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PLOT: Mulder and Scully investigate an unexplained death associated with a tobacco company.
Bugs. Yuck! After watching "War of the Coprophages," I just have no prolonged tolerance for watching little critters crawling around. Unfortunately, this episode has *lots* of them. If that wasn't bad enough, they are multiplying within a human body! That is the gross out factor that worked extremely well in the teaser. Ironically, I am just getting over a bad cold and am still in the coughing stage. So when I saw Scobee coughing and drinking water, I certainly could relate. But when he coughed out blood and a little critter was floating in the water, my face instantly changed to a pale hue. Viruses and germs are bad enough, but imagining that bugs are running around my lungs...yuck!
This episode had the right elements to be more interesting than the standard "Monster-of-the-Week" fare. The teaser brought about an interesting but very gross scenario and placed Assistant Director Skinner right in the middle of it. There was the obvious public service announcement (psa) overtones of how smoking kills, and an atypical villain with no possible link to the dead other than his 4-pack-a-day smoking habit. Skinner and Mulder were able to show why they come off as two of the best smartasses this side of David Addison. Of course, we cannot forget that there were some good Mulder/Scully interaction through much of the latter half of the episode with one of them being in mortal danger. So all of these elements already make for a very watchable episode, but yet, I still came away feeling unsatisfied.
The teaser was certainly well paced, and there was always the feeling of impending trouble as reflected by the tense feelings emitting from both the Scobees and Skinner. It is always a good thing to see Skinner out in the field. He is still relatively young to be sitting behind a desk for longer than necessary. His responsibility for protecting a federal witness also reflects other facets of being Assistant Director than what we normally see. Unfortunately, all of his training and experience was not able to save Dr. Scobee. His unusual death was a great way for Mulder and Scully to step into the investigation. Skinner certainly knew which one of his agents to count on when it is *his* butt on the line. On a quick side note, I found it rather refreshing to see Skinner sweat a bit to his superior. At least we kind of understand why he rides Mulder and Scully so hard, because in the end, he is solely responsible.
As usual, it is Mulder who sees something that most people would overlook and
deduce that there is a link to the death. Only Mulder found the beetle in the glass of water. It kind of makes you wonder what kind of training
other F.B.I. agents lack to have missed something that seemed pretty obvious. Mulder thought the bug was important enough to take it with him
to view the reactions of the Morley executives. Just from their denials, it was obvious they knew more than they were telling. However, when
millions of dollars are at stake, not too many corporations will be very cooperative or willing to give out information. The Morley executives
are no exceptions. It is actually very disturbing to believe that a genetic mistake would be covered up, but the tobacco industry has never
been known to think of people's welfares first before its own.
Watching the rest of the episode made me think too much. Why? I just find it difficult to suspend disbelief that these same genetically manufactured cigarettes would still be given to someone after there were already deaths directly caused by it. That's disturbing enough, but why would Voss be *carrying* these deadly cigarettes in his briefcase? For someone who supposedly felt guilty about what happened to Scobee, he certainly did not hesitate in giving Weaver two cartons! It's incredible that Mrs. Scobee didn't file a civil suit against Morley and Voss for what happened to her husband not to even mention the families of the three people in the focus group who died.
Even though the overall plot had promise and was a rather clever way to disparage the tobacco industry as a whole for their need to make a "safe" cigarette, the plot holes tend to make it very unfulfilling. Besides the fact that Morley would actually keep giving the dangerous cigarettes to Weaver, why haven't there been more deaths than what was mentioned in the episode? Since Mr. Weaver smokes four packs a day, wouldn't everyone that he ever came in contact with develop the same symptoms? Also, if Dr. Scobee was studying the focus group, and he became infected, why did it seem to take longer for his symptoms to develop, yet Mulder's came about after breathing a few puffs from Weaver and in less than 24 hours? That inconsistency without a feasible explanation seemed too contrived to be believeable. And how could Morley and Cigarette Smoking Man not be in the same episode?
The interaction between Mulder and Scully was above average, particularly with Mulder in danger. Scully had a worried look throughout Mulder's dilemma. Though I found it *very* interesting that she has no problem jumping in to save her ex-lover in "all things," but when Mulder had trouble breathing, she had to yell for help? Maybe Mulder pissed her off, because he was right about the bugs. On that disgusting note, it was odd to see all those little larvae plopping into a canister full of them as Mulder's lungs were literally being vacuumed out. I'm not sure if that was more disgusting than the scene before it where Scully excavated a ton of them out of a dead body's lungs, and they were still crawling! It was interesting to see both Skinner's and Mulder's reactions when they saw Scully's discovery. At least we know that they can be squeamish of bugs, too.
I did not necessarily hate this episode, but it certainly is not something that I would be wild about watching over and over again. It was definitely nice to see Skinner interact with his two favorite agents beyond his desk. Tobin Bell, who played Weaver, looked absolutely perfect as the chain-smoking loser. Bell had just the right look and mannerisms of someone who only cared about his habit and nothing else. David and Gillian seemed to be going through the motions in this one even though Mulder had some nice one-liners. Compared to some of the other MOTW episodes this season, "Brand X" is just a bit above mundane and definitely not boring. I only hope that none of the remaining episodes don't feel contrived just so we can see how Mulder or Scully show concern for the other. That just sounds like desperation!
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