Terms of Endearment

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PLOT: Buried in boring background checks, Mulder happens upon a case involving a demon stealing pregnant women's babies.

This episode was a bit of a change of pace for Season 6. It helped with the continuity in that Mulder and Scully were still assigned to Assistant Director Kersh in a rather routine and mundane duty as background checks. You really have to admire Scully for sticking through all this garbage with Mulder. She had eight years of medical school and graduated from the F.B.I. Academy just so her talents and skills can be used for interviewing deadbeat Jerry Garcia look-alikes for *federal* jobs. Yessiree. Scully must be in love.

Anyway, the whole premise of the episode was interesting as it brought in elements very reminiscent of another episode: Season 4's "Home." There is someone who is trying to desperately procreate in the hopes of having normal off-spring instead of inheriting those genes that could be considered "not" normal. Wayne Weinseider shows a type of angst typical of anyone who is trying to have children to call their own. But he has a little secret that he doesn't tell his wives. He is a demon. Now, is he *the* demon is not really an issue in this episode, but the fact that there was also a female demon shown sort of takes the mystery out of that one. Nevertheless, Wayne's demonic DNA is causing havoc for his desperate need for fatherhood.

I really liked how the teaser set up the plot very well. The setting and special effects applied for the demon made it very disturbing. Yet, the episode did not go in the direction that would make it as scary as "The Calusari" or "Die Hand Die Verletzt," where the unseen demons and spirits definitely gave those episodes a dark overtone. In this scenario, it was an unusual way for Wayne to abort the unborn demonic child and not let the mother feel as though he was directly involved. It's not every night that you would wake up to find a demon at the foot of your bed. Thus, the nightmare scenario was what Wayne was hoping for to explain the atypical events that happened to his wife.

But Wayne certainly was not expecting the F.B.I. to be involved. They wouldn't if Spender had anything to do about it. Fortunately, Mulder took it upon himself to literally go through Spender's trash to find this particular case. I still find it amazing that Mulder can stand being in a bureaucratic system, not follow the rules and *still* can keep his job. Obviously, he has some people in high places that are certainly protecting him from just being kicked out. Yet, for all his rather selfish needs, Mulder realizes that he needs the system to help him with his quest. And so even though he knows that he is being punished, Mulder does not do anything so extreme as to not only get himself kicked out, but ruin Scully's professional career as well.

Mulder certainly doesn't disappoint in this particular case. He is the only one that even suspects that Wayne is much more than he seems. These are the kind of cases that show how much his talents are being wasted. How in the world did he even suspect Wayne? Not enough evidence appears to point the finger at him, but Mulder has the "hunch" that shows his profiler skills. Even though Scully tells him that the wife is to blame, Mulder does not follow the advice (when does he ever?). But proving it, something that Mulder definitely shows a weakness in, is another thing entirely. As far as everybody else is concerned, Laura is the one who has killed her own baby. Even her own brother believes it.

Unbeknownst to everybody else though is that Wayne has *another* wife, Betsy. The contrast between his two wives is interesting. Laura, who looks like a Betsy, is rather plain and mousy. While Betsy, who looks like a Laura, is very attractive, even when pregnant. Betsy appears as though she is a career woman, while Laura was the old-fashioned housewife. Since he is not residing in Utah, Wayne is breaking the law to ensure that he produces a normal baby. This is where Mulder finds the evidence, since he did some background checking, which he can later justify to Kersh, and found out that Wayne immigrated from Czechoslovakia and was involved in two other women who had dead babies. But a nice little twist comes about that was unexpected: Betsy is a demon, too. Wayne didn't know that and was about to take her baby as well, because it was not going to turn out to be normal.

Again, Mulder shows us that he is just thinking on another plane from everyone else. When everyone thought Wayne was just taking the babies and killing them for no apparent reason other than murder, Mulder realizes after meeting Betsy that Wayne only wants to be a father while Betsy is pure evil. She *wanted* to keep the demonic baby, because that is what she wanted. Very clever, since that was not at all hinted at until near the end of the episode. Seeing no way out, Wayne sacrifices his life to save Laura, whom he admired for her loyalty to him even though he tricked everyone in believing she killed her baby. While Betsy drove away scott free with something resembling a human iguana. Ugh!

I absolutely love Bruce Campbell as Wayne. He is usually shown in things that emphasize his rather physical comedic talents: Ithalocus from Xena/Hercules, Brisco County, Jr., etc. In this episode, he gets to stretch his dramatic legs a bit to show that he can handle being a demon that can easily be sympathetic or human without ever truly hiding his evil side. Not exactly an easy task for any actor.

"Terms of Endearment" is one of those episodes where nothing seems to be making sense until one stray element enters the picture. With a season that had so much emphasis on the growing closeness between Mulder and Scully, this one lets them participate, but only as viewers and really does not reveal anything that has been shown before. I was rather surprised that not too many people enjoyed this particular episode. It flowed pretty well and actually tied up the events at the end, which is a rarity on the X-Files. I guess all the more "mushy" episodes before this had people expecting a certain pattern that never really materialized in this one. Still, this episode was worth watching.

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