Post: Length alert, kiddoes--get some snacks!

There are so many ideas floated in *Milagro that it's hard to know where to start the commentary--so many themes are intertwined in a thoroughly masterly and disturbing fashion. I guess the best way is just to try to enumerate them, and let the stray ideas fall where they may.

1. The writer's creation taking over. This is something the writers in this forum have often talked about--the idea of a writer's creation developing its own mind and direction--and CC himself spoke of it himself in a recent interview. On this level, *Milagro seems to be an attempt by the writers to express and work out the complex, contradictory nature of literary creation, almost as if neither the writer nor the character is complete without the other. We are not even sure who is real--Scully finds evidence of the "psychic surgeon," of his real life and death, and yet Padgett refers to him as "his creation"; when creation and reality have spilled into each other to such an extent that people are dying, can we be sure that even the personnel file Scully finds is not an artifact? The teaser shows us that Padgett is capable of altering his own reality as much as anyone else's. The most compelling moment for you writers, though, must have been that vision of a kind of deadly stand-off, with the character saying, "Why do I do what I do?" and the author replying, "I thought you could tell me"--the writer and his creation as completely and shockingly unknown to each other as the real people they are required, by their symbiosis, to destroy.

2. Once again, we enter the debate over fate, character and will. It is abundantly clear that there are no easy answers here as to who is controlling whom. Does the girl stay late at the grave because he writes it that way, or does he "get into her head" enough to know that this is what she would do, and so he writes about it, thereby alerting his creation to the necessity of another stolen heart? How much of what these kids do is of their own volition? Would they, or their romance, even exist without Padgett? All interpretations seem possible. Does Scully go into Padgett's bedroom because he has already written it, or is she simply drawn by his understanding of how tumultuous and conflicted her feelings are, by his unblinking (literally! Anyone else notice that?) attention to her?

I liked what Zuffy said last week about how, in the XF universe, escaping fate often requires personal growth or a leap of faith or understanding (this could be said about the real world, too, Zuff!). But in the XF world, it is often unclear what is meant by fate--sometimes it means some sort of a larger spiritual connection; sometimes an inevitable outgrowth of one's character (as I think it was in *Trevor); but often, especially when used about Mulder, it is shorthand for a lifetime of manipulation by human forces which, though they can be understood, are beyond our control. When Mulder defines fate as realizing that "the choices you thought you had were already made long ago," he is speaking directly to that third meaning. It is Mulder's horrified realization that his whole life has been orchestrated to please the Consortium's agenda that leads to the crisis of confidence he is suffering now (I'll discuss that in a minute), and I don't think it's an accident that the interaction of destiny, manipulation, and character have been the themes in several episodes since *1Son. Recognizing and dealing with the legacy of manipulation, separating it out from his own choices, and deciding where he has to go from here, is the work that Mulder must be engaged in right now. In reference to 11-13's post about futility, there really is no contradiction if you consider point of view. From Mulder's point of view futility is a real and pressing issue right now, much more so than in *Gethsemane, because this time there is no easy answer since he no longer is pure victim--he has to confront his own failure to act.

3. Scully's repressed passion. So Scully really is in love with Mulder, is she? What struck me was the comprehending and yet shut-off look between M&S when Padgett said that she was "already in love." It seemed to say as clearly as anything could, "Yes, but let's not deal with this now." For once, complete agreement. Padgett wrote the fantasy, yes, but it is VERY significant that he attributed it to her. And yes, there is no denying that she is attracted to the weird ones. Scully's level of tension and her potential for breakdown, on which we have commented before, continue to rise, and the only question is, now that Padgett has given her back her heart, along with his own, will she make use of it? Was her final surrender to emotion real and valuable to her, or will she shut down again, as she did after her cancer recovery?

4. The "new Mulder" and the reversal of roles. There was some discussion on this board earlier about the changes in Mulder since *1Son, and they have never been more apparent than they are here. The only explanation I can find for his current state of mind is that he is still reeling from those traumatic and tragic events, from his complete loss of confidence in himself. His self-confidence is so low, in fact, that he, a master profiler, states that "no one can tell what someone else is going to do," and Scully has to remind him of who he is and what he can do. He seems utterly passionless, disturbingly lacking in the fire and extravagent emotion that used to be his hallmark. When he suggests a secret admirer to Scully, he does so without a trace of either humor or jealousy--just as a plain fact, so incredibly different from Scully's prickly reaction to Karin in *Alpha. And when Scully returns from the church and tells him he was right, he first insists he was wrong (how often have we heard Mulder admit that he is flat-out wrong?), and then proceeds to investigate the guy in a cold, premeditated fashion that is completely unlike his previous flamboyant self. Only a couple of times do we see signs of his old impetuousness. Once is when he breaks into the apartment fearing for Scully, though there seems to be a scene missing--we have to assume that he is listening, has heard her in the next apartment, and becamed alarmed when the voices fell silent. But we have been given no reason to attribute his reaction to jealousy--only to fear for her safety. Another is when he moves toward Padgett, as if to rough him up, and is dissuaded by Scully's touch--the same touch, and its instant affect on Mulder, that tells Padgett how she really feels. More frequently, though, we see the new, impassive Mulder. When he tells her what he read about her in the book, he is deliberately crude in order to gauge her reaction, but then immediately backs off and--startlingly to me--he neither warns her about further contact with the guy nor expresses particular outrage that her privacy was violated in such a way. His lack of affect when he sees her supposedly dead can be attributed to shock, I suppose (it is similar to his stunned reaction in *Kitsunegari); but when she clutches him and begins to cry, his expression is not one of love, pity or relief, but bewilderment--no tears or emotion, just deeply disturbed confusion. What can we think about this? There are so many possibilities. Is he genuinely surprised, after all that has happened, that she would react to him in such a way, that for once she isn't "fine"? How much of his former emotionality over her abduction and cancer was not love, but guilt? Has he grown so used to her rejection that he has given up on love, just when she seems to be discovering it? Does he think of himself as such bad news that he no longer wants her to love him? Or is this simply more evidence of Mulder finally "growing up"--trying to figure out what is happening rather than just reacting to it?

The reversal of roles, in fact, has taken another step here, with Scully becoming more and more the provocative one. She has not only become the outrageous thinker, but she has become the one ruled by emotion, albeit repressed emotion, while Mulder has become impassive and shut-down. He recognizes the reversal, and even attempts to get some humor out of it, but the attempt falls very flat. In *Trevor Mulder was amused and heartened by her adoption of his outrageous stance; but their failure to affect the events in that case was deeply disturbing to him, I think, as we can see from his face at the end; he is questioning, once again, whether he is anything close to what he once so confidently believed himself to be. I think we are seeing Mulder wander further and further into a crisis of identity and confidence, while Scully finds herself forging ahead and trying to fill in for him while ignoring her own crisis, driven more and more by belief and emotion even while she resists admitting it. They appear to be in the process of going "full circle to find the truth."

5. The MSR--or lack thereof. This episode gives us a view of M&S at work together that we have never really seen before, though we had little glimpses in such eps as *Arcadia--a level of professional unity of purpose that is almost surreal. And yet, on another level, they seem to be completely--maybe even willfully--out of touch with each others' feelings. Are we seeing their relationship as Padgett sees it--seamless and yet devoid of any real connection--in the way he HAS to see it in order for him to think he has a chance with her? Or is this what M&S have created in order to tide them over, until all the things still bothering them can be resolved--is each genuinely afraid of knowing what the other is really feeling? Is this the best they can do right now? The holding pattern they seem to be in could be the remnants of love, or the possibility of it--perhaps both--we can't really tell.

6. I DON'T want to see Scully covered in blood ANY MORE this season. Enough! Enough! Enough!

7. Finally, and most of all, a huge thank you and congratulations to Spotnitz, Shiban, and Carter, who had the courage to dig into some of the dirtiest corners of the human mind, and the double courage to resist giving us any easy answers. Bravo.