Plus One

When I caught up to the third episode of this new season of The X-Files and saw that it was written by Chris Carter, I actually cringed. He was the writer responsible for that terrible season opener that almost made me bail on the show entirely. But get him back to self-contained stories, it seems, and he can still manage to pull out a decent episode of the show he created.

"Plus One" saw Mulder and Scully investigating a series of unusual suicides in which the victims claimed to be seeing dopplegangers of themselves before their deaths. The agents circle in on a pair of schizophrenic twins who seem to have some sort of supernatural power to have orchestrated the deaths. But before they can figure out exactly what's happening, the hunters become the hunted -- Mulder and Scully begin to see copies of themselves, an omen that they'll die next.

I was just talking about how a lot of television is opting for the big moment of surprise instead of showing us important character scenes. This episode got it right. It almost slavishly followed the classic X-Files formula. Mulder was spinning wild theories, some wide of the mark. Scully was skeptical, though just shaken enough for a little doubt to creep in. You absolutely knew that one of them was going to be targeted and seeing their own doppleganger by the final act; the only surprise is that you probably didn't expect it to be both of them. (I didn't, anyway.)

Instead of going for surprises (that wouldn't have surprised), the episode spent a fair amount of time on the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Since the show never really got all that specific about their original transition to more than friends, it kind of works that we don't really know quite how they're back to just being friends again. But showing us how they interact with each other now is interesting. They get separate hotel rooms, but they're still there to comfort each other when needed (in a rather intimate way). I do wish that there hadn't been quite the gender-biased emphasis on Scully's aging (more so than Mulder's), but it was nice to see their conversation veer into this more personal and deep area than they ever used to venture.

The guest characters were fun too. It was all about pairs. Not only was there the sister and brother at the core of the mystery, but there were dual personalities residing within each of them. We also got comic relief from the paired nurses that interacted with Scully at the hospital. The characters who saw their own murderous dopplegangers were fun too: a hard-partying clubber and a sleazy lawyer. It was all a pretty fun little stew of quirky ingredients.

Compared to the last Chris Carter-penned X-Files episode, I was downright blown away. In the broader spectrum, though, I'd give "Plus One" a B. I might just be back to a point where I don't have to feel as embarrassed about watching The X-Files. (And I hear the next episode in my queue was a particularly great one.)