The Cave's
X-Files Commentary Archives:
Wetwired (3x23)
Author: bardsmaid
Wetwiredis
a great example of a fusion The X-Files uses to great advantage: a
compelling story interwoven with personal impact on the lives of its
protagonists. As I see it, this personal/interior focus is one of the
prime elements feeding the growth of the fanbase. Many shows that focus
on crimes are overwhelmingly procedural, but The X-Files gives us
characters with emotional depth (and--yes--even their families. On how
many other shows do we come to know the character's parents, brothers,
sisters?) When the characters have a personal stake in what they
investigate, and when we as viewers become invested in their lives,
foibles and yearnings, we care about what happens to them. It keeps us
coming back.
The creepiness factor inWetwiredcomes
both from understandable human fear--who wouldn't cringe at the idea
that someone might be attempting to control them?--and that fact
that this nefarious effort is so completely calculated, part of a
deep and far-reaching conspiracy, the chief players of which are
only too familiar to us. We know how low they will sink, what
lengths they will go to... and we understand their complete lack of
concern for their victims.
Typically, Mulder gets tipped off to this case by a
mysterious informant. Scully questions him about this man,
asking how he knows they're not being used, but Mulder
responds that "We've
got dead bodies and confessed murderers. If we're being
used, it's to find out the connection. That's what I'm
interested in." Which seems good enough for Scully, because
thereafter she throws herself wholeheartedly into the
investigation. Often on the show we see Scully as the
brakes to Mulder's runaway car, but in this instance nothing
paranormal (read: beyond the realm of scientific
explanation) appears to be involved, and Scully is in her
element proposing theories and digging for evidence.
So much
so, in fact, that she ends up under the same influence as
the previous victims of the mind-control effect emanating
from the TV.
Two points interested me
particularly:
Scully's characteristic way of reasoning, which
leads her in the direction of the psychosis
The fears this experience exposes
The difference between Mulder's and Scully's methods of
reasoning, noted in our recent discussion ofAvatar ,made
me realize that the exact same thing is going on here.
Scully reasons from effect back to cause: when she
thinks she sees Mulder conferring in the darkened car
with CSM, she immediately becomes suspicious. She
trusts the evidence in front of her eyes more than what
she knows from experience to be true about her partner.
The next day she questions Mulder pointedly on
several occasions, and urges him to take the device he's
found in the cable box to Agent Pendrell for analysis.
Then she checks with Pendrell to see whether Mulder has
complied.
Mulder, meanwhile, seems completely unaffected by
Scully's sudden suspicion, even after she's shot at him
through the motel room door. He knows her sudden
paranoia and actions are uncharacteristic of the partner
he's come to trust deeply. He even makes a point of
cautioning Skinner that "these
officers should be instructed not to confront her once
they find her." At Maggie Scully's house, things come
to a head when Scully points a gun at Mulder and all her
worst fears come tumbling out ("He's lied to me from the
beginning/he's never trusted me" for starters, and then
"You're in on it. You're one of them. You're one of the
people who abducted me. You put that thing in my neck.
You killed my sister!) But even in the face of
this barrage, Mulder doesn't flinch or take offense.
This isn't his partner; the psychosis is speaking and
not the woman he knows from experience.
[In spite of Mulder's apparent calm, however, I'd love
to see a fic set a few days down the road from the
events of this episode, where the accusations that have
poured out of Scully's admittedly drug-addled
subconscious stick in Mulder's head and make him start
to wonder whether, in fact, she might believe, even in
small degree, some of the accusations she made against
him in her moment of crisis.]
In
the end, Scully is saved from the influence of the tapes
she's been watching, and predictably, the syndicate goes
about wiping up the evidence of their experiment by
having their sneaky devices removed from the cable boxes
and then killing off the doctor and the cable installer
who'd had contact with Mulder and Scully.
But even though we're relieved that Scully is safe and
that the partnership is back on solid ground, the chill
of X's words make the audience's uneasiness linger.
He'd been assigned to kill the two men from the
beginning; he was just hoping Mulder would get to them
first. X seems to look at what's happened as if it's
been nothing more than a game--maybe of chance, maybe of
cat and mouse. In any event, he seems to be losing no
sleep over the results.
There's the possibility,
we can assume, that the experiment might continue
elsewhere. But even if it doesn't, we're pretty sure
that the syndicate will be hard at work using other
innocent people as guinea pigs for some other
experiment, as if they're so many petri dishes or
beakers. We shiver in sympathy for them... and at the
possibility that somewhere beyond our own backyards,
someone--or some organization--might be drawing us into
the crosshairs of their intent to perpetrate something
just as nefarious on us.
