Hi all, I’ve been blown away by the response for reviews of the best written X-Files episodes! I will eventually get through them all, but I want to start with season six’s “The Drive,” written by Vince Gilligan.
This episode starts with a short news report about a crazy man who has stolen a car and taken a woman hostage, only to be captured by the cops after a high-speed chase – however, as soon as the woman is safe, she dies, one side of her head exploding.
Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully are being punished, checking farmer’s fertilizer accounts, when Mulder spots the news report and wants to investigate. Scully is hesitant, saying they must do their jobs by the book if they are to regain the X-Files, but with a smoldering look and a smile, Mulder is able to convince Scully to take on just one more weird case.
At the prison, Crump wakes in his cell; his ears are ringing, and he has a bloody nose. While Scully inspects the dead woman, the corpse splatters her with blood, and she locks down the lab, thinking herself contaminated. Mulder follows Crump as an ambulance takes him to the hospital, but when the vehicle speeds up, Crump recovers, snatching a gun and leaping out to take Mulder hostage, throwing away Mulder’s phone in the process.
What follows is a fantastic sequence where Scully races to uncover what is causing the mystery deaths, and Mulder trying to piece together why Crump’s health deteriorates unless he travels west, faster and faster. Scully does most of the investigative work in this episode, uncovering a secret Navy sonar weapon that went awry and causes people’s ear pressure to build until their heads literally explode, while Mulder must take increasingly dramatic action to keep Crump alive. By the time Scully has a plan to save Crump, the grouchy character is on his last legs, too weak even to argue with Mulder. The race against time finishes at a California beach, where Scully races to the car to try a last-ditch effort to cure Crump – only to find he is already dead.
Back at the FBI headquarters, the pair of agents are chewed out by their boss, and Mulder, ever the rebel, storms out. Scully tries to point out they their investigation likely saved other lives in the area, as the Navy is dismantling their equipment, but finds that the whole affair has been covered up, and thus she is no closer to returning to the X-Files. The episode finishes with Scully walking away, now set on the same rebellious course as Mulder.
So what makes this episode such a fan favorite, more than twenty years after it first aired? For many it’s the performance of Bryan Cranston as Crump. Cranston is a far cry from his sweet, loveable role in Malcom in the Middle, and to Vince Gilligan’s credit, the victim of the government weapon gone awry isn’t the usual trope of a suffering Saint; he’s a snarling racist who believes that the death of his wife was part of some “Jewish Government Conspiracy.” Yet the fact that he’s an uneducated redneck gives him a strange sympathy – he’s an ignorant man, jumping at shadows, and mentally unequipped to deal with an actual government experiment gone wrong.
For me though, this episode is an almost perfect example of a writing technique known as the Clock. The Clock is something that places a hard time limit on your story, which builds tension as your characters draw closer and closer to the deadline. In most cases, the Clock is a literal countdown, yet in this case, the same is done with the slowly building ear pressure. The Clock was set in the opening news report, so by the time Crump first hears his ears ringing, we already feel the deadline ticking away in the background. The tension then builds beautifully over the rest of the episode, Crump’s slowly growing ear pressure forcing him to travel faster and faster – until he runs out of road. Vince Gilligan adds extra fuel to the fire by dangling a cure in front of the viewers, which makes it all the more bitter when Mulder arrives just minutes too late.
The pacing of this episode is fantastic, Gilligan presenting Mulder and Scully’s sides of the story in short, sharp bursts, never giving either character a chance to slow down as they keep racing towards the conclusion. Destroying Mulder’s phone was a great touch, and more than just a throwaway moment showing how angry Crump is. Mulder and Scully generally rely on each other, so cutting them off ratchets up the tension even more – the viewers, who have all the information, are one step ahead, feeling the frustration as the separated characters fumble for an answer while the deadline gets closer.
That’s it for today! I’ll be serving up more great writing from the X-Files over the coming months, but next week I’m thinking of dusting off a brown coat and heading for the stars… see you then!
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