"Chinga"

"Are you aware of the statistics of decapitation?"
Originally Aired 2/8/98

It's only been a month between episodes of The X-Files, yet this January-February break felt longer than a typical summer off. When I was finally able to pop the disc with "Chinga" into my dvd player and press "play", maybe I was too excited for this "brand new" episode. With Season 5 being a top notch batch of episodes and also this one being co-written by Stephen King, more hype was surrounding it than most first-time episodes. I felt underwhelmed, so I watched it again, and then again; even a 4th time and 5th time. The other two instances where it took me this long to watch an episode, its because I had fallen asleep! ("3" and "Kaddish", in case you were curious.)

Honestly, "Chinga" isn't that terrible of an episode, it just took awhile for it to sink in. The first time through I focused too much on the case and the premise of the story, which revolves around a young girl and her doll. They're both overcooked horror cliches, especially creepy kids in the world of The X-Files, going all the way back to Season One's "Eve." The evil doll has been done famously in the Child's Play films and an episode of the original Twilight Zone series. So its easy to groan at going to that well again. But judging it on that alone, I wasn't being fair to this episode. It follows the pattern of this season's "Post-Modern Prometheus" and even last season's "Small Potatoes", because it mixes the horror elements with humor. "Chinga" even has the most frightening scenes of the series since "Home", with people clawing their eyes and getting skewered with a harpoon. Besides going to the horror cliche well, the other part that bugged me was the main guest actress who played Melissa Turner. What bugged me about her was just her manner of speaking, how she keeps saying, "but Buddy!"

With this being a Stephen King episode, the touches he contributed are easily noticeable. Setting the story in Maine is obvious, also the crazy old lady in town who preaches about religion, or in this case condemns the single mom. I think the increased level of terror is also a touch of King. But one thing I also noticed right away is an increase in melodrama, with Melissa Turner being the object of affection of the town butcher and even the deputy. I can't recall an episode with a love triangle like that, unless you go all the way back to Season One's "Conduit."

Another interesting thing to note is that right before I watched this episode, in the fact the day before, I was going to introduce a friend to The X-Files. I tossed around a few ideas for an episode to sell the series to a new fan with a fellow fan, and one that he suggested was "Chinga." Now I've never skipped ahead on my plan to watch every episode in order and I wasn't going to make an exception now. I decided on the quirky "Humbug", but after watching "Chinga", I realized it wouldn't be a good choice anyways. With this episode falling in the middle of Season Five, it does have the benefit of Gillian and David being so great with their characters that any new fan would easily spot Mulder's quirks and Scully's ingenuity. Yet the mix of humor and horror that I mentioned earlier may only be appreciated by a long time fan. Even though within the episode Mulder and Scully are miles apart, they're actually closer then ever as characters. Mulder seems so at ease when tossing out his quip about marrying Scully (has he ever said something like that before?), yet later it appears he would be so embarrassed should Scully find out that he misses her. Season Five really seems to be The X-Files at it's creative peak and I'm really looking foward to next week's new episode, "Killswitch"; but maybe I should dial that excitement down a notch.