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PLOT:An ATF raid on a religious cult's compound has Mulder come into contact with his soulmate and it's not Scully.
"The Field Where I Died" is the second installment in the fourth season by the writing team of Glen Morgan and James Wong. As expected, they do not disappoint as this episode showed a side of Mulder never before revealed and caused a very diverse reaction among many X-Philes.
"At times I almost dream. I, too, have spent a life the sage's way..." A haunting voiceover intro taken from a Robert Browning poem sets the very somber mood for a Mulder-angst-ridden episode. This voiceover is very reminiscent of "Blessing Way" when Scully dreams that the supposedly dead Mulder is talking to her. One thing that sets this series apart from many others is how it can effortlessly go back and forth from the lead characters just reacting to the events in the episode to the main focus on one or both of the lead characters without batting an eye.
The notion of past lives has not truly been touched in the series. There is evidence to support the theory but just like Scully, many proponents believe that it is more of a case of an individual with multiple-personality disorder. Ironically, both are correct in the case of Sarah Ephesian. She does suffer from multiple-personalities when in great distress. Yet, she has oppressed memories of past lives that becomes evident in deep-regression hypnosis.
Mulder firmly believes the theory of past lives. However, when he talks to Skinner later about releasing Melissa so that they can try to jar her repressed memory with familiar surroundings, he casually and professionally states all the psychological facts of Melissa's *multiple personality* or "dissociative personality disorder" (DPD). He knows that stating a medical fact would allow him to further investigate Melissa. As usual, when he becomes obsessed with a case, Mulder reports what he needs to "get away with it" and does not take into account Scully's feelings, which deeply anger her at this point.
The kicker is the scene where Melissa changes into "Sarah". The three of them are standing out in the field. Sara recants bunkers and dead bodies, and Scully starts writing the info down until she hears "Confederacy". As Mulder is reluctant to even stand in the field, his eyes become more and more sadder, he starts to have an awakening as Sara stares back at him. She tells him that they were together in a past life, and she was there in the field where he died during a Civil War battle.
The degree of Mulder's emotional involvement in the case is beyond any rationality. He explodes at Scully when she tells him that Melissa is just a "deeply disturbed woman" rather than to believe her recounting of past lives. It is very rare for Mulder to ever shout at his partner, but this one was memorable.
The deep-hynosis session reveals that Melissa/Sarah and Mulder are intertwined soulmates. She reveals to him that they are together in this life only in passing. To confirm her statements, Mulder puts himself in hypno-regression. We find out that he and Scully are also intertwined but as friends or allies, not as soulmates as he and Melissa. Scully later finds out through the local library that Mulder's and Melissa's identities as "Sullivan Biddle" and "Sara Kavenaugh" did exist during the Civil War.
Sadly, this evidence only has Mulder feeling more committed into saving Melissa's already lost soul. He so desperately wants to feel as though his life does have a purpose. His search for Samantha has closed him off from every other aspect in his life and turned him into a true loner with only Scully to bond with. He feels as though his life is meaningless otherwise, but this revelation with Melissa has given him some hope that there is someone or something meant *for* him.
If anything, the story is moving and very angst-ridden. Of course, the performances, particularly Duchovny's, were top-notch. The cinematography was something out of an epic. It seemed as though the field had a personality all it's own. And Mark Snow's music was soft and eerie without being overly done. An absolutely incredible episode but....
Yes, I had a problem with the whole soulmate business as many other X-Philes did as well. Morgan and Wong have a knack for worrying more about their current plotline than keeping up with the X-Files mythos. The most blatant error was Cancer Man having a previous life of a Gestapo Agent when he was shown as an adult male in "Piper Maru" just a decade later. Also, how in the world can Mulder's soulmate suddenly meet him in passing in *this* life when all the previous lives they experienced had them tied together? That's just an inconsistency that's hard to ignore and a nice and convenient Morgan/Wong plot.
It also bothered me that after 70 plus episodes of the Mulder/Scully tease, she is all of a sudden tossed aside as nothing more than Mulder's sidekick in all previous incarnations. Just because some woman tells him they're soulmates, Mulder conveniently forgets the ethereal bond he has with his beautiful partner? It's hard for me to believe that Mulder would risk everything to save Scully as he does in "One Breath" or "Colony/End Game" and *not* feel more lustful or intimate urges towards her. How can *any* man look at Scully's smoldering beauty without *any* primal reaction? Again, Morgan and Wong gave a convenient plot-line.
As newer episodes are shown, no mention of this episode has ever came up. Interesting that a major discovery of past lives and soulmates warrants nary a mention in either Mulder's or Scully's daily lives. So what we get is a gorgeous stand-alone episode that will have no impact whatsoever in our dynamic duo's lives or the X-Files mythos.
And rightly so, because as the 70 plus episodes have shown before it, "The Field Where I Died" proves nothing other than how *wrong* it seems for Mulder to be with anyone else but Scully. He may be self-centered, paranoid and a repressed obsessive, but Scully still cares and worries about him, which is more than anything Melissa, his "soulmate," ever did in this life.
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