#the erlenmeyer flask | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

carefulfears · 1 year ago

Text

@amplifyme thank you lovely! answering these one by one <3

top 5 underrated MSR moments

(i’m still not feeling well so this may not be coherent lol, just gonna ramble a bit)

1/ redux ii - "because i knew you'd talk me out of it if i was making a mistake"

this is my favorite line delivery of the series. it carries so much weight. he hasn't stopped smiling at her the entire time she's been in the hospital, trying to alleviate how much she worries about leaving him alone, and at times it is forced, but not here.

when he tells her that he was lost the night before, but found his way when he was with her. and explains to her the situation that he is in, the choice that he's been given, the decision that he's made. and she asks why he came to see her if he'd already made up his mind.

the way that he laughs and chokes through tears at the same time when he responds, "because i knew you'd talk me out of it if i was making a mistake."

it's almost ridiculous to say out loud, in the end, because it's the end. it's a foregone conclusion, and it's so so limited.

the look on her face says so much. there is so much grief in being needed. it doesn't last forever. it might not even last the rest of the day, she might not live long enough to ever find out if he's walking into that hearing to make a mistake. how can either of them do anything but cry and laugh in the face of that??

she's on her deathbed and he's flashing that smile at her so maybe she won't worry, like he did when he knelt before her in a surveillance unit and handed over his gun, a lifetime (or two years) before, trying to make it all okay. but how could it be okay when this person needs her like this? when it's all so fragile? when tomorrow, maybe, there won't be anyone to listen to him and tell him if he's making a mistake.

it aches to be depended on.

"you are going to die in your best friend's arms. and you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, because you've memorized it, it's all you know." (richard siken planet of love)

she's going to die in her best friend's arms, and it's funny, because what is there to do except choke out a laugh through tears?

2/ sein und zeit - "she was trying to tell you to stop"

this is tough as nails love.

this is the dirty work that no one can bear. this is being willing to tell someone what they need to hear, and to stay for the fallout.

i love this episode, and this whole scene is such an intense and important moment in who their characters are.

she gets down on the floor. she looks him in the eye and tells him the truth, even when her voice wavers. she holds steady in the midst of his lashing out, his eruptive grief, his inability to accept the facts that she cut through skin and bone to find. she grabs him and holds him tight and rocks him on the ground.

i always think of this quote from audries' throat, eye, and knucklebone:

"Sometimes she wishes he’d get some kind of universal object permanence. Actually practice the world-weariness he preaches with his tired eyes and dingy kitchen. Learn to anticipate the punch or else to slip and roll with it. It’s all incongruent - leaves her there cursing God and rocking him on the floor and all the while thinking you should know better at no one in particular."

mulder, who at 12-years-old, closed his eyes every time he walked into his room, because maybe his sister would be there when he opened them.

who looks up at stars and sees wandering souls, who can spin any light in the sky or water in an autopsy report into a reason why the world is still kind, despite all to the contrary. for whom "trust no one" is little more than a computer password, because he listens to everyone, believes everyone has something important to say, even cold answering machines.

he wants to believe, he comes into every situation with a bad joke and the most hopeful answer, he is rarely wrong. he still walks into every room with his eyes shut tight.

and what a thing to dedicate your life to, to spend your days with someone who sees the world this way. except, what happens when even the most complex spins and intricate theories cannot account for the dull sharp reality of loss? when there are certain things that are just too awful to be explained.

he should know better. one of them should, at least, but sometimes when you walk into every room with the most hopeful answer, you're wrong. sometimes there's just no evidence or conspiracy or mythos to be dreamed up.

his mother killed herself. she did so without saying goodbye, without telling him the "unsaid" truths she's kept secret, without leaving anything more than burnt photos of him in the trash and a message on his answering machine about how he didn't call her back. a message that he can rewind and replay a thousand times over, it still won't hold any answers. he still won't be able to figure this out.

it's horrible and painful and devastatingly human, with no grander purpose to it, and he should know better than to look. after everything that he's seen and lost and been through, he should have retained some understanding that this is the world.

but he looks anyway, with as much dedication and hope as he does everything, and there is no one there other than scully to say stop. to say this is the truth. to say these are the facts.

there is no one there other than scully for him to run up against, and she sits calmly and holds onto him.

she tells him the truth, and she tells him something else, too. she tells him that his mother wanted to tell him to let go, that she wanted to "take away his pain."

which...maybe this is true, or rather, maybe scully believes this. but scully stood in the next room when his inquiries to his mother got him little more than a slap to the face.

scully watched on tape as tena signed her son over to the devil, a hospital pen in her hand and cigarette smoke framing her face. scully's heard this voice on an answering machine too, and she never got a response either.

there's so much pain in her face as she tells him, through tears, that his mother just wanted to take his away. her own version of shut eyes and a strategic spin, this is what she has to offer.

in the following scene, it's morning now, and scully answers the door with her hair frazzled, still wearing her blouse from the day before but not her blazer.

weary from a night spent confronting the punches of the world, she's visibly exhausted when she looks at skinner and says, "it's been a hard night for him."

when mulder comes to the door, she never moves from her place in front of him, blocking him in. (she has always shared him with the world only reluctantly). as skinner tells mulder that the mother of the missing little girl in california has something to say, and she will only talk to him.

sometimes, when the worst happens, you want the person with the most hopeful answer.

skinner tells him that he's booked them two flights, and after mulder nods and walks away to get ready, scully looks at her boss and tells him that he "better book three."

tough as nails!

3/ the erlenmeyer flask - "mulder? i just want to say that i was wrong."

this moment exemplifies so much of their relationship in season one, and this is my favorite MSR. baby-faced and curious and overjoyed to know each other. they are best friends.

no one else would run up behind him on the street and stop him to tell him they were wrong, and that they should have believed him. it means so much.

when she tells him that she should have just trusted his instincts, and he replies, "why? no one else does." and she just smiles at him...season one scully has found secret treasure no one knows about. she can't believe she's getting away with hiding him in the basement.

4/ paper hearts - "but i do know you"

it's about THE INHERENT GRIEF IN BEING NEEDED!! of course a paper hearts moment was going to land on this list somewhere. my attachment to this episode knows no bounds. i could bring it into anything.

paper hearts is an ahab and starbuck episode. mulder is more haunted than we ever see him, as he spends the hour grasping at ghosts. scully's place in this episode is everything that makes her role so important, as she tries to balance hope and rationality. this is their quest, and these are their skeletons.

earlier, when roche tells mulder that he just wants to see his face when he finds samantha's body, you hear scully exclaim "oh my god" before standing up and screaming at him, opening the door and just getting mulder out.

she tries to reason, she tries to rationalize, she tries to get him away from "the darkness", but when it comes down to it, she digs in the dirt next to him with her bare hands.

i love these little moments that they always share in the end, when it's all over. there's nothing more to be done. all that's left is a tattered scrap of fabric with weary eyes looking on. she just comes in to check on him.

she gives him the results of the labs on the last heart, how there's nothing to go on, and then she tells him that they will find who that last little girl was. when he asks how, she replies that she doesn't know, "but i do know you."

this is their quest. they will find all of the victims, give the families the answers that mulder so desperately wants for his own. she doesn't know how, she just knows him, and that's enough to believe.

when she tells him to "go on home and get some sleep," all he can do is laugh. after all of the heartache and tension in this episode, how brutally visceral the pain of it all is, it melts away in the incredulousness of her suggestion.

he flashes that smile and hugs her, "thank you" and "i'll be okay" at the same time

and she strokes his hair and stares at the floor.

the grief in being needed. (who would come make sure he's okay if she were gone?). the grief in following ghosts. (there has never been a more brutal reminder that samantha was more than the photo in that frame). the grief in loving someone so encased in pain and loss. (he will not go on home and get some sleep).

there's so much grief in being starbuck, in the end.

5/ how the ghosts stole christmas - "maybe i did wanna be out there with you"

is there any better representation of season 6 than hanging out with a movie after a night of some light murder/suicide plans?

this episode is just the best. and one of the things that makes it so good is that it's comedy is rooted in examination, in bringing mulder and scully's psyches into question and condemnation.

😭😭😭😭

having only christmas eve to keep up their reputation, our titular ghosts, lyda and maurice, are forced to resort to "pop psychology" to fulfill their haunting. they have no idea the gold mine that stumbled into their house this year.

instantly upon meeting, maurice WHACKS mulder, calling him "narcissistic," "overzealous," "self-righteous," and prone to obsessive compulsive antisocialism

a lonely man who considers himself passionate and misunderstood, but chases illusions in order to find warped meaning and significance

meanwhile, in the next room, scully is not safe from disturbance, as lyda calls out her "conflicted yearnings" and delusions of loyalty. the reason why she's "really here"- for the satisfaction of proving her partner wrong.

in the end, mulder and scully escape the house only by realizing that the ghosts don't actually have any power over them. it's all an illusion, it's not real, and lyda and maurice can't hurt them- or make them hurt each other.

but it doesn't stop them from internalizing the messages of their haunted house, and mulder spends christmas alone watching a christmas carol, as the scene opens on him listening to scrooge say the line, "i don't deserve to be so happy."

also unable to shake the events of the night, scully shows up

and asks if any of that was real. if it was just an illusion. which, always knowing when to back down on the need for belief, mulder gives her, agreeing with her that it must have just been in their heads. (folie a deux, she is always more comfortable in shared madness with him than with the world.)

after having been dragged out on christmas eve to look for ghosts, finding them, and then deciding that it was all shared delusion: she repeats back the insecurity that lyda gave her, "not that my only joy in life is proving you wrong."

but after coming inside, she betrays her true insecurity. responding to mulder's "when have you ever proved me wrong?" with "well...why else would you want me out there with you?"

why else would he want to spend christmas eve with her, why else would he want her with him, if not to play her role? if not to offer the "science and rationalism" that he told her, not too long ago, saves him?

"you didn't want to be there? oh, that's...self-righteous and narcissistic of me to say, isn't it?"

god, they are both so slow.

they both consider for a moment, these roles they play. these "subconscious desires" that they mask in their own personal pursuits. how easy it is to turn them against themselves, to expose their uncertainties and weaponize them.

before scully lands on, "no, i mean...maybe i did want to be out there with you.”

and they exchange the christmas presents they totally swore they weren't gonna get each other this year.

maybe they do just want to be out there together.

maybe it's not about grand perceptions of loyalty or meaning. maybe it's not about the parts that they play. maybe it's not about obligation or dependency. maybe they just want to.

#thank you again for the ask #lots of love #asks #kae meta #txf #msr #redux ii #sein und zeit #the erlenmeyer flask #paper hearts #how the ghosts stole christmas

95 notes · View notes