This July, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the sixth season of The X-Files and the third (and final) season of Millennium.
Trevor is a perfectly solid monster of the week episode of The X-Files.
In many respects, it feels like the episode that Alpha desperately wanted to be. It is very much a traditional story in a season that has been relatively untraditional in its structure and format. Mulder and Scully are assigned to a case that is explicitly paranormal and set about investigating it to the best of their ability. Along the way, Mulder and Scully become passengers in a story that involves the guest cast. Trevor is not as sly or self-aware as something like Monday, Arcadia or Milagro. It is a straightforward case of the week.
“I wanna take his face… off…”
There are other similarities between Trevor and Alpha. Alpha was an episode that really wanted to tackle a very traditional monster in a very traditional way – it was a very disappointing attempt at a werewolf episode, following on from Shapes in the first season. In a way, Trevor alludes to a more classical monster story than most X-files. Wilson “Pinker” Rawls is effectively a wraith avenging himself upon those who did him wrong, the embodiment of past mistakes returned to haunt the living. He is a ghost, even beyond his ability to walk through walls.
Of course, Trevor provides a suitably pseudo-scientific explanation for what Rawls does, and the climax builds to an intimate family tragedy. However, Trevor feels very much like a classic ghost story about a man returned from the dead to visit retribution upon the living.
Diehl it back…
Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Ghost story, john diehl, scepticism, scully, skepticism, the x-files, trevor, x-files | Leave a comment »
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The X-Files – Dreamland II (Review)
This July, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the sixth season of The X-Files and the third (and final) season of Millennium.
Morris Fletcher is (and remains) one of the more interesting aspects of the Dreamland two-parter.
Fletcher would go on to become perhaps the most unlikely recurring character in the history of The X-Files. Michael McKean would reprise the role for a brief cameo in Three of a Kind at the end of the season. As with Kersh, he would disappear from the show’s world for the troubled seventh season, but would return the following year. He made a guest appearance in All About Yves, the finalé of The Lone Gunmen. Fletcher would then follow the Lone Gunmen back to The X-Files, appearing in Jump the Shark during the final season.
And the shippers went wild…
A large part of what makes Fletcher work is the wonderful guest performance of Michael McKean. McKean is a veteran actor with a long history of great work, dating back to his breakout role as Lenny (and Squiggy) on the sitcom Laverne and Shirley. Along with the move to Los Angeles, the sixth season of The X-Files began to drift away from Chris Carter’s initial reluctance to cast recognisable actors in significant roles. The X-Files: Fight the Future had featured guest appearances from Martin Landau, Blythe Danner, Armin Muller-Stahl and Glenne Headly.
The two-parter built around Michael McKean paves the way for appearances from Ed Asner, Lily Tomlin and Bruce Campbell. These are all superb guest performances, and consciously play into the idea that the sixth season of The X-Files has taken on a more playful or vaudevillian style. It is too much to describe these guest roles as “stunt casting” in the same way that putting Jerry Springer in The Post-Modern Prometheus or Burt Reynolds in Improbable was stunt casting, but the casting decisions are part of a broader change in the show.
Our man Morris…
On paper, Morris Fletcher could easily come off as a one-note creep. After all, he is a character who thinks nothing of using his body swap with Fox Mulder to cheat on his wife of twenty years. There is a creepy and pervy banality to his evil, one that mirrors that of Eddie Van Blundht in Small Potatoes. However, while Small Potatoes felt a little too sympathetic to pathetic Eddie Van Blundht, Dreamland strikes a better balance in its portrayal of Morris Fletcher. McKean plays Fletcher as a very human character, but one who is no less creepy for his well-practiced charm.
It goes almost without saying that Michael McKean’s guest performance is a major reason why Dreamland (mostly) works.
Not particularly reflective…
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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: commentary, deconstruction, dreamland, frank spotnitz, john shiban, kim manners, Michael McKean, morris fletcher, mulder, science fiction, scully, subversion, vince gilligan, x-files | 1 Comment »