Disproving CSM's Conjecture in En Ami

CSM postulates that Scully and Mulder aren't together because she doesn't fully trust him; that, although she's drawn to powerful men, she is afraid to open herself up to them.

"You'd die for Mulder, but you won't allow yourself to love him."

The problem is, he's wrong.

Because CSM mixed up her fatal flaw with Mulder's.

Self-Denial and Self-Sacrifice

CSM's theory: Scully rules herself by denial, and Mulder offers himself up as the sacrificial lamb. How is he wrong?

Scully's flaw is self-sacrifice, putting everything she covets from life on hold to join Mulder on his quest (comedically summed up in Bad Blood's "I do it all for you, Mulder! All for you!") The Starbuck-Ahab complex she harbored since childhood-- expressing her love through devotion-- kept her in the car the first year; but the Truth soon became as much about her losses as it did Mulder's tragedies. Unlike Mulder, however, Scully strives to have a life uncomplicated by mess and trauma and the constant grind. So, she sits in the car, year after year, waiting for her partner to adapt to their changing dynamic (which he did not do for almost six of those years.) Her own fears and insecurities are placed under the bootheel of the work; but when life becomes too complicated or emotionally clouded, Scully strikes out in confused rebellion (e.g. Never Again, Milagro, and All Things.) Moreover, Scully is the one who sacrificed what she held dear-- stability, a family, something other than 24/7 monsters and conspiracies-- to bear the cross of Mulder's quest, not the other way 'round. (The realization-- that she does want this life-- and shift does not occur until All Things, a few episodes after En Ami.)

Mulder's fatal flaw is self-denial (and self-punishment): he set aside a normal life out of a determination to find or avenge his sister. If Mulder was self-sacrificial, he would have let Scully walk out of his life a thousand times over and born that heartbreak silently, alone; instead, he stormed out after her and broke down his walls to convince her to stay. Furthermore, his self-denial is ever present even in tender moments, drawing away from emotional vulnerability once danger is past and shying away even faster if Scully draws attention to the present moment. Mulder is the one to deny himself love and a life with Scully (Home, Detour, Dreamland I, Arcadia, etc.), not the one who sacrificed everything he wanted to stay on his quest-- this is what he wants. (The change from obsessive pursuit to measured search begins in The Unnatural, changes wholly in Amor Fati and Millennium, and reaches its conclusion in Closure.)

CSM's Observations

The reality that CSM observed both agents for years and years and came to the exact opposite conclusion is baffling.

He concluded that Mulder sacrificed normalcy for the Almighty Mission, projecting his own Messiah complex onto his 'protege' and patting himself on the back whenever Mulder was, yet again, tossed to the jaws of Death for the "greater good." He also concluded that Scully stayed in the basement because of the raw power she smelled on Mulder, keeping a cold yet lustful distance because she was afraid to risk her womanly love on the all-consuming passion of his might.

How very dime store novel of Old Smokey.

Both assumptions are, of course, very wrong.

Mulder Dreaded "More" While Scully Hoped for It

Scully gave many unsubtle hints through the series that she was ready for more with Mulder: her willingness to go down with him in Tooms, her overt jealousy in Syzygy, her pointed inquiry about his family genetics in Home, her displacement and hurt in The Field Where I Died and Never Again and The End and The Beginning and One Son, her "we just keep driving" in Dreamland I, her unspoken 'secret' that was practically ripped from her chest in Milagro, her flirting in The Unnatural, her IVF request, and on and on.

Scully is by nature reticent with her emotions, fearful to fully open up lest she be hurt or become a burden; but in Mulder's case, she's reiterated over and over (Irresistible and Elegy) that their relationship falls into the latter, not former, category. In Emily she is, once again, "alone"; however, the context to her statement is vitally important. In the hospital, she hoped for Mulder to claim a place by her and her daughter's side as co-parent; but when he uncomfortably withdrew instead, it proved that he still wasn't ready for "more." Scully was alone in places Mulder couldn't fill; and so, she said goodbye to that hope, alone; then to her daughter, alone; and bore the little girl's death, alone. The burden of her fully opened heart was too heavy, she assumed, for Mulder... and in a way, she was right-- not until Fight the Future, when forced to confront "them", did Mulder finally acknowledge it. Until then, sacrificially tucking her heart back inside her chest-- for both their sakes-- was what Scully deemed the best course of action. She sticks around for her own reasons, as she says in Memento Mori; but those don't exclude the hope that Mulder will someday "settle down, live something approaching a normal life." (Her plans change in All Things-- but she's not there, yet.)

All those years, it was Mulder who was more emotionally distant. He was content with his life, happy to spin tires down the tarmac forever with his partner. Mulder was willing to deny himself into eternity if it meant not having to sacrifice an aspect of the life or career he was comfortable with and nervous to change for 'more.' It's why he was so afraid in Fight the Future and so proud of himself in The Unnatural (the warmup), Amor Fati (the big swing), and Millennium (the victorious homerun.) Scully is the only one-in-five billion he has: in the past, he could tease about passing genetic muster, about his boyish agility, about so much more, but to act on it? It took him four years to initiate a hug (post here) and seven years to approach a label of sorts for their relationship. Mulder's an overly cautious man, more pessimistic than optimistic when it comes to people sticking around; and any traditional, long-term relationship he'd witnessed had broken down or was held together by deadened respect and a few bratty kids.

Now it's Season 7, he's learned his lessons, and they're here, together.

Or were, until Scully dipped on a sketchy roadtrip with their enemy.

Conclusion

The most unrealistic part of this episode (amid a host of several others) was that Scully, despite hearing the drivel CSM peddled the entire drive, decided that he had anything worthwhile to say.

Thank you for reading~.

Enjoy!

dying at scully calling mulder from her stakeout to complain like “i’m cold” 🥺 “this is boring” 🥺🥺 “i’m gonna die from malnutrition” 🥺🥺🥺 girl you are not subtle

BLEEDIN’ ME DRY LIKE A GODDAMN VAMPIRE

@calimanc okay the william part. i know this won't be popular but i also love it lol (surprise, surprise)

i completely understand why people hate that scully gave william up, but i just don't see any other choice. if mulder didn't leave (because dd sucked lol) it may have worked for them to keep him. but children on a show like this really change things.

it's so freaking bittersweet seeing scully & mulder with william. it's something they both wanted more than they ever let on, than they ever dared to voice.

mulder is william's father, i really don't think there's any doubt about it. they were sleeping together, they were in a romantic relationship, they love each other beyond what anyone can understand. they're two people filled with miracles and this time, they got one they wanted most. it's fucking beautiful. it may undermine her struggle with infertility, like so many other shows do, but this show is built on the impossible & the fantastic, the paranormal & miracles & magic & science. imo, it's perfectly in line with everything else. mulder & scully are the light in dark places, and they desperately needed some light themselves at this time. it's so painful once they're back together and they don't have william, but the logistics would have been so much harder with a baby on the run.

and the truth is, i think it was the only way it could really go. i don't think there was another option. scully would never give up her baby, except when she thinks it's the only way to keep him safe & ensure he lives a full life, a normal life, the possibility of a happy life. it's something she never recovers from. it's the only thing, besides losing mulder, that would break her. it takes scully two decades to face it, and not until she's forced to when they find william. scully is so avoidant of her trauma and she can only face it when she has mulder to put her back up against. mulder lived in his trauma for most of his life. by the revival, i think he's finally started to move "past" it. but william is a deep wound for them both. they lost their chance to be parents, to be a family. to experience their version of normal with a child they always wanted. i can't even comprehend the pain & grief & loss & trauma of this. but somehow, i think this made mulder more stable. he had to live with consequences of it, and grief & some guilt, but not the same way scully had to. if there's one thing these two are good at, it's putting the other first when they need it. mulder sets aside his own because scully can't be rational, can't be strong the way she's always been. this is her weakest spot, her mother mentioning william is what made her absolutely lose it when maggie died. it's sooooo painful, literally beyond comprehension (for me) but i've always been a sucker for pain & grief & angst. it's one of the most human experiences and ddga are just. so good at portraying it.

(csm is a LIAR — it's possible he had a hand in it, given en ami. but he did not impregnate scully. i know people go on about the medicine & science, but like. it's sci-fi. the science doesn't need to be real or accurate. like how many medical dramas are out there with inaccurate medicine lolllll anyway, i do think it's a possibility he gave her some kind of medication to reverse the effects of what they did to her before OR the chip finally healed her. the chip caused her to go into remission, and it's a possibility the technology of the chip is what that guy was trying to give scully. the cure to all disease. anyway. that's just my two cents on that.)

dana scully x jagged little pill

pathetic men x "right through you" (track 5/12)

he would not fucking say that (call her dana in an email)

The X-Files - “En Ami”

Written by William B. Davis

February 11, 2000 (GOLD)

The moment that would take on a whole new significance in the revival 18 years later...

Scully insists she would never lie to Mulder in these trimmed lines:

“With what he has now, he may just live forever...”

There's nothing more that really needs to be said about how horrifyingly creepy & out of character En Ami is. But re-watching it, my main takeaway was the weird ass scene with Scully's landlord. Not only that he apparently recognized CSM but not Mulder, but also the fact that they've canonically had keys to each others places since like at LEAST season 3?? It's just such bafflingly terrible writing.

TIL that William B. Davis may have written the original draft for En Ami, but it was heavily redrafted by Chris Carter:

""En Ami aired shortly before 7X22: Requiem, where Scully learns she is pregnant; the En Ami script was originally William B. Davis’s but heavily rewritten by Chris Carter, and the addition of that scene where the CSM puts on gloves looking at a sleeping Scully is certainly Carter’s. Seasons 8 and 9 explored various possibilities for William’s conception, like divine miracle, restored fertility by contact with the alien Ship in Africa, IVF with Mulder as a sperm donor, implanted alien/human hybrid or organic Supersoldier, triggered pregnancy via tap water additives or Scully’s chip; and through all those developments the En Ami scene was not referenced again and the theory of the CSM being responsible was just another theory not followed through.""

En Ami - Agent Scully lets sympathy cloud her better judgment when she accompanies the Cigarette Smoking Man on a road trip and wonders if he's as evil as she always thought.

Little Green Men - With the X-Files shut down, Mulder travels to Puerto Rico on a tip from his mentor in the Senate to uncover the reason behind the sudden reactivation of a remote long abandoned SETI-like communications station.

my struggle iii aka the en ami rehash ™️

Top 5 episodes of TXF that you dislike

Thanks for asking @scullys-scalpel! I had to go through the episode list to remind myself of the ones I didn't like, and there were more than I was aware of (looking at you seasons 9 and 11...). BUT I was asked for my top 5 dislikes, so I went with the ones I have a visceral negative reaction to.

1. #Gender Bender (#s1e14)

I first watched this episode when I very, very young (like we're talking 10 years old) and I just thought it was so fucked up on so many levels LOL. Not only did the whole sex-pheromone/handing touching thing weird me out but I was also very unsettled by Scully throwing up after escaping Brother Andrew's seduction (I mean, I get it). I have a weird phobia around vomiting and combined with this ep's weirdness my anxiety was ratcheted up, so it's not one that I have revisited.

2. #The Gift (#s8e11)

Which brings me to this ep lol. I just can't. I could barely get through the first airing and haven't watched it since.

3. #Firewalker (#s2e09)

I am putting this ep on my list because of how much it terrified me as a kid. I was about 11 years old when it aired and it gave me such nightmares LOL. I had built it up so much in my mind that I avoided it in syndication and hadn't watched it since its first airing. That is, until I was showing the series to my husband and he made me watch it. Now, as an adult, it is much-less scary than I remembered but I nevertheless still turned my head when the spores burst through people's necks. The scene that absolutely terrifies me (still to this day) is when Scully finds an infected Jesse who is making those inhuman gasping sounds. It's a shame that this episode resides in my fear-centre as I completely missed the fact that Bradley Whitford played Trepkos until this most recent viewing.

4. #Roadrunners (#s8e04)

The saving grace of this episode is, of course, Gillan's acting but that's really about it. I remember thinking "what the hell did I just watch?" after it aired. The concept is just so bizarre and I thought it was ill-timed what with Scully's pregnancy. I'm sure that the writers thought that it only enhanced the urgency of the storyline by putting her and her unborn child's life in peril, but after having just come off the nail-biting season premiere, I thought it was too much, too soon to put Scully through that trauma. Not to mention that such physical trauma would likely put her pregnancy in serious jeopardy. It was just such an ill-conceived episode.

5. #En Ami (#s7e15)

I immediately disliked this episode from the first time it aired as it raised very serious questions about Scully's consent and bodily autonomy, that weren't really dealt with (until that infamous, completely inappropriate, retcon job in season 11, which was such a cop-out IMO). I was well into highschool when this aired and even then I remember being so disturbed by the implications that Scully was drugged and later undressed (and god knows what else) by CSM while she was unconscious. Not only that, but I thought the whole 'adventure' was completely out of character for her and such a slap in the face to Mulder. Sure, he's ditched her countless times before without rhyme or reason, but what she did was beyond the pale: no matter her so-called 'for humanity' motivation, she went off with the ONE PERSON who has SINGLE-HANDEDLY orchestrated so much destruction in Mulder's life. Obviously this created some very serious tension between them (that, I have to admit, is handled so deliciously in fanfic), but I found it jarring that there could be this level of betrayal in one episode (so shortly after Mulder lost his mother and put the mystery of his sister to rest) and a (presumed) consummation of their relationship a mere two episodes later. It just doesn't compute for me. I understand that the impetus for this episode was Bill Davis wanting an opportunity to work more with Gillian, and kudos to that I guess, but the storyline and its implications are so problematic that I just can't respect it.

And there you have it! My top 5 most disliked X Files episodes. Thanks for reading :-)

thinking about this too much and i'm going straight to requiem with it.

if mulder knew during en ami, had been going to doctors...with the way scully's cancer was interfered with, her infertility, her pregnancy. i think it makes sense that mulder was also being monitored & interfered with. csm would have known.

part of what i like about en ami is he's finally treating her as more than an experiment or as a way to get to mulder. he didn't want scully to tell mulder about this, it was a caveat for him telling her anything. he spends the time psychoanalyzing her and trying to make him see as more than a villain. he tries to humanize himself. tells her she can have the cure for cancer, all human ailments. he tells her how she'd die for mulder but won't let herself love him. everyone knows she would die for mulder, sacrifice anything for him, give him anything. and it goes both ways.

csm may know a lot, but he doesn't know everything. he can plan for a lot, but he can't plan for everything.

if what happened to mulder from biogenesis through amor fati is the cause of his brain disease, something csm stole, had surgically removed from mulder and put into his own brain...was there concern for himself? granted, it couldn't have worked. it was a failed experiment, but having part of mulder implanted into him that developed a disease?

he did want a cure. and if it did exist, he could have taken it for himself. leaving mulder & scully with nothing.

csm doesn't know everything and he needed to figure out what scully knew. if she knew, not only would she have been driven as a doctor & as someone who was infected with a deadly cancer, but she would want it for mulder.

in the end, scully leaves with a blank disc and csm (presumably) throws the real one into the water, unlikely to by seen again. but that doesn't mean he doesn't have the cure. something, i think he would be interested in. to save his chosen few should the need arise.

but before that can happen, mulder is abducted. i know most people interpret mulder's reaction as angry, and that's part of it. his fear, especially concerning scully's tendency toward belief (beyond the sea, all souls). i think it's more complicated than that though. he knows about his brain disease. he remembers scully's cancer too well, her abduction, emily. mulder knows what scully would sacrifice for him. he knows what she sacrifices for others & the world. her safety, her autonomy, literally anything she has to offer. he knows what he almost did to get her cure for cancer...if mulder told scully about his brain disease, if she went along with csm without even knowing about it. there's no telling what she would do if she did know.

(mulder didn't want her to be used again, the way they both have been. he knows the pain of manipulation. he knows how her abduction affected her, and himself. they both know loss at the hands of this conspiracy several times over. he doesn't want this to be scully's life.)

the audience doesn't always understand how crazy dana scully is, but fox mulder knows very well.

in requiem, mulder tells scully the cost is too high. not for all the reasons they've been told, but the personal cost. he's at a point where he's starting to believe it isn't worth it. he wants her to live, like she wanted him to live. well, differently. mulder wants her to pursue the normal life she doesn't have, that she left behind to stay on the x files & to be with him. mulder was going to keep scully safe, he wasn't going to let her be abducted again. he convinces her to stay, but scully won't let him go alone. someone needs to have his back.

i don't know if mulder knew he would be abducted, that they were taking abductees with the brain activity he exhibited on biogenesis through amor fati. either way, he gets taken and not her.

scully doesn't find out about his brain disease until after mulder's been abducted. she denies the possibility because he would have told her, like she told him. when doggett suggests he doesn't trust her, she throws water in his face in a crowded bullpen. scully finds gibson in the desert, wanders the desert in search of mulder. hoping he'll turn up, having dreams of what he's going through.

scully suffers without him, has her prayers answered when he returns from the dead. she saves him from becoming a monster, and his brain disease is cured. and what if...this is what was on the disc? turning these people into hybrids eliminated human vulnerabilities, cured diseases, brought them back from the dead.

csm couldn't actually have scully know that. is a cure that takes away your humanity worth it? would she have found a way to counter it? (well, yes because she did.)

En Ami was bad the first time around but after the revival i just want to skin him alive