The X Files - The Field Where I Died

 While driving to a hypnosis specialist, Mulder and Scully have a heated exchange (it isn't out of disrespect but because of debate where Scully's cynicism about "past lives invading a body of a wife and follower of a David Koresh/Jim Jones" is real or not while Mulder believes it is more than possible) where they meet a stalemate later seemingly confirmed about past lives. Scully questions Melissa about child abuse in a children's room at Ephesian's colony, as a little girl personality named Lily emerges...you can see Scully taken aback and yet continuing to talk to Lily instead of Melissa, at the very least willing to go wherever she needs to in order to try and find the hidden guns somewhere at the location. When Mulder undergoes hypnosis as Melissa did, a Jewish mother emerges, speaking through him about the Gestapo taking away her beloved, and the Cigarette Smoking Man (Mulder calls Cancer Man) was a Nazi officer responsible. Scully was even mentioned by Mulder to be the Jewish woman's father who died. Once again Scully tries to determine if the guns can be found, willing to ask the person from the past speaking through Mulder (Sullivan, this time, the Confederate officer) of the location...Scully's face as she sees Mulder under the hypnosis in such suffering, with a "soul that was tired", speaks of such volume. 

I realize some consider Duchovny's acting in the episode not particularly on the same level of Cloke (she is sensational and how she can weave in an out of different personalities is astonishingly good), but when his Mulder is under hypnosis, he sold me a ticket. Consider me easily persuadable, I guess. If anything, I loved Anderson's work in the episode -- no surprise, really -- as Scully clearly is witness to quite a lot of experience to absorb. And yet with both Melissa and Mulder seemingly undergoing breaks from their present selves, even if under hypnosis (Sullivan only seemed to nudge Mulder to the bunker on the property, while Melissa will go from one "past life" personality to another when certain questions make her very uncomfortable.

I know some critics weren't shaken by the ending as Mulder walks about a floor full of dead bodies of the followers of Vernon Ephesian, having willingly, voluntarily drank a poisoned koolaid, but I was personally. I know that many viewers will believe that these people were ignorant fools who allowed themselves to be conned by a sociopath who took whatever he could from the Bible to convince them to follow his teachings and be beholden to him, but, nonetheless, that mass of human death in the farm did remind me of Jonestown, an image of dead I recently once again eyed briefly (only long enough before I had to look away as that visual of so many dead will forever haunt me until my last breath) on a Reddit board. Mulder and Scully are part of a FBI task force (with ATF agents), led by Skinner, trying to find weapons hidden in a bunker, hoping Melissa (Kristen Cloke; I know her from the 2006 "Black Christmas") will tell them where they are in order to stop a mass suicide prevented at the beginning of the episode (Mulder's "told" by a previous officer from 1863 Civil War battle of the underground bunker, where he and Scully stop Ephesian's group from taking the poisoned drink). Tragically, Melissa's one past life personality, Sidney, who lived during Truman's presidency, doesn't know where the weapons are but truly understands how dangerous Ephesian is and wants to stop him...without the knowledge of the weapons bunker, the FBI will be unable to hold Ephesian or Melissa. Throughout the episode, Mulder tries (and ultimately fails) to convince Melissa of past lives inside her, even playing back a recording of her under hypnosis "invaded" by Sidney. Also, Mulder and Scully, despite their very best efforts, just can't seem to break Ephesian's grasp of Melissa. Even at the end, Melissa relents when Ephesian quotes scripture and puts the cup of poison koolaid in her face.

This is an episode where Mulder is tortured by something he couldn't have anticipated, seemingly awakened particularly because of the Ephesian situation and meeting Melissa. That incredible scene where Melissa is invaded by Sarah, a woman who was hidden in the bunker during that fateful November day in 1863 and realized that Mulder's past life is of an officer she loved (and saw die) named Sullivan, is the episode's knockout...I truly believed Cloke was a Southern woman whose Confederate officer lover died and Sarah was reliving that very experience as her hands caressed wheat in the field near where the one bunker was found. 

While there are plenty of examples of Mulder saving Scully or Scully saving Mulder, "The X-Files" didn't always provide a happy ending or relief. Examples like "The Field Where I Died" present a type of Waco where such an ending doesn't posit such results. 4/5