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"What the hell is going on here?"
Usually I'd save a quote like that for the "Our Little Sailor" section of Random Musings, but it seemed to fit as an opener to this review. I had no idea what was really going on in this episode right up until the very end when it suddenly made even less sense despite the desperate attempt at a voice over fix. The one advantage of not having a clue as to what is going on is it can make an episode suspenseful. At first we seemed to be dealing with murderous quicksand. Then, I was convinced I'd accidentally turned on the new FOX show "When Trees Attack". No wait, it morphed into an after school special about child abuse and teen angst. Wrong again. It's really a "Psycho" take off with an axe man thrown in for good measure. Hmm, there seems to be the start of an interesting parallel to Mulder's past. Nope, that's gone. It's back to "The World's Silliest Car Chases *With* Attacking Trees". If I was going to be really cruel I'd have used the quote "I know everything happens for a reason, but I still don't see no reason for this". I just couldn't do it though because despite the fact that "Schizogeny" had some serious problems I still found things in it that I enjoyed.
What were those things? Well, I have to admit that the teaser really intrigued me. Dad comes home from a hard day at the nut-o-rama fighting the bleeding blight well into the night and finds that Bobby has dug a huge hole in the front yard (apparently for the purpose of holding the cameraman for those cool ground level shots) but left the shovel out. Meanwhile, Bobby is trying to amuse himself on his Playstation by seeing if trying to look through that hair hanging in his face makes the game more of a challenge. There's yelling. There's running. There's atmosphere. There's a man with an axe. There's cool creepy forest cinematography. Slurp! We end with a great shot of Bobby as Phil becomes one with the mud. What can I say. It struck my fancy. Unfortunately, after the teaser we were treated to a festival of exposition that seemed to last for days before we got to anything even remotely creepy again.
I also thought that David Duchovny did an admirable job of trying to make something out of Mulder's past paralleling to Bobby. Too bad that the editor and script didn't seem to give him much help in this endeavor. He's especially good in the last interrogation scene. Speaking of Bobby, Chad Lindberg does a wonderful job of portraying this tortured teen.
But alas, the problems were there and they were bountiful. The script by Scott and Wollaeger was choppy and uneven and seemed a few drafts short of completion. The jokes, if you can call them that, were awkward - "I am a cocktail sausage" - whatever. No one seemed to have clue one what to do with Scully in this episode. You know it is not a good episode for Scully fans when her "big" scene involves giving the evil Stern!Scully stare while waving her badge wallet to get a kid armed with a comb he refuses to use out of a classroom. The rest of the time they just had her around for the occasional reaction shot while Action!Mulder did everything. He climbs down, he climbs up, he finds a drop of blood on a tree branch, he gets in a car chase, he questions folks, he saves the boy, he digs up graves, he examines a body (can't have Scully doing that can we) and even points out something to the medical examiner (who apparently does *not* come from Dr. Scully's "the body has a story to tell" school of post mortem examination as he doesn't even notice a huge splinter on a murder victim). Scully? Oh that's right, she gets to call for back up when the axeman cometh. When she does offer anything Mulder laughs at her (and later he observes poor Bobby who can't make friends could be him - hey pal it helps when you don't laugh in their faces after asking their opinion). Could we please, please have an episode soon where Mulder and Scully work like partners instead of this one or the other stuff? Is that too much to ask? That they actually work together to solve something?
New director Ralph Hemecker seemed more concerned with artsy camera angles than inspiring his actors - we get lots of ground shots, mirror shots, etc., but we need more than nice camera work to make an episode successful - like things making sense. We're never really given much information as to why Mulder believes what he does this episode either. He doesn't even tell us about some old X-File where trees are mortally attacking people.
With a more work I think this episode actually could have been a contender - it had an interesting premise, as offered it is merely an average outing and a fifth season blight.
-While Chef Scully tells us her mud pie weighs in at 12 pounds 9 ounces the scale does not share her opinion. It reads almost 11 pounds.
-I know they were just trying to make a cute little joke about Duchovny's "400 inches a day" of rain comment that got him into so much trouble in Vancouver this fall, but having Scully say that just to make the joke is a bit insulting. She would know better, because if it got anywhere near 400 inches you'd be on the lookout for Noah. It just so happens this review is delayed because I was at the "wettest spot on earth". It's found on the island of Kauai and it averages 440 inches a *year*.
-The censors may have thought they were fooling us by having dubbed "dorkweed" over what looked like "dickwad" (and by the look on Scully's face she isn't too impressed with the dub job either), but they aren't paying that close of attention as they let pictures of a bare breasted woman and someone flipping off the camera with both hands slide amongst the busy background of Bobby's wall.
-So, exactly why are Mulder and Scully here? Did the almost non-existent local law enforcement call them in? Does Mulder randomly read suspect statements for every murder investigation in small Michigan towns and the standing up in the mud thing peaked his interest?
-What was with that shoe clue? So the woman has mud on her shoe. It's been raining. The bigger question is why she was wearing those ugly gold suede pumps with that pantsuit. Which brings us nicely too...
-Frank's Fashion Spot: As much as I like Scully's double- breasted pinstripe suit does she have to wear it *every* week? She's grown more attached to that thing than that awful beige phase a few years back.
-When Lisa looks out the window after her dad is pulled out there is no jagged glass around the frame at all. In fact she places her hands right along the bottom of it which later sports all sorts of jagged edges when Mulder & Scully look at it.
-Are the people in this episode afraid of light switches? Lisa goes into the root cellar in the dark in the middle of the night after hearing a frightening conversation. Yeah right. And when Mulder and Scully come into Karin's house they don't even bother with the lights and go straight to their B-quality flashlights. Gawd I miss the big lights.
-When Karin was in her "Evil Dad" mode her voice kept giving me "Aubrey" flashbacks. I kept expecting her to say "Somebody's gonna take the blame for this little sapling-uh-sister".
-Actually for me the most interesting X-File in this episode was how Mulder and Scully could, steadfastly refusing to have a normal conversation inside their vehicle, stand out in a storm so loud they had to practically shout to each other over the roof of the car and not get wet while we could see the downpour behind them.
-Mulder can notice a bead of blood on a twig but he doesn't notice a rather large body sticking out of the basement window when they park their car right behind the good aunt's Volvo? It wasn't that dark.
-I hope Mulder took the insurance option with Lariat. He's going to need it.
Autumn
"Well, you ask me for answers. Those are the best ones I've got."