The X-Files - Irresistible

Genuinely unsettling performance/character from Nick Chinlund (the way Nutter directs him is especially chilling, in dark tones, close-ups into his psychopathic eyes and the way he tilts his obsessive face, expressing this dwelling desire that takes in victims’ hair and fingers) and a heart-wrenching, emotionally agonized Scully, just unable to steel herself any longer, truly make this episode of X-Files quite hard to forget. Nick’s Donnie Pfaster had been working in a funeral parlor, taking hair and fingernails from corpses. He escalates, as Mulder predicts, to live women, murdering them for their hair and fingernails. Director Nutter makes sure he visualizes Nick’s performance and takes the camera right into the monster. Bruce Weitz can’t be left out as the agent in Minnesota, first believing his dug up corpse in a graveyard is a potential UFO case, with Mulder disappointing him. Mulder is familiar with these unpleasant kinds of cases, while Scully is so disturbed she can barely handle seeing the bodies or even the facial pictures. Mulder notices Scully is bothered by all of it, sympathetic to her obvious discomfort. The loss of her dad and the early second season ordeal she faced (near death) has taken a toll and this creep with his hair and nails fetish certainly doesn’t lighten her load. This creep only encourages her psyche’s crumbling walls. But the emotionally exhausting series of episodes regarding Duane Barry and Scully being missing then found nearly dead, Mulder nearly shooting the Cigarette-Smoking Man, and Mulder nearly losing her and feeling powerless to save her; there needed that episode where Scully finally breaks down and just lets go. Mulder, at the end of this episode, is there to comfort her and she sure needs it. I think anyone who has comforted someone who has just been through so much upheaval can totally relate to this moment. Scully needed to just cry and get a hug. Mulder is just the one she could depend upon for that affection. He nearly lost her and almost himself when she was gone and nearly dead. Weitz brings a lot of energy to his agent, completely invested in the character’s pursuit for Donnie, totally up for working with Mulder and getting that monster. My personally favorite scene has Scully speaking about herself in second person to a psychologist. Gillian is so damn good in this scene. Her welling tears in her eyes, speaking carefully but openly, revealing but trying to somewhat conceal. When asked by the psychologist if Mulder is someone she could speak to during this very vulnerable period in her life, Scully seems to have thought a lot about it but decided against it. This being in the second season, you can gradually see that Mulder and Scully just have to rely on each other for laughs, a good cry, scientific/philosophic debate, and care. The wall that might have been put up between them at the very beginning is clearly removed by the time we get to Irresistible. Because oftentimes they are all each other has.

The episode is predictable in that most of us knew Donnie would kidnap Scully (bless her heart, the show sure loved doing that to her) and Mulder would have to come to her rescue (again). But she defends herself and goes right at him, not being a victim if she could help it. It was kind of a given that she would be in peril because the episode was building towards that. His interest in hair and certain women, spotting Scully while in prison for creeping on a student in a class he was taking, and getting her name from a fellow inmate interrogated for the murders Donnie committed; these were all steps in that direction to confrontation. This is all right at the end when Scully returns from Washington back to Minnesota. She went back to DC to check on potential fingerprints on a victim’s body. It was a chance for her to get away and she could have remained as Mulder was receptive to her obvious distress and suffering. She’s so strong, tough-willed, but with all that Scully had been through, there has to be a release. And Mulder was available.

Slight hints at a nightmare

The details accompanying Donnie really make the skin crawl. His lurking, digging through trash for hair in a bathroom, pictures at the end as narrated by Mulder in profiler mode depicting a disturbed child in a family of sisters, asking potential victim about what shampoo their hair needs for a prepared bath, groping a recently deceased young woman all combine to define Donnie, the creep. The slight silhouette of a Nosferatu-like figure presents itself in quick images.