March 30, 2019

The X-Files 9.18, Sunshine Days: Here’s the Story of a Man Named Doggett…

Posted in TV tagged John Doggett, Monica Reyes, The X-Files at 1:06 pm by Jenn

That couch is so bad

Summary: Two guys are sitting outside in Van Nuys, California, drinking. One of them, Blake, whistles the Brady Bunch theme song and tells the other guy, Daley, that the house they’re looking at across the street is from the show. It doesn’t look like it from the outside, but Blake delivered a pizza there last night and saw the interior. Daley’s still skeptical, so Blake leads him to the house to try to get access. It’s midnight, but no one seems to be home and the door’s unlocked, so Blake thinks they should just walk right in.

He’s right about the house, which looks exactly like the inside of the Bradys’ home. There’s even a broken vase like one Peter broke on the show. A football suddenly comes falling down the stairs, reminding Blake of the episode where Marcia was hit in the face with one and broke her nose. Daley’s freaked out and leaves, so he’s not there when Blake hears children laughing upstairs. He follows it and thinks he sees Cindy and Bobby Brady. Daley’s still outside, waiting for his friend, who quickly joins him…but falling onto the roof of their car.

The next day, Doggett and Reyes come to the house to try to figure out what happened. Doggett thinks Blake must have fallen out of a plane or helicopter; it’s not important to him how Blake got into that plane or helicopter. He finds a piece of something black in the car and puts it in an evidence bag.

Daley arrives and asks if someone’s going to arrest the homeowner. He tells the agents the house is from The Brady Bunch, but Reyes knows that the show was shot on a Hollywood soundstage, and the house used for exteriors is in Studio City. (She took a picture of it once. She’s very proud of that, and Doggett is filing that information away for future teasing.) Daley’s annoyed that the police won’t search the house.

The agents and Daley meet the homeowner, Oliver Martin, who sticks to the story he already told the police: He wasn’t home when Blake died, and he didn’t hear or see anything. The agents want to enter the house, and Oliver tries to resist, but Daley busts in. He’s confused to see that the interior is now completely different. Oliver denies that the house ever looked like the Bradys’. But Daley is sure that he saw what he saw.

After Daley leaves, Doggett decides to check out Oliver’s trash. He finds a couple of roof shingles inside, then boosts himself up to the roof, discovering that it’s been recently repaired. He tells Reyes he smelled fresh plaster inside the house, and the black thing he found in the car was part of a shingle. Reyes asks if he’s suggesting that Blake somehow shot through the roof of the house and landed on Daley’s car, like a cartoon character. Doggett just says the connections he’s made here make sense, and he’s finally getting the hang of the job.

At Quantico, Scully is about to do Blake’s autopsy when she hears one of her scalpels rattling around on its tray. When she touches it, she gets an electric shock. She Skypes (or whatever the 2002 version of Skype was) Doggett and Reyes at the FBI’s L.A. field office to tell them that Blake was dead before he landed on Daley’s car. Doggett’s roof theory makes sense to Scully, and she thinks electricity is involved.

She wired Blake to something, and he’s giving off some kind of residual electricity, like he’s a dying battery. If Mulder were around, Scully know she would bring up electromagnetic fluctuations and poltergeists and such. She can’t come up with another theory, so she has to admit she doesn’t know what’s going on.

Back at Oliver’s house, Daley pours out a beer for his dead friend, then tries to sneak back inside. Through the window, he sees someone who looks like Alice serving dinner to a family in ’60s clothing. He busts through the door and discovers that, while the interior of the house looks like the Bradys’ again, Oliver’s the only one inside. Oliver tells him to leave before it’s too late. Daley wants an explanation for what he saw, but instead, he gets lifted in the air and flung through the roof.

Doggett and Reyes return the next day for their next investigation into an unexplained death. Daley’s been dropped in the backyard so hard that he’s sunk a few inches into the ground. The agents try to talk to Oliver again, but he refuses to speak to them if they don’t have a warrant. Scully calls to let Doggett know that he and Reyes are on TV, thanks to all the media swarming the house. She’s now in L.A. and thinks she’s found someone who can help them with the case.

A video from 1970 shows an eight-year-old boy named Anthony about to take part in tests with a doctor named John Rietz. Anthony does something spectacular, but the video shuts off. Now, 32 years later, Rietz tells the agents that Anthony made a bunch of blocks rise off a table using only his mind. He thinks whatever caused that let out an electromagnetic field that shorted out the video image, which is why it wasn’t captured on film. Rietz expects the agents to call him crazy, but Doggett believes him.

Doggett thinks Anthony is Oliver, and thanks to a look through some of Mulder’s books, Scully is able to confirm that. Rietz, a parapsychologist, tells the agents about how Anthony/Oliver was able to make things fly around. Rietz spent six months studying Oliver, who was as confused as everyone about his abilities, but knew he was psychokinetic.

Reyes asks how Rietz lost touch with Oliver. Rietz says Oliver’s abilities faded, so I guess he was no longer worthy of being studied. Doggett asks if there’s anything they can take to a judge to get an arrest warrant for murder. Rietz doesn’t know what kind of person Oliver’s become in the past 32 years, but the boy he knew was lonely.

Oliver patches up his ceiling again, back in the non-Brady house. Then the house becomes the Bradys’ again, and the kids say goodbye to Oliver as they leave for the day. Rietz calls and leaves a message asking Oliver to meet with him so they can catch up. The ladder Oliver was using to patch the ceiling starts shaking, and a scraper flies off and knocks the phone off the counter.

Reyes has been wondering why Oliver changed his name when he had no reason to (such as a criminal record he wanted to distance himself from). Thanks to a Brady Bunch website, Reyes has come across Cousin Oliver, Carol Brady’s nephew who moved in with the family in the show’s final season. She doesn’t think the name Oliver Martin is a coincidence in light of what Daley said about the house. Rietz recalls that he watched the show with Oliver.

Reyes can’t figure out why Oliver would name himself after a character no one liked. Scully remembers that he was called a jinx. Is that how Oliver views himself? Doggett doesn’t care; he just wants to bust him. Scully thinks Oliver should be studied instead of jailed. Rietz agrees – he could give scientists insights into paranormal activity, even proof that it exists. Scully wants that, as it would vindicate Mulder and the rest of the agents for all their work on the X-Files.

Doggett and Rietz go to Oliver’s, where Doggett spots something interesting through the window. Oliver won’t answer the door, so Doggett picks the lock and goes in, leaving Rietz outside. The House is Bradyfied again, and Oliver is upstairs, just wanting to be left alone. Doggett starts rising in the air, and though he manages to slow his ascent by grabbing a doorknob, he flies through the ceiling.

Fortunately, Doggett doesn’t go all the way through the roof, but instead finds himself in the attic. He’s upside-down, though, so that’s something. He yells through the window for Rietz, then Oliver, who just leaves him up there. Rietz comes inside the house, ignoring Doggett’s warnings that Oliver’s dangerous, and tells Oliver to let Doggett go. Oliver, now acting childlike, says he can’t – he doesn’t know how. Rietz tells Oliver to relax and focus, as he used to when Oliver was a child. He knows Oliver’s a good person and can fix this. This leads to Doggett falling through the ceiling, but least he’s alive.

Reyes and Scully come inside, amazed by the setup of the house. Oliver says he just thinks about things and they appear. Scully asks what happens if he thinks about another place. Oliver hesitates, but Rietz asks him to try, saying it’s important to him. Suddenly, the group is transported to a grassy plain overlooking the ocean. Moments later, they’re back in the house, which Oliver says is his preferred location.

Scully wants to take Oliver to Washington to help scientists study his phenomena. Rietz says again that it would be important to him, so Oliver agrees. Doggett thinks this is a huge mistake – clearly, Oliver isn’t in control of his powers. Scully thinks he can learn, and once he does, he can accomplish huge things. Doggett says it’s equally possible that he’ll cause destruction.

Reyes notes that whatever’s going on right now, it’s not working, since two people are dead. Scully thinks they owe the world the answers Oliver could provide them. Doggett believes there’s something he’s not telling them. Oliver packs his things, including the football, but it gives him an electric shock, so he leaves it behind.

The group goes to D.C. and brings Skinner up to speed. Scully and Reyes are full of smiles, while Doggett is still his skeptical self. This is despite the fact that Oliver has made Skinner float a few inches off the ground. The effort makes him sweat, and he asks for a glass of water. The agents leave him alone while they discuss the situation with a doctor named Jacocks. He thinks this is worthy of a Nobel Prize for physics. Doggett’s the only person in the group with doubts.

Skinner notes that with this kind of proof of paranormal activity, the X-Files can never be shut down. Kersh needs to be brought in immediately. But before anyone can call him, Oliver has a seizure. Once he’s in a hospital, Rietz thinks he just needs some rest to recover. Scully blames an electrolyte imbalance, which is only part of Oliver’s problems: He’s going into multi-organ system failure. His powers are destroying his body. The agents see the Bradys standing around Oliver’s bed, but when they go in his room, no one’s there. Oliver explains that the Bradys came to say goodbye, because he’s dying.

Doggett goes to his office to rewatch the 1970 video. Scully, Reyes, and Rietz arrive to tell him the doctors have come up with a treatment plan. Doggett notes that they still haven’t explained the cause of Oliver’s powers. Why is he obsessed with The Brady Bunch? Scully and Reyes think the show is still popular all these decades later because the Bradys are the ideal family. Oliver didn’t have one as a child, so he created one.

Doggett asks why he chose the Bradys, not the Partridges or another happy TV family. He reminds Rietz that he watched The Brady Bunch with Oliver, and slowly Oliver’s powers faded. Maybe he didn’t need them anymore because he was happy being with Rietz. If Oliver’s going to die because of his powers, but they go away when he’s happy, and Rietz makes him happy, there’s a simple solution. It just means no answers for science.

Rietz goes back to the hospital and tells Oliver that the vindication of his life’s work is important, and he let it blind him. He treated Oliver like a lab rat instead of a person. He regrets leaving Oliver’s life so abruptly. Rietz tells Oliver he can never use his powers again. Oliver dreads being alone, but Rietz promises he won’t be – they’ll have each other. Oliver asks to be called by his original name again.

Doggett tells Scully he’s sorry she can’t get her proof of paranormal activity. But Scully thinks she’s had it the past nine years after all. Maybe not proof of the paranormal, but at least of more important things. Doggett hopes that Anthony will learn how to love in the real world instead of the TV world. He and Reyes hold hands, and she tells him he’s getting a hang of the job.

Thoughts: Oliver is played by Michael Emerson. Rietz is played by John Aylward. Daley is played by David Faustino.

This should have been a Mulder episode. Imagine all the jokes.

Oliver can make his house look different without lifting a finger, but he can’t fix holes in his ceiling and roof using just his mind?

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March 2, 2019

The X-Files 9.14, Scary Monsters: WWMASD? (What Would Mulder and Scully Do?)

Posted in TV tagged John Doggett, Monica Reyes, The X-Files at 1:15 pm by Jenn

Yes, let’s show this kid more violent images on TV. That’s a great plan

Summary: In Fairhope, Pennsylvania, a boy named Tommy is lying awake in bed. He’s spooked by a tree branch tapping against his window and checks under his bed for monsters. He hears a noise from his closet and yells for his father, Jeffrey, asking him to make sure there’s really nothing under the bed. Jeffrey does, telling Tommy his imagination is playing tricks on him. But after he leaves, Tommy can see something under his bed reflected in his mirror. He tries to get out of his room, screaming for help, but Jeffrey’s holding the door closed.

Scully’s back in Quantico, trying to take a break from her eager students. Leyla Harrison comes to see her, reporting that she’s gone back to accounting rather than continuing to have adventures in the field. She has a case for Scully, who just wants to eat her lunch. In the course of busting a secretary for borrowing an FBI vehicle without permission, Leyla came across a possible X-File. The secretary’s daughter was Tommy’s mother, who was recently killed. Tommy told his grandmother that a monster killed her, and his father knows about it.

Leyla knows an eight-year-old isn’t a reliable source, but the fact that the coroner says Tommy’s mother stabbed herself to death is a big red flag. Scully thinks the coroner’s report is fine, and it’s perfectly reasonable that a woman would stab herself 16 times. Leyla tells her that Jeffrey took Tommy to a mountain cabin and has cut him off from the rest of the world, including his grandmother. Tommy also told his grandmother that the monster that killed his mother also killed Spanky, his cat. Scully says she can’t do anything, unless Leyla happens to bring her the cat’s body.

Reyes calls Scully at home that night while she and Doggett are driving somewhere. Leyla has brought them the X-File, and is tagging along on a trip to Pennsylvania. Scully tells Reyes the same thing she told Leyla – there’s no case. Reyes confronts Leyla for not telling her and Doggett that she already approached Scully with the case. Doggett just turns the car around to go back to D.C.

Leyla thinks they should continue the trip to Pennsylvania – even if the case isn’t an X-File, they should still want to help Tommy. She says Mulder would go if he were there. Doggett changes his mind, and the agents arrive in Fairhope as Jeffrey’s finishing burying something in the snowy yard outside his mountain cabin. Jeffrey insists that everything’s fine, but Doggett sees blood on his hand. Jeffrey says he just cut himself on some glass.

Reyes asks to talk to Tommy, but Jeffrey says he’s in bed already. Doggett notes that it’s only 7:00. Reyes says that Doggett’s stubborn and won’t leave until they get to see Tommy. Tommy himself comes outside and tells his father that he heard a noise that scared him. The agents remind Tommy what he said to his grandmother about monsters, but Tommy robotically says that monsters don’t exist. Jeffrey tells the agents that this is why his mother-in-law isn’t allowed to visit her grandson anymore.

Leyla thinks her imagination, like Tommy’s, got the better of her and she dragged Reyes and Doggett out on a non-case. But Reyes and Doggett are sure that Tommy and Jeffrey are hiding something. Doggett can tell that Jeffrey’s been digging, which is enough probable cause for a judge to give them a search warrant. As the agents leave, Tommy says to Jeffrey that he doesn’t think the monsters will let them go. Indeed, the monsters keep Doggett’s car from starting, and they make blood shoot out of the vents. Some kind of dead animal is under the hood.

Scully gets a late-night visit from a friend of Leyla’s named Gabe Rotter. He’s there to deliver Spanky’s body. Scully decides to be “exceptionally polite” and only tell Gabe firmly that he needs to leave. Gabe complains that he had to sneak around and dig a bunch of holes to find the cat’s body, so Scully is going to be grateful for his work. Also, Leyla said she’d only go out with him if he delivered the cat.

Scully immediately tries to call Reyes, but she doesn’t have cell service in the mountain cabin. The car won’t start, despite not seeming to have anything wrong with it, so the agents are stuck in Fairhope for the night. Leyla’s reminded of Mulder and Scully’s circumstances in “D.P.O.” and their inability to use anything electrical. She wonders what Mulder and Scully would do in this situation. Doggett reminds her that they’re not there. He and Reyes think their situation is the best possible thing – they’re with the very person they want to keep safe.

Upstairs, Tommy yells for help again. The agents find Jeffrey holding his door shut and burst into Tommy’s room as Jeffrey tries to tell them not to. There are creatures in Tommy’s room that look like giant bugs. Doggett shoots one, and the others skitter under the bed.

Tommy draws a picture of himself and Reyes while Doggett searches the house for more creatures, with no luck. Tommy tells the agents the that creatures are the monsters that killed his mom, but his dad doesn’t want him to talk about them. Doggett goes back to Tommy’s room, which is full of his drawings. He blasts Jeffrey for trapping his son in the room with the creatures.

Jeffrey shows some scars on his arm, saying the creatures almost killed him once before. He’s trying to deal with monsters that won’t leave him and his son alone. He thinks they want to kill the agents, and there’s nothing they can do to stop them. Killing the creatures won’t stop them. Leyla disagrees – what would he have been burying in the yard earlier other than a monster?

In D.C., Gabe watches uncomfortably as Scully performs a necropsy on the cat while wearing an apron that says “something smells goo-ooood.” I bet Mulder got that for her. Speaking of Mulder, his fish tank is now in Scully’s kitchen. Gabe’s like, “You’re cutting open a dead cat on your kitchen table while your baby sleeps a few doors down. This is totally normal for you?” Scully thinks that the cat killed itself, just like Tommy’s mother killed herself.

The phone rings, so Scully asks Gabe to hold the cat’s ribs open while she answers it. Gabe’s like, “This date Leyla promised me better be excellent.” The call is from a sheriff named Jack Coogan whom Scully called to help her get in touch with the other agents. Coogan tells her that Tommy’s grandmother asked him to look in on Tommy, but Jeffrey chased him away when he showed up. Tommy seemed fine, so Coogan didn’t follow up. He’s happy to go back and check on the agents, but not now – it’s snowing, and the roads are icing over.

Doggett digs up the thing Jeffrey buried in the yard, cutting himself just like Jeffrey did. He was telling the truth about it being glass – he buried the mirror from Tommy’s room. He buried it because Tommy was afraid of it. Doggett tells him to pack up his son so they can all leave the cabin. Leyla guesses they’re dealing with black magic, and the mirror was used for conjuring. Doggett’s like, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

He plans to have them all walk to the sheriff’s station, which makes Tommy nervous. Jeffrey promises his son that Coogan will help them. Tommy runs to Reyes for comfort. Coogan arrives at the cabin and tells everyone they can’t leave because it’s too cold outside. Jeffrey realizes Coogan isn’t really Coogan. Reyes sees that Coogan has drawn his gun and yells out a warning. Doggett fights the sheriff, trying to punch him in the stomach, and is shocked when his fist goes right through the man.

Gabe amuses himself by snooping around Scully’s apartment while she’s on the phone. He finds Mulder’s FBI badge and says, “So this is Johnny Fabulous, huh?” HA! I love this guy. He’s heard all about Mulder from Leyla, who talks about him and Scully all the time. Scully’s worried since she can’t get in touch with Coogan again, and her concern concerns Gabe. She thinks the cat was trying to chew something out of itself that was causing a lot of pain. She figures that’s why Tommy’s mother stabbed herself – she was trying to cut something out of her body.

While Scully calls Maggie to get her to babysit so Scully can go to Pennsylvania, Reyes channels her to do a cursory autopsy of Coogan’s body. He has no internal organs, and Doggett has decided his blood isn’t blood (and that the “blood” in his car isn’t really blood either). Knowing he sounds like Leyla, Doggett says he remembers one of Mulder and Scully’s cases similar to this – their mushroom hallucinations from “Field Trip.” He stops before he can compare the two cases.

Reyes says that Mulder and Scully might see something in this case that she and Doggett don’t. Doggett doesn’t know what it would be, since nothing there makes sense. Then he realizes that might be exactly what they need to see. They try to send Tommy, who’s drawing more pictures, out of the room with Leyla, but he doesn’t want to go. He’d rather be with Reyes, so she goes upstairs with him instead.

Doggett asks Jeffrey how he knew Coogan wasn’t Coogan. Why did he move Tommy to the cabin and lock him in the room with the monsters? Jeffrey insists that he loves Tommy and would never hurt him. He locked Tommy in with the monsters because he knew they wouldn’t hurt him either. Upstairs, Tommy shows Reyes a bunch of his drawings, including ones he did of the monsters. There’s also a drawing of Reyes with a monster inside her. Reyes asks why he would imagine something so horrible. “Because I’m afraid,” he says.

Scully and Gabe go to the sheriff’s station and meet up with the real Coogan. He says he tried to get to the cabin, but it was too dangerous. Gabe and Scully remind him that some agents and Gabe’s girlfriend (okay, buddy, slow it down) are at the cabin, and they need to find a way to get there. Coogan says he can’t help them.

Leyla wonders if Tommy is somehow at the center of what’s going on. They go back to Coogan’s body, which isn’t there anymore. Suddenly Reyes comes downstairs, gasping in pain. She confirms that Tommy’s responsible for everything that’s happening. And just like in his drawing, Reyes has a monster inside her stomach.

Doggett tells Jeffrey that he has to stop Tommy from whatever it is he’s doing. Jeffrey says he can’t stop Tommy from being afraid and imagining things. He doesn’t mean to do all this stuff. Reyes disagrees. Doggett runs upstairs to stop Tommy himself, but Tommy has crossed over into creepy-little-kid territory, so Doggett’s not much of a match for him. Thanks to Tommy’s imagination, Doggett falls out of the house into a black nothingness full of the bug creatures.

Back in the house, Reyes begs Leyla to get the monster out of her. Jeffrey’s no help, and Leyla’s starting to bleed out of her eyes, thanks to a new drawing Tommy’s working on, so Reyes is in a bit of trouble here. Jeffrey goes to his son’s room, but Doggett has made it back inside and stops him from opening the door. He’s adamant that what’s happening isn’t real. Tommy’s mother only stabbed herself because she thought it was real. Doggett doesn’t, so it can’t hurt him.

Tommy hears Jeffrey outside the door and yells for him to come into the room. From his window, he sees the agents and Jeffrey leaving the house together. Doggett goes back in and pours gasoline around the living room, telling Tommy he’s going to set the house on fire. Tommy thinks Doggett’s just trying to scare him. Doggett lights a match and asks, “Scared yet?” He starts a fire and stands in the flames like they won’t hurt him.

Outside, Leyla’s bleeding has stopped, and Reyes’ monster is gone. Scully and Gabe arrive in a Jeep with a plow attached and run into the house, which isn’t actually on fire. Tommy is unconscious, which I guess is why all the weird stuff stopped. Scully checks him over as Doggett tells Reyes that she was right. Also, the gasoline was just water.

In D.C., Leyla and Gabe get to enter a place she’s probably only dreamed of going – the X-Files office, which still has Mulder’s “I want to believe” poster on the wall. Leyla’s happy that the division is still in good hands. She’s moved her affection from Mulder to Doggett, thinking that Doggett was better equipped for this case than Mulder would have been. After all, Doggett’s “lack of imagination” is what saved them all. Doggett’s not as flattered as Leyla intended.

Reyes reports that Tommy’s in a psych facility, and obviously the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him or exactly how to treat it. But for now, they’re stifling his imagination by having him watch a bunch of TVs at once. Ha ha! TV ruins your imagination! It’s funny because a TV show is saying it! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Sigh.

Thoughts: Steve Ryan, who plays Coogan, also played J. Walter Weatherman on Arrested Development, so now I have all these “and that’s why you don’t _____” jokes running through my head.

Someone working on this show was a David Bowie fan. The title is from one of his albums, and the last scene is similar to one from Bowie’s movie The Man Who Fell to Earth.

The idea of drawings coming to life is featured in pop culture more than I realized. Three other instances:

• The Doctor Who episode “Fear Her”
• The Supernatural episode “Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie”
• Keith Donohue’s book The Boy Who Drew Monsters

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February 23, 2019

The X-Files 9.13, Improbable: The Theory of Everything

Posted in TV tagged John Doggett, Monica Reyes, The X-Files at 1:12 pm by Jenn

I have no words

Summary: A man playing poker in a casino is very bad about keeping a poker face when he’s dealt a 2 and a 3. He folds and moves on to the slot machines, where he stares creepily at a woman. Then he joins Burt Reynolds (yes, the real Burt Reynolds) at the bar and orders the exact thing Burt predicted he would, a 7 and 7 and a pack of Morleys. The player, Wayne, wonders if Burt knows him. Burt says he’s “part of the regular game.”

Burt continues that Wayne’s problem isn’t the cards, but playing the hand he’s dealt. When he gets bad cards, he needs to know what to do with them. Cards can’t think, so Wayne needs to make them work for him. There are millions of possible hands, but “the game can’t beat the man.” Burt tells Wayne that the woman he was watching comes to the casino every weekend and never wins, but she keeps coming, hoping her luck will change.

Wayne starts to follow the woman into the bathroom, but Burt stops him, asking if Wayne is bluffing. He wants Wayne to surprise him by leaving the casino. Instead, Wayne goes after the woman. As Burt finishes his game of solitaire with the same 2 and 3 Wayne was dealt, the woman’s slot machine pays off for another player. A woman then emerges from the bathroom, screaming about a murder. Burt draws the ace of spades.

In D.C., Reyes reads about the woman’s murder in the paper. She’s very talented, as she’s able to walk through the halls of the FBI building without running into anyone while she looks down at the paper. Scully joins her in her office, where Reyes is doing math. She asks if Scully thinks the universe is knowable in math, and can be reduced to a simple equation. Scully recognizes this idea as the Theory of Everything, but she doesn’t believe in it. She isn’t sure an equation that complex is even possible.

Reyes presents some unsolved cases of murder victims from the past few years. The woman from the casino, Amy, is the latest victim, having been killed two weeks ago. Reyes thinks that by assigning numbers to the letters of the victims’ names – numerology – she can figure out who killed them. It’s something she’s been doing for years. Reyes has also calculated karmic numbers for the victims.

Scully notes that she has no other evidence connecting the victims, so she doesn’t have much of a case. But Scully sees something in a picture from Amy’s murder scene that piques her interest. There’s a pattern in the bruising on the body that the other victims have. It could be from the killer’s ring. Reyes realizes that she might not have such a crazy theory after all. Scully says maybe Reyes and the killer are both crazy.

Wayne gets ready for another day of killing, or whatever, and sees Burt playing Three-Card Monte on the street outside his apartment. Burt lip-synchs to a French song, and the other people on the street start moving with the rhythm of the song. Triplets and three pigeons are nearby. Wayne approaches and tells Burt to stop following him or he’ll end up dead, too. Burt knows Wayne won’t hurt him; it doesn’t fit his pattern. He does another round of Three-Card Monte, which Wayne loses. Burt lets him in on the game’s secret: “Choose better.”

Wayne leaves angrily, almost bumping into Reyes, who’s in the neighborhood to see Vicki Burdick in room 333 of the Hotel Knickerbocker. Vicki’s a numerologist, but she doesn’t think she can be much help, since she deals with living people, not the dead. Her specialty is using numbers to provide guidance. Reyes insists that there’s a connection among the four murder victims, and if Vicki can help her figure out who the killer is, they can prevent more murders.

Too late – Doggett calls to tell Reyes that two more bodies have been found. On the plus side, he thinks Reyes’ discoveries could launch her career. You hear that, murder victims? Your deaths are not in vain! An FBI agent will benefit! Reyes goes back to the office, where her colleagues great her with applause. This is somehow not a dream sequence.

An agent named Fordyce tells Reyes that they’ve dubbed the murderer the Triple Zero Killer because of the pattern he leaves on his victims’ bodies. Three women were killed in 1999, and three recently, so the killer seems to like 3s. They just need to figure out three things: how the killer chooses his victims, how he kills them, and whether he’s planning more murders soon or if he’ll go into hiding for two years again.

Doggett wonders if the killer disappeared for two years because he was in prison. Scully profiles the killer as angry and strong. Reyes’ contributions to the brainstorming session are all about numbers. She thinks the killer’s using vibrational disharmonies to pick his victims. There’s practically a record scratch. Seriously, how is this not a dream sequence? Vicki calls to give Reyes some information, but she’s interrupted when Wayne stops by.

The agents go over to check out what’s now their seventh murder scene. Fordyce wants to know how the killer knew to come after Vicki, since no one else knew about Reyes’ theory. Is it just a coincidence? Fordyce notes that the FBI has a reputation to uphold, so agents can’t be going to numerologists or psychics for help. I guess he doesn’t know about how helpful Clyde Bruckman was all those years ago.

Fordyce isn’t interested in numbers; killers work on impulses, even if they don’t understand them, and that’s how they’ll catch this one. Reyes points out that if the killer acts on impulses he can’t understand, the agents might not be able to understand them either. Killers may have different impulses, and not all of them will lead to murder. Fordyce won’t accept that idea.

Doggett notes that if Reyes didn’t tell anyone else she had come to see Vicki, the only people who would know work for the FBI. Fordyce doesn’t think they need to worry about an inside job – it’s improbable. Doggett says that doesn’t make it impossible. Fordyce tells them he doesn’t care how they solve the case, as long as they find the killer.

Reyes tells Doggett that Vicki had information for her from the victims’ numerological charts. She tells Doggett his karmic number is 6, which aligns with his personality. Doggett says the same traits outlined in his karmic number are shared by lots of people. They’re people, not numbers. Reyes still thinks Vicki had a reason to call her. Doggett decides to do some actual FBI work while Reyes figures that out.

Wayne runs into Burt again; this time he’s playing with dominoes. He’s arranged them in a spiral and knocks them down as Doggett passes by. Wayne thinks Burt is trying to draw attention to him so he’ll get caught. Burt invites him to play a game, but Wayne says he doesn’t play Wayne’s games. Burt knows that’s true. As Wayne leaves, Burt studies a domino with three dots.

Scully starts Vicki’s autopsy at 6:06 p.m. She finds patterns of six dots on Vicki’s skin, then sees that her tape recorder is at minute 666. She joins Reyes at Vicki’s office with the revelation that the triple zeroes on the victims’ bodies aren’t actually zeroes – they’re 666, just worn away. She thinks 666 is on the killer’s ring. Reyes also has a revelation: Vicki did her own chart and realized her numbers matched the other victims’. That must be why the killer targeted her.

“Her Number Was Up” is the headline of the newspaper article about Vicki’s murder. Doggett has posted it on a board next to a map of all the victims’ locations, which form the number 6. Fordyce announces that he thinks they’ve come up with a profile of the killer. It’s basically the same profile of every serial killer ever. Fordyce doesn’t see why that’s a problem. Doggett thinks Reyes could be on to something, and the number 6 could be significant to the murders. Fordyce reminds him that they have seven victims now.

Reyes and Scully leave Vicki’s office, encountering Wayne on the elevator. Scully looks at his ring as he holds the door while the women get off. She forces him out of the elevator at gunpoint, but he ducks back in just as the doors close. That seems like a really dumb error for a seasoned FBI agent to let happen. Anyway, the women head to the stairs and chase Wayne in the parking garage, but he drives off and leaves them trapped by a gate.

There’s no cell reception in the garage, and neither agent saw the car’s license plate, so even if they could call for help, they couldn’t tell anyone to put out an APB on Wayne’s car. The closest door has a numerical keypad on it, so the women can’t open it. They’ll just have to wait until someone finds them. Reyes points out that they can’t be sure Wayne was in the car; he could still be in the garage with them.

They search the garage, but the only person they find is Burt. He tells him he’s waiting for a friend so they can play checkers. He invites the women to play with him, but they’re a little busy. After Reyes frisks Burt (probably the highlight of Annabeth Gish’s career), the women tell him to open his car trunk, where he said he kept his checkerboard. It’s full of classical CDs.

Scully tells Burt that they’re looking for a serial killer. Burt asks if there’s anything he can do, but without a working phone or the combination to the door, he’s as useless as the women are right now. They pass the time playing checkers, which Burt is really, really good at. Scully tries to shoot off the doorknob on the door with the keypad, with no luck. More checkers, this time with the women playing each other while Burt dances.

Reyes is playing with red pieces while Scully plays with black, but Reyes suddenly realizes something and turns the board. She thinks hair color is a factor. The killer murders a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette, in that order. Since Vicki was blonde, the next victim will have red hair, and the ninth will have brown hair. You know, like Scully and Reyes.

Burt casually says it’s remarkable that Reyes got that from a game of checkers. Now Scully thinks he’s somehow connected to the murders. Reyes thinks it’s all in the numbers, and Scully decides Burt isn’t a threat after all. The women tell him the numbers theory, and he asks if the numbers are helping the agents catch the killer, or if he’s using them to stay ahead of the authorities. It’s like a game.

Scully tells Reyes they can’t reduce this whole case to a game. Reyes reminds her that Scully, as a scientist, is ruled by numbers. So doesn’t it make sense that everything made from those numbers is also ruled by numbers? Scully says that makes everyone checkers on a checkerboard, being moved by some higher being. Reyes quotes Einstein: “God does not play dice with the universe.” Scully thinks that covers checkers, too. All of creation and life can’t be reduced to a win/lose game.

Reyes disagrees – maybe the people who win just see patterns better than others. Maybe they’re not the next victims, but are going to stop the killer. Wayne could still be in the garage with them. Suddenly the lights go out. Burt puts away his checkerboard as the women search the garage again. Reyes finds Wayne first, and he overpowers her before she can alert Scully. But ONCE A-FREAKING-GAIN, Doggett shows up in time to shoot the killer and save his partner.

The agents try to get Wayne to tell them why he killed people before he dies. He shakes his head but doesn’t tell them anything. Doggett tells the women that he saw the same pattern of victims that they did and thought Scully and Reyes would be Wayne’s next targets. The women run back to talk to Burt, but he’s already gone.

At the FBI building, Fordyce and some other agents turn their heads to make the 6 on the map of victims become a 9. Scully puts William to bed, but she can’t sleep herself until she talks to Reyes. She wants to know her own numerology. Reyes reports that she’s a 9, a number of completion. She has come to understand that “this life is only part of a whole.” One more thing bugging Scully: Who was the man in the garage? “God knows,” Reyes says. Then there’s a lip-synching/dance sequence in Wayne’s neighborhood, because this show is weird. When the camera pans out to show the city, we can see Burt’s face.

Thoughts: Vicki is played by Ellen Greene.

I’m so mad I already used the title “Murder by Numbers.”

I’m very grateful for this light, fun episode in the middle of a season full of baby angst and trauma.

Wayne: “Go to Hell.” Burt: “Are the reservations in your name?” Heh.

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February 16, 2019

The X-Files 9.12, Underneath: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Cable Guy

Posted in TV tagged John Doggett, Monica Reyes, The X-Files at 1:10 pm by Jenn

Jason Mantzoukas? Is that you?

Summary: In Brooklyn, a cable guy pulls up outside a house and kisses a crucifix. A voice from the back of the truck tells him to go do his job. This job involves lying to the family inside that their cable’s out, then acting really squirrelly. Suddenly, the father of the family is dead on the floor, and the mom and daughter are dead in the kitchen. Two cops arrive seconds later and arrest the cable guy. One of those cops is Doggett.

In D.C., Doggett is yelling at someone on the phone, angry that the cable guy (Robert Fassl) has been cleared of the murders thanks to DNA evidence. Doggett insists that if Fassl is released from prison, he’ll kill again. He was known as the Screwdriver Killer and murdered seven people 13 years ago. Doggett thinks the DNA evidence is the result of a lab mistake.

He tells Reyes that neighbors called the police after hearing screams (which we didn’t hear in the original scene), and Doggett and his partner found the family dead. Fassl was in the house, so he must have been the killer. Reyes points out that they didn’t catch him in the act. Scully arrives and confirms the medical examiner’s report – the DNA exonerates Fassl. The odds are a hundred million to one that there was a mistake. Doggett wants her to redo the tests herself anyway. He’ll be going to New York to make sure Fassl doesn’t kill anyone else.

Fassl is released from prison in New York and collects the belongings he had with him when he was arrested, including the crucifix. The press is interested in hearing from him, but his attorney, Jana Fain, speaks for him, saying they’re looking into procedures at the D.A.’s office and the police department to determine why he was falsely imprisoned for 13 years. Fassl spots a bearded man across the street, staring at him.

Scully and Doggett are in New York, trying to convince the ADA, Damon Kaylor, to let them look into the evidence. Doggett points out that if Fassl really is innocent, the real killer is still out there, and his victims’ families are going to want some answers. As Doggett and Scully look through files, she notes that the case must have been a career-maker for him. He remembers how relieved everyone was when they thought they’d finally found the killer. Scully reminds him that even good cops make mistakes.

Doggett wants to make it clear that he’s not reopening the case just to cover up his errors. Scully knows that, but she doesn’t want him to feel guilty. Doggett says he would never send someone to prison if he wasn’t absolutely sure the person was guilty. This is just a matter of finishing the job he obviously didn’t finish 13 years ago.

Jana takes Fassl to her house since he has no other place to stay. Her house his huge, and she has a full-time housekeeper, thanks to a generous inheritance from her parents. Jana tells Fassl that she tries to use her wealth to help people, which explains why she took his case. She’s fully convinced that Fassl is innocent, and she feels horrible that he was punished for a crime he didn’t commit. Alone in his new room, Fassl prays with his crucifix and rosary, but stops when his hands start bleeding. He looks up to see “KILL HER” written in blood on the wall.

Doggett reunites with his old partner, Duke Tomasick, wanting help going over the case. Duke thinks they just arrested the wrong man. He warns Doggett that if he keeps working the case, it’ll come back to bite him. At Jana’s, she finds Fassl praying again and remarks that it’s great how everything he’s been through hasn’t diminished his faith. (He was once a seminary student.) He tells her he prays all the time, even when it doesn’t look like he’s praying. Jana’s sure that someone’s listening. Well, yeah, but it’s the bearded guy, and he has a screwdriver he wants to use on Jana.

Doggett works all night only to get bad news from Scully: Hair samples found at the murder scene belong to someone other than Fassl. However, the DNA in the hair is very similar to Fassl’s, and must belong to a blood relative. Doggett knows that Fassl’s parents died when he was a teen, and he’s an only child, so he doesn’t have any blood relatives.

Fassl wakes up on his floor and is surprised to see Jana in his room, completely unharmed. In a stroke of luck, she was at the county lockup the previous night. However, someone went through her things in her room, and since Fassl’s the only houseguest, she thinks he’s violating her privacy. Now that he’s free, he has to be responsible. P.S. The housekeeper is MIA, and there’s blood dripping from a kitchen cabinet. As soon as Jana leaves for work, Fassl pulls the housekeeper’s body out of the cabinet and chops it up for easier transportation.

Reyes is now in New York, meeting with Brian Hutchinson, the warden at the prison where Fassl spent the past 13 years. He thinks Fassl really is a murderer and should still be behind bars. His cellmate was murdered, and the killer, whose picture was snapped by a security camera, was the bearded man. He wasn’t an inmate, so no one’s sure what all happened. They also couldn’t pin the murder on Fassl, though Hutchinson is sure he was involved somehow.

Since the DNA retests say Fassl’s innocent, Kaylor doesn’t get why Doggett and Scully are still working the case. The DA’s office is planning to offer Fassl a settlement and end the whole thing. Doggett’s all, “But! The truth!” Kaylor doesn’t care about the truth, since the DNA evidence is definitive. Just then, Reyes shows up to tell Doggett and Scully that they have a new suspect – the unidentifiable bearded man.

Doggett tells Reyes that Fassl, not the bearded man, was in the house 13 years ago, so the bearded man isn’t important to the case. Reyes disagrees, suggesting that Fassl and the bearded man are somehow connected. Doggett would rather not have this turn into an X-File. Reyes thinks one of the men is doing the other’s bidding. They just need to compare the DNA from Fassl’s cellmate’s murder to the DNA from the 1989 murders.

Scully says that won’t work – the hair samples logged from the 1989 crime scene weren’t actually at the scene. Doggett thinks she’s accusing him of planting evidence, but Scully just wants the facts on the table. The DNA evidence that convicted Fassl was planted.

Kaylor goes to Jana’s house to tell Fassl they want to offer him a settlement. To his surprise, Fassl announces that he wants to go back to prison. Kaylor thinks Fassl’s about to make a confession, so he tries to leave, but the bearded man stops him with a screwdriver to the back. Looks like Fassl has another body to get rid of.

Doggett confronts Duke, who admits to planting the evidence that sent Fassl to prison. He was sure Fassl was guilty and wanted to make sure he was punished. Doggett reminds him that he committed a felony, not to mention did something unforgivable. Scully interrupts to report that Kaylor has gone missing. Meanwhile, Fassl’s hiding Kaylor’s body in some kind of tunnel. There’s a skull nearby, so this can’t be the first time Fassl’s been down there.

Knowing that Kaylor went to see Fassl, Scully and Reyes call him in for questioning. They try to play good cop to convince Jana they don’t think Fassl has done anything wrong. When they show Fassl and Jana a picture of the bearded man, Fassl gets agitated. Scully notices him holding his rosary and asks if he’s Catholic. She knows a rosary can be a great comfort, like Fassl obviously wants his to be right now. She asks about the bearded man, guessing that Fassl just wants him to go away.

Jana accuses the agents of playing mind games and announces that she and her client are leaving. Doggett comes in, having watched the whole conversation, and Reyes says she’s changing her theory. Maybe Fassl can’t admit that he has a sinful side, even to himself, and has manifested a second personality that does all the bad stuff. If he could actually physically become that other personality – the bearded man – that would explain the different DNA.

Doggett scoffs at the idea of a real-life Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde situation. Reyes argues that Catholicism backs up her idea, when you really think of transubstantiation. Scully sums it up: Fassl won’t face his sins, so he’s forced to become a killer. Doggett wonders how they’re supposed to catch a killer who hides inside an innocent person.

Back at Jana’s, “KILL HER” appears in blood on the bathroom wall. Then the bearded man smacks Fassl around a bit, telling him to kill. So this is Fight Club now? Jana hears the scuffling and checks on Fassl, who just says he fell. When she goes to get a bandage for a cut on his head, the bearded man ambushes her.

Doggett and Reyes stake out Jana’s house, fighting about her theory. Doggett thinks regular old police work is good enough to solve this case. It’s really all he has anyway. They spot the bearded man lurking around the house and chase him. Jana’s still okay, and she tells Reyes that Fassl was there one minute and then suddenly gone.

Doggett finds a hatch labeled “cable access,” and he and Reyes go into the tunnel underneath it. Regular old police work ensues, though I’m not sure they should be splitting up. Reyes winds up falling in some water, where she finds Kaylor’s body and some skeletons. The bearded man sneaks up on Doggett and knocks his gun into the water. Reyes finds the bearded man holding a screwdriver to Doggett’s neck.

She tries to get through to Fassl, appealing to the part of him that couldn’t bring himself to kill Jana. The bearded man denies that he’s Fassl. Reyes calls him a sinner and a murderer, which just makes him madder. She manages to get off a shot in the bearded man’s back, and he falls in the water. When Doggett pulls him out, he’s Fassl. Well, well, well! Looks like Reyes’ crazy theory was correct!

Scully and Jana come down to help look over the crime scene. Jana knows she saw the bearded man, so she’s a little confused about how Fassl could be the killer. Doggett – sleep-deprived, and coming off of finding out his former partner is a felon – can’t explain anything. Reyes agrees that this time around, regular old police work was good enough. They closed the case. Of course, who knows it that’ll be enough next time?

Thoughts: Yeah, you don’t get released from prison the day after evidence exonerates you. The justice system is nowhere near that fast.

Hutchinson says Fassl’s cellmate was a “bada&%,” but how tough can you be with a name like Spud?

Why would Fassl ask to go back to prison when the bearded man could still kill people there? It’s not like he could hide there.

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February 9, 2019

The X-Files 9.11, Audrey Pauley: Maybe We Should All Rethink Signing Organ-Donor Cards

Posted in TV tagged John Doggett, Monica Reyes, The X-Files at 1:05 pm by Jenn

Ordinarily, when a random woman tells you to jump into nothingness, you shouldn’t listen, but this one time, it’s okay

Summary: Reyes drives Doggett home to Falls Church, Virginia (hometown shout-out!), after work one night, and they chat in her car for a few minutes. There’s a discussion about him being a cat person when she thinks he should be a dog person, and how he prefers cats because they’re easier to take care of and harder to disappoint. Reyes doesn’t think Doggett ever disappoints anyone. Instead of making out, because come on, Doggett goes inside alone.

On her way home, Reyes gets into a bad car accident and is taken to a hospital. She finds herself in an empty ER, and when she goes to check things out, she discovers that the hospital is basically floating in the middle of nothingness. When she goes back inside, she encounters another patient, Stephen Murdoch, who’s also aware of their weird situation. He takes her to a man named Mr. Barreiro, telling him there’s someone new in the hospital. Reyes guesses that the men think the three of them are dead.

As Reyes runs off, Scully arrives at the hospital and meets up with Doggett. She’s learned that Reyes was hit by a drunk driver, so the single beer Reyes had with Doggett after work wasn’t much of a contributing factor to the accident. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter – as Scully determines herself, Reyes is brain dead.

The Reyes from the empty hospital comes by the room where her body is being kept alive by machines, but she still sees the room as empty. Stephen finds her and tells her death isn’t that bad once you get used to it. Reyes wants to know why all the paperwork is blank and there are no signs on the walls. Stephen isn’t sure, but he thinks they might be in a kind of way station until they move on to the next destination. Reyes goes back outside and drops a mug into the nothingness. It gets zapped by some sort of electricity in the atmosphere.

Reyes’ doctor, Preijers, tells Scully and Doggett that Reyes signed a living will and has an organ-donor card. Doggett doesn’t think things add up – Reyes is supposedly brain dead, but her body is mostly unharmed. Scully says it doesn’t matter, since brain death means she’s not going to get better. Preijers knows of a patient who needs a heart transplant, so they need to move quickly to harvest Reyes’ organs.

Reyes comes across a woman in the empty hospital, but the woman runs around the corner into a dead end and disappears. Stephen yells for Reyes, who rejoins him in time to see Barreiro getting zapped like the mug and slowly fading away. In reality, Barreiro has died, despite Preijers’ efforts to revive him. The woman from the hallway, who’s a hospital volunteer, watches him die.

Doggett tells Scully that the doctors say they can harvest Reyes’ organs as early as the next morning. Scully has examined Reyes and found some minor swelling in her brain, but not an amount that would normally lead to brain death. Doggett looks at Reyes’ EEG records, which show that her brain waves suddenly stopped at some point. He thinks that if they can figure out what caused that, they can reverse it.

In the empty hospital, Reyes tells Stephen about the disappearing woman. Stephen wants to focus on one disappearance at a time and asks what happened to Barreiro. Reyes thinks he died, which obviously couldn’t happen if the three of them are already dead, so she thinks she and Stephen are still alive. Stephen asks where they are, then.

Doggett asks Preijers about the EEG, making Preijers think he’s building a malpractice case. Since Reyes was wearing a seatbelt and had an airbag, and she was conscious when the paramedics got to her, there must be something they’re not seeing. Preijers allows Doggett to look through Reyes’ chart to see everything the doctors have done for her.

The disappearing woman is sitting by Reyes’ bed when Doggett returns to his partner’s room. The woman introduces herself as a patient aide who mostly delivers flowers. She asks if Doggett is Reyes’ husband, and when he says no, she guesses that he loves her. The aide (okay, her name’s Audrey Pauley, let’s just get there already) tells Doggett that Reyes isn’t gone, “at least not her soul.” Doggett wishes he could talk to her and tell her things he’s been meaning to say.

Audrey goes to her home, a room in the hospital, where she keeps a dollhouse shaped like the empty hospital. Inside it, Reyes is looking for another way out. She sees Audrey again and asks her to show them the way out. Audrey says she can’t help, but she has a message for Reyes – her friend loves her very much. Reyes guesses she means Doggett, so that’s interesting. Audrey tells her that her friends think she’s dead. Reyes asks her to deliver a message back to Doggett that he’s a dog person.

A nurse named Whitney advises Preijers to review Reyes’ records, since an injection he gave her isn’t in her notes. Preijers denies this. Whitney reminds him that inconsistencies like that are just the sort of thing malpractice lawyers love to find out about. Preijers pretends to be grateful that Whitney’s looking out for him; then he gives her an injection of her own.

Doggett remembers the dog person/cat person conversation as he thinks about his feelings for his partner. Then he lets fantasy take over and imagines kissing Reyes. He’s brought back to reality when he hears a commotion – Whitney’s body has been found. Doggett’s suspicious and thinks she was murdered as part of a cover-up. Scully tells him how she would have committed the murder if she were Whitney’s killer, and it’s exactly what Preijers did. Doggett’s like, “Great, thanks for volunteering to do an autopsy.” Scully reminds him that it won’t bring Reyes back.

Audrey finds Doggett in Reyes’ room and delivers the message about him being a dog person. She repeats what she said earlier about Reyes not being gone. In the doll hospital, Reyes looks through paperwork again, but Stephen says he’s gone through it all and never found a clue. Reyes notes that while the hospital looks complete at first glance, there are small things missing. It’s like a movie set built by someone who didn’t quite get what he or she was recreating. Suddenly Stephen starts gasping and collapses. Real Stephen is now dying, and of course Preijers is his doctor.

Audrey takes Doggett to her room, explaining that the nuns who run the hospital let her live there in exchange for her work as an aide. Doggett asks why she made the dollhouse. Audrey says she goes into her head, by which she means she goes into the dollhouse, and gets to be alone. Well, she was alone in the past, but now patients join her there, like Reyes. Doggett asks who the other patients are.

Reyes holds Stephen as he dies; he gasps something I can’t quite catch about life. Scully tells Doggett that Reyes’ parents are on their way from Mexico to say goodbye. He replies that they’ll get to talk to their daughter because he’s not letting the doctors take her off life support. He has Stephen and Barreiro’s files and has put together that Preijers pulls the plug on his patients. Doggett even wonders if Preijers drugs his patients to speed up their deaths. He insists that Reyes is still alive, and she and Stephen need their help to survive.

They’ll be too late to help Stephen, since he’s getting zapped away like Barreiro. At least the dollhouse version of him gets to die with a kind friend holding him. Scully and Doggett realize they didn’t get to the real Stephen in time. Doggett returns to Audrey’s room and tells her they only have an hour to keep Reyes alive. Audrey says she only delivers flowers; she can’t help. But since she can communicate with Reyes, Doggett needs Audrey to tell her what’s happening.

Doggett cries as he says he wants Reyes to know that she needs to fight and show some sign that she’s still alive. He doesn’t know what else he can do. Audrey tries to comfort him, but Doggett doesn’t have time to give in to his emotions. Preijers watches as he leaves Audrey’s room.

Audrey returns to the doll hospital and tells Reyes that Doggett wants a sign. She starts to leave, which Reyes objects to. Audrey says something’s wrong in her head, and she really can’t help anyone. She needs help herself doing something as simple as delivering flowers, since when she tries to read, the words are all jumbled. Reyes realizes that Audrey created the doll hospital, which means she can make the rules work however she wants. She can help Reyes escape.

Audrey goes back to the real hospital, where Preijers tells her he’s being accused of doing some horrible things. Audrey needs to be silenced, which means an injection. Reyes notices the hallways of the doll hospital changing, and Audrey tells her she has to leave. But the way out is through the nothingness, which will supposedly kill Reyes. Audrey says it won’t hurt her now. She understands now why she built the doll hospital.

Reyes lets herself fall into the nothingness as Scully tells Doggett that the transplant teams are ready to do their work. Doggett refuses to allow it, but Scully notes that he hasn’t given a good enough reason to think Reyes is alive. Fortunately, Reyes herself can do that, as she’s now awake. She asks about Audrey, but Doggett is once again too late to save someone – Preijers has already killed her. At some point in the future, or in the past, or in another version of reality – I don’t know – Doggett drives Reyes home, but once again, he doesn’t tell her how he feels. They both end up in their separate homes, alone.

Thoughts: Sorry, show, but Doggett and Reyes are no Mulder and Scully. Don’t go reaching for a romantic connection just for the heck of it.

Also, thanks for making me type “Preijers” over and over. I appreciate it.

Someone please count up the number of times Vernee Watson (Whitney) has played a nurse and/or has appeared on medical shows.

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