The X-Files - 4.

French title: Amour fou
translation: A Crazy Love

US Airdate: May 4, 1997

writer: John Shiban

director: James Charleston

STARRING:

David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder

Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully

Guest Cast:

Alex Bruhanski as Angelo Pintero

Steven M. Porter as Harold Spuller

Gerry Nairn as Sgt. Conneff

Daniel Kamin as Det. Hudak

Mike Puttonen as Martin Alpert

Nancy Fish as Nurse Innes

Sydney Lassick as Chuck Forsch

Christine Willis as Karen Kosseff

Lorena Gale as the attorney

Angie Pintero, the working-class owner of a bowling alley, tells one of his employees, a mentally-disturbed, compulsive man named Harold Spuller, to go home for the evening. Shortly thereafter, Angie discovers a badly-injured blond girl wedged inside a pinspotter carriage. The girl attempts to speak, but no words come out of her mouth. Angie notices police in a nearby parking lot and rushes outside to get help. He realizes a crowd has gathered around the dead body of the same girl he saw only moments earlier in the bowling alley. Angie relates his bizarre tale to Mulder and Scully. Mulder suspects that Angie encountered the dead girl's ghost, a spirit that was attempting to communicate with the living for reasons unknown. Three similar encounters, and three similar murders, were reported in the area in as many weeks. The agents discover the words, "She is me" written on the bowling lane where Angie saw the spirit. But its meaning remains a mystery.

Detective Hudak tells Mulder and Scully that an anonymous caller phoned 911 with a message regarding Penny Timmons, one of the killer's victims. The caller claimed that Timmons' last words were "She is me." But Hudak notes the victim's larynx was severed, making it impossible for her to utter dying words.

The agents trace the source of the 911 call to a payphone at the New Horizon Psychiatric Center. Mulder notices one of the patients, Harold Spuller, avoiding his gaze. After viewing photographs of the murder victims, Scully comes to the conclusion that Spuller fits the killer's profile: a compulsive person consumed with the desire to organize, clean and reorder.

Scully uses a rest room to attend to a nose bleed. There she encounters the spirit of another blond girl. Moments later, Mulder relays word that the body of yet another victim was found nearby.

Mulder discovers Harold holed-up in a dimly-lit room accessible from the bowling alley. The walls of the room are covered with score sheets, including those of the victims. Mulder realizes that Harold met each of the murdered women at the bowling alley. Suddenly, Harold lapses into a strange seizure. From his point of view, he sees Angie's ghost standing behind Mulder. He rushes out of the room and makes his way to the bowling alley, where Angie lies dead, the victim of a heart attack. Mulder tells Scully that every person who saw the apparitions was about to die, implying that Harold may be next. Scully, who also saw a victim's ghost, is struck by the implication.

Harold is transported back to the psychiatric center. There, he is tormented by Nurse Innes, who ridicules his intellect and physique. Later, Mulder finds Innes lying on the floor, half-conscious. Innes claims Harold went berserk and attacked her. One of the other patients, Chuck Forsch, tells Scully that Nurse Innes was trying to poison Harold. Scully slowly realizes that Innes, not Harold, was responsible for the murders. When Innes attacks Scully with a scalpel, Scully draws her weapon and fires, striking her in the shoulder. Afterward, Scully tells Mulder that Innes has been ingesting Harold's medication, triggering violent and unpredictable behavior. She hypothesizes that Innes was out to destroy the love Harold felt towards the young women. Later, Harold's body is discovered in a nearby alley, the apparent victim of respiratory failure. But Scully suspects Harold died from what Innes took away from him.

Scully admits to Mulder that she saw the ghost of the fourth victim shortly after she was murdered. Later, Scully sees Harold's spirit sitting in the back seat of her car.

How's the subtitle "One Flew Over The Scully's Nest" grab ya? Best I could do, after all, the actor that played Chuck was in the classic movie "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", as Charlie Cheswick. Kinda neat as the name Chuck is a nickname for the name Charlie. Another member of the cast was spotted in the group therapy scene, and if Nurse Innes isn't a modern version of good old Nurse Ratchett, I don't know who is!

After the Skinner-centered episode the week before, this Scully-filled one was a much needed slap in our faces, I thought. She actually deals with her cancer and how she feels about Mulder. Heck, even Mulder gets to appear human here. It's about time. The x-file itself was merely a sideline to the very human center of this one.

I've probably said this before, but I can't help myself, Gillian Anderson is the most talented actress working on TV right now, period. She expresses more emotion in one quiver of those beautiful lips, one raise of lovely eyebrow, one sigh, than anyone else that dares to call themselves actors. Maybe I'm biased, but her performance here tore my heart out, she made me care, simple as that. If you didn't feel something in the cockles of your soul stir at the end, when she began crying alone in her car, check your pulse.

Is Scully psychic? Possibly. It seems to run in her family already, with both her mother and her late sister, Melissa, exibiting psychic abilities in previous episodes, and Scully seems to be channelling something here.

Not that it really mattered, but the plot involving the nasty nurse had too many holes and unanswered questions for me. So she was killing people that made Harold happy right? And this was because...? Because her husband ran off with a sweet young thing? And the point of the ring switching was...?

And for that matter, what exactly was the whole "she is me" thing about? The nearest I can get to an explanation is that "she" was the recently dead girl, and "me" was the ghost of the same person. Or something like that anyway, I had to keep myself from singing "I Am The Walrus"! Ummm, you see, that's an old song by The Beatles with the lyrics "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together" and later on, of course, the classic line "Goo goo g' joob". Just pretend you know what I'm talking about okay? Man I'm gettin' old.

Can't let this go by, a bowling nitpik. In the scene where Harold recites the scores, one of the sets is "122 131 166 178 201". How did that bowler jump from 131 to 166 when you can't score more than 30 in a frame?!

This is the second time Scully has seen Karen Kossoff, the FBI counsellor, the first time was in "Irresistible". Hope it won't be the last, it was terrific seeing them explore Scully's psyche together.

Very creepy stuff with the dead girl caught in the pinspotter, the scene where Harold sees all the dead people gathered, and particularly the scene in the bathroom where Scully sees the just killed girl's apparition, YIKES! Seeing the blood slowly drip down her freshly-cut neck nearly did me in! Way to go gang :-) I'm just a sucker for this kind of stuff.

So, did Scully look just a wee bit frightened when Mulder showed up at her door? After "Small Potatoes", who can blame her?! No wine this time though, so no nookie :-)

(after telling them he saw the dead girl in the pinspotter)

Angelo Pintero: "Look, I'm not making this up."

Mulder: "No one's suggesting that you are, Mr. Pintero."

Angelo: "I saw the look on her face." (indicating Scully)

Mulder: "Can I ask you a favour? Can I get a soda, a cola, something like that?"

Angelo: "Sure."

Mulder: "Thanks. (Angelo leaves to get the drink, Scully and Mulder begin walking back down the lane) What *is* that look Scully?"

Scully: "I would have thought that after four years, you'd know exactly what that look was."

Mulder: "What? You don't believe in ghosts?"

Scully: "You're saying that what this man saw was the victim's ghost."

Mulder: "Sounds more like a disembodied soul."

Scully: "Which is just another name for a ghost."

Mulder: "Except that, according to Mr. Pintero, this one was attempting to communicate. It was speaking to him as if she was trying to tell him something. That sounds more like a death omen."

Scully: "A death omen?"

Mulder: "Yeah. It's a spirit being that arrives as a harbinger of death. (he picks up a bowling ball and rolls a strike, wonder how many takes that took!) This is the third reported sighting in as many weeks and as many murders. Each time, the victim appearing near the crime scene, trying to communicate, trying to say something."

Scully: "Communicate what?"

Mulder: "I don't know yet, but... (Angelo arrives with a cup of cola, gives it to Mulder) Thank you. If you'll hold on a second, I may have an answer for you."

Angelo: "Hey, what are you doing?"

Mulder: "She is me."

Scully: "What?"

Mulder: "Written onto the wax, "she is me", look at this." (the words become clear)

____________________________________________________________

in a room full of local officers, during a debriefing, Mulder and Scully stand at the back of the room and he whispers something to her

Det. Hudak: "Hey you, in the back, are we boring you?"

Mulder: "No, not at all."

Hudak: "Because if you have nothing to contribute to this..."

Mulder: "I do have something to add. I think that following the FBI model in this case will not only fail to turn up the killer, but will undoubtably lead to more victims and more deaths."

Hudak: "You wanna tell us who you are and what you base that on?"

Mulder: "I'm Special Agent Mulder, this is Agent Scully, we're from the FBI, we're following up a lead that seems to have been dropped? A statement made by the proprietor of the bowling alley, the guy..."

Hudak: "The guy who claims he saw the victim."

Mulder: "No, not the victim, her apparition. What the Irish call a fetch, what is more commonly known as a wraith."

Hudak: (with an attitude) "Oh, okay."

Mulder: "Were there any written messages in any of these other cases?"

Hudak: "Written messages?"

Mulder: "Do the words, "she is me", have any meaning to you?"

Hudak: "You mean Penny Timmons' last words."

Mulder: (incredulous) "Those were her dying words?"

Hudak: "According to a 911 call we received..."

Mulder: "Who made that call?"

Hudak: "A nut."

Mulder: "What do you mean?"

Hudak: "There were no dying words. Penny Timmons' larynx was severed. She couldn't cry for help, even if there was help to cry for."

Mulder: "And no one followed up on this lead?"

Hudak: "No, but...ummm...I'll have someone get *you* the number, and *you* can follow-up on it."

Mulder: "I appreciate that." (scene changes to the Psychiatric Center where the call came from)

____________________________________________________________

a group of patients has been gathered for the agents to question

Mulder: "Hi, I wanted to ask if anybody used the payphone out in the hallway there on Friday night? Because somebody called the police and reported a murder." (gets nothing but blank looks)

Martin Alpert: (whispers to Mulder) "Sloppy joe night."

Mulder: (to patients) "That was Sloppy joe night?"

Chuck Forsch: "Oh, that was me! I did it, I admit it, I did it! I'm just a human being after all."

Martin: "Chuck, tell the truth."

Chuck: (smirks and laughs) "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I lied, I lied, but, I'm just a human being."

Martin: "Has anyone used the payphone to call the police?"(silence)

Mulder: (holds up graduation picture of Penny Timmons) "Does anybody recognize this woman?"

(hands start going up around the room)

Chuck: "That's the lady that got murdered!" (other patients agree with him)

Scully: (picks up a TV Guide-type magazine with Jay Leno on the cover) "And, does anybody recognize this man?"

Various patients: "Yes, he did it!" "He's the murderer!" "He's a very funny man!" "He smiles a lot!"

____________________________________________________________

in the hallway, Mulder watches Harold being taken back to his room as Scully looks at graphic pictures of the dead woman

Scully: "I think I found something here Mulder. In these photos taken by the forensics team, the third victim, her left hand, the band of pale skin, it looks like she wore a ring on that hand, right?"

Mulder: "Yeah, a wedding ring."

Scully: "Yeah, but she wasn't married."

Mulder: "So, what, he stole her ring?"

Scully: "No, not at all." (shows Mulder the pictures, very gory)

Mulder: "Oh, he switched it."

Scully: "And in all the other murders, he repeated the same ritual, changing the ring on each of the victims."

Mulder: "Nice catch Scully." (included here because he so rarely says it!)

____________________________________________________________

Scully's therapy session

Karen Kossoff: "We've spoken about your fear. You've been afraid to express it to others, to Agent Mulder."

Scully: "This is different."

Kossoff: "How?"

Scully: "Several months ago, I was diagnosed with a cancerous mass, a nasal pharyngeal tumour that cannot be operated on, and cannot be treated by conventional medicine."

Kossoff: "I'm sorry."

Scully: "I don't mean for this to sound too dire. My health has been good, I have been checked up on a weekly basis."

Kossoff: "You've kept working."

Scully: "Yes. It's been important to me."

Kossoff: "Why?"

Scully: (pause) "Why....ummm...Agent Mulder has been concerned...he's been supportive through this time, and..."

Kossoff: "Do you feel that you owe it to him to continue working?"

Scully: "No. (pause) I guess I never realized how much I rely on him, before this. His passion... he's been a great source of strength that I've drawn on."

Kossoff: "What happened last night, Dana?"

Scully: "I saw something, and I don't know what to trust. If I saw it because of the stress, because the image had been suggested to me...or if it was a suggestion of my own fears."

Kossoff: "Your fear of failing him."

Scully: (a slight laugh) "Maybe."

Kossoff: "What did you see?"

Scully: "I saw a woman who had recently been murdered. But I saw her. It appeared as if she was trying to tell me something."

Kossoff: "Do you know what?"

Scully: "No."

Kossoff: "Are you sure?" (Scully shakes her head)

____________________________________________________________

after telling Scully that he was with Harold when he saw Angelo's apparition, right before his death from a heart attack

Scully: "But you didn't see it yourself?"

Mulder: "No."

Scully: "Why?"

Mulder: "I don't have that facility, that kind of connection to the victims that would have made such a vision possible."

Scully: "What's Harold Spuller's connection?"

Mulder: "I don't know it's exact nature, but I think it has something to do with his autism. That Harold experienced a profound attachment to these victims, but because of his disability was unable to express the depth and power of those relationships, so somehow a psychic or preconscious bond was formed that went beyond the temporal."

Scully: "Wait a minute, so Harold knew the people that were killed?"

Mulder: "Yeah, from the bowling alley, going back seven years."

Scully: "Even if what you're saying is true, Harold wasn't the only one who claims to have seen these apparitions."

Mulder: "No, but he does have something in common with those who have the visions that is quite powerful in its own right."

Scully: "Which is what?"

Mulder: "Well they were all dying. One of emphezema, one of cancer, and now Angie Pintero."

Scully: (a look of concern crosses her face, as Mulder doesn't know yet that she's seen an apparition herself) "Harold Spuller is dying too?"

Mulder: "Well, that's what I need your medical opinion on."

Scully: "Well, what if he isn't?"

Mulder: "I would be very surprised. I mean, what is a death omen if not a vision of our own mortality? And who among us would most likely be able to see the dead?"

____________________________________________________________

after Nurse Innes has been arrested for the murders and Harold has been found dead, apparently from the effects of not taking his medications

Scully: "Well Harold Spuller wasn't dying Mulder, he was killed as a result of what that woman took away from him."

Mulder: "Is that your medical opinion?"

Scully: "I saw something Mulder."

Mulder: "What?"

Scully: "The fourth victim, I saw her in the bathroom before you came to tell me."

Mulder: "Why didn't you tell me?"

Scully: "Because I didn't want to believe it. Because I don't want to believe it."

Mulder: "Is that why you came down here, to prove that it wasn't true?"

Scully: "No, I came down here because you asked me to."

Mulder: "Why can't you be honest with me?"

Scully: "What do you want me to say? That you're right? That I believe it, even if I don't? I mean, I mean, is that what you want?"

Mulder: "Is that what you think I want to hear?"

Scully: "No."

Mulder: "You can believe what you want to believe Scully. But you can't hide the truth from me, because if you do then you're working against me... and yourself. I know what you're afraid of. I'm afraid of the same thing."

Scully: "The doctors said I was fine."

Mulder: "I hope that's the truth."

Scully: "I'm going home."