Surekill: Off the Top of My Head (SPOILERS) (January 7, 2001) Caution: spoiler for next week's ep (based on the trailer) is in the "Etc." section. SUREKILL (8ABx09): In a nutshell: Ho-hum MOTW with characters I didn't give a damn about. Oh, and paging Dr. Scully... What I liked: - Scully's hair and outfit. Loved the ribbed mock t-neck on her, and her hair was nice and fluffy. Two big thumbs up there. But... for Pete's sakes, shouldn't Pregnant!Scully be out of those heels by now? By my timeline, she's a good four months along, at minimum. - GA in the interrogation scene with Randall. She was just poifect. :) If I suspend all of the problems I'm having this season about Scully forgetting about Mulder's existence, that was the Scully I know and love. - Speaking of that scene... Randall: "No. We're exterminators." Scully: "Yeah -- you certainly are." Looks blandblandbland in black and white, but the delivery was superb. :) What I didn't like: - Randall apparently has some weird vision thing going on and Scully makes no mention of having his vision tested? Hello Dr. Scully? - Doggett tossing around a chemical name like he was born to do it. Hey, that's Scully's job! ;) - Oh, good, another woman gets to show off her bra on this show. Was that really necessary? - Dwight didn't exactly walk around like someone who is legally blind. In unfamiliar surroundings, like the police station, he seemed to be very sure of where he was looking. My uncorrected vision is 20/400; without my glasses I'd be hesitant to cross the street and I'd be squinting like crazy. (What was the point of him being legally blind, anyway? It didn't seem crucial to the story at all. Did I miss something?) What's got me puzzled: - In what month is this story supposed to take place? If Redrum happened in December, and Scully still isn't showing, it should still be winter, right? Well, that sure didn't look like winter in Worcester to me. - Why did Doggett turn the lights off in that scene at Chase's real estate office? He didn't have a look on his face that said something like, "Wow, do I see little holes in the wall? Let me check this out." He acted like it was the most normal thing in the world to close the door and turn off the lights like that. Certainly Scully gave no indication that she noticed anything strange when she walked in. (I could understand Doggett not noticing holes in the wall when he walked in, since he focused on what was on the floor.) - Why did they give up on the idea of that 90 lb. heat-sensing thing so quickly? Surely that was the most logical answer (at the time, I mean ). After all, how long has Doggett been out of the Marines? They surely would have improved upon the product by then (why not ask the LGM about that?). And if someone *really* wanted to kill Chase, carrying 90 pounds up a ladder would not have been much of a deterrent. Mulder did just fine carrying Scully up something a lot taller than a ladder in FTF. - How is Dwight running a business when he's legally blind? And if his eyes are so bad, why isn't he wearing some kind of corrective lenses to improve them as much as possible? At first I thought perhaps he had been lying about being legally blind, but that cigarette lighter scene with Tammy and the magnifying glass bit at the end seemed to prove otherwise. - How did Randall know how to "stop" his X-ray vision at what he wanted to look at? How come he didn't just keep looking through stuff? - At the end, Doggett mentioned that the Bureau in Montana was on alert for Tammy. Why Montana? Did I miss something there, too? Etc.: - Too bad Dwight's dead. I imagine he could have sued the FBI's ass for serving him with a search warrant that he presumably couldn't read due his vision disability. Doggett's comment to "find someone to read this to you" sure didn't help. Similarly, Scully brought in files and asked Dwight if he could explain them -- but from where she was holding them he couldn't possibly have seen what she was holding, if he was indeed legally blind. - Cradock Marine Bank! So nice to see that they have branches in Massachusetts too. - So... what was the point of this ep? Did Scully or Doggett learn anything? Did the other characters learn anything? Did we learn anything? Was there any suspense? Was there any reason to have sympathy for any of the four (including Chase) characters, all of whom seemed to be at E on their moral dipsticks? That includes Randall, who, although apparently slow-witted, didn't seem to have any qualms about committing murder. Aside from a superb job from GA, and no objectionable behavior from Doggett (at least not that sticks out in my mind), there was nothing noteworthy about this ep at all. - Next week's ep: Metal? Blood? Looks like it could be intriguing -- I'll keep my fingers crossed. (If Doggett rescues Scully again, though, I'm going to be mighty pissed.) It appears that Scully's going to be wearing the same outfit next week as she did this week, though. I mean, I love the look, but...