Review of The Goldberg Variant by Sue Brody It's that time again... Get ready.... Sue rants about an XF-lite ep! Oh, no. Run for cover! Here we go... You have been warned...turn back now... I don't really have a lot to say about this ep (though I will force myself to say *something* ), because I just don't think there was much content in this ep. At all. So I'm going to touch on a couple of minor points and then end it there. If you liked the ep, you probably don't want to read my review. At least this was the first X-Files lite ep of the year, and not the third or fourth, so it could have been worse...and to think, a lite ep that contained stereoptypical mobsters. Hmm. Alec Balwin...I just kept thinking I was seeing Alec Baldwin in the teaser (after the first initial shot, which maed me think it might be Kevin Spacey...oh, I was *so* hoping for Kevin Spacey...). He would have spiced up that oh-so-obvious scene. Gee, do you think this episode was about...oh, I dunno...LUCK? Who wants to count the number of times the word "Luck" or "Lucky" was said? Why did Mulder say "Hello" and not "Mulder" when he called Scully from beneath the subway? Speaking of which, that was very FTFish to have Mulder coming up on Scully. These two are feeling very feisty these days. You'd think they were *off* the X-Files, wouldn't you? I guess those pesky aliens and anyone left in the Syndicate, along w/ Krycek and CSM, just aren't really that important anymore. Well, not til February sweeps, anyway. Okay, to be fair, in MOTWs, you don't have talks of the syndicate, but I just wish these eps were creepier. There wasn't anything very creepy about this ep at all, though I kind of hoped Henry lived in the radiators, like Tooms. That would have been cool. Scully is dressing more and more casually these days. Not that I am complaining, but do agents in the field dress this way? Or maybe a better thing to ask is if agents in the field *used* to look the way Scully did (i.e., sensible skirts and blazers, stockings, high heels, etc.). Mulder's next job will *not* be as a plumber. But he shouldn't get his hair wet when it's this short. That was tonight's gratuitous Mulder!hair comment. "I like baseball, too," Scully says to Richie when she first speaks to him in his room. Gee, wonder why?! Could it be b/c of The Unnatural? Hey...continuity! Last season *did* happen! Well, we've seen people regenerate (Leonard Betts), so Scully should know *that* is possible. What is AMAZING is not that Henry is so lucky but that Mulder *guessed* this after about 30 seconds on the job. Man, he is *good*. He doesn't even need to profile anymore--he just figures it out. Unreal. He might now know *how* immediately (the plane crash), and he might now know why (to save Richie's life), but he certainly knows *what*, and that is just amazing. He's become Clyde Bruckman! The fact that he could predict how one of Cutrona's men died (heart attack from being strung up by a shoelace, etc.) was just incredible. This ep reminded me a little of Tithonus, b/c, in a sense, Henry could predict when something was going to happen, just like Fellig (e.g, the guy that played the lottery getting hit). And Fellig was related to Bruckman, in the way that he said Scully was never going to die and then Fellig kept her from dying. This time, Henry kept Mulder from dying *and* he saved Richie's life. The difference in *this* ep is that there really wasn't any poignancy. There really wasn't any mediation on life. There were just alot of discussions about "cause and effect" and lucky streaks and that got tired really, really quickly. There sure wasn't much suspense for me in this ep. Mulder keeps hutring his arm this year. I hope they don't have to amputate it soon. We don't need two one-armed heroes running around. Krycek is enough. Yes, I'm kidding. Okay, when the words Richie lit up in the hospital, I thought I was gonna be sick. That was as bad as the end of Rain King, when we saw the sun shine and Victoria Jackson's character had the baby in her arms. Gag me. Did we not *all* know, as soon as we found out that Richie was sick, that Weems was saving up the money for Richie? Where *I* was wrong is that Cutrona was the match for Richie. I thoght Weems was gonna give up his life for the boy, though I guess that was a bit too obvious. But all the good guys won and the bad guys lost, and hurrah. What a relief. I mean, I was worried for about 15 seconds. What happened to the days of Pusher, when bad things happened to good people? Whenever you hear tinkly music in an X-Files ep, I would watch out. And really, that's it. It's nice to see Mulder and esp. Scully smile, but they really didn't seem to take this case too seriously (except when Scully briefly reprimanded Mulder for letting Weems take off, and then when M&S thought Richie might die), and neither did I. Oh, well. There's always Orison to look forward to. And so I will.