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This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

Sein und Zeit and Closure don’t fit together at all.

There is a nice symmetry to the stories, with Sein und Zeit closing with Mulder standing amid a mass grave and Closure opening with the excavation of the same mass grave. The contrast between the two shots of the same space says a lot about the differences between Sein und Zeit and Closure. Sein und Zeit is an episode that isolates Mulder, demonstrating how alone he truly is in the world and how all his beliefs might be empty; Closure responds by cluttering up the narrative and revealing an absurdly convoluted explanation of what happened to Samantha.

A grave subject…

Even the themes of the two episodes are almost unique. Both Sein und Zeit and Closure are driven by Mulder’s desire to make sense of what happened to his sister, but both adopt diametrically different approaches towards the question. Sein und Zeit proposes that the world is a random and cruel place where bad things happen to children for no reason beyond the sadistic whims of strangers, while Closure embraces the idea that there is a larger scheme in which these horrible events occur.

There is a yin-and-yang structure to Sein und Zeit and Closure, a sense that the two episodes are almost at odds with one another when it comes to the fate of Samantha Mulder. Closure offers something approaching hope. It is too much to describe Closure as a happy-ending to the character arc that ran through the first seven seasons of the series, but it does offer Samantha an ending that is not soul-destroyingly bleak. It offers Mulder resolution and understanding. In his own words, it offers him freedom.

“Conscience… it’s just the voices of the dead… trying to save us from our own damnation.”

It is a very hopeful suggestion. It is a particularly hopeful suggestion coming at the middle of the show’s seventh season, as the resolution to Mulder’s character arc. The audience has spent seven years watching Mulder deal with the trauma of the loss of his sister, wrestling with the fear that he might never find an answer; or that he might find an answer that fails to make sense of it all. What if he found an answer that made sense of everything? What if Samantha’s disappearance wasn’t just part of a government conspiracy? What if it was part of something bigger?

What if the disappearance of Samantha Mulder meant everything?

A man alone.

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: abduction, Arc, chris carter, closure, conspiracy, frank spotnitz, mythology, Samantha Mulder, sein und zeit, the cigarette-smoking man, x-files | 11 Comments »

This November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the seventh season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Harsh Realm.

Sein und Zeit and Closure don’t fit together at all.

There is a clear demarcation that exists between the two episodes, to the point where they cannot really be described as a single two-part story. Following the disappearance of Amber Lynn LaPierre from her home, Sein und Zeit closes with the arrest of a serial child-murderer and the discovery of a mass grave. There is not a whiff of the show’s central mythology to be found, despite Mulder’s insistence and anxiety. Although Closure picks up where Sein und Zeit left off, it embarks on its own separate story that does draw heavily from the show’s established mythology.

A grave subject…

Even the guest casts of the two episodes are almost unique. Outside of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, only two guest stars appear in both episodes. Rebecca Toolan and Megan Corletto both play characters who die in Sein und Zeit, but appear as ghosts in Closure. The featured guest stars in Sein und Zeit do not reappear in Closure, and vice versa. Even the series’ recurring cast is firmly divided between the two halves; Walter Skinner appears in Sein und Zeit, while the Cigarette-Smoking Man plays an important role in Closure.

There is a yin-and-yang structure to Sein und Zeit and Closure, a sense that the two episodes are almost at odds with one another when it comes to the fate of Samantha Mulder. Sein und Zeit dares to ask what might happen if there was no rhyme or reason to her abduction; what if it was just a tragedy, like the tragedies that happen to happy families all the time? Mulder has invested so much of himself in the quest to explain what happened on that night in late November 1973; what would happen if there were no meaningful explanation?

“Conscience… it’s just the voices of the dead… trying to save us from our own damnation.”

It is a very bleak suggestion. It is a particularly bleak suggestion coming at the middle of the show’s seventh season, as the resolution to Mulder’s character arc. The audience has spent seven years watching Mulder dig deeper and deeper into a sinister conspiracy against mankind, largely motivated by the fact that his sister’s disappearance is a part of some larger puzzle. What if it wasn’t? What if Mulder’s whole quest were simply a lie that he had told himself? What if Mulder wanted to believe so badly that he convinced himself that this made sense?

What if the disappearance of Samantha Mulder meant nothing?

A man alone.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: abduction, Arc, chris carter, closure, conspiracy, frank spotnitz, mythology, Samantha Mulder, sein und zeit, the cigarette-smoking man, x-files | 4 Comments »