#but he's also right that his motivations are complex and go beyond his sister's abduction

[bisexualfbiagents]

You of all people should realize that sometimes motivations for behavior can be more complex and mysterious than tracing them back to one single childhood experience.

THE X FILES GIF MEME [2/9] SCENES from Oubliette (3.08)

[carefulfears]

top five season 2 episodes. or top five season 3 episodes. both iconic seasons for the myth arc but also full of really good motw eps

you're so right, they're both some of the best!! let's chat season 3

(some of this is derived from my newsletter)

1/ oubliette

#MYepisode. aside from paper hearts, this is my favorite episode of the series. it means so much to me. i love it so much. i love that they accidentally wrote a very poignant story of abuse and trauma reactions, from so many different sides.

oubliette opens on the abduction of 15-year-old amy jacobs from her bedroom, her nose beginning to bleed as her kidnapper whispers the words "nobody's gonna spoil us."

twenty miles across town, lucy householder is working her shift at a fast food chain when her nose begins to bleed, and she collapses, repeating the phrase "nobody's gonna spoil us" over and over again.

when mulder begins investigating, it is revealed that lucy had been kidnapped from her home 22 years ago at age eight, her abductor never found.

he becomes convinced that lucy is the connection to finding amy, as lucy continues to experience everything that amy experiences. every scratch on amy's face appears on lucy's. when amy is kept in the dark, lucy can't see.

"i feel like it's happening all over again," lucy whispers to mulder in her room at the halfway house where she lives, and this is a feeling that all trauma survivors are familiar with.

the supernatural element of this episode is a heightened version of the re-traumatization that lucy would be experiencing regardless, upon learning that her kidnapper had taken someone else.

the psychic connection between these two survivors, simply intensifies the implicit connection between them. they've never met, but they're tethered to each other. in experience, in understanding, in reaction and physical response.

lucy isn't the only one reliving the worst nights of their life, as mulder is once again walking into the childhood bedroom of a lost little girl.

years earlier, in conduit, he confessed to scully that he spent his childhood walking into his room with his eyes shut, feeling that maybe one day when he opened them, his sister would be there. "just lying in bed, like nothing ever happened."

in oubliette, he arrives at the jacobs' house alone, with scully's flight delayed in D.C. (later, when she says that she tried to call him, he tells her that he left "in a hurry," and forgot his cell phone).

it's hard not to feel a little pang in this scene, when he pauses to speak to amy's mother. tells her that he's sorry, that they're going to do everything they can to find her daughter, and she says "how could you really know how i feel?"

(i'll do another post sometime on mulder in this episode, there are a lot of angles to it that i'm not going to address here)

amy isn't the only person that lucy feels a connection to though, and i love the script page of this moment between her and mulder.

contrasted to mrs. jacobs’ reaction, lucy understands how sincere he truly is, even without knowing him. i love how purposeful the use of light and dark is in this story.

this is a really important episode for mulder's characterization, as the conflict builds to scully and the other investigators suspecting lucy as an accomplice in amy's kidnapping, due to her criminal history and traces of physical evidence.

mulder defends her from law enforcement fervently, leading to a confrontation with scully where she accuses him of "protecting her beyond the point of reason" and rationalizing a personal identification with her, because of her correspondence to his sister.

he responds that he's thought of that, and "not everything i do, say, think, and feel goes back to my sister," telling her that motivations are more complex than one singular childhood event.

this is something that elizabeth kubek touches on in the book deny all knowledge. kubek writes that the key women in oubliette, along with samantha mulder, are viewed as "simple equivalents."

and that the kidnapper of the first two girls, carl wade, "represents a symbolic logic of duplication," in the ways that he subjects both girls to the exact same experience and treatment, years apart.

this is amplified by the psychic connection between them, which furthers the degree to which they are, in many ways, the same person, having the same experience.

kubek goes on to note that mulder "resists" reading the girls as simple equivalents, instead viewing all three of them as individual people, leading individual lives.

in the end, when lucy gives her life for amy, the "logic of duplication" model would suggest that it's an even trade- that the girls are identical in their defining life event, and therefore exchangeable.

mulder relentlessly fights to save amy, then openly grieves lucy, weeping over her body outside of the home where she was held years ago.

in the final scene, it's mulder that suggests that maybe lucy's death was about more than saving amy. maybe it was about escape, and being her own person.

2/ pusher

along with beyond the sea, this might objectively be the best episode of this series, and i definitely view modell as the scariest villain.

even more than the gruesome monsters or the brutal serial killers, modell is impenetrable. he can pass through any security with one word written on a napkin. you can track him, you can seek him, but no one can stop you from lighting yourself on fire or pulling your car out into traffic when you find him.

he is the kind of killer who calls the police and confesses, because even if you get him to court, 5 bucks says he gets off.

this episode smoothly combines a truly well-executed MOTW with subtle character dynamics and standards.

mulder is any serial killer’s ideal adversary. scully is the disbeliever who trusts her partner more than she dismisses any phenomena.

these are themes that we’ve seen before, but they’re rarely as prevalent as in this episode.

the episode reaches its climax in one of the most intense sequences of the series, the russian roulette scene, which perfectly encapsulates so much of both what is scary about modell and what is steady about our agents.

mulder will put a gun to his head and pull the trigger with no hesitation, but he’ll shake and sweat and scream when it’s aimed at scully.

scully will cry with fear, but she won’t run, she won’t move, until she finds a solution that doesn’t involve leaving him there.

in the end, it’s not worth another minute of their time.

3/ grotesque

i love a good "maybe mulder's been possessed/bitten/infected, or maybe he's just like that" episode!

the moment that really sticks with me from grotesque is this one here; when scully, unable to find mulder, goes to his apartment, and discovers that it is completely wallpapered in the killer's drawings.

season 3 is heavy in characterization, more so than any other season, and grotesque is one of the more visual explorations of psyche and obsession, the effects of sanctity, of following someone who is constantly chasing something else.

grotesque follows a chain reaction of fixation and consumption, in line with its central statement, the advice that mulder's former mentor bill patterson lived by: "to know an artist, you have to look at his art...if you want to catch a monster, you have to become one yourself."

a mulder-centric story told largely through scully's eyes, the audience follows as patterson pursues the killer, mulder pursues patterson, and scully pursues mulder, each of them compulsively striving to understand the other.

undercutting the tension of this procession, is the entity that mostow claims possessed him to kill. with mostow in custody, the murders continue, and no one is sure who or what is carrying on the objective.

in the end, it's patterson himself who is responsible for the copycat killings, though it’s never clear if “possession” was literal or figurative.

mulder theorizes that after years of obsessing over mostow's murders, of studying his work, patterson sunk “deeper and deeper into that ugliness, as you taught us to do” until the violence he bore witness to, stayed alive inside of him.

this is something that mulder is quick to understand, and after all, he was once one of patterson’s students.

“you said it yourself, if you want to know the artist, look at the art. i’m finally agreeing with you.”

in a show, and character, that finds comfort in evil being found "out there": in space, in starlight, in underground creatures, grotesque posits evil as "something born in each of us."

something lying dormant, that can be seen or activated in examination and association.

4/ quagmire

like so many season 3 episodes before it, quagmire is a love letter to the core of who the characters are, except this episode ruminates on new revelations and quiet conversations rather than exemplifying the traits that we already see in them.

sitting on the rock discussing literature and family origins and earnest theses disguised in flippant remarks, the audience is let in on the same realization that scully has when she tilts her head.

that they are ahab and starbuck, and have been since childhood nicknames and “boyhood” fantasies. that they know exactly who they are, and what they’re doing, and where they’re headed, and they are never more than 3 feet from the shore.

they can get up and leave, but they don’t realize it, they’re sitting in the dark with each other.

this is a unique episode in that mulder is both right and wrong.

it might not have been the true culprit; but the creature is real, the hope is there, the belief is worthwhile. he’ll never know it.

scully knows it though, she knows it without ever seeing it, because she understands what belief truly represents. that people want to believe, that these stories will always endure.

ahab slew the white whale, and it wasn’t enough, but there’s still hope.

5/ jose chung's "from outer space"

i have a hard time writing about this episode because i literally have no reason for liking it this much except that it's funny. i don't even like the plot. it just made me laugh so hard that i had to keep rewinding it and laughing again, so it always makes my lists.

but we're just chatting so let's giggle over the top 5 jose chung's moments that make me laugh.

1/ blaine describing the ""men in black""

i swear to god this is what the transcript says:

"one of them was disguised as a woman, but wasn't pulling it off. like, her hair was red but it was a little too red, you know? and the other one…the tall, lanky one…his face was so blank and expressionless. he didn't even seem human. i think he was a mandroid...the only time he reacted was when he saw the dead body.

(mulder lets out a very girlie, high-pitched shriek)"

2/ the alien smoking a cigarette

not a day goes by that i don't think about this.

3/ roky's interaction with the men in black

MAN IN BLACK 1: no other planet has been misidentified as a flying saucer more than the planet venus...even the former leader of your united states of america, james earl carter jr., thought he saw a UFO once…but it's been proven he only saw the planet venus.

ROKY: i'm a republican.

4/ alex trebek

"mulder didn't say it WAS alex trebek. it was just someone that looked incredibly like him."

5/ agent diana lesky and "her partner, reynard muldrake, that ticking time bomb of insanity"

darin morgan, thank you for the implication that mulder gets off to the bigfoot tape. i treasure it.