The X Files - Elegy *

 

While the murders in the episode -- a nurse steals meds from an autistic man while also poisoning him, and those taken meds had "encouraged" violence on women the autistic man (who voluntarily stays at a hospital and can go and return anytime he wants, actually working at a bowling alley for the last ten years, where he met women that were later found murdered) had an affection for and connection to, having met them at a bowling alley -- are important in terms of investigation for Mulder and Scully, what I personally took away from "Elegy" being the Scully stan that I am is furthering the ongoing medical crisis plaguing her, while she fails to really tell Mulder the entire truth. She keeps working despite an inoperable tumor that can't even be healed with medication, relating to her therapist that doing so seems to because of her devotion to Mulder, recognizing his passion and wanting to remain close to him. 

Scully seeing two "apparitions" in the episode is a big fucking deal to me. She's such a stickler for scientific evidence and rational explanations for extraordinary events. Telling Mulder she saw the fourth victim of Nurse Innes' (Nancy Fish; I just watched her last weekend in "The Exorcist III" as a similarly creepy nurse) in a restroom as a ghost with a sliced throat that bleeds just doesn't seem to be something Scully is particularly comfortable with. Seeing the autistic man, Harold (Steven M Porter), later in her car after the ambulance is taking off Innes, not dead with a gunshot wound to the shoulder as she approaching Scully with a scalpel, the weapon she used on all the women Harold "fancied", points out something Mulder felt strongly about in his own diagnosis of how Harold was able to see the ghosts: when you are dying, the ability to see apparitions appears to be a type of "heightened sense". 

Harold's bowling alley boss saw one of the Innes victims at the beginning of the episode, later himself dying from a coronary; Harold seeing his boss' ghost, later himself dying of respiratory failure because he quit taking his meds after believing Innes was poisoning him; Scully seeing the fourth victim, herself realizing that the tumor was killing her: Scully coming to recognize her own mortality and how real death seems to be approaching her is certainly a powerfully dramatic development that allows Gillian Anderson to continue to act her ass off. There is obviously real anxiety, not just in how her own mortality seems to be under attack but what she's willing to keep from Mulder, even as he clearly wants to know if she's actually okay. There is stress to their relationship because he feels she is keeping secrets and she just doesn't seem able to come fully clean with him. Nose bleeds won't ease Mulder's concerns even if Scully scurries away to clean up and keep the discussion about them brief.

Scully's anguish isn't fun to watch. But it gave Anderson some real meat on the bone to flex her acting muscles. And I think it only makes us love her even more. Struggles and trying to work through them are what extends the life of series that could fall prey to investigative procedurals with a supernatural bent...a little more than just "Mulder and Scully go to this place to investigate, find answers, nearly get killed, and solve the case or narrowly escape death" goes a long way. Sure, I could watch endless episodes of Mulder and Scully "on the case", but I think dramatic arcs that challenge them gives us a bit more emotional investment.

The apparitions appearing to folks who will be dead soon I find is creepy as hell. And "she is mine" part of the episode, whether blood on a mirror, ring-scraped into a bowling alley floor, or repeated over and over by a frightened Harold all amp up the creep-factor, too. I can't imagine how scary it would be to see talking ghosts together in a darkened room of an abandoned warehouse whispering to you...especially when you already have enough anxieties to deal with. 4/5