Essential X-Files: The Host
This is the third episode in my rewatch of the eight X-Files episodes that Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz have called essential viewing for the movie: the Pilot, Beyond the Sea, The Host, Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, Memento Mori, Post Modern Prometheus, Bad Blood, and Milagro.
The plot set-up: At the end of Season 1, the X-Files has been shut down. Mulder and Scully are reassigned. Scully’s at Quantico, and Mulder thinks he’s being put on the worst cases possible as punishment. This includes the sewer death that Assistant Director Skinner specifically requested to be assigned to him.
After viewing this episode again, I’m very curious how it may tie into the movie. Besides being written by Chris Carter and featuring some classic moments important to Philes, the only things that strike me as being able to carry on are:
- Both Flukie (aka the Flukeman) and one of his/her offspring are alive.
- Mulder wonders, “How many new species are being created [everyday]?”
- We hear the second informant, Mr. X.
Otherwise, it’s an episode very dear to many X-Philes because:
- Gillian Anderson is pregnant and hidden behind file folders, desks, and jackets.
- Darin Morgan, brother of Glen Morgan and eventual writer of four of the greatest XF episodes of all time (Humbug, Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, War of the Coprophages, Jose Chung’s From Outer Space), plays the Flukeman.
- It’s choked full of the beloved “[Mulder/Scully], it’s me.” telephone exchange.
- People remember it as an episode that really grossed them out.
- Mulder loses his gun.
In addition to all this, let me add these two points. First, the work of John Bartley as cinematographer is amazing. His lighting did so much to establish the identify and the feel of The X-Files. And second, I read somewhere, and I can’t remember where, that today’s television shows are paced so much more quickly than everything that ever came before. If we, today, watched the pilot episode of ER, a show that I also remember as moving amazingly fast, it would drag. This was true for “The Host.” At numerous times during the episode, I grew bored and impatient with all the talking. I’m surprised at how slow it felt.