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sinkwriterDedicated to all the beautiful, intelligent X-Philes on my friends-list...
The fates have been kind to me this month. During the program rewatch over in the LJ community![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
trustno1_redux, another volunteer was regrettably unable to complete her recap of this episode, so I stepped in and gratefully received an opportunity to take a shot at it. Why was I so excited and happy about that?
Because the episode is "Paper Hearts." ♥
Written by the brilliant Vince Gilligan and directed by the mega-talented Rob Bowman.
Before I get started with the recapping -- which I originally posted yesterday over ontrustno1_redux -- please let me take a moment to express just how much I love this episode. It's interesting to me because it's not the standard monster-of-the-week thing, it's not to do with conspiracies or aliens; instead, it's something so simple yet so scary. The bad guy is so ordinary, he could be anyone, he could be your neighbor, which is why he's so terrifying. Yet it gets marvelously psychological: he mocks and needles Mulder, just pokes him in all the right emotional spots. He makes Mulder think that he might have taken Mulder's sister, and that causes Mulder to doubt everything he ever believed about his sister's disappearance, which is fascinating because it calls into question almost everything about the show, everything he's worked for, everything he's obsessed about, and it's SO amazing to watch him deal with that and struggle with it and try to figure things out and not let this horrible man get to him.
In my opinion, it's one of David Duchovny's best performances in the history of the show. He's fantastic, and the episode is fantastic. It's emotional, intense, riveting, scary, creepy, and unsettling... it's just amazing stuff. Great story, great idea, great execution, creepy dream-like music throughout, and terrific acting. Just a phenomenal episode. It's in my top ten favorites, may even be my most favorite as an overall episode.
Without further ado...
The X-Files: "Paper Hearts"
Recap, Part One
The Teaser: Dreams and Nightmare Realities
Fox Mulder's apartment.
The golden glow from his tropical fish tank illuminates Mulder's face where he sleeps, arms folded across his chest, on his beloved couch. After a moment, his head turns to face forward, his eyes opening. There is a red laser dot holding position on his ceiling. Mulder looks at it, blinking, tracking it as the dot circles lazy patterns before reaching the corner and trailing down the wall.
As the dot slides down the smooth surface, Mulder sits up, entranced. A little over halfway down, the dot expands, flashing to become the word FOLLOW in glowing scarlet light. After a moment, the word dissolves back into a single, solid dot and continues its path down the wall. Mulder is transfixed, watching as the dot reaches the floor and travels toward the door. He gets up from the couch and begins to follow, as instructed.
Cut to the red laser dot gliding through the shadowy night, brushing across a grassy yard. It moves quickly and comes to a halt in a parking lot where an El Camino sits, the silhouettes of tree branches making eerie, dark patterns on the white surface of the vehicle.
Mulder walks along in the breezy night air in a T-shirt and jeans but no coat, his eyes focused on the dot as it stops near the back windshield of the car and spreads into the words MAD HAT -- the T of the word HAT seems to bend along the edge of the window, giving it the slight appearance of an arrow pointing toward the roof of the truck bed. Interesting.
The word straightens itself into a single neon line, sliding in a diagonal off the car and back to the ground. Mulder slows his pace, his eyes glued to the signal. He watches as the laser dot pauses underneath a wooden sign that reads BOSHER'S RUN PARK. A smaller plank provides more detail: MANASSAS PARKS & REC. How helpful.
The dot slides under the sign, pausing long enough for Mulder (and us) to digest the data, then it continues on, past the sign and into the park. It races along a field of grass lined with heavy shadows, and Mulder hurries after it. He finally catches up as the glowing red circle stops at a thick tree, one distinctive amidst the much skinnier trees and brush around it. Mulder watches as the dot trails down the tree trunk, coming to rest amidst the dead leaves at its base.
As Mulder approaches cautiously for a closer look, he sees something nestled in the bed of leaves on the ground. It is a young blonde girl, no more than eight years old, and she is stretched out on the ground with her hands folded gracefully across her belly, not unlike the position Mulder had been in while he was sleeping. Her face tilted away from Mulder, she appears to be resting peacefully. As Mulder stares at the little girl, the crimson dot hovers over her chest. The dot turns into the outline of a heart, its glowing red light illuminating the contours of her face.
As the wind picks up, leaves swirling, Mulder gapes at the sight, horrified. Suddenly, the little girl's body begins to lower into the ground, swallowed up by the dried leaves until she is gone.
Mulder gasps awake.
It was all a dream. He's still in his apartment, stretched out on his couch.
As he catches his breath, exhaling heavily, he looks around as if dazed. His hands rest over his heart.
Cut to Mulder at his desk, flipping open a phone book. He looks tired.
He pages through the book until he finds what he is looking for. His finger trails down until we can see what he is looking at:
FAIRFAX CITY
OF Cont'd
I assume it's referring to the City of Fairfax, not Fairfax City, but they didn't put a proper comma in there, so that's what we get. Whatever, I'm not feeling ultra-picky today.
Under Parks, he has found the one from his dream. Bosher's Run Park, located at 6002 Lonetree Rd. Incidentally, we can also see another park listed directly beneath it, a Costello Park Pool at 9802 Millstream Ave. (Just in case you care about that kind of detail.)
Mulder turns his head away from the book, already on the move.
Cut to his car pulling into the same parking lot from his dream. However, the lot is empty, no El Camino waiting for him. For the curious, Mulder's license plate is 5S2 706. He steps out of his car, flashlight in hand. I note that he mirrors what he was wearing in his dream, a faded red T-shirt and jeans, only this time he's also wearing a leather jacket. He looks handsome. (What? That's a valid point, isn't it? Okay, moving on.)
Mulder pauses to look upon the park's entrance sign -- it is the same sign he saw in his dream -- before he heads off jogging across the yard, also like he did in the dream.
He comes to a familiar clearing, only this time it is the white-gold glow from his flashlight that creates a circle on the distinctive, thick tree. He trails the flashlight beam down the trunk, just like the red laser dot from his dream. As he steps closer, he concentrates the circle of light on the leaves at its base. He looks concerned.
Mulder kneels down in the leaves, and reaches out, brushing some aside, exposing the crumbly black earth underneath. He shines his flashlight on the area...
...as we dissolve to early morning daylight coming through the trees, illuminating the same spot on the ground. A gloved hand enters the space, holding a trowel, excavating carefully, unearthing gentle scoopfuls of dirt and dumping the contents onto a screen held by another pair of gloved hands. They sift through the soil, bit by bit. Mulder steps up, pointing to the area where he saw the little girl in his vision, instructing the workers to concentrate on that specific spot.
Dana Scully's voice calls to Mulder. He turns and makes his way toward her, a short distance from the dig site. Even as she asks what he's doing there and he softly tells her he's not sure he can explain, his eyes never really leave the spot where the other agents are digging.
Scully: "You called for a forensic excavation at 5 am on a Sunday?"
Mulder's eyes remain focused on the digging, his face serious, but he reaches out a hand and grasps at her arm, holding it tightly. He says he needs a moment before he can explain, but Scully nudges him: "Mulder, what are you doing out here?" The insistent yet gentle tone of her voice finally brings him to face her full on.
He takes a breath and then confesses that he keeps having a dream about a little blonde girl.
Scully seems a bit dubious. "You saying you're out here because of something you saw in a dream?"
He meets her eyes, perhaps searching for support, and takes another breath. He looks as if he's going to say something to his partner, but one of the techs interrupts, calling him over. She's found something in the soil.
Mulder moves quickly to the woman's side, squatting beside her to take a closer look. Scully joins him, exhaling a stunned breath, her face concerned and frowning as she kneels.
Close in on a small human skull, about the size of a child's, embedded in the ground, its eye sockets filled with dirt, its nose hole the shape of an inverted heart.
Mulder's dream has become a nightmare reality.
***
The X-Files opening credits. "THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE."
***
ACT 1
SCENE 1
I wonder if having a last name that sounds like "roach" has any effect on what kind of person you grow up to become.
BOSHER'S RUN PARK
MANASSAS, VIRGINIA
We already know that location tidbit from the dream and the reality versions of that park, within the teaser, so thank you very much for your redundancy, Magic-Typewriter-on-the-screen. Carry on.
Mulder and Scully look on as the technicians continue their work. Using string and stakes, they've now sectioned off the area where the skull was found, creating separate grids all around it within which they can continue excavating the skeleton and any other potential evidence. Scully's arms are crossed as she asks Mulder to tell her about his dream. Mulder's hands are boyishly stuffed into the pockets of his jacket as he turns to her and explains that he's had flashes of the dream for three nights in a row, but this was the first time it went on long enough to lead Mulder right to the body.
Scully still seems unconvinced, but Mulder moves away, returning to the dig site, insisting that they expose the chest area. The tech explains that it takes time, and Mulder makes a face like that's not good enough for him. He grabs a pair of gloves from a box and gets down on the ground, quickly brushing away the dirt, not with the gentle care and attention the techs have been using. The tech asks Mulder to let them handle it, but he keeps digging. She tries to get his attention several times, but he is laser-focused on finding what he's looking for. Scully comes over and kneels down to intervene: "Mulder, if you destroy evidence, we may never find out what happened here."
Mulder's voice is insistent: "I know what happened. She was strangled. He used an eight-gauge electrical cord. He took something from the body postmortem -- a trophy, a piece of fabric cut from her clothes... in the shape of a heart."
Scully: "You're saying you got all these details from your dream?"
Mulder: (still digging) "No. I know this M.O. I know it from memory."
Scully: "Whose M.O.?"
Mulder: (looking at Scully intently) "John Lee Roche. He killed 13 eight- to ten-year-old girls."
Mulder looks down to where he has uncovered the worn cloth of the girl's nightgown. There is a heart-shaped space cut out of the flowery fabric.
Mulder: "This makes 14."
Scully looks down at the heart space and back up at Mulder in alarm.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 2
Fox Mulder: Bringing a new definition to the term 'Sleeper Agent.'
Mulder and Scully's basement office at the F.B.I. They're wearing the same clothes, so they must have come straight from the excavation site. Mulder opens his cabinet and pulls out the file on John Lee Roche, handing it to Scully --
ROCHE, JOHN L.
259 12047 - 5
Mulder: "It was a difficult case. He was extremely hard to catch. By 1990, ten victims had been found, scattered across the eastern seaboard. The earliest dated back to 1979. VICAP named the case 'Paper Hearts' because of the trophies the killer took."
That's one of the tiniest issues I have about this episode: the so-called trophies aren't made of paper. I guess 'Cloth Hearts' doesn't have the same poetic punch? Anyway, like I said, it's a very small nitpick.
All the victims were abducted from their homes. Reggie Purdue -- Mulder's former boss and mentor back in the day, last seen in the Season 1 episode "Young at Heart"; hooray for continuity! -- brought him onto the case because he thought Mulder could get inside the killer's head. Scully: "Did you?"
Mulder: "I concluded that we were probably looking for a salesman, someone who traveled around a lot, someone who could gain people's confidence, someone ordinary. Turns out Roche was a vacuum cleaner salesman. His job took him all over the northeast."
As Mulder explains the case, Scully flips through the file, studying a picture of Roche from his mug shot. He is indeed an ordinary-looking man, balding with grey hair and an unassuming face. His height is a lanky 6 feet 4 or 5 inches. The dude is tall.
Oh man... I am suddenly creeped out. According to the paperwork tucked behind his photograph, Roche was arrested in 1990 on my birthday, August 25. How bizarre is that?
[For anyone who cares, his mug shot number is 317401, and his citation number is 206-1073-647. The rest of the typed file is obscured by his photo.]
Mulder continues: "He'd be in someone’s home, demonstrating his vacuum cleaner. All the while he'd be checking out their kids. He'd choose a victim and then come back for her months later."
Scully notes that it was Mulder's profile that caught the man. Mulder shrugs modestly.
Scully asks about what happened to the cloth hearts. (Yeah, see... cloth hearts, not paper. Ahem. I'm letting it go, really.) Mulder says they never found the hearts, but that they didn't need them to make their case.
Mulder: "We had him cold on 13 counts of murder. He admitted to 13. The polygraph said he was telling the truth. But that always bugged me about this case. I always wanted to find those hearts and count them, see if they really added up to thirteen."
Oh, Mulder. So many things for you to obsess about, so little time.
Mulder gets quiet, looking regretfully at the file in Scully's hand: "I guess they didn't." He returns a contemplative gaze to his partner.
Scully closes the file folder and looks to Mulder. She thinks she can explain his dream. She thinks he never stopped thinking about the case. Mulder sits back, listening. Scully continues: "I believe that you may have solved it in your sleep."
Wow. While it's not a completely unusual possibility, that's still skirting around the edges of science a bit, for Scully. I'm fascinated that she suggested this.
Mulder considers her theory. "So you think that I've somehow had this information about a 14th victim all the time and I've been processing it unconsciously?"
Scully then quotes one of my favorite X-Files lines of all time, originally mentioned in the Season 2 "Aubrey" episode: "You said it yourself once. You said that a ... a dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask."
Mulder smiles slightly, probably because he knows that's a damn good line and he said it so that makes him really clever and cool. (Well, in my book, anyway.)
Scully tells him he did good work. Well, yeah... how many other federal agents solve crimes in their sleep? Does he get paid overtime for that?
She leans forward toward Mulder, her eyes thoughtful. "Let's identify this girl so we can put her to rest."
***
ACT 1
SCENE 3
Mulder needs a hug.
Scully's lab.
In the eerie, cool blue lighting of the room, we cut to a close-up shot of what I consider the saddest, most heartbreaking thing one could ever see laid out on an autopsy table, on television or in real life: the bare-bones skeleton of a child victim. As the camera pulls back and up a bit, we see Mulder is sitting on a stool right next to the table, looking down at the skeleton, his face looking like someone stole his kid sister Samantha all over again.
The camera pans the dirt-encrusted bones, then moves to focus on a square section of very old, patterned fabric next to the body. There is a small pocket sewn onto the cloth, with a dollar sign embroidered in gold thread decorating its center.
As Scully enters the room, Mulder looks up mournfully, immediately schooling his expression into a more neutral shape. Scully's wearing her doctor scrubs, carrying a crisp piece of paper with the results of her exam: "I believe her name is Addie Sparks. She went missing from her home in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, in June of 1975." As Scully explains that she contacted the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and ran a search through their database, Mulder looks down at the skeleton, his brow furrowing. He thinks 1975 is too early for John Lee Roche. Scully thinks the match is accurate: "The height is right; the description of the sleeper is right." But Mulder realizes that would mean Roche started kidnapping and killing young girls way earlier than he or the VICAP team ever realized.
I've always marveled at the role reversals found in the Mulder and Scully characters, and I think this episode is one that shows it in an interesting way. Scully is the woman; therefore, one would think that she'd be the maternal one, the character most broken up about the death of a child. But she is also a scientist and a doctor, so she generally knows how to separate herself from the emotions of such tragedy and focus on the evidence. Mulder, on the other hand, is the man, and stereotypically on other programs back in the day he might have been written as the stoic character, the one who can deal with such violence in unblinking fashion. Not on The X-Files. Instead, they break the mold and alter the stereotypes. Mulder here is the one who is emotionally devastated by the events of this episode, as well as most other episodes where a young person is lost or missing. His history -- the loss of his own sister -- makes it even more personal and painful for him, but understandable for us as viewers as we watch him throughout this journey.
He stares at the bones, his expression pained, as Scully points out that they'll have to verify Addie Sparks' identification. She wants to know if her partner is up for that. It takes Mulder a moment to tear his eyes away from the victim's remains, but he finally looks up at Scully and nods. Then his eyes immediately return to the skeleton in front of him.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 4
I've got nothing snarky to say. This is a sad scene.
NORRISTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
A car pulls to a stop in a suburban neighborhood. Mulder is driving; Scully sits at his side. They get out and approach a house. Cut to Mulder using the door knocker. He is fidgety and turns briefly to give Scully a look before turning back to face the door.
A balding man with a grey beard opens the door. Scully asks if he is Frank Sparks. She shows her badge and identifies herself and her partner, asking if they can have a word with him. Frank looks at both of them for a moment, then whispers: "You've found Addie." He seems both weary and relieved at the news.
Cut to the three people sitting in Frank's living room. Addie's father carefully removes the swatch of fabric from the evidence bag and examines it before explaining in a husky voice, "This was for the tooth fairy. When Addie was asleep at night, I'd... I'd come and put a quarter in this pocket. Her mother sewed it."
Scully gently asks where his wife is. Frank is still looking at the pocket on the fabric, touching it, his face pained. "She passed away last summer." He looks thoughtful as he pulls his gaze from the cloth. "So, you're saying the, uh -- the man that did this is already in prison?"
Mulder looks at him with a strong, certain gaze: "Yes, sir, and he won't get out."
Frank: "You do this full-time, telling people... this kind of news?"
Scully admits they don't do this sort of thing full-time. Mulder leans his elbows on his knees, getting closer to Mr. Sparks as he speaks up with a wry, sympathetic half-smile: "It's not a good job."
Frank's eyes go back to the fabric from his daughter's nightgown, as his voice breaks: "I used to think... that missing was worse than dead because--" he clears his throat "--you never knew what happened."
Close-up on Mulder as he intently studies the grieving father. It is clear that he is thinking about his own sister, about her disappearance, and how he relates to this man's pain. How badly he wants to know what happened to Samantha.
Frank continues: "But now that I know, I'm glad my wife's not here."
Mulder looks down for a moment, like perhaps he's uncertain what to believe. Does he want to know what happened to his sister, if the news is something like this? Or is he better off the way he lives now, uncertain yet clinging to a sliver of hope? He looks back up at Mr. Sparks as the man says his wife got luckier by missing out on this horrible conclusion. Mulder considers this, then looks up at the mantle where Addie Sparks' smiling picture sits.
Mulder slowly returns his gaze to Frank, who asks him how many more people he'll be visiting today. Mulder seems confused. His eyes wet with grief, Franks pushes a painful button when he asks, "Were there other victims you didn't know about?" Her face sorrowful, Scully turns to look at Mulder, who seems to ponder this question with great regret and guilt, that he may have missed something in his original assignment, as if the deaths are his fault.
Dude. The look on his face makes me want to give him a gigantic hug.
Cut to Frank Sparks closing his front door, as Mulder and Scully make their way down the steps back to their car. Mulder walks quietly ahead of Scully, his eyes cast downward, his face contemplative, his brow furrowed.
As Mulder looks up at the car parked in front of him, suddenly his memory flashes to his dream of the white El Camino sitting in the lot at Bosher's Run Park. His eyes blink back to the present, to his own vehicle. He begins to walk faster, murmuring something about Roche's car. His voice amplifies as he puts the pieces together: "Roche drove a white El Camino. I saw it in my dream, Scully." She doesn't understand what that means, but Mulder is on a roll now: "The cloth hearts he collected -- he would have wanted to keep them close to him. For a traveling salesman, that means inside the car, right?" Mulder pulls out the case file and begins flipping through the pages.
Scully: (her voice uncertain) "You're saying the hearts might still be in his car?"
Mulder says that Roche doesn't have them in prison because his cell is searched regularly and his mail is thoroughly examined. He finds what he's looking for in the paperwork -- the car was sold at auction in 1992, put beyond Roche's reach. Mulder looks earnestly at his partner: "It's worth a look, Scully. We gotta find those hearts in order to count them."
Scully sighs heavily. "Don't you think the car might have been searched at least once already?"
Mulder: (his tone firm) "Not by me."
***
ACT 1
SCENE 5
Cars and Cloth Hearts.
HOLLYVILLE, DELAWARE
A young man opens his garage door. Mulder and Scully stand together, waiting. Interesting that Scully's body language is closed, her arms folded across her chest, while Mulder's is open, his hands down at his sides, his head tilted in anticipation.
The El Camino's new owner gestures to the vehicle in the garage, pointing out all the detailing he's done on it, all the things he's changed in order to spruce it up. He seems awed that a serial killer once owned his car. Pause while I cringe and eye-roll. Man, it's not like John Dillinger owned that car and used it on bank robberies -- Roche strangled little girls. That's not to admire in any way, shape or form. Not that robbing banks is admirable either, but seriously... get some perspective, kid.
Personally, I'd want to sell the damn thing and get it the hell out of my garage. Bad karma, all that. Yuck. But I digress...
Mulder agrees with my disgust because he pushes past the kid and approaches the car, pulling the driver's side door open and climbing inside the cab. He begins small, checking underneath the visor, digging through the glove compartment, as Scully joins him from the passenger side. They both feel around the sides and under the seats. Mulder peeks to see if the car owner is watching, then unfolds a small switchblade; he begins to cut into the cushion of the seat. Scully gives Mulder an alarmed look, but Mulder smirks: "I'm helping him detail." Heh. I love snarky Mulder.
Scully feels around the fabric on the ceiling, as Mulder gropes the cushions, searching for any treasures hidden inside. There's nothing. He sits back, looking frustrated. He feels like they're missing something. Scully muses that perhaps whatever they're looking for is hidden underneath the car. She gets out as if she's going to look. I find myself mildly amused that the smartly dressed Scully is about to climb under a car and get her tailored suit all dirty. Such faith she has in her partner. Gotta love it.
As Mulder pushes harder against the ceiling of the vehicle, he seems to be thinking. He stops what he's doing, his eyes glazing over as he pictures his dream again. The scene flashes back to the shadowy night and the El Camino sitting in the parking lot, as the red neon forms the words MAD HAT. Flash back to Mulder sitting in the car, muttering the same words.
Scully's checking the trunk. Guess she didn't want to mess up her suit, after all. Hee.
Mulder calls to her, pointing out that the camper shell that usually covers the back of the truck bed is no longer attached to the vehicle. He climbs from the car and jogs out of the garage, heading behind the structure to look for it. Scully follows.
Mulder runs around the yard until he finds the shell, covered in plastic, tucked against a garden shed. He struggles with the unwieldy part. Uh, Scully, some help over here, please? She watches as he yanks it to the ground, upside down, and pulls the plastic wrapping off of it. The look on her face says she doesn't quite believe he'll find anything, but Mulder is undeterred. He stomps around on the carpeted ceiling of the shell, pushing against the quilted padding with his feet, searching for lumps. Eventually, he kneels and starts using his hands to push around the walls of the camper shell. He feels something, and tears back a section of fabric to reveal a leather-bound copy of the novel Alice in Wonderland. It's in pristine condition.
Mulder grasps the book as he stands up again, Scully joining him at his shoulder. He stares at the gold-edged cover, where there is a picture of Alice having tea with the characters from the story, including the one called The Mad Hatter. Mulder realizes the MAD HAT from his dream was giving him a clue to the case.
I love this episode, but this is one of those teeny, tiny nitpicks. If he didn't know about the hidden book, how on earth would his brain know to dream such a specific clue like MAD HAT? Unless, of course, Roche mentioned liking the novel, maybe alluded to it in one of his interrogations in an attempt to tease law enforcement because he knew they wouldn't find his treasure, and because no one would know what the hell he was talking about. I suppose that's plausible. Still, it's a small stretch. I'm riding the fence on this detail, Dubious Scully-style.
Anyway, as Mulder begins to flip through the novel, he discovers various fabric hearts tucked into the pages. The two agents lean in together, their heads tilted close to one another, as they begin to count...
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... eight, nine, ten... eleven, twelve, thirteen...
As they come across the fourteenth heart, Scully gasps, "Addie Sparks."
But Mulder turns the page and finds a fifteenth heart. Then a sixteenth. His fingers brush the flannel fabric, pressing against the heart. He looks weary as he murmurs, "He had two more victims." Mulder's jaw is tight and his lips press firmly together. Scully looks up at her partner with wide eyes.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 6
Seems David Duchovny missed his calling. I wonder if the Lakers need a good shooter.
A door buzzes and slides open. Led by a prison guard, Mulder and Scully make their way down a shiny gray hallway. As they reach the gate, a drawer pushes out and Mulder pulls his gun from beneath his suit coat, placing it inside the bin. Scully follows suit. She watches as Mulder bends down and removes his spare weapon, unwrapping it from his ankle. Once he's placed it in the holder, the drawer retracts and the gate buzzes open. They make their way down a shadowy hallway, lit by only one florescent strip on the ceiling. Mulder opens a door, leading the way into a gymnasium. The sound of a basketball thumping on the floor echoes throughout the room.
A very tall, lanky man dressed in prison blues is sinking a basketball into the hoop from the sideline. Recognizable from his mug shot, this is John Lee Roche.
He catches the ball as it bounces back; he turns to face the federal agents. He walks forward a step or two, greeting Mulder with a casual, "Long time, no see," as if the two men are friends. He smiles slightly as he dribbles the basketball once, then glances at Mulder as if assessing him.
He turns back to the basketball hoop. He is so tall, he can reach up and easily flip the ball into its net. "You got a new partner."
As Mulder introduces her, Scully immediately frowns, lifts her chin defiantly, and crosses her arms. It is kind of hilarious to watch this woman, who is barely over five feet tall, facing off unblinkingly against this long-limbed man who towers over her. I love her for it.
Throughout the conversation, Roche keeps a casual rhythm, smiling to the agents, tossing the ball through the hoop, catching it, bouncing it, and tossing it again.
Roche: "So, what's up?"
Mulder: "We found Addie Sparks, John."
Roche: "Congratulations, I guess."
Scully: "We also found your cloth hearts, all sixteen of them."
Roche is unfazed, his face giving away nothing: "Huh."
Mulder pushes a bit: "Sixteen victims, John. How come you said there were only thirteen?"
Roche sinks another basket, his voice light. "I don't know. Thirteen sounds more magical, you know?"
In a wide image of the entire gymnasium, its length of narrow, rectangular windows and its curved, high ceiling, there is a fascinating shot of the three characters standing in a row, angled in ascending order of height.
Scully...
Then, Mulder...
Then, Roche, who -- despite his seemingly gentle nature -- towers over them both, like the giant monster he really is.
Mulder rolls his eyes at Roche's remark, turns toward Scully for a split second, then back to Roche. He wants Roche to tell them about the final two victims. Scully says something that I don't think helps much: "You're in here for life. You've got nothing to lose."
Roche agrees with me (which makes me shudder), as he points out: "I got nothin' to gain."
Mulder tells him he can gain one moment of decency in his life. He says Roche can let the families put their daughters to rest. He knows what he's talking about -- his own family never got the chance to do that, to find Samantha Mulder and have that closure.
Roche pauses a moment, weighing the basketball in his hand. As he shoots the ball, he takes a shot at Mulder, too, saying lightly, "I understand you take this very personally, Mulder."
Mulder closes his mouth and gives a half-smile, knowing full well that Roche is trying to mess with him. His eyes aren't smiling, though, and his jaw is slightly tight.
Roche turns to face Mulder. His smile is playful and mildly taunting. As he spins the basketball on one long finger, he steps toward the agent. He tosses Mulder the ball and says: "Sink one from [where you're standing], and I'll tell you."
Mulder barely hesitates. He stretches out into a small hop, and shoots the ball at the hoop. It swishes through easily. The two men face each other. Mulder looks slightly expectant, but Roche tosses off this comment as he strolls past, walking away: "You'd trust a child molester?"
Mulder makes a face, as if he knows full well that he should know better and he let the bastard play him anyway. Roche pushes his buttons again: "You bring my hearts and give them back to me, I'll tell you everything you wanna know."
Frustrated, Mulder places his hands on his hips. He and Scully turn to watch as the convict exits the room.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 7
I wonder if David's siblings ever called him names like that.
Close-up on a desk. Evidence bags are lined up neatly, each containing a cloth heart, each stickered and properly marked with the identity of the child victim that matches with the specific nightgown fabric. A hand clutches two more evidence bags, each containing a fabric heart. There are no names listed on the stickers across the tops of the containers. These are the two unidentified victims of John Lee Roche.
Mulder stares at the hearts in his hand, the side of his face pressed against the top of his other hand, his head resting on the surface of the desk. Setting the hearts down, he lifts his head, exhausted, and pulls off his glasses.
(Side note: I really, really love it when he wears his glasses. I have no idea why. It's an implausible, ridiculous fixation. I just think he looks very cerebral and handsome. That is all.)
Mulder rubs his eyes tiredly, cradling his face in his hands for a long moment before looking up again. Still hunched over his desk, he stares straight ahead as if in a trance.
An important side note: the music that plays during this scene is the same music that played at the top of the episode during the dream sequence. It is an instrumental melody that bounces around lightly, very dreamy, child-like and haunting. It's perfect. It immediately evokes an enigmatic, magical, almost fairy-tale-like mood. I cannot express just how wonderfully it adds to these scenes and remarkably clues in the viewer to the fact that Mulder is dreaming...
...which we now realize because there is a red neon dot resting on the wall. It glides down until it reaches the floor, then moves across the room and under the door. What a marvelously seamless transition from awake to dream state. Mulder sits up, blinking.
Muffled sounds from a TV or radio can be heard in the distance, so Mulder gets up from the desk and strides forward.
He opens the door to his basement office in the F.B.I. building, but when he walks through, he is now in the living room of his parents' former home. A television set is tuned in to a news channel, where a reporter is talking about the Nixon Watergate tapes.
"...erased a conversation between President Nixon and H.R. Haldeman... while transcribing the subpoenaed tape."
Mulder freezes for a moment, taking in the scene, stunned, but then a look of wonder crosses his face and he steps forward, looking down at the young girl who sits in front of the television, a game board at her feet. It is his sister, Samantha.
"Woods testified that she erased only about five minutes of the conversation, but the tape contained--"
Samantha turns to face Mulder, and tells him it's his move. It's Stratego, the game they were playing the night she disappeared.
"Under investigation from Senator Howard Baker, H.R. Haldeman reiterated the White House explanation that--"
Mulder circles around his sister until he reaches his mark. He stands there, looking down at her, his voice sounding dazed: "Samantha."
She snarks at him, "Are you gonna move or not?"
Mulder's eyes never leave his sister as he bends down to sit on the floor with her. She asks him if they have to watch the boring news show. Mulder looks up, surprised, his eyes blinking, his face turning nearly in slow motion to glance at the television, as if his brain is slowly catching up with his memories of that fateful evening.
On the screen, Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski says: "It would be very difficult to reach the conclusion it was an accident."
Staring at the TV, Mulder's voice sounds slow and spellbound as he repeats the words we once heard and saw a twelve-year-old Mulder say in a flashback during "Little Green Men," the premiere episode of Season 2: "The Magician comes on at nine."
Samantha repeats her next line: "Mom and Dad said I could watch the movie, buttmunch."
I laugh because it's really funny to see a young girl call an adult Mulder 'buttmunch.' Heee.
Mulder's eyes are wide as he continues to take in his surroundings. He's still trance-like as he responds in a monotone, "They're next door at the Galbrands'. They left me in charge."
He looks to Samantha, whose head is tilted like she's one step away from giving her older brother a huge eye roll, or a smack upside the head.
There is a loud click, and the lights and the television suddenly shut off, plunging the room in shadows. Samantha turns to look toward the front door. Mulder remembers this moment from his childhood and says nervously, "No." On the wall, the cheesy, painted picture of a boy and his dog begins to rattle like there's an earthquake coming. The playing pieces begin to shake and hop around on the game board. Framed photos on the mantle fall over. Glass is heard shattering. Mulder stands up, looking about the room.
"Not again."
As Samantha looks to her sibling, a blinding, bright light flashes through the gauzy white curtains of the front window. It illuminates the entire room. Mulder squints. An alarm-like buzzing overlays the rest of the scene.
As the doorknob squeaks and slowly turns, Mulder reaches for his gun at the waistband of his pants, but it's not there. He yells to his sister, "Samantha, run!" She stands there, uncertain.
Mulder hurries over to a sideboard, reaching up to the top shelf where a small metal lockbox sits. He swipes it off the top of the furniture, knocking it to the ground. The box breaks open, its contents spilling out. Among the papers and small trinkets is a revolver. Mulder kneels down and places his hand on the barrel of the weapon, but a sound captures his attention. He looks up, his eyes wide with childlike fear. He is frozen in place, staring up at the front door.
In his previous recollection of this moment, the figure in the entrance was tall and willowy, very bendy and alien-like. In this moment, in this dream, as the door swings open with a chilling creak, the suited figure standing in the doorway is John Lee Roche. He looks a little younger, he has more hair and it's dark instead of gray, but it is definitely John Lee Roche.
Mulder blinks, confused, as if this is different than he expected. He gazes up, his mouth agape, his face lit up in a glow of white light, as Roche strides confidently into the room, looking down at Mulder with an open-mouthed smirk. Roche looms over Mulder as if he is a child, and Mulder looks up at him, still frozen in place.
We can hear Samantha gasp in the background, but we don't see her. Roche looks off to the side, grinning, and walks in that direction. A smash of glass is heard and then Samantha calls out to her brother, her voice pleading: "Fox! Fooooox!" Mulder stares, horrified, watching everything unfolding in front of him, but he can't move.
As he cries out for his sister, Mulder's body jerks up violently, his hands slamming against his desk. His voice echoes in the empty room. He looks like he's lost his sister all over again.
Another nightmare, this time personally unsettling.
As Mulder comes down from the rush of the dream, he breathes out and stares numbly at the two unmarked evidence bags, holding them up helplessly.
***
ACT 2
SCENE 1
A pivotal moment in X-Files history.
Back at the prison in a simple visiting room with a table and two chairs. Mulder sits hunched over like a child, elbows on knees, waiting to see John Lee Roche. As soon as the door buzzes, he straightens, standing to full height, hands on hips in expectation. As Roche enters the room, the camera presents a strange yet fascinating effect -- Roche looks like a giant, blocking and towering over Mulder; for a split second, it makes the room appear as if it's getting smaller, like the ceiling is very low, like they're about to sit at a child's play table. Very Alice in Wonderland-like.
I really have to admire the actor who portrays John Lee Roche. Tom Noonan does a terrific job. With the choices he makes, the particular little tics and mannerisms he uses, he plays the character so normal, like a mild-mannered neighbor you'd know from anywhere; yet, at the same time he plays another layer, one with small, taunting smirks and smart, watchful eyes, to demonstrate that the character knows exactly what he's doing. He's well aware of his antagonistic effect on Mulder, and he relishes every moment of it. He pushes all the right buttons. All these elements come together to make such a complex villain, but he's not easily identifiable as a monster like the scary Flukeman or the slippery Eugene Tooms or any other creature Mulder and Scully usually come up against. Instead, he's very much human, which makes it all the more unsettling to realize how realistic the portrayal is, how vulnerable children are around someone like that, how easily he could fool them into trusting him. It's chilling.
Roche sits down and fastidiously picks a piece of lint from the table, letting it fall to the ground. He looks up at Mulder with a mild smile. Mulder remains standing, his hands still on his hips.
Roche looks intent, now. "Did you bring me my hearts?"
Mulder looks like he hasn't slept in days. He gazes wearily at Roche for a long moment, then looks down at the table, his eyes almost closing. He swallows and shifts back and forth on his feet; it's like he's seeking strength, steeling himself, preparing to ask something very difficult. He wants to ask the question, but does he really want the answer?
Finally, he looks up at Roche and speaks: "Yesterday, you said something about me taking it personally. Why did you say that to me?"
Roche blinks at Mulder several times, saying nothing. The corners of his mouth barely move but there is a very small smile playing around on his lips.
Mulder goes the direct route, his voice low and deadly: "Where were you in 1973?"
Roche's eyes never leave Mulder's face: "What, the whole year?"
Mulder's not in the mood for games; his voice is tense and brittle: "November. The 27th of November. Do you know what I'm getting at?"
Mulder, I love you, but I can't even remember what I did on the 27th of November last year, much less twenty-some years ago. You are just asking for him to mess with your mind.
The entire time Roche tells his story, he doesn't stop looking at Mulder, his voice light but controlled, his face teasingly earnest. "I was selling vacuum cleaners in 1973. I made a sales trip to Martha's Vineyard that year, and I sold a vacuum cleaner to your dad. He bought it for your mom. I believe it was a, um... ElectroVac Duchess, or the Princess model, and... your dad and I talked about it at great length. He -- he had a really hard time choosing."
At first Mulder fidgets, his eyes filled with great pain, but as Roche talks, Mulder's face becomes almost expressionless. He seems to be restraining himself with every fiber of strength in his body. When Roche pauses, Mulder's voice comes out in a tightly controlled whisper: "What do you know about my sister?"
Roche plays just the right cards, says just the right words to keep stringing Mulder along: "You bring me my hearts, and maybe I'll tell you more."
Mulder studies Roche for another long minute, his jaw clenching, his eyes seeking answers, until he cannot control himself any further. He hauls off and punches Roche right in the face, knocking him off his chair, sending the convict to his knees.
As Mulder steps back, rubbing his sore hand, a guard enters the room. Roche points at Mulder and complains to the guard: "This man hit me."
What a whiny baby. You're lucky that's all you got, Roche. Just ask Duane Barry what Mulder did to him when Barry kidnapped his partner.
The guard looks from Roche to Mulder and then says, "I didn't see it." He leaves the room. Infuriated, Roche knocks on the door so he can go back to his cell. He glares incredulously at Mulder and exits. Interesting. I think that's one of the few times we actually see Roche lose control or express any emotion other than toying amusement.
As Mulder watches him go, Scully steps up from behind her partner and says with conviction: "I did." Don't you love how she doesn't let him get away with stuff? Awesome. Scully stares at Mulder like she can't believe he just did that, like she thinks he's losing control of his emotions and it's scaring her.
Mulder turns to look at her, then turns away, dropping his head in shame, shaking out his punching hand. (That'd be his right hand, for those curious.)
Cut to the prison door buzzing open, and Mulder leading the way out into the hallway. Scully follows as Mulder tells her that Roche was at his childhood home, that he took Samantha. Scully tells Mulder that it was only in his dream, that his mind made it up.
I love this conversation between the two characters. It stirs up some tough questions about Samantha's disappearance, putting to question all that Mulder has ever believed about what may have happened to her. It's a remarkable moment in the history of his character, and for his relationship with his F.B.I. partner. Beautifully played by both David and Gillian. It's fantastic.
Mulder throws back at Scully the very quote she gave him earlier, how a dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet figured out how to ask, something buried in your subconscious. He thinks Roche knows something. He reminds Scully that Roche said he was on Martha's Vineyard. Scully wants to know if it's some big secret that Mulder lived in Martha's Vineyard. Mulder's not thinking clearly, he can't see how Roche could know that about him, so Scully points out that Roche could have looked it up online through the prison library. Mulder doesn't seem to want to believe this, but Scully's already done her homework. She found that Roche was in the library on the computer the very day before. The server records can't tell them what he looked up, but she reminds Mulder that you can find just about anything online these days. (And that was, like, a long time ago, way back in the 1990's! Back when they had cell phones the size of toasters. Just imagine what they can do now!)
Mulder closes his eyes, taking in this information, as his wonderful friend and partner tells him what he must hear: "He is playing with you, Mulder. He is committing emotional blackmail, and you are letting him. You walked into that room with your heart on your sleeve. He saw vulnerability, and he took advantage of it."
Mulder looks at her now, opening his mouth as if he wants to say something, but Scully keeps going, her voice softening: "You had a dream, a nightmare, and you had it because of all the emotions that this case is stirring up for you, but... it was nothing but a dream."
Mulder nods. He hears what she is saying. But he quietly reminds her: "My last dream came true."
Scully considers this, taking a breath.
Mulder asks a crucial question: "Scully, do you believe that my sister Samantha was abducted by aliens?"
Scully exhales, lowering her chin a bit.
Mulder presses the matter: "Have you ever believed that?"
She drops her head, unable to meet his eyes.
Mulder continues, answering for her: "No. So what do you think happened to her?"
He looks at her with imploring eyes -- he's asking for her honest opinion, he truly wants to hear her theory on the matter, and deep down they both know she can't necessarily shut down his concern that John Lee Roche may have taken his sister. It's a much more plausible possibility than alien abduction, and surely she must admit that.
Scully looks up at her partner, surprise all over her features, as if she cannot believe after four years of working together Mulder is actually considering another possibility: "What are you saying you believe now?"
Mulder is torn, his eyes pleading. "I don't know. I don't know what happened. I don't know what to believe." This is a huge admission for him to make. "I just know I have to find out now."
As he walks around her and heads down the hallway, Scully stands there, taking in his words, looking concerned. She sighs heavily and turns to follow him.
***
ACT 2
SCENE 2
Why the hell would anyone name a vacuum cleaner "Princess"? Is that supposed to make vacuuming a more fun and feminine task? F*** that.
GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT
Mulder rummages around in his mother's basement. She calls down to him. As she descends the stairs in her bathrobe, he apologizes for waking her up and asks her how she's feeling. She says she's fine and asks him what he's doing in the basement in the middle of the night.
He pulls out the two evidence bags and presents them to her. He wants to know if she recognizes the fabric for either of the two cloth hearts. He does not mention that if she recognizes one as the fabric from Samantha's nightgown, it could be the proof they need that John Lee Roche did indeed take Mulder's sister.
Mulder's mom is confused, she doesn't know what he's asking her. He pushes gently, hoping one or the other will seem familiar somehow. She sighs and reminds him that she doesn't remember things as well as she used to, ever since she had the stroke. Mulder smiles immediately, stuffs the hearts back into his pocket, and apologizes, hugging his mother.
As he rubs her back and tells her it's all right, she drives me nuts with her seeming indifference. I've never felt like Teena Mulder was a fully fleshed out character. We got glimpses, but she was often so cold to Mulder, I just found it very difficult to like her or fully trust that she was being honest with her son.
Anyway, Mulder asks her if his father ever bought her a vacuum cleaner. She says she doesn't use it anymore, but that it's under the stairs in storage. Mulder hurries over to check it out while his mother asks him what's going on. He doesn't answer, instead opening the storage door, digging past boxes of Christmas decorations, and pulling out an old vacuum cleaner. The ElectroVac Princess model, just like Roche claimed. Damn it. Mulder gives the contraption a long look, then shoves it back into its box.
***
Dun, dun, DUN!
See Part Two for the rest of this episode's recap! Thank you very much for reading.
The fates have been kind to me this month. During the program rewatch over in the LJ community
trustno1_redux, another volunteer was regrettably unable to complete her recap of this episode, so I stepped in and gratefully received an opportunity to take a shot at it. Why was I so excited and happy about that? Because the episode is "Paper Hearts." ♥
Written by the brilliant Vince Gilligan and directed by the mega-talented Rob Bowman.
Before I get started with the recapping -- which I originally posted yesterday over on
trustno1_redux -- please let me take a moment to express just how much I love this episode. It's interesting to me because it's not the standard monster-of-the-week thing, it's not to do with conspiracies or aliens; instead, it's something so simple yet so scary. The bad guy is so ordinary, he could be anyone, he could be your neighbor, which is why he's so terrifying. Yet it gets marvelously psychological: he mocks and needles Mulder, just pokes him in all the right emotional spots. He makes Mulder think that he might have taken Mulder's sister, and that causes Mulder to doubt everything he ever believed about his sister's disappearance, which is fascinating because it calls into question almost everything about the show, everything he's worked for, everything he's obsessed about, and it's SO amazing to watch him deal with that and struggle with it and try to figure things out and not let this horrible man get to him. In my opinion, it's one of David Duchovny's best performances in the history of the show. He's fantastic, and the episode is fantastic. It's emotional, intense, riveting, scary, creepy, and unsettling... it's just amazing stuff. Great story, great idea, great execution, creepy dream-like music throughout, and terrific acting. Just a phenomenal episode. It's in my top ten favorites, may even be my most favorite as an overall episode.
Without further ado...
The X-Files: "Paper Hearts"
Recap, Part One
The Teaser: Dreams and Nightmare Realities
Fox Mulder's apartment.
The golden glow from his tropical fish tank illuminates Mulder's face where he sleeps, arms folded across his chest, on his beloved couch. After a moment, his head turns to face forward, his eyes opening. There is a red laser dot holding position on his ceiling. Mulder looks at it, blinking, tracking it as the dot circles lazy patterns before reaching the corner and trailing down the wall.
As the dot slides down the smooth surface, Mulder sits up, entranced. A little over halfway down, the dot expands, flashing to become the word FOLLOW in glowing scarlet light. After a moment, the word dissolves back into a single, solid dot and continues its path down the wall. Mulder is transfixed, watching as the dot reaches the floor and travels toward the door. He gets up from the couch and begins to follow, as instructed.
Cut to the red laser dot gliding through the shadowy night, brushing across a grassy yard. It moves quickly and comes to a halt in a parking lot where an El Camino sits, the silhouettes of tree branches making eerie, dark patterns on the white surface of the vehicle.
Mulder walks along in the breezy night air in a T-shirt and jeans but no coat, his eyes focused on the dot as it stops near the back windshield of the car and spreads into the words MAD HAT -- the T of the word HAT seems to bend along the edge of the window, giving it the slight appearance of an arrow pointing toward the roof of the truck bed. Interesting.
The word straightens itself into a single neon line, sliding in a diagonal off the car and back to the ground. Mulder slows his pace, his eyes glued to the signal. He watches as the laser dot pauses underneath a wooden sign that reads BOSHER'S RUN PARK. A smaller plank provides more detail: MANASSAS PARKS & REC. How helpful.
The dot slides under the sign, pausing long enough for Mulder (and us) to digest the data, then it continues on, past the sign and into the park. It races along a field of grass lined with heavy shadows, and Mulder hurries after it. He finally catches up as the glowing red circle stops at a thick tree, one distinctive amidst the much skinnier trees and brush around it. Mulder watches as the dot trails down the tree trunk, coming to rest amidst the dead leaves at its base.
As Mulder approaches cautiously for a closer look, he sees something nestled in the bed of leaves on the ground. It is a young blonde girl, no more than eight years old, and she is stretched out on the ground with her hands folded gracefully across her belly, not unlike the position Mulder had been in while he was sleeping. Her face tilted away from Mulder, she appears to be resting peacefully. As Mulder stares at the little girl, the crimson dot hovers over her chest. The dot turns into the outline of a heart, its glowing red light illuminating the contours of her face.
As the wind picks up, leaves swirling, Mulder gapes at the sight, horrified. Suddenly, the little girl's body begins to lower into the ground, swallowed up by the dried leaves until she is gone.
Mulder gasps awake.
It was all a dream. He's still in his apartment, stretched out on his couch.
As he catches his breath, exhaling heavily, he looks around as if dazed. His hands rest over his heart.
Cut to Mulder at his desk, flipping open a phone book. He looks tired.
He pages through the book until he finds what he is looking for. His finger trails down until we can see what he is looking at:
FAIRFAX CITY
OF Cont'd
I assume it's referring to the City of Fairfax, not Fairfax City, but they didn't put a proper comma in there, so that's what we get. Whatever, I'm not feeling ultra-picky today.
Under Parks, he has found the one from his dream. Bosher's Run Park, located at 6002 Lonetree Rd. Incidentally, we can also see another park listed directly beneath it, a Costello Park Pool at 9802 Millstream Ave. (Just in case you care about that kind of detail.)
Mulder turns his head away from the book, already on the move.
Cut to his car pulling into the same parking lot from his dream. However, the lot is empty, no El Camino waiting for him. For the curious, Mulder's license plate is 5S2 706. He steps out of his car, flashlight in hand. I note that he mirrors what he was wearing in his dream, a faded red T-shirt and jeans, only this time he's also wearing a leather jacket. He looks handsome. (What? That's a valid point, isn't it? Okay, moving on.)
Mulder pauses to look upon the park's entrance sign -- it is the same sign he saw in his dream -- before he heads off jogging across the yard, also like he did in the dream.
He comes to a familiar clearing, only this time it is the white-gold glow from his flashlight that creates a circle on the distinctive, thick tree. He trails the flashlight beam down the trunk, just like the red laser dot from his dream. As he steps closer, he concentrates the circle of light on the leaves at its base. He looks concerned.
Mulder kneels down in the leaves, and reaches out, brushing some aside, exposing the crumbly black earth underneath. He shines his flashlight on the area...
...as we dissolve to early morning daylight coming through the trees, illuminating the same spot on the ground. A gloved hand enters the space, holding a trowel, excavating carefully, unearthing gentle scoopfuls of dirt and dumping the contents onto a screen held by another pair of gloved hands. They sift through the soil, bit by bit. Mulder steps up, pointing to the area where he saw the little girl in his vision, instructing the workers to concentrate on that specific spot.
Dana Scully's voice calls to Mulder. He turns and makes his way toward her, a short distance from the dig site. Even as she asks what he's doing there and he softly tells her he's not sure he can explain, his eyes never really leave the spot where the other agents are digging.
Scully: "You called for a forensic excavation at 5 am on a Sunday?"
Mulder's eyes remain focused on the digging, his face serious, but he reaches out a hand and grasps at her arm, holding it tightly. He says he needs a moment before he can explain, but Scully nudges him: "Mulder, what are you doing out here?" The insistent yet gentle tone of her voice finally brings him to face her full on.
He takes a breath and then confesses that he keeps having a dream about a little blonde girl.
Scully seems a bit dubious. "You saying you're out here because of something you saw in a dream?"
He meets her eyes, perhaps searching for support, and takes another breath. He looks as if he's going to say something to his partner, but one of the techs interrupts, calling him over. She's found something in the soil.
Mulder moves quickly to the woman's side, squatting beside her to take a closer look. Scully joins him, exhaling a stunned breath, her face concerned and frowning as she kneels.
Close in on a small human skull, about the size of a child's, embedded in the ground, its eye sockets filled with dirt, its nose hole the shape of an inverted heart.
Mulder's dream has become a nightmare reality.
***
The X-Files opening credits. "THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE."
***
ACT 1
SCENE 1
I wonder if having a last name that sounds like "roach" has any effect on what kind of person you grow up to become.
BOSHER'S RUN PARK
MANASSAS, VIRGINIA
We already know that location tidbit from the dream and the reality versions of that park, within the teaser, so thank you very much for your redundancy, Magic-Typewriter-on-the-screen. Carry on.
Mulder and Scully look on as the technicians continue their work. Using string and stakes, they've now sectioned off the area where the skull was found, creating separate grids all around it within which they can continue excavating the skeleton and any other potential evidence. Scully's arms are crossed as she asks Mulder to tell her about his dream. Mulder's hands are boyishly stuffed into the pockets of his jacket as he turns to her and explains that he's had flashes of the dream for three nights in a row, but this was the first time it went on long enough to lead Mulder right to the body.
Scully still seems unconvinced, but Mulder moves away, returning to the dig site, insisting that they expose the chest area. The tech explains that it takes time, and Mulder makes a face like that's not good enough for him. He grabs a pair of gloves from a box and gets down on the ground, quickly brushing away the dirt, not with the gentle care and attention the techs have been using. The tech asks Mulder to let them handle it, but he keeps digging. She tries to get his attention several times, but he is laser-focused on finding what he's looking for. Scully comes over and kneels down to intervene: "Mulder, if you destroy evidence, we may never find out what happened here."
Mulder's voice is insistent: "I know what happened. She was strangled. He used an eight-gauge electrical cord. He took something from the body postmortem -- a trophy, a piece of fabric cut from her clothes... in the shape of a heart."
Scully: "You're saying you got all these details from your dream?"
Mulder: (still digging) "No. I know this M.O. I know it from memory."
Scully: "Whose M.O.?"
Mulder: (looking at Scully intently) "John Lee Roche. He killed 13 eight- to ten-year-old girls."
Mulder looks down to where he has uncovered the worn cloth of the girl's nightgown. There is a heart-shaped space cut out of the flowery fabric.
Mulder: "This makes 14."
Scully looks down at the heart space and back up at Mulder in alarm.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 2
Fox Mulder: Bringing a new definition to the term 'Sleeper Agent.'
Mulder and Scully's basement office at the F.B.I. They're wearing the same clothes, so they must have come straight from the excavation site. Mulder opens his cabinet and pulls out the file on John Lee Roche, handing it to Scully --
ROCHE, JOHN L.
259 12047 - 5
Mulder: "It was a difficult case. He was extremely hard to catch. By 1990, ten victims had been found, scattered across the eastern seaboard. The earliest dated back to 1979. VICAP named the case 'Paper Hearts' because of the trophies the killer took."
That's one of the tiniest issues I have about this episode: the so-called trophies aren't made of paper. I guess 'Cloth Hearts' doesn't have the same poetic punch? Anyway, like I said, it's a very small nitpick.
All the victims were abducted from their homes. Reggie Purdue -- Mulder's former boss and mentor back in the day, last seen in the Season 1 episode "Young at Heart"; hooray for continuity! -- brought him onto the case because he thought Mulder could get inside the killer's head. Scully: "Did you?"
Mulder: "I concluded that we were probably looking for a salesman, someone who traveled around a lot, someone who could gain people's confidence, someone ordinary. Turns out Roche was a vacuum cleaner salesman. His job took him all over the northeast."
As Mulder explains the case, Scully flips through the file, studying a picture of Roche from his mug shot. He is indeed an ordinary-looking man, balding with grey hair and an unassuming face. His height is a lanky 6 feet 4 or 5 inches. The dude is tall.
Oh man... I am suddenly creeped out. According to the paperwork tucked behind his photograph, Roche was arrested in 1990 on my birthday, August 25. How bizarre is that?
[For anyone who cares, his mug shot number is 317401, and his citation number is 206-1073-647. The rest of the typed file is obscured by his photo.]
Mulder continues: "He'd be in someone’s home, demonstrating his vacuum cleaner. All the while he'd be checking out their kids. He'd choose a victim and then come back for her months later."
Scully notes that it was Mulder's profile that caught the man. Mulder shrugs modestly.
Scully asks about what happened to the cloth hearts. (Yeah, see... cloth hearts, not paper. Ahem. I'm letting it go, really.) Mulder says they never found the hearts, but that they didn't need them to make their case.
Mulder: "We had him cold on 13 counts of murder. He admitted to 13. The polygraph said he was telling the truth. But that always bugged me about this case. I always wanted to find those hearts and count them, see if they really added up to thirteen."
Oh, Mulder. So many things for you to obsess about, so little time.
Mulder gets quiet, looking regretfully at the file in Scully's hand: "I guess they didn't." He returns a contemplative gaze to his partner.
Scully closes the file folder and looks to Mulder. She thinks she can explain his dream. She thinks he never stopped thinking about the case. Mulder sits back, listening. Scully continues: "I believe that you may have solved it in your sleep."
Wow. While it's not a completely unusual possibility, that's still skirting around the edges of science a bit, for Scully. I'm fascinated that she suggested this.
Mulder considers her theory. "So you think that I've somehow had this information about a 14th victim all the time and I've been processing it unconsciously?"
Scully then quotes one of my favorite X-Files lines of all time, originally mentioned in the Season 2 "Aubrey" episode: "You said it yourself once. You said that a ... a dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask."
Mulder smiles slightly, probably because he knows that's a damn good line and he said it so that makes him really clever and cool. (Well, in my book, anyway.)
Scully tells him he did good work. Well, yeah... how many other federal agents solve crimes in their sleep? Does he get paid overtime for that?
She leans forward toward Mulder, her eyes thoughtful. "Let's identify this girl so we can put her to rest."
***
ACT 1
SCENE 3
Mulder needs a hug.
Scully's lab.
In the eerie, cool blue lighting of the room, we cut to a close-up shot of what I consider the saddest, most heartbreaking thing one could ever see laid out on an autopsy table, on television or in real life: the bare-bones skeleton of a child victim. As the camera pulls back and up a bit, we see Mulder is sitting on a stool right next to the table, looking down at the skeleton, his face looking like someone stole his kid sister Samantha all over again.
The camera pans the dirt-encrusted bones, then moves to focus on a square section of very old, patterned fabric next to the body. There is a small pocket sewn onto the cloth, with a dollar sign embroidered in gold thread decorating its center.
As Scully enters the room, Mulder looks up mournfully, immediately schooling his expression into a more neutral shape. Scully's wearing her doctor scrubs, carrying a crisp piece of paper with the results of her exam: "I believe her name is Addie Sparks. She went missing from her home in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, in June of 1975." As Scully explains that she contacted the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and ran a search through their database, Mulder looks down at the skeleton, his brow furrowing. He thinks 1975 is too early for John Lee Roche. Scully thinks the match is accurate: "The height is right; the description of the sleeper is right." But Mulder realizes that would mean Roche started kidnapping and killing young girls way earlier than he or the VICAP team ever realized.
I've always marveled at the role reversals found in the Mulder and Scully characters, and I think this episode is one that shows it in an interesting way. Scully is the woman; therefore, one would think that she'd be the maternal one, the character most broken up about the death of a child. But she is also a scientist and a doctor, so she generally knows how to separate herself from the emotions of such tragedy and focus on the evidence. Mulder, on the other hand, is the man, and stereotypically on other programs back in the day he might have been written as the stoic character, the one who can deal with such violence in unblinking fashion. Not on The X-Files. Instead, they break the mold and alter the stereotypes. Mulder here is the one who is emotionally devastated by the events of this episode, as well as most other episodes where a young person is lost or missing. His history -- the loss of his own sister -- makes it even more personal and painful for him, but understandable for us as viewers as we watch him throughout this journey.
He stares at the bones, his expression pained, as Scully points out that they'll have to verify Addie Sparks' identification. She wants to know if her partner is up for that. It takes Mulder a moment to tear his eyes away from the victim's remains, but he finally looks up at Scully and nods. Then his eyes immediately return to the skeleton in front of him.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 4
I've got nothing snarky to say. This is a sad scene.
NORRISTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
A car pulls to a stop in a suburban neighborhood. Mulder is driving; Scully sits at his side. They get out and approach a house. Cut to Mulder using the door knocker. He is fidgety and turns briefly to give Scully a look before turning back to face the door.
A balding man with a grey beard opens the door. Scully asks if he is Frank Sparks. She shows her badge and identifies herself and her partner, asking if they can have a word with him. Frank looks at both of them for a moment, then whispers: "You've found Addie." He seems both weary and relieved at the news.
Cut to the three people sitting in Frank's living room. Addie's father carefully removes the swatch of fabric from the evidence bag and examines it before explaining in a husky voice, "This was for the tooth fairy. When Addie was asleep at night, I'd... I'd come and put a quarter in this pocket. Her mother sewed it."
Scully gently asks where his wife is. Frank is still looking at the pocket on the fabric, touching it, his face pained. "She passed away last summer." He looks thoughtful as he pulls his gaze from the cloth. "So, you're saying the, uh -- the man that did this is already in prison?"
Mulder looks at him with a strong, certain gaze: "Yes, sir, and he won't get out."
Frank: "You do this full-time, telling people... this kind of news?"
Scully admits they don't do this sort of thing full-time. Mulder leans his elbows on his knees, getting closer to Mr. Sparks as he speaks up with a wry, sympathetic half-smile: "It's not a good job."
Frank's eyes go back to the fabric from his daughter's nightgown, as his voice breaks: "I used to think... that missing was worse than dead because--" he clears his throat "--you never knew what happened."
Close-up on Mulder as he intently studies the grieving father. It is clear that he is thinking about his own sister, about her disappearance, and how he relates to this man's pain. How badly he wants to know what happened to Samantha.
Frank continues: "But now that I know, I'm glad my wife's not here."
Mulder looks down for a moment, like perhaps he's uncertain what to believe. Does he want to know what happened to his sister, if the news is something like this? Or is he better off the way he lives now, uncertain yet clinging to a sliver of hope? He looks back up at Mr. Sparks as the man says his wife got luckier by missing out on this horrible conclusion. Mulder considers this, then looks up at the mantle where Addie Sparks' smiling picture sits.
Mulder slowly returns his gaze to Frank, who asks him how many more people he'll be visiting today. Mulder seems confused. His eyes wet with grief, Franks pushes a painful button when he asks, "Were there other victims you didn't know about?" Her face sorrowful, Scully turns to look at Mulder, who seems to ponder this question with great regret and guilt, that he may have missed something in his original assignment, as if the deaths are his fault.
Dude. The look on his face makes me want to give him a gigantic hug.
Cut to Frank Sparks closing his front door, as Mulder and Scully make their way down the steps back to their car. Mulder walks quietly ahead of Scully, his eyes cast downward, his face contemplative, his brow furrowed.
As Mulder looks up at the car parked in front of him, suddenly his memory flashes to his dream of the white El Camino sitting in the lot at Bosher's Run Park. His eyes blink back to the present, to his own vehicle. He begins to walk faster, murmuring something about Roche's car. His voice amplifies as he puts the pieces together: "Roche drove a white El Camino. I saw it in my dream, Scully." She doesn't understand what that means, but Mulder is on a roll now: "The cloth hearts he collected -- he would have wanted to keep them close to him. For a traveling salesman, that means inside the car, right?" Mulder pulls out the case file and begins flipping through the pages.
Scully: (her voice uncertain) "You're saying the hearts might still be in his car?"
Mulder says that Roche doesn't have them in prison because his cell is searched regularly and his mail is thoroughly examined. He finds what he's looking for in the paperwork -- the car was sold at auction in 1992, put beyond Roche's reach. Mulder looks earnestly at his partner: "It's worth a look, Scully. We gotta find those hearts in order to count them."
Scully sighs heavily. "Don't you think the car might have been searched at least once already?"
Mulder: (his tone firm) "Not by me."
***
ACT 1
SCENE 5
Cars and Cloth Hearts.
HOLLYVILLE, DELAWARE
A young man opens his garage door. Mulder and Scully stand together, waiting. Interesting that Scully's body language is closed, her arms folded across her chest, while Mulder's is open, his hands down at his sides, his head tilted in anticipation.
The El Camino's new owner gestures to the vehicle in the garage, pointing out all the detailing he's done on it, all the things he's changed in order to spruce it up. He seems awed that a serial killer once owned his car. Pause while I cringe and eye-roll. Man, it's not like John Dillinger owned that car and used it on bank robberies -- Roche strangled little girls. That's not to admire in any way, shape or form. Not that robbing banks is admirable either, but seriously... get some perspective, kid.
Personally, I'd want to sell the damn thing and get it the hell out of my garage. Bad karma, all that. Yuck. But I digress...
Mulder agrees with my disgust because he pushes past the kid and approaches the car, pulling the driver's side door open and climbing inside the cab. He begins small, checking underneath the visor, digging through the glove compartment, as Scully joins him from the passenger side. They both feel around the sides and under the seats. Mulder peeks to see if the car owner is watching, then unfolds a small switchblade; he begins to cut into the cushion of the seat. Scully gives Mulder an alarmed look, but Mulder smirks: "I'm helping him detail." Heh. I love snarky Mulder.
Scully feels around the fabric on the ceiling, as Mulder gropes the cushions, searching for any treasures hidden inside. There's nothing. He sits back, looking frustrated. He feels like they're missing something. Scully muses that perhaps whatever they're looking for is hidden underneath the car. She gets out as if she's going to look. I find myself mildly amused that the smartly dressed Scully is about to climb under a car and get her tailored suit all dirty. Such faith she has in her partner. Gotta love it.
As Mulder pushes harder against the ceiling of the vehicle, he seems to be thinking. He stops what he's doing, his eyes glazing over as he pictures his dream again. The scene flashes back to the shadowy night and the El Camino sitting in the parking lot, as the red neon forms the words MAD HAT. Flash back to Mulder sitting in the car, muttering the same words.
Scully's checking the trunk. Guess she didn't want to mess up her suit, after all. Hee.
Mulder calls to her, pointing out that the camper shell that usually covers the back of the truck bed is no longer attached to the vehicle. He climbs from the car and jogs out of the garage, heading behind the structure to look for it. Scully follows.
Mulder runs around the yard until he finds the shell, covered in plastic, tucked against a garden shed. He struggles with the unwieldy part. Uh, Scully, some help over here, please? She watches as he yanks it to the ground, upside down, and pulls the plastic wrapping off of it. The look on her face says she doesn't quite believe he'll find anything, but Mulder is undeterred. He stomps around on the carpeted ceiling of the shell, pushing against the quilted padding with his feet, searching for lumps. Eventually, he kneels and starts using his hands to push around the walls of the camper shell. He feels something, and tears back a section of fabric to reveal a leather-bound copy of the novel Alice in Wonderland. It's in pristine condition.
Mulder grasps the book as he stands up again, Scully joining him at his shoulder. He stares at the gold-edged cover, where there is a picture of Alice having tea with the characters from the story, including the one called The Mad Hatter. Mulder realizes the MAD HAT from his dream was giving him a clue to the case.
I love this episode, but this is one of those teeny, tiny nitpicks. If he didn't know about the hidden book, how on earth would his brain know to dream such a specific clue like MAD HAT? Unless, of course, Roche mentioned liking the novel, maybe alluded to it in one of his interrogations in an attempt to tease law enforcement because he knew they wouldn't find his treasure, and because no one would know what the hell he was talking about. I suppose that's plausible. Still, it's a small stretch. I'm riding the fence on this detail, Dubious Scully-style.
Anyway, as Mulder begins to flip through the novel, he discovers various fabric hearts tucked into the pages. The two agents lean in together, their heads tilted close to one another, as they begin to count...
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... eight, nine, ten... eleven, twelve, thirteen...
As they come across the fourteenth heart, Scully gasps, "Addie Sparks."
But Mulder turns the page and finds a fifteenth heart. Then a sixteenth. His fingers brush the flannel fabric, pressing against the heart. He looks weary as he murmurs, "He had two more victims." Mulder's jaw is tight and his lips press firmly together. Scully looks up at her partner with wide eyes.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 6
Seems David Duchovny missed his calling. I wonder if the Lakers need a good shooter.
A door buzzes and slides open. Led by a prison guard, Mulder and Scully make their way down a shiny gray hallway. As they reach the gate, a drawer pushes out and Mulder pulls his gun from beneath his suit coat, placing it inside the bin. Scully follows suit. She watches as Mulder bends down and removes his spare weapon, unwrapping it from his ankle. Once he's placed it in the holder, the drawer retracts and the gate buzzes open. They make their way down a shadowy hallway, lit by only one florescent strip on the ceiling. Mulder opens a door, leading the way into a gymnasium. The sound of a basketball thumping on the floor echoes throughout the room.
A very tall, lanky man dressed in prison blues is sinking a basketball into the hoop from the sideline. Recognizable from his mug shot, this is John Lee Roche.
He catches the ball as it bounces back; he turns to face the federal agents. He walks forward a step or two, greeting Mulder with a casual, "Long time, no see," as if the two men are friends. He smiles slightly as he dribbles the basketball once, then glances at Mulder as if assessing him.
He turns back to the basketball hoop. He is so tall, he can reach up and easily flip the ball into its net. "You got a new partner."
As Mulder introduces her, Scully immediately frowns, lifts her chin defiantly, and crosses her arms. It is kind of hilarious to watch this woman, who is barely over five feet tall, facing off unblinkingly against this long-limbed man who towers over her. I love her for it.
Throughout the conversation, Roche keeps a casual rhythm, smiling to the agents, tossing the ball through the hoop, catching it, bouncing it, and tossing it again.
Roche: "So, what's up?"
Mulder: "We found Addie Sparks, John."
Roche: "Congratulations, I guess."
Scully: "We also found your cloth hearts, all sixteen of them."
Roche is unfazed, his face giving away nothing: "Huh."
Mulder pushes a bit: "Sixteen victims, John. How come you said there were only thirteen?"
Roche sinks another basket, his voice light. "I don't know. Thirteen sounds more magical, you know?"
In a wide image of the entire gymnasium, its length of narrow, rectangular windows and its curved, high ceiling, there is a fascinating shot of the three characters standing in a row, angled in ascending order of height.
Scully...
Then, Mulder...
Then, Roche, who -- despite his seemingly gentle nature -- towers over them both, like the giant monster he really is.
Mulder rolls his eyes at Roche's remark, turns toward Scully for a split second, then back to Roche. He wants Roche to tell them about the final two victims. Scully says something that I don't think helps much: "You're in here for life. You've got nothing to lose."
Roche agrees with me (which makes me shudder), as he points out: "I got nothin' to gain."
Mulder tells him he can gain one moment of decency in his life. He says Roche can let the families put their daughters to rest. He knows what he's talking about -- his own family never got the chance to do that, to find Samantha Mulder and have that closure.
Roche pauses a moment, weighing the basketball in his hand. As he shoots the ball, he takes a shot at Mulder, too, saying lightly, "I understand you take this very personally, Mulder."
Mulder closes his mouth and gives a half-smile, knowing full well that Roche is trying to mess with him. His eyes aren't smiling, though, and his jaw is slightly tight.
Roche turns to face Mulder. His smile is playful and mildly taunting. As he spins the basketball on one long finger, he steps toward the agent. He tosses Mulder the ball and says: "Sink one from [where you're standing], and I'll tell you."
Mulder barely hesitates. He stretches out into a small hop, and shoots the ball at the hoop. It swishes through easily. The two men face each other. Mulder looks slightly expectant, but Roche tosses off this comment as he strolls past, walking away: "You'd trust a child molester?"
Mulder makes a face, as if he knows full well that he should know better and he let the bastard play him anyway. Roche pushes his buttons again: "You bring my hearts and give them back to me, I'll tell you everything you wanna know."
Frustrated, Mulder places his hands on his hips. He and Scully turn to watch as the convict exits the room.
***
ACT 1
SCENE 7
I wonder if David's siblings ever called him names like that.
Close-up on a desk. Evidence bags are lined up neatly, each containing a cloth heart, each stickered and properly marked with the identity of the child victim that matches with the specific nightgown fabric. A hand clutches two more evidence bags, each containing a fabric heart. There are no names listed on the stickers across the tops of the containers. These are the two unidentified victims of John Lee Roche.
Mulder stares at the hearts in his hand, the side of his face pressed against the top of his other hand, his head resting on the surface of the desk. Setting the hearts down, he lifts his head, exhausted, and pulls off his glasses.
(Side note: I really, really love it when he wears his glasses. I have no idea why. It's an implausible, ridiculous fixation. I just think he looks very cerebral and handsome. That is all.)
Mulder rubs his eyes tiredly, cradling his face in his hands for a long moment before looking up again. Still hunched over his desk, he stares straight ahead as if in a trance.
An important side note: the music that plays during this scene is the same music that played at the top of the episode during the dream sequence. It is an instrumental melody that bounces around lightly, very dreamy, child-like and haunting. It's perfect. It immediately evokes an enigmatic, magical, almost fairy-tale-like mood. I cannot express just how wonderfully it adds to these scenes and remarkably clues in the viewer to the fact that Mulder is dreaming...
...which we now realize because there is a red neon dot resting on the wall. It glides down until it reaches the floor, then moves across the room and under the door. What a marvelously seamless transition from awake to dream state. Mulder sits up, blinking.
Muffled sounds from a TV or radio can be heard in the distance, so Mulder gets up from the desk and strides forward.
He opens the door to his basement office in the F.B.I. building, but when he walks through, he is now in the living room of his parents' former home. A television set is tuned in to a news channel, where a reporter is talking about the Nixon Watergate tapes.
"...erased a conversation between President Nixon and H.R. Haldeman... while transcribing the subpoenaed tape."
Mulder freezes for a moment, taking in the scene, stunned, but then a look of wonder crosses his face and he steps forward, looking down at the young girl who sits in front of the television, a game board at her feet. It is his sister, Samantha.
"Woods testified that she erased only about five minutes of the conversation, but the tape contained--"
Samantha turns to face Mulder, and tells him it's his move. It's Stratego, the game they were playing the night she disappeared.
"Under investigation from Senator Howard Baker, H.R. Haldeman reiterated the White House explanation that--"
Mulder circles around his sister until he reaches his mark. He stands there, looking down at her, his voice sounding dazed: "Samantha."
She snarks at him, "Are you gonna move or not?"
Mulder's eyes never leave his sister as he bends down to sit on the floor with her. She asks him if they have to watch the boring news show. Mulder looks up, surprised, his eyes blinking, his face turning nearly in slow motion to glance at the television, as if his brain is slowly catching up with his memories of that fateful evening.
On the screen, Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski says: "It would be very difficult to reach the conclusion it was an accident."
Staring at the TV, Mulder's voice sounds slow and spellbound as he repeats the words we once heard and saw a twelve-year-old Mulder say in a flashback during "Little Green Men," the premiere episode of Season 2: "The Magician comes on at nine."
Samantha repeats her next line: "Mom and Dad said I could watch the movie, buttmunch."
I laugh because it's really funny to see a young girl call an adult Mulder 'buttmunch.' Heee.
Mulder's eyes are wide as he continues to take in his surroundings. He's still trance-like as he responds in a monotone, "They're next door at the Galbrands'. They left me in charge."
He looks to Samantha, whose head is tilted like she's one step away from giving her older brother a huge eye roll, or a smack upside the head.
There is a loud click, and the lights and the television suddenly shut off, plunging the room in shadows. Samantha turns to look toward the front door. Mulder remembers this moment from his childhood and says nervously, "No." On the wall, the cheesy, painted picture of a boy and his dog begins to rattle like there's an earthquake coming. The playing pieces begin to shake and hop around on the game board. Framed photos on the mantle fall over. Glass is heard shattering. Mulder stands up, looking about the room.
"Not again."
As Samantha looks to her sibling, a blinding, bright light flashes through the gauzy white curtains of the front window. It illuminates the entire room. Mulder squints. An alarm-like buzzing overlays the rest of the scene.
As the doorknob squeaks and slowly turns, Mulder reaches for his gun at the waistband of his pants, but it's not there. He yells to his sister, "Samantha, run!" She stands there, uncertain.
Mulder hurries over to a sideboard, reaching up to the top shelf where a small metal lockbox sits. He swipes it off the top of the furniture, knocking it to the ground. The box breaks open, its contents spilling out. Among the papers and small trinkets is a revolver. Mulder kneels down and places his hand on the barrel of the weapon, but a sound captures his attention. He looks up, his eyes wide with childlike fear. He is frozen in place, staring up at the front door.
In his previous recollection of this moment, the figure in the entrance was tall and willowy, very bendy and alien-like. In this moment, in this dream, as the door swings open with a chilling creak, the suited figure standing in the doorway is John Lee Roche. He looks a little younger, he has more hair and it's dark instead of gray, but it is definitely John Lee Roche.
Mulder blinks, confused, as if this is different than he expected. He gazes up, his mouth agape, his face lit up in a glow of white light, as Roche strides confidently into the room, looking down at Mulder with an open-mouthed smirk. Roche looms over Mulder as if he is a child, and Mulder looks up at him, still frozen in place.
We can hear Samantha gasp in the background, but we don't see her. Roche looks off to the side, grinning, and walks in that direction. A smash of glass is heard and then Samantha calls out to her brother, her voice pleading: "Fox! Fooooox!" Mulder stares, horrified, watching everything unfolding in front of him, but he can't move.
As he cries out for his sister, Mulder's body jerks up violently, his hands slamming against his desk. His voice echoes in the empty room. He looks like he's lost his sister all over again.
Another nightmare, this time personally unsettling.
As Mulder comes down from the rush of the dream, he breathes out and stares numbly at the two unmarked evidence bags, holding them up helplessly.
***
ACT 2
SCENE 1
A pivotal moment in X-Files history.
Back at the prison in a simple visiting room with a table and two chairs. Mulder sits hunched over like a child, elbows on knees, waiting to see John Lee Roche. As soon as the door buzzes, he straightens, standing to full height, hands on hips in expectation. As Roche enters the room, the camera presents a strange yet fascinating effect -- Roche looks like a giant, blocking and towering over Mulder; for a split second, it makes the room appear as if it's getting smaller, like the ceiling is very low, like they're about to sit at a child's play table. Very Alice in Wonderland-like.
I really have to admire the actor who portrays John Lee Roche. Tom Noonan does a terrific job. With the choices he makes, the particular little tics and mannerisms he uses, he plays the character so normal, like a mild-mannered neighbor you'd know from anywhere; yet, at the same time he plays another layer, one with small, taunting smirks and smart, watchful eyes, to demonstrate that the character knows exactly what he's doing. He's well aware of his antagonistic effect on Mulder, and he relishes every moment of it. He pushes all the right buttons. All these elements come together to make such a complex villain, but he's not easily identifiable as a monster like the scary Flukeman or the slippery Eugene Tooms or any other creature Mulder and Scully usually come up against. Instead, he's very much human, which makes it all the more unsettling to realize how realistic the portrayal is, how vulnerable children are around someone like that, how easily he could fool them into trusting him. It's chilling.
Roche sits down and fastidiously picks a piece of lint from the table, letting it fall to the ground. He looks up at Mulder with a mild smile. Mulder remains standing, his hands still on his hips.
Roche looks intent, now. "Did you bring me my hearts?"
Mulder looks like he hasn't slept in days. He gazes wearily at Roche for a long moment, then looks down at the table, his eyes almost closing. He swallows and shifts back and forth on his feet; it's like he's seeking strength, steeling himself, preparing to ask something very difficult. He wants to ask the question, but does he really want the answer?
Finally, he looks up at Roche and speaks: "Yesterday, you said something about me taking it personally. Why did you say that to me?"
Roche blinks at Mulder several times, saying nothing. The corners of his mouth barely move but there is a very small smile playing around on his lips.
Mulder goes the direct route, his voice low and deadly: "Where were you in 1973?"
Roche's eyes never leave Mulder's face: "What, the whole year?"
Mulder's not in the mood for games; his voice is tense and brittle: "November. The 27th of November. Do you know what I'm getting at?"
Mulder, I love you, but I can't even remember what I did on the 27th of November last year, much less twenty-some years ago. You are just asking for him to mess with your mind.
The entire time Roche tells his story, he doesn't stop looking at Mulder, his voice light but controlled, his face teasingly earnest. "I was selling vacuum cleaners in 1973. I made a sales trip to Martha's Vineyard that year, and I sold a vacuum cleaner to your dad. He bought it for your mom. I believe it was a, um... ElectroVac Duchess, or the Princess model, and... your dad and I talked about it at great length. He -- he had a really hard time choosing."
At first Mulder fidgets, his eyes filled with great pain, but as Roche talks, Mulder's face becomes almost expressionless. He seems to be restraining himself with every fiber of strength in his body. When Roche pauses, Mulder's voice comes out in a tightly controlled whisper: "What do you know about my sister?"
Roche plays just the right cards, says just the right words to keep stringing Mulder along: "You bring me my hearts, and maybe I'll tell you more."
Mulder studies Roche for another long minute, his jaw clenching, his eyes seeking answers, until he cannot control himself any further. He hauls off and punches Roche right in the face, knocking him off his chair, sending the convict to his knees.
As Mulder steps back, rubbing his sore hand, a guard enters the room. Roche points at Mulder and complains to the guard: "This man hit me."
What a whiny baby. You're lucky that's all you got, Roche. Just ask Duane Barry what Mulder did to him when Barry kidnapped his partner.
The guard looks from Roche to Mulder and then says, "I didn't see it." He leaves the room. Infuriated, Roche knocks on the door so he can go back to his cell. He glares incredulously at Mulder and exits. Interesting. I think that's one of the few times we actually see Roche lose control or express any emotion other than toying amusement.
As Mulder watches him go, Scully steps up from behind her partner and says with conviction: "I did." Don't you love how she doesn't let him get away with stuff? Awesome. Scully stares at Mulder like she can't believe he just did that, like she thinks he's losing control of his emotions and it's scaring her.
Mulder turns to look at her, then turns away, dropping his head in shame, shaking out his punching hand. (That'd be his right hand, for those curious.)
Cut to the prison door buzzing open, and Mulder leading the way out into the hallway. Scully follows as Mulder tells her that Roche was at his childhood home, that he took Samantha. Scully tells Mulder that it was only in his dream, that his mind made it up.
I love this conversation between the two characters. It stirs up some tough questions about Samantha's disappearance, putting to question all that Mulder has ever believed about what may have happened to her. It's a remarkable moment in the history of his character, and for his relationship with his F.B.I. partner. Beautifully played by both David and Gillian. It's fantastic.
Mulder throws back at Scully the very quote she gave him earlier, how a dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet figured out how to ask, something buried in your subconscious. He thinks Roche knows something. He reminds Scully that Roche said he was on Martha's Vineyard. Scully wants to know if it's some big secret that Mulder lived in Martha's Vineyard. Mulder's not thinking clearly, he can't see how Roche could know that about him, so Scully points out that Roche could have looked it up online through the prison library. Mulder doesn't seem to want to believe this, but Scully's already done her homework. She found that Roche was in the library on the computer the very day before. The server records can't tell them what he looked up, but she reminds Mulder that you can find just about anything online these days. (And that was, like, a long time ago, way back in the 1990's! Back when they had cell phones the size of toasters. Just imagine what they can do now!)
Mulder closes his eyes, taking in this information, as his wonderful friend and partner tells him what he must hear: "He is playing with you, Mulder. He is committing emotional blackmail, and you are letting him. You walked into that room with your heart on your sleeve. He saw vulnerability, and he took advantage of it."
Mulder looks at her now, opening his mouth as if he wants to say something, but Scully keeps going, her voice softening: "You had a dream, a nightmare, and you had it because of all the emotions that this case is stirring up for you, but... it was nothing but a dream."
Mulder nods. He hears what she is saying. But he quietly reminds her: "My last dream came true."
Scully considers this, taking a breath.
Mulder asks a crucial question: "Scully, do you believe that my sister Samantha was abducted by aliens?"
Scully exhales, lowering her chin a bit.
Mulder presses the matter: "Have you ever believed that?"
She drops her head, unable to meet his eyes.
Mulder continues, answering for her: "No. So what do you think happened to her?"
He looks at her with imploring eyes -- he's asking for her honest opinion, he truly wants to hear her theory on the matter, and deep down they both know she can't necessarily shut down his concern that John Lee Roche may have taken his sister. It's a much more plausible possibility than alien abduction, and surely she must admit that.
Scully looks up at her partner, surprise all over her features, as if she cannot believe after four years of working together Mulder is actually considering another possibility: "What are you saying you believe now?"
Mulder is torn, his eyes pleading. "I don't know. I don't know what happened. I don't know what to believe." This is a huge admission for him to make. "I just know I have to find out now."
As he walks around her and heads down the hallway, Scully stands there, taking in his words, looking concerned. She sighs heavily and turns to follow him.
***
ACT 2
SCENE 2
Why the hell would anyone name a vacuum cleaner "Princess"? Is that supposed to make vacuuming a more fun and feminine task? F*** that.
GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT
Mulder rummages around in his mother's basement. She calls down to him. As she descends the stairs in her bathrobe, he apologizes for waking her up and asks her how she's feeling. She says she's fine and asks him what he's doing in the basement in the middle of the night.
He pulls out the two evidence bags and presents them to her. He wants to know if she recognizes the fabric for either of the two cloth hearts. He does not mention that if she recognizes one as the fabric from Samantha's nightgown, it could be the proof they need that John Lee Roche did indeed take Mulder's sister.
Mulder's mom is confused, she doesn't know what he's asking her. He pushes gently, hoping one or the other will seem familiar somehow. She sighs and reminds him that she doesn't remember things as well as she used to, ever since she had the stroke. Mulder smiles immediately, stuffs the hearts back into his pocket, and apologizes, hugging his mother.
As he rubs her back and tells her it's all right, she drives me nuts with her seeming indifference. I've never felt like Teena Mulder was a fully fleshed out character. We got glimpses, but she was often so cold to Mulder, I just found it very difficult to like her or fully trust that she was being honest with her son.
Anyway, Mulder asks her if his father ever bought her a vacuum cleaner. She says she doesn't use it anymore, but that it's under the stairs in storage. Mulder hurries over to check it out while his mother asks him what's going on. He doesn't answer, instead opening the storage door, digging past boxes of Christmas decorations, and pulling out an old vacuum cleaner. The ElectroVac Princess model, just like Roche claimed. Damn it. Mulder gives the contraption a long look, then shoves it back into its box.
***
Dun, dun, DUN!
See Part Two for the rest of this episode's recap! Thank you very much for reading.
