WE LOOK AT TWO NEW SEASON FOUR
X-FILES, BEGINNING WITH THE ENIGMATIC NEVER AGAIN What might be the reasonable effect of losing the custody of your two kids to your divorced wife?
You might expect to go to go to a bar to get drunk.
You might even expect to stumble across the street into a tattoo parlour and get a tattoo of a winking femme fatale above the pledge: 'Never Again'.
Not impossible.
But you would not expect the tattoo to take on a life and voice of its own and start taunting you about your friendships with women. And you'd certainly be a little put out when it encouraged you to kill these women, particularly when you then did exactly that. But wait.
All is not lost.
At the tattoo parlour a beautiful redhead comes into your life who seems to calm the jealous vixen on your arm, quieting her to an occasional aside.
The redhead is a doctor who says she is visiting her aunt in Pennsylvania and has missed her flight out because of the storm.
Would she like to go out to dinner that evening?
She would?
That's great!
She even offers to come to your apartment to pick you up.
Better dispose of that body then...
Never Again was intended for broadcast before Leonard Betts, but the episodes were swapped in order to maximise the potential post-Superbowl audience.
Thus Scully's shocking discovery in Leonard Betts gives Never Again a resonance it might not originally have had.
With a notable change in her outlook and with Mulder forced to take a week's leave (coincidentally allowing David Duchovny more time off from the series...) Scully is placed centre-stage, an opportunity Gillian Anderson embraces with relish.
Playing opposite her, as the haunted stock-broker Ed is Rodney Rowland, who, like the earlier refugees from Morgan and Wong's abandoned Space: Above and Beyond, transfers to The X Files environment with considerable impact. Here he's allowed to play a fully-fledged human being (though under the influence of this week's paranormal pest) who interacts intimately with the FBI's most eligible lady.
The success of this venture is largely due to the smouldering screen chemistry
evident between Rowland and Anderson, who play their parts to the hilt.Fans of the Scully/Mulder 'relationsnip' will no doubt be irate at Scully's disloyalty to her vacationing partner but the result is so compelling as to recompense for the Bambis and Detective Whites of Mulder's acquaintance.
Besides, while Scully shows us her wilder side, Mulder - by no means entirely absent from the show - is in seventh heaven over at the Presley home, Graceland (and a very funny scene that is too).
The episode is sensuously directed by Rob Bowman, who makes the most of guest artist Jodie Foster as the voice of the tattoo.
She's excellent, with a particularly disturbing laugh, but she could have been anybod if it weren't for the screen credit.
Exploring the realms of dementia and possession, Morgan and Wong's final contribution to the series, Never Again (are they trying to tell us something?) is most successful in two ways. Firstly, it jolts audience and characters alike out of their weekly routine by reminding us that Scully, at least, has a life and ambitions (like real people) outside the boundaries of Mulder's X Files.
The discussions between the two of them on the subject are unforgetable; it's not often you see Mulder left speechless.
Secondly, the whole pitch of the episode, skewed by it's broadcast after Leonard Betts, means that it provides the emotional respite needed before the heart-wrenching Memento Mori.
All site graphics, original texts, and content other than specified © DrkNite. Fan art, fan photos, and other contributed materials © to their respective owners. All rights reserved.