Post: Well, it's another day and I DID go back and watch Terms of Endearment again, and then I watched it over again (LITTLE NOTES pad in hand, of course.) And some things have begun to come together that I didn't see the first time around. Interesting things.

The most obvious thing this episode highlighted for me is how CC never stoops to the level of making his villains caricatures. Every one of them is a full person, with good and bad qualities, complex motivations, and dreams and aspirations that, even if we don't share, we can at least understand. Wayne, the demon in this episode, is perhaps the most human villain we have yet seen. Like Kristen in '3', he is tired of the life he is used to; he just wants to live a normal life and have a normal child. He has married, become the very supportive father-to-be, notices (and longs for) the normal children other people have. If he wanted a child just from some ulterior motive, or for malicious reasons, he would not be so crushed at the news that the sonogram shows his unborn baby to have a potentially disturbing disfigurement. But he is genuinely, deeply touched. His constant tenderness with Laura speaks to his humanity (even when we discover he has another wife, Betsy.) When Laura says that seeing the sonogram gave her the feeling that the baby she was carrying was somehow evil, we see Wayne wince, but it is not the wince of someone being found out; it is the sting of deep regret. This man/demon has worked hard to be the person he hopes to become; his remark about the 'job jar' shows just how far he has gone to put on this 'wardrobe', if you will, in it's entirety.

Mulder recognizes in Wayne a man who longs to be a good person, as well as the demon who will do whatever it takes and say whatever need be said to accomplish his goal of having a normal child and heir, and he doesn't despise the man, but rather watches him with curiosity and regret for how he must eventually fail. Even his remark to Wayne as he leaves the house, "I know what you are," is delivered without malice or bitterness. Actually, I believe Mulder understands all too well what it means to be driven by a need almost beyond yourself, and the potential to hurt those closest to you along the way. His life is the story of a driving need to find his sister and the truth surrounding her disappearance, and more than once along the way this has nearly cost his partner--the one person who makes his life not just bearable but, by his own admission, whole--her life. This, I think, is why he watches Wayne with so much interest, but without bitterness. I think it's what makes him hesitate repeatedly in his questioning of Wayne about the circumstances of the baby's disappearance (just after Laura has left the room.) He pauses; he gulps; he looks down, away from the man he is questioning. Mulder's tone is very quiet here, very soft. Watch it again and look at what David pours into this scene. He shows us a Mulder who is clearly affected by something that grips him at more than just a surface level when he says, "Um...according to your wife's statement (pause), at one point she reached over for you in the bed (pause) and you weren't there." Does this echo for Mulder his own inability to help his sister, to stop her abduction, or his guilt in not being there for Scully on any number of occasions where she has become endangered because of his quest? There was a lot to this little scene, a haunting depth that David's acting brings home for the viewer. 

This leads into the second thing I saw highlighted in this episode: the way in which the circumstances of this case produced emotional echoes for both Mulder and Scully. Though their reactions might not be noticed by the casual or first-time viewer, those of us who know these agents well see how their pasts affect their reactions to the circumstances presented here. When Scully tells Mulder he must place Laura under arrest for apparently attempting to abort her own child, she suggests that he "procede carefully. This could be very emotional for everybody concerned." It is not offered as a recitation of standard operating procedure; it is said quietly, but with obvious feeling. Having just watched 'Emily' last week, we can see that her conviction comes from her own sad experience. When she helps to uncover the bodies of the normal children buried in Betsy's yard, Scully is obviously affected. We can see her own private anguish pass through her like a shiver and sense her wondering at how anyone could choose to give up a normal, healthy child when so many (like herself) have struggled to hold onto loved children who would never have any chance for a life of normalcy. 

In any other show the actors would just deliver the lines and go home. There would be a cut and a print and everyone would feel like they'd fulfilled their obligations. Not so with TXF. The fullness of character that makes Mulder hesitate (and gulp--there are several of them) his way through his question to Wayne, and that soften/deepen Scully's reaction to a case she has no personal stake in, is what makes these agents real to us; ultimately, it is what anchors this show--what makes it all believeable--in the same way that Scully anchors Mulder to keep him from flying away on the helium of his own theories. What would this particular theme--or most X-files premises, for that matter--be in the hands of another production company but perfect candidates for one-star movies? 

The third intriguing aspect of this story touches our continuing discussion of a 'normal life' and what we have come as a society to accept as desirable. Immediately upon starting my second watching, I began to notice the contrast between the two wives. Laura is plain, certainly not what you'd find held up on TV or in the movies as the ideal desirable wife. She wears little makeup, her naturally curly hair is long and plain; she wears glasses that didn't come from the designer eyewear section. Her clothes are unremarkable--indeed, dressed-down. The house she and Wayne live in is comfortable but older. Betsy, on the other hand, is almost striking. She has eyes like crystal, flawless makeup, a trendier hairstyle. Her clothes are something you might buy at Nordstrom's and the house she lives in is more upscale--newer, lights in the more manicured yard, fancy front door with frosted glass panels and a decorative wreath on the door that stands out so far that you'd have to swing the door open fairly wide just to get by it without knocking it down (that wreath definitely had me concerned!) But what a contrast between the two personalities. Laura is sincere, gentle, and caring. Betsy is reserved, calculating. Laura comforts Wayne when he is crushed by the news about their baby's deformity; Betsy leaves him to deal with it on his own. Laura is trusting; she comes outside to encourage Wayne to come to bed even when she has begun to suspect that something about his story doesn't make sense; Betsy, on the other hand, hesitates before even letting Wayne in the front door ("What are you doing?" she says.) Laura's reaction to finding out about her deformed baby was the feeling that something evil was growing inside her that she wants nothing to do with; Betsy realizes exactly what it is and lays plans to make sure she gets it. When Wayne finds it necessary to take Laura's baby, she cries out to Wayne for help, not believing the awful being she sees in front of her could be him. Betsy, at the same point, knows exactly who it is, and is waiting to catch him.

As we have seen with Scully's experience in Dreamland I and II--wishing wistfully for a 'normal life' with house in the suburbs and kids running in the yard (and then her subsequent experience with the all-too-normal Morris Fletcher)--the stereotypes we are presented with by media and society do not always look the same once we have gotten home and opened the package. Quite often they do not deliver in the way we had hoped or expected. Our first view of Laura does not peg her as an 'attractive' woman, and yet we come to see an inner beauty as well as the tender, caring reaction she occasions from her husband. Betsy appears, on the surface, to be the more desirable, and yet she turns out to be suspicious, calculating, and bitter ("Everything went fine without you, Wayne. It always does.") Undoubtedly the calculating Betsy has counted on the power of stereotypes to aid her in her quest to gain the demon child she seeks. On the surface she is a much more attractive package than Laura. And yet her inner self shows through the thin veneer of attractiveness and even affect Wayne's response to her, for he does not treat her with the tenderness he showers on Laura.

This showing of the potential hollowness of the stereotypical is echoed in a small way in the contrast between Jeffrey Spender and Mulder. Spender is the agent who seems the more legitimate. He is in charge of the X-files. He is a straight-arrow, a by-the-book operative, the type of agent of whom Les Miserables' Inspector Javert would heartily approve. Yet the scene with the distraught sheriff (Laura's brother) shows him to be completely without heart. He smiles, acts concerned, and tells the officer Laura's case will put right into their top-priority caseload, yet as soon as the man leaves, the police report is sent through the paper shredder. What a contrast with Mulder, the self-admitted laughingstock of his peers, who appears, when we next see him, with the shredded document pasted together, genuinely interested and eager to help solve the mystery. 

While I do not propose that CC is presenting this theme of societal expectations to us as a morality play, we have seen it arise before in this season, and it speaks to Carter's general insistence that things are very often not what they seem...a refreshing--and thought-provoking--message coming from a medium where things are generally (sadly) exactly what they seem AND NO MORE.

All in all, I'm very glad I went back and gave this episode a second look. Following are a few miscellaneous nice touches I noticed:

-Wayne's tenderness with the first wife, Laura, and his sincere yearning to BE normal, to leave his demonic background behind. It made him a character you could take a deeper look at instead of dismissing out-of-hand (you can't learn from what you won't deal with.)

-Mulder with Spender's shredded report. How very characteristic of him to be digging in Spender's garbage for material to investigate. (Does this man ever give up? Would we like him if he did?)

-Scully having been up all night--after her normal day-stint at the FBI--analyzing the medical data to help Mulder's investigation. She never leaves him without backup.

-The RED car that Wayne, the devil, drives.

-The irony of the insurance client's remark as her three picture-perfect boys thunder through the dining room, "Slow down, monsters!"

-Mulder's off-hand comment to tip off Wayne: "I'd hate like the devil for that to happen..." and the nearly imperceptible eye signal that lets Wayne know Mulder is on to him--and glad Wayne knows it.

-The way Scully freezes when Mulder explains that Wayne has harvested the buried fetuses "because they're demons and he wants a NORMAL child." What a jolt back to Emily.

-The sheriff's defense of his sister as almost a mirror of brother Bill's intended but overbearing protectiveness for Scully

-Mulder's "I'll race ya." Here is Mulder's classic relentlessness, the dog who has caught hold of your pant leg and will NOT let go. He recognizes the conflict Wayne must deal with within himself, but he has hurt innocent people, and Mulder is NOT going to let him get away with it. 

-Mulder with the kids in Wayne's car. He really seemed to be enjoying himself here, in a way he might not have been with kids some seasons ago. (I'm sure we all see the potential implications here.)

-The back-and-forth between Mulder and Scully in Laura's hospital room. Here again we see the softened voices and gentle urgency that have replaced the sometimes strident disagreement of past seasons. Their intense desire to work WITH each other (probably with stinging memories of their jangling out-of-sync in TB) shows through. 

My advice, should you ask, is to go back and watch this one again. You may discover something you like.