Daemonicus: Off the Top of My Head (SPOILERS) (December 2, 2001) Caution: spoiler (sorta) for next week's ep (based on the trailer) is in the "Etc." section. I also tell you what *doesn't* happen in the trailer. *g* Caution #2: I'm afraid I have more bad words this week, with respect to one particular aspect of this ep. If you watched the ep you probably already know what I'm talking about. *g* DAEMONICUS (9ABX03): In a nutshell: "Hell Money" meets "Beyond the Sea" with a dash of "Pusher." But the plot is worse than "Hell Money." What I liked: - The lighting and camera were very nice in this ep. Lots of dark creepiness and some nice camera edits going from scene to scene (particularly from the truck to the institution and back again). - RP did a nice job with Doggett's confrontation with Scully and Reyes in Act III. - It was also nice to see Scully getting her spine back, and I'll give 1013 a point or two for trying to show that, while she still believes first in science, she's willing to consider other possibilities when science doesn't provide answers. It wasn't perfect, but I'll take what I can get at this point. - Oh, and Scully had her weapon again. Thank God. Of course, she let the bad guy sneak up on her. Minus a point for that... What I didn't like: - In the teaser: "For gosh sakes." Enough with the rural stereotypes guys, OK? - SQUEAAAAAAAAAK. Anybody else think of William's mobile when they heard that overhead fan? What, has the budget been cut for sound effects this year? - Doggett: "And it's worth 50 extra points." NONONO! Dammit, that's a Mulder line. NO ONE EXCEPT MULDER can say Mulder lines!!! - God, I miss Mulder. - Reyes to Doggett: "I can't explain it." Didn't we hear Scully say that to Skinner about William? For once, will SOMEBODY on this show tell SOMEBODY else what they saw, heard, or experienced? Please? - ::cringe:: Monica's having "feelings" again. Spare me, please. Note to 1013: Reyes sounds *really* stupid when she talks like that. - That "rolling sky" effect looked kinda cheesy to me. - Who kept count of the number of gratuitous gross things in this ep? Dr. Sackheim with those darts in her face. Kobold vomiting QUARTS of bloody goop -- all over Doggett. (Poor RP gets *very* messy on this show.) Richmond at the end with his brains blown out. Here's another ep that should have had a viewer advisory. Note #2 to 1013: it's really more effective when you show LESS... like Gerlach hanging upside down from the tree (nice shot, BTW) with blood dripping from his hand. - Here's a "viewer advisory" for this OTTOMH: I'm about to rant. 4-letter words up ahead. Approach with caution. ... ... ... WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?! Doggett is "seeking the love or approval of a woman"? Yeah, yeah, I read the spoilers a while back but, quite frankly, I put that stupidity out of my head. "You can't compete with the long-lost Agent Mulder"?!?!?! Who the FUCK came up with this abomination of a storyline? ::sputter:: Shit, this isn't worth my fucking time. Let's move along before I burst a major blood vessel. - Re: the beginning of Act III: Would they please fire whomever is dressing GA? Those deeeeeeeeep v-necklines are just not appropriate, and neither is the blouse that's so ill-fitting that it puckers and we can see skin between the buttons. I know she's a new Mom and all that, but since we've seen this the past couple of years it can't be 1013 trying to show the change in Scully's body. :-PPP Speaking of Scully's new-Mom body, what do you suppose she's doing about nursing while she's out doing all this FBI work? Oh, never mind. Why do I bother asking questions like that? We won't see William again until February, I'm guessing. - Beginning of Act IV, looking into Scully's car: "Where is she?" "I don't know." Wow, what a profound conversation for Doggett and Reyes to have while they stare into the empty car. Note #3 to 1013: we can SEE that the car is empty. We can SEE that Doggett and Reyes see that the car is empty. Why did they (and you) waste time by having them (and us) look at it? - Geez, Doggett has it bad for Scully, doesn't he? ::rolls eyes; takes blood pressure medication:: And what a nice little 20 minutes they took to show Doggett (and us) that the body on the floor wasn't Scully. ::grinds teeth:: What's got me puzzled: - Why did Mr. Mountjoy want his wife to go down to the basement alone? Wouldn't they have been safer staying together? And if the lights were out, why didn't he get a flashlight when he got his gun (aside from the fact that he needed to be in the dark to shoot his wife). - Is it my imagination, or did the music in the opening credits sound the "old way" (i.e., not the way it was for the first two eps this season)? - OK, so Scully's working at Quantico now. That makes sense. But do we know how much time has passed since NIHT? I'd like to think that she took a reasonable amount of time for maternity leave, but... ::shrug:: And speaking of maternity, anybody want to guess where William is while Scully is teaching and doing field work and doing multiple autopsies and examining mental patients who just vomited quarts of... something? (What, they have no MD's at that institution who could do the job?) - So Monica has investigated "hundreds" of cases like this one? And Mulder and Scully had never heard of her before S8? Uh-huh. - So. The guard, Paul Gerlach, is missing? And Dr. Sackheim just assumes that he went with the missing patient, Dr. Richmond? Did it not occur to anyone that Richmond might have killed Gerlach? Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that this institution has security cameras? So why didn't anybody check the tapes to see when Richmond left and with whom? - Speaking of Richmond, what did he have to do with all of this? OK, he apparently killed the Mountjoys with Gerlach, and then he killed Gerlach. But what tie did he have to Kobold? Why did he escape when he did? Did anybody think to compare his current crime spree with the one where he used all those coeds for fertilizer? Where the hell was the investigation in this episode? - And while I'm ranting, why did everybody keep listening to Kobold and doing what he wanted? Where's his credibility? Surely they don't believe he's innocent merely because he didn't escape with Richmond? He certainly wasn't helping to save anybody's life. Did anybody do any digging (you know, that investigation stuff) to see if he had ever had anything to do with Richmond in the past? Doggett seemed to think that Kobold must be working with Richmond, but nobody really checked that out. - Er, what was with the masks? Nice makeup job (well, I *thought* it was makeup until Scully cut that mask off of Gerlach), but what was the point if the only people who saw the "demon" faces were people who were about to die? - Reyes: "If he's faking it, he can still help us." Uh... how? If Kobold's faking it, he's trying to trick you. How does that help? - How does a man committed to a padded room in an institution get access to the Internet and to phone books? - What was this ep about? Did anybody learn anything, aside from us being informed that Doggett has it bad for Scully? Etc.: - Raise your hand if you knew from his first moments on-screen that Custer was gonna die. Yup, I thought so. - There's a shot of Reyes walking toward the camera at the beginning of Act II where she looks like she's trying to be the new Emma Peel. (Where did I see someone else describe her that way? I'm sure I must have read it somewhere...) - They sure did a quick clean-up job on that room that Kobold vomited in. That's the cleanest institution I've ever seen. And what a great lobby (or whatever that was) they had. Great use of space. *g* - Next week's ep: ::shrug:: At least no one used the phrase "the key to everything" in the preview. However, I don't think 1013 was doing themselves any favors by showing clips from previous seasons; I think they're setting up the viewers for disappointment, given the show's writing over the past year.