Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/xfiles/x-files3/dpo.rvw

Text File | 1996-09-22 | 9.2 KB | 169 lines

                       Fire from Heaven

                       by Sarah Stegall

                copyright 1995 by Sarah Stegall


     What happens when a total loser acquires supernatural
powers and harnesses the lightning itself?  We get "Beavis and
Butthead meet 'The X-Files'".  Friday night's episode,
"D.P.O.", gave us a much needed breather after the hectic pace
of the "Anasazi" trilogy, with a solid performance from
Giovanni Ribisi married to a minimalist X-File plot.  But
before I get into the review, I must admit that I suffered
from split personality watching the episode.  I was distracted
from the plot because I kept focusing too much on Mulder and
Scully's every word, wondering how their recent experiences
had marked them.  I don't feel this is what Carter or writer
Howard Gordon had in mind for the viewer.  When I could focus
on the show, I found it enjoyable.  "D.P.O." is a respectable
episode, not groundbreaking but not bad either.  But my
enjoyment of it suffered from my own over-hyped expectations.
     Talk about your missing time!  There wasn't much
connection between the events of  "D.P.O." and the trilogy it
followed.  I was hoping--nay, demanding--a close look at the
way Mulder and Scully are going to integrate the life-changing
experiences they have just gone through.  But "D.P.O." cuts
right past all that and picks up their lives *five months*
after the events that concluded "Paperclip".  I suppose we are
expected to just assume that Mulder has had five months of
intense grief therapy,  or Scully has started drinking heavily
in private, or however people deal with life-changing events
they refuse to talk about.
     If I was unclear last week in my review, let me be very
plain here:  we cannot simply go back to 'business as usual'
without leaving the audience feeling cheated.  There is no
"reset" button in life.  What distinguishes soap opera from
more serious drama is not the plot elements--comas,
abductions, amnesia, the murders of close family members--but
the manner of resolving them.  Soap operas let the
ramifications of a coma or an amnesia episode drag on for
years and years and years without any resolution, much as
Chris Carter apparently plans to do.  Serious drama (or
melodrama) will show us the resonances set up in our
protagonists' souls, show us the changes in their
personalities and the impact on their lives.  Of course the
heroes will continue to live their lives, but those lives will
be flavored by what they have experienced, just like any
human.  If Mulder and Scully come back from "Paperclip" as the
same duo that went into it, then they really are becoming Ken
and Barbie with badges.
     Either that, or Mulder wakes up in the shower with his
father calling him on the phone, and the entire series returns
to Season Two.  I don't mind this--I *liked* Season Two--but
in that case why waste our time and raise our frustration
level with "Paperclip"?.
     The issue is not incompetence, but vision.  There can be
no question by now that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson
can handle sensitive portrayals of subtle but deeply felt
emotion.  Two actors this good are probably chomping at the
bit to expand and develop characters they have been playing
more than two years.  There can be no question, after Howard
Gordon's exquisite end scene in "Conduit" with Mulder showing
us his tortured private side, or Chris Carter's excellent
glimpse into Scully's complex persona in "Irresistible", that
the writing talent is on hand.  What's missing is the *will*
to take the plunge into the truly risky territory of character
development.  Carter dealt this hand to us in
"Anasazi/Blessing Way/Paperclip", but seems to be backing away
from the table now.  Well, I hope he doesn't.  I know Carter
has said he is reluctant to take the focus off the X-Files and
put it on Mulder and Scully.  However, there is a difference
between an *episode* which focuses on Mulder and Scully, and a
*plot* which centers on them.  In "Anasazi / Blessing Way /
Paperclip", for example, both the episode and the plot
centered on the duo.  Their personal problems WERE the plot.
However, in an episode like "Irresistible" or "Tooms", the
relationship was allowed to take center stage only a couple of
times during the episode, and detracted not at all from these
two exceptional stories.  So it IS possible to focus an
episode both on the agents and on their investigation.
     I'm not going to start really grumbling for a while,
however.  Television conditions us to instant gratification,
and the X-Files audience can be extremely demanding.  I am
willing to let whatever maturation is planned take place over
a longer span than seven days.  But I want to see it.  The
audience's patience is not infinite, as David Lynch learned in
the second season of "Twin Peaks".  Eventually, you have to
deliver on your promises.  I am waiting, patiently.
     So how was "D.P.O."?  Rather better than I expected,
actually.
     Mulder and Scully go to Oklahoma (which, as we all know,
is celebrated for its evergreen trees and mountains) to find
out why an unusually high number of deaths by lightning have
been taking place.  Their search quickly focuses on a truly
pitiful example of human failure, Darren Peter Oswald
("D.P.O."), whose major goal in life seems to be to run away
with his high school remedial reading teacher, Sharon Kiveat
(Karen Witter).  The fact that this buffoon also seems to have
gained the ability to focus lightning through his body
complicates his life enormously, by introducing into it
something that actually might have value.  Given the gift of
Zeus, he uses it to suck down the lightning to fry random farm
animals (giving new meaning to "cow tipping") and cause
traffic collisions for his and his friend Zero's (Jack Black)
amusement.  Anyone who annoys him can become the target for
this deadly power--even his friend.
     Beautifully played by Giovanni Ribisi, Darren comes
across as a stereotypical passive-aggressive white trash
slacker, a waste of protoplasm even to his own mother.  [I
swear I went to high school with this guy.  We all went to
high school with this guy.] Ribisi's performance is top-notch,
as convincing as Zeljko Ivanek's in "Roland", the first season
episode involving a retarded janitor.  While Darren is not
exactly retarded, he is certainly capricious, degenerate, and
ignorant.  In him Howard Gordon uncovers the true heart of
evil--a stupidity too self-centered to notice (or care) that
the figures around him are people.  When Darren finally forces
Mrs. Kiveat to accompany him, he rambles around trying to
figure out whether it would be preferable to steal a Japanese
car or an American car (and even starts to boost Mulder and
Scully's own car).  He finally overreaches himself in killing
the skeptical sheriff, and is put into a psychiatric
institution in a high-voltage containment room.  This made me
very uneasy--I don't want this guy locked up in a government
institution.  One shudders to think what the Cigarette-Smoking
Man could do with Darren Peter Oswald on the payroll.
     Howard Gordon, a veteran X-Files writer who wrote
"Conduit", "Fallen Angel", and "Dod Kalm", turns out a
characteristically straight-ahead episode.  There were none of
the 90 degree plot turns so common in The X-Files:  we knew
from the beginning who the bad guy was and what he could do.
One of the scenes I particularly liked was the scene where
Sheriff Teller (Ernie Lively) is grilling Scully about the
medical evidence.  I loved watching him  give Agent Scully a
version of the "are you kidding me?" speech she has given
Mulder many times, while Mulder just stands there and says
nothing.  Rather than seeing this as a failure on his part to
back up his partner, I saw it as evidence of his respect for
her.  Mulder knows that Scully doesn't need defending, and
despite her "Feel free to jump in anytime" remark, she knows
it too.  This is real equality, when he treats her the same
way he treats himself--no compromises, no hedging, no
concessions.
       Director Kim Manners and writer Howard Gordon gave us
an X-File in MTV mode, with some good if obviously stagy
scenes.  The best was probably the death of Zero in the
parking lot, falling to the pavement in a shower of small
change, a perfect metaphor for his life.  And standing
silhouetted on the roof above him, against a classic Steven
Spielberg sky, is Beavis-as-Zeus himself, Darren Oswald.  I
loved the shot where Mulder and Scully draw down on the
elevator in the hospital (without dropping their guns,
mirabile dictu), aiming high and low like a grey flannel
version of Mutt and Jeff.  This is one instance where the
difference in the actors' heights makes for a real plus.  And
what FBI agent does not live for the opportunity to race off
down a hall, crying, "I'm going after Oswald!"?  Mulder's
creepy sequence in the red-lit stairwell was good if heavy
handed.  But we needed to *see*, not hear about, the scene
where Darren Oswald tells his teacher about his "special
powers".  The teacher was a cardboard bimbo--why in God's name
did she go with Darren?  And I could have done without some of
the self-consciously hip soundtrack.
     Considered strictly on its own merits, this was a fair
episode.  It didn't disappoint, but there were none of those
moments where you catch your breath and say, "Wow!"  I give it
three sunflower seeds out of five.