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I felt a bit bad for letting the Season 3 rewatch thread die, even though I didn't start it in the first place (and other people could have done a recap). If I can muster up the time and energy, I may pick up where I left off. It's fun watching (most of) the episodes again and turning a critical eye on them.
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Jan 28, 2014 00:16
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 02:25 |
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haveblue posted:He does have a bedroom and in season 6 he gets a waterbed. And presumably his landlord asks him to get rid of it not long after that.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:48
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I know this isn't the Let's Watch... thread (RIP), but these are kind of fun to do, so I figured I'd do one every now and then. Episode 3x07 - The Walk. Written by John Shiban. Directed by Rob Bowman.  We open with a guy - Lieutenant Colonel Victor Stans - in a VA hospital bed getting questioned (not entirely sympathetically) by a psychiatrist about why he'd tried to commit suicide (again). Stans is telling Dr Sceptical that his repeated attempts are not a cry for help - that he won't let Stans kill himself.  Dr Sceptical is... not so sure and wanders off to go get Stans some tranquilizers. Which is when Stans decides to make a run for it - sort of; finding his way down to the basement and the hydrotherapy pool in what has got to be one of the dingiest gyms known to man.  First, he locks the door, then grabs some weights off a table, stuffs them in his hospital gown (which is stupid, given that anything heavy enough to weigh him down would probably rip the gown) and cranks the heat up on the pool. Just as he's about to jump in, though, a mysterious voice tells him to 'Stand down, soldier' and he glances in a mirror to see a horrifying  Which is supposed to be a reflection of a soldier in combat gear, but for the half-second or so we see it, it looks more like an wall-mounted light fixture. Anyway, Stans is freaked out by the decor and jumps feet first into the boiling water.  He gets pulled out by the fire-fighters - it's hard not to be baffled at how quickly they arrive - who find the door mysteriously unlocked and the steaming side of boiled manflesh just about has time to croak something along the lines of "I told you he wouldn't let me die" before we flash to the TITLE SEQUENCE!  Some time later, Mulder & Scully are questioning Stans about stuff - his wife and child burned to death in a house fire that preceded his first suicide attempt - and surprisingly, they have different ideas about what's caused Stans' condition. Scully actually scribbles down "Classic Post-traumatic shock" on her notepad, so congrats if you've got Psychiatrist on your Scully Does Everything bingo card, while generally being pretty  about the whole interview. Mulder channels Mulder, albeit rather enigmatically holding something small that he doesn't refer to in this scene.After a couple of minutes of forgettable conversation, our dynamic duo are pulled out of Stans' room by another soldier.  Captain Draper asks them to stop their investigation, which gives Scully a chance to show her Military Daughter chops again, demanding to see the Captain's commanding officer.  Elsewhere, as a bunch of veterans begin to pass out from CO2 inhalation, a man with one leg is talking in dreamy, wondrous tones about a dream he had where he ran around with his child which I suppose could be touching if you have a soul, but this is the X-Files, so I'm just waiting for someone to die horribly.  Also unimpressed is our Monster of the Week, a quadruple-amputee magnificent shitbag known as Rappo. After being a shitbag and pissing all over his fellow "cripples"' dreams, he yells for someone who wanders in and wheels him away.  Poor old Martin Lloyd, always losing his memory. So sad. In the meantime, M&S have been shown into General Callaghan's office and there's a slightly tedious argument where Scully gets all teachery  and the General is all 'chain-of-command, nothing here for you'.  Anyway, it turns out that Stans wasn't the first person to try to commit suicide, nor was he the first officer to have his wife and child(ren) die in a house fire.  After Callaghan has grudgingly allowed M&S to continue their investigation and they've pottered off, Captain Draper pops her head back in to apologise for something or other and they have a brief conversation in tones that nicely hint that their relationship is maybe equal parts father/daughter and Miltary. She leaves and Callaghan goes straight for the booze, interrupted by a garbled message on his answerphone and then a voice; neither of which, sadly, are about the dangers of drinking poison whiskey. The voice itself says something like "Your time has come, killer" and despite coming from the doorway, Callaghan looks over at the window. So it's probably lucky for him that the silhouette of the light fixture - now resembling a soldier - is clearly visible in the reflection on the glass.  Lucky is not, however, a word that would describe Captain Draper's evening swim, where she is - in a genuinely tense and exciting scene - eventually pulled under the water and drowned by an actually impressive special effects sequence:   Poolside, the next morning, Callaghan is all "the military was her family", his voice giving a little bit more away. M&S clarify that the guards saw no-one coming or going - maybe they should consider turning the loving lights on, hmm? - and Mulder quizzes Callaghan about 'spooky things' that might have happened. The General mentions the phone message - what's nice is that you kind of get the feeling that the death of Draper is what's making him be this open - and the trio, plus some extra soldiery dudes hop in the car to head to Casa Callaghan.  Where Callaghan Jnr has just been freaked out by seeing someone in the house.  The General tries to calm his wife down and after a quick look around, some footprints are found in the sandpit.  Which, along with some fingerprints, leads the agents to poor old Martin Lloyd, complete with letters from each of the victims - covered in insects, not for The List-type reasons, just because his place is filthy. Back at Casa Callaghan, Junior has been busy in the sandpit, excavating a colossal amount of sand, piling it up and then playing with his toy soldiers in the, um, pit below. A soldier is there guarding the place but - sure enough - this episode's curse of 'Things That Are Bad For You' strikes again.  The guard lights up a cigarette and our phantom tips the whole mound of sand onto the kid. The guard notices something is off and comes running, but it's too late. Yep, this episode just killed a 8-9 year old kid.  Not content with that little bit of savagery, Martin Lloyd is the next target for the phantom, despite him screaming "I'm not safe here, he's been here before" over and over until the show's long-running theme of terrible jail/prison guards shows up again and tells this episode's candidate to go wandering off. Scully - who was told by Martin Lloyd that Rappo was the person he was collecting the letters for - comes back to the cells for words with Martin Lloyd after being unimpressed that he pointed the finger at Rappo.  Sadly, she doesn't get the chance to bawl him out in any sort of satisfying way, given that he's dead. We then get the resolution of the 'What Was Mulder Carrying In The First Scene' conundrum that absolutely no-one cared about. They're x-ray films and they seem to show that there's more than just background levels of radiation at each of the crime scenes, so he thinks it's Astral Projection. Mulder pops in for a visit with Rappo and tries his favourite "I know what you're doing, just admit it" mode of questioning, which has never worked. Ever.  The main upshot of the conversation is that Rappo blames the military - specifically the officers - for what happened to him and all the other soldiers who come back from wars not entirely right. Sadly for Mulder, Rappo decides not to confess to a crime he'd never be convicted for What does happen is that Rappo decides to kill the General's wife while the two of them are at home, grieving.  The General decides it's time for action and heads back to the hospital to see Stans.  It's not clear quite what he has in mind when he goes into the room. Given everything that's happened to him, the logical thing would be for him to ask for information, but the acting and direction make it seem like he's going to kill Stans. Anyway, Stans says he knows who is doing the killing. It's...  There's some verbal sparring between the two of them and then Callaghan empties his clip into the wall behind Rappo.  He leaves the room and bumps into M&S in the corridor outside and after shrugging his way through saying "Dude's still alive, whatever", he gets in the elevator, presumably to go home. That's not where he goes, however, as M&S look in on Rappo to find him in a trance ("He's having a seizure!" A seizure is it, Scully?  ). Rappo forces the elevator down to the basement, with Mulder sort of lightly-jogging down the stairs after it.  Down in the basement of  Which is when he starts getting knocked around by a special effect that looks much better in motion. Mulder joins in. With getting his rear end kicked, I mean. Upstairs, Scully and a Nurse are trying to bring Rappo around but they both have to leave the room for :reasons: which is when someone slips into Rappo's room with Ninja speed and reflexes.  Scully hears the door slam behind her and, presumably thinking something like, "Who could possibly move that fast?" she tries the door, but finds it locked from the inside. Who is this individual, possessed of such speed and grace? Oh, it's the dude who's got 3rd degree burns to something like 99% of his body and has to hold the handrail when walking up and down stairs. Of course.  As Mulder and Callaghan get the poo poo kicked out of them in the Gym of Doom & Gloom, Stans - in full view of Scully - grabs the spare pillow from Rappo's bed and presses it over his face. Rappo's form disappears as he's about a second away from turning Callaghan into meaty chunks and Stans relaxes:  As the voiceover blathers about something or other, we get a couple of concluding shots of Callaghan sitting in his office getting mail from his new mail man:  Wait, Stans new job is to walk, bow-legged, slowly down the corridor, pushing a mail cart while wearing a mask?  Awesome Overall, I like this episode. There's far too much convenient timing of plot events to overlook and Rappo is such a lunatic that it's impossible to have any sort of sympathy for him. That said, I really like some of the performances, particularly for Rappo and Callaghan and some of the writing touches are subtle enough that they actually reward subsequent viewings. This is also one of those episodes where Mulder & Scully really don't do an awful lot. You sort of suspect that them being present didn't change Rappo's plan or his timescale and Stans seems like he would have ended up killing Rappo eventually anyway. Anyway, decent-good episode and given that John Shiban's next episode is the legendary Tesos Dos Bichos, certainly worth watching with that in mind.
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Mar 2, 2014 13:58
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I just watched Jose Chung's From Outer Space again. If there's been a better 42 minutes of TV about loneliness and the hopeless search for the truth, I've never seen it.
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May 26, 2014 18:15
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MisterBibs posted:That actually reminds me of something: in Post-Modern Prometheus, did the monster rape those women? I always thought that myself, but I think I heard a line during my last watch that implied it was more of an artificial insemination thing. Great episode though it is, he did rape the women. Sex through deceit and all that.
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Nov 21, 2014 18:04
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Millennium is, if nothing else, a weird show to box-set through. The tonal shift between Seasons 2 & 3 is hilarious out of context, although I didn't find a huge difference in quality between the two.
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Jan 19, 2015 21:02
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Jack Gladney posted:I just watched the one where Chinese immigrants gamble for their internal organs, and it stars a young DB Wong, which I remembered from when it aired--and a ridiculously young Lucy Liu, which I had never realized. She must be like 20 in it. Probably because everyone who watched the episode immediately wished they hadn't.
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Feb 10, 2015 21:14
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Jack Gladney posted:Why didn't that guy ever write for television again? That show was a nursery for this generation's best tv professionals, and the guy just drifts out of the business after putting them all to shame like it was nothing. I read a couple of articles and the impression I got was that he just felt incredibly frustrated at the whole process of getting his scripts made. I dunno. Something something anxiety issues.
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Feb 11, 2015 19:24
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I think the shots where the colour drains away from everyone except his target is supposed to show that he 'fixates' on specific targets, rather than that it's a conscious choice. I dunno. Maybe he's just autistic.
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May 5, 2015 18:23
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I think the best way to rationalise it is that Duane Barry gave her some frontal-lobe damage, so her memory's a bit screwy.
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May 20, 2015 18:12
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 02:25 |
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I got to the point where I could only watch an episode of Supernatural if I was drunk and then sober me realised my mistake. Mostly, that other shows are far better if you're pissed than Supernatural.
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Aug 23, 2015 00:22
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