Wine and an X-Phile #01006: Shadows

“Do you know how difficult it is to fake your own death? Only one man has pulled it off. Elvis.”

Air Date: October 22, 1993
Directed by: Michael Katleman
Written by: Glen Morgan & James Wong

Filed Under: Monster of the Week

Synopsis:

After several deaths seem to be tied to the same person, Mulder and Scully head to Philadelphia to investigate.

Review:

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s really much wrong with this episode, sans it being a bit boring or predictable, but there’s something about it I don’t really like and couldn’t connect with the episode truly as much as I thought. I think maybe one of the reasons the episode doesn’t jive with me is that there are a lot of unnecessary unanswered questions, especially for an episode that isn’t supposed to be tied with any overarching plot. Why did we have to see the trio from the mysterious agency? They seemed to only be there because of the way that the duo was killed because it was so unusual and not necessarily because they were terrorists and potentially tied to the greater plot with the frim and their arms deals. It kind of felt weird and misplaced, and I guess one could say they were just there to throw you off of the ending, but there really was no need.

I do think it’s interesting we never truly get a sense of Howard Graves as a person. He’s pretty morally grey, even in ghost form, and only really looked out for Lauren - and in that, it seemed only because she was the age his late daughter would have been. He was pretty adamant about killing off anyone who got near her, whether good or bad or how it affect her innocence, and it made him pretty unpredictable which helped with the creepy factor. I think the added tie in that the firm had been doing things that were grounded in reality instead of helping some random experiment or abnormal substance was a good touch. I personally connect and am creeped out more by real-life horrors and terrible people who are that way without the help of paranormal things, and tieing the two together made that enjoyable.

The episode has some creepier moments, specifically the first scene of the episode when we see the two muggers getting killed in the beginning. It had a good slasher film quality to it and I think set up the episode nicely. The inconsistent anger of Graves, even when he was trying to tell Lauren how he died, made him unpredictable and kept up the mystique of who he was and kept the ending an ok surprise.

Extras:

The episode was inspired by the 1982 horror film, The Entity. Some of the filming of the effects that happened during the scene where the attackers come to get Lauren at her home took too long, and pushed the crew out of their noise curfew time:

All of a sudden this [naked] guy appeared on his porch across the street. He was screaming obscenities at the crew, telling us to go home, that we had no right to be there [....] We ignored him and continued filming. I was determined to get the day and get us out of there as quickly as possible. He blustered on for another minute or so, then gave up. We wrapped around 12:30 a.m. It was one of the most ridiculous on-location moments I can recall during my five years on The X-Files." (X Marks the Spot (On Location with The X-Files), pp. 36-37) (original source)

Favorite Prop(s):

I don’t know. The To-day / to-morrows plaque is just so memorable.

MSR:

There were just so many times they just had to be close to each other.

Rating:

3/5. I know that I said I hated it, but on a whole the episode is fine. I think it’s a good one to rewatch only after having not seen it for a while. I usually end up watching these episodes a couple of times, and when writing the post but Hulu was down when I started to write and found that even when it was accessible again I had no real want to watch it.

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