"Mind's Eye"

"We found her at the scene doing a Formula 409."
Originally Aired 4/19/98

This is a very great episode, so why was it so hard to review? I was even pretty good this season at keeping myself from falling behind until "Mind's Eye." In a season full of experimenting and episodes that played with the show's formula, this one is also different from the normal formula. It feels so much like an episode of Law & Order because its set at a police station for a majority of the scenes, and it also deals more with murders than ghouls. Yet in typical X-Files style, its done as a character-driven story, and its guest is very good! Lili Taylor as a blind woman, who's also the suspect, was so good she was even nominated for a "Guest Star Emmy Award."

Lili Taylor's character, Marty Glenn, is why this episode works so well. This episode is very "talky" and full of dialogue, so to make it work it needed a great guest who will get you engaged into what's being said. To compare it to another X-Files episode, I think this actually is what Glenn Morgan was attempting to do with "The Field Where I Died", but it didn't quite translate from page to screen. Mulder becomes attached and is determined to clear Marty's name, much like he connected with Melissa in that episode. A better comparison outside of the series would be to Millennium's first season episode, "Covenant", in which Frank Black fights to clear the name of an innocent man whom everyone thinks is guilty. To connect it back to The X-Files, that episode's guest star, John Finn, also played Michael Kritschgau in this season. Only difference is this episode ends tragically, making it one of the most heart-wrenching standalones in the run of the series. In fact, I struggled to find a humorous line that would work as my intro quote; "Mind's Eye" is too much of a downer.

This one was a real treat out of my remaining "unseen" episodes. I wasn't really sure what to expect before I was able to finally see it. Four episodes remain of Season Five, with only one of them being an episode that I have seen before ("Folie A Deux".) With just four left, it doesn't feel like the end of the season already. Even though there were fewer episodes than normal, they seemed to spread them out more with at least 3 breaks that lasted three weeks each; guess it doesn't help that I fell an extra two weeks behind.

Scully: the Original Duckface