known. You will know it. It’ll come to you, as it’s come to me faster than the speed of light.You may believe yourselves rid of your headache now and maybe you are… but you’re only done it by cutting off your own heads.”
• What an exit speech. Mulder stays quiet for so long, but when he does decide to speak up against the conspirators, it’s all “No government agency has jurisdiction over the truth” and “Evil, true evil, is a collaboration of men.” Which it is—the enemy has never been the aliens. It’s always been the men in suits—but the act of collaboration has robbed them of their individual identities. CSM doesn’t even have a full name. Mulder and Scully are the thorn in the FBI’s side because they’ve only made each other more human, so that the conspirators can’t take them down without proving their own inhumanity. There are enough liars here, sure, but they’ve lost so much of themselves that they’re worth less together than Scully and Mulder are worth on their own.

• He still believes that the truth is out there. The X-Files is about people who chase the truth but so rarely find it but keep chasing it anyway, and that’s so much of why this show never leaves me.
• That and Gillian Anderson crying.

The camera never breaks from her. It doesn’t need to. All that matters right now is what it would do to Scully to lose Mulder again.

• Scully can’t even answer the phone. She looks so lost and small. I like that she trusts someone else to grab it without having to ask.
• No one in their lives is going to let this stand. They all ship it way too hard.
• “I’m here with Skinner.” Did baby goat think Mulder wouldn’t trust his motives until he knew Skinner was there too?
• “We’re getting you out of here.”

Yeah, Mulder, people want to help you. Get used to it.

• So proud of Doggett for breaking the law without a second thought. When we met John Doggett, he was lying because the FBI told him to, and now he’s defying the FBI in service of the truth. This is what this job does to people if they let it.
• Scully wears an oversize coat one more time for science.

As soon as Mulder is at her side, she closes off to everyone else and turns to him.

• Touching each other. No wasted time.

• Mulder doesn’t have people to say goodbye to in the same way that Scully does. Skinner and Gibson are just about it. Monica and Doggett are in his camp, but they aren’t his friends to the same extent that they’re Scully’s friends, and his parents and sister are dead. Scully has a mom and two brothers, at least one of whom seems to care that she exists. But it’s Scully who runs off without looking back and Mulder who reaches out. It’s Mulder who pats Gibson on the cheek, Mulder who’s always surprised that people are willing to put themselves on the line for him, Mulder who wants to make himself small so others will be big and Scully who wants Mulder to be free. Scully has people; Mulder has ghosts. Mulder needs Scully; Scully chooses to need Mulder, every time. She has what she came for here.

• “Where are you going?” “To see a man about the truth.” Mulder’s dialogue in this episode is absolute gold.
• Doggett saves the poster first.

I let out an actual wail.

• It’s like he’s keeping it safe for us all. That poster matters—it says something about Mulder that his motto isn’t “I believe” but “I want to believe.” The truth can’t be wished into existence. As a scientist, Scully knows that, but one of the reasons she and Mulder fit together so well is that Mulder’s always known it too—that his search has always been in that gap between desire and proof, believing that what’s actually true is more important than what he wants the truth to be.
• BUT he also tells the Gunmen that he wants to change this truth. Not everything is permanent. Scully makes him believe that he can do more than make the truth known—he can make it better. They’re both willing to see things as they are, but they’re not passive about it. The truth can’t be wished, but it might be able to be worked.
• The Gunmen are hallucinations, so I’ll give them a pass on saying things they’d never say. Mulder’s subconscious is just working through how much he wants to disappear with Scully and never look back.
• Also bye.

He’s so tender. This kiss isn’t to prove anything to her; he just loves her and finally has her back and he’s HAPPY ABOUT THAT please drive this car over me

• Replace Matthew McConaughey with Mulder in this tweet.

You just kinda know that if you asked Matthew McConaughey for directions he’d start with the history of the region.

— Matt Zoller Seitz (@mattzollerseitz) September 29, 2014

• “Pueblos. Anasazi Indian. Abandoned 2,000 years ago. Nobody knows why.” “Yeah, Mulder, but what are we doing here?”

Dammit Mulder, cut the crap.

• White t-shirt, I’ve missed you most of all.

• “I hoped and prayed you were dead, you chain-smoking son of a bitch.” Scully and Mulder have parallel insults for CSM. They’re so cute when they’re hating someone together.

• “You’ve even refused to testify what you learned, even though it would have saved your life. You damned me for my secrets, but you’re afraid to speak the truth.” Ugh, fine, that’s fair.

Mulder, look at her. How could you leave her out of anything?

• “You call me afraid? Look at you sitting in the dark like a fossil.” At least Mulder doesn’t hide from the truth. He’s out there making an effort.
• Old white guy calls Indians the original shadow government and then invites Scully to sit on his lap. CSM is really outdoing himself in the villainy department.
• “You don’t have to hear this.” “No, I want to hear it, Mulder.” Scully hasn’t had to do anything at any step of this partnership. She’s chosen to stand by Mulder and accept the risks from day one. Mulder lives with what this job has taken from her by giving her the freedom to walk away, but he should also know by now that she never will. She’s in this fight with him.
• And Monica’s in it with Doggett. Partners.

You two are welcome to just turn around and make out at any time.

• At last the magnetite claims Knowle Rohrer.

• They want to help, but it’s always going to be Mulder and Scully for themselves in the end.

We have to go hold each other in a motel room, it’s KIND OF OUR THING

• I’m already crying (again).

Rainy motel to rainy motel. A snake eating its own tail.

• Has anyone ever DIED because of TV parallels

He told her that nothing else mattered to him

and now he has nothing else but her.

• The intimacy in Scully’s voice when she asks what Mulder is thinking. She’s never going to stop reaching out to him.
• “I’m a guilty man. I failed in every respect. I deserve the harshest punishment for my crimes.” Mulder is still dealing with the trauma of his torture, but he internalized it differently than the military planned. They should have known that Mulder is used to being called a failure, and it’s only ever made him think more closely about what kind of success is worth the cost.
• “I believe that I sat in a motel room like this with you when we first met, and I tried to convince you of the truth. And in that respect, I succeeded.” Can we celebrate this? They did it. He didn’t give up when she questioned him; she didn’t give up when he tried to push her away. Mulder trusted Scully to keep listening when no one else did, and now she believes. They both won this one.
• “But in every other way, I failed.” “You don’t believe that, either.”

Scully believes in aliens, Mulder, not your self-doubt.

• “You wouldn’t tell me. Not because you were afraid or broken, but because you didn’t want to accept defeat.” Scully knows him. That’s literally what he said to X. If Mulder was afraid that knowing the truth would crush her spirit, I think it’s because damaging her hope would, in turn, crush his. Mulder’s spirit can’t be broken if Scully’s isn’t.
• “Why would I accept defeat? Why would I accept it, if you won’t?” Mulder never stops—it’s a combination of work ethic and passion, and it fuels Scully on both ends of the spectrum; she understands his ability to keep going when there’s nothing to put their backs up against, but he also inspires her to find a reason to fight. He is that reason. “Mulder, you say that you’ve failed, but you only fail if you give up. And I know you—you can’t give up. It’s what I saw in you when we first met.”

The memory of their innocent baby selves makes him smile.

• “It’s what made me follow you.” She’s just bringing him back to life over here.

PUPPY

• “Why I’d do it all over again.”

She wouldn’t change a day.

• “And look what it’s gotten you.”

Mulder, it’s okay. You can stop blaming yourself for everything now.

• “And what has it gotten you?” The loss goes both ways. “Not your sister. Nothing that you’ve set out for. But you won’t give up, even now.”

He still believes that if he quits now, they win—and with that date on the wall, he’s right.

• “You’ve always said that you want to believe. But believe in what, Mulder? If this is the truth that you’ve been looking for, then what is left to believe in?” Scully’s with Mulder all the way, but can he even find an ideal behind this fight anymore? If he’s fighting to change the truth, then the truth itself can’t be what he falls back on. What’s left?
• “I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us—greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.” They can save themselves, but not alone. They can be together and put each other first only if they don’t lose sight of everyone else. Mulder’s worldview and Scully’s priorities need each other.
• “Then we believe the same thing.”

And they’re both pretty bashful and excited about what that means, which is that they get at least six more episodes.

• He has the strength of her beliefs.

• STILL HIS CONSTANT

OKAY BYE

•  Mulder makes the first move, but Scully affirms it and leans into it.

That sounds about right.

SHE RUBS HER NOSE AGAINST HIS. Show this to the aliens and I guarantee they will cry and call off the colonization. Problem solved. Revival retooled to be about Scully and Mulder playing tambourine across the country.

• The rest of us don’t even deserve beds, to be honest.

He’s just wrapping himself around her.

• “Maybe there’s hope.” Scully and Mulder are on the run. They’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their child, and the message they choose to leave us with is hope. Cancer and abduction can’t cancel out baseball diamonds; funerals and bees don’t get the last say over root beer, Superstars of the Super Bowls, “Smile, Scully,” not-stolen bouquets, towers of furniture, arms extended as invitations to dance. There are rainy cemeteries, but there are reasons to laugh in them in the middle of the night. There’s someone waiting on the couch for you when you’re ready to give up. None of this means that everything is okay right now; none of it guarantees that everything will work out later. But life keeps going. This is what Scully and Mulder are to each other—not the end of the fight, but the calm in the middle of it all. They’re “the light in the dark places.” Thanks for that, Chris Carter.

I’m back! AND SO ARE MULDER AND SCULLY.

It’s been so long since my last post that you all probably gave up on me, but my job has taken up almost all of my free time, and I wanted to get this one right. It’s a finale. But it’s not the finale, because Gillian’s about to go red again and David is crying at new scripts and everything is great. And I want to say thanks. (I will be writing up I Want to Believe, but having seen it, this feels like a more appropriate time.)

It’s been almost a year since I started watching The X-Files. In that time, I’ve lost my job and found a far better one. I’ve met the best people and watched Gillian Anderson kiss David Duchovny onstage, twice. I’ve gotten too little sleep on some nights and taken too many sadness naps on others. I’ve seen those reddit posts about how I’m exactly what you were like at 14. I’m 26. I know what you mean, I hope. And I appreciate it more than I can say. I’m glad to have helped even one person remember what it felt like to watch this show for the first time, and I’m so grateful to have been embraced by this fandom from day one. Sometimes I wonder how you put up with those early posts, when I actually only wrote about times when they could literally make out. I didn’t know Mulder and Scully well enough to write a novel about the car scene in “Tooms.” How did you have the patience to know that I’d get there?

The friends who introduced me to this show came over to watch the finale, and when they left, one of them said, “I’m so glad you’ve taken to The X-Files like… a Kelly to The X-Files.” Yes. It’s been a uniquely all-consuming thing for me—a “singular passion,” as Deep Throat would say. (I took a Myers Briggs test and it told me I have the same personality as Fox Mulder, and then I read every word of the description nodding and crying at these insightful paragraphs about Mulder, which proves their point, really.) And sharing this experience with all of you has made it something much bigger for me. It’s pushed me to sit with scenes that need a little extra thought until I’ve figured them out. It’s given me a reason to pause and the best excuse to marathon; in the end, I think these posts made me watch this show both faster and slower than I would have on my own. I was never watching alone, even when it was 1:15 am and I was the only person in my apartment and it felt like the right time to watch “Home.”

Thanks for watching with me. Thanks, at the most selfish level, for making me feel appreciated on days when I needed it. Thanks for loving Mulder and Scully, and thanks for believing that I’d love them. Thanks for never giving up on this show. This revival is all thanks to your hard work. You kept me honest, you made me a whole person, and I owe you everything.

I’ve never been so conflicted.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in I Want to Believe:

• I don’t know about y’all but I really liked The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008), a two-hour supercut of Mulder and Scully making snow angels and drinking hot cocoa in “West Virginia.”

You have to hand it to this movie for wasting absolutely no time reminding us to trust no one. “This is West Virginia,” it says. “No,” I say, the daughter of a West Virginian, but even if I weren’t, I’d know.

• “Scully. Dana Scully.”

I need a momenttttt

• I love her doctor hair. I love the low ponytails and the messy buns and the braids that she throws her hair into like it’s second nature, like she’s not even trying. I bet Mulder braids it sometimes, sitting on the porch while she leans against him, looking at the stars. I bet he’s good at it.
• Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital for saving people

• This place is all wrong. Scully’s faith isn’t an ornament in a horror movie; it’s a set of questions she asks in the dark. It’s also a kind of interpersonal answer, in that it offers her a set of concrete things she can do for other people. Scully’s beliefs show themselves in the cross necklace she gives to a frightened child and the handful of dirt only she thinks to throw on her partner’s grave. Her faith is how she interacts with the world and tries to make sense of it, and it’s as much a struggle for her as Mulder’s beliefs are for him. The point of Scully’s Catholicism isn’t to create divisions but to break them down, to blur the lines between her and Mulder: They each see the value in continuing to fight for whatever kind of hope they have, but they don’t want that hope to be blind. What they want most is the truth.

• But this isn’t the environment for honest questions and active answers, and Scully knows it. As much as she commands the room, she’s chafing against it, and that makes me sad for her. Maybe I’m just not used to seeing Scully painted with the brush strokes that The X-Files usually reserves for Mulder. He’s supposed to be the one who stands before a disapproving tribunal and pleads a case that no one wants to hear. It’s the FBI’s job to be the faceless enemy in Mulder and Scully’s quest. But the entire idea behind this movie relies on watching the FBI court Mulder and Scully; it’s turned the Bureau from a bunch of old white guys into Amanda Peet and Xzibit; the old white guys have erased themselves from the narrative; the FBI can’t be the villain. So Scully’s beliefs, complex and quiet, are inverted into something too loud and too simple and pitted against her instead.
• Anyway! Free Scully from the garbage hospital.
• Nice of them to let her work pediatrics when her residency was in forensics, though. I know she could go back to residency, but we should maybe address it.
• “I don’t work with Fox Mulder any longer. I don’t work with the FBI.”

mmmmMMMohmygod you’ve got so much integrity you’re not even really lying

Called Out

• Love This Gate

They live in the middle of nowhere and they know that this gate is both too much and not enough for whatever’s out there. But she still opens and closes it every day, rain or shine.

• Love This Driveway

“If I had to settle down, build a home, it’d be a place like this.”

• Love This Unremarkable House

It’s like if Mulder’s apartment moved to the country and developed Scully’s taste in art. They built a home together. They went looking for homes together. I think they saw something of themselves in this place: There’s no way for anyone who isn’t in it to understand its magic. And after so many years of being pressed on every side—by the Syndicate and the Bureau, by “the darkness” and near-death experiences—those forces let go, and Scully and Mulder still hold themselves together. The pull between them was always stronger than the pressure on them. They’ve become, and to some extent always were, this island of a house, still standing even though it has nothing to lean on but itself.

• I’m trying not to be easy for this parallel, but I’m so easy for it. I’m putty in this parallel’s hands; let it mold me.

Nobody down here but Dana Scully’s most wanted.

• “You’ve become awfully trusting, Mulder, for a man wanted by the FBI” is (a) clunky exposition (b) a confusing attempt to keep the exact state of Scully and Mulder’s relationship vague for a little while longer, even though it’s really not that odd for him to assume that it’s her because she lives there (c) all of the above.
• “‘Auf einer Wellenlänge,’ as the Germans say. It’s a precognitive state often confused with simple human intuition, in which the brain perceives the deep logic underlying transitory human existence, unaided by the conscious mind, materializing much as you did just now. Though if you’d actually materialized, you’d be rapidly dematerializing.” Ahh, there’s the man who corrects how people pronounce “ronin.”

Mulder, are you coming on to me?

• The deep logic underlying Mulder’s transitory human existence is Scully.
• That’s not innuendo, because you know she’s on top.
• Screenshots from this movie are the reason I wasted months of my life thinking beards didn’t suit David Duchovny. I can never get those months back.

IT JUST NEEDS A TRIM

• “But who believes that crap anymore?” makes me sadder than it should. It’s a joke. I know it’s a joke. But Mulder isn’t supposed to make jokes like that to Scully. He’s self-deprecating with other people and earnest with her.

• Scully says that she had a visitor, and suddenly he’s all puppy dog eyes and worry.

• ‘Mulder, the FBI is desperate for your forgiveness’ and ‘Mulder, they’ve just been happy to have you out of their hair’ are opposite sentiments and should not both be true, but they ARE both true, because the FBI. Loves. The GAME. The suits love nothing more than to use Mulder as their pawn; they can’t do this without him, even when he gets out of hand. Part of me likes watching the Bureau squirm, likes watching it cast its eyes to the ground and whisper, “I made a mistake,” while Mulder barks, “Louder! I can’t hear you!” into a megaphone. Drop and give him 20, FBI. But a bigger part of me resents how easily the enemy can be defanged, because what does it say about everything Mulder and Scully lost in their fight if all the Bureau needed was a little time apart? An organization that wanted Mulder dead doesn’t want him dead anymore. Why? Just because. His life hinges on a whim. They’re making it up as they go along, and Scully and Mulder pay the price.

Some things never change

• Mulder, Too, Has Known Pain

“Shit,” I almost forgot how much I care. What a drag.

• He wants that peg leg. He wants to be totally content here, because he has Scully, and he doesn’t need anything else. But he’s throwing pencils at the ceiling and doing push-ups to pass the time, and he knows he’s meant to be doing more. Mulder doesn’t stay in the comfortable bed with the devil outside, even when Scully is in that bed with him. Mulder gets out there and helps people. He helps when it’s a terrible idea for his own safety, he helps when he knows Scully is going to have to dive in after him to bring him back, and he helps when the people asking for his help don’t deserve it. He can’t do anything else.
• Working with Scully is always his one condition. Give Mulder the opportunity to make any demand he’d like; he’ll choose partnership with Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. every time.

Of course she gets shotgun

• Zip your coat, Mulder.

Mulder doesn’t zip his coat once in this entire movie

• I’d care about this if things were different:

• I can’t believe The X-Files found the one thing not made funny by the X-Files theme.

• From the show that named Octavia Spencer’s character Octavia and everyone else William, it’s Dakota Whitney!
• Whitney doesn’t even try to engage with Scully; she acts like the X-Files were just Mulder’s game, and Scully did her part by getting Mulder here. How can Whitney claim to have done her research but not understand that everything Mulder and Scully accomplished was because they were working together? What does their time in the basement look like when it’s written down in official reports? What sense can you get of Mulder and Scully through the FBI’s eyes, when from the beginning they were more than the FBI knew how to handle? They never could color inside the lines or investigate with conventional methods; they were humans up against a machine, and it actually feels entirely right that the Bureau would have no language to describe them, that Scully met a man whose entire life was files and together they did something that no file could capture. Even Whitney has no idea who she’s just called in. So Scully enlightens her: She refuses to be cut out. She asks the pertinent questions and makes herself a part of this, like she has from day one.
• An aside: Look at her.

LOOK

• It’s like they’re the only ones in the room.

• Annnnnnd now if someone could please make the pedophilia jokes stop.
• I expected better of Billy Bones from Muppet Treasure Island, tbh.
• “Bugger” is not a Scully word.
• “Well, I have another word if you’d like.” “I’m sure you do!” He loves her.
• “You were good in there.” He LOVES her. “All I had were questions. But you pushed him, you challenged him. Like old times.” He loves old times.

And gazing

• “I want you here.”

“This isn’t my life anymore, Mulder.”

• Why did Scully tell Mulder to get involved if she didn’t plan to join? She knows she’s never been able to let him run off without her. And why would she claim that this would be good for him if she didn’t already know, at some level, that they each need a monster to fight? I understand wanting to get away, wanting to not be the kind of person whose life stabilizes in the shadows, but Mulder and Scully can’t be the light in the dark places if there isn’t any darkness at all. Their relationship inverts the way we think about light: What’s bright is there to hurt them. It’s blinding and antiseptic; it floods hospital rooms and train cars and drags them into spaceships. The light dissects them. The darkness lets them heal. Mulder and Scully run into each other’s arms in deep woods and find hope in the night sky and, lighting department be damned, kiss in dimly lit rooms. They deserve more light, but they can’t push away the darkness entirely without also pushing away a part of themselves.

Look at him! He’s already Mulder again; look at his eyes. He has someone to help. But what excites him even more is the idea of helping someone with Scully again: the idea of needing her not to get the get the groceries or hold a bank account but to save a life together, like old times.

Not a big fan of old times right now. Still a big fan of Mulder.

• “Let’s just say I want to believe.” Scully rolls her eyes from the other car.
• “And his sister was abducted by ET.” I think I gave Drummy a fair shot, but he can go now.

Contractually obligated sad Samantha face

• “Why go to such great lengths to create such an elaborate fiction?” says the man who believes that the government is engaged daily in the process of crafting elaborate lies to distract us from the imminent reality of alien colonization, who once took a brief hiatus from that viewpoint because he decided that the really elaborate lie was actually the aliens.
• Mulder, zip your coat.

• “I’m not the most popular girl at the FBI right now for calling you in, believe me.” Oh honey, they would never let this happen if they didn’t want it to.
• “Yeah, well. I’m only half the team.”

The other half is so pretty. Have you seen how pretty she is? Every time she talks about science I propose to her. She shot me once.

• Whitney still doesn’t get that Mulder’s insights are made better when they’re challenged by Scully. I still don’t get why every woman on this show who isn’t Scully or Monica has to be written like she’s lowkey crushing on Mulder. Lowkey crushes on Scully are fine; who could blame? But Scully appreciates Mulder when no one else does—that’s the point. It’s not that I want to sentence him to a life of being ignored by everyone but Scully because it’s romantic. It’s just that when someone else does tell him that his insights are needed, he deserves those words to be free of ulterior motive.
• Scully knows a frightened kid when she sees one. She knows fear when she sees it.
• “Don’t be afraid.”
• Give her someplace to cry in peace!

She needs Mulder!

• [*NSYNC VOICE] Here we goooOOOooo

Also what Mulder says right before Scully tells him that they should get married

• Scully and Mulder read each other’s minds all the time, but if they didn’t each occasionally find each other mysterious and unknowable, they wouldn’t need each other. What makes their relationship work is that even when they don’t know each other’s thoughts, they feel them; they understand that something important is going on beneath the surface, and they make room for it. Last time we saw them like this, it was Scully who asked what he was thinking. Now it’s Mulder’s turn to reach out to get inside her head—and he didn’t always do that. It took Mulder a long time to understand that asking Scully about herself wasn’t a breach of the unspoken trust between them. He got there.
• This is the best shot in movie history:

[CROWD CHEERS]

*Yes yes yes here we go, Mulder has got the flow*

• They’re spooning and Scully is making complimentary dick jokes. And nothing else happens in this movie, bye
• I love the way his whole world shrinks to the size of Scully’s problems.

“Why haven’t you told me about this before?”

• “Why bring a kid into the world just to make him suffer?” IDK, ASK CHRIS CARTER.
• “How old is he?” Rip my heart out and impale it on those West Virginia mountains; he knows what she’s thinking. On this, he can read her mind.
• “I think our son left us both with an emptiness that can’t be filled.” I feel the same about “William” (2002, dir. David Duchovny).
• When Scully encounters a problem that can’t be cured, she curses God, because she was raised to believe that things should be just. Mulder wasn’t. He’s never seen anyone in a position of power lose sleep over others’ suffering, his own included, so he’s never thought of himself as deserving an unburdened life. It was always Scully who wanted that for him, so of course he wants the same for her. It’s this cycle of justice between just the two of them: this dance they do to make the world balance out beneath their feet. They take each other’s burdens because she showed him how. Just as Scully saved Mulder from phenomena she didn’t always believe in, he’ll curse a God he doesn’t believe in if it means that she can get some sleep. And she accepts it. This totally symbolic gesture is the biggest comfort to her, because she trusts him not to let her go through this alone. That’s all they each need.

Remember when Scully and Mulder were casually affectionate in the home they shared and this was just life?

• Can we also talk about the fact that Mulder is under the blanket? He’s not reaching out to her from the top of the covers; he’s not sprawled halfway under the sheets while she gets ready in the bathroom; he’s not alone on his couch with the TV blaring or asleep at his desk at 3 a.m.; Fox Mulder is wrapped in a comforter with the woman he loves. I just had to walk it off.

He’s going in for more. He is Going In for More

Iconic

Anyway I love The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008) and Scully should laugh all the time

• A concept: Scully and Mulder talking about FBI toxicology reports in bed together in 2016.
• Their pillow talk would be all existential questions and suffering and dick jokes and “hey, there were traces of animal tranquilizer in that severed arm.”
• You could just trim it, Mulder!

Change your fate

• Hang this in a museum.

Skeptical Partner Wants Both Sex and Reasonable Discourse: A Painting

• If you think I didn’t tear up at this .gif, let me tell you something.

I did.

• Touch himmm

Do it Scully

• Whitney calls Scully to fill her in on the case because she knows Scully is with Mulder in the middle of the night and also because she is definitely afraid of her.

I wouldn’t even make direct eye contact with her, personally.

• What is this tomfoolery?

Did we ASK for another Diana Fowley?? Did we ask for a show that thinks most women are Diana Fowley?

I like this because Scully isn’t jealous; she’s just appalled

• Mulder, your COAT.

• Father Joe is a mess of a character and Mulder’s “Tell me” is wasted on him. I love his “Tell me”—the way the emphasis is never on the “tell,” but the “me.” It’s not an order; it’s an invitation. Mulder is here to listen to victims when no one else will. But Father Joe is not a victim.
• “Mulder, stop.” Okay? Why? He’s just asking questions. He’s not jumping onto a moving train or getting experimental brain surgery or sailing into the Bermuda Triangle all on his sweet lonesome. I routinely make terrible decisions and regret them a few hours later, because I am a Mulder, but Scully is a Scully, and she’s ride or die. She doesn’t give anyone advice that she hasn’t thought through. What is Scully seeing from Mulder now that she, of all people, isn’t ready for? What happened to,”I worry about you and the effects of long-term isolation”? What about the look she gave him when he handed her the folder? What changed her mind?

Maybe it was the fact that the FBI REFUSES TO LET THEM RUN OFF TO MAKE OUT IN THE WOODS IN PEACE SO WHAT’S THE POINT

• “This is about you trying to save your sister.” A bright-eyed Scully with velvet on the collar of her brand new blazer said as much to her partner’s face in Iowa in 1993, because she needed him to know that she saw him making every case personal. But it isn’t 1993 anymore, and this Scully would never. This Scully knows that every case is personal. (“It could have been you once, or me.”) This woman walks into a child’s empty room every day of her life, too. She watched Mulder dig his hands into the dirt to uproot that feeling, and she dug in with him. Mulder already found his closure with Samantha; they both know that. The extent to which this is about his sister is the extent to which everything and everyone always will be, and he’d be a completely different person if that weren’t the case.

But he can never stop trying to make it so no one else has to hear that.

• If Scully is worried about Mulder, it’s only because she’s not including herself in the equation. Samantha is the reminder that not everyone wins, but Scully is the hope.
• Isn’t the fact that Mulder has to ask someone for a flashlight proof enough that he’s hasn’t been living his best life?
• “Don’t give up.” Don’t be creepy, maybe.

I hate this

• Father Joe doesn’t deserve “Don’t give up” any more than he deserves “Tell me.” And does he know who he’s talking to? Dana Scully has sometimes refused to give up on as many as three so-called “lost causes” before breakfast. The only difference between her perseverance and Mulder’s is that his focuses on caring for the ideal Everyone and the people he’s just met who represent that ideal, while hers has more to do with long-term relationships. It’s no surprise that Scully won’t give up on Christian (from the show that brought you a bunch of Melissas and a half-dozen Williams, it’s a sick Christian in need of Scully’s care!), especially after William. What is a surprise is the way she’s going about it. The Mulder brush strokes continue to be all over Scully: She’s the one fighting an unfriendly panel. She’s the one keeping quiet about her plan and ignoring her partner’s phone calls. While he volunteers to lose sleep on her behalf and tries to keep her in the loop (“an exact match for the previous amputation you noted, Scully”), she goes rogue. She takes risks. She googles stem cell therapy. She googles it.

BYE

• Scully would call an expert.
• SCULLY WOULD CALL AN EXPERT.
• SHE WAS CALLING THE GUNMEN MORE THAN MULDER WAS BY THE END. SHE LOVES EXPERTS.
• How many of Mulder’s voicemail messages do we think get cut off at the tone? All of them?
• Why are we all here if Scully doesn’t get to be the one to ask what Mulder is thinking and then pop a trunk with him in perfect time?

• “These young people look so much the same.”

Also this movie’s opinion on Amanda Peet and Gillian Anderson

• You can’t make me feel good about this, Mark Snow. I see you.

Nice shot though

• Proud of Scully for taking a break from studiously avoiding Mulder to let him braid her hair this morning.

Great job Mulder!!!

• This is a familiar lack of personal space and I’ve missed it and love it and welcome it back with open arms.

• “I need you on this with me.”

Mulder is less desperate this time than he was 10 years ago. He’s more sure of himself: He needs her on this WITH HIM. This isn’t about her utility to his mission. This is about THEM, together.

• He’s so focused on her. What is she afraid of? He is fine, and I think what scares Scully is not that Mulder is “actually okay” but that she is—that she never really left behind a life of chasing slim leads and taking big risks and refusing to give up in the first place. She just channeled it into one boy.

Sure.

• “I can’t look into the darkness with you anymore, Mulder.” Oh God, not the darkness.

I am forever grateful for this line though.

• “Scully, this is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. This is who I was before I met you. It’s what I do; it’s everything I know.” “Write it down. Put it in a book.”
• Should I even respond to that? It’s so silly that I’m not even mad. I just want to pat that line on the head and send it to bed with a glass of warm milk. When it wakes up tomorrow, it’ll understand what it did. “Put it in a book.”
• “PUT IT IN A BOOK,” says Scully to Mulder, because he loves making everything about him, and it’s his dream to turn his sister into a merchandising opportunity, and he’s been itching to give everyone more ammunition to dismiss his ideas, and the people who were trying to kill them both for a long time would definitely not mind.
• She can’t tell him to stop investigating because she doesn’t want him to stop.

“But I can tell you that I won’t be coming home.”

For like a night, right?

• Reminder that she talked him into taking the case.
• This is fun.

• Christian’s parents clearly have no idea what they want so I’m glad we’ve already started sticking a needle in his brain.

IF YOU WATCHED THIS SHOW YOU’D UNDERSTAND. IF SHE KILLED YOU NO ONE WOULD EVER FIND THE BODY

she’s thinking about it

• “He’s not my husband.”

Scully is having a very bad day

• SCULLY: (Calls out a pedophile priest for his actions) THIS MOVIE: Whoa there Scull, little harsh, don’tcha think?
• Hey just wondering but where are the aliens and why have they been replaced by a nightmare that someone’s homophobic uncle had about The Gay Agenda?
• “Three guesses who he’s married to in the state of Massachusetts.” Oh no
• “I think this is a longer conversation.” Which Mulder should have with Scully.
• The FBI hasn’t changed.

Great crime-solving, Drummy

• Mulder’s luck hasn’t changed, either. Being kept on the sidelines is still working to his advantage.

• But he also keeps losing people.

…who call him Fox

• FINALLY

Light and dark find middle ground

• “I just want to be sure.”

That’s all she’s ever wanted for him

• As soon as Scully starts interrogating Father Joe, she and Mulder find their old rhythm: She feels him thinking. It’s like she’s saying what he can’t.

• Again: FINALLY.

• She told him not to argue, and he didn’t—they’re really giving Mulder’s post-abduction phase a run for its money in the terrible communication department—so it took her this long to remember what one hallway speech accomplished a decade ago. This would be a great time for Scully to make a hallway speech of her own, but Mulder cuts it short, because he’s decided to take the exact wrong lesson from the wrong things she was saying, which she now knows were wrong (or maybe he’s just bitter).

“It’s like you said: That’s why we can’t be together.”

• Mulder isn’t the type to get dramatic to prove a point, and he definitely isn’t the type to decide, after finally letting himself believe that this relationship is worth it for Scully too, that they don’t fit together after all. For himself, Mulder leaps without looking, but for Scully, he stops and thinks. I’d hate to see you carry an official reprimand in your file because of me. I couldn’t let you risk your life on this. I’m not going to watch you die, Scully, because of some hollow personal quest of mine. It took Scully repeatedly reassuring him that she wouldn’t put herself on the line for anyone but him, that he was worth it, for Mulder to accept that she wasn’t going anywhere. Which is exactly why Scully would never hold her presence in Mulder’s life above his head like some kind of bargaining chip, using their relationship to make him do what she asked. He introduced himself to Scully in the context of what he’d lost, and she promised the opposite. She didn’t have to agree with him to stand by him. If Scully could go back on that now (which she wouldn’t, in this context, but here we are), it sends him right back to the start, convinced that he’s meant to be alone.
• A nice 360-degree view of Mulder not zipping his coat, for fashion:

DERELICTE

• The badge never really explained his incessant questions, but now he doesn’t even have a badge.
• Puppy just…bites his phone.

• I know we’re doing the whole homage thing, but if you think Mulder has anyone other than Scully in his contacts, you’re lying.

He’s also memorized her number.

• Scully was so worried about the darkness but honestly the most dangerous thing Mulder has done in this movie is look at his phone while driving.

NOPE

• Hey Chris.

Apparently the urn holds the ashes of his dog, who died during filming. He looks so SAD. Everything is sad.

• I can’t believe we went straight from that to the image of a dog’s severed head, which I had to look at with my own two eyes.
• “Yeah, it’s me.” Does that sound like the voicemail greeting of a man who expects calls from more than one person?
• “Mulder, the FBI agent’s alive.” Okay well her body may be alive but she has no head; I feel like that’s an important distinction, Scully.

Also I can’t call Monica Bannan by her name, Mulder. It makes me miss Monica Reyes too much

• “YES IT’S DOCTOR SCULLY.”
• “I can’t reach Mulder.” “Well, where is he?” “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be calling.”

Let her run the Bureau already

• “Then let me talk to somebody there with some balls who can.” Bless.
• She’s missed yelling into her phone. She’s been saving that up.
• A beacon in the night:

• I already feel safer than I did ten seconds ago. Why hasn’t Skinner been here the whole time?

Pretending that he has any confidence in Mulder’s judgment: It’s like riding a bike.

• Meanwhile, Mulder interrupts an illegal head transplant to ask them nicely to stop; does anyone here speak English? He has a wrench.

• “I know Mulder. He’d get to a phone and call first.”

Scratchy beard is the scene I’d save from a fire, but this is my actual favorite moment of the movie.

• Love Means Never Having to Pretend Your Partner Makes Good Choices
• Read this. ‘ARE YOU BROKEN?’
• Maybe, but at least he has a smartphone.
• YESSSS

I’m taking that “hey” as a Doggett shout-out and you can’t stop me

• His half-conscious smile has me big time.

MAKE OUT

• Give Skinner Backup 2k8

• Scully busts in like, ‘I’ve been running my hands through Mulder’s hair and it isn’t doing anything. I’m a medical doctor.’

People are dying but Mulder needs a coat

• But there’s a role in this that she’s meant to play, and it’s why Mulder needed her. Skinner picks up on what Scully needs from him without having to ask. He’ll get Mulder. She’ll get the dying people. “I have work to do here.”

This is exactly what she did when Mulder was hypothermic in a tub.

• “Skinner??” He’s so excited.
• And I hugged you until you were not frozen anymore

Beautiful

• Imagine I Want to Believe with more Skinner.
• If there is only one (1) thing about this movie that keeps me up at night, it’s this: Mulder is upset that a psychic pedophile priest will be remembered as a pedophile rather than as a psychic. As if Mulder’s wide-eyed wonder at the paranormal somehow surpasses his boundless humanity. He got into this for his sister, and he’s lost a son. Mulder would never dismiss the suffering of children just because the man who made them suffer is a psychic. He’s never put much stock in redemption, either—not for the bad guys.

• Now Scully is trying to claim that she took “Don’t give up” to mean, “Don’t give up on Christian,” when she already wasn’t giving up on him—and let’s be real, she was never going to give up on Mulder, either, so she really didn’t need to hear it at all, certainly not from Father Joe, and quite frankly I think she overreacted to that one.
• “Why would he say that? ‘Don’t give up.’ Why would he say such a thing to you?” Everyone needs to calm down.

Puppy already needs another walk

• Mulder sees no higher virtue than not giving up. Scully came to him in a dream once to remind him that his place is not a comfortable bed with the devil outside, and now he says that “the opposite of what the devil might say” is “Don’t give up.” Complacency is the greatest vice on The X-Files. If you quit, the bad guys win. Everything that sets Mulder and Scully apart—what they know, who they know, the support and opposition they’ve met along the way—is a byproduct of their refusal to stop looking. This is what this show has to say for itself, and this is where the story of two people in an extraordinary situation can meet any one of us right in the middle of our ordinary lives: It argues that the only thing standing between us and Something More is very hard work, which is not glorified, but which can be worth it.

• Unless you just want to take a vacation or whatever…???
• Mulder and Scully are never really talking about what they’re talking about, but I have no idea what they’re talking about here. Is Scully still planning to do the surgery? Is she not? “If you have any doubts—any doubts at all,” Mulder says, “just call off that surgery this morning, and then we’ll get out of here, just me and you.” I don’t even know what she’s doubting! Her stance on the surgery? We can’t be expected to believe that she’s doubting their relationship now—not after everything they just went through—but unless Mulder is asking her not to give up on the two of them, he’s doing a complete 180 on “Don’t give up.”
• This is a complicated situation. It’s a painful and risky procedure (that she still might not have the parents’ full consent for, which is not okay), but I still don’t like the idea of Mulder and Scully’s relationship being positioned as the opposite of trying to save someone: as what happens when they run away. That’s never been the case. They can have both. Scully is about to prove that they can have both when she performs the surgery and then takes him canoeing.
• “As far away from the darkness as we can get?” Not The Darkness again!!!
• “I think the darkness finds you and me.” Or sometimes you run headlong into it, Mulder. “But let it try.” It will.
• This is a callout post for Mark Snow. First of all, how dare you.

Her little “kiss me” pout though

You either get good lighting or a good angle: You have to pick one (1)

NOSE ON CHEEK

• The real universal invariant is the forehead touch.

It’s okay, Mulder. She’ll be back tonight to help you look for the Speedo.

• The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008): a cinematic masterpiece:

Essentially

• David said about the story, “Mulder is Mulder. He needs to be out there. And the kind of romantic part of the film is that he really rediscovers that passion and still says at the end, to Scully, ‘I’d rather have you.'” And that’s something. This very confused little movie does at least declare that if it had to pick one, it would pick Mulder and Scully’s relationship over any conspiracy. Me too, movie.
• But those priorities shouldn’t have to be at odds, because Mulder and Scully wouldn’t exist without his passion. Even when Scully’s whole focus is on him (That’s what I’m fighting for, Mulder: You and me), it’s because “this is us fighting this fight.” The last thing we saw from them both was her encouragement to keep fighting, as long as he didn’t do it alone. They’ve been on the run and in hiding since then; they’re beaten down and tired, and Scully is afraid to jump back into this life. I get that. Scully and Mulder deserve a break. But if they’re trying to convince themselves that they can only be together in the tropical sun, I’m not sure they learned anything today.

Anyway, they’ll figure it out in season 10. Which is this month, because it’s been half a year since my last post, and I’m garbage. I’m back now! I’ll be here to talk out every new episode, for better or for worse. Mainly better. I can’t wait. Think of this post as a cleansing of old wounds. Now the healing can begin.

There’s a title for you.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in “My Struggle”:

• The man, the myth, the monotone is back.
• And he’s telling his story, even if only to us, in a narrative device. It was always Scully affirming Mulder’s right to be heard. He believed her. Now she’s not there. He’s still talking.
• But he’s still talking about Scully. He sees her in terms of how their partnership pushed them both: his obsession was deepened, and her faith was tested. Mulder, who knows as well as anyone that believing isn’t easy, respects the questions that Scully was willing to ask by his side, even as he worries about the cost.

I’m glad these are the images we needed to see: birth, rebirth, protection, hope.

• “Are we truly alone? Or are we being lied to?” Isn’t that the question of the show? We already know: We’re not alone, because Mulder and Scully have each other. We are being lied to, because this breakup is a SHAM.
• Anyway, check out the original opening credits

WE DID IT

• This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I feel like I just got five more minutes with my childhood Golden Retriever

• Listen. The Federal Bureau of Investigation could track down Mulder’s phone number if it wanted, and there is no way Skinner hasn’t been keeping tabs on his wayward kids. He knows they’re separated. Skinner called Scully to give her a reason to see Mulder.
• Mulder just starts talking. Scully calls, and Mulder picks up the conversation mid-thought like no time has passed. Time isn’t a universal invariant; Mulder and Scully are seconds apart no matter how long it’s been. They’re still in each other’s heads.
• “He doesn’t know how to reach you, Mulder. I barely know how myself.”

Babe, you’re on the phone with him Right Now, and I don’t think you’ve ever been more excited about anything in your life.

• Why is she still at the garbage hospital?
• She has blood all over her neck. Someone help her.
• “On the net.”
• Mulder remembers every word of why Scully left him: “I thought you were done with UFOs. The stranglehold they put on your very existence, I believe is how you put it.” He buried himself alive in work and Scully was the one who couldn’t breathe. Their connection did them in. The ghosts saw it on Christmas Eve 17 years ago: Mulder and Scully could only kill each other with how badly they want to be together. This is just another haunted house.
• “Don’t pretend I’m going alone.” Oh. Oh no.

He knows she still won’t. This is their universal invariant.

• I like that the big thing since IWTB has been to introduce Mulder and Scully with a dramatic reveal from behind. Like, maybe this time it won’t be Mulder. We don’t know.

SCULLY’S IN THIS?

???!! UNEXPECTED

I don’t want to jump to any hasty conclusions, but on the strength of the evidence that we have here, I really think the main characters of The X-Files are in this.

• Checking. Him. Out.

pls have sex on this sidewalk

• He drives with Scully or he doesn’t drive at all. That’s a metaphor.
• Mulder still does the whole “joke with Scully when she’s worried sick about him” thing; good to see he hasn’t changed; that’s somewhat comforting.

“Relax, Scully. I’m kidding.”

He really hit a low point, didn’t he? Could we maybe talk about it? Get some details?

“Why do you think her mouth is always open?” —David Duchovny

• “It’s good for you to get out of that little house every once in a while” is also what Scully tells herself in the bathroom mirror every morning.

ohhhhhhhh he’s bitter

• “I’m always happy to see you.” “And I’m always happy to find a reason.” This is loaded. Scully worries that Mulder thinks she doesn’t want to see him.

She does.

• I think Mulder knows that she does—that she might even be looking for a reason—but he feels like it’s on him to provide it. And then there’s the fact that they need a reason now, when the for all of those years the magnetic field around them was enough.
• Most of my time now is spent thinking about the space between Mulder and Scully and then lying face down on the floor because they’re always going to love each other and I don’t understand what happened and I’m not sure they do either.

• The rest of my time is spent watching the “Millennium” kiss on a loop and telling myself that I’ve had enough bittersweet kisses; it’s okay that the cheek kiss didn’t make it to air. But I’m lying to myself.
• “Former Agent Dana Scully.” Nah.

Former Agent Dana Scully Dropkicks Man Across Nation’s Capital

Meeeee, she shot me, it was amazing

• Join me in the pit:

She still wants to be Mrs. Spooky.

• As soon as Tad shows up, they’re a united front again. Scully never could do anything other than defend Mulder in public; she only challenges him when they’re alone. Maybe they’ve been alone with just each other for too long. Maybe they’ve always been better at being alone in a room full of people. Let them out into the world.

This is more like it.

• “You WERE the X-Files.” You got that right.
• This means something.

It means they’re married until proven otherwise.

• When you realize you’re in a limo with a married couple:

• When you decide to give someone a pop quiz about aliens:

They’re always going to love this: knowing they’re the experts, just the two of them. And I’m always going to love that Scully can now look Mulder in the eye like, “Let’s bring this bitch down a peg with ABDUCTION FACTS.”

• Scully knows more than you.

Don’t test her.

• She’s awfully clinical with Sveta, especially when the conversation turns to alien-related pregnancies. It’s the only defense she has.
• Still bitter.

• People use Mulder’s first name like they know him when they don’t (in trying to prove that they know him, they actually prove the opposite), so he’s always been careful about when he calls her Dana. It’s an invitation rather than an assumption. But Scully has a life outside him now, where everyone assumes: where Dana means “You hear me” rather than “I hear you,” and Mulder feels like she betrayed their language.

• But look at her reaction in the limo: Her first instinct when Tad calls her Dana is to look to Mulder. She hasn’t shrugged off the meaning that he gave her name.

• “You were a couple before. You and Mr. Mulder. You were together, but now you’re not.”

DID SHE ASK

• I’m not sure if it was Adele or what, but I’ve come around to the idea that Mulder and Scully could hit a point where they’d need some time apart. I know. They’ve been through too much to ever leave now; if losing William and spending years on the run didn’t do it, nothing could; they’re not like the rest of us; they’re beyond. But maybe if nothing on its own could do it, everything together could. There’s so much they never say about William. The 2012 invasion didn’t happen like Mulder expected. And they can’t work that out on the job like they used to. I can see Mulder and Scully hitting a rough patch when their relationship is divorced from the extremes of hunting aliens; sometimes it takes two flashlight beams in the night to cut through the differences that don’t matter. It’s not that The Darkness is the only place where Mulder and Scully can be together, but it might be the only place where they can find each other.
• But I need more of an explanation than one line about Mulder’s depression, because all that does is open up more questions. What made Scully leave? What did his illness look like at its low point? It must have been bad: much worse than what we’re seeing from him right now, which is basically exactly what we saw from him every day for the first seven years of his and Scully’s partnership. Mulder won’t give up. That’s why Scully fell in love with him and why she’d do it all over again, and I know that depression can take a thousand forms, all of them capable of creeping in between two people, but I want to know what it did to these two people I love. It’s too serious an issue to be the script’s cop-out. I want to know that we’re not the only ones thinking about this.
• “And you have a child together”: Sveta’s last words
• Dana Katherine Scully, M.D., will stick a needle in your arm to make you stop talking.

She never took the Hippocratic Oath. She loves harm

• “You don’t know what it’s like to be abducted, to be taken against your will. You don’t know.”

I hear they reopened the X-Files because no one could explain this murder

• Scully’s staring people into submission and Mulder’s out there hugging a spaceship. Incredible.

Look at this puppy.

• He looks 20 years younger. No matter how many people Mulder loses or how much he resents his own restlessness, he still finds hope in extreme possibilities. And it’s fitting that what he’s found is not alien, but the human response to aliens, which is through science. The ARV is where Mulder’s work meets Scully’s. He asked her 19 years ago who she’d be if she could be anyone for a day. She picked herself, and I loved her even more (so did he). But he pushed her, suggesting that even if she’d still be herself behind a different face, “ultimately, maybe it’s other people’s reactions to us that make us who we are.” For a show built on the idea that we’re not seeing things as they are, The X-Files also suggests that when lies front for the truth long enough, they become it—that maybe if the truth is always out there, just out of reach, the closest we’ll ever come to anything is in our reaction to it. (Idea: When Chris Carter says that Mulder and Scully are a Platonic love story, he’s just talking about the Allegory of the Cave.) But maybe it’s the emotional truths that matter more. The conspiracy only matters for how it affects the human experience. Mulder can’t do this alone because it’s Scully who gives the work weight. Anyway, give her a desk.
• “Do you miss it at all? The X-Files?”

There’s blood on my neck; take a guess

• “As a scientist, it was probably some of the most intense and challenging work I’ve ever done. I’ve never felt so alive.” Working with Mulder made Scully feel alive. She gives his work weight, and he gives hers joy. And it’s being a scientist that makes the X-Files so rewarding for Scully, because what’s the point in pushing boundaries if you don’t have any? Mulder and Scully love a challenge: He asks the biggest questions but is always looking for answers, and she knows that all of the answers really just hold more questions. Belief aims for science and science aims for belief, and two people meet in the middle. This show is so big and so intimate at the same time: a set of perfect opposites about two perfect opposites. The X-Files is about doing the hard work to balance yourself out, which sometimes only happens in relation to someone else. Mulder and Scully found that in each other; the first impossibility they ever proved possible was their relationship.

(That’s love in her eyes)

bye

• She’s sad. And she’s drawing hard lines around her sadness, justifying her solitude as something unavoidable because she tried everything she could. I’m sure she did. If anything, the fact that Scully calls her relationship with Mulder “impossible” speaks to the fact that she poured her whole self into it. But they’ve always been impossible, and she knows it. That dance (proving each other right, proving everyone else wrong) is part of why they need each other. This is Scully hiding hope in what looks like acceptance and leaving room for both. It’s just that you only see the hope if you know what you’re looking for: basically, if you’re Mulder.
• Mulder’s always looking.

• This is my favorite scene of the episode: Mulder finding his way to Sveta’s place to say Talk to me; you can trust me; I’m listening. Truth isn’t a catchphrase for Mulder; it’s the belief that everyone should be heard. And if no one else is willing to listen, he will. Fox Mulder will sit at your kitchen table and hear your story if he has to hitchhike in the middle of the night to do it.

“Everything stays between us, Sveta.”

• “The things I’ve experienced, they’ve affected my entire life. They have made it impossible to have anything like a normal existence.” “And what are you afraid of?” “That it only gets worse.” Mulder and Scully are afraid of the same thing.

Sveta’s crying and LOOK AT HIS EYES

• “But you always wondered if they weren’t lying to you too.” I mean, I think he was pretty clear on the fact that they were, Sveta; don’t pretend you made “Trust no one” happen.
• This is something.

• In 24 hours, Scully will be calling Tad a “charming man full of charming BS,” so she’s obviously here to look out for Mulder and get a read on this guy. Good on her for scoring a limo ride and free champagne out of the deal—although the fact that so many of Scully’s investigations require her to accept drives and drinks from leering men is, to understate it, a real bummer.
• “Scully, listen to me. I’ve been misled.” You’re saying “I” a lot. I heard “we.” “We’ve been misled.” There we go.
• “Our work, the X-Files, everything.” It’s still theirs.
• I know Mulder has been looking for a lead on the conspiracy for so long that he’d pretty much take anything, but this is an awfully quick turnaround. He’s abandoning theories that he spent decades testing, based on evidence that he usually witnessed firsthand—and all he has here is one account. Sveta’s experiences don’t necessarily disprove every one of his old theories, and they don’t have to prove all of Tad’s.
• “Couldn’t you be jumping to conclusions?” Yeah, PROBABLY.

• Mulder calls Scully, won’t let her interrupt, starts to tell her all about a new conspiracy, then claims he “can’t do this over the phone right now” and hangs up. He is teasing her with conspiracy foreplay.

It’s working.

• Scully yelling “Mulder, talk to me!” into a phone after he’s already hung up is the most familiar Mulder-and-Scully thing to happen so far in this episode.
• We’re home.

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

• I like that when Skinner says that nothing was touched, what he really means is that everything was touched but the pencils. The FILES are gone but it’s fine; those old pencils are still here. Or, if you’re feeling grumpy about the complete overhaul of the mythology: The substance of what Mulder and Scully uncovered together has been swept aside in favor of catchphrases and callbacks. But I’m only a little bit grumpy about that. I mean, I’m not thrilled. It’s dismissive and somehow even more confusing; the old conspiracy was nonsense, but calling it nonsense doesn’t erase the fact that Mulder and Scully saw it happen. But the mythology never mattered as much to me as Mulder’s fear that he was aimless in the midst of it, which is nothing new. I like that progress on this show isn’t linear; it’s all dead ends and false starts and a man who wants his foot on the gas but has nowhere to go. And now Mulder, who used to throw pencils at the ceiling because Scully wasn’t there, is trying to find a way to keep going without her—for her.
• If you think Skinner didn’t repaint this office by himself on a weekend with his sweater tucked into his pants, think again.
• “It’s about controlling the past to control the future. It’s about fiction masquerading as fact.” Oh my God, is he rehearsing a one-act play?

Lighting dept. says yes

• I’ve missed Mulder so much and it’s been like a year since I finished the series.
• What is this animosity toward Skinner, though?? And why doesn’t Skinner have Mulder’s number? Stop messing with my firm belief that they’ve all kept in touch!
• The poster doesn’t deserve this.

• I know it’s sad that Scully has to downgrade Mulder’s call from an expectation to a hope, but have responsible check-ins from Mulder ever been a guarantee? I’m just glad to hear her say that she wants him to call her.

He’d better call me he’d better f*%!ing call me

• “Roswell—that was a smokescreen.” “So I’ve been told.”
• She never got her call.

You’re on some jag about the X-Files.

• Look at her indignant little arms. Tackle him, Scully.
• This works too.

I’m really into the way he spins her into position: away from the stairs, toward their home

I DON’T KNOW

• “I know what I’m doing.”

Convincing

• It was so nice of Chris Carter to let the same computer that designed the opening credits write this scene.
• “YOU WANT TO BELIEVE. YOU SO BADLY WANT TO BELIEVE.”
• At least their faces are selling it.

• It’s like muscle memory. There’s a dance Mulder and Scully do when they work a case, and as soon as Scully sees Sveta, she knows exactly what step they’re on. This is the part where Mulder’s only thought is the commitment he made to help someone, no matter the cost. He doesn’t go back from that. I think she’s heartbroken not only that he’s given himself back over to the obsession that she watched consume him, but that she can’t follow him this time. There are obvious shades of season 5 in all of this, and, as she stood apart from him then, she has to stand apart from him now. Scully has too much integrity to stand behind Mulder in what he now believes if she doesn’t believe it too.

“You know what you’re doing”

• There goes the love of his life.

He barely even tries to stop her. They’re so afraid to fight for each other. They’re afraid that it’s too late

Set me on fire

• This is killing them. Mulder and Scully haven’t fallen out of love; they’ve just fallen into a place where the responsibilities they hold highest are coming into conflict with their relationship. What if Mulder can’t help someone without hurting Scully? What if Scully can’t help Mulder without leaving him? She isn’t happy. She’s looking for an excuse to find her way back to Mulder again—but she won’t do it at Mulder’s expense. Walking away is the best way she can think to push him a few steps back from the edge, to make him do that thing they do where they become each other when they’re apart. She can’t stop him, but maybe she can make him look before he leaps. Maybe he’ll ask the skeptical questions when she’s not there to do it for him. Maybe knowing that she doesn’t support him will help him look at what he’s doing more critically. Not a word Scully says on that porch has anything to do with her; it’s all about him. She left the first time to care for herself. She’s leaving this time to care for Mulder.
• “Don’t tell me what’s important.“
• But here’s the thing she always has to face eventually but hasn’t let herself consider in a long time: What if he’s right?

“Mulder, what are you up to?”

• SHE’S BACK.

• Wait, sorry: Are we suggesting that aliens came to earth because we started dropping hydrogen bombs and they were worried about us? The real bad guys on The X-Files have always been the men in suits. We got it. No one needed it to be this literal. Humanity is capable of the worst and the best; the aliens are just supposed to be the neutral players who move everyone else into place. They never took any interest in us before and now they’re coming over to visit with a plate of cookies and telling us that we could do so much more with our lives if we’d just buckle down and focus on our studies. Let’s not pretend you care, Doris.
• “Explosions acting as transducers drawing alien life forms through wormholes in spaceships using electrogravitic propulsion.” Beautiful.
• TAD, IN THE BACKGROUND: “Odious and far reaching!”
• “You can’t say these things.” “I’m gonna say them tomorrow.”

• I love the contrast between the way Mulder delivers the conspiracy and the way Tad does. Mulder is cool and serious; he wants you to hear what he’s saying. Tad is hyped. He wants you to feel what he’s feeling.
• “It’s fearmongering claptrap, isolationist techno-paranoia so bogus and dangerous and stupid—”

• There’s nothing left to do but stand up and applaud at this point, honestly.
• Mulder is so worried about Sveta. I love him.

• Parallel worlds are a part of the X-Files canon, which means there is a world where Mulder is calling Scully out to the backyard to have sex while their laundry dries in the sun. Also he grows his own tomatoes.

IT’S CANON, I DON’T MAKE THE RULES

• This is probably the second time in my entire TV-watching career that a parking garage has ever done anything good for me.

Let Gillian Anderson play a Bond villain

Let Dana Scully rest her feet and maybe draw a bath

• Mulder you dramatic, romantic puppy.

It’s like passing a note in the classroom that says “If you love me, check yes, ” but his classroom is the shadows.

She checked yes.

• What is Mulder talking about? I think he’s proposing that they move to space together. Either that or they fight all of the people who want to move to space.

Stop making light of your beliefs with Scully!

SHE LOVES HIM SO MUCH SHE’S SO WORRIED ABOUT HIM PLEASE RUN ME DOWN WITH SCULLY’S DIRTY CAR

• “We need to find her, Mulder. We need to protect her, no matter what.” We. She’s in this. She’s where Mulder was on that porch. Neither one of them can turn back when they know someone needs their protection. Mulder trusted Tad’s theory more quickly than I ever would, but in relation to his pace, Scully’s pace makes sense. This is how she works: She questions Mulder for his own sake, but she listens to him, and she never stops trying to prove his theories. Even before she understood how certain Mulder was about Sveta, she knew enough to run the DNA tests again. She ignored the science and listened to her instinct (to listen to Mulder).

She can’t look at him until she brings up William. Then she has to look at him. She needs the reassurance that they share this experience, and she knows he does too (BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE THE CHILD AROUND TO REASSURE THEM).

He says her name like it’s a full question in and of itself.

• “I’m saying she’s not the only one.”

Mulder’s face DROPS. There he goes narrowing his world to the scope of Scully’s health again.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

• Look how badly she wants to stop these sons of bitches.

• “Scully, are you ready for this?” Mulder, look at her. She’s ready.

She doesn’t want there to be.

• Scully wanted an ironclad excuse to come back to Mulder, whether that meant pulling him out of his obsession or joining him in it (because if she believes him enough to follow him, then he’s onto something, and that’s the Mulder she fell in love with). She’s found that excuse, but getting back into this life is still a choice. It always has been. She’d do it all over again.
• These are heart eyes.

• She’s handing him exactly what he wants, and his only concern is for her. Mulder hasn’t forgotten how much this job took from Scully, and he doesn’t want it if she isn’t ready.

Don’t tell me that he hasn’t wished every day that he could make a clean break from their old life

• Skinner rejoices from his office.

OKAY, Mulder’s phone has never been at 82 percent battery. It’s never been higher than 12 percent, I’m sure of it

• And the Smoking Man is alive and no one cares about him, bye

The X-Files have been reopened! And now that season 10 is over, I finally have time to write about season 10. I’m not sure what these posts are now that we’re all watching together—this fandom is smarter than I am; I’m about to be exposed—but I am sure that Mulder and Scully still need to be making out. So we’re all still in that boat.

See you soon for “Founder’s Mutation.”

What a light and breezy time we’re all having in this pit.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in “Founder’s Mutation”:

• Welcome back, MOTW cold opens! I have missed noiselessly screaming into the void!

live shot of me when he reaches for the letter opener

• It would have been nice to get a little bit more of Scully and Mulder’s return to the Bureau—give me that first walk into the basement—but I’m not losing any sleep over it (SCULLY yawns, loses sleep over an X-ray, doesn’t sleep again for 23 years). I think it’s for the best that the episode order was shuffled, and there’s something right and comfortable about the way Mulder and Scully have slipped back into their old patterns like they never even left. There’s no ceremony involved in their return because this is still who they are.

“What do you make of this, Scully?” He’ll always want to hear what she thinks.

• She doesn’t even know what Mulder is looking for, but she stands up for his right to keep looking for it.
• Their walk and talk is off the charts right now.

A little collusion does wonders for the relationship.

They love being a little out of step with everyone else.

• Scully, you Googled brain surgery.

The subtitle of this revival is ‘PRETEND THAT LAST MOVIE DIDN’T HAPPEN’

• Honestly Mulder could tell me, “I’m safe. You can trust me,” and follow it up with, “Now we’re going to jump onto this moving train from a bridge,” and I’d be like, “You ARE safe and I DO trust you.”

HE’S SO GOOD

• FOX EXEC, MARCH 2015: “Okay, I’ll approve this revival on the condition that you help me fill in the rest of my catchphrase BINGO card.” CHRIS CARTER: “Done.”

“The truth is in here.”

• Autopsy Scully, the morgue is still your runway.

• Do you think Scully sometimes looks at an ear and is just like, “Damn I hope this one doesn’t explode on me”?
• Look at this top-shelf listening.

Mulder spends so much of his time on the move, but this is what he’s rushing to do: sit with people and hear them out.

• “Mulder, you’ve got to see this.” Music to his ears.
• This is the kind of concern I want to see in Scully: not concern for Mulder, but concern for someone else that she knows she can share with Mulder. It’s time for them to worry about someone else together.

• X-rays: A love story

• “It’s hard to imagine in 2016 that Sanjay had to keep his lifestyle preferences a secret.” Maybe it was because people still say “lifestyle preferences.”
• At some point you have to wonder if Scully’s little feet can reach the pedals.

I trust her with my life but would I drive with her????? (Probably.)

• SCULLY ISN’T SORRY, SCULLY ISN’T HERE TO MAKE NICE

• Medical doctor prescribes touching.

so much

• I need a white noise machine that’s just Scully introducing herself as FBI.
• SUIT: “You can’t see these files.” MULDER: “I’ve seen them!!!” (Very nearly actual dialogue.)
• It doesn’t matter how many times Skinner denies his favorite agents access to a case; Scully will look at him like she Can’t Believe This Indignity every time.

I KISSED YOU IN AN ELEVATOR ONCE

• Skinner is loving this game. He’s lying to authorities. He’s in the club.

Keep it together Skinman

• Meanwhile, Mulder.

• FOX EXEC, JUNE 2015: “My next BINGO card is called ‘It’s Not the ’90s Anymore.'” CHRIS CARTER: “I’m familiar with Edward Snowden.”
• This is a “Like, TODAY?!” face and it makes me feel alive.

• Come here, you big, bald, beautiful man.

I’m so glad we’re not even pretending that Skinner’s allegiance could lie anywhere else.

• “What do you think?” He always wants to know what Scully thinks, too.
• “I think there are many troubling details to this case, and if Agent Mulder has nothing more to add…”

then we need to have sex in the nearest supply closet

• “…then I think we need time to prove his theory.”

but first sex

• Mulder is so touched by the fact that Scully’s first priority is proving his theory. For so long, their dance relied on her resistance; even if she secretly believed him, she had to make him work for it. He appreciated that—not only because it legitimized his work, but because they liked sparring with each other. But they’ve sparred enough lately. The time to put up a front has passed; they both know that she’s open to most of his ideas, so the dance would ring false (in the same way that attempting to recapture the same old sexual tension between two people who’ve been in love as long as Mulder and Scully have rings pretty false). What Mulder needs now is to be believed. He’s chased so many dead ends and pushed her away with what I’m sure were increasingly desperate theories; he needs to know that he can still be right, and that Scully will still put herself on the line in his defense.

She’s loving this: working with Mulder, exposing the flaws in the bureaucratic system, finding new supply closets…

• What a sight.

• What. A. Sight.

Home again.

• The basement looks bigger. I know that’s because it’s a new set, but I like to think that it’s also because the walls aren’t closing in on them anymore. Mulder and Scully have made a place for themselves in the margins; they’re old-school outsiders who’ve lost whatever need they once had to change the system. Scully isn’t going to be the head of the Bureau in 2023. She’s not that person anymore. She doesn’t trust authority in the way that she used to, and she doesn’t need its praise; she just wants to put a stop to the latest conspiracy and solve some cases with Mulder on the side. They’re double agents, working for the FBI but only loyal to each other.
• And not to justify her lack of desk or the fact that her name still isn’t on the door—I still want both of those things for her—but I fully believe that she doesn’t need them for herself. This is Outsider Scully, who sees being erased as an advantage; people still don’t understand how she and Mulder work, and that’ll be their downfall. Hiding herself in Mulder’s name is another act of rebellion: against the side of her that used to chase approval, against an organization that would underestimate her, against Mulder’s self-doubt. He’s the one who needs to reclaim his place; she’s just here to get things done.
• Why am I so proud every time Mulder tells Scully what’s really going on with him? This isn’t new. Unapologetic honesty has kind of been his thing since that motel room in Oregon. He probably calls her every morning to tell her about his weird dreams.

She hates hearing that Mulder was in pain

• “What are you hiding?”

She’s worried about you, Mulder, and I don’t think she’s hiding it

• Go team.

‘US’ or ‘ME’?

• “Us” and “me” are the same again. Mulder gets turned on by danger, and Scully gets turned on by following him into it, and that’s a side of this story we haven’t been able to enjoy in a while: They work because he brings her where she actually wants to go. 
• And they’re talking about it. He’s so happy that they get to be Mulder and Scully again. This is great.
• I love watching Mulder mess with people, but that “Obamacare” joke is so bad that I can actually hear the Fox exec calling “BINGO” in the distance.
• I thought everyone at Our Lady of Sorrows hated Scully.
• SHE BARELY HAS TO DUCK.

She could fit in his pocket and they both love it.

They don’t even have to look at each other; every move they make is on instinct. Mulder and Scully are never more in sync than when they’re completely focused on someone who needs their help.

• Look how much pain Scully lives with every day.

• “But everybody here has the same story.” You don’t even know.

• Nothing to see here.

The government pays these people to be discreet.

• Cue “Walking in Memphis.”

They’ve still got it.

• Scully worries that Mulder keeps things from her because he thinks she’s fragile, but I think it’s because he knows she isn’t. Scully will carry everything he gives her. She’ll test his theories even if it means she’s working to prove her worst nightmares. When it comes to her health and her ability to conceive, Mulder wants to do the testing for her. (For obvious reasons, that isn’t possible after a certain point, but he always forgets that.) He wants to cut out the part where he throws a bunch of ideas at the wall and Scully figures out what sticks; he takes her life too seriously to play the usual game. And he benefits too, selfishly: Mulder blames himself for Scully’s health issues. It’s easier to deal with his guilt if he doesn’t have to vocalize anything on that front until he has all of the facts. It’s still the wrong call, definitely, but it’s made for all of the usual Mulder reasons: how much he loves Scully and how hard he finds it to believe that she’s willing to suffer out of love for him.
• “Is this what you believe happened to me 15 years ago? When I got pregnant, when I had my baby?”

• “My baby” doesn’t thrill me, but she always says “our son.” When Scully refers to William as hers alone, it’s only clinically—the pregnancy was hers. Everything that should have come after would be theirs.

Proof that it’s so much more romantic when Mulder tells the truth

• This is what Scully needs to hear: Mulder always sees her before he sees what happens to her. She’s been there when he gets so caught up in his fascination with people’s experiences or abilities that he forgets to treat them as people first—not out of a lack of compassion, but just because he’s looking at the big picture. It’s worth pointing out that he did that a lot more in the early years, before Scully’s voice was always there to help him not to lose perspective. But this isn’t the first time she’s expressed the fear that their baby would make him look at her as the “object of some unending X-File.” If Mulder, who’s always seen her as a person first (as she has with him) ever looks at her as just a part of the game, they’ve both lost. Telling Scully that she’s never JUST anything is basically a more overtly romantic variation on what Mulder said to a very pregnant Scully in her apartment: that this was only about her. He’ll never break her down into a set of puzzle pieces; he’ll never see her as one big piece in a larger puzzle. She’s Scully. He might not know exactly what was done to her, but he asks those questions without letting the questions become more important than she is.

Deep breaths

• “Do you ever think about William?” I love the immediacy of his “yes.” He doesn’t want her to need that reassurance. James Wong says that David added, “Of course I do,” which of course he did.

This is the look that Scully gives Mulder when he says “yes” and she knows they’re still dealing with this loss together, if you were looking for new reasons to roll yourself gently off a cliff

• “But I feel like I’ve had to put that behind me.” Mulder, what did we just learn about telling the truth?
• “He’d be 15 years old now.”

FIND ME THAT CLIFF

• “I’ve missed every single year of his life. Sometimes I hate myself that I didn’t have the courage to stand by him.”

She can’t even look at him

• A world where Scully hates herself is no good; we should probably burn everything down and start over. But a world where Scully is ALLOWED to hate herself is good, because it’s real. Scully’s been to hell and back, and after all of these years, she’s finally being given the space to let it affect her. Even better, she’s sharing it with Mulder.
• I still think there was no one better to protect their child than Scully, but the choice to give up William was made with complete selflessness on Scully’s part: She didn’t want her son to have to live in fear. She acted out of love but still feels like she acted wrongly, like she wasn’t brave enough to stay with him like she always stayed with Mulder. Scully’s life with Mulder has been one selfless act of devotion after the next. How could she let herself define love as letting go when for so many years she defined it as showing up? It’s no wonder she lost her way with Mulder; she doesn’t think she can trust herself.
• “You did what you did to keep him safe. His adoption is secret, his location is unknown because you had to protect him.” You. Scully had to protect William alone because Mulder wasn’t there. He doesn’t even feel like he’s earned the right to factor into this conversation. Mulder hasn’t put William behind him, but maybe he wasn’t lying when he said that he feels like he has to, because he feels like it shouldn’t be about him. But she wants it to be about him, too. She wants to know what he thinks.

“and see what it unravels.”

• The most comforting thing Mulder can give Scully right now is a case to focus on. They need this job; it’s an outlet, but it’s also their way in. It’s the cause, but it might be the solution.
• And here we go.
• Bye

I hope wherever William is, he shakes people’s hands by waving their arms around

• “Your hands are sweaty.” “Ew, that’s you.” MULDER’S CHILD
• I forgot how light Scully’s voice gets when she’s happy. I forgot how her laugh sounds. I can still remember the last time I felt the sun on my face…it was a summer day 15 years ago…before the war…
• “Sit still, listen, say ‘Excuse me’ if you fart.” How could anyone think that Scully isn’t imagining raising William WITH MULDER after a line like that?
• She loves the ridiculous things Mulder says to their son. Look how happy she is. And look how good her hair looks.

We could’ve had it all

• The only thing Scully needs her son to remember is that she loves him. She has to worry every day that he doesn’t know it.

• But she would also like him to remember the periodic table of elements and Newton’s laws of motion. (Every teacher at this school fears her.)
• Full disclosure, I just burst into tears at “Be home in time for dinner!” It’s so MOM.
• Does she just show up to yell that at William, or does she not know until he says “Bye mom” (MOM) that she won’t be seeing him until later? What a Mulder thing to just run off. SHE SEES SO MUCH OF MULDER IN THEIR CHILD.

• Daydream Scully is soft. She’s looser. Scully attributes everything hard and empty about the person she’s become to the fact that she gave up their son, which probably only makes her harder and emptier—but she can’t let go of the version of her life that could have been happy. She doesn’t live in a world where she can clutch her cross necklace and smile at the miracle child she got to keep, but she still wears that necklace. Scully gathers up the pieces of who she is and keeps going, staking claim to the fragments of the truth that she can still believe in, even if she’s lost the hope that they’ll fit together neatly in the end. That’s why we need her; that’s how life tends to go. But that’s also why she needs Mulder. There is nothing more Mulder than shouldering all of the guilt for the loss of a child, but Mulder, improbably, still believes that he can find the meaning behind what’s happened to him. He can fit the pieces together. As long as he can do that, Scully has a reason to keep fighting. (She left him when he traded hope for desperation and lost himself in it, and she came back as soon as she had reason to trust his theories again.) A Mulder who’s working toward real answers is Scully’s answer. A Scully who holds on to herself is Mulder’s proof of selfhood.

• WILL.

William as a name is forever achey to me because of this show, and Will is… somehow worse? “William” is an inheritance and the promise of a fresh start; he matters because of what he means to the people around him. “Will” is a person. Will comes home from school at the end of the day and has mac and cheese with his parents.

• This is the kind of mom Scully wants to be: the kind who isn’t punished for trying to ensure her son’s independence. She gets to be there for him when he’s afraid. She gives him the space to get hurt, and then she helps make it better.

She’s a medical doctor.

• And the worst part is that Scully’s worst-case scenario isn’t even dependent on her being there. She can’t tell herself that giving William away spared him from his alien DNA. He could be dealing with this regardless; the only difference is that she isn’t there for him.

The Unremarkable House deserves better

• This is the look of a mom whose kisses can still make it better and who isn’t living in fear all the time.

Pajama sets still on point

• And then her heart drops out of her chest. Scully (our Scully) fears letting down her guard more than anything. The moment she lets herself relax, everyone she loves is in danger.

• Anyway, William is a Boy Scout and one night while Scully was teaching him how to start a campfire in the backyard, Mulder came up behind her and started singing “Joy to the World” in her ear.
• Hoo boy.

• You can actually see her decide to pull the picture out of that drawer. Scully has to give herself permission to feel the pain that she’s already carrying every day. She lives on this tightrope strung between a scientist’s inclination to move forward and a mother’s inability (and unwillingness) to forget, and there’s nothing below her but this infinite drop. I think our son left us both with an emptiness that can’t be filled. This is why I’m glad that Scully and Mulder aren’t in each other’s daydreams; they’re together, but that’s background noise, because their breakup regrets aren’t the point right now. The breakup can be undone; William can’t. All Mulder and Scully can give each other is someone to hear those words when they hang them out there in the dark: We’re empty. They make something beautiful out of that, but it’s a new something beautiful; it doesn’t fix everything else. Scully and Mulder take loss seriously. That’s why they work as a couple, and that’s why this isn’t about them as a couple.
• She really hasn’t gotten comfy in that new apartment. Good.
• “I’ve ready everything you’ve published, Dr. Goldman.” I’m a medical doctor.
• Have you cried enough at Scully being sweet with kids today?

• Scully is almost too excited to take this bastard down.

She terrifies me but I like it.

• “Dr. Scully, I was told that you were the rational one.”

Not for a long time now Gus

• It’s been 23 years, and Mulder and Scully still have a reputation.
• She says, “He didn’t answer my question” like it’s the punchline to a joke. She didn’t even expect Dr. Goldman to answer. Scully’s gone full Mulder.
• Not to be insensitive to Agnes, but this is beautiful.

Like a religious icon

• The burgundy scrubs are more than I dared to dream this revival would provide.

We have been chosen

• The most X-Files experience of all: Mulder is talking about the Syndicate and alien-human hybrids, and I’m not catching any of it because I’m distracted by how good Scully looks.
• She’s in love.

• With this asshole.

• “I think about him every day.” Mulder looks to Scully before she’s even said anything. He can feel her thinking.

He’d better be holding her hand under the table right now

• They still fit together.

He doesn’t hesitate and she doesn’t flinch; this is totally natural; also I’m crying

• Is this season 1??

• Have you ever noticed how Mulder purses his lips 200 percent more the minute he puts on sunglasses

He is mentally starring in an action movie at all times.

• He doesn’t get to wear sunglasses very often; you have to allow him his dreams.

• Just Like Old Times, Pt. 42/??: Scully takes the lead in the questioning. Mulder jumps in to ask something really personal. Scully’s ready to go. Mulder is in pain. Scully will burn this place to the ground to get the answer to the question that she thought was inappropriate 20 seconds ago.

More touch

This face is the only reason their interrogations ever get anywhere

• There she goes; she’s off.

Bad things happen when the birds gather but worse things happen when Scully runs full tilt at the birds

• Now they’re running into danger together.

• It Could Have Gone Better

At what point do we talk about this hand placement

• “Skinner, keep your people behind the red tape.” His people.

• Mulder and Scully are bathed in police lights a lot in this episode, but watch the progression. They move further away from the investigation each time: They beat the police to the scene, they’re called to the scene, and then they’re kept away. And that’s good progress. They belong on the margins. Scully and Mulder look right standing behind that tape, defiant and sure of themselves. The kind of truth they look for is easiest to see from an angle anyway.
• “I blacked out after Goldman’s eyes popped out of his sockets.”

This is a dad joke, and he’s making it entirely for Scully

• She’s sorry.

• Mulder doesn’t show his vial of stolen blood to just anyone.
• Here We Go, Pt. 2
• He’s shared so many movies with Scully; of course he imagines sharing them with their son.

Look, I am almost never on board with the whole “kid adorably mispronouncing a word” thing, but oh my God give me five hours of William pointing at things at things and calling them by the wrong name and I will complain about none of it

• Mulder sees Scully (curious, independent-minded) in their son as much as Scully sees Mulder (bold, independent-spirited). There’s no telling any child of Scully’s what to believe; all Mulder wants to do is present his theory right along with Scully’s and trust William to make up his own mind.

“Other people think it represents the beginning of human knowledge.”

He can’t wait for this kid to tell him that he’s wrong about everything

• Launch me into a wall of magnetite.

• I do not want human emotions anymore.

“You never wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, Scully?”

• “Space is hard.” You have no idea, kid.
• The way Mulder mimics JFK’s cadence is so adorable HOW MANY TIMES HAVE THEY WATCHED THAT SPEECH TOGETHER
• “All great and honorable actions are undertaken with great difficulty.” Mulder would never want William to be afraid of hard work. As if any child of Mulder and Scully could be.

• Mulder imagines his son needing him at the same age when Scully imagines him asserting his independence. Scully needs the kind of love that allows for setting William free and then coming back together with him. Mulder just needs to feel like a part of William’s life for the first time.
• “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Which of them is having more fun with this???!!!?!!! (Not me)

• Every time Mulder counts down, I cry. It’s so DAD. It’s so childhood: that constructed sense of anticipation. Mulder, who is anything but selfless but who leaps into action so quickly that he comes across that way, is waiting until the time is right. He’s entirely focused on creating an experience for someone else. He’s only like this with one other person.

• William’s dreams are self-destructive, but Mulder still wants him to dream them.

Save yourself

• No one has ever called Mulder “Dad” before this. Not in a joke. Not in a dream. This is the first.

The Unremarkable House once again deserves better

• Mulder deserves better. He deserves not to go about his life convinced that he’s destined to lose everyone he loves; he deserves dreams that don’t end badly; he deserves to believe that he deserves these things. He doesn’t even think that he’s worthy of hope.
• They didn’t get to take enough pictures of William.

• Scully had to let herself look at that photo. Mulder leaves his daydream photo in hand. He invites the pain, because he feels like he deserves it; setting aside time to be sad is the least he can do after leaving Scully alone with their son. He barely experienced fatherhood, so he digs his hands into the wound on purpose to make up for it—to make it real for him. That’s his nature anyway; he dreams about the moments he’d make with his son, while Scully dreams about the moments she’d have. She wants everyday life, because Scully shows love by showing up. Mulder is active. He loves in big gestures.
• Anyway, they’re both convinced that they can’t be happy and this is me.

As usual, I’m sorry that this took so long! I had to fight my way through the crushing sense that nothing I write means anything, because I’m Mulder throwing pencils at a poster, and sometimes I need Scully to wave a drawing of a monster in my face and remind me how to have fun. Next week.

Yeah, this is how I like my X-Files.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in “Were-Monster”:

• Darin Morgan, you had me at:

She bought him a new one after he kicked the last one into oblivion and you just know she lords that over him every damn day

• Season 11: Mulder kills a man with this pencil.

‘Mmm’ – Gillian Anderson

• Okay SHUT THE DOOR

Mulder, keep throwing!

Throw everything off the desk and do Scully on it!

• As always, Mulder is too busy being dramatic about ice creatures to notice that he could be getting some.

Scully’s skepticism used to put him in this position; now he does it to himself.

• I guess it’s really no surprise that a mid-life crisis would hit Mulder with the speed of a thousand phantom tanker trucks. He’s never felt anything halfway.

She’s like, ‘Did you see me arguing?’

• I really was all in from “my poster.” This first scene between them is so sharp: Everything that works for the jokes works for the characters. Mulder worrying restlessly while Scully sits, long-suffering but into it, is funny, but it’s also them in a way that this episode in particular needs them to be. Darin is giving us a commentary on the average monster-of-the-week episode, so he starts with the basics. Scully is steady; Mulder is in motion. But the twist is that Mulder is running for what Scully’s already found—the fun in this job—and in that sense, they’ve switched. They’re doing the same things for opposite reasons.
• “It has a monster in it.”

I know you better than you know yourself, man

• Yay Piper!

• “Notice they didn’t get a picture of it, which is odd, because everybody always has a camera on them these days.” This is peak grumpy Mulder and a sly acknowledgment of the fact that this case is going old school. Pre-Google.
• Nothing like an impractical pantsuit in the woods when your file has a monster in it.

control your gaze

um

• “Mulder, I can see that you’re going through a questioning phase of some sort, but people have been killed here. And if we can help stop that and save some lives, I think that is a unquestionably worthwhile thing for us to do. Regardless of whether the thing we find is animal or human or…”

“…otherwise.”

• Now that’s vintage Scully logic. That’s stuck-in-an-Alaskan-outpost-with-a-parasitic-worm Scully logic—just do the work in front of you—and it’s not how she thinks anymore. I’m pretty sure she stopped thinking that way in Alaska, when she saw that she could let these cases touch her and still come out okay. But if Mulder needs to find his place on the X-Files again, she’s going to show him how she found hers, starting at the beginning.
• “It had a horn? Like a… unicorn?”

This is Scully’s life now: A man-size horned lizard is spotted at a gas station wearing underwear and she’s just like, ‘Please be more specific’

• Winona Ryder I love your work!

No face journeys

• Bye

• He’s a middle-aged man, Scully.

It’s not

• MULDER: Can’t wait to get a pic of this monster. Nice glossy 8×10?? Hang it over the bed??? SCULLY: Okay I’m gonna snuff out the light behind its eyes but have fun.

❤

• Bye pt. 2

He died doing what he loved: running phone first at a monster

• Not that I doubt that a cooped-up Fox Mulder would tape over his laptop camera, but this is the relationship between Mulder and tech that I imagined, because for all his paranoia, Mulder is awful at “trust no one.” He pretty much trusts everyone who doesn’t wear a suit and give him direct orders, so unless Scully wants to put a suit on his phone, he’s going to treat that thing like another appendage. Endless answers and speculation at the tips of his fingers, and maybe more people who think like him? Everyone getting equal access to the same information? Please. He dreamed this up.
• “Go to the settings.”

It wouldn’t do any good but I want to fax this to everyone in the Senate

• [squeaky worried voice] “Mulder!”

CLASSIC Dana Scully, M.D. move: He’s covered in blood and she lightly caresses his cheek

• How dare this gas station porta potty make me so nostalgic.

SHE’S SORRY

• Everyone runs in this episode like they’ve never seen anyone else run before.

• Local Federal Agent Needs Attention

Helpful demonstration of squinting there Mulder

• He still won’t say “monster,” so Scully just jokes about a mangy sasquatch on his behalf.

The only thing more important to Mulder than shoving his phone in his partner’s face for the 30th time is acknowledging that he likes her joke.

• “It shot blood at me. From out its eyeball, Scully.”

Schroedinger’s bloody eyeball

• Finally Scully gets a chance to naysay for a second.

• As always, he’s got receipts.

same

• Mulder can fight it all he wants, but he’s already playing the game. It’s instinct: One of them has to challenge what the other one thinks. (“Let’s just keep this in the realm of the natural sciences, shall we?”) The rest—the specifics of who believes and who doubts—is all superficial by this point, because they’ve both picked up so much of each other. Scully needs Mulder to get his faith back because it’s a part of him, but it’s a part of her now, too. They aren’t as simple anymore as the believer and the skeptic. They’re older and more experienced, which means accepting more possibilities and fewer certainties. But they only know one way to work a case. So they’re just feeling it out, debating as usual—same debate, new sides—pretending any of their opinions are as absolute as they used to be. But they never were absolute, really, and that’s why they’re here.
• “So we’re looking for a man-sized horned lizard with human teeth.”

You’re the one who said it

• Scully could not be happier to be having a “silly”-sounding conversation in a morgue with Mulder.

We’re back

• This is their old dynamic in reverse: Scully enjoys the work, and Mulder enjoys that Scully is enjoying herself (and keeps quiet about the fact that he’s having fun, too).

• Darin Morgan just crumpled up I Want to Believe and slam-dunked it into a trash can. He’s putting right everything that second movie got wrong, because this job isn’t all darkness, and it’s not an obstacle to their relationship. It’s the best place for them to heal. We’re already seeing the way they use these cases to work through the hopes they aren’t ready to express, but the really important thing here is that Scully is ready to express that she’s having fun. And that’s enough. Years ago, Mulder needed a story about an alien playing baseball in 1947 to remind him that loving something is purpose enough in itself. That goes for solving cases, too—and the only story Scully needed to remind her was the story of Scully and Mulder.

SURE WHY NOT

• After everything, Mulder’s still soft. That was a wonder even in the pilot.

• Sure, he’s all “I didn’t say monster” with Scully, but someone else cries monster when Scully’s not around, and Mulder is ready to listen. Try him. He wants to believe. He always did find it easier to be vulnerable with complete strangers, but it’s not out of lack of trust for Scully; he just doesn’t want to get her hopes up.
• I’ll let David and Gillian take this one:

• I just want to take Guy Mann’s face in my hands and shout that he’s not alone.

hard same

• Sometimes the monster is the “plain and simple” answer. And sometimes the “plain and simple” answer is followed by four hypothetical and very un-simple explanations, because you know—nothing’s ever absolute. But the more questions Mulder wants answered, the more sure he is of himself.
• And he’s always sure of Scully. He knows what she’ll say.

You can actually see her decide to ride this one out

• I’m hung up on this: “Is it so outlandish to believe that some legends are based on actual occurrences and not just ignorance?” That’s Mulder and Scully. The legend of the life they led has been looming in their memories, and they’re only just now realizing that yes, it did happen, and it can happen again. They can have that life back.
• He doesn’t even need Scully to be here for this conversation; he’s already having her half of it. But her half is really his half right now, and he’s talking himself out of that skepticism, and he basically just wants her in the room because he always does.
• “But Mullllder.”

• When he brings up science in the bedroom

and you’re not wearing pants

• This time, when Mulder comes back around to scientific possibilities, it’s to make the case that science and monsters aren’t mutually exclusive. No matter the origin, the outcome is the same. A whammy by any other name is still put on you.

[Mulder runs out into the woods singing Hilary Duff’s “Coming Clean”]

OWN YA MAN, SCULLY

• Her Mulder. He’s her Mulder and she likes him like this, and this time, she’s not only communicating that she’s happy to be working with him—she’s communicating that she’s happy with him. As a person. Scully has a way of saying in a few (or no) words what Mulder says in whole speeches. This is her, “But you saved me.” This is her, “You kept me honest. You made me a whole person.” Fox Mulder’s goddamned unfailing belief saved Dana Scully a thousand times over. She owes him everything, and she doesn’t want to do this alone. Her actions have been saying as much for the past two decades, but I think she’s had some time to understand that sometimes he needs to actually hear it. And she wants to tell him.

He’s lost

• Mulder, please. When has this partnership ever required agreement?

Just let her say it, FOX, let her say it

• Reminder that she’s wearing his shirt.
• “But what about the FACTS?” Fox Mulder exclaims, emphatically tapping a file with a sketch of a man-sized three-eyed horned lizard.
• Scully’s pumped to talk to this smartly dressed possible lizard guy with her partner.
• He keeps pointing at her because he can’t believe he can.

boop

• I have a feeling that the last thing Darin Morgan would want me to do is break this episode down into symbolic pieces like some high school English teacher introducing the concept of literary criticism. There’s a sweet, lively joy in this hour when you just take it as it is: It’s the story of Mulder and Scully having fun again. That’s purpose enough. But I’m here, so bear with me.
• Mulder and Scully are Mulder and Scully, right? Guy is humanity. The psychiatrist is critics, I think—and not necessarily negative critics, just literary critics. People who analyze the truth out of every story. Me, maybe. He wants the truth to be something theoretical instead of literal. Mulder won’t bite. One of the most interesting and, to my mind, overlooked aspects of The X-Files is its refusal to paint belief as easy; no belief can stand until it’s been tested. If proof sometimes eludes, the search for proof never stops. When people talk about this show’s clear delineation between faith and skepticism, they tend to forget that, just as the psychiatrist does when he suggests that believing in actual monsters is easier than taking a look at ourselves.
• And yes, the real monsters dwell within us; this week’s “monster” is literally a representation of us, while the men in suits who conspire behind closed doors are still the real enemy. But those old guys aren’t going anywhere. Accepting the existence of monsters doesn’t mean ignoring our own monstrosity. It means facing it head on, in senses both external (the conspirators’ selfishness and greed have made Mulder and Scully’s fight harder every step of the way) and internal (Mulder can’t see the truth until he works through his issues). The psychiatrist thinks value and meaning are inherently separate from the things we can touch. But it’s the tangible—this job, their relationship, a were-lizard’s handshake—that saves Mulder and Scully, giving them something to put their backs up against in a world that offers them little certainty. And still they keep searching. That’s the opposite of easy.
• Of course, if you take that a step further, the fact that I’m looking for morals and lessons in this story totally defeats the purpose, and we’re right back to that thing where nothing matters except Mulder and Scully having fun.
• This is definitely a Darin Morgan episode.
• “Mulder, it’s me.” Old school.

Telling Mulder she found a horny toad lizard man really turns Scully on

• SMART PHONES IS US
• The Nighthawks of our time:

Morgan, Darin. Man at Work. 2015. Film. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

• “You know it’s not safe to approach a dangerous suspect without backup.”

Don’t test her

• Nooooooo.

“No matter what we do, eventually you end up in a place like this.” But this gravestone is already here to lend some hope to the story: If we kick it in the ass, we’ll at least be remembered.

• “I’m just gonna… kill you. You ready?!”

“You’re like the only nice person I’ve ever met.”

• Obviously Mulder has no intention of killing him, but I think this is more than just a self-serving trick for information. He’s banking on the idea that having someone to hear (and, Mulder hopes, believe) his story will help Guy. Sometimes you need someone to listen.
• “I didn’t even get the chance to shoot blood out of my eyeballs.” SCIENTIFIC FACT.

“Three eyes?!”

I will protect him, I want to see him grow up healthy, I want to tell my friends and neighbors about him

• Help this poor lizard; he’s more lost than Tyra Banks in Life-Size.
• “For some unknown reason there was a bunch of dead bodies lying around.”
• “3,000 gigaburtz of pixel bits”
• “You can see from the shape of it that it’s quite rectangular.”
• “I don’t understand half the things I’m telling you.”

• DISNEY I AM HANDING YOU A LIFE-SIZE SEQUEL.
• I feel so exposed…

“But I was too overcome with human fear to quit.”

• “If I haven’t written my novel by now, I’m never gonna write it, you know?” I don’t think we appreciate this line enough.
• “No, I got a puppy!”

Me when it’s Daggoo time

Beautiful

• “And I quickly realized that the only way to be happy as a human was to spend all of your time in the company of non-humans.”

Mulder gets that.

• Mulder, as always, wants internal logic. But Guy can’t even see any external logic, even though he’s buying into our ingrained sense of the “right” way to live. His story seems like it’s about how we operate within societal constructs, but it’s actually about the constructs themselves: how we impose order and meaning on a world that doesn’t make sense. If any of these ideas about human nature are cliché, that’s because we made them that way; it’s how we find it in ourselves to get up with the alarm clock. Mulder and Scully impose meaning through their job. We, the people watching this show, impose meaning through the clear definition of a monster-of-the-week episode, the callback to the red Speedo, the theme song that tells us what show we’re watching. The title of this episode is the only one of the whole series to mention Mulder or Scully (much less both of them) by name—it’s about the telling of the story as much as it is about the story itself. We’re Jose Chung in this scenario.
• “DAGGOO?!”
• “Well I’d like to see you explain that to my dead friend George!”

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

• We have been uniquely blessed.

“That did not happen.”

• Unmoored as he is, Mulder does know the difference between fantasy and reality when Scully is involved. She’s his benchmark.
• If Guy is all of us and he lies about his sex life… and we’re watching this show that never wanted to show Mulder and Scully having sex…

• “That’s my life you’re talking about.”

We have our “Never Again” answer.

• Look at the man the FBI hid in the basement, owning his life and his place in others’ lives!
• For those of you just joining us, Mulder and a lizard are doing a close reading of the First Folio edition of Hamlet.
• It is a comforting thought that we’re all ignorant, “because if there’s nothing more to life than what we already know, then there’s nothing but worries, self-doubt, regret and loneliness.” The good and tangible things in their lives keep Mulder and Scully going, but the hope that there’s more out there is what gives them a reason to keep going. That’s the tension. The opposite of belief isn’t disbelief but apathy, and hope isn’t just what we hold on to in the face of adversity. It’s how we impose meaning on adversity. When Mulder and Scully set off on the run, “maybe there’s hope” seemed like the promise that they’d keep searching for answers. Now it seems more like an answer in itself—the best one there is.
• He’s so proud to be FBI again.

Hell yeah he’s the fuzz, look at his SUIT

• “J’accuse, Monsieur Mulder!”

This is rocketing up the list of X-Files lines I quote the most

• Can you even believe

• Mulder is still framing “monster hunting” as a destructive kind of addiction, but Scully knows better. You can see it in the way she says, “Some jobs keep pulling you back.” There’s something to be said for not fighting that pull.

“I guess maybe he’s like us”

• When is this woman going to stop sticking her fingers in cages? Hopefully never.

• Shout out to Queequeg. RIP, buddy. #gonebutnotforgotten
• Mulder. Pup. She’s telling you she misses you.

“Just go to sleep. Let me curse God for a while.”

• CLASSIC Mulder move: storming in worrying about Scully and she’s fine.

• “I have a whole speech prepared!”

Nah

• Great job not gazing, you grown-ass adults.

I can think of someone else Mulder wants quality time with

• Look at the way she tips her chin up at him in the end. This is an argument, and she’s winning. This whole episode, Scully is trying to get Mulder back on his feet, but she isn’t gentle about it. She’s throwing him in his own face (her poster, which she bought for him; her immortality, which is definitely his theory) and daring him to take his identity back. It’s a challenge. That’s been their language since he showed her a chemical formula in a slide show, and she knows he’ll rise to it.

Some people keep pulling you back

• I don’t believe Dana Scully has ever paid for a dog in her life.

She isn’t fooling anyone with this cute little look around the shelter. Like being watched would change anything about what’s happening here

• “You want a hat?”

Have you seen my hair??? No

• The beauty of this line is all in the way he says “constructs.”

• A BREAKTHROUGH AT LAST

HEY BUDDY YOU WANNA COME HOME WITH SCULLY

• “I don’t mean to get too personal…”

• Mulder was right when he talked Guy into telling his story. Sometimes you need someone to listen. (“Just having someone like you to—look, what I’m trying to say is: I’m glad to have met you.”) He should know; he’s always been that someone. Scully knew that this was the kind of quality time that could bring Mulder back, even more than time with her. (She’s already his touchstone; the person Mulder is unsure of right now is Mulder.) His beliefs, big as they are, require listening to a relative stranger. Shaking a hand.

OH

I miss this lizard already

What a shot

He’s back

• After 20 years, Fox Mulder just saw Big Blue. He found proof and shook its hand. Nothing “maybe” about it—there is hope. We just can’t find it on our own. I think when we’re struggling, it’s tempting to think that if we could just stand in a place where our lives once went right, we’ll be okay. Everything else will fall back into order. That’s not how it works. Nothing can ever be re-created that perfectly; our own desperation to re-create it pretty much guarantees that. Mulder thought sitting at his basement desk would be enough to save him, but what he needed was to get past the surface of this job and find the heart of it: the fun (with Scully) and the purpose (with Guy). The fun of it is the meaning he and Scully impose: the banter, the poster they can’t do without. But even when you strip that away, the work itself has intrinsic, tangible purpose.
• There’s objective meaning and there’s the meaning we assign, and both are valuable, if different. But there is objective meaning, however much it might seem to us and to Guy like there isn’t. That belief is what unites Mulder and Scully. I came into this post thinking my thesis would probably be something nice about how great it is that Mulder and Scully are able to make their own order in a disordered world, but I’m leaving it convinced that there is something real waiting for them. Mulder just touched it. Somehow, this hour by The X-Files’ most meta, most existential writer is also one of its most encouraging. Sure, these fleeting moments of happiness are still surrounded by “crushing loss and grief,” but the truth is out there with an outstretched hand. There’s a concrete difference between a man who turns into a lizard and a lizard who turns into a man.

Hi everyone! Like Mulder, I’m back. So sorry for disappearing. Thing happened. Some of them happened to America; some of them happened just to me, and I’m very okay now, but it took me a while to find it in me to write this, even though I knew (thanks Darin!) that writing it would help. That’s part of it, too: I wanted to get this one right because I like what this episode has to say. I’ve still probably just scratched the surface. But I never intended to go this long between posts (I had it in my head that I’d written the last one in May and was at least scraping by at 11 months, but NO. A YEAR. AN ENTIRE YEAR).

I’d like to say I’ll be back very soon, but I have a work project that’s going to require me to pretty much rewatch four complete seasons of television (rough life) over the next month, so I should get that done first. But I’ll be back after that. I forgot how much fun these posts could be.

Feels sad, feels organic, thank you.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in “Home Again”:

• When I look at this I like to imagine Michael Caine in Miss Congeniality standing just off camera whispering, “Be the badge.”

Also I am Michael Caine in this scenario

• If you didn’t spend the entire lead-up to the revival gathering scraps of spoilers in your dirty little paws (RESPECT), you may have missed the fact that the episode order was switched; “Home Again” was written to air second, as the first episode to welcome our agents back to the Bureau. I’m saving my thoughts on the overall shakeup for next week’s “Babylon” post because LOL burn it down, but for now, I’ll say this: I’m glad “Were-Monster” didn’t air after “Home Again.” But I do get a little sad for the chills we could have gotten when I see how excited this episode was to shower us all in Mulder and Scully, FBI. 
• Here. The promos wanted you to have this.

Mulder: DON’T SCARE HER OFF

He does as he’s told

• If we let this episode live in a pocket universe for a second, where this is their first case back and Mulder does say, “We used to,” I love that he’s desperately trying to seem chill until finally he can’t take it anymore and just has to yell to the whole world that the evidence is “IMPOSSIBLE BY THE WAY!”

She loves his disruptive ass

• I get the feeling this isn’t the first time Mulder has stared pensively out a window while telling a room full of people who Did Not Ask all about how medieval prisoners were drawn and quartered.
• Here’s a sad breakup consequence for you: When Scully gets the news that Maggie suffered a heart attack, she and Mulder instinctively, immediately shut out the rest of the room. And then he pulls back.

• This is the kind of subtle fallout from their split that works; it doesn’t undercut the care between them, just how they express it. And their fumbling attempts to leave each other the right amount of space only wind up proving how much Mulder and Scully are connected and how unchanging their dynamic ultimately is. They’re like magnets; it’s taking more energy to keep them apart than it would for them to come together. Mulder hesitates here to put his hand on Scully’s face even though he did exactly that, with an almost painful lack of hesitation, 22 years ago when she lost her dad. They spent so many years as “just friends” who liked holding each other’s faces that they opened up the door for estrangement to encompass pretty much all forms of affection this side of living together. But it’s telling that they aren’t sure where to draw the line now; the lines all blurred when Mulder and Scully got together because everything they did was always more romantic than they were willing to admit.
• Portrait of the Blogger as a Sad Viewer:

Maggie sweetie I’m so sorry you had to die in this repurposed hallway

• What I haven’t told you yet is that this blog post is actually a five-hour TED Talk on the meaning of the word “here” in The X-Files episode “Home Again” (2016, dir. Glen Morgan). Don’t get up; I’ve locked the doors.
• Scully says she’s been where Maggie is. Ahab is there. Scully is here. Bill and William and Charlie are here, too. She starts by drawing the biggest circle: Here is just living. Being alive is its own kind of community, in that we act on and are acted upon by people we know, people we’ve never met, people we’ve forgotten. This is the circle Scully draws around William: She leans on her belief that he’s out there somewhere, and in that sense he keeps her going even if he doesn’t have conscious memories of her. The X-Files doesn’t believe it’s possible to live in isolation. Even when Scully asks her mom to stay alive, it’s not because she’s afraid of what it means to die; she calls it “going home.” It’s just because she needs her mother.
• WAS THIS AUTHORIZED?

The X-Files has conditioned me to expect a WHOLE LOT, including but not limited to ill-fitted blazers, every part of the country looking like Canada, a mythology that’s just a cartoon plane crash sound effect, and learning to view it as a sex scene when two characters’ knuckles touch, but it did not prepare me for flashbacks!!

• Look at that boy.
• Scully and Mulder are so full of contradictions they wind up in the same place. Scully does what she can for the people around her and falls back on her belief in a broader community. Mulder does what he can for the broader community and falls back on his belief in the people around him. They both believe being here has a ripple effect, but Mulder (especially young Mulder, still looking for his peg leg) isn’t always comfortable with the kind of “being here” that involves being still. He shows up and offers himself like he’s apologizing for having nothing better. But his presence is enough—it was for Scully then (“I had the strength of your beliefs”), and it is now.
• Like right now.

• I love that we hear “I’m here” before we see him. The first way Mulder’s presence is measured is by its effect on Scully.

SHE LOVES HIM

• Back in the day is now.

I’ve been staring at this for so long time isn’t a universal invariant anymore

• The past keeps coming back in this episode—in flashback, in parallels Mulder and Scully draw, and in parallels that just happen because of who they are. If people leave impressions on each other, then memories have active power even now. There’s something unfair about that, especially when it comes to death: We can remember people we can’t bring back. But Mulder and Scully are still here, and they’re bringing the past into the present (they used to sit like this on benches; they used to have experience with spooky cases). That’s their kind of dark wizardry. Very rarely, dead things come back to life.
• Mulder updates Scully on the case like it’s a bedtime story. His only goal in bringing it up is to distract her, and, maybe, to give her an out if she doesn’t want him here. “I would stay,” he says, “but I suspect the subject will kill again.” And then he stays and the subject kills again. It’s almost hilarious, but mostly it’s just nice for him. I love that he’s old enough now not to feel responsible for that; Mulder knows where he’s needed most, and it’s with Scully. He learned his lesson about sitting in hospitals.

I don’t have analysis I just think this is good touching

• When the chips are down and the people Scully loves are in danger, she is always open to extreme possibilities. This is the woman who ran through the woods for Jeremiah; she needs the hope of the unexplained, too, even if she doesn’t admit it quite as easily. “Back in the day, didn’t we ever come across the ability to just wish someone back to life?”
• “I invented it.”

Who told him about his lips

• I’ve been defaulting to “One Breath,” but technically “when you were in the hospital” refers to probably 30 percent of their partnership.
• It’s not news, but I like how easily Mulder admits how badly he needed Scully to wake up. Even when they’ve hit a bump in the road, they aren’t pretending that they wouldn’t literally die without each other.
• I hate to say it, but the breakup makes this one particular scene better. They left everything else between them at the door, and it makes this conversation feel safer and quieter, like it’s happening in a bubble. It means more, somehow, than the fact that Mulder and Scully are still willing to risk their lives for one another that they can sit with each other when one of them is in pain.

KEEP PRAISING HIM NO ONE LOVED HIM ENOUGH AS A CHILD

• This is such an easy Mulder/Scully blend of love and teasing, gallows humor and exposed heart. He’s telling her how much he needs her to be here (alive); she’s telling him how much she needs him to be here (with her). There’s something about Mulder that Scully will never be able to explain, and she leans on that. The unexplained gives her hope.

[pointing, excitedly] He’s taking the compliment!

• You can feel the history behind this conversation. Mulder knows now, from what they’ve been through together, that his presence mattered and matters. And for a show that spends so much time walking in circles to maintain the status quo—like, Scully saw one incredible thing, but she thinks this new incredible thing is obviously swamp gas—it feels like the biggest relief to see these people learning from and facing the past. They never do this. They just don’t talk like this.

thanks I love it

• Look how ready Mulder is to fight the man who would cut off contact with Dana and Margaret Scully. Fighting through the phone: It’s the new X-File.

• It’s not enough that Scully and Mulder are estranged; she and her little brother have to be on the outs, too? I don’t know about this. Glen Morgan said he went this route because he was “surprised at the number of families that have at least one family member who’s estranged that no one talks to,” and sure, that’s true. And if Scully and Mulder can hit a rough patch, anyone can. But the idea that any relative of Scully or of her mother would not want to be a part of that family just sounds fake to me. Who wants to live like that?
• I mean, at least we’re talking about Charlie for the first time in over two decades. And if we’re going to go this route, as much as I need an explanation logically, I’m glad we don’t get one. It’s like Maggie’s necklace: Families have things they don’t talk about. Sons they gave away, for instance……
• Also Bill is still the worst (and absolutely the type of person who’d try to use his sister for free medical advice about their dying mom) so maybe it was Bill. Maybe this is all Bill’s fault. You ever think of that, Bill?
• Charlie asks the wrong questions: He wants to know the “big mystery” when Scully is more worried about the little ones.
• Scully sees that her mom is awake first through Mulder’s reaction and this is the point in writing this post when I took a break and went to bed because how dare they.

“Only what I see in your face…”

• Maggie is a maternal figure to Mulder, too. She’s a better mom to him than his mom ever was, and I’m glad this episode finds ways to honor that without overshadowing the fact that this is Scully’s story.

Oh yikes he’s so happy

• That pause after “My son” is brutal. But even if she were calling Mulder her son, she wouldn’t be wrong. 

• Scully looks to Mulder every time something changes with Maggie. It’s like nothing she’s feeling is real until she shares it with him and he reflects it back to her. All of this episode’s ideas about the way we’re shaped by other people are gathered up and magnified in Mulder and Scully. They’re constantly bouncing off each other.
• No. No no no no no no.

MAGGIE

• They’re still balancing each other out: Scully needs to be irrational right now, so Mulder is the steady one.

Why does the touching always happen under these circumstances

• When did he move from “Mrs. Scully” to “Margaret”? This family had so much time together that we didn’t see!
• I can’t stop thinking about Gillian Anderson, trying to tap into these emotions, saying, “Go get Sheila,” and looking at her, the TV mom she’s known over 20 years, to feel what Scully is feeling. Since that article my life has never known peace.

She fits

• Throw a dash of the “Memento Mori” hospital hallway hug into today’s list of parallels.
• He squeezes his eyes closed when she says “our child.” Mulder doesn’t want to make Scully’s grief about him, but he’s feeling it.

• Cozy

STAY THERE

• OR DON’T

Like Mulder earlier, she reaches for his face without thinking and then pulls back

• I’d call this the Philadelphia redemption tour if Mulder didn’t just burn all of their athletic institutions.
• In “Never Again,” Scully spent her time in Philadelphia chafing against this job and Mulder’s sway on her life. Now she needs both. It’s impossible to separate the job from the partnership: She depends on the work she and Mulder do as a way of escaping from and channeling her pain, and that’s because of the work but also because of him. Mulder, let’s go be Mulder-and-Scully. Glen said he wished this scene could have more time to breathe, but for me the whiplash is part of its power; Scully doesn’t even give herself enough time to tell Mulder she’s fine, because with him, she’s not pretending that she is. She’s only telling him that she’s about to pretend for everyone else.

“I get it Scully, I do. But not right now.”

• This is like looking behind the curtain at all of the times they kept working when any good employer would send them through months of counseling first. And since we’re on the subject, that’s also one of the reasons I think “Never Again” is more valuable to the story in the order it aired, after “Leonard Betts.” I love the original intention behind “Never Again,” but there has to be a wild, angry, disorienting beat between Scully’s life-changing news and the way she pulls herself together to face it. Scully’s composure is sadder and more impressive when it’s laced over how scared we know she is. Here, we get that in 30 seconds.
• She walks off before Mulder agrees to anything. She knows he’ll follow (just like he knew she’d still investigate that case in Philadelphia. They don’t leave each other hanging).

Anyway those are her tears on his shirt

• Mulder, who’s literally just along for the ride at this point:

• I would pay her to do this to me.

Thanks hon

• “Mulder, back in the day I used to do stairs and in three-inch heels.” MULDER, I AM YOUR SUPERIOR.

uhhh well I guess we know how they entertain themselves in that house in the middle of nowhere with the very-likely-faulty electricity……..

• Literally they’re gonna have sex in this trash-art hideout.
• [X-Files theme 10-hour version]

• Remember when this was the only two seconds of season 10 footage we had and it was genuinely more exciting than any of my lived experiences?

• “But if you don’t see a problem, there’s no problem, right? People treat people like trash.” I know this is about society’s lazy and hypocritical worship of personal comfort at the expense of people in need and definitely not, like, the romance to which I have myopically dedicated this blog series. But I do think there’s a nice counterpoint in Mulder and Scully always showing up and being here as witnesses (seeing the problem) when the other is in pain or in trouble.
• I am obsessed with Mulder picking a fight with his exact previous definition of a tulpa.

• “And if you think real hard, or you want them so bad, they come to you.”

[thinks real hard about alternate reality where this is the first series finale and all of the revivals are just Mulder and Scully and William taking trips to IKEA]

• I don’t think I’ve learned anything trustworthy about tulpas from this show, but I do think killer art is a cooler X-File than killer garbage. It’s also timely: Artists have to take responsibility for the ideas they put out there and the way they can be interpreted (“an idea is dangerous, even a small one”). This whole episode is about a thought creation doing its creator’s unconscious bidding but taking it too far, and it refuses to let the creator off the hook.
• “Were-Monster” wound up telling a story about concrete truths, beliefs we can chase and find and touch, even if we have to run off on our own to meet them. “Home Again” is more theoretical: Maybe we’re never on our own. Ideas and memories have as much power as actual monsters, and we’re never without them. We’re always responsible for each other, and to each other. (I was not expecting this post to go full Brothers Karamazov.)
• Today in classic X-Files non-resolutions: Just give your clay man a smile.

• This is like putting a Band-Aid over the problem (but not literally; he actually took the Band-Aid off). We can’t be expected to believe this will solve everything, can we? The Band-Aid Nose Man is still on the wall watching as the Trashman leaves. In a story about hypocrisy, he’s become what he hates: someone covering up his problems so he can pretend they don’t exist.
• Log is the new rock.

They look like they’re about to carve their initials into the tree

• Scully says her mom needed to know before she died that Charlie would be okay; she had unfinished business. Business rarely finishes on this show (a clay smile on the face of a monstrous creation is usually the closest we come), but if anyone deserves closure, it’s Maggie. But in reaching out to fix what she believed to be broken, Maggie left other things unsaid. Scully, in the room with her mother, didn’t get a goodbye. There’s no way for us to wrap everything up.
• That’s the X-Files tension: that compulsion to keep tying up loose ends even when there will always be more. The good guys in this story are the ones who just can’t help but try to solve the mysteries in front of them. It’s the same reason Maggie directed “My son is named William too” at Mulder: According to Glen, Maggie knew she and Scully were squared away. Mulder was the one who “needed a little ‘Is your life in order?’ kind of question.”
• So it’s interesting that Scully basically rewrites everything involving William into a “we.” Twice in this episode, she says Maggie’s last words were directed at the pair of them: “She wanted to make sure that we’d be responsible, to know that William’s okay, even though we can’t see him.” And right after Maggie dies, Scully describes William as the son “we gave away.” But we’re reminded in flashback that when she reunited with Mulder in jail, she said, “I gave him up.” Over time, Scully has shifted the responsibility of that decision so Mulder can share it, and it feels like a deliberate choice they made to accept the whole point of this episode: They’re always responsible to and for each other. He put his trust in Scully when he went on the run; she put her trust in that trust when she gave William up.
• “I know that as parents we made a difficult sacrifice to keep him safe, that it was for his own good to put him up for adoption. But I can’t help but think of him, Fox.” Fox. They’re all grown up.
• He’s just letting her talk. Mulder’s silence was obviously meant to lead into the “Founder’s Mutation” fantasies, pushed (in the original order) as late in the season as possible to mimic the way Mulder has shoved his own grief to the back of his mind. And as much as I understand why they’ve decided to share the decision to give William away, the fact that Mulder still won’t let himself mourn with her means it isn’t an even split.
• Here come Scully’s wedding vows!
• “I believe that you will find all of your answers.”

• She has so much faith in him. And in them.

• He didn’t expect that.

She’s like, ‘Of COURSE I will’

• I know there’s been hand wringing over Scully turning William into her mystery, but even Mulder’s silence proves how much he’s trying not to see William as an open wound. William isn’t Samantha—he wasn’t taken; he was given away, so Mulder can’t make William his mystery without undermining Scully. (Mulder doesn’t just wonder about his mysteries; Mulder chases them down.) I do think the writing this season sometimes bends over backward to draw parallels between William and Mulder’s quest, and in doing so, it treats William like he belongs to Scully more than to Mulder. But I don’t think that’s how Scully means it. She just means they both know this is her “case” to close or open.

• “I won’t know if he thinks of me too or if he’s ever been afraid and wished that I was there. Does he doubt himself because we left him? What questions does he have of me? The same that I have of this coin?”
• How does Gillian Anderson make this line work?

“I need to believe…”

• “…that we didn’t treat him like trash.” You didn’t, Scully! Trash is the responsibility people want to forget, and you’ve never forgotten him.
• Ugh, this hesitation.

• That is also a live shot of me at the end of “Home Again.”
• When it started to look like this show was going to bring Maggie back to kill her, I was exhausted—not everyone in Mulder and Scully’s lives has to die. But everyone in life does die, and this episode is so weighty and Glen Morgan’s connection to the material is so affecting that it works, turning a move that could have felt like a haphazard stab at Big Drama into an intensely personal story. The X-Files, like Mulder, seems like it’s after answers to the big questions (the biggest mysteries), but there’s no way to approach them without also asking small, daily questions about where we stand with each other and how we move forward. Sometimes we’re helpless to do anything but sit with each other, but sometimes that’s enough.
• Thanks for everything, Maggie. I’ll always remember that time you got between your daughter’s gun and her partner. That was boss.

See you all soon for “Babylon”! Suffer with me.

Yikes.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in “Babylon”:

• Yikes!
• Does this episode think it’s edgy to suggest that a Muslim man in America might eat a PB&J sandwich? This intro otherizes by trying to familiarize (one problem with “they’re just like us” is that it presumes who gets to be “us” — in this case, white people — and who has to be “they”), then literally blows up viewers’ sympathy as if to blame us for it. I’m already furious.
• Hold on, let’s get the one wholly good scene out of the way.
• “Ear witnesses” is cute.
• Mulder only believes, or wants to believe, what he thinks can be proven. But Scully’s faith is about filling in the gaps where science can’t, which is why she doesn’t bat an eye at saying a story in the Bible didn’t literally happen. That’s the sort of thinking Mulder can’t wrap his head around: Why believe in someone who lived to be 930 years old if you know he really didn’t? Same reason this season toys with Scully’s DNA, I guess: There’s more than one way to be immortal, and she knows it.

Dana Scully remembers everything Fox Mulder has ever said so jot that down

SCULLY! WHAT! ARE! YOU! WEARING!

She knows it was hot

• Mulder remembers everything Scully has ever written so jot that down too.

[voice from 23 years ago] I *liked* it

• Mulder and Scully and Einstein and Miller is a double-date time-travel stage play I would see on opening night.
• It’s so much funnier that these doppelganger parallels aren’t subtle. Einstein practically kicks down the door shouting “I’m a medical doctor.”
• Imagine impressing Scully this much.

I’d cry

• “Can we get to the business section please” is a great way to dismiss someone who won’t stop talking.

This is the mood kids

• The real secret to this scene’s success is simple, adorable, and also the reason why they don’t have friends: Mulder and Scully are obsessed with themselves. “He seems like a bright young man.” “She calls him Miller.”

wow get a room with who you are as people

• “She’s clearly in love with him.” First of all, true. But this isn’t playground gossip! This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation! And they’re adults! With a child!
• Once again Einstein’s the mood.

• I can’t tell what points the pundits on the news are making, but if the old white man isn’t the most irrational one then this isn’t the X-Files I know.
• No, Einstein, Mulder can’t just tell you over the phone. He has a PROCESS. He does a SLIDE SHOW.
• Mulder before building a tower of furniture: “First can we talk about the nature of reality as you perceive it?”
• He is at home being critiqued.

He moisturizes in your disdain

• I present “mugwump” and “woo woo” as evidence that this script was written in a parallel dimension and came through wrong.
• If Einstein is meant to be anything close to a reflection of Scully in the early days, even an exaggerated one, she’s not. Scully was never harsh or condescending. But Einstein’s kind of great if you just look at her as someone who is absolutely furious that she has to talk to people.
• One thing I know for sure is that Einstein did debate club in college and she was the star.
• Look how much Scully loves going through the looking glass to glimpse young Mulder.

• She really means “I believe that you believe” as an expression of full support. Her relationship with Mulder has never been about needing to believe the same thing; it’s about trusting in one another’s sincerity.
• There are like 10 seconds when Mark Snow does a Good Thing while Einstein is bitterly calling Mulder because her future self stole her partner, and I’m angry because if you give Witch Meryl Streep a cow and she lets you cross to the parallel universe where this script originated, it’s a fun concept.
• “How do you say ‘howdy partner’ in Arabic?” YOU JUST SAY HELLO IN ARABIC.
• Is “Not all Muslims are extremists, certainly” seriously the most this episode could do?? Not ALL Muslims??? HOW GENEROUS.
• When you would usually eviscerate this sad white man but the script won’t let you:

• We aren’t being mean enough to this white lady nurse who hates that Her Tax Dollars are going to Those Immigrants, either.
• I know I’m not the victim of this episode, but Carrie Underwood’s Sunday Night Football song is a personal attack against me now. Faith Hill never would have played me like this.
• Hell is empty and all the devils are line dancing.
• You know what, no. I’ve never watched this hallucination dead on and I do not like it. Come back in three minutes for Dominatrix Einstein. I’m reclaiming my time.

No.

• Can we rescue Lauren Ambrose? Can we rescue ourselves?
• “You were 50 shades of bad” is harassment, please call HR.
• I’m the only woman in this scenario who’s not a medical doctor but I don’t think that’s how placebos work. That’s not how any of this works.
• Oh look, Miller was with the bureau in Iraq, because white Americans who go to Iraq are always lovely peacemakers and Iraqi people who come to America are always building bombs and depleting the local peanut butter supply.
• Let me just…try to understand. The point of the vision (other than giving Mulder the name of the hotel, which the FBI could have found 15 other ways) was for Mulder to know that the victim’s mom is the victim’s mom? Even though she comes to the hospital on her own and speaks English and can introduce herself? Let her talk!
• “Mulder where did you find her?” “Please don’t ask him that.” OUTSIDE [clap emoji] THE [clap emoji] HOSPITAL [clap emoji].
• White shirt looks good though.
• We’ve arrived at this episode’s big play at being less Islamophobic: Shiraz has a mom, and he didn’t go through with the bombing. So we’re “not all Muslims”-ing with a dash of sexism.
• Shiraz goes into cardiac arrest and Scully just…stands there…

When you’re a medical doctor and you’d usually try to save someone’s life but the script won’t let you

• God yes, this is exactly why I tune in to this show about not trusting authority: so it can glory in playing cutesy folk music over footage of armed soldiers invading a space where a bunch of Muslim men are in prayer.
• There’s 9/11 footage playing at the AIRPORT BAR. Writing this post is like when The Onion gives up and just starts writing actual news.
• I know it’s privileged to assume pop culture can be an escape — if you never see yourself on screen or behind the camera, it’s not — but it’s inexcusable that so many Muslim Americans sat down for an episode of a ’90s alien show only to be reminded of a day that’s still being used as an excuse to target them because of their faith. (I’m white, so please don’t center my perspective: In Sept. 2016, NBC News reported that anti-Muslim hate crimes were about five times more frequent than they were before 9/11. The Huffington Post also spoke to a number of Muslim Americans about how their lives changed that day. The stories in each piece are examples of how dangerous the ideas in this episode can be.) To see a show I love use a still-fresh tragedy to recklessly perpetuate a false association between Islam and violence makes me ashamed. I am sorry.

Now Miller’s the mood

• I don’t need my Einstein with feelings. I only want Miller and Einstein as over-the-top comic relief, and only when Mulder and Scully are in the room, thanks.
• “Something is clear to me now.” “The value of an open mind?” “The nature of reality.” Dialogue.
• When the alien show plays The Lumineers

• I don’t need Lumineer Lead Singer to tell me Mulder and Scully belong with each other. I need Mulder and Scully to use their words to tell each other. You can’t just fake resolution with song (did 30 Rock teach us nothing?). This is why The X-Files rarely uses outside music—it’s a cheap distraction, and no two people hear it exactly the same way. I’ve got “Ho Hey” associations (the season 8 premiere of Bones; feeling aimless after leaving Alaska) that I had to scrub in order to think of Mulder and Scully when I hit it in my playlist (fine, it’s on there). It’s like Beckett’s take on language: Every time we use a word, we assume the other person defines it as we do. The best shared language is silence—that’s how we respect the uniqueness of another person’s experiences. Mulder and Scully know that. And the score usually backs them up by starting on the ground floor with Mark Snow, whose language we all associate with the same things. This episode wants to be about communication, but it presumes too much about what we have in common without bothering to understand our differences. The X-Files was better at speaking to us when it just did what it always does.
• This mirror is for shaving shirtless while Scully watches, and nothing else.

What am I meant to take from these whip-adjacent marks? Nothing I’m taking, that’s for sure. Also this is the closest I’m coming to showing those marks. Reclaiming my time.

• It’s cozy in the winter, but I love the Unremarkable House in the summer. I spent 13 summers in the mountains. I feel like I know this place. There’s something about summer in this landscape that feels wide open, like you can make changes that will stick.
• This is exactly the life I want for myself but mostly for the fictional characters I project myself onto.

[DESPERATELY KEEPS IT CASUAL]

a dream I’ve had

• Shout out to Scully’s white pants. This is like if her “Demons” outfit graduated college and got a mortgage.
• I love the whole look of this scene. I don’t think it can be saved by watching on mute because I Will Never Forget What Was Said Here Today, but while I’m here I might as well mention that this vibe is good and warm and it’s nice to see them in the sun.
• “Talk to me Mulder.” She’s ready for him again.
• His exaggerated “WHERE TO BEGIN” is precious. He’s seeing himself like Scully sees him: too vast to sum up.
• OKAY WHY AM I CRYING I’m supposed to be a hard bitch at this episode!!!!

She loves her dark wizard

• The X-Files endures because even when there are fake cats being lobbed at Gillian Anderson’s head, Scully looks at Mulder like That, but The X-Files is also incredibly confusing for the same reason. Can I not just reject this episode in peace?
• Scully saying she saw unqualified hate when Mulder saw love is a cursed exchange and it gives me a chill.
• Can we get to the business section PLEASE (the business section is making out)
• “Walk with me Scully.”

I love this clingy scientist

• Do they look like two people who are talking about an angry God and suicide bombers?

• The X-Files is a social experiment to see what people will put up with.
• Look at how close they are.

• Look at their hands.

[LESLIE KNOPE VOICE] WHAT IS THAT

• Now look at her face.

• Now consider that they’re talking about “mother love.”
• Is that what’s going to save us?! The love of mothers?! It is so telling that this scene is outraged at the idea of sons as martyrs even as it happily paints women as exactly that.
• “Maybe it ends where it began: by finding a common language again”…in bed.
• They could’ve “opened their hearts and truly listened” in bed or on the desk or in IKEA or right here but just without the part where they talk about prophets. For a story that’s theoretically about getting past the Tower of Babel, this conversation is awfully obscure. An actual relationship status update shouldn’t have to be an X-File.
• I miss the parallel universe where this episode is good and I’ve never even been there.
• At least Mulder and Scully are having fun.

I’ll say this for this scene: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson did what they could.

• That zoom out at the end literally makes me want to pick a fight with planet Earth.
• And that’s that! Mulder and Scully are the only two people on Earth and we’re all in their computer simulation and it just glitched Very Badly but it’ll all be okay because of something to do with a horn.
• In conclusion, the Lone Gunmen deserved better.

You mad? I am Einstein-level angry at this episode and I’m leaving with receipts. If you feel like reading, here are a couple of responses to “Babylon” from Muslim fans (one on tumblr, one in the International Business Times via a conversation with Chris Carter). And if you’re looking to fight this episode with money this holiday season, might I suggest donating to CAIR?

Next week, we reclaim our time from Tad’s O’Malley’s chemtrail conspiracy theories. Hoo boy.

Now with more struggle.

Times Mulder and Scully should have made out in “My Struggle II”:

• I was on duty at my coworker’s apartment when Fox posted the opening scene of this episode during the Super Bowl halftime show and then took it away as soon as the halftime show was over. I watched this scene in her closet. I took my computer into my editor’s closet and watched Scully turn into an alien and then wrote about it and emerged to a world where it was already gone, and I didn’t even get to see Beyoncé. I have never shaken the feeling that experience gave me. Profoundly unsettling.

Where am I

• “THIS IS THE END” lol jk
• Never forget that Scully’s out to stop these sons of bitches.
• WHY does she need the whole back of the car for this tiny bag?

Mulder every morning: Yes babe I’ve seen the cargo space yes I know you could move a body back there yes of course I’d help

• Scully’s already halfway into a conversation with Mulder before she’s even in the office.
• Tad O’Malley Is Always Waiting for You

on MindQuad

• I wish his show were just called SQUAD.
• “What may seem like science fiction…but is science FACT.” I don’t have a better joke about this line than the line itself.
• “Agent Mulder’s phone” may be a ridiculous way to answer the phone in the office you’ve been squatting in for 23 years now, but it is an amazing power move. It’s petty and mature. It’s petty because it’s mature. I’ve said this before about Mulder’s nameplate on the office door, but for Scully, hiding herself in Mulder’s name is another act of rebellion: against the side of her that used to chase approval, against an organization that would underestimate her, against Mulder’s self-doubt. He’s the one who needs to reclaim his place; she’s just here to get things done. She really doesn’t seem to mind that this isn’t officially her office (it’s hers to Mulder). But she is damn sure not going to let anyone forget about it either.
• Answering the phone to Tad O’Malley while watching him online and still making him identify himself is also a baller power move. He sounds so disheartened.
• Scully two seconds after walking in the door: “What are you doing here and where is Mulder?”

Do you think I joined the Bureau to talk to other people Tad?

• As it turns out, pairing Einstein directly with Scully—and making the comparison between them less about personality than it is about how Scully’s approach to science has shifted since joining the X-Files—is a much better fit than pairing Einstein with Mulder. After watching Scully stay in the same scientific lane for so long in order to keep Mulder in check, it’s nice to see how she’s evolved: She knows now not to discount her experiences just because they don’t match up with science FACT.
• That said, America’s relationship with science has changed too, so let’s maybe not bring back the suggestion that the smallpox vaccine was Secretly Evil.

Young Scully Pairs Pastel With Mismatched Prints, As Fashion Intended

• Oh, and now we’re bringing back anthrax (“the canary in the coal mine”!!!) because “Babylon” apparently didn’t do enough to throw it back to late 2001, which was such a good time for The X-Files and definitely not a direct precursor to its cancellation.
• VERY cool how Scully keeps her phone in her bra. Another power move somehow.
• Mulder has a folder on his computer called “Curiosities.”
• He also has a PHONEFINDER APP activated and prominently displayed on his unlocked computer, apparently? Fox Mulder, who tapes over his webcam? Sounds fake but okay.
• I love that Scully only cares about evidence until she hasn’t seen Mulder for 12 hours and he’s not answering her texts.
• She 100 percent knows it’s Monica immediately.

She just wants to hear her say it

Casual and Platonic

• “Someone who was there for you.” Sure, that sounds like a good person to throw under the bus.
• This is an oddly stilted greeting and it’s still closer to kissing than Scully and Mulder get in this episode.

• They’re still doing that thing where one of them sets the intimacy level of how they address each other and the other one matches it. But this time it’s Scully who decides no, they’re first-naming it today. She sounds almost wistful, like she wishes they were still at first-name level and she’s trying to will them back there. It’s almost like she knows they would still be at that point if this episode’s treatment of Monica made any sense at all.

SAME

• Scully looked. Monica. Up. when she got back to the FBI.

Walk walk hair flip baby

This flashback fisheye is so upsetting to me. Was this episode made on iMovie

• CSM is “expected to make a full recovery” despite being shot in the face with a rocket launcher.
• “I thought that you were dead.” You were shot in the face with a rocket launcher.
• “They haven’t killed me yet, as hard as they may try.” For instance, they SHOT ME IN THE FACE WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER.
• This flashback gives us the same Monica—brazenly telling a murderer who may just be the only actually immortal person on this show that she hates his smokey guts—who yelled at a military panel in Mulder’s defense. She may have been the only person less concerned about rocking the boat than Mulder was (Mulder loves this job; he wanted to rock everyone out of the boat and then climb back in). She and Doggett were reflections of Mulder and Scully who didn’t personalize everything quite so much, who just did what they believed to be right because it was right, even if that meant dropping everything to drive a pregnant acquaintance to Georgia and deliver her baby. It would take a lot for Monica Reyes to compromise her standards even enough to go undercover and play the long game (which I’m still hoping is what’s happening). If this were all for William or even Doggett, it might make sense. But we don’t get that explanation. We don’t really get any explanation beyond self-interest. This isn’t even for Scully except to the extent that it allows Monica to survive with Scully.

Not the worst way for the world to end

• I feel like Reyes yelling at that panel!

• Mood:

I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU, WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU

• “You’re one of the chosen elite.” Well we knew that.
• Mulder erases the whole population and still goes looking for Scully. Scully finds out the whole population is about to be erased and is like, “Okay but what about Mulder?”
• “He loves Mulder. He sent a man to him.” Oh my God, did no one edit this?
• Mulder in 2016 fights like someone who’s been on the run and I love that middle-aged badass.
• “You sent for me. I’m here.”

OKAY

• “I don’t come when you call.” You…literally just said that you do.
• Power Move: slapping that cigarette out of CSM’s hand. It’s petty because it’s not mature.
• The Smoking Man still doesn’t get it. He compares Scully to his cigarettes: She’s Mulder’s weakness as the cigarettes are his. (Okay buddy, first of all, you think cigarettes are your only weakness? Not power at any cost? Not misogyny and murder? Just the cigarettes? K.) But Scully isn’t Mulder’s weakness. She’s the only reason he’s alive and the reason he keeps fighting—the only name in this scene to get a rise out of him. The bad guys on this show are the people who fail to understand relationships as a form of salvation. Sometimes you put two people in a room together and they don’t tear each other down. It’s tempting to wash your hands of humanity, but The X-Files also argues that it’s too easy, and that it ignores the ways we ourselves are responsible. (I didn’t cause global warming, says the man who smokes 10 packs a day.) Scully and Mulder don’t let themselves off the hook. They keep showing up.

• The funniest villain defense I have ever heard in my life is “I’m not responsible for the decimation of the megafauna.”
• And now, chemtrails.

C H E M T R A I L S

• I have video taken after this finale of a friend slumped over on the couch crying “CHEMTRAILS” while Sia plays in the background.
• Can you believe The X-Files, a show about shadowy government men who withhold the truth and shape reality as we experience it, playing with our lives so they can hold on to the power they feel slipping away, came back in 2016, and instead of tapping into that reservoir, it decided to attempt relevance by giving credence to anti-vaxxers and chemtrail conspiracy theorists? Those are the exact wrong elements of governmental distrust to tap into right now.
• Tad:

• Tad loves an interactive visual presentation as much as Mulder does. No wonder they’ve bonded.
• At last Scully assumes her rightful place as humanity’s savior.

I’m so proud of you babe

• This is a good play on Scully’s immortality—she lives on through this vaccine. How does she die? She doesn’t, and neither do we.
• “I’m on the king’s throne. Feels soft. Just like the king.” [“Bad Blood” voice] OHHHH SH…
• CSM takes off his face and Mulder’s immediate reaction is to wish Scully were here to deliver a sick burn.

He keeps a diary of her most cutting insults

• Science but make it fashion

Agent Mulder do you know what the penalty is for an overdue genome sequencing

• Now Tad says microwave radiation is being used as a trigger. He’s playing right into my mom’s hands.
• This whole global contagion thing seems a little too obvious for The X-Files, yes? The crises on this show are intimate (someone is taken; someone dies) and intellectual (the people are being lied to). It’s not that you can’t take “the people are being lied to” to its most extreme conclusion and wind up here. It’s just that this story plays better on a smaller scale. It’s most appealing when it deals with a threat that only Mulder and Scully can see.
• This is a nice shot though.

• Lots of hot DNA talk in this episode.
• Einstein has found the way I want to slowly die.

• It’s sweet the way Scully boosts her morale as she administers the vaccine.
• You know what? Miller is a good kid and I like him. I’m glad he brought his sexiest car to the apocalypse.
• Dana Scully stops a riot just by yelling at people to please stop rioting.

Angry Mob, in unison, at the doors of the hospital: The small redhead told us to come.

• Dana Scully drives on the sidewalk and gets mad that there are people there.

Why are you honking at her? She’s right

• Look at this tiny savior on the move.

• AT LAST. FINALLY. IT’S ABOUT TIME.

Here. Showing up. Like always.

Mulder would thank the man who destroyed the world if he spared Scully.

• Scully and Mulder have always survived as a unit; they save themselves by saving each other. Scully was saved, and that allows her to save Mulder. (I will not be hearing arguments that the other half of this we is Miller at this time thank you.)

She loves him

• She should have kissed him here. In theory, I don’t mind that Scully and Mulder are separated for so much of this hour; obviously The X-Files is best when they’re together, but I’ve always appreciated how confidently it lets them do their own thing, because they’re confident in each other. Mulder and Scully are just as interesting when they’re fighting for each other as they are fighting beside each other. But the reunion needs to match the build-up.
• And so it goes for Mulder and Scully’s whole relationship arc this season: Their breakup feels like it was leading to a moment that never came. Because Scully and Mulder were always together in some sense, their romance evolved in ways that mostly went unspoken (they defined their first kiss by what didn’t change between them—the world didn’t end). Breaking them up logically forced their relationship to the forefront in a way it never was in the original series. But this season tried to have it both ways, splitting them up and getting back to business as usual. I appreciated that the monster-of-the-week episodes paid tribute to the way Mulder and Scully’s dynamic is incapable of ever really changing—it only deepens—and I understand that this job pushed them back into old habits. But a season with six episodes doesn’t have the same rhythm as one with 24. You lose the luxury of implication; you have to say it. And this season never did. I still don’t understand what we’re supposed to take as the reason behind the split. Yes, Mulder’s depression was diagnosed as endogenous, but they’ve already got plenty of reasons to be sad, and bringing up William occasionally doesn’t make that connection explicit. It’s for the best that the episode order was shuffled (“Were-Monster” would be a lot less fun if it felt like Scully was just trying to ignore her grief), but it’s frustrating that the story paid Mulder and Scully’s breakup so little attention that it could be reorganized at all.
• Where was the payoff? Talking nonsense in a field?
• She should have at least kissed him here.
• “Agent Miller is also in trouble.” I love this man who met a genie and never made a wish for himself.
• “He needs stem cells in him right now.” No comment.
• I’d like to credit to Tumblr user thexfiles with ruining my day by pointing out this “Modern Family camera zoom.”

The level of incompetence in this office is staggering

• At least we’re acknowledging that they biologically have a child together? I hate that I still have to celebrate that.

What’s the term for a deus ex machina but it’s literally the exact opposite of that? Just a UFO arriving last minute to mess things up

• I lost years of my life to this cliffhanger. There’s no here here. I understand leaving a few things up in the air—Mulder and Scully will always be out there doing their thing; the world is never fixed; the fight never ends. But after 23 years, it’s reasonable to expect some closure, especially given that every time it seemed possible that The X-Files could end during the later seasons of the original series, the show went out of its way to give Mulder and Scully something they wanted (even in “Requiem,” Mulder gets his proof and Scully gets a baby). At the very least, this episode should leave us with something thematically satisfying: a Big Answer, a Moment for Mulder and Scully, a William reunion. But this is all set-up, and it plays like the only point of it is to guarantee renewal. Sure, we’ve got that renewal, and the promise of a search for William is a good one, but there’s still nothing deeper to this story.
• They should kiss is what I’m saying.

We’re learning a lot about Gillian Anderson’s eye tonight, which to be honest I don’t mind

• Okay bye see you on Fox in two years!

Can you believe I took so long with these posts that those two years are now down to less than two days? Here’s to season 11.

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.