The X-Files Virgin’s Diary – Closing season one … and the X-files?

(Season 1, Episodes 21-24)

Another fun guest appearance in these last four installments of Season One. And a welcome return. Doug Hutchison was truly one of the creepiest monsters of the week as Eugene Tooms (I’m still checking my vents every night before I go to bed), so it was great seeing his creepy performance again.

I was even more surprised, though, to see Zeljko Ivanek as a mentally challenged twin in “Roland.” He gave a stellar performance, so convincing that if I hadn’t already seen him elsewhere I might have thought they got a truly autistic man to play the role. It’s nice to know that he was just as good at giving the creepiest stares back then as he is now.

21 – “Tooms”
(Original Air Date: April 22 1994) I wonder if they knew they were going to bring Tooms back when he first appeared, or if it was after the response to that episode. I had a friend who used to watch this show back in college, and Tooms was one of the “monsters” he liked to talk about.

I’m just impressed that Tooms always knew exactly where to stand so that shaft of light would hit his weirdly changing eyes. I’ll give it up to Hutchison here, because it’s hard to convey so much character with so few lines. I don’t know if he’s said more than twenty words between both appearances. And I also didn’t recognize him as Horace from Lost.

I found myself thinking of him more of an animal than a man. It was instinct that drove him to kill and nest and hibernate. Just because he looks like a man, and occasionally talks like one, doesn’t mean he necessarily is, does it?

Plus, can you really kill a folding man underneath an escalator? Not that Tooms would have been able to stay there. Again, if he were a man he’d have known that an escalator needs occasional maintenance, so it’s a horrible place to build a nest you hope remains undisturbed for thirty years. That’s not good planning at all.

It was nice to see Cancer Man again, as well as Director Skinner. He’s one of those characters that I knew was significant later on, so I was glad to finally see him make an appearance. That, plus it was feeling like Scully and Mulder were working in a vacuum.

22 – “Born Again”
(Original Air Date: April 29, 1994) This one, even though it had reincarnation, was a little pedestrian for me. Maybe I just want Mulder and Scully investigating things that are a little more creative than someone coming back from beyond to kill for money.

I did learn, though, that the way to talk to little girls is to bend down to a 90 degree angle so your head is level with theirs. It puts them at ease. Especially when two people are doing it side-by-side. God that looked ridiculous.

As for the girl, Andrea Libman looked incredibly familiar to me, and yet her Wiki page says this is one of her most prominent roles. Maybe I saw her in … Little Women? Maybe I saw her in my room at night using her mind to kill me by choking me with my alarm clock cord. Yeah, I think that was it. Bitch.

23 – “Roland”
(Original Air Date: May 6, 1994) A little strange to have two beyond the grave murderers back-to-back, don’t you think? One reincarnated as a telekinetic little girl and the other using telepathy to control his autistic twin. Sure, they’re different but I still think it might have been a better idea to space these out a bit in the season.

This one was sold by the acting of Ivanek. He was spot-on as Roland, so much so that he was nearly unrecognizable, except that nobody does creepy like Ivanek. Hell, I saw some of those same weird sideways glances on Heroes this past season.

The wind tunnel deaths were a little gimmicky, but the method of control between the twins was intriguing. Even more intriguing was why Roland’s relationship to his brother wasn’t on either of their records. If Roland wasn’t taken away until they were five, how could his birth and relationship just be erased like that. I’d be pissed and want to throw my stars, too!

24 – “The Erlenmeyer Flask” [MythArc] – SEASON FINALE
(Original Air Date: May 13, 2994) Oh Deep Throat, we hardly knew ye. No, honestly, how many times did you show up and we don’t know a damned thing about you? It’s a little ridiculous if you think about it. That and the admitted lying. Why, as Scully suggested, should we even trust you now?

Still, I didn’t know he died this early. Where will Mulder get his tips now? I liked how we got two catch-phrases in one episode though. Deep Throat’s dying words: “Trust no one,” and Mulder’s assertion that he wasn’t going to stop because: “The truth is out there.” After all, he’s been reading it in the intro credits all season.

The show has me so skeptical of everything, I’m wondering if the alien fetus Scully grabbed was real or another elaborate hoax perpetrated by the government on them. Hell, Deep Throat’s death could be part of that. He might not even be dead. Trust no one? How about trust nothing!

Is Scully even a woman? Maybe she’s an alien in a woman body suit. Mulder’s a robot man and the cigarette smoking man is a walking car; he uses the cigarettes to explain the exhaust. That makes sense.

I can’t believe they closed the X-files down. What will Mulder do? How will they sustain this show for another eight seasons and two movies (and counting). Probably re-open it.

The bottom line is that this was a good opening season for an ongoing show. They had a decent balance of done-in-one episodes and mytharc installments. I would have liked a bit more connection between the other stories, but I’ve been told by you that some of that is coming. I guess we’ll see how Season Two plays out starting next week.

Previously on The X-Files Virgin’s Diary
Now you can just click the show title under TV Shows over there on the right for all our previous installments. Handy, isn’t it?

Clacked by Jason Hughes
on Jul 03, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT