The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives:  Episodes:  One Son

NOTE: Posted to an on-going discussion in the Cave at the time the episode first aired

This episode caused a firestorm of emotion among fans, many of them condemning Mulder in a way they never could have imagined themselves ever doing.  However, I saw the happenings here in a different light. I don't see Mulder as dumping Scully for an allegiance to Diana Fowley; I don't see him giving up on the world and changing--in the space of a few minutes--his core personality (relentlessly fighting for what he believes is right, compassionate to victims, committed to his partner) into a self-centered man interested only in seeing his sister again at tremendous cost to humanity, willing only to save his own sorry ass. No, I don't buy it. I do, however, see a lot of other issues and factors at play in this episode. Here they are:

THE TESTING OF INSTINCT
Mulder has survived--indeed, prospered and solved many cases--based on instinct, on going with his gut feeling about something, even when it contradicts the logic or material evidence set in front of him. Scientific evidence would never have made the connection between Eugene Tooms and the murders he committed. Who but Mulder would have taken those elongated fingerprints and compressed them on the computer to prove they were the prints of a man who had been following the same pattern for over a hundred years? Who else would have believed Tooms had been around that long? The X-files division's higher-than-normal conviction rate comes precisely--as Scully herself states--from the unconventional methods of investigation spearheaded by her partner (even though this obviously wouldn't be the case in RL.  But this is the XF world, not ours.)

Anyone would be loathe to give up--to turn on--the principal thing that had brought them the most success in life. While we, the audience, see things that make us suspect Diana Fowley, Mulder has not been privy to all these things (he's a character, not an omniscient narrator.) He has trusted Diana in the past, not just professionally but personally--another reliance on instinct--and to distrust her now would mean not only accepting something for which the evidence has not proved conclusive (to him), but, in addition, distrusting his instinct itself--the foundation from which he operates. Shaking up your world this fundamentally is always a terrifying prospect. (Remember that at the end of *Beyond the Sea, Scully is unable to do this very thing herself when she admits to Mulder, "I'm afraid to believe.") A natural hesitancy kicks in here, and Mulder is experiencing it. 

And yet... Mulder doesn't dismiss Scully's fears out-of-hand. Just as in *E.B.E, where she states that the UFO photograph Deep Throat has given them is a fake, for as much as he is disturbed--even angered--by her claims, he immediately goes to check them out. In this case he goes to Diana's apartment, where he is confronted by the Cigarette Smoking Man and learns something he never expected to hear. 

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING, or
HAVE YOU PLAYED THIS GAME YOURSELF?
Mulder has had a history with Diana Fowley that none of us has seen or, for that matter, known anything about, outside of Mulder's remark to her in *The End that "I've done alright without you." We find Diana suspicious, as members of the audience, partly because of her actions themselves and partly because of the perceived threat we see in them regarding Mulder and Scully's partnership. I think we would be incredibly naive to claim that we are a disinterested party in this. 

While we have our own 'druthers' about this liaison (Mulder and Diana), we really have no basis on which to judge it, and frankly, it's not our place to judge it any more than it's our place to judge our next door neighbor's relationship with his spouse. The scene in the apartment between Mulder and Diana demonstrates (in facial expressions/gestures/tone, not words--as always) that the relationship between them gave Mulder something positive at one time that he continues to carry with him. I found this scene fascinating for the fact that we finally get to see Mulder in a non-partnership/professional situation--something perhaps analogous to the bar scene with Scully and Ed Jerze in *Never Again--and we can see clearly that there is a connection left between these two people. This is reality. Listen and I were talking about how those of you without ex-spouses may not grasp the fact that even though there are things that ultimately drove you apart, still, there can be other things that remain as strong ties between two people who have gone their separate ways. Relationship breakups and divorces are not starkly black-and-white any more than the rest of life is. As with any relationship, there are good aspects and bad aspects, good times and bad, things that drive you apart and others that bind you together--permanently. I know this because I've lived it, and I can see evidence of it in Mulder and Diana's interaction in this scene. Real life is not as tidy as, "Obviously he/she is scum; just cut the connection and get on with your life." And do we really distrust Mulder enough to think that he is just a complete and utter fool in this instance? (I think I hear muffled cries of 'yes, yes' out there, but personally, I don't.)

THE LOSS OF HOPE
Utter loss of hope is something almost as inconceivable to those who haven't experienced it as is comprehension of the number three million. We can say the word--three million--roll it around on our tongues and write the number three with six zeroes behind it, but we still have no real gut-level comprehension of how many things that actually is (though we may run around, self-satisfied, parroting 'three million, three million' and convince ourselves that we do.) Hopelessness--complete, utter and abject hopelessness--is a similar case. Mulder meets up with it when he crosses paths with the Cigarette Smoking Man in Diana's apartment, but I don't think we as the audience grasp the extent of what is really going on here. Even Mulder has to struggle with it--and struggle he does--while we, safe in our recliners in front of the TV, have only to remind ourselves that it's only a show, or that we know the actors' contracts run through the end of next season so we know they won't be killed off. We don't really have to worry.

Mulder, on the other hand, is confronted with the prospect of utter hopelessness, and he holds out against it as long as he can. Mulder rails at CSM for using innocent woman as lab rats, accuses him of only wanting to save himself at humanity's expense, of being selfish, of only postponing a holocaust, of giving away the Consortium members' children and wives 'as if they were things' (David's acting in this scene was incredible). He tries to poke holes in CSM's narrative (questioning the circumstances of Samantha's abduction.) He says, "You can't do that... Stop it now... or I will stop it." But in the end he has no ammunition left. Hope--the second of Mulder's key nutrients after instinct--has completely evaporated. THERE IS NO WAY OUT.  Coupled with this lack of hope, Mulder is also deeply affected by learning that his own father opposed the plan in the same way he is doing, and yet finally he, too, saw no alternative but to offer his daughter to the aliens in the hope that somehow she would survive, and would hold the key to her brother's survival. Watch David's facial expressions throughout this scene. 

As Hobrock points out, this is not just a question of losing a battle or losing a war; it is the prospect of total annihilation of life on Earth, and yet it is much more than a prospect. I don't believe many of us in this forum have ever faced this kind of prospect, and therefore we have little grasp of Mulder's 'choices', or, more accurately, complete lack thereof. There is no escape at the end of the episode for Mulder; there is no chance of the world--or even part of it--being saved if he acts. There is only the fact that the power of the aliens is so overwhelming that there is nothing that can be done, and that indeed the only choice--and not a happy one--is to either die with everybody else or survive with a few people he may choose to bring along. If you were actually in this position (put on the whole costume before you try to answer this one) what would you do?  If the only two choices were die with everyone else or save yourself with a few friends, would you not think about the friends you could save as a hedge against this utter meaninglessness? 

Going back to that Vietnam scenario I keep using as an example, what would you do if two little napalmed kids and their napalmed mother came running at you?--if there were no way to save them, no medical care available? Would you 'save' them and watch them die a slow and agonizing death because 'saving people is the right thing to do' and you'd feel good about your righteous stand?  Or would you do the unconventional-seeming, unethical-seeming thing that would actually relieve their pain? The difficulty of this dilemma cannot be understated, and I believe the same thing goes for the situation Mulder finds himself in here. If he refuses CSM's offer of refuge, the world will not be saved. If he broadcasts the threat, the aliens will only come all the sooner to consummate their plan. THERE ARE NO OPTIONS.  We keep wanting for there to be options, for there to be hope--as does Mulder. But there isn't any. It's the end of the line. And in this instance, as he has in many others, Mulder reaches out and touches--albeit unwillingly--the extreme possibility, which in this case is that there is nothing that he can do, and that the only 'options'--really bad and really worse--leave him with the possibility of saving a few people he cares about, and perhaps seeing his sister again. (I do NOT believe, however, that he falls sucker to the 'see your sister again' ploy. He is too skeptical by now; anything could have happened to her. I don't think it's his own self-interest that makes him finally accept this option; it is the possibility of saving a few others, including Scully.) 

Reaching this point is the most painful thing Mulder has ever had to do. It means he has to give up everything he's every held as sacred, and in addition, he has to sit back and do nothing (as he tells Diana.) Mulder is a doer; we see this constantly, though it comes out most clearly in episodes like *One Breath and *Memento Mori where he must do something--anything--to try and save his partner's life. In this instance, however, he comes to the paralyzing realization that the only way to succeed is to stop fighting. What could be harder for him? 

So why does he do it--give in, give up? Because he doesn't see any other course of action. Go back and check out Mulder's reaction when CSM gives him the little slip of paper with the information on it. This is a look we have never, ever seen on Mulder before, a look of utter, abject self-betrayal forced upon him because to accept this 'option' offers the only faint glimmer of hope there is. This is your life crumbling before your eyes, your life's efforts betrayed as worthless and misguided. David did an amazing job with this, showing us volumes about Mulder's inner anguish without the necessity of a single word.

HAS MULDER ABANDONED SCULLY?
It has been inferred that Scully has picked up Mulder's slack in all this; that she's the only one still carrying on the quest. I would submit (for as much as I admire Scully) that in reality she is still stuck in the conventional loop of thinking that she can do something to save the world, just as she has often been stuck in the loop of conventional scientific thinking in the past ("But that's not possible!"--how often do we hear her say this?) Also, while she does charge ahead to continue the investigation on her own (this is a woman with a mission), the reason she's chasing the train with Cassandra Spender on it is because Jeffrey Spender gave her the information. 

When Mulder calls Scully from outside Diana's apartment, he immediately tells her where he is. (He winces at having to say it, but Scully does not react to it at all--unlike in *The End.) He tells her they're going to pick her up; obviously, he has not 'traded' his loyalty to Scully for loyalty to Diana or he wouldn't say this. As a matter of fact, I'm not convinced that he's completely unwary of Diana. In the apartment when she kisses him, he does not return the kiss, but conveniently slips past her face. (And if he were still trying to test Diana, what better way to do it than to appear to value her again, as when he tells her, "...that's where we need to be" after talking about saving the people you love. This could be just as effective/attractive an emotional hook for Diana as what she is trying to do to Mulder.)

When Scully calls and tells him she's going after Cassandra's train, Diana immediately asks, "What did she say?" and notice that Mulder does not tell her, but rather deflects the question with, "This may be our last chance to stop them." Notice here that when he sees a chance to stop what's happening, he jumps right on it; before, he saw no hope. He proceeds to send Diana on ahead in order to go with Scully to intercept the train. (Scully, BTW, does not have to 'practically beg him for his help' on this one as some have suggested; she merely states--feeling that she is on her own now--that she's going to go after the train no matter what, and Mulder immediately chooses to join her.) When they arrive at the train yard, Mulder is true to his old form, doing the seeming impossible (shooting at the train window) on the slim, outside chance it will succeed.  As does Scully, which shows how far she has come in these six years... the real possibilities of stopping a train by shooting at it notwithstanding.

THE ENDING
By the time we see Mulder and Scully in Kersh's office, both are somber. Mulder realizes that the decision he had made--though it seemed to him the only viable one at the time--would have resulted in his and Scully's deaths if they had actually gotten to the air base. (By the way, the hangar scene was filmed at the Marine Corps Air Station--a helicopter base in Tustin, CA, BTW, very close to where I once lived; I've actually been inside those old blimp hangars they filmed in--cavernous old wooden structures.) Scully also realizes by this time that the situation is much more grave than she had previously realized, and that Mulder's assessment of the possibilities is probably correct. Jeffrey Spender, at the end, does become 'his own great man'--the one he spoke of to Krycek in the last episode. He stands up against his father's treachery.  Unfortunately, he [apparently] pays for his stance with his life, though I, for one, am left with a feeling of triumph for him. 

EXPECTATIONS REVISITED and A LITTLE MORE ON BACK SEAT DRIVING 
The general expectations--of the fans as well as characters like Scully and Jeffrey Spender--are that hope springs eternal. We'd all like to think so, but in some instances this is not what life gives us. Mulder butts up against this twice in this two-parter, first when Cassandra Spender shows up on his doorstep begging him to shoot her, and again when CSM offers him the chance to save a few friends. 

Mulder doesn't have a chance to act on Cassandra's request, but he considers it seriously and realizes, though it goes against conventional wisdom and conventional ethics, that shooting her is actually the only way to preserve the greater good, and he is willing to do this even if it means being condemned by those around him. This is his idealism at work, though it doesn't mesh with the conventional (the situation, however, is highly unconventional.) He does the same thing when confronted by the situation CSM describes to him: he is willing to look at the 'extreme possibility' and comes to the conclusion that it's the only hope he has. I don't believe Mulder is afraid to die; we have seen him risk his life for his quest on countless occasions. I believe it is the chance to save others, no matter how few, that leads him to accept a path he would otherwise loathe, and which obviously causes him no small discomfort to accept. But his decision again goes against conventional wisdom, and for this he has been scourged and flamed by an overwhelming number of fans. Mulder did in this instance what he has always done: he looked at the options, considered even extreme possibilities, and did the best he could with the information he was given. This is all we can ask of him.  None of us can do more than this.

As a person who--as many of you know--has walked many strange miles in some pretty weird moccasins, I cannot emphasize enough the fact that if you haven't been in a specific situation, you cannot readily assess what you would do if you were actually thrown into it. You can think you know, and speculation is cheap. I would caution against the easy answer here, the quick, unthinking, "of course he should keep going!" without the benefit of having to assess the actual circumstances Mulder has found himself in. Jeffrey Spender, in fact, kept operating with the best of motives throughout this episode, trying to protect his mother, but he had built his defense on conventional assumptions, not the actual facts--the dire nature of the situation was entirely too overwhelming to be believable. And his failure to correctly assess it results in his mother's being taken away despite his sincere efforts.

It has been my experience that people--in whatever situation--do the best they can at the time with the resources/information they are given. (It's also true that vast numbers of people who haven't had that experience are willing to jump in after the fact and think they could have easily done better. I'm not at all convinced.) I'm willing--my own personal experience as backup--to accept that *One Son shows the best efforts, at the time and given the circumstances, of everyone from Mulder to Scully to Jeffrey Spender. A rocky road lies ahead. Let's give them a breather and a chance to regroup, and see what they will do with the possibilities.

                                                                                                 -LT 

ADDENDUM: More thoughts on the death of hope

Human failings--people's dark sides, perhaps, as Zuffy says--are something we don't always want to contemplate. We want people to do the right thing, especially if they're someone we admire. We hope they'll do the right thing. We assume we'd do the right thing if we were in their shoes. When they don't, we're upset, or disheartened, or we lash out at them in our own (limited-experience-based) self-righteousness. I saw this happening to Mulder at the beginning of the week; anything seemed to be enough to justify stringing him up to the nearest virtual tree.

I would like to submit that one of the reasons we react so strongly is rooted in factors that go way beyond TXF into the territory of our own lives. We need the hope; we need to know that in the crucial situation the right decisions will be made. History--Nazi Germany, for instance--shows us sadly that this is not always the case. But we need the hope. So we look at the examples of those who have survived, and those who have made the 'right' decisions against all odds. We look at the Nazi death camp survivors. We look at Rosa Parks' refusal to give up a bus seat. We look at the Illinois family who took in eight orphaned siblings so they can continue to grow up as a family instead of being split up among many caregivers. The fact that we see others who have made the right decision reassures us that if it were us in the crisis, we, too, could do the right thing. 

None of us knows, however, what we would really do if placed in the crisis situation unless we end up there. Some people survive and others don't. Anne Frank didn't, and we can't say it was because she was an inherently weak human being; the circumstances were simply too overwhelming.. Some make the decision for the greater good and others find, much to their chagrin and dismay, that it is something they aren't capable of. Still others do their best and make what seems to be the best decision given the circumstances. Sometimes this is the right one; other times it isn't, in which case you have two scenarios: either circumstances somehow allow you to muddle through, or you are left face-to-face with horrendous consequences. In any event, there are no givens at the time we actually make the decision, no neighbor's test sheet to copy off, no quick peek into the future to tell us what our decisions may buy us. It's lonely territory. 

Hobrock, arguing that Mulder should have continued to 'do the right thing' (i.e. act in a conventionally noble way) has cited those who were able to survive the horrors of the Nazi death camps, and they certainly deserve our admiration. Yet I would suspect that for every person who was able to maintain the singular will to survive, there were probably fifty others who simply didn't have the mental or physical strength to continue... or the opportunity. Saying that there were people who survived the camps, so therefore Mulder should be able to make the 'right' decision when confronted by the ultimate non-choice in Diana's apartment strikes me as very similar to Scully's comeback to Mulder in *Memento Mori when he says that all those other women have died, and Scully says, "They did not! This Penny Northern is still alive." One out of how many?

I have reached many incredibly low points in my own life. My family of five (then six)  spent two years of unemployment living in a barn on under $2,000/year--not a misprint, incidentally. I lost a truly amazing child who was less than a year old. My husband, after many long, frustrating years, got a sex change and went off to live a new life, leaving me with a daughter and four teen and pre-teen boys to raise. I spent some really, really rough years, and there were many times when I thought I would never make it through. Somehow I did, and now I feel all the stronger for what I've gone through, and yet how did it happen? Sometimes I think it's something beyond us and our own personal wills or personal strengths (there but for the grace of God...etc.) One thing I have learned is never to condemn someone else for their apparent lack of strength. I've been there.

I think this is why the veritable flood of Mulder-condemnation at the beginning of this week has bothered me so much. The readiness to judge someone whose shoes we have not been in, to assume that we would have done better ourselves, to condemn those who don't reach the ideal, after my own experiences, is something I find really scary as an indicator of human nature. This is not meant as a personal criticism of anyone who has posted; I simply offer it as a chance to think about--and reexamine--our reactions to other people's circumstances. 

Re Mulder's situation in Diana's apartment: what he was presented with there was the choice between dying in vain with the rest of the population or 'saving' himself and a few of those he loved. CSM never mentioned becoming a hybrid (indeed, in the meeting of Consortium members, the men seemed to be pointedly avoiding contemplating that this could happen to them; it was Alex Krycek, alone at headquarters when Jeffrey Spender comes in, who says they've gone to be prepared to receive the hybrid genes.) While if you think it far enough through, you will realize that this is the end result, in the moment of crisis you may not do this. Mulder has already received several blows: that there is no hope against the invasion, that all consortium members have given up family, that even his father--the lone holdout (his vision of his father must be in extreme turmoil at this point, making him even less stable)--finally realized the inevitability of what was coming and gave up Samantha. With all this laid upon him, Mulder is presented with two choices: die in vain, or save a few people he loves. If he were clearly thinking of the choices Littljoe sets out (die or become a captive, slave clone), of course he wouldn't have taken it. But I think he has just been beaten enough that he can't see far enough to realize this is where 'survival' will take him. David's facial expressions throughout this scene, especially that one at the end we've never seen before, speak to this. I think he's just out of hope, run dry, and I say that because... been there, done that; know the territory.

I also do not see that acquiescing in this circumstance is necessarily equivalent to revealing a 'dark side'. From my own understanding, having a dark side, or turning to the 'dark side'--a la Star Wars--involves some fascination with or actual yearning for (perhaps even a hidden yearning for) the power and delight of evil. I think coming to a point where you are completely beaten down is not the same thing. Would we accuse the non-survivors of the Nazi camps of giving in to a 'dark side'? It seems unlikely. Mulder did indeed have an encounter with the dark side in One Breath where he confronts CSM in his apartment and nearly kills him. In that case Mulder had to choose whether he would be avenged by killing a man--an admittedly evil man--when the act of doing so would make him like the man he was killing. He couldn't do it. Here, I think, in *One Son we have a different situation. 

In the end, what disturbs us so profoundly about Mulder's collapse in this case (after a gradual process of being worn down that was actually begun, as Patty points out, with *Gethsemane), is the unspoken/subconscious extension that perhaps if even Mulder can't withstand this onslaught of circumstances, perhaps we couldn't either. I believe this is a potential we don't want to see or know about ourselves. Here, I believe, is the truly chilling possibility.

                                                                                          -LT

P.S. My motivation here is not to be a Mulder-apologist but rather a Mulder-explainer; translation is always my game and has been throughout my life. I want you to be able to crawl inside the character and see his situation through his eyes. Once you've done so, you're free not to buy my arguments if what you see there doesn't ring true to you. I merely want you to have tried on the full suit before you make your decision.

I hope all this provides some food for thought.

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