whateverrrrr you love my gross every-nine-monthly wordy x-files posts

[elapses]

goldenmelisande and her brother are engaging in this in-order XF viewing, and every so often she will be talking about whatever episode and I... will get a little bit jealous. So I maybe kinda bullied veils into watching "Never Again" with me this week. Anyway I have been meaning to write about it for days and days but ugh life got in the way, BUT NOW IT IS THE WEEKEND, and what is the weekend for if not rambly posts about Mulder and Scully.

I feel like this cap encapsulates Scully's general mood in Never Again perfectly:


That face (well, that face and an eyetwitch) is her only response to Mulder's volley of "That contact that we met last night at the Wall, who had the distinction of being present for a first, that being you abandoning me during questioning. In the future I'll make sure that all those people being interviewed provide you with a multimedia laser show to keep your interest maintained." Ugh have we talked about how much I LOVE IT when Mulder and Scully's dynamic is like, thrown, and they are weird and snippy and awkward and mean with each other?! Because it's kind of actually my favorite, I mean, there is a reason I love season 3 best. Why am I allowed to be a person, idek.

Anyway I also love this bit of blocking, it's so boyish:


Also their faces:




The X-Files is that show where no one ever ever gets laid, except for that one time. "Never Again" is, as I'm sure you recall, Scully's "one time", although I guess like everything on the X-Files, it's ambiguous in that somewhere on the internet there are people saying "BUT SHE DIDN'T" and there's just not quite enough textual proof for you to say completely, definitely that she did. (But she did.) And a lot of people across the internet will say they hate this episode because it's out-of-character for her to, idk, have a one night stand with a murderer? (Not that she knew he was a murderer at the time.) But I actually love what this episode (and a handful of others) imply about Dana Scully, which is that even though 97% of the time she is this prim, poised, rule-abiding, perfect daughter figure, every so often she will start to feel trapped and she will do something monumentally self-destructive and then (usually) run away from it. Obviously there is only so much textual proof but sometimes I kind of feel like all of her previous relationships ended that way? She's fine and she's fine and she's fine and she's fine and then she just snaps. And then the cigarette-smoking, sleeping-with-her-med-school-professor part of her comes out for a bit and then regular Scully just kind of leaves in her wake.

Love how completely Mulder just doesn't understand this about her though, idk she's so completely the "good one" to his wild one that he just cannot wrap his head around the part of her that doesn't play that role. In the scene where she's in the hotel room he pushes her buttons twice, completely by accident, and basically completely triggers her whole Ed Jerse thing by being a dumbass, all "I checked where we always stay in Philadelphia, I knew you wouldn't abandon me" (because you're predictable) and then the derisive way he says "what have you got a date?" (because you never have dates) when she's trying to brush him off. I love how even though their phone conversation is a fight on both sides Mulder finishes off with a stupid dance, enjoying his ~vacation~:


But Scully finishes it all THAT DICK I HATE HIM:


But I don't think the point of this episode is that she gets prickly and weird and runs off and gets a tattoo and possibly-probably sleeps with this dude who tries to kill her the next morning, the point is that... she stays afterwards. Even though she feels trapped by her life, even though she fucks up, even though the whole thing with Ed Jerse is basically her big metaphorical way of setting fire to what she feels like X-Files has made her life become, she chooses to deal with the damage. Even if it takes them like a zillion years probably because they never ever talk about anything, UGH THESE TARDS I LOVE THEM.

But seriously I feel like Mulder's maturation over the course of the series is like, obvious: in many ways his life stopped that night he lost Samantha when he was twelve, and the guilt associated with that moment makes him put his life in standstill. He's not allowed to want a life, or a relationship, or a family, or a freaking bed until he's put his old family back together again. That is the Mulder we meet in season one, and he is vastly different from the Mulder of later years, who slowly comes to believe that he can want things, he can deserve things. But sometimes it feels like everyone thinks Scully was already a grown-up in everything but looks and fashion sense when she walked into the basement in the Pilot. She wasn't. She has stuff too. And the point is that they grow and change and screw things up with each other and then fix them.

CAN YOU BELIEVE I JUST WROTE AN ENTIRE POST ABOUT NEVER AGAIN WITHOUT MENTIONING A) EPISODE RE-ORDERING OR B) THE DESK? I can't. I am impressed with myself.

Also this has nothing to do with anything but:



That's "(p.s.) vampire diaries staff I know they are working hard but.. the next episode please hurry.. "

LOL FOREVER HE IS THE MOST RIDICULOUS PERSON