Post:

In Monday, Scully takes the position that "I think that we're free to be the people that we are -- good, bad or indifferent. I think that it's our character that determines our fate." There is a great deal of support for Scully in Season 6. Along with "normal life," the theme of second chances is beginning to stand out this season, paired usually with the question of what fate is and whether we can escape it.

As LT, Patterson and others have said, Pinker Rawls demands our attention -- insists on it -- even as we are repelled by his violent streak. We are captured (but not captivated) by his willingness to give himself over to violence as a way to assert his identity -- not just to get his way but to demand respect -- at the same time that he is able to turn on the charm and treat Jackie and Trevor with tenderness. His volatility adds to the realism of the character; we think we know what to expect, but aren't quite sure what will happen next. Even if we don't know how bad the next explosion will be, we know it will come. Rawls sees his "second chance" in the form of his son, in getting what is "his" as though this will correct what's wrong with his life. Rawls is a rich character because he strikes us as capable of love, but we have to wonder what form that "love" will take? Is it giving and understanding? Or is it having? Does he understand this? Although he approaches the boy with great tenderness, the rage and instability are still just beneath the surface, radiating out from him. Trevor reacts instantly to the danger, feeling that explosive core either instinctively or from experience with other men.

Rawls (like June?) seems to think that the second chance can come from outside not within… that having Trevor will give him whatever it is that he seeks: purpose, wholeness, meaning, love. (It's easy to think this because it must appear to him that external forces are holding him down and there's plenty of evidence to support that notion.) But we are made to see that Pinker's character has not changed. Indeed, he tells June that God has sanctioned his choices, has justified and empowered him, apparently asking nothing from him in return. Validation, plain and simple. God gave it to him, now he wants it from everyone else. Change is not on his mind; only at the end is he hit by the realization that his own character has doomed the very thing he most wants. And at that point, he steps back and walks away, perhaps at that moment choosing his one real "second chance." What would have happened had he not died? Scully told us in Monday that "character is fate." Would Rawls have had the strength or sustained insight to change that character? It just seems unlikely. Would outside forces have allowed him to? That seems unlikely, too.

An alternative reading of the ending is that he chose death, much like Pam in *Monday, realizing that there was no other chance for himself, only for others.

The theme of second chances (not new this season by any means) keeps cropping up. In *TOE we saw Dwayne driven by the desire for a different life through the birth of a non-demon child. Again and again, his demon nature trips him up and, achingly, he finds that he cannot produce that which he wants so badly. Fellig in *Tithonius seeks his second chance continually as he stalks death, preternaturally tuned in to that which he has been denied and that he wishes for so fervently. Morris Fletcher grabs hold of Mulder's identity to live out the fantasies impossible in the confines of his own life and body. And, of course, *Monday is built around a possibly endless repetition of second chances heading always to the same end.

Mulder says in *Monday "With every choice, you change your fate." But that isn't true. Not in *Monday, not in general. It's only the "right" choice that changes fate -- not right as in correct, but right in the sense that somehow it *can* make a difference. And in X-Files land that means a choice that requires some kind of leap, some kind of personal insight into character and willingness to act on it. And sometimes in X-F as in real life it is not even our own choices, but the choices of others that really determine our fate. It is Fellig, not Scully, who changes her fate for her. In Dreamland, it is not even choice but random chance that shifts Mulder's life from his quirky but accustomed path to an ordeal of loss.

Well, of course, it's not as cut and dried as that. As we see from Jane, we are also imprisoned by our past and by factors that we cannot escape. The truth in LT's post has much to do with how hard it is to escape from where we start and how the things that pen us in build up and make it harder to change. In June's life, we see that no matter who she has become, others still know who she had been, others like Jackie who protect her and others like Pinker who are ready to rip off her new identity to expose the person she wanted to leave behind. Others know who we are (or were); they define us by that knowledge and keep us from shedding identity and changing character quite as we might like.

There is one other "second chance" ep that I haven't mentioned because it is unresolved: SR 819. Skinner tells us that "Every minute of every day, we choose. Who we are. Who we forgive. Who we defend and protect. To choose a side, or to walk the line. To play the middle. To straddle the fence between what is, and what should be. This was the course I chose. Trying to find the delicate balance of interests that can never exist. Choosing by not choosing. Defending a center which cannot hold. So death chose for me." In light of all the other second chances we have seen, we have to wonder whether Skinner's character will, in the end, make his fate, or whether it has now passed utterly beyond his control.