"Schizogeny"

"Is it possible that he took the term 'mud pie' literally?"
Originally Aired 1/11/98

I'd have been your friend.

Season Five has been an exciting and emotional series of episodes on The X-Files. Episodes have dealt with Scully's cancer, clone children, romantic mutants, and even the background of our favorite trio of computer hackers, The Lone Gunmen. While those episodes have broken new ground for The X-Files, this week's episode feels like a relic of Season One; maybe it was an unused script that was unearthed by tree roots.

This is one of the few from this season that I've previously watched (the others being "Unusual Suspects", "Bad Blood", "Travelers", and "Folie a Deux"), and it really sticks out like a sore thumb among the rest of the season. It isn't because its the worst episode of the series, perhaps just the worst of this season. "Schizogeny" seems like it has a unique subject matter that The X-Files hasn't tackled before- child abuse and teen angst. I even like Mark Snow's music for the episode; it feels darker like his scores for Millennium. Along with Mark Snow's score, the main character of the episode accused of murder is a boy named Bobby, seems to have a love for heavy metal music. In the opening scene he's listening to a song by Rob Zombie featuring Alice Cooper, then later he's listening to Danzig in his truck. That wouldn't make him an outsider to me, since anyone who listens to Alice Cooper is a friend of mine. Another interesting part of this episode is the setting of an orchard. It looks eerie on it's own, but it's downright frightening when filmed by The X-Files crew.

That's about where the positives of this episode end. It felt like a first season episode of the show because it didn't know what it wanted to be. The "Teen Angst Trees", or even if they used some other supernatural force, defending abused children would be a good storyline. That's similar to past episodes, like a ghost from beyond the grave defending a secretary in Season One's "Shadows." Yet "Schizogeny" seems to go off the rails when it takes inspiration from Psycho, like the therapist being possessed by her dad and locking people in her basement. It seemed a bit grim when she met her fate thanks to an axe, but I'm down for a decapitation every now and then.

Something else I want to make note of is I seem to take for granted how easily I can get screen captures for every episode of The X-Files. I didn't realize that until I started writing reviews for other tv shows, like Justified. They aren't as accessible as my beloved X-Files, so I want to extend a BIG thank you to Chris Nu for his screen captures website.