* * / * * * *
You get Remar speaking in whispers, caught in convulsing
shakes, speaking about the crimes of two killers (one a guard, another a
psychotic doctor) who together wear zombie decay masks and fix a crime scene (a
husband accidentally shoots his wife, believing she’s an assailant when, in
fact, she couldn’t talk due to duct tape across the mouth and hands bound
behind her back) so that the victims are playing Scrabble with the word Daemonicus
spelled out on the board, and eventually vomiting rivers all over Patrick. It
does seem this evil exists, as Monica Reyes arrives at the home of the deceased
Mountjoys and “feels it”. She believes Doggett does feel it as well although he
refuses to accept it, all the while trying to convince her and Scully that
Remar’s former Miami professor, Josef Kobold, is a fake orchestrating a game
(director/writer, Spotnitz, really lays it on thick when a chessboard floor in
Kobold’s institution, through camera stylized fade into the woods where the
escaped lunatic shoots the guard who helped him free more than symbolizes how
much of a game this whole diabolical plot really is). Probably the best scene
in the episode has Kobold using Doggett’s partners against him, questioning why
he is working on the X files and if he has feelings for Reyes and then (when
seeing Doggett and Scully speaking on a courtyard when out in the police car
leading the agents to a crime scene where the security guard hangs upside down
similar to Saint Peter’s execution) Scully, because Robert Patrick illustrates
quite a lot of reaction to such proclamations before being puked on all over
and over and over… The puking part might REALLY undermine this episode…it could
very well leave viewers at odds with the entire episode, rendering Dæmonicus a punchline. Remar is a veteran who can make
the most out of anything, and his Kobold is a real piece of work…a piece of
work who seems to have gotten away. Perhaps despite the episodes setbacks in
terms of its overall story and execution (style is off-the-charts visually and
aesthetically impressive, on par with the series as a whole, as movements of
the camera and use of darkness and clouds set an ominous tone but Remar’s “demonic
misbehavior” kind of hits the usual demonic possession clichés), Kobold makes
for a great adversary opposite Doggett and that irritation is palpable. Also I
did enjoy a scene where an institution doctor, Dr. Monique Sampson (Andi
Chapman)—later killed by the escaped lunatic with a face full of hypodermics—is
left practically speechless when Reyes is sincere about a possible demon
possession being at fault for the murders in the episode. Sampson, much like
Doggett, can’t take Reyes seriously, with Doggett commenting that a padded cell
was ready if she needed it. Scully, now a teacher at Quantico, dictating to her
class that while science remains important in the field, there are cases where
not everything can be explained so easily. Even as Scully isn’t in the field as
much—more or less called on by Doggett to do autopsies—once again the show
makes sure she is put in danger, spared when the killer on the loose kills
himself…seemingly after influence from Kobold. Kobold’s escape, when a guard
sees him possibly transforming into a demon, is a bit far-fetched but fits the
narrative regarding Doggett’s inability to stop him because he was unwilling to
view his nemesis as more than just a manipulative psycho who butchered co-eds
and fed them as fertilizer to his garden.
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