X-Files Rerun "Duane Barry"

"Mulder, it's me. I just had something incredibly strange happen."
Originally Aired 10/14/94



"Duane Barry is gonna use you for target practice."

I like this one more as time goes by. I think its because the episode takes a break from the "X-Files formula" and doesn't have an actual investigation; this time it's Mulder alone with a crazy alien abductee. I even heard the words from "Chunk" in the Goonies movie inside my head as I started this episode, "hhh-hostage crisis!" Mulder says he needs information on Duane Barry, the alien abductee, but I think even without it, his background as a criminal profiler should be enough to get him through this situation. I am a bit surprised that wasn't mentioned at all.

The guest of the week is Steve Railsback, who plays the title character of "Duane Barry." I love that he talks in third-person and punches whiny bald guys; its eerily comical. "You callin' Duane Barry a liar!" is a pretty good catchphrase, too. I think he should have been nominated for a Supporting Actor Emmy, not CCH Pounder, though she is alright as the stern SWAT commander. This watch I even noticed "Andy McLaren" from Millennium (Stephen E. Miller) as the guy who fits Mulder for his wire and tells him what to do. Krycek is back too, though he isn't given a whole lot of anything to do. He just serves the SWAT team's coffee boy, which somewhat makes me feel sorry for the guy.

Just like last week's episode, I like how this plays out as a standalone story until the revelations in the closing moments. The ending this time features a brief investigation into one of the implants that Duane Barry said was a way that the aliens could track him. As soon as Scully has the surface of the chip magnified, you instantly know its a bar code, so when she's at a grocery store a few moments later its a pretty cool scene when the store's bar code scanner flips out and buzzes like crazy. That'll show them for doubting Duane Barry! That type of ending, which links a standalone to a greater conspiracy and the story arc, was an area The X-Files had never really went before. There were brief glimpses in the first season when Deep Throat was present in "Fallen Angel" and "E.B.E." This type of storytelling is present in tv shows I watch today like Fringe and Supernatural, where each episode is mostly a separate investigation with moments at the end to link them to the season-long arc.

Chris Carter wrote the script and did a great job for his first time directing an episode. Well, I think he did a great job since Duane Barry could've easily slipped into the territory of being a parody, just like last season's guest star Brad Dourif. Plus, I'm sure its hard to keep an episode interesting that is mostly scenes of talking with little action, so he cut to plenty of footage of the aliens torturing Duane Barry. Its the most we've seen of aliens on the series and even though this was filmed nearly twenty years ago, the giant, over-sized alien heads don't appear corny like most 1990's sci fi aliens. In fact, the drilling in Duane Barry's mouth is still creepy (even though they revealed on the dvd set that it was just water.) I believe after "The Host" was my first real exposure to The X-Files, this was one of the first I can remember watching when Sci Fi Channel had those 7 hour marathons of a different show each weekday. Thank god for the times when the Sci Fi Channel used to be cool!