The X Files - Aubrey

 ***/****

Aubrey was one of the second season episodes I didn’t see during its initial run in 1994 so this was a first time viewing which is always cool. I always kind of get jazzed at the thought of seeing an early X Files episode for the first time. Aubrey certainly posits an interesting idea: can a psychopath’s genetic imprint pass down his evil to his family line? Can a granddaughter adopt the persona of her monstrous grandfather through his memories passed down to her, taking over her body and mind, urging her to pick up where he left off, perhaps triggered by a pregnancy? BJ Morrow (Deborah Strang), a homicide detective tells her partner, Lt. Brian Tillman (Terry O’Quinn; Lost/The Stepfather) that she’s pregnant. Meanwhile, memories of a serial killer who would brutalize women in the early 40s, carving SISTER on their chest with a straight-razor, emerge in BJ’s dreams, including the murder and hiding of the bodies of two FBI profilers. Tillman is investigating fresh murders using the same MO as Harry Cokely (Morgan Woodward), and BJ’s “visions” could very well be the key to solving them. New murders and old murders solved through BJ with Mulder and Scully arriving in Missouri to investigate how she would be able to locate the bones of one of the FBI profilers in the middle of nowhere ultimately results in the engrossing possibility of “genetic memory” and the passage of a psychosis from one generation to the next. This premise is quite incredible but the presentation is so compelling, I’ll be damned if it doesn’t all work. Strang isn’t all the well known but her performance here is just extraordinary. That confusion and disorienting cavalcade of memories and invasion of this past personality disrupting her life, accompanying a pregnancy through an affair with a married cop (BJ was having sex with Tillman, trying to decide if she wants to keep the child, much to his protest); Strang has a hell of a part in this episode.

I really loved the use of Mulder and Scully in the episode. This is less Scully challenging everything Mulder speculates and more of the two of them just seeming to be on this even keel for a change. Their rapport is light and genteel, this trip seems to combine their efforts together instead of them often separating to follow certain investigative leads, and identifying markings on bones has the two of them unifying their skills to great effect. 

Because BJ offers such detail and through her visions Mulder and Scully are given particulars and specifics that allow them to tie together evidence that certainly could indicate the possibility in “genetic memory”, this episode doesn’t feature the usual heated (but respectful) debates you normally see between the agents. And there is this scene in the bathroom where Scully talks to BJ about her affair and pregnancy that gives the women a brief reprieve from the dark subject matter; it is a nice moment for Anderson and Strang.  

The X Files often doesn’t get the credit it deserves for having really humane, topical, sincere character development and pieces that recognize the kind of human beings Mulder and Scully are. How they are open to listen and genuinely care about others. Yes, the show is often about the search for and offer valid proof of extraterrestrial life, but Mulder and Scully aren’t just moving pieces in a sci-fi plot. They aren’t beloved just because they point their flashlights in the dark as potential dangers could be nearby…these are characters that suffer, endure, crack jokes, love, are driven, challenge each other, follow cases all across the country looking to find the answer in a puzzling mystery where the unlikely is a possibility, take chances, face frustrating superiors, encounter cases of quite the disturbing nature, and work together despite disagreements and differences of opinion. 

With BJ privy to details she shouldn’t know (like a connection to the World’s Fair in 1939), awakening with SISTER carved on her chest and covered in blood, and later visiting her grandmother (a victim raped and nearly killed by Cokely in ’42) in the persona of her grandfather from the past, Mulder eventually theorizes that the “memory gene” skipped a generation to the next child.

That ending, where BJ is pregnant, suicidal, and locked in a cell, is so heartbreaking as Scully notes in her assessment of the case that the memory gene theory is still not quite conclusive. Mulder certainly convinced Scully correctly that BJ was the new killer and was out to go after the “victim that got away” and eventually the old man who has left his taint on her. Mulder nearly getting the razor to his throat was a nice change of pace from the usual “Scully in peril” conclusion. Woodward, rash-faced and coughing non-stop, hitched to an oxygen tank and attached to his smokes, is quite a great heavy…you loathe him the moment he appears and when he calls Scully “little sister”, it makes the skin crawl. O’Quinn is more or less the bossy cop making demands of BJ to abort the child and often interrupting her time with Scully and Mulder because he doesn’t want her involved with them.