The Goldberg Variation - 12/19/99



"If he's got muddy Es and big loops, he's our boy."   ~ Sgt. Joe Friday


Yes, I know it's a week after the original broadcast of the episode, but I 
have an excuse: I had finals!

<Sigh> A nice, touching melodrama always gets to me. That has nothing to do 
with this episode. The title really says it all. Rube Goldberg was some 
scientist guy who invented those infamous "cause and effect" devices, like 
the game "Mouse Trap". The main character thinks that because hes basically 
invincible and everyone else must suffer more because of this, his life is 
all a mechanism of cause and effect. He survives being thrown off of a 
skyscraper and incidentally some mob guy ends up dangling by his shoestring 
from a ceiling fan: cause and effect... or something. This main guy (who's name 
I can't remember right now because my tape screwed up and I can't watch it 
again) thinks that in some way he can control, change, and influence the 
future even if he doesn't want to. Sound like someone we know?

(Clyde Bruckman)

This was another hour's worth of wasted time. I didn't feel anything for any 
of the characters, except for Scully having to listen to Mulder's inappropriate 
and bad sound effects. He can't even kick a door open any more. Do you see how 
far we've fallen? I tried, I mean I really tried to like this episode. It was 
too far-fetched at times and it looked like the writer tried to redo a perfectly 
good story line from four seasons ago by changing the characters and motives. 
I almost cried at the end, but not for the power surge "Richie" motif, but for 
the longing of the third season.

  
Rating: 2 lounge chairs out of 5, mainly for reminding me of Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose

"...maybe someday we will find that it wasn't really wasted time." ~ The Eagles