Review of MILAGRO by Sue Brody I have *been* this writer-blocked writer...sans cigarette... And still I think about this ep, and think, and think...I'm sort of writer-blocked myself this week. To begin with, it was amusing that Mulder calls Padgett "Mr. Popularity" when he is looking at his phone bill, because, alas, the same could be said about Mulder himself...but Mulder gets the woman in the end...and I leave, as a fellow Shipper says, "conflicted." The guy who played Padgett looks so much like Sean Penn! Wouldn't it have been AMAZING if they had gotten Sean Penn to play Padgett? Hey, man, it's LA, why not?! Next week, in David Duchovny's episode, we get M. Emmett Walsh and Jesse L. Martin from Ally McBeal, so.... Okay, taking out one's heart in the teaser is just gross...small intestine...Pepperoni. Green peppers. Mushroom. Pizza. Hmmm. That sounds good. Sorry, wrong ep. "K.N. murders his own best intentions." What did that mean? Just a pun? Why did Padgett extract his own heart? Was it to feel it? Was it to feel passion? To understand his characters, he had to experience it himself? Why didn't he need the doctor to do this? FIRE! Incinerator! God, it took me so long, but then...of course! The incinerator! Never Again! Scully with a man! AHA! Where are Morgan and Wong when you need them?! Must passion always be when one is under someone else's power? Or there is fire involved? And I'll go out on a limb and say that this ep *did* happen... because Padgett willed it so...and hopefully M&S will remember this in the future. This kind of was psychic surgery. So good for Mulder for getting it so quickly. "Loneliness is a choice." That, my friends, is simply not true. And happily,Scully countered by saying, "My life isn't so lonely, Mr...Padgett. Quite the opposite." But I was amazed that Scully didn't arrest Padgett, or at least bring him in for questioning, with what she knew about the murders, and the fact that he basically *admitted* stalking her. That is NOT the Scully I know, and it worried and frustrated me...kind of HTGSC, I thought. Or maybe it was really Genderbender. She was *not* acting under her own accord. Yet look how insulted she was when Mulder raced in and saved her from Padgett's advances (and who knows what else)...was she *still* under Padgett's influence? I guess so, until she saw the word "heart" on the paper in the typewriter... Padgett, re: Nacimiento: "Jungians would say it's the characters who choose the writer, not the other way around. So I guess you could argue he directed me." Didn't this just feel too...overt? And then when Nacimiento does arrive, he does tell him how it ends...it was a bit contradictory, until finally Padgett burned the manuscript and extracted his heart. Had to love the line, "Agent Mulder. My book. Did you like it?" What writer doesn't say that?! And Mulder's response, "Maybe if it were fiction" was right on the money. But did we need a whole episode devoted to this? Clearly, Padgett only wants love for himself. When he kills Kevin, it's b/c he doesn't want him to have the love from Maggie he himself seeks, I assume. And Mulder embracing a sobbing Scully. Does this mean LOVE? It's all about the angst, apparently, at least where M&S are concerned. Since when did CC, Spotznitz, and Shiban become Jungians? Are they *qualified* to speak on Jungian psychology? They *are* qualified to speak about writing...and man, they couldn't stop! Mulder also notes, "If he imagines it, it's a priori, before the fact." So now they are lawyers, too. Mulder has *quite* a look on his face after telling Scully, "Well, let's just say it ends you w/ doing the naked pretzel with a stranger on the bed in an unfurnished fourth floor apartment." She says, "Mulder, I think you know me better than that," but Mulder just smirks...maybe he's not so sure...or maybe he'd like the chance to find out...Could be *his* unfurnished fourth floor apt, after all... Did we need the brief sex scene? Was it gratuitous? "Ache. Pang. Prick. Twinge." Did I switch to the Playboy Channel? Was it so we could imagine what it would be like when Scully and MULDER had sex? So we could BELIEVE Scully can be sensual? We can just look at it like a smitten man's passion for her...but why would she deny it ("Oh, brother") when it had to do w/ Mulder (Triangle), and yet *stay* in Padgett's apt, against her better instincts, w/ Padgett about to get *very* intimate on the bed, until Mulder burst in and saved the day, rescuing the damsel in distress (gag)? Is she unable to act under her own volition? Has she forgotten how to trust, to love? Can Mulder bring that back for her? Is that what this is about?! "She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal." Would Scully really *feel* these things (not necessarily vis a vis Padgett, but with another man), or are these just derived from Padgett's wishful thinking? We were blessed with another ep where *Scully* takes the Mulder-based view (last week in Trevor she came up with spontaneous human combustion, and this week that it could be all in Padgett's head), and Mulder even *acknowledges* it, in that weird moving to the other side of the hallway moment. Is that because Padgett is controlling her thoughts? Or is because of the amount of time Scully has spent with Mulder? Why the big change? "Her prompt mind ran through the golcanda of possibilities." 'Scuse me?! Surely, you fanfic writers can do better than that! Was he just supposed to *be* a bad writer? A pretentious one? He had failed (as had CSM)--was this why? Because his prose was so heavy-handed? At least CSM got published, if in a porn magazine...Well, we know he was wrong about one thing: "being inherently trusting herself." Few are *less* trusting than Scully. But he was right about her being "a marshall of cold facts," or at least she had been at one time. And he also admits at the end that she doesn't love him, so maybe he was wrong about other things, too. What the hell is "titian" hair? Never mind, I have been informed that it means red. Next: "Hegelian self-justification"? Now we're bringing in Hegel? Am I watching the Learning Channel? I thought I was on Fox, home of Guiness Book of World Records and Scariest Police Chases 483... "To be thought of as simply a beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable." Which means she *couldn't* give herself up to the passion without the logic, at least to Padgett's way of thinking. But why would Mulder not be able to compartamentalize, to look at her in more than one way? Mulder looked fine in his shades and blue shirt. Didn't like Scully in the black, half-opened shirt and long black blazer, though. Seemed kind of sloppy. And her hair was *flat* again! DD's is growing out, at least. "Yet the compensatory respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart--to let it open, to let someone in." Um...that someone spends a helluva lot of time with you, Scully. Do you not yet recognize what Padgett does, what Holman in Rain King does? Agent Scully is already in love. Are we to assume that that is w/ Mulder? Does she have an inkling? Is she sad because she can't express this yet? And does Mulder know? KEY TO SHOW: Mulder asks, vis a vis the charm, "Why would he (Padgett) do something as heavy handed as this?" Bingo! While I was intrigued by the ep, and perhaps was at times even mesmorized, I was constantly being *reminded* that I was supposed to be mesmorized. It was so narrative. I kept feeling like I was being hit over the head with the images, the language. The painting in the church? Flames of Christ's passion? GET IT? Beating hearts outside the body--"deep" writing--writers who create characters, who act God-like, who imagine because a writer "imagines how people behave" and that they "notice people." Scully acting against her own best intentions, because she is not acting of her own accord, or she is finally being liberated, being allowed to be free. GET IT?! However, unlike in Never Again, where I believe she was acting under her own accord, here she was not. And the writers kept reminding us, and reminding us, and reminding us of this. I felt like I was being manipulated, and I wasn't very happy about it. Meanwhile, Scully gets pissed at Mulder ("Thank you for making my schedule, but I think I'm going to have to be late for that appointment"), but ultimately ends up in Mulder's apt. I'll say one thing--they were more in tandem, more of a team, working together there, trying to catch Padgett in the act, than they were in Arcadia. If they were to be married--THIS is what their life would be like, IMO (at least a good part of it). Oh, and what was this about her muscular calves?! Would Scully *like* if Mulder talked about her muscular calves? Isn't it time for Scully to be taken with Mulder, the way Padgett was with Scully? Did *either* of them get that she was in love with MULDER, at least as far as Padgett could tell? Guess that happens *next* season... Scully says to Mulder via phone, "An envelope has been slipped under *your* door." UH HUH! There is a separate office!!!! Now, where *is* it?! Okay, just a minor point, but had to bring it up... Finally: Nacamiento says, "Man's power, his only true power, is to destroy it." Does he mean passion? Love? Emotion? Anything *not* within his/her control? Whose theory is *this*? Happily, Padgett *does* follow his heart, and like in a fairly recent Millennium ep, makes the sacrifice so that Scully might live (as Frank Black's daughter lives). So, to reiterate, I am conflicted. The plot kept me hooked, my jaw was open the whole time, but there was much that annoyed me about the ep. It was just so...over the top, I guess. Dark, yes, but just so...mannered, I guess. (No pun intended, Kim Manners.) "She's only trying to get his attention but doesn't know it." Doesn't *everyone* know at this point but M&S?! Now I need to rest.