The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives:  Technical Files

Herewith: Zuffy going bonkers with symbolism!

Mulder's home has always been an extension of his work, a comment on the fact that The X-Files are his life, that he has no "home" to go to, only another center for his work, and the more secret stuff at that. There is some indication, I think, that Scully's apartment was her "retreat" (as the fanfic writers put it), but I've never had a sense that his apartment is a retreat for Mulder. It is, in addition, where the X-Files are when there are no X-Files. As such, Scully has occupied the space less than his space in the office, but with the same free access and with the same sense of mission, including the care of wounded Mulder, of course, or locating an absent Mulder. The appearance of his apartment in *Two Fathers/One Son falls into this category, I think.

If we go back to *The End, we can add two other significant uses of his apartment to the ones you listed in season 6: her caring for him after his attack on Spender while their fates are being decided. Then in FTF, she appears reluctantly at his apartment to tell him she is leaving. She steps straight into the very psychic core of The X-Files -- Mulder's fixation with his father's role and his family's fate -- in order to announce her departure. She obviously cannot stay in this "sacred" core a moment longer than necessary to deliver the news, but in leaving she pulls him out of this mental center/fixation as well. He chases her down the hall to make his plea, showing in physical action how both of them break out of their established common territory and, ironically, make a more private expression of affection in a more public space. Later, in *The Unnatural, their private encounter likewise occurs in a very public space, outside of the claims of the files.

Season 6. One of he big changes is that FM suddenly obtains a bedroom, in what could be a metaphor for the possibility of intimacy in his life. The bedroom first appears in Dreamland I in which it is blocked off when Morris finds it -- blocked off, interestingly enough with porn magazines as well as old files, as if to say Mulder has blocked intimacy with cheap, glossy, rapidly discarded substitutes, now that I think about it. (Okay, Zuffy is going slightly overboard with this line of thinking! Smile a tolerant smile for me.) Morris then invites Scully into this new space, space which Scully has never seen before, hell, never even realized Mulder had. Even though she knows it is Morris and not Mulder who lures her into the bedroom, she reacts wistfully to it. "No, I don't hate it," she says, roughly in the same tone she used in saying "I like it" to Eddie/Mulder in Small Potatoes.

The bedroom itself shows up three more times, I think: in Monday, when Scully reacts with surprise to the notion of Mulder in a waterbed and Mulder is surprised that Scully doesn't know about it. If you follow my logic, this fits in well with the season's sense that he has made a commitment to her that she has not accepted, maybe not even realized. Then, in *FT he pulls her into the intimacy of his darkened bedroom to share with her the realization of his deepest wishes. Yet in the same episode, her encounter with the bedroom is the realization of her deepest fear: that is where his coffin rests. The last appearance of the bedroom is in Biogenesis, about which the less said the better.

Scully does not go into the bedroom with Mulder except in his hallucination. But even without bedroom scenes, her presence in his apartment has seemed pretty chummy this season, even on business. The most personal, obviously was when she came to his place to exchange Christmas presents at the end of Ghosts, a purely personal gesture that was marked by a gift, a confession or two -- all in all an unusual willingness on her part to give and accept personal feelings within *his personal psychic space, after his attempt to achieve that same thing outside that space. *Ghosts had the first of the leg to leg shots this season, repeated in Milagro.

Well, if anyone is still reading, there's a lot to be said about the use of the apartment space in Milagro or the symbolism of Diana in the apartment as fumigator/seductress, but I haven't got any more time for fun. Alas.

P.S. It's possible that Scully lost her lease after paying for all those little side trips when she and Mulder were reporting to Kersh.

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