The X Files - Audrey Pauley

* * * / * * * *
While not altogether perfect, for such an imperfect ninth season, I'll take it. First off, Patrick is so damn good (John Doe, though, is an episode that rivals this performance), you can't help but yearn for his Agent Doggett to find a way to save Monica Reyes from the organ supply donor knife. Second, when Monica awakens from a coma after a serious (and impactful) wreck, due to a drunk driver, emerging in a nearly empty hospital where the exit leads to oblivion, while the inside of the structure has scrambled words on medical records and windows and coke machines are left blank. It is really a great Twilight Zoney wallop that really throws us for a loop. While Doggett seeks help from Scully to fight to help keep Reyes from being cut open for her body parts, Monica starts to see a nursing aid, who we later learn is illiterate, seemingly appearing from time to time. Doggett and Reyes continue to correspond through her.

The episode certainly wants us to consider the possibility or potential likelihood that Doggett and Reyes might become an item. A rather sexually tense conversation before Doggett leaves her car as Reyes complements him on certain positive traits she considers commendable, with the two locking eyes results in something romantic not quite reciprocated. Doggett’s loss (dead child, divorce subsequent to it) and their working relationship perhaps the cease and desist serving as blockades to such.

Audrey, the aid, can’t quite explain to Doggett what is going on with the miniature recreated hospital kept hidden in the hospital and how those that die in the real building are available to her in “her head”, some kind of created limbo she can visit and leave. She tries, and maybe that is what will keep viewers from fully embracing the episode. That she eventually realizes, with help from Reyes and Doggett in trying to persuade her towards finding some sort of way, there might be a path for Monica to cheat death might also leave a lasting confusion. This whole power never quite is elaborated and serves as quite a surreal storytelling device. Jack Blessing is well cast as a serial killer, an ER doctor named Dr. Jack Preijers, injecting a hard-to-detect drug that eventually finishes off comatose patients. Scully will assist Doggett in hopefully detecting the drug, but with Reyes’ parents soon to arrive and no serious brain activity there to help them, it is only a matter of time before the ventilation machine is turned off for good.

In this limbo with Monica are Stan Shaw as Stephen Murdock and Del Zamora briefly as Barreiro. Barreiro had a cranial stitch job while Stan appears to have very little wrong outwardly, both soon to be victims of the clever Preijers who has to silence a nurse onto him by injecting her with the same drug as his patients. Doggett questions why Reyes is in her current condition, leaving Preijers needing his nurse, who stumbled on his bad behavior, capitalizing on her trust by grabbing her from behind in his office. Barreiro goes first while Shaw remains with Monica a little longer as they investigate the hospital, see Audrey also there with them, with questions for her. But even Audrey can’t keep away from Preijers forever, perhaps identified as a threat due to Doggett’s visits with her.

Patrick’s helplessness when begging Audrey for help, pleading with Scully to try and find something to keep Reyes from being officially ruled dead, and his pursuit of some answers as to why she is in a coma with a brain unresponsive is some of the best work of his career. His eyes welling up, the processing of losing precious time, and the investigation hitting snags really emphasize the desperate situation Doggett is in. And the conclusion as Monica and Doggett still keep a divide between them against romance sort of brings us full circle.

Scully is either often warding off grief (just wanting Mulder back) and Mama Bear Protector (defying the FBI often keeping her in the dark or those who might threaten her baby) or stoic, matter-of-fact extended agent and help when needed (by Doggett and Reyes to help solve cases or be requested for her medical expertise). It seems she is either the main focus of the story or just a passerby within the cases often investigated by Doggett and Reyes. Mulder’s absence is like this albatross the season just couldn’t quite deposit.

I never mention the music as much as I should or the good use of darkness. When you watch later seasons, the camera moves a lot, the night scenes are too murky, and the editing gives us little time to breathe. But the music here really compliments the mood and developments. The series, even with lackluster nine, has always benefitted from the overlaying score.