Fox Mulder
finally reaches the end of his search for his long-lost sister Samantha.
(Originally
aired February 13, 2000)
Written by
Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz
Directed by Kim Manners
GUEST STARS
Rebecca Toolan
- Teena Mulder
Anthony Heald - Harold Piller
Megan Corletto - Amber Lynn LaPierre
Mimi Paley - Young Samantha Mulder
Randall Bosley - Ed Truelove
Nicholas Stratton - Ghostly Boy
Sal Landi - Detective Tariq Kadri
Ed Beechner - Deputy
Stanley Anderson - Agent Lewis Schoniger
Christoper Wynne - Base Cop
Patience Cleveland - Arbutus Ray
Lillian Adams - Hospital Administrator
Fort Atkinson - Detective #1
Jeff Xander - Detective #2
Norman Smith - Detective #3
WHAT HAPPENED
Police have
come to the field discovered by the agents in the previous
episode,
near Santa's North Pole Village. The bodies of children are zipped into
bags and carried away. Someone takes photos.
In a somber
voiceover, Mulder ruminates
about the children's innocence and the cruelty of fate.
But is fate so
cruel? Perhaps "the tragic young are born again when the world's
not looking." Perhaps it's all part of God's "eternal
recompense and sadness."
We see children
playing. And instead of "The Truth is Out There," we see these
words: "Believe to Understand."
ANALYSIS
"Closure"
is a satisfying episode, one that puts to bed the now-tiresome search
for Mulder's sister Samantha.
Mulder's opening
monologue
and the recurrent use of choral music make for a richly somber
atmosphere that contains surprisingly hopeful elements.
What Marxists
would call the "correlation of forces" - the nature and
respective strengths of antagonistic powers - is becoming more clear in
the series.
Benevolent
entities that are, or at least appear, spiritual in nature, are
operating. And, at least in a certain hospital in 1979, they appear to
have been one step ahead of Cigarette
Smoking Man.
The character
of Harold Piller, although integral to the plot, weakens the episode
somewhat.
Leaving aside
the strange resemblance of Piller to George W. Bush, we may wonder why
this onetime police psychic seems so phony even when we in the audience
can verify what he says. Is it bad acting, or a superb rendition of an
unconvincing character?
WHAT WE LEARN
Samantha,
Amber Lynn and Harold's son are "all in a better place."
DANGLING PLOT
THREADS
Where did the
automatic writing in the ransom notes come from?
Why the
references to Santa Claus even in cases that seem not to have had any
link to Santa's North Pole Village?
REALITY CHECK
Eyeing the
stars, Mulder ruminates that their light takes "billions of
years" to reach us. But celestial objects visible to the unaided
eye are not billions of light-years away. The nearest stars are just a
few light-years from Earth.
TUNE IN NEXT
WEEK
From the
sublime to the absurdist, as Mulder and Scully join forces with a camera
crew from Fox's long-running trash-TV Cops in the episode that
could only be titled "X-Cops".
