"Theef"

"You do keep me guessing."
Originally Aired 3/12/00

Months ago a friend and I met at a theater to witness an amazingly horrible horror movie called Annabelle. I'm always skeptical of these modern horror movies because haunted objects/possessed people are done to "death", though this one was surprisingly high on unintentional comedy as we ended up laughing constantly throughout the last third of the movie. It all started with a comment about having "black juju", and I'm using that to segue to this week's episode "Theef", which is centered on juju of the bad variety. I was going to say voodoo, but Mulder tells us that it's "hex craft", which is basically due to a doctor's bad juju.

While watching "Theef", it dawned on me that even though this is a 'back to basics' horror story, it still follows the trend of recent seasons. We always seem to follow the villain more than our heroes now, while the early seasons were more about Mulder and Scully uncovering the truth the same as the viewers do and also butting heads with local law enforcement along the way. "Theef" gives ample screen time to it's "villain", Billy Drago as 'Oral Peattie.' I actually spent a good chunk of the episode distracted by a few plotholes, such as how did Peattie get from the backwoods of the Appalachians all the way to sunny California, and also how he was able to track down the Wieder family if he can barely operate a microwave. I guess giving as much screen time to the villain as they have been doing, these standalones live or die by how effective the villain is, and Billy Drago eventually won me over. I really don't care how he trekked across the country because it actually adds to his 'creep factor'. Basically everything from the 'death by microwave' scene to the moment 'Executive Producer Chris Carter' appeared on the screen is "full of win", as kids on the internet would say.

I also feel like my attention span and memory is becoming as awful as the internet because I seem to forget how much I liked the previous episode before the current one has even ended. I was ready to claim this as the best standalone of Season 7, just like the internet jumps from 'meme' to 'meme', but I remembered a few of the earlier episodes such as "Orison" and "Hungry." Both of those were heavier on darker plots and horror elements than Season 6's lighter entries and are not to be easily dismissed. That's also what I enjoyed about "Theef" were it's horror movie elements, like borrowing a corpse in bedroom resembled Norman's mother in Psycho, and Peattie carrying a severed head is much like Jason's mother in Friday the 13th Part 2. Speaking of X-Files' former episode staples like local law enforcement, the early seasons also seemed to have a fondness for exhuming bodies. I've never seen so many exhumed bodies in all my hours of TV watching than I have with The X-Files. I think this is the first exhumation scene since the third season... but I'm not counting.

Even though I started 2007 with using a gift card to purchase discounted DVD sets of The X-Files' Seasons One and Two following a few reruns on the Sci Fi Channel the previous year, I believe my 'fandom' fully kicked off in the spring when I happened to catch a few reruns during the early morning hours on TNT. They were actually in Season 7 when I joined their cycle of episodes and I caught the closing moments of this episode. I did eventually see the full episode but it didn't strike me as anything special. Viewing it again several years later and given it's placement in the series, the moments with Scully and Mulder actually lift the episode above the average. While the writers/producers weren't sure of The X-Files' fate beyond Season 7, this episode (combined with "The Sixth Extinction" and "The Goldberg Variation") seems to hint at Scully becoming a believer.

Microwave popcorn will never be the same again!