"Elegy"

"Sloppy Joe Night"
Originally Aired 5/4/97

Always lying around on the job.

I really wanted to like this episode, honestly, I did. I even watched it several times before finally sitting down to write this, in an effort to give myself a chance to let it sink in. A week later and it's still just "okay." It's about half-good, half-bad.

What the episode does succeed at would be it's quirky moments and there are a lot. First would be when Mulder is talking to Scully about apparitions, rolls a strike at the bowling alley, then goes right back to talking without missing a beat. Even Scully was impressed! Later on, Mulder and Scully visit a psychiatric center, which provides more comedy. Mulder asks if anyone has used a payphone to report a murder, to which one guys confesses, "I admit it. I did it. I'm just a human being after all." Good performances there from David, Gillian, and the guest stars.

Besides the fun and quirky moments, there is a serious side to this episode with Scully's cancer having a presence. After having another nose bleed, she spots an apparition like others have in this episode, so she visits an FBI psych. Its a reference to Season 2's "Irresistible, which I enjoyed because it echoes the same theme in that episode, with Scully questioning whether she can still perform her job as an agent. Gillian Anderson's facial expressions in this episode are so good that she could even get away without talking at all. I assume she won her Lead Actress Emmy for "Memento Mori" yet she was great in every episode this year.

However, now comes the part where I talk about what I didn't enjoy. I felt the first 30 minutes or so of "Elegy" was excellent, like I mentioned already, from the comedy to the drama. Yet the conclusion wasn't satisfying. A nurse is guilty of ruining someone's happiness by messing with his pills and killing women who visited the bowling alley. It just didn't fit at all. It felt wedged into the episode just to give it a killer and tie a neat bow onto the end. The last ten minutes of an episode shouldn't ruin the 30 minutes that I did enjoy, but it doesn't leave me with a sense of urgency to revisit it often.

One interesting aspect that I noticed is that "Elegy" is more like the type of episodes I see now on Supernatural and especially Fringe, where the standalone cases are tied to that season's storyline. In this episode people who are dying see visions of people who have just died. An example on Fringe would be when the two leads (Peter and Olivia) are falling in love, while at the same time a killer is preying on people in love, so it causes them to reflect even more on their feelings. Maybe its because I'm set in my ways but I prefer The X-Files method of having storyline elements pop up when least expected, rather than bludgeoning me over the head with the major storyline week after week.