The Penultimate Partner Episode: Analyzing the Second-to-Last Episodes of Seasons 3-7
So I was thinking about the showâs tendency to do an episode that is explicitly about the Partnershipâabout the deep abiding bonds between Mulder and Scullyâright before the season finale.
This doesnât seem to happen in season 1 and 2 (the penultimate episodes are Roland and Our Town, respectively, which donât seem to play the same role). And something different is happening in season 8 and 9, so I don't think they fit as well.
But during the showâs peak popularity, seasons 3-7, the second-to-last episode seems to be setting up baseline emotional stakes for whatever plotline is about to hit. These episodes are giving us the state of the partnership, reminding us how devoted they are to one another. They also tend to have to do with one or both partners having a distorted perception on reality that requires the other partner's intervention in some way. Iâm calling them the Penultimate Partner episodes.
So can we look at the themes of each of these Partnership episodes and see development over time? I think yes. Itâs gonna be long. I rewatched them all, so buckle up.
Season 3: Wetwired - partnership as trust
Season 4: Demons - partnership as loyalty
Season 5: Folie a Deux - partnership as shared madness
Season 6: Field Trip - partnership as touchstones
Season 7: Je Souhaite - partnership as happiness
Season 3: Wetwired (right before Talitha Cumi)
This episode, like several in the Penultimate Partner episode category, involves a X-file that distorts perception. Because Scully canât trust her own senses due to the mind control, she also canât trust Mulder, calling into question the key tenet of their partnership. (And by season three, they have definitely established trust as the bedrock.)
Her gradual mistrust of Mulder in this episode is tense and painful; you can see on her face how much she argues with herself about it even as her mind is tricking her. Others who fall victim to this mind control phenomenon wind up murdering their romantic partner, but in the end of the episode, when theyâre discussing what happened in the hospital, they both seem pretty unsurprised that Scullyâs paranoia focused on Mulder. They both know, late season three, how crucial trust is between them. They understand that itâs Scullyâs worst fear that Mulder would betray her. Itâs not even news to them.
What Mulderâs worst fear might be is also hinted at, although itâs unsaid. Heâs furious that her life is put at risk by the mysterious informant. When Mulder believes Scully may be dead and heâs going to identify her body, his reaction is chilling. He seems to completely shut down emotionally, not even showing any reaction to the Gunmen. Tellingly, when he is offered a choice between getting answers and going to ID Scullyâs body, he doesnât hesitateâhe chooses Scully. (Sometimes people claim Mulder doesnât show this kind of commitment to her until much later, even until Home Again in season 10, so itâs interesting to see it so unequivocal here.)Â Â Â
I want to say that Scullyâs anxiety about trusting Mulder in this episode is foreshadowing aspects of the cancer arc in the next season, but I donât think thatâs really whatâs happening. This episode seems more like an entirely season 3 cap to the Anasazi / Blessing Way / Paperclip storyline, especially the murder of Melissa. Scullyâs paranoia calls back Mulderâs in Anasazi, and Scully explicitly blames Mulder for her sisterâs murder when sheâs drawn a gun on him. Even just the fact that we're there with Maggie, who has a picture of Melissa displayed prominently, tells me that loss is supposed to be on both partners' minds.
(Actually, the interaction between Mulder, Scully and Maggie is pretty amazing in this scene; theyâre an emotionally complex trio who seem to be communicating on some other level. I love how when Mulder and Maggie are talking to freaked-out Scully they almost sound strangely unreal, almost like they really are speaking falsely. It allows us to imagine the scene as it looks from Scullyâs point-of-view, as a massive betrayal.)
Wetwired is, technically, a mytharc episode, as this whole mind control thing seems to tie back into X and the Syndicate. Personally I think the episodeâs ending, emphasizing the mytharc-related plot and Xâs involvement and whatever tf was happening there, was a little misguided. For my tastes they would have done better to play up the more personal, character-based themes a little more. But I also think this episode was the first real Penultimate Partner episode, and it was setting some patterns that were going to be expanded on.
Season 4: Demons (before Gethsemane)
From the cold open, we can already tell this is already a more personal episode than Wetwired. Mulder is the one having perception problems now; he wakes from a disturbing dream, covered in blood, muddled memory. This is also technically a mytharc episode, but much more concerned with direct impact on character than Wetwired was.Â
Scully instantly rushes to Mulderâs aidâwalks right into his shower, for heavenâs sakeâand absolutely never wavers in loyalty to him, even when he looks real, real guilty and a "rational" person would be suspicious. She is in fierce, must-protect-Mulder mode throughout this entire episode, from the moment she shows up palpating his head with her hands to her back-off behavior with the cops to her badass cold âI know what you doâ comment to Dr. Goldstein. She also helps Mulder see through his distorted perception, telling him "this is not the way to the truth" as he holds a gun on her.
In this Penultimate Partner episode, we see something more than simple trust going on, although thereâs trust, too. Maybe the word is loyalty or devotion. We see Mulder coming apart and Scully completely and utterly devoted to him. Itâs actually very clear foreshadowing for the following weekâs episode, Gethsemane. Mulder isnât stable, and he needs Scully to keep him from âlos[ing] his course,â as she says in Demonsâ end narration. Gethsemane will follow up on the Mulder losing-his-course idea, and also will explore the idea that Scullyâs bottomless support of Mulder isnât always good for her. (This idea is voiced especially by Bill.)Â
There are some ways in which this episode is a neat little bookend to Wetwired. In Wetwired, Scully flees to her motherâs house, desperate and paranoid; in Demons, Mulder, similarly unhinged, seeks out his mother at her house. In Wetwired, Scully sees things that arenât there, and in Demons, itâs definitely implied that Mulder may be seeing things in his past that werenât actually there. In Wetwired, Scully pulls a gun on Mulder, and in Demons, Mulder pulls one on Scully.Â
I adore this episode, even though itâs definitely vulnerable to the critique that Mulder acts like a self-obsessed loon and Scully a hopeless enabler lol. Especially because it comes before the Gethsemane / Redux three parter, I wish the episode would have explicitly connected his behavior to the cancer arc, as I feel like that would have made his wild choices seem more understandable. If he felt like he needed to find answers faster because he knew Scullyâs time was running out and he saw it all tied together with her fate, then we would get why he was acting so rashly. It would also tie more nicely into Gethsemane, which misleads the audience into thinking Mulder has killed himself, in part, because he believes sheâs been given cancer to make him believe.
But again, I love this episode. Scully showing up and putting that blanket around Mulder when heâs shaking. Her hugging him at the end when heâs desolate on the floor. This shows a partnership thatâs been through Paper Hearts and Memento Moriâthatâs moved beyond trust alone.
Season 5: Folie a Deux (before The End)
This is another episode about perceptionâabout one partner seeing things the other canât. Unlike in Wetwired or Demons, however, in this episode the altered perception actually represents the real truth, something everyone else fails to understand. The episode plays around with the tropes of earlier episodes like Wetwired, at first encouraging us to think that it's a delusion that Pincus is a monster, but then convincing us, through Mulderâs eyes, that the delusion is actually reality. Â
As other people have observed, this episode ends up being a nice little metaphor for the whole show: Mulder knowing what no one else does, being ostracized and considered insane, asking Scully to find evidence to corroborate him and ultimately convincing her to believe him and see what he sees. Their partnership is, quite precisely, a madness shared by two.Â
Itâs a monster of the week, not a mytharc, so thereâs no distraction of elaborate mytharc plot, just characters and monster. And this is a Vince Gilligan operation, so our focus is definitely on character. From the first scene with Mulder and Scully, we sense that weâre going to be talking about the partnership. Skinner gives them an assignment in Chicago that Mulder doesnât think is worth it, and he complains in a particularly self-centered way to Scully, which she observes (âYouâre saying I a lot.â) The episode is going to be very explicit that while Mulder might be monster boy, they are in this unhinged partnership situation together. Another important moment comes later, when Scully is calling the perp crazy for thinking he saw a monster, and Mulder says, âWell, I saw it, too.â Scullyâs careful about-face after that, her delicate avoidance of implying she thinks Mulder is actually crazy, is part of the dance theyâre doing at this late season five stage of their partnership. She doesnât quite believe him, but she doesnât knee-jerk not believe him either.Â
And the foreshadowing of whatâs to come in this one, whoo boy. Most obviously, we must acknowledge that 1013 knew exactly what they were doing when Mulder tells Scully âyouâre my one in five billion.â A mere seven days from now, a mysterious beautiful ex who believes his theories is going to show up to immediately cast doubt on that claim. And this episode is also toying with the question of whether Scully actually does always back Mulder up when itâs important, when she has to accept she saw something illogical. At the end, does she tell Skinner she actually saw a giant bug in Mulderâs hospital room? We donât know, but I think itâs implied she doesnât. Thatâs all presaging what will happen in The Beginning coming off of Fight the Future. Itâs Scullyâs little way of resisting the madness, but it also hurts Mulder and damages the partnership, which will be a problem in season six.Â
Season 6: Field Trip (before Biogenesis)
Full disclosure: this is my favorite episode. So Iâm going to make some big claims about it. This is the ultimate Penultimate Partner episodeâthe one that best knits together what it wants to say about their partnership and what it wants to establish for the finale. It's a monster-of-the-week episode (another Vince Gilligan ep, with John Shiban) but refers to the mytharc often. Itâs also one of the best episodes about their partnership, period.Â
This is yet another episode about distorted perception. This time, however, under the influence of a giant mushroom, both partners are unable to perceive clearly, to determine what is real and what is a lie. And when theyâre confused, they critically turn to one another to help them see what the truth is.
Coming off of season six, the partnership is rocky. Mulder is frustrated that after so many theories of his have borne out, he still canât get the benefit of the doubt from Scully, something he explicitly says in the dialogue here. Scully has felt like sheâs not been trusted or heard, like Mulder has turned to others (Diana Fowley, for example) rather than his partner.
This is an episode about how they absolutely need one another to be able to make sense of the worldâthat individually each of their points-of-view are not enough. In Mulderâs hallucination, Scully accepts his claims about alien life forms too completely, not applying enough skepticism, not pushing back against him. In Scullyâs hallucination, a world without Mulder, everyone is unacceptably unquestioning of the status quo, refusing to dig deeper, lacking Mulderâs critical acumen and drive. Neither partner likes the feeling of being unopposed, and it makes both of them suspicious about the hallucinationâs reality. They may think they want their own view to prevail, but they need one another to be a whole person.
The theme of whatâs real and whatâs not â and needing one another to discern the truthâis exactly what is picked up and developed further in the Biogenesis-Sixth Extinction-Amor Fati arc that follows this. Scullyâs skepticism has to stretch to incorporate more of Mulderâs worldview to make sense of what she sees in the Ivory Coast, and of course, Mulder calls on Scullyâs worldview to see through his misleading dream world in Amor Fati. In fact, you could argue Field Trip is really about the idea that Mulder and Scully are one anotherâs touchstonesâthe people they need to know whatâs right and real.Â
Incidentally, this episode also plays around with some of season 6âs other subtextual throughlines: Mulder and Scullyâs anxieties about possibly entering a non-platonic relationship, their unease about what a normal, domestic life might even be for them. For the entire episode theyâre directly compared and juxtaposed with the Schiffs, a young married couple who died on Brown Mountain. The Schiffs are a tall man and a redheaded woman. They even die hallucinating lying together on a hotel bed after she asked him to âhold herâ (although I do seriously doubt 1013 was intentionally foreshadowing a full year ahead). The last shot is of Mulder reaching out to take Scullyâs hand across the ambulance, suggesting a kind of partnership beyond just, you know, partnership. Which takes us to the next season. Â
Season 7: Je Souhaite (before Requiem)
Truthfully, I donât think this episode fits quite as well in the Penultimate Partner category. It doesnât share some of the same traits as these other episodesâitâs not quite as notably about perception, for instanceâand itâs not fundamentally about the partnership in the same way. But it does end up commenting on their partnership (even their relationship, really) as part of its theme, so I think we can include itâespecially because its position right before Requiem ends up being important.Â
Je Souhaite (btw, written and directed by Vince Gilligan) has a bit of an unsettled feeling to it because it was kind of treading water, waiting to see what happened with DD and the series. Nothing too monumental could happen with the partnership or the plot because it wasnât clear to anyone what would happen next with the show: whether it would end or continue, whether DD would be involved or not.
So we have a story about Mulder and Scully making peace with not having a significant impact on the worldâe.g. not bringing about world peace, not introducing invisible bodies to science. Instead, they are content to delightfully share a beer and comment that they have made one another âpretty happyâ (as Scully says about Mulder). Through the jinni character, they seem to take the lesson that they can enjoy being with one another, accept the simple happiness that their relationship brings them. Rather than wish for success that comes too easily, they take joy in the little things with one another.
Comparing this episode to the Penultimate Partner episodes that come before, we can really see how Mulder and Scullyâs dynamic has evolved by season seven. We have a Scully who is much more open to supernatural phenomena, for example, and whose skepticism seems more like a reflex or a defense mechanism now. Scullyâs move towards belief is partially reflected in the plot of the episode: the X-file here really isnât even science fiction. It is just straight up fantasy or magical realism. Aside from Scully's brief mention of a disease to explain what happened to the mouthless man in the cold open, no plausible scientific explanation for the jinni's long life or wishes is really even floated.
Scully is delighted by the discovery of the invisible body, and Mulder is visibly delighted by her delight. Heâs also frustrated by her retreat into doubt when the body disappears, of course. But even the reversal into her old skepticism is half-hearted, as she soon after she's engaging in discussion with Mulder about what his final wish was. This is consistent with the overall blurring of the old hardline believer-skeptic dynamic we see in season 7. Itâs also peeking ahead to Scullyâs coming role as resident basement believer in season 8.Â
The last scene, with the beers and Caddyshack, is meant to be a callback to djinni Jennâs comment that she wishes she could âlive my life moment by moment... enjoying it for what it is instead of... instead of worrying about what it isn't.â Mulder, we see, is taking a cue from her. (And good for him, as we almost never see these characters do this. Except on rare baseball-related occasions.)
However, this episodeâs position right before Requiemâand right before the events of season 8âends up giving this scene a real bittersweet bite. We know, after Requiem, that they were probably a romantic couple at this time. We know, after Requiem, that this time is going to be their last happy time together for a long while. Later in season 8, we learn that one lingering wish of Scullyâs in season 7 is that she wanted to conceive a child with Mulder. And of course we know, after Requiem, that she gets her wishâbut with a vicious catch, with a terrible side effect, much like what happens with the jinniâs wishes.Â
So thatâs my academic thesis on that. I know others have pointed out the existence of this type of episode before. What did I miss? Do you think I am wrong to leave out seasons 1, 2, 8, and 9? Why do we think these episodes focus so much on distorted perception? Interested to hear othersâ thoughts (if they make it through this lol).
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