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"Yeah, we'll have it our way."
I wish.
Logically I know that this episode was Mulder light and Scully even lighter to accommodate the summer filming schedules of Duchovny and Anderson. Emotionally, I'm irritated that we had to waste an episode of the last season on something like this. Vince Gilligan is one of my favorite writers on the show, but even he could not make me care about some brain eating shark boy with a really wicked tongue no matter how much he tried. Gilligan specializes in showing us the monstrous side of humans like in "Paper Hearts", "Pusher", or "Unruhe", but he failed in making me care about the human side of a monster.
I'm just not up to going "oh poor little shark man with the sad eyes and growling stomach. I know he sucked the brain out of that nice lady upstairs, but he can't fight biology even though he told us he managed to his whole life up until a month ago." Frankly, I even found the writing of Mulder and Scully in this episode, aside from a few clever quips, to be quite lazy, and coming from Gilligan it really disappointed me when I could not even count on that. Scully was literally paint by numbers down to the shock at seeing her umpteenth monster and skepticism 101, and it always annoys me when Mulder is allowed to make huge leaps for no apparent reason but to make him right. Right from the start he's deciding that the dude's brain was eaten and speculating a tongue made the hole in the head. He's magic you know. He then picks the suspect right away out of 32 Lucky Boy's because, I dunno, he's a little nervous around FBI agents? So we get smart ass Mulder toying with the kid complete with winking and really bad jokes. I guess Mulder did not have all his psychic sense scooped out of his brain last week after all. At least we got that "good cop, insane cop" line out of it. That was a small ray of sunshine.
Taking what little we could get from Mulder and Scully this episode, the banter between the two of them even when disagreeing was light and playful. It's nice to see that after season six. Scully even actually looked amused by Mulder's theory enough to give him a full jaw drop. That is before disappearing for most of the episode apparently to do an autopsy where she finds some shred of shark tooth. A shark tooth fragment which somehow got implanted in the victim's head even though we've been told there is but a small hole and it appears like the tongue thingee is what makes it. Oh well. Maybe she was also busy deciding which black suit to wear.
In the absence of our leads the tale is told from the perspective of a Slim-Chew popping monster as he moves from victim to victim and feels really bad about it. Oh the monster angst. Chad E. Donella does a fine job working with what he had and trying to make Rob interesting. I certainly can't fault the actor for having to spout all that "biological imperative" and "I have to be me" stuff. The rest of the supporting cast was written in unfortunately broad strokes making it up to the actors to try to find an interesting character. We had the stereotypical ex-con thug, the overly sympathetic shrink who stupidly confronts the murderer, and the kindly neighbor Sylvia, who was the only one given any sort of interesting character back story.
Director Manners had some fun shots in this one. I especially liked seeing the drive through guy pulled through the window. At least all the times we had to watch the trash being picked up one had the fun body tumbling shot. Still, there is a big production mistake in the end when blood from Rob obviously splatters on the camera when he is shot. The makeup was effective, but distracting when for some reason Rob also lost all skin pigmentation when he pulled his ears off.
Why this episode was chosen for sweeps I'll never know. Surely they could have found a better follow up to the two parter instead of this ultimately forgettable outing.
-Could the Lucky Boy logo look anymore like an obnoxious little creep? Something tells me they don't sell many of those T-shirts at twelve bucks a pop.
-Speaking of the Lucky Boy they certainly seemed to have a pretty limited menu. The sign looked like it had maybe six options and drinks.
-You know, I sure as hell would not be that obnoxious to someone working at a drive through as the guy in the teaser was unless I really wanted the "special sauce" on my burger -Rob sure made a lot of noise taking his ears off and the like if that guy in the car could hear it over his radio and chugging car.
-Derwood's prescription bottle was dated 6/28/99 with instructions to take something three times a day. If we go by that the episode date stamp is sometime in July. Somehow I doubt they meant that.
-Frank's Fashion Spot: It was slim pickings this week with the hideous baby blue of the Lucky Boy uniforms (which one of the store's fashion victims had tried to match with her eye shadow and frosted lipstick - shudder). Scully apparently packed black. Imagine that, but really. A *pink* low cut shell underneath? How the mighty have fallen.
-Lucky Boy must really pay those burger flippers well if Rob was able to afford that apartment in Orange County. Plus they have EAP folks that make house calls!
-I know head wounds bleed a lot, but just how much blood did Rob get on that shirt? The whole tub looks full of it and the shirt is soaked. Like that nail brush is really going to help. Methinks Rob might want to look into a lobster bib for his little outings for buttery treats.
-So this whole apartment building has one trash can? Those people must be really serious about recycling.
-You know, I did feel a little bad for Duchovny's double Steve Kiziak in this episode when I realized the poor guy has to subject himself to every bad haircut Duchovny gets.
-I'm sure we've all been waiting for the return of the toilet humor of 1013. Well, we can all breathe a sigh of relief at that line about dipping the boys in the slaw. Lovely.
-How convenient that Derwood had his name engraved on his bat. No plot device there.
-Was that supposed to be a joke about Peter Jennings being the most handsome man in the world?
-Mulder tells us that Spinks' car is missing. Must be a fine automobile since Derwood wears a motorcycle helmet.
Autumn
"I'd say that's ground beef."