"All Souls"

"Well, then maybe she flew here, Scully."
Originally Aired 4/26/98

It must be 1998 since the cellphones are smaller.

Another week behind and another difficult review to write. This week's episode feels closer to a plot from The X-Files' sister series Millennium than it does one of it's own. It's about girls who are mysteriously dying by the hand of either a demon or an angel in disguise, which is what feels like Millennium, but the moments I enjoyed involved Scully. She tells this episode in a flashback which is done with her in a confessional booth and I thought that was a creative way to tell this episode's story. I seem to be one of the few who enjoyed the two-part "Christmas Carol"/"Emily" story, so I guess that's why I liked that part of "All Souls." If this was just a typical X-Files case and not attached to that story, I think it would seem rather dull and "soulless", actually. Tying it in with that previous story gives Gillian Anderson a reason to flex her acting muscles (wings?) and I am even more of the belief that Seasons 4 and 5 are *her* story and not Mulder's.

Last week we had an episode with Mulder forming an attachment to a victim, just like he has in the past, so it was nice that Scully was given an episode where she was forming an attachment. However her's was more about letting go of her lost child. Now you would think as much as I enjoyed Scully's scenes, I'm not sure how much I enjoyed it overall. It didn't seem to develop it's villain very much, though I did like the make-up effects used on the body of a pastor that he appeared to have set on fire from the inside of his body. My other complaint is more of a nit-pick; I think Father McCue is a terrible pastor. During a scene where Scully is trying to explain that she saw a heavenly figure, he explains the entire plot of this episode, only to dismiss it as a bogus story. If he had actually believed in that story, he could have prevented all of these girls from dying! He says its just a story and it isn't even recognized by the "Church." Which church is that, just his own? Because it seems like that is religion in a nutshell. That's why we have Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Baptists; they're all basically Christians, its just they decided to leave out certain things. So which is really right and which is just a story?

The X-Files motto was "I Want To Believe" and it took on multiple meanings throughout the course of the series. I like that it wasn't just a belief in aliens; it could have been in human nature, the paranormal, and in religion. However it seems that when The X-Files actually had a plot that used religion, it was hit or miss; mostly miss.