Badlaa: Off the Top of My Head (SPOILERS)
(January 21, 2001)

Caution: spoilers for future eps (based on the trailer) is in
the "Etc." section.  I added spoiler space for that.

BADLAA:

In a nutshell:  Indian mystic kills people by crawling up
their... well, you don't want to know.  (Did somebody actually
get paid to come up with this plot?)


What I liked:
-  Scully at Mulder's desk!  The "I Want to Believe" posted!  An
alien head-shaped mug!  The photo of Samantha!  Those did my
heart good. :)
-  GA's performance in general (except for one scene -- see
below -- which I blame on the writing, not on GA).  It saved
what would otherwise have been a 100% laughable episode.
-  The shots in the pool were nicely done.


What I didn't like:
-  The basic premise.  "Munchkins" (to use Quentin's term) that
climb into your body via your rectum?  Is this supposed to be
the way to win the 18-to-49 male demographic heart?  Did anyone
think that this plot was the least bit entertaining?  Quite
frankly, I'm glad I was spoiled.  If I hadn't known the basic
plot ahead of time, I think I would still be sitting in my
living room, staring at the TV in shock.  And I thought "Fight
Club" and "Surekill" were bad.
-  I thought that Doggett seemed rude to Scully last week, but
that was nothing compared to this week.  This was both in the
hotel scene, and at Trevor's house in the conversation they had
by the pool.  "What are we doing here?" Doggett asked.  Even if
he didn't agree that something paranormal was going on, he
couldn't deny that the murders were connected.  I wanted to
reach through the TV screen and slap him.
-  The last five minutes or so of the lines that GA was given. 
I nearly choked when she said, "I can't."  What, she's never
seen someone/something evil in the cloak of innocence before? 
Did it really make such a difference that the mystic appeared to
her as a child rather than an adult?  Of course, she managed to
shoot him after all (I almost said -- gulp -- "in the end" <g>),
but then she was totally broken up about it.  "Do you know what
it's like not to be able to see with your own eyes?" she asked
Doggett.  She's not capable of Mulder's open-mindedness?  Umm,
has she forgotten how much she's evolved over the last 8 years? 
I just found her speech to be fake/forced.  I can't fault GA for
her heartfelt delivery, but the words just didn't work for me. 
If nothing else, it was hard to take that Scully's suddenly all
broken up about not being Mulder when no one seems to have cared
about Mulder's whereabouts for weeks.


What's got me puzzled:
-  Why did the maid go to Mr. Pataki's room after he'd been
there for twenty minutes?  Aside from the fact that they needed
someone to find the body, I mean. <g>
-  Just how incompetent are those DC police that they missed
*handprints in blood*?  That wasn't exactly a needle in a
haystack.  Could the police have found the important clue,
leaving Doggett to simply show it to Scully?
-  Why was there no assistant at the autopsy?  And why did
Scully say that it was unauthorized?  It certainly looked like
the body had been prepped for autopsy; if it wasn't for Scully
to do, and nobody else was around, who was going to do it?  And
if Scully thought there was something weird going on, why didn't
she *call* for an assistant?  She already thought that there was
something potentially alive inside of the body.  And once she
had the mystic cornered in that storage room, why didn't he
attack her?
-  How did the Indian mystic get his cart back after he popped
out of Quentin's dad's body?  I assume he didn't bring it along
in the dad's body since it was outside of Mr. Pataki's body. 
And why didn't anyone find the cart at Quentin's house?  Did the
mystic throw some kind of cloaking device over it to make it
invisible?
-  Mr. Pataki didn't have red eyes when we saw him at first in
the hotel room, right?  It wasn't until after the mystic, er,
started to make his escape that the eyes turned red.  So why
were the eyes of Quentin's dad and Trevor's mom red right away?
-  When Trevor's mom's body was taken away, why didn't Scully
tell them to weight the body immediately, and/or go with it for
an immediate autopsy?  In fact, why didn't she send the body off
with an armed escort, since they had every reason to believe
that the Indian mystic was inside her?  How come her abdomen
wasn't distended, or does that only develop after several hours?
 For that matter, how did the mystic get back out of Trevor's
mom's body with nobody noticing?  And how come nobody said a
word about Trevor until the kid dropped down out of the tree? 
(Is that the way he usually comes home when he's disappeared for
hours?  He couldn't have been hiding in the tree all that time.)
-  Doggett told Chuck that Scully had left before he (Chuck)
arrived with the camcorder.  (What, police stations don't have
video recorders?!)  Presumably that was because Scully was in
such a big hurry to ask Trevor whatever she was going to ask...
but what was it?  We never found out, just that she thought that
something didn't "add up."
-  Why did Trevor and Quentin follow the killer mystic rather
than call the police, tell their parents, tell the FBI
agents...?
-  So why *was* the mystic killing the specific people he was
killing?  If he was just trying to kill every American he could,
holding all Americans responsible for his son's death, why
didn't he kill the women at the school?  Scully?  Somebody else
in the hotel?  Quentin, when he was in his bedroom?
-  Okay, I give up.  What was the point of having the mystic be
back in Indian two weeks later?  So Scully didn't really kill
him after all?  There's more than one of them?  If it's the
former, then she was wrong about what she killed; doesn't that
sorta nullify her whole teary "I'm not Mulder" speech?  Somebody
please explain all this to me in small words, because I just
don't get it.


Etc.:
-  Did anybody else feel bad for the actor who played the first
victim?  Talk about a humiliating role: first sitting on a
toilet, then will blood presumably pouring from your rectum. 
I'm sure that will look great on a resume.
-  The set for the hotel room looked an awful lot like the set
for Scully's apartment, didn't it?
-  "Accommodation"?  That's a nice word for what that Indian
mystic was doing.  I wonder how many times it took GA to give
that "stowaway" explanation without bursting into laughter? 
Think that will make it to the blooper reel?
-  Yuck.  Watching Quentin's dad with his distended abdomen, and
the incision -- did anybody else think that seemed like a
pregnancy/Ceasarean metaphor?  I watched that thinking, "How
stupid can this get?"
-  Nice to know that Chuck had goofy hair in the 70's too. <g>
-  Future weeks' eps (?): I'm going to leave some spoiler space
here, because I mention some big ones, albeit vaguely...
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-  It wasn't clear to me how many eps were shown in this trailer
-- at least two, I'm guessing -- and I must say that I'm glad to
see DD back.  And I say that in spite of the serious
reservations I have about the plots, based on spoilers I've
read.  And was that the new agent in one of the shots, the one
who yelled for Doggett to watch out?  I'm sorry, but I just
can't get interested in the new addition, just like I couldn't
get interested in Doggett.  I just hope I don't find her as
annoying as I've found Doggett at times.  And I hope she has a
better accent. <g>  As for the rest of the trailer... it nearly
killed me to hear those last few words; Scully asking about
Mulder.  ::sniff sniff::  What poor Scully and Mulder are in
for...