X-Files--"Dreamland"

Lots of X-Philes are going to want to burn me in effigy for this, but episodes like “Dreamland” cause me to lament the post-Fight the Future shift away from dark episodes to a more light-hearted adventure series. Which is not to say I have lost interest in the series or that I particularly dislike “Dreamland.” it is the powers that be seemed to be growing bored with The X-Files and wanted to turn it into something else. A spectacle, perhaps.

Spectacle is an apt description of “Dreamland.” Ut is a farce played mostly for laughs which plays on the subtle theme running through the sixth season of what it might be like for the agents to settle down into domestic bliss. The answer is that does not seem to be the kind of life the two can live. Not that the realization has stopped the shippers from considering “Dreamland” and its sequel favorite episodes.

The agents are accosted on the road to Area 51 by Men in Black. They are forced to turn around, but not before an experimental aircraft flies over, tearing a hole in space. The effect is Mulder and Morris Fletcher, played extra smarmy by Michael McKean, switch bodies. I find it highly contrived that both go on about their business in order to get separated rather than immediately panicking. It is too implausible.

What their separation does is set up the fish out of water jokes for the remainder of the episode as each adjust to their new life. Fletcher is having a much better time playing Mulder than the other way around. Scully becomes suspicious as Mulder acts like a chauvinistic cad who is no longer interested in the X-Files. Mulder cannot adjust to Fletcher’s home life even though he is definitely an absentee husband and father.

I will grant you there are some laugh out loud moments. As a Marx Brothers fan, I loved the sequence in which Mulder and Fletcher reenacted the famous mirror scene between Groucho and Harpo from Duck Soup. You may be more familiar with Lucille Ball and Harpo reprising the scene in an episode of I Love Lucy. But I do hope the original came to mind for you first. Some of Fletcher’s more obnoxious intereactions with Scully are amusing, but since he is a sex fiend, I have to wonder why he is not more flirtatious with her. I would be. *Ahem*

The warp tear caused by the experimental plane is wreaking all sorts of havoc across the Nevada desert. Mulder is being dragged along to clean up the mess with extreme prejudice. After he finally contacts Scully, she is suspicious there may really have been a body switch. Before she can really look into it, Kersh forces her to arrest mulder as Fletcher for being a traitor at the behest of Fletcher as Mulder so he can continue posing as the FBI agent.

Fun, frivolous, and gruesome at times with human nodies fused into solid objects because of the warp tears, “Dreamland’ is entertaining, but far different than much of what has gone before. The series’ philosophy has definitely shifted. Not necessarily a terrible thing yet, but an indicator the show has peaked.

Rating: *** (out of 5)