We find that monster, we find Skinner.

The X-Files

11.6 Kitten

(SPOILERS) A couple of first timers on the show in their respective roles show the old hands how it should be done, with one of those rare supporting player-focused episodes that can prove indulgently misplaced or surprisingly assured depending on the assembled elements. Skinner takes his place in the spotlight for the first time since… S.R. 819? And there’s a fine supporting turn from Haley Joel Osment. Not ground breaking, perhaps, but a cut above most of the fare of late, and equipped with a suitably cogent coating of conspiracy lore to bed it in.

Writer Gabe Rotter has produced the show since its return, and worked as an assistant on Lone Gunmen, for which Carol Banker also directed an episode. So they aren’t exactly fresh blood, but they’ve been around long enough to know what they’d probably like to see done better or added to the mix. Throwing young Skinner into Nam filmed in Vancouver is a little on the Tour of Duty side of realism for my tastes, but Banker avoids dwelling on the shortcomings of the scenery and rather concentrates on the Jacob’s Ladder horrors of a government unbashful about experimenting on its troops.

I might begrudge that this is the third in four episodes where hallucinations form a key part of the X-file, but since they’re only central to one of them, the overall effect doesn’t whiff to strongly of writers stirring and repeating. Ironically, given this is Skinner-centric, Mitch Pileggi is off screen for quite a while – Cory Rempel acquits himself well as his ‘Nam version – and when he is, he spends a wedge of time stuck in a hole.

Kersh: Have you ever wondered why, after 35 years in the Bureau, Walter Skinner isn’t sitting on this side of the desk, or even perhaps running the whole damn agency, for that matter?

It’s nice to see the return of nasty Kersh (James Pickens Jr), the kind of germane reappearance I can get behind, one that doesn’t seem like it’s raking over the show’s dying embers. He’s exactly the guy to give a rundown of Skinner’s shortcomings at the FBI, and the reluctant Mulder a wakeup call to the fact that his AD has had his best interests at heart all along, even if he’s been frequently hamstrung in his work. What’s been missing is why, and this retconning is mostly fairly coherent, giving a guy who keeps what he believes and thinks generally close to his chest; it’s a motivation that works reasonably well (particularly good, when Dana notes they know nothing about him, is Mulder’s comeback from rooting around in a cupboard in Skinner’s apartment with “It appears he may suffer from moderate to severe constipation”).

Mulder: The monsters are here.

Scully: Does that get your juices flowing, Mulder?

Mulder: As much as I appreciate any reference to my juices, Scully, my only concern here is Skinner.

I have to admit, I was expecting Davey to be revealed as a non-aging John “Kitten” James – due to the toxin he’d been exposed to – until quite late on, the point where we saw flashbacks to John in the veterans’ facility (the narrative of why he was let out doesn’t quite pull together, nor the fact that we never really find out what has happened to him: plus, he’s played by a stuntman). Osment makes the most of his performances, though, and seizes the story in a manner Karin Konoval wasn’t quite able with her dual roles in Plus One a few weeks back.

Davey’s narrative of the injustices committed upon his father, and his putting forward the kind of conspiratorial mutterings that are Mulder’s lifeblood, makes for good meaty grist. It’s nice to hear the conclusion – after I expressed my doubts about a programme being shut down last week – that this time such protestations are deemed unlikely (“Thirty years research and development and they just throw it in the trash?”). Davey believes the government can control minds by exposing the populace to this experimental toxin, via water, food supply and chemtrails, which admittedly isn’t the most popular of chemtrails theories, but it’s gratifying to have two references to the conspiracy theory in as many episodes, this time even ending with their proliferation. Nevertheless, it’s clear Davey’s a wrong ‘un, because he thinks cats are creepy.

Sheriff Stenzler: People are swearing they’ve seen some kind of monster out in the woods.

There are a few elements here left hanging, such as MK-NAOMI – MK-ULTRA in releasable form – causing people’s teeth to drop out; why are they releasing it in that area, specifically? Because they’ve let John back out so there’s a readily available scapegoat for any adverse consequences? And why was Skinner called Eagle back in the day if he wasn’t bald? An ironic reference to his eyesight? Generally, though Kitten satisfies as a character-based episode and a conspiracy one.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Dude. You’re my hero and shit.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
(SPOILERS) I was going to say I’d really like to see what Vince Gilligan has up his sleeve besidesBreaking Bad spinoffs. But then I saw that he had a short-lived series on CBS a few years back (Battle Creek). I guess things Breaking Bad-related ensure an easy greenlight, particularly from Netflix, for whom the original show was bread and butter in its take up as a streaming platform. There’s something slightly dispiriting about El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, though. Not that Gilligan felt the need to return to Jesse Pinkman – although the legitimacy of that motive is debatable – but the desire to re-enter and re-inhabit the period of the show itself, as if he’s unable to move on from a near-universally feted achievement and has to continually exhume it and pick it apart.

The past is a statement. The future is a question.

Justified Season Six
(SPOILERS) There have been more than enough damp squib or so-so show finales of late to have greeted the demise of Justified with some trepidation. Thankfully it avoids almost every pitfall it might have succumbed to and gives us a satisfying send-off that feels fitting for its characters. This is a series that, even at its weakest (the previous season) is leagues ahead of most fare in an increasingly saturated sphere, so it’s a relief – even if there was never much doubt on past form – that it doesn’t drop the ball.

And of those character fates? In a show that often pulls back from giving Raylan Givens the great hero moments (despite his maintaining a veneer of ultra-cool, and getting “supporting hero” moments as he does in the finale, 6.13 The Promise), it feels appropriate that his entire (stated) motivation for the season should be undermined. He doesn’t get to take down Boyd Crowder, except in an incarcerating sense, but as always he is sanguine about it. After…

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

It’s not every day you see a guy get his ass kicked on two continents – by himself.

Gemini Man (2019)
(SPOILERS) Ang Lee seems hellbent on sloughing down a technological cul-de-sac to the point of creative obscurity, in much the same way Robert Zemeckis enmired himself in the mirage of motion capture for a decade. Lee previously experimented with higher frame rates on Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, to the general aversion of those who saw it in its intended form – 48, 60 or 120 fps have generally gone down like a bag of cold sick, just ask Peter Jackson – and the complete indifference of most of the remaining audience, for whom the material held little lustre. Now he pretty much repeats that trick with Gemini Man. At best, it’s merely an “okay” film – not quite the bomb its Rotten Tomatoes score suggests – which, (as I saw it) stripped of its distracting frame rate and 3D, reveals itself as just about serviceable but afflicted by several insurmountable drawbacks.

You’re only seeing what’s in front of you. You’re not seeing what’s above you.

Mr. Robot Season 2
(SPOILERS) I suspect my problem with Mr. Robot may be that I want it to be something it isn’t, which would entail it being a much better show than it is. And that’s its own fault, really, or rather creator and writer-director of umpteen episodes Sam Esmail’s, who has intentionally and provocatively lured his audience into thinking this really is an up-to-the-minute, pertinent, relevant, zeitgeisty show, one that not only has a huge amount to say about the illusory nature of our socio-economic system, and consequently the bedrock of our collective paradigm, but also the thorny subject of reality itself, both of which have been variably enticing dramatic fodder since the Wachowski siblings and David Fincher released a one-two punch at the end of the previous millennium.

In that sense, Mr. Robot’s thematic conceit is very much of a piece with its narrative form; it’s a conjuring act, a series of sleights of hand designed to dazzle the viewer into going with the flow, rath…

What you do is very baller. You're very anarchist.

Lady Bird (2017)
(SPOILERS) You can see the Noah Baumbach influence on Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, with whom she collaborated on Frances Ha; an intimate, lo-fi, post-Woody Allen (as in, post-feted, respected Woody Allen) dramedy canvas that has traditionally been the New Yorker’s milieu. But as an adopted, spiritual New Yorker, I suspect Gerwig honourably qualifies, even as Lady Bird is a love letter/ nostalgia trip to her home city of Sacramento.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

You’ll just have to face it, Steed. You’re completely compromised.

The Avengers Season 6 Ranked – Worst to Best
The final run, and an oft-maligned one. It’s doubtful anyone could have filled Emma Peel’s kinky boots, but it didn’t help Linda Thorson that Tara King was frequently earmarked to moon over Steed while very evidentlynot being the equal Emma and Cathy were; the generation gap was never less than unflatteringly evident. Nevertheless, despite this imbalance, and the early hiccups of the John Bryce-produced episodes, Season Six arguably offers a superior selection of episodes to its predecessor, in which everyone became perhaps a little too relaxed.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog