The X-Files: Ascension   Rewatch 
March 26, 2020 9:22 PM - Season 2, Episode 6 - Subscribe

In the second installment of a two-part episode, Duane Barry heads off for an alien rendezvous with Scully in the trunk of his car, while Mulder puts the pieces together and figures out where he's gone.
posted by orange swan (3 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I thought it unrealistic that Mulder would have been left alone with Duane Barry and/or be allowed to choke him without anyone even noticing.

Sheila Larken was so perfectly cast as Scully's mother, as well as playing a good character in her own right. You can see about half of Scully's personal qualities in Margaret Scully (the other half she inherited from her father): Margaret looks like Scully, except for her hair colour; Margaret has Scully's essential kindness and perceptiveness, if not her drive and discipline. Margaret's relationship with Mulder is always fun to watch too. She's always very kind towards and accepting of him, and never blames him for anything that happens to Scully or Melissa, if her patience and understanding do get perhaps a little frayed later on, and for his part he's always a little on the awkward side with her, like a teenage boy meeting his girlfriend's mom. I'm glad Larken enjoyed a good run on the show.

David Duchovny did his own stunts with the Skyfall Mountain tram (of course they would have used a safety cable/harness). The man must have a good head for heights. Heights don't usually bother me, but I could hardly even watch that sequence and found myself thinking I won't be able to get into a tram in future unless I can forget about this episode.

Speaking of stunts, while her stunts weren't nearly as flashy as Duchovny's, it wouldn't have been easy for Gillian Anderson to throw herself down on the floor of her apartment or climb into the trunk of that car so late in her pregnancy.

Mulder and Scully go through a LOT of traumatic events in their work. Time and time again they they get attacked, they get abducted, they get injured, they nearly get killed/murdered, they kill multiple people (always justifiably, but still), and they just... bounce back every time and go on like it's nothing. They only act traumatized when they actually lose someone or when there are other ongoing physical effects such as Scully's infertilty and cancer, while realistically they would have gotten completely messed up with PTSD early in the show's run.

And now poor Mulder doesn't know where Scully is, and of course the trauma of that is going to be compounded by the older trauma of his sister's disappearance, and by the feeling that he failed to prevent both.
posted by orange swan at 2:16 PM on March 27, 2020 [2 favorites]


Huh. They licensed 'Red Right Hand' a decade and a half before 'Peaky Blinders' did again.

Around this episode, X-Files became a 'must watch' show, one of the first, next to TNG. I was in grade 10, ~15yo at the time.

I found "my people" in college about a 1/3 of the way through season 4 and ritualistically watched together from season 5 through to the end of season 7 (May 2000.. we didn't get around to the last few all together).


Mulder's pretty dickish, perhaps understandably and from the audience justified, but I so feel him knowing when one's in the right and everyone else if chivvying you or something and you're tired and it's 'hey, fuck off.'

That kind of behaviour typically gets one fired.


CSM: Kill Mulder and you risk one man's religion into a crusade.
Ratboy: What about Scully?
CSM: We've taken care of that.
Rb: How?
CSM: I'll tell you only what you need to know.
Rb: I have every right to know.
CSM: You have no rights, only orders to be carried out. If you have a problem with that, we'll make other arrangements. /leaves
posted by porpoise at 8:04 PM on March 29, 2020


The cigarette butts in the car - even back then as an in-car smoker, someone leaving their butts in my car would be super duper obvious.
posted by porpoise at 8:05 PM on March 29, 2020


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