Day 1: The X-Files

Status: Ended
Premiered: September 10, 1993
Last Aired: May 19, 2002
Show Categories: Science-Fiction, Drama
TV.Com Ratings Rank: 248 of 17,887
Episode: Closure
Season: 7
Aired: 2/13/2000

The episode opens on a smoke filled hill as a bunch of workers uncover and take away the bodies Mulder discovered at the end of the previous episode. Mulder starts quoting crappy poetry in a bored voice that suggests he's already skimming the Evolution script in his mind and wondering if he should get his plane tickets the hell out of X-Filesland from Cheaptickets or Priceline. Are they still dreaming of ice creams and monkeybars, Mulder? No, they're NOT! They're dreaming of some real fucking closure on your sister after 7 years of lies, cheap tricks, damned lies, retcons, and boolsheet.

But those dreams are shattered 90 seconds into the episode when darkness falls, Enya starts weeping, and ghosts fly out of the ground so they can stand in a circle and signal to us that yes, what we are about to receive is going to suck. And suck really really hard.

Roll opening credits, amen.

Believe to understand? You don't want to know what I believe right now, TV show.

Coming out of the credits we watch people ... watch TV. I believe this practice of watching people watch TV began in the 80s. Until then show runners understood that if we wanted to watch people watch TV we'd turn our heads to the right or left. Or look in the mirror if we're one of those sad, weeping millions who live alone.

In the next scene we meet Harold Pillar, played by the man who played the douchebag Vice Principal on Boston Public. Ah, Boston Public. I'll be getting to YOU, sweetie, later this year. And it's going to suck. And suck really really hard. This actor also played a longer haired douchebag on Silence of the Lambs and one or two of those sequels/prequels.

Harold is a police psychic and wants to help Mulder find the missing girl in this current case. Harold mentions "walk-ins", which, according to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, are people with names like Roland and Eddie and Jake. These are different kinds of people than "Walk-Outs", which are the millions of people who stopped watching The X-Files after this episode.

Scully response to this is familiar to longtime fans of the show. She leaves. She abandons Mulder. If I remember right, she started leaving him during cases in Season 2 and did it with more and more frequency as the series wore on. More, she threatened to leave him on many more occasions than she actually did so. This disloyal character trait is very unendearing and reminds one of a battered wife who continuously leaves and returns to her abuser. Which is probably intentional because Scully's belief in science is so strong that repeated proofs that more is out there probably does feel like abuse to her.

Mulder and Harold return to the field where the kids died (reminding fans of a much better Mulder poetry reading in a previous, much better season). Harold drops all pretense of masculinity during a sobbing exposition scene about Starlight and matter to energy conversion. The actor pretends he's weeping for the children, but it's clear that he's regretting his decision to forever be linked to the second worst series long mystery arc resolution behind Twin Peaks.

In the next scene we're back to watching people ... watch TV. I can't identify what show Scully and the creepy old man are watching but it features Mulder wearing a very bad wig. Maybe Mulder shoots Alf fan films in his spare time, with him in the title role of course, and Scully found his tapes. At the end of the scene Scully name drops the title of the episode by saying "Mulder deserves closure just like anyone." Notice she didn't say he deserved intelligent, creative, or nonretarded closure. Just closure. More foreshadowing that this closure is going to suck. And suck really really hard.

And ... we're back to watching people ... watch TV. This time it's Planet of the Apes, as if the show runners want to rub in the difference between a brilliant resolution to a mystery and a stupid one. Harold storms into Mulder's room babbling about visitors being present wanting to tell us something. Mulder protests that it's 3am but refuses to explain why he's still so well dressed. Anyone busting in on my fat ass at 3am is going to receive their righteous punishment for such an offense by being forced to gaze upon my nude, pudgy body.

Mulder's mother appears in a very creepy and well done way. But, like most old people, she insists she wants to say something but refuses to speak up. Mulder gets pissed and demands Harold leave his room. At this point, what the brilliant but sadly long gone Phil Farrand used to refer to as "The Pixies of Plot Advancement" step in and make Mulder write a note to himself. And we're off to the second act!

Meanwhile, Scully is creeping around Mulder's mother's bedroom, apparently trying to discover what 70 year old women wear to feel sexy in bed. We're almost choking on Pixie Dust when she finds a crucial scrap of paper that escaped a trashcan burning. Scully calls Mulder with this but he's snippy and hangs up on her.

Mulder and Harold arrive at one of five million fenced in military bases it's our pleasure to visit during the course of this series. Mulder's snippy to Harold before they're run off by the police. (Mulder's mood by this point in the episode rivals that one vacation I didn't have time to eat before a 6 hour flight, wasn't fed on the flight, then had to endure an eternal wait for a shuttle to my hotel only to find their restaurant had just closed and it was a 20 minute cab drive to the nearest fast food place.)

Meanwhile, Scully, who's mood isn't much better, arrives home to find Cancerman waiting for her. As always on this show, the sexual tension between these two is almost unbearable. After telling her a whole lotta nothing, he gives her one last steamy look before letting himself out.

And YES. Another scene at a military base chain link fence. Mulder and Harold easily scale it and invade the premises. This doesn't improve Mulder's mood, however, which now rivals the time I had to go 20 straight hours without urinating (it's a long story). They find Mulder's sister's name immortalized on the sidewalk. You heard me. This secret government conspiracy that hid the truth about Samantha for 25 years couldn't make sure their kidnapped children didn't write their names on the new concrete and apparently couldn't afford to replace that square once it happened. It's a miracle we don't all know the truth about the aliens by now.

Mulder and Scully scream at each other in the next scene. The interesting thing is that Mulder starts off calm and almost smiling but just a minute of Scully's skepticism is enough to make him angrier than a poor soul stuck on an international flight with only Beverly Hills Chihuahua as the inflight entertainment.

Once Mulder and Scully make up, they confront Harold. They tell him that they know he just took this role for the paycheck and that he's been secretly giggling about how retarded the script is. Harold starts weeping again and says he couldn't tell them the truth upfront or he'd have never been hired for the role. But he can prove his commitment to this role by crying again like the little puss he is. He pulls it off wonderfully.

And we're back in the military base AGAIN. Why Mulder and Harold didn't search the house last time can only be explained by the Pixies. Or Starlight, I guess. Harold demands that they hold hands. Scully's defensiveness at this suggests a lingering heat from her meeting with Cancerman. Or maybe Scully's in a bad mood because of the supernova taking place in the yard outside their house. (it was dark as hell as they run in but seconds later every window is flooded with light)

Ghosts start appearing. They don't look pissed about what's happening this season on Ghost Whisperer, which is odd. A boy ghost shows up and leads Mulder away. Apparently Mulder has never seen any of the thousands of Japanese horror movies which clearly warn about the dangers of following creepy assed ghost children away from your friends. But this time the ghost child doesn't drown him in gallons of nasty water or turn him into a stain on the wall, just shows him where Samantha's diary has been hidden.

Mulder reads from the diary, but he's so sad and depressed I suspect he's really reading the final pages of this script. There, there, Mulder. We're right here with you, buddy.

They go out and look up at the stars and pretend this scene hasn't been done a million times before. Yes, starlight is old. We get it. But no, they're NOT souls. They're light generated by stars. Duh.

Mulder's visited by a ghost in bed. Unfortunately for him, it's not the ghost of Marilyn Monroe but of his creepy looking mother. She whispers in his ear. From reading her lips, she says "why don't you follow my lead and force them to write you out of this show before it REALLY starts to suck? This episode is a portent of the doom to come!"

Scully wakes Mulder up the next morning and takes him to a police records room, where they have evidence that his sister ran away from the military base. It's Scully's turn to be snippy as she lobs one weak protest after the next. Mulder brushes all that aside and drives to the house of the nurse who admitted Samantha. As Mulder, Scully, and Harold get out of the car, Mulder stands frozen. The expression on his face is clear: he does NOT want to finish this episode. He knows that we're only minutes away now from some really brutal, life altering, series defining SUCK. Mulder even says out loud that this is, indeed, the end of the road for this series. But Scully leaves him behind and forces the action to continue. The end of this episode, like the fact that Keanu Reaves movies are going to suck and that there is never enough PIE in the world, is inevitable. Might as well get it over with.

Let's pause here and marvel at the nurse's first name. Arbutus. Ah, Arbutus. A first name worthy of the spawn of overrich, undereducated celebrities. If only a girl had been named Arbutus in my high school. That would have been a guaranteed date every time I was running short because every other boy would have been a total laughing douchebag to her.

Anyway, let's get back to the suck.

Unable to contain his mirth at her name, Mulder wanders off. Enya starts up again. Horror movie ghost boy is back and he leads Mulder to a starlit field. A starlit field where ghost children are dancing and playing. Starlight Samantha (played by the millionth different actress during the run of this series) runs up and hugs Mulder.

So. Um. After 7 years of drama, searching, lies, misleads, serial killers taking credit, alien abductions, Veronica Cartwright lying, and various other assorted boolsheet the answer is ... Starlight.

Fucking Starlight.

The 5th season of Sliders thinks that's retarded, but okay. Starlight it is.

Mulder comes back and confronts Harold. But Harold refuses to admit how much this resolution sucks and runs off into the dark to apparently walk 100 miles home on foot. I'm right there with him, I'd rather walk a 100 miles than face this resolution.

But Mulder's free. Not free of the weight of his sister's mystery, just free of most of the final two seasons after this one. Thinking of how close this final season is to being over, he lifts his tear streaked face to the sky and whispers gratefully, "I'm free."

If only Starlight had come to take me right before this episode aired.