Recap is on the way – let’s talk about the episode here
The X-Filesrevival is over.
Was it good for you?
It certainly didn’t finish well.
Credit: Ed Araquel/Fox
Chris Carter tried to end with an apocalyptic bang.
He left us whimpering “Why?”
“My Struggle II” was an attempt to bookend the revival with symmetry.
And so we got an opening sequence that recapped her series history with photographs and voice-over.
It also reminded us that Scully is jacked with alien DNA.
This was the essential context of the story that followed.
*“My Struggle II” was a valentine to scientists in another way, too.
No, it’s a virus!
that I often felt lost.
It also appeared that he’d been watching Tad O’Malley on the Internet.
O’Malley did get one scene with a principal character in the episode.
After calling Mulder’s office phone and getting Scully instead, the two met at Mulder’s house.
It was trashed, the result of a violent struggle.
O’Malley had arranged a meet-up with Mulder to discuss a discovery he had recently made about himself.
O’Malley suspected the entire population was similarly affected.
As he put it: “AIDS without the HIV virus.”
NEXT: “No.
It makes no sense.”
She was game, if only to help debunk this crazy expression of pseudoscience.
How could this alleged conspiracy have meddled with everyone’s DNA, anyway?
Scully hypothetical: through smallpox vaccines.
Perhaps the conspiracy snuck some bonus material in those shots.
“Anthrax is the canary in the coal mine.
It’s a harbinger of infections to come.
“You are witnessing what might be the advent of a global contagion!”
Meanwhile, Agent Miller got a bead on Mulder by tracking his phone.
He was in South Carolina, headed toward a meeting with a toxic wannabe world-leader who wanted his vote.
And it wasn’t Donald Trump.
In any other episode, Scully and Einstein would make for an exciting on-screen partnership.
At one point, Einstein’s constant, withering assault of “Alien DNA?
That’s crazy!”
skepticism seemed to change Scully’s mind about things.
It makes no sense,” Scully conceded, speaking a line that spoke for the whole episode.
What’s she been up to since then?
Among her duties: keeping him lit with cancer sticks.
Among the perks: an injection of alien DNA that would allow her to survive the coming pandemic.
Scully was appalled by Monica’s cowardice.
I was baffled by Monica’s presence in general.
Monica’s download did give Scully a Eureka!
O’Malley was wrong: It wasn’t alien DNA attacking their immune system.
It was something else that had been slipped into them via childhood vaccines, a “Spartan Virus.”
The answer given after more wheel spinning with Einstein was yes.
NEXT: “This Is The End” the opening credits threatened.
But it probably isn’t.
Meanwhile, Washington, DC, was in tumult.
He arrived at Cigarette Smoking Man’s compound in (loaded name alert!)
Spartanburg, South Carolina, in bad shape.
The fight with the stooge had left him bruised.
His collapsing immune system was draining him further.
He was merely accelerating the process and saving the planet by doing so.
Cancer Man’s menace hadn’t been properly developed in the revival and his misanthrope-as-messiah shtick felt tired.
And man, does Carter love the visual of CSM smoking through his tracheotomy hole or what?
It grew less creepy and more tedious with repetition.
After all that, Mulder lost consciousness.
He woke up to Agent Miller saving him.
Cigarette Smoking Man let them go.
Scully manufactured a cure for all her friends for the world!
in the span of what seemed like mere minutes.
Had it come to offerdeus ex machinasalvation?
Or had it come to incinerate them the way it incinerated poor Sveta in the premiere?
One that I assume will be resolved whenThe X-Filesrevives itself once more, whenever that might be.
If only this episode had left us more excited for the prospect.
