X-Files--"Milagro"

When asked to list one’s favorite episodes of The X-Files, “Milagro” 9Spanish for “miracle’) is inevitably near the top of the list. It is, by the way, the only sixth season on episode to be so honored. We are on the slow decline towards the end of the series already, folks, with only a few truly bright spots left. The cynic in me believes “Milageo” is highly regarded because it “reveals” for the first time scully is in love with Mulder. It is also one of the few episodes to sex her up. But I would like to think there is a better reason.

“Milagro” is a novel--pardon the pun-- piece of television. We just do not get much in the medium quite so creative and existential. A writer who moves next door to Mulder is working on a murder mystery novel in which a killer removes his victims hearts with his bare hand. Somehow, the writer has managed to resurrect a Brazilian psychic surgeon--the kind who allegedly removed illness from people, but is actually removing bloody chicken entrails or some such.--who is committing for real the murders he is writing about.

The writer is on the periphery of the murder investigation when he meets Scully in the apartment building’s elevator. He immediately becomes enamored with her. She seems strangely drawn to him as well because he has such a skill at sizing her up. As with Eddie van Blundt as Faux Nulder, scully’s profound loneliness draws her to anyone who seeks to understand her. She is added to the novel as a character, which puts her on a collision course with the killer.

She is saved from death at the last minute by the writer destroying his manuscript before the surgeon can rip her heart out. Or does he do all the right things, but she survives because clyde bruckman once told her she would never die? It is not made clear, but it is also irrelevant. The issue is lost in the tearful embrace she and Mulder share when he discovers her alive, and the suicide of the writer near the building’s incinerator by the removal of his own heart.

The above summary does not do the episode justice. It is a story within a story, where the writer’s imagination tragically comes to life with the resurrection of the Brazilian psychic surgeon, but still demonstrates the often fat separation between life as we dream it--he is in love with Scully--and how we are forced to live it--she is in love with someone else. Sometimes even our fantasies betray us, so as when the psychic surgeon goes after Scully. The writers destroys his work and then himself to prevent her murder.

It is easy to get a Fight Club vibe from “Milagro,‘ sans any of the film’s whiny theme that modern men cannot all be rock stars, so they must destroy society in revenge. “Milagro” takes the best elements--the existential bits about creating a person to allow one’s id to ru unrestrained--and plays it out in a fascinating manner.

I rate ‘Milagro’ highly because of its uniqueness. One suspects a television executive would scratch his head if such an existential concept were pitched today as a regular episode of a television series. Further proof television is rapidly going downhill. There is very little this daring on the idiot box these days.

Rating: **** (out of 5)