X-Files--"Drive"

“Drive” is an interesting point of note. Bryan Cranston, a year before taking his famous role as the father on Malcolm in the Middle, has a prominent guest role in an episode written by Vince Gilligan. A decade later the two would pair up again for the award winning series, Breaking Bad. As near as I can tell, “Drive” is the first time Cranston and Gilligan work together, so this episode may be Breaking Bad’s grandpappy.

“Drive” also continues the sixth season trend towards more action oriented episodes of The X-Files. The story is one long car chase with standard gore and government conspiracy thrown in to remind you what show you are watching. For an episode so different than most of the series’ offerings, it is surprisingly intense and entertaining. The downer ending comes as no surprise. Oh, and in case you have forgotten the show is no longer filmed in Vancouver, you get to see plenty of Southwestern desert on the trip from Nevada to California.

Mulder and Scully have been knocked down to the lowest of the low--checking in on farmers who have purchased high quantities of fertilizer to make certain they are not building bombs with them. Assistant director Kersh, whom the two are now under, makes it clear he is attempting to force them to quit the FBI. While checking out big piles of manure, Mulder spots the news report of the end of a high speed chase in which in which a woman’s head exploded when the car finally stopped. He convinces scully to check it out.

Bad idea. Mulder winds up being taken hostage by the husband. He appears to be suffering from a severe headache that can only be alleviated by driving west at high rate of speed. Scully performs an autopsy on his wife and determines there was a growing pressure on her inner ear which literally forced it to explode. Her husband obviously has the same condition.

As the car heads towards the pacific ocean, the agents plan a NASCAR style pit stop with a quickie surgical procedure to relieve the pressure on the man’s inner ear. It is too little, too late. By the time Mulder has reached the stop, the fellow’s head has exploded. For good measure, Kersh chews them both out for the unauthorized detour. I do not like this guy. Bring back Skinner.

There are a couple missteps here. Scully performs the autopsy without a contamination suit even though she has no idea what killed the woman. It could be an infectious disease, in which case she is unnecessarily exposing herself to risk. Indeed, for two-thirds of the episode, she thinks the root cause is an infectious disease, so she and everyone around her are wearing haz-mat suits. Soon, she discovers the cause is a white noise signal the Department of Defense is emitting which destroys the inner ear. But if that is the case, why is only one ear affected? Both inner ears should be primed to explode, not just one as “Drive” depicts.

In spite of those two logical flaws, I like “Drive.” There is not much to it outside of the action, but that winds up being enough. I am even willing to accept the whole idea of the military secretly testing a sonic weapon on white trash rednecks as the premise. Cranston does not get to be as clever as many of his other characters, but his banter with Mulder over Jewish conspiracies--first overt hint Mulder is Jewish, albeit not observant?-- offers comic relief from what thankfully rises above the generic television car chase. It is not typical fare for The X-Files, but it is not a waste of your time, either.

Rating: *** (out of 5)

“Drive” also features a cameo by country artist Junior Brown as the farmer the agents check in on in the beginning of the episode. Vince Gilligan is a big fan, so flew in Brown at personal cost to do the role. I am positive I have posted brown and the Beach Boys performing “409,” but it is still one of my favorites, so it bears a re-post: