Essential X-Files: The Post-Modern Prometheus
This is the sixth 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: Mulder received a letter from a woman living in a small town. She claims to be once again pregnant under mysterious circumstances. Since another mother on Jerry Springer said that Agent Mulder came to see her werewolf baby, she thought he may want to visit and investigate her circumstances.
Teaser: We go into black and white, just like the classic monster stories. Unlike the classic monster stories, we get our first Cher song.
I really want to like this episode. It’s written and directed by Chris Carter. It is an homage episode to many classic monster tales, especially Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which is also titled The Modern Prometheus. And there are so many great Mulder and Scully moments.
But I just can’t get over how the horrors of the heinous crimes committed are played for laughs. I have little sympathy for the monster and none for the monster’s family. “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” has comedy within it, and “Bad Blood” is straight out funny, but both those episodes treated their crimes seriously. Here, Chris Carter tries to turn out an inappropriately happy ending.
It’s rather like going to see Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni and trying to enjoy the first act as a light-hearted comedy about a serial rapist. Perhaps I’m just not post-modern enough for all this.
I try to not give away too much plot in my write-ups, but here, I’ll have to provide the outcome as a context for my opinions. Basically, the monster (The Great Mutato) is the result of a botched genetic experiment. The monster’s adopted father tries to replicate the procedure to create a mate or companion for his disfigured son.
This procedure involves gassing women in their houses, and then impregnating them with animal DNA.
Ha! Isn’t that funny?
Shouldn’t such an action be rewarded with a celebratory kum-bi-ya Cher concert? Come on, the monster danced while he was trespassing in the unconscious women’s houses. Surely that makes him loveable.
And this is just one of the reasons why, as I’ve said before, Chris Carter trying to focus on a Scully story is a dangerous thing. If you haven’t watched XF all the way through, just imagine how well he handled Scully’s abduction and medical rape over the years.
Ok, calming down now.
One storytelling moment that I just don’t understand is that everything was moving towards a depressing but criminally viable ending. Everyone who did wrong was arrested.
And then Mulder says that the ending is wrong. He says, “Dr Frankenstein pays for his evil ambitions, yes. But the monster is supposed to escape, to go search for his bride.” This is not how either the novel or the original film ended. I’m not sure what he is referencing, but it’s a real clunker to throw in there just to tag on the inappropriate ending.
I’m not sure that Chris Carter understands that the label modern references a set of ideas rather than any specific time period.
Notables:
- Chris Owens, who would later go on to play Special Agent Jeffrey Spender, is the Great Mutato.
- You get to see full-on skeptical, disapproving Scully for much of the first act. Man, she got good at this.
- This homage to monster stories contained weird rural characters, a mad scientist, a mob of angry villagers complete with torches, and of course, a misunderstood monster.
- There’s an interesting running gag about light bulbs over our agents’ heads.
- The episode ends in another fan favorite sequence when Mulder and Scully dance into a freeze frame.