Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Milagro

If you’ve ever written something in length – a novel, a movie script, a years long blog series about a long running television show – it can seem like it becomes your reality. I have a couple unpublished manuscripts sitting around that, when I was immersed in writing them, they felt real. Like I knew the characters personally. I knew their lives. Their thoughts. Their inevitable ruin. Today’s episode of The X-Files, Milagro, is about such an experience to varying degrees of success.

Writer’s block is a beast, let me tell you. It ruins your motivation. Makes you feel as though you’re a terrible writer. It’s like having a bad drawing day – only it can last weeks. Anxiety settles in as you wonder if inspiration will ever return. I suppose that was what fledgling author Phillip Padgett (John Hawkes) was experiencing at the beginning of his episode when he went into his bathroom and removes his bloody heart. Figuratively, of course, but you get the idea.

Later, after the man throws a bag of garbage into his building’s basement incinerator and is on his way back to his apartment, Scully encounters him as she walks into the elevator. She finds riding in silence in the elevator unsettling. She goes into Mulder’s apartment to discuss a case they are working on where the heart of a victim had been removed without any physical evidence. Mulder believes the removal was psychic in nature because of course he does. Meanwhile, Padgett is on a chair in the apartment next door listening to their conversation through a vent.

While they investigate their case during which a teenager runs in the woods alone, chased by her boyfriend who is attacked and his heart is removed, Padgett types away at his typewriter. This was the 90s, so typewriters were still common. It was how I learned how to type in middle school. The next day, Scully discovers an envelope in her office containing a milagro which is a type of pendant. Padgett’s voiceover describes the deep meaning of the unsolicited gift and how Scully feels about it.

When Scully happens – supposedly by coincidence – across Padgett in a church, he admits giving her the pendant and he discusses with her the Sacred Heart of Jesus. If you weren’t raised Catholic like I was, the heart of Jesus Christ is viewed as a symbol of God’s boundless and passionate love for mankind. Scully’s religious background gives her insight into the discussion though she is shaken by it since it seems like a direct link to the case they are working on. She tells Mulder about the encounter who later arrests Padgett when Scully is in Padgett’s apartment discussing character revelations in his writing – something that Mulder had actually read after discovering it in his mail.

When another victim turns up while Padgett is in jail and Mulder releases him hoping that Padgett will lead him to the real killer. When Padgett gets home, he has a conversation with the dead killer in his book, a Brazilian doctor. He believes that through psychic connection, the doctor has come back to life and the motivations for removing the heart out are confirmed to Padgett. He knows that Scully dies in his book so he goes to the incinerator to burn it but is intercepted by Mulder. Meanwhile, the Brazilian doctor accosts Scully. Mulder hears gunshots and finds Scully bloodied but unharmed in his apartment. Padgett’s voiceover starts up again and his is found in the basement with his beating heart in his hand as he says that he was giving what he could not receive.

Was it love? Or just life that Padgett thought he was giving? Perhaps both. Symbolism was the actual subject of this episode after all. The burning of the human heart is woven throughout the episode, from the victims having their hearts removed and burned to Scully receiving the pendant. Padgett also compares Mulder to himself as being a criminal profiler – having to think like the killer – is a lot like writing such a character. Mulder isn’t willing to sacrifice his obsession for freedom which contrasts with Padgett burning his manuscript in order to save Scully.

As far as later season episodes go, this one is neither great nor terrible. It merely exists with some great voiceover as Mulder and Scully take a bit of a backseat to the writer’s monologue. It’s better than the previous two episodes, but doesn’t hold a candle to others. Mark Snow used heartbeat sounds in his music for the episode which is probably why I like it more than I should.

John Hawkes (Padgett) has had memorable roles in True Detective, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Deadwood, Everest, Lost, Winter’s Bone, and Identity. He also starred in an episode of the first season of Millennium.

Nester Serrano (the Brazilian doctor) is most recognizable for me from The Day After Tomorrow and also starred in guest roles in Fringe, Medium, Cold Case, Malcolm in the Middle, Criminal Minds, and Alias. He also starred in ten episodes of 24 in a memorable role.

Another round of familiar faces in the guest roles also helps elevate this episode out of mediocrity. I remember it for that and not for the expositional voiceover that tries to explain the inner workings of Scully’s mind.

Until next week, the truth is out there.