The X-Files - Ghouli **

In more or less a follow up to a brief response to the episode Ghouli on the blog back in 3/11, I found my second viewing of it slightly more rewarding. Once again, Anderson’s great piece of acting in the morgue, her grief-stricken Scully looking over the fallen body of her son, believing him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the skull (after supposedly murdering his parents, later to be determined as false) as she apologizes for giving him up for adoption in order to protect him remains the episode’s high spot, but Mulder’s use of Bob in coffee shops and ongoing rift with “agents of the D.O.D.” also give Ghouli a certain value. I especially loved when Mulder warns the D.O.D. duo in suits to keep cracking wise as his mood wasn’t tolerating their nonsense. These government types are X-Files staples, Cigarette-Smoking-Man goons under his orders to find William, hybrid alien/human still evasive despite attempts to find and kill him. Skinner’s minor involvement in this episode once again reveals CSM in his office, while ending up in Norfolk later at Mulder’s request to talk with him about William on the deck of the Chimera, the abandoned derelict vessel no longer activated, more or less a deteriorating ship resting all alone unless kids board it to “smoke weed during summer break”. The episode concerns itself more with Mulder and Scully trying to locate William, at odds with the D.O.D. Mulder sees William’s escape from the hospital, despite appearances of being dead, as the product of his abilities to convince those around him they are seeing someone or something when in fact it is all a delusion. And the creature that his two girlfriends (he has a Pick-up Artist book in his room and a Malcolm X poster on the wall) see on the Chimera, William admits to them in the hospital was a practical joke that went horribly wrong! William having the ability to imitate others (like the novelist of the Pick-up Artist when greeting Scully or Scully when encountering one of the D.O.D. gunmen, even a hospital staff worker to avoid Mulder and Scully) comes in quite handy. Scully encountering her son unknowingly at a service station later, Mulder capitalizing on a camera recording it all, she can feel assured of William’s current safety status, including the knowledge that he found time to converse with her. Mulder’s affectionate, comforting presence is key to Scully’s mental balance and stability. Her “third state of sleep” and realization that William communicates to her motivates Scully, a dream revealing to her the location of the Chimera, initiating their trip to Northfolk in the first place. Although William is a bit suspect to me considering his involvement in multiple girls and the prank with the monster, I do love Scully's maternal investment in his safety, and the tears she sheds for him are quite potent and effective.

3/5