Scary Monsters: Off the Top of My Head (SPOILERS) (April 14, 2002) Caution: *MAJOR* spoilers for next week's ep (based on the trailer AND on spoilers I have read) is in the "Etc." section. Spoiler space has been provided. SCARY MONSTERS (9ABX12): In a nutshell: Suspenseful, scary ep about monsters conjured up by a boy's imagination. The ending fell flat, and the ep borrows from past eps (but which ones don't these days?), but for the most part the characters acted logically and had important roles to play. One of the best non-Mulder eps of S8/S9. Features the return of Agent Leyla Harrison. What I liked: - Agent Leyla Harrison. I'm delighted that 1013 brought back her character. OK, so she's still a little green and naive (Doggett and Reyes knew the father was hiding something when she didn't; she thought that everything that happened had a paranormal explanation), but she did seem to have gotten smarter since we last saw her in "Alone." I'll give 1013 points for the character development. - The teaser. OK, the ep was pretty damn good all around (until the very end, anyway), but the teaser was definitely "classic" X-Files. - Hey, Scully's teaching again! And they called her "Dr. Scully"! And we witnessed her calling her Mom to babysit instead of her just taking off! Woo hoo! (I'll ignore the fact that she could have called Skinner to go after Doggett, Reyes, and Harrison. Were the hell has Skinner been, anyway?) - I originally wondered why Agent Harrison went to Scully instead of Doggett, then when Gabe revealed that Harrison constantly talked about Mulder and Scully it all made sense. That's the sort of internal ep logic that I like and always appreciated about this show. :) - "If Agent Mulder were here, he'd keep going." ::snicker:: - And a Mulder sighting! OK, it was just his old badge, but it made me smile. :) - The blood blowing into the car through the vents -- unexpected. I like that in an ep. - The dead cat! I knew Agent Harrison would come through with that! (That was a mighty clean dead cat, though. I thought it had been buried?) - Doggett putting his fist through Fake!Sheriff's stomach. More unexpected stuff. And the fact that there were no internal organs, and that the blood wasn't really blood, was a nice touch. It makes sense that the kid would not have been specific enough in his imagination to include those details. - Hey... Doggett mentioned "Field Trip"! So he DOES remember some of what he read in all those casefiles in the basement! - Doggett didn't believe, so Tommy's monsters didn't hurt him. Interesting idea; that the non-believer fought the paranormal with his non-belief. OK, that was like "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas," but it worked well in this context. (But see my complaints below about the ending in general.) What I didn't like: - Maybe it's just my imagination, but did I notice a little subtle bashing of folks who are still fixated on Mulder and Scully (like Agent Harrison is, or was, going on and on about Mulder and Scully; that was further supported by Gabe's statements) rather than getting into the new characters (as Agent Harrison did at the end of the ep)? And then there was Doggett's comment to Harrison about how M&S weren't there, Doggett and Reyes were. Hey, 1013, is it my fault that your new characters don't interest me anywhere near as much as your original characters? Plus I'd say that there's a good chance that a significant portion of your current audience are people who loved Mulder and Scully. So why snark at them? - What the hell were those monster things? Giant unkillable scorpion cockroaches?! They just looked kinda silly to me. I think 1013 would have been better off showing them more in shadow, so we couldn't really quite see *what* they were. The unknown is more scary, anyway, eh? - That thing inside Monica reminded me of "Roadrunners," and not in a good way. :-P - The story was suspenseful and creepy and had unexpected things jump out at you. Yay for all that. I just wish the ending had worked better. So is Tommy an evil kid, doing bad things with his imagination? But how was he able to do that with just his thoughts? And why? How did Doggett know it was all fake? Didn't he scream when those critters started gnawing on him? (His fall was cheesy, BTW; 1013 doesn't seem to be able to do those well... but I must admit that I was caught off guard when Doggett took that fall, so they get points for that.) Oh, and if Tommy was evil, why did he seem so genuinely innocent at times? Was he sometimes possessed by some kind of monsters who made him do those horrible things to people? Why would he imagine something so awful happening to his mother? And what about that fire that Doggett started? OK, I know he didn't really start it because it was only water in that can, but did he actually strike a match, and if so what happened to it? (After all, Tommy didn't think he would actually start the fire, so I don't think it was Tommy's imagination that came up with the match.) And what, the kid's imagination is now being stifled by having him watch lots of different television programs at the same time? So what happens when the TV goes off? When he's lying in bed at night? What's going to keep him from doing horrible things to people then? Yeah, I know they said it was a temporary fix, but what about the REASON why the kid did it in the first place? That would really help them figure out how to stop any further monster attacks. This show used to care about that piece of the story. What's got me puzzled: - Why did Scully have so much of a problem eating her lunch while she looked at those murder photos? They weren't even that graphic. Hell, *I* could have eaten my lunch while reviewing that file. - I can understand that Scully wasn't eager to get involved in the potential X-File that Agent Harrison brought to her. But how did Scully know that there was no case? She's certainly been involved in X-Files where people harmed themselves against their will. And why were Doggett and Reyes willing to check it out, but then turn around just because Scully said there was no case? Surely they were convinced enough that there *was* a case that there should have been some back-and-forth debate before Reyes got off the phone with Scully. - What happened to all of them walking out of that house? Did they forget about that after the excitement with the Sheriff? - Why did they have Reyes take the boy back up to his room if that's where the monsters kept reappearing? - So Doggett figured out that the monsters hurt Tommy's father and killed his mother; why are they leaving Tommy and Monica alone in that bedroom? Etc.: - Hey! In the teaser, that kid didn't have anything under his bed! No toys, no shoes... now THAT'S paranormal. *g* - Is Agent Harrison going to have a problem with her eyes every time we ever see her? (I know it's unlikely she'll show up for the rest of the season, but maybe she'll be in the next movie. With no eye problems. I can hope, can't I?) - Did anybody else laugh at that little bitty jeep with its little bitty snow plow that Scully and Gabe drove up in? That didn't really seemed to be equipped for the horrible weather that the Sheriff had mentioned. - Glad to see that Doggett was concerned about Monica at the end. I guess it IS love. :) - Like I said at the top, despite its flaws this was the best non-Mulder ep of S8/S9. Sorry, 1013, I know you don't like it but I will forever put Mulder/non-Mulder eps into separate categories. - No spoilers here: just so y'all know, next week's OTTOMH will be delayed, either by a few hours or until Monday, depending on some traveling I expect to have to do that day. - Spoiler space follows before comments on next week's ep. A major spoiler is here, so bail now if you don't want to know. - - S - P - O - I - L - E - R - - S - P - A - C - E - - Next week's ep: Is it just me, or is FOX reaching for ratings when they announce that one of the characters that you see in the trailer is going to die? I guess they couldn't just come out and say THREE of them are going to die, eh? That would have been too obvious. But they sure made it sound like the condition will be permanent, even though I keep hoping that the Gunmen's deaths are a ruse to save William. And if, as the trailer said, you shouldn't miss the last 5 minutes, does that mean that the Gunmen will get killed and have their group funeral in those last 5 minutes? Either way, it will be sad to see. ***