Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Demons

This episode is not one I remembered well, but I do remember liking it well enough that I am always disappointed to see that it has not aged as well as some other episodes. I’m not saying it’s bad, but in the context of the greater conspiracy at play, there are far better episodes that fared better over time. While this episode sets up a lot, it also leaves a lot of unanswered questions and further muddles Mulder’s memory of Samantha’s disappearance.

Mulder wakes in a hotel room covered in blood, having no memory of how he ended up there. He calls Scully and they discover he is in possession of a set of keys belonging to a couple who they later discover are dead. Police take Mulder into custody believing he is responsible for their murders, but Scully finds that both victims and Mulder have ketamine in their systems. The couple were alien abductees and Scully believes that they received some kind of treatment involving the drug to recover their abduction memories and that Mulder received it as well. This treatment gives Mulder flashback memories that he does not know if they are real.

Mulder has a seizure and a flashback where he overhears his parents arguing with the Cigarette Smoking Man about deciding if either he or Samantha will be taken, and again later where he sees his mother arguing with the same man. Mulder confronts his mother about these new memories of these fights about his parents having to choose between whether it was Fox or Samantha who would be abducted. He demands to know who his father is because it now looks like his real father was the Cigarette Smoking Man. His mother refuses to answer, forcing Mulder to go back to the doctor for another ketamine treatment. It does him no good and he ends up at an old family home where Scully has to calm him down despite the fact that he is no closer to finding answers than he was before.

What this episode shows is how desperate Mulder is to find out what truly happened to his sister. To find the closure that has eluded him his entire life. It leaves him no closer to the truth, unable to trust his own memories. It sets up the conspiracy for the rest of the series even if it offers no new answers to either Mulder or the viewer. Only questions and the knowledge that it may destroy Mulder long before he gets to the bottom of everything. It offers up conspiracies, but no real answers. And that is the episode’s downfall.

Next week I’ll be discussing the season 4 finale and season 5 premiere where Mulder tries to find irrefutable proof of alien life. Where today’s episode succeeds is in setting up the two part finale and premiere where Mulder finds himself completely disillusioned by his own government. I’ll discuss more next week but I’ll leave you with this:

This show has a history of cliffhangers and kids today will never know the pain of having to wait all summer long for the premiere and if you missed it, you had to wait until it was aired in reruns. There was no streaming it later. If you managed to record it on VHS, great, but if you didn’t, good luck discussing it around the water cooler.

Until next week, the truth is out there.