“Via Negativa” (season 8. episode 7; originally aired 12/17/2000)
In which Doggett sees the other side…
(Available on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.)
Earlier this week, I took part in a Reader Roundtable write up of the second season Twin Peaks’ episode “Lonely Souls.” It was a fun time, and if you’re caught up on the show, you should check it out; I mention it here not to be a shill (well, maybe a little), but also because watching the first half of this week’s X-Files double feature had me thinking about “Lonely Souls” quite a bit. The two aren’t really comparable in terms of plot, and quality-wise, “Souls” easily comes out on top. But both episodes, at their height, tap into a kind of powerful, subconscious horror that elevates them above standard genre fare. “Via Negativa” has a silly plot about a cult leader who takes a special drug that unleashes… something; “Lonely Souls” has visions of white horses, a hypnotic night-club act, amnesia, a wisdom-dispensing giant, and an identical-twin cousin. Yet these are stories which transcend the limitations of mere plot and tap into a rich, more powerful source of emotion. “Via Negativa” never quite reaches the heights of Lynch’s work, and I don’t want to oversell the hour as some kind of lost classic. But it has undeniable power that took me almost entirely off-guard. Comparing something to a fever dream is, by now, the hoariest of critical cliches, and yet that’s what this entry often feels like: something dark and uncontrolled and off-kilter.
It’s strange how much of the season so far has been about keeping Doggett and Scully separated. Back when Mulder was the male lead, this made sense, at least in the later years; a good mix of partnered and solo missions helped keep the dynamic fresh, and after so much time working together, it was debatable if there was a Mulder/Scully argument we hadn’t seen half a dozen times already. But Doggett and Scully are new, and out of the seven episodes so far this season, half or more have found a way to keep one or the other agent on the sidelines, shifting focus onto a single lead. In the case of “Via Negativa,” that decision makes sense, in that the real story of the episode is Doggett struggling to come to grips with the darker side of working on X-Files: the creeping, unshakable realization that the world you’d taken for granted is no longer a world you can trust. Still, the determination to keep the two apart is an odd choice overall. It hasn’t hurt the show yet, as Doggett remains compelling and Scully is, well, Scully (long may she reign), but their partnership remains under-developed. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the writers, having realized that there’s no way any new character could ever hope to rival Mulder and Scully’s long history have decided to take a mulligan on even trying.
Which isn’t to say Doggett isn’t spending time with some of Mulder’s other old friends. With Scully absent, Skinner steps in to fill the gap, with mixed results. The more time he gets on-screen, the more Skinner seems like a shadow of his former self. This is arguably intentional—as his loyalties to Mulder and Scully have become more and more pronounced over the years, the shadowy forces using governmental bureaucracy to hold the nation in line are inevitably going to trust him less and less. But it’s sad seeing him reduced to playing Mulder-lite, spouting crazy theories and looking increasingly desperate to be anywhere but where he is right now. As supporting cast goes, Skinner is someone who works best on the sidelines. An occasional starring episode is cool, but bring the character to the forefront too often and he loses whatever mystery he has left.
The Lone Gunmen fare much better. Appearing only for a scene, they serve largely to connect Doggett more deeply to the show’s world. Scully, who stays sidelined in the hospital for most of the hour due to “abdominal pains” (surely something to do with her pregnancy, although we don’t find out what yet), calls the conspiracy-obsessed trio in to help Doggett’s current investigation, a series of vicious axe murders that were committed under suspiciously outre circumstances. The boys show up, joke around a bit, and demonstrate by their almost immediate admiration of Doggett that the new guy is all that and a bag of chips. Their willingness to accept him (after he manages to make a connection they hadn’t noticed yet) would be almost too obvious an attempt to ingratiate us with the character, if it weren’t for the fact that Doggett’s transition from good cop in the normal world to good cop in crazy town isn’t without its downside.
The specific X-File the story centers on isn’t all that impressive. Anthony Tipet (Keith Szarabajka) was able to open his mystical third eye, but in doing so, unleashed the dark force of his subconscious will, and that force has been jumping into people’s dreams and murdering them with their worst fears. Or something like that. When you try and break it down into the details, there’s a lot of vagueness, and no real demarcation of what Tipet’s powers actually are, or why they’re manifesting in such a relentlessly homicidal way. There are ways to justify this, as Doggett’s reference to the episode’s title suggests; you could say Tipet tapped into powers he could neither understand nor control, and the result is a kind of demon who exists purely to kill. But the episode doesn’t seem much interested in getting too deep into reasons. Magic drugs, freaky third eye, dream murders. Just roll with it, okay?
I can see getting hung up on the plot, but the atmosphere—heavy, doom-laden, and frequently bizarre—makes up for any shortcomings in the script. As the episode unfolds, the how and the why of Tipet’s condition become less and less relevant, and the climax, which features Doggett struggling with the nature of his reality, barely features Tipet at all. By that point, “Via Negativa” is less interested in tracking down a monster than it is in expressing just what it might be like for an outside to stumble upon things that Mulder and Scully by now take for granted. The look of utter, almost frozen horror on Robert Patrick’s face as he goes into Skinner’s office, uncertain if he’s dreaming or awake, is remarkable, both from the actor’s work (he behaves like a man who has a bomb strapped to his chest and is terrified of sudden movements), and from the way it recontextualizes the show’s dangers. By now, people (and others) with paranormal abilities are par for the course on The X-Files, even when the show manages to find new ways to surprise us. But Doggett, a man for whom logic and rational thinking are clearly very important, is now faced with a danger that he can’t protect himself from. That his final dream climaxes with an attempted attack on Scully—one thwarted at the last moment by Tipet’s death and Doggett’s willingness to sacrifice himself—isn’t really a surprise. Maybe there are other reasons for why he would go after her, maybe it’s simply that his deepest fear is assaulting his own partner; but now that he’s faced with a universe in which all the closet doors stay open, who else can he blame for his condition?
Grade: A-