Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Jeremiah Smith and Marita Covarrubias

October of 1996 saw yet another X-Files season premiere start the season with the resolution of a cliffhanger from the previous spring. Episode 24 of season 3 was the Talitha Cumi finale which starred Roy Thinnes as Jeremiah Smith, a man who could bring someone back to life by healing their mortal wounds. For some reason, my memory always puts this character in place of another who comes in later in the season for my mind wants the Jeremiah Smith character to be the one who tells Scully she has cancer. Alas, my memory is confusing two separate characters and I won’t get to talking about the true culprit of opening that can of metastatic worms until episode 12 of season 4. For now, I’m discussing how Jeremiah Smith became someone Mulder needed to protect with his life for Mulder’s own mother ends up in the hospital after a meeting with The Smoking Man (William B. Davis).

In reality, Jeremiah Smith was fed up with The Syndicate’s plan for alien colonization, much to The Smoking Man’s chagrin. Mulder wants Smith to heal is mother who is lying in a hospital bed after a stroke and the two men go on the run as bounty hunters chase them and fool Scully into believing he had turned himself in. If you remember, the bounty hunters on the show are also shape shifters. Convenient for plotting purposes.

At the beginning of the season 4 premiere, Smith and Mulder go on a journey that leads them to a rural area where Mulder finds child age clones that look like his missing sister, Samantha. Mulder takes one of these clones, against Smith’s wishes, and they are chased through a giant beehive by a bounty hunter. During a documentary on the DVD set that I own, the crew talks about how the bees weren’t supposed to sting the cast but many of the cast and crew suffered bee stings due to the use of live bees on set. This was neither the first nor the last time bees were used during the show’s original run and it wasn’t surprising. Maggots and cockroaches were in other seasons.

Meanwhile, Scully enlists the help of Mr. X who ends up shot by the Gray Haired Man (another member of the Syndicate). Mr. X writes SRSG in blood as he dies. Later, Letters found by Mulder lead him to Marita Covarrubias played by Laurie Holden who works in the UN, the first introduction of her character. She informs him that the fields he and Smith found were now abandoned. At the end of the episode, the Smoking Man has one of the bounty hunters heal Mulder’s mother, Teena. He states that the fiercest enemy is one with nothing to lose. Mulder’s mother is his last remaining family member so her death would have given him every reason to bring down his own government.

This premiere wasn’t the most exciting, certainly not as exciting as season 3 which we had to wait all summer to see if Mulder was still alive after the season 2 finale. It did give X-Files fans more conspiracies to mull over. To discuss at the watercooler, or if you were my age, whispered across tables in Study Hall while the teacher read a book.

Little did I know at the time, but Laurie Holden would also land the part of Andrea in one of my other favorite shows, The Walking Dead. While the show doesn’t do Andrea justice in the same way the way the comics did, Holden’s performance through the first four seasons is one of the more memorable for me. It wasn’t her first time working with TWD show runner Frank Darabont either. Holden also starred in his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist. The Silent Hill adaptation saw her as a cop who chases the protagonist into the smoky town and Holden was Jim Carrey’s love interest in The Majestic, my third favorite Carrey film. Needless to say, Laurie Holden is definitely a highpoint in season 4 so I’m looking forward to her future appearances.

Before I leave you today, I’ll remind you that Chris Carter’s other show, Millennium, would premiere three weeks after this on Friday, October 25. The X-Files‘ season 4 premiered on Friday, October 4 of that year and would officially move to Sunday when Millennium takes over its Friday night timeslot. I can remember how very giddy I was to have two shows anchored in sci-fi from Chris Carter. I do not remember much of Millennium since I haven’t done a rewatch of it since its original run. It is not streaming anywhere and finding a DVD set of the complete series proved difficult. Special thanks to eBay for coming through in that regard for I was able to pick up a used set of the series. One thing I do remember is the opening credits with the violin music which I loved then and I love now. At least my memory got that right since it still wants to believe that Jeremiah Smith was the cancer outer for Scully (my brain is weird, I know).

I’ll be watching Millennium along with The X-Files as I review the next few seasons and I’m looking forward to comparing the two.

Until next week, the truth is out there.