The X-Files 9.7, John Doe: La Verdad Está Ahí Afuera

January 12, 2019

The X-Files 9.7, John Doe: La Verdad Está Ahí Afuera

I’m not going to lie, this look really works for Robert Patrick

Summary: We know this is a special episode because it comes with title screens. On Day One, Doggett wakes up on a dirt floor in an abandoned building. Someone steals his shoe, and Doggett chases him outside and onto a street in what Hollywood always thinks Mexico looks like. As Doggett tries to steal his shoe back, the thief calls to some police officers. They’re not happy with the thief, but they’re more interested in Doggett and whether he has papers. Ooh, the Mexican police want papers from a white guy! Twist! Unfortunately, Doggett doesn’t have any. Even more unfortunately, he can’t remember his name.

Day Two. Doggett is in a holding cell with a bunch of other people. To add insult to injury, he still only has one shoe. He thinks that yelling “andale” will make the police pay attention to him, but he’s wrong. One of the other prisoners mocks Doggett for taking his single shoe off to hit the bars of their cell, then putting the shoe back on. Doggett’s pleased to have found someone who speaks English. The guy tells him they’re in Mexico and asks what he remembers. Doggett just wants to get out of jail and call the American embassy.

The guy points out that from there, Doggett will have trouble getting home, since he doesn’t know where home is. He thinks going home might not be a good idea anyway, since Doggett is in a part of Mexico that Americans don’t come to unless they want to disappear. Doggett gets defensive, saying the guy doesn’t know him. “You don’t know you,” the guy points out.

Doggett has a dream about his son, Luke, calling for him. Then we skip ahead to Day Eight. The guy who speaks English (Domingo) is released from the holding cell, and after he learns from the police that no one’s coming for Doggett, he offers to bail Doggett out. Domingo has a job for Doggett but won’t give him any details, knowing Doggett won’t care as long as he gets his freedom. If he works hard enough, Domingo might get him another shoe.

Once he’s free, Doggett says goodbye to Domingo, but Domingo sees Doggett as his property now. Doggett tries to run, but Domingo has a buddy, Nestor, and Nestor has a gun, which he sticks in Doggett’s back. Doggett disarms Nestor and takes the gun (and his other shoe). Domingo notes that, if nothing else, they now know that Doggett isn’t a man of his word.

Doggett tracks down the shoe thief and asks what else he stole from Doggett. All he gets is a little silver skull charm. The thief tells Doggett that he’s disappeared. Out of options, Doggett finds Domingo in a bar and agrees to work for him. The job is as a coyote, moving people across the border. Domingo doesn’t think Doggett is above the job, since he must have done something horrible to lead him to needing it.

Domingo pays Doggett in advance so he can rent a room above the bar. Doggett shows Domingo the skull and asks if it means anything. All it means is that Doggett has silver and still asked Domingo for money. Nestor warns Domingo that he’s making a mistake; he doesn’t know what Doggett wants. Domingo says he just wants to remember, “same as all the rest.”

Doggett studies his face in the mirror of his room, seeing two little scars on his head. He realizes that the tattoo on his shoulder means he’s a Marine. Elsewhere, we get a glimpse of the Mexican version of CSM, whose charm bracelet is missing a little silver skull.

Day 12. In D.C., Scully and Skinner meet with Kersh to tell him that they’ve gotten word from U.S. Customs. There’s a surveillance photo of Doggett walking across the border from Laredo, Texas, into Mexico. Apparently Americans can just walk into Mexico? They should put some sort of barrier there to keep that from happening. I don’t know what it could be; I don’t have any ideas there. Skinner wants to send a task force there, but Kersh refuses. They’ve been searching Texas for Doggett, and now it looks like he just walked away. He’s Mexico’s problem now.

Scully argues that Doggett could be injured and could need their help. Kersh says he’s as concerned as she is (yeah, I bet), but he can’t use American resources to search Mexico. There’s too much political stuff he’d have to deal with. Skinner notes that Reyes is in San Antonio and was raised in Mexico, so she could help. Kersh says she can do whatever she wants, as long as she stays in the U.S.

So Reyes uses the FBI’s San Antonio field office to bug a Mexican businessman named Molina. He’s been dodging her for two weeks, claiming he’s been too busy with his tractor dealership to help. Reyes addresses him in Spanish, asking if he also sells drugs. Molina’s American lawyer objects to the language switch, since he doesn’t speak Spanish.

Reyes asks Molina about a missing businessman named Hollis Rice. Doggett was investigating his disappearance, and Reyes thinks he questioned Molina two weeks ago. Molina says he doesn’t remember talking to anyone named Doggett. Molina’s lawyer says his client is an upstanding citizen and a pillar of the community. Reyes asks if anyone actually uses that phrase other than mob lawyers. (Nice one.) She thinks Molina runs a smuggling operation, and Rice was involved somehow, then disappeared because he crossed Molina.

Reyes continues that Doggett is also missing in Mexico, and she’ll do anything it takes to get him back. Molina’s only hope is to help her. The lawyer calls an end to the interrogation, unless Molina is under arrest. He’s not, so they leave. Reyes gets the last word, telling Molina in Spanish that he should think hard about his future.

Doggett has another dream about Luke. The boy wakes him up at 5:30 in the morning, eager to show him something. Before Doggett can find out what the surprise is, he’s woken up by a ringing phone. He’s fallen asleep in the waiting room of some office where he’s waiting to use the phone. Doggett calls the Marine Corps Public Affairs Office and, lying that his name is Detective Ladatel (the first word he sees on a sign nearby), ask for help with an amnesiac Marine who was hit by a taxi. He uses info from his tattoo to try to help ID himself.

Police enter, so Doggett runs off. He goes to work, fixing trucks for Domingo since he refuses to do anything further as a coyote. Domingo has found a missing-persons flier for Henry Bruck, a suspected murderer. Though the flier doesn’t contain a picture or any details, Domingo figures it’s Doggett. He promises to keep Doggett safe.

That night, Nestor meets with the Mexican CSM (we’ll call him HF, for Hombre Fumando). He says that he and Domingo are friends of HF’s cartel, and Domingo has taken in a disappeared American who’s different from all the others. He knows that HF already knows all this. Actually, HF knows even more than that – he knows Doggett is an FBI agent.

Nestor asks why Doggett is still alive. HF says he takes his orders from the cartel, and his orders never said to kill Doggett. Ahh, I get it. The cartel isn’t a drug cartel – it’s the Mexican version of the Syndicate. HF continues that if Doggett were to die tonight, it wouldn’t be any of his concern.

Scully goes to San Antonio and tells Reyes that Skinner’s on his way to Mexico to work with the feds there to find Doggett. She’s learned that the Marines are looking for an unidentified man in Mexico. Reyes recognizes Doggett’s alias, Ladatel, as a Mexican phone calling card, not a name. They decide to trace the call Doggett placed to the Marines.

Nestor corners Doggett at the garage, where he’s working under a truck. Nestor reveals that he speaks English and tells Doggett, “See you in Hell, FBI.” He pulls a gun and fires at Doggett, who releases the jack holding up the truck so the truck blocks him from getting shot and injures Nestor’s foot at the same time. Hey, if Doggett hadn’t gotten his other shoe back, he could take Nestor’s! Doggett hides, then pounces on Nestor as he’s trying to get off another shot.

Domingo returns to the garage and finds Nestor dead. Doggett accuses Domingo of sending Nestor to kill him. He thinks Domingo knows who he is. Domingo says he’s a killer, for starters, since he killed Nestor. He calls Doggett a “desaparecido,” someone the cartel makes disappear. They run the town and kill people who make trouble. People who are more trouble dead than alive get their memories taken away.

Doggett asks how he can get his memory back. Domingo says he can’t. But Doggett’s dreams are clearly some sort of glitch in the process, because they’re breaking through his amnesia. While Doggett is distracted by a memory, Domingo starts pounding on him.

Reyes questions a police officer, pretending Doggett is her husband who abandoned her and their kids. He tells her that he and his fellow officers found an American who had been beaten to death. She asks to see the body, but it’s not Doggett (probably Henry Bruck, then). However, he does have the same scars on his head that Doggett has.

Domingo goes to HF to tell him that Nestor is dead. He knows that Nestor wouldn’t have tried to kill Doggett without HF’s permission. Domingo has overpowered Doggett and wants HF to have the honor of finishing him off. HF asks what Domingo told Doggett when he inevitably asked about his identity and his memories. Domingo says he didn’t reveal anything, but HF doesn’t believe him. He wants to see the truth with his own eyes. By this, he means use his eyes, which are now glowing, to remove Domingo’s memories from his head.

Doggett wakes up (this is turning into a drinking game) in the garage as a car arrives. He grabs a tire iron to use as a weapon and almost clocks Reyes over the head with it. He grabs her gun and holds it on her, unsure if he can believe her when she tells him they need to leave. He’ll need to make a decision quickly, because the police are there to kill him on behalf of the cartel.

Doggett thinks he and Reyes can just hide and wait for the cops to get bored. (I will not call it a Mexican standoff. I will not.) He tells her the only thing he can remember is his son. Reyes tells him the boy’s name was Luke. Doggett asks how old Luke is, and Reyes realizes sadly that she’ll have to tell him that Luke is dead. Her face says it all, but Doggett remembers that Luke was kidnapped and murdered.

As Doggett is crying over Luke’s death, the police throw a smoke canister through the window. Reyes tells her partner he needs to focus. The police start firing into the garage, which is really not a place the agents should be hiding out, with all that gas around. Reyes tells Doggett that they can’t die there. There’s a bus in the garage, so they board it and try to use it to escape, but Doggett’s driving abilities must have been removed with all of his other memories, because he tips it over just a few yards from the police.

Before the police can resume shooting, the feds arrive, led by Skinner, and stop the standoff. Well, that was anticlimactic. Doggett returns the skull to HF and accuses him of taking away his identity. He now knows he was in Mexico looking for Rice, who suffered the same memory loss as Doggett. But HF failed with Doggett, who now remembers everything.

Skinner tells Doggett to leave so the other agents can detain HF. But HF stops Doggett when he asks why Doggett would want to remember his past. There’s no way he’s happier now that he remembers. HF saw all the pain Doggett has suffered and doesn’t know why he’d want it back. “Because it’s mine,” Doggett replies.

With his memories fully restored, Doggett can now fill in the rest of the scene he kept dreaming about. Luke wanted to show him that he could ride his bike on his own. He should be wearing a helmet, unless he wants to end up with amnesia like his father, but whatever, good for him. Reyes is sorry that Doggett had to go through all that pain, but Doggett is fine remembering the bad as long as he can also remember the good.

Thoughts: In a couple of Doggett’s dreams/memories, we see his wife in bed with him when Luke comes in. She’s played by Barbara Patrick, Robert Patrick’s real-life wife.

Hey, show, don’t cast a white actress to play a character with the last name Reyes, then pretend she grew up in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish. Annabeth Gish’s accent gives away her lack of fluency.

Domingo: “I’d invite you to have a drink with us, but Nestor hates you.” For some reason, that cracked me up.

I hope Scully’s okay. She disappears after she gets to Mexico. Maybe she found a fun bar and spent the rest of the case doing tequila shots.

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