08x05, "Invocation"
Atropos
Thoroughly meh and too unclear for my taste. (Did the opening credit scroll font change?)
So Billy--whom I thought for a while was one of the alien clones like from FTF--is some kind of human-seeming (but silent and personality-less ghost who’s come back to very, very poorly provide vague clues that Cal is the killer? By… trying to kill his younger brother, who’s three years older than he is? I don’t get it. I did crack up when he suddenly manifested that giant knife, though.
I was at least relieved that the child-centric episode didn’t end up playing on the whole pregnant!Scully thing, and didn’t devolve too much into schmalz. (You’d think they could have strapped on the lady’s pregnancy prosthesis better at the beginning so she didn’t have to hold it on. /snark) There was a lot of role reversal in this one, with Scully trying to just accept what was going on and roll with it, and Doggett constantly pushing back. Also we got to find out that Doggett--who was really talking down to (weird creepy) Billy while interrogating him--has some kind of child-related trauma in his past. (NOBODY MENTION JOHN CONNOR.) Join the club, pal. It seems in this episode that he’s a lot of bluster and swagger and good ‘ol boy machismo and not a whole lot else. He throws out the term “failure to thrive” in a completely inappropriate setting (because no really, “failure to thrive” doesn’t cover not aging in ten years). He accuses Scully of lazy procedure after illegally obtaining sealed juvenile records. He did get burned by sarcastic!psychic (called in because she failed to provide help when Billy disappeared? I don’t get that either… should’ve called the Stupendous Yappi), which was fun. I was sadly disappointed that he didn’t just hang on to the trunk of the fleeing car. C’mon Doggett, we know you can do it.
Nasubionna
Episode 5 - Invocation
All the Pretty Horses is a creepy-ass lullaby when you listen to the lyrics. I'm sure that mom is happy her kid is back, and I can't totally blame her, but you'd think she'd at least be a LITTLE weirded out that he hasn't aged.
LOL, love Doggett's interrogation tactics on that little kid! I'm with Doggett on this one, it wasn't like he was water boarding the kid, and hey, you gotta get information! Scully and his mom were being too overprotective, in my opinion. "Failure to thrive", that's a term I'm very familiar with in the hospital industry, unfortunately, but this is not an accurate application of the term.
Always listen to the dog! Sparky knows what's up!! Was it Bill Murray who said, "I don't trust people who don't like dogs, but I trust a dog when it doesn't like a person". Or something along those lines.
I think there was a miniseries called "The 4400" that was about a buttload of people who disappeared over the last 40 years suddenly all reappearing on one day together, and nobody had aged - including the little kids who disappeared in the 60's. I seem to recall that it had a lot of promise, but got cancelled or something. Anyway, this is reminding me of it, and now I kind of want to watch it again.
Ooh, Doggett's got records he shouldn't? HE'S A MAVERICK.
Ah, they finally hint at Doggett's painful past regarding his son, having him pull that photo out of his pocket, apparently some nice foreshadowing of the psychic mentioning the boy that Doggett lost (before she goes into a super-freaky seizure).
I honestly don't remember anything that happens in his episode - it's entirely possible I didn't catch this one the first time around.
Wait, now Doggett is sticking up for the kid when Scully wants to take him away to an institution? They are really flip-flopping on the way they treat this kid - first Scully is pissed that Doggett does a little interrogation, but now she's calling him a pansy for not wanting to take the kid away? INCONSISTANT. The whole "weird kid writing symbols", reminds me of the very early episode "Conduit" where the little boy puts together the computer print-outs that form his sister’s face. I guess after 7 seasons you can start to repeat some supernatural themes. Unless the police psychic is the one who wrote all those symbols? This is what happens when you are slightly distracted while watching and when the episode just generally feels like a bit of an inconsistent mess.
Doggett is just about as frustrating as early-seasons Scully when he insists that the psychic was just putting on an act. True, anyone can make up stories and flail around, but pushing that symbol out of her forehead meat is a pretty neat trick that I'm not sure how anyone could accomplish….
I'm sorry, but when they went in the horse trailer, I thought, "where's the manure? Are you telling me he put a pony in there and it didn't crap? IMPOSSIBLE." LOL, life of a livestock farmer.
OK, I honestly didn't suspect the skeezy dude who was harassing the teenage kid and hooking up with trailer lady. And I guess Billy was basically a vengeful spirit with the twist of having a corporeal body that he could teleport around? Who knew that the skeezy guy (I didn't even catch his name, that's how little I cared about him) was going to kidnap his brother? Why would skeezy dude kidnap a kid from *the same family* that he kidnapped a kid from 10 years ago? He's just really got it out for this family for some reason? OK episode, I guess, nothing terribly gripping, but nowhere near as irritating as Roadrunners was.
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