The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives: 
Episodes:  Little Green Men (2x01)

"I wanted to believe, but the tools had been taken away," Mulder says in the voiceover accompanying the beginning of this episode. But we find that it's not just that the tools have been taken away, but rather that Mulder, and perhaps more significantly (since she seems not to be a cause of ' trouble' for the shadow men within the FBI), Scully, are being actively worked against. Though Mulder has been reassigned to the kind of punitive make-work tasks he and Scully will experience again later in the series under A.D. Kersh, CSM and his shadow conspirators obviously haven't assumed that mere reassignment will stop Mulder from the types of investigations he's driven to undertake.

When this episode first aired, I had no particular suspicions regarding Senator Matheson, who tips Mulder to the contact messages received by the Arecibo array, but given that we find him uncooperative at best and with shady ties implied several seasons later, in S.R. 819, I'm wondering now whether the decision to tip Mulder to the messages received at Arecibo wasn't a grand conspiracy in itself. Or maybe CSM was only keeping tabs on Matheson at this point, well aware that he'd been acting as a sponsor for Mulder's work. Either way, the predictable happens: Mulder takes off immediately, headed for Puerto Rico and the potential reinvigoration of his hopes, which clearly had flagged to a new low at the point where the episode begins.

But perhaps just as significantly for the men of the conspiracy to whom Scully is an unknown quantity, she just as quickly goes in search of her ex-partner. While Mulder's actions may have been predictable, they learn something significant about Scully here: that while she may not make waves within the FBI, she's not about to let her ex-partner go plunging off any cliffs. While CSM and his men may not have known about Mulder and Scully's clandestine garage meetings, her actions in tracking Mulder to Arecibo tell them very clearly that she feels a loyalty to this man that goes beyond their former work assignment. If they were smart, they'd realize that Scully is just as much a threat to their security as is Mulder, though they still seem of a mind, at this point, to pass her off as 'just a woman agent'. Interestingly, it's Alex Krycek, three episodes later, who recognizes her potential, telling CSM that, "Scully's a problem. A much larger problem than you described."  And we know that they got the message then, because shortly afterward, Scully is abducted.

In any event, what we see in Little Green Men is not a passive but rather an active campaign against our two agents: CSM grilling A.D. Skinner about whether Scully knew what Mulder was up to; agents sent to Mulder's apartment to look for incriminating information; Mulder's phone illegally tapped; Scully followed as she attempts to catch a flight to Puerto Rico without being detected. It's also interesting to note that this episode gives us the first glimpses of Skinner being pushed to the point where he begins to stand up, however tentatively, for these two 'renegade' agents. As CSM is leaving Skinner's office (and looking forward, predictably, to lighting up a Morley), Skinner says, "I don't smoke." It's not a big, obvious stand, but I think it can be seen as a precursor to the scene in his office at the end of the episode where Skinner surprises CSM by turning on him and ordering him out of his office. Clearly, CSM has asserted himself to the point where he threatens both Skinner's authority/autonomy and the kind of fairness to which he subscribes, and Skinner will have none of it.

"You even begin to doubt what you know is the truth." Throughout this episode we witness a very personal crisis of faith on Mulder's part. Scully sees it in his rumpled hair, his distraction, and his frustration with the pointless work he's been assigned. But as viewers, we are also privy to his vision of the night his sister was abducted--how the two had fought, how a power failure comes on the heels of their sibling spat, followed by the terror of the lights, the door knob turning of its own accord, and the young Fox's attempt to get to his father's gun. But he's too late, which at this point, in the 'present' of the episode we're discussing, he must feel is the story of his life.

Something that impressed me--a detail I'd never noticed until I rewatched again last evening--is the striking similarity between his dream about the abduction and the subsequent alien visit at the Arecibo station. In each case, there are the same flashing lights, the same shaking, the door knob turning of its own accord, and the vision of a vaguely alien form in the blinding brightness beyond the doorway. (It even made me question whether the experience as we saw it was completely objective, or whether it had been colored to some degree by the lingering terror from Mulder's childhood experience.) The difference this time is that Mulder does manage to get hold of a gun. But his effort is in vain; the weapon won't fire in spite of his repeated pulls of the trigger and his verification that the magazine he's inserted is indeed loaded. If this second encounter proves to him that he couldn't have saved his sister anyway, it's cold comfort.

[As an aside, Mulder's mindset in this episode--the depth of his very palpable depression/frustration--made me realize exactly why I'd been so convinced, when the early Season Six episodes were first airing, that we should be seeing some sort of personal reaction or response from Mulder, that being removed from the assignment that hadn't been merely his job but his life--as well as his one potential access point to discovering the truths he'd been seeking--was exacting a distinct personal toll on him. My conviction about this, coupled with the fact that no evidence of any personal impact was forthcoming on-screen, eventually led me to sit down and explore the possibilities in story form, scribblings that became the germ of my Sanctuary series.]

"I still have you." Throughout the episode, it's worth noting how much Mulder depends on Scully... or at least, on what Scully has come to mean to him in his own mind. The doubts he may have been hiding even from himself come tumbling out in their secret meeting in the Watergate's murky garage, though it's not his lack of access that Mulder laments, but rather the possibility that he may have been chasing 'little green men' all this time. He's actually been questioning the veracity of his memories of Samantha's abduction, the thing that's fueled him for so long.

Even alone in the cramped Arecibo workroom, Mulder turns on his tape recorder to record his impressions and addresses them to the woman who's no longer his partner. She's become his anchor, the wall protecting him from the world's buffeting gale. "Before," he confesses to her as he speaks, "I could only trust myself. Now, I can only trust you." Which is saying a lot for a man who's experienced life as himself against the world and it's scorn toward what he believes. And of course Scully comes through. She shows up just in time to save him from the military team that surely would have killed him. Back in D.C. on his wiretap assignment, Mulder admits his dependence on her as naturally as if she were a member of his family. "I've still got you," he tells her, as if it's an obvious and foregone conclusion. Scully seems caught off-guard by his statement, which makes sense considering how hermetically sealed she can be when it comes to her own emotions; surely she can't imagine making a similar admission to anyone.

In the end, in spite of yet another loss of evidence and the fact that he's still stuck doing wiretaps, Mulder realizes that he's no longer fighting alone, but that he and Scully are still partners, and perhaps more so than when the were assigned to work together since this is a partnership of choice, a deliberate pact made in the face of potentially dangerous consequences.

The truth may be out there, and Mulder and Scully will attempt to find it, but shadowy figures are lying in wait. They have no intention of sitting indifferently by while these two discover the secrets they've been hiding and expose them to the world.
 

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