TV REVIEW: The X-Files - Founder's Mutation

After the breakneck, slightly maddening quasi-pilot that was last week's My Struggle, Founder's Mutation finds us in far more familiar, freak-of-the-week territory. Dr Sanjay, a scientist working for the DOD, finds himself plagued with a high pitched noise and, after an episode during a board meeting, he commits suicide by jamming a letter opener into his ear, but not before writing "Founder's Mutation" on his hand. Now Mulder and Scully are back on the X Files, they're sent to investigate. It seems like a routine suicide, but as they dig deeper, it seems they have stumbled on to a secretive mutation experiment and Mulder begins to hear a very high pitched noise.

X-Files vet James Wong is back on writing and directional duties for the episode and the old school feeling starts almost immediately alongside the narrative. The cold open with Sanjay's death is wonderfully familiar, an enigma of a scene that sets up the episode's central mystery with an eery atmosphere and some nastily graphic ear-piercing. It also acts as a settler for the current season. Mulder's ongoing 'project' theory lurks behind much of the narrative, but the focus remains on the mystery at hand and its effects on the returning FBI agents.

In getting back to episodic basics, Founder's Mutation is a huge step up in maintaining the balance between moving the season forward and capturing the factors that made the series so popular in the first place. The central mystery is not without its bumps, but it's a considerable step-up from the info dump that served as the first episode. Now that dynamics have been established, the show feels a little more settled. 

Like much of classic X-Files episodes, the horror resides very much in the real world as well as in the paranormal, playing on maternal fears, paranoid conspiracies and the horrible knowledge that a child has been born with a life-limiting mutation. Of course, it's not without some classic ickiness either. Exploding eyeballs, self-Caesarian sections and letter openers as suicide methods all make an appearance and there's a kind of glee in the goriness to it that sits nicely in the narrative. 

However, where the episode really flies is in its examination of the characters at the heart of The X-Files. Much of their dynamic in the first episode was based on their sudden reunion, Scully reluctantly drawn back in and Mulder recklessly jumping back into doing what he does best. Here, it's much on the toll that their work has taken on them, particularly in denying them the kind of life with their child that other people enjoy. Thwarted parenthood was a wider theme in the episode, but the scenes with Mulder and Scully talking about their own lost child was 

Their respective 'what if...' moments with their son, William, are the episode's best moments, a heartbreaking glimpse into what could have been. There's no one happy family unit still, but there are two parents getting to spend time with their child. It's interesting that the flashbacks still keep them separated, their different expectations of parenthood and their respective fears of how it could end are perfect for their characters. Anderson has always been fantastic at conveying Scully's loss with a simple flicker of emotion, but it's Duchovny who tugs at the heartstrings here, a man denied growing up with his sister and fearful of losing his son in the same way.

It may be a little rocky still, but there's no denying that everyone involved in The X-Files return still understand what is needed to make the show tick and that we're all a sucker from some tragic Mulder and Scully emoting.

- Becky

You can read Becky's review of previous episode, My Struggle, here.

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TV REVIEW: The X-Files - My Struggle

This review contains spoilers...

Opening with a Mulder exposition of his own personal obsession and the history of alien conspiracy theories, the My Struggle once again asks the question of "are we truly alone?" Coupled with the unchanged opening credit sequence, it is a glorious statement of intent; it's a continuation of the story that we loved (and that infuriated us) with the characters we fell in love with. Mulder and Scully are separated and pursuing their own lives, but are dragged back in by an online talking head, Tad O'Malley, a conservative conspiracy nut who also happens to be a Mulder-Scully fanboy. As they begin to investigate, it appears that they're amongst something far bigger and more dangerous than they ever expected. Again.

The length of time since the end of the series and the last movie, I Want to Believe, is a big one, so it's natural that there's some strangeness to the relationships. They've shifted and changed, but the episode seems torn as to whether it wants to brave that rockiness or not. It's a new pilot episode, re-establishing the mythos, the relationships and the world in which it all operates, but in doing so, it's trying to do too much. In both trying to emphasise that displacement and trying to make the episode run as smoothly as possible, Carter creates something mightily uneven.

The scene with Mulder and Skinner in the old X Files office is the best example of this alongside the clash between Scully and Mulder on his porch; it's thudding exposition set-up for the new story whilst trying to recall the past. The personalities and the relationships should be enough, but Carter doesn't seem to have enough confidence that we all remember how these patterns work. A character shouldn't need to say "the truth is out there" for us to know that Mulder still wants to believe. 

A lot of the episode naturally gets by just through the sheer thrill of seeing Mulder and Scully back on screen together. Duchovny and Anderson slot back into their roles with ease, like pulling on a slightly irritating jumper and a sharp power suit respectively. Duchovny's sardonic humour is the same as ever, delivered with the lazy charm that he's made his own over the years, whilst Anderson starts utilising her full range of reaction faces almost immediately. Her expression after being mansplained by O'Malley was everything. The pair's chemistry is instantly present and correct too and though the episode is a little clunky in its explanations of their history between I Want to Believe and the present day, there's a weight to their every interaction that conveys a lot.

What it does to the mythology is a brave move and a pretty clever one too, utilising a War on Terror, post-Snowden/Wikileaks world to tap back into the atmosphere of distrust and paranoia that the series initially thrived on. As O'Malley and Mulder explain to Scully how it all fits together, the episode suddenly takes off and everything slots into place. It re-energises a mythology famously impossible to follow (I'm not sure we'll ever straighten everything out) and provides the new fight, the new struggle that brings Mulder and Scully back together. It's a big mess, of course, but what would The X-Files be with sense? 

The final scene with the infamous Cigarette Smoking Man (replete with the effects of his eponymous habit) is a cracking slice of dark humour to end My Struggle with. It's another echo of its pilot episode, but handled with more deftness than the rest of the episode combined. It's that scene that gives me hope for the rest of the series. The awkward reintroduction is now out of the way, we can get down to trusting no one.

- Becky

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