The X-Files: Max (Part 2/2) Rewatch
May 27, 2020 8:18 PM - Season 4, Episode 18 - Subscribe
Mulder and Scully continue their investigation of Flight 549 and discover that it may have been sacrificed by the military in order to obtain alien technology.
Scully never even knew Agent Pendrell's first name. Ouch. (By the way, it's Sean.)
Scully said in the previous episode that Pendrell had been shot in the lung. Wouldn't that have been survivable if he got surgery immediately, as he would have? Or was she wrong about that?
I'm surprised Mulder would have been aware of the Tickle Me Elmo craze.
Scully compares Mulder to Max. Mulder's Oxford education, professional status, and good looks are all that separate him from obsessed, dysfunctional, possibly mentally ill fringe people like Max and Sharon. (Notice how Mulder's home office in the Virginia farm house he lives in with Scully in the 2008 movie looks quite a bit like Max's trailer?) It's no wonder they look up to him.
Mulder and Garrett's undertone yet threatening conversation was a good minute of tense drama. As was the scene of the Flight 549 plane crash, in which even the flight attendant panicked and sat on the floor sobbing. Those poor people.
posted by orange swan at 11:12 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
Scully said in the previous episode that Pendrell had been shot in the lung. Wouldn't that have been survivable if he got surgery immediately, as he would have? Or was she wrong about that?
I'm surprised Mulder would have been aware of the Tickle Me Elmo craze.
Scully compares Mulder to Max. Mulder's Oxford education, professional status, and good looks are all that separate him from obsessed, dysfunctional, possibly mentally ill fringe people like Max and Sharon. (Notice how Mulder's home office in the Virginia farm house he lives in with Scully in the 2008 movie looks quite a bit like Max's trailer?) It's no wonder they look up to him.
Mulder and Garrett's undertone yet threatening conversation was a good minute of tense drama. As was the scene of the Flight 549 plane crash, in which even the flight attendant panicked and sat on the floor sobbing. Those poor people.
posted by orange swan at 11:12 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
The motive for intercepting the flights seems to have been to take back the alien technology that Sharon stole, but why couldn't they just manufacture another one? If the point is to take it back to preserve their secrecy, they could surely have been more subtle about taking it back than they were. And I've commented in the previous post about what a bad idea it was to try to shoot Max aboard the flight. The whole idea of alien/government hijacking a plane to take back the thing Sharon stole is very contrived and implausible.
posted by orange swan at 4:39 PM on May 29, 2020
posted by orange swan at 4:39 PM on May 29, 2020
My apologia for the UFO wanting to take back the tech is more a move of denial of tech rather than covering up. My take on it is that human tech can't reproduce alien tech; we've just been salvaging alien components and trying to integrate them into our own.
UFO aliens want to nip it in the bud to deny humans the ability to reverse engineer breakthroughs that alien tech had made.
The attempted airplane assassinations are all crap. Should have put a random-looking agent as the passenger behind the target. Syringe jab with a pharmaceutical to induce 'natural causes' looking death.
So much easier to smuggle in, "It's my insulin!".
Mulder's enough of a weirdo (like my then fellow X-Files watchers still are) that it makes perfect sense that he'd be ironically aware and secretly amused by Elmo.
Scully's soliloquy comparing Fox to Max was captivating.
Bullet wounds are funny; it depends on the the angle and distance, and also the nature of the bullet creates a lot of variables. It missed vital organs, but the lung is highly vascularized (lots of blood going through it).
You can survive on just one lung, and having one lung filled with fluid (in this case, blood) isn't terminal. However, if Max lost enough blood (due to excessive damage from a specialized anti-personnel bullet, or even a regular bullet but hit a major internal artery) then he'd perish from low blood pressure (shock) if the IV saline drip wasn't enough in speed or volume before they could get him continuous transfusions.
He had a decently high BAC, so the internal bleed could be faster than it should have been.
(By the way, it's Sean.)
Ouch indeed!
posted by porpoise at 10:58 PM on May 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
UFO aliens want to nip it in the bud to deny humans the ability to reverse engineer breakthroughs that alien tech had made.
The attempted airplane assassinations are all crap. Should have put a random-looking agent as the passenger behind the target. Syringe jab with a pharmaceutical to induce 'natural causes' looking death.
So much easier to smuggle in, "It's my insulin!".
Mulder's enough of a weirdo (like my then fellow X-Files watchers still are) that it makes perfect sense that he'd be ironically aware and secretly amused by Elmo.
Scully's soliloquy comparing Fox to Max was captivating.
Bullet wounds are funny; it depends on the the angle and distance, and also the nature of the bullet creates a lot of variables. It missed vital organs, but the lung is highly vascularized (lots of blood going through it).
You can survive on just one lung, and having one lung filled with fluid (in this case, blood) isn't terminal. However, if Max lost enough blood (due to excessive damage from a specialized anti-personnel bullet, or even a regular bullet but hit a major internal artery) then he'd perish from low blood pressure (shock) if the IV saline drip wasn't enough in speed or volume before they could get him continuous transfusions.
He had a decently high BAC, so the internal bleed could be faster than it should have been.
(By the way, it's Sean.)
Ouch indeed!
posted by porpoise at 10:58 PM on May 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
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But ultimately, it avoided jumping a shark by jumping a ray/ skate. Or something. The plot kind of stalled for me.
Wow, so much leg room. And flight attendants in heels.
posted by porpoise at 10:56 PM on May 27, 2020 [1 favorite]