X-Files--"The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati"

I like my episodes of The X-Files weird, and they do not come much weirder than ‘The Sixth Extinction Ii: Amor Fati.” Unfortunately, they also do not come off asa bigger case of plagiarism than this, either. I will get to that in a moment, but I have to note a cast and crew as lawsuit happy as The X-Files bunch was ought to have thought twice before pulling off pretty much everything after the first act.

There is a lot going on here. Mulder’s mother visits him in the hospital. She runs into the Cigarette Smoking man. He apparently promises he can save Mulder, because she agrees to sign him out of the hospital against medical advice. Much of this is told from Mulder’s perspective. He dreams the Cigarette smoking Man heals his illness, then leads him to an undisclosed location where gets to live an idyllic life into old age after dropping his involvement with the X-Files.

He gets a nice house in the suburbs, Diana Fowley for a wife (no accounting for taste.), kids, his sister, and Deep Throat still alive. I never grasped how much guilt he felt over Deep Throat’s murder. He feels odd he would dream about his revival to alleviate his guilt, but nothing about all the suffering scully has gone through because of him; abduction, her sister’s murder, her cancer, Emily’s death, and her inability to have children all spring to mind immediately. Mulder is either an odd duck or the most emotionally selfish man alive. Maybe both.

As he is dreaming all this, the Cigarette Smoking Man and a group of surgeons are operating on his brain. He is now an alien/human hybrid himself. They want his genetic material because--take a deep breath--he may be the one who fulfills a prophecy of preventing the alien invasion. There is plenty of Mulder as Jesus symbolism, not the least of which is his strapped down to the operating table in a cross formation and a metal halo holding his head in place which looks much like a crown of thorns.

Scully spends the episode searching for Mulder aimlessly until she is helped by an astral projection of Albert Housteen and secretly by Fowley, who is feeling guilty over her part in Mulder’s fate.. She is murder off screen for aiding Scully. Thank the Lord we do not have to deal with her any longer.

Here is the big problem--the episode is nearly blow by blow the last thirty minutes of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. In the film, , we see Christ saved from the cross at the last minute and allowed to have a normal life. He gets married, has kids, and leads a long, normal life. As Jesus is dying of old age, he is visited by his supposedly-dead best friend Judas, who calls Jesus a traitor and shows him that Jerusalem is burning because Jesus did not die for our sins. Jesus then snaps back to reality where he is indeed dying on the cross. the episode is nearly identical, with Mulder 'saved' by the Cancerman, allowed to have a normal life where he marries and has children, when he is about to die of old age, he is visited by his supposedly-dead best friend Scully who calls him a traitor and shows him that the world is being destroyed by aliens because he did not complete his quest, and he snaps back to reality where he wakes on an X-shaped table.

I do not know if the above description describes for you how blatant the "homage" is. The Mulder as Jesus bits are sometimes so forced, they are laugh out loud funny. it is all from really ought of no where, too. Mulder has been much more of a knight on a quest--the term has been used many times--than a savior of humanity.

The episode ends with a lot of lovey dovey dialogue between mulder and Scully on how they are each other’s anchor to reality. Neither has anyone to trust except the other. They share a smooch, but it is one of deep friendship in the middle of a highly emotional moment. Still, I think the shippers generally get excited over it. If so, enjoy, boys and girls.

Compared to the other two parts of the story, “Amor Fati” is the strongest. But that is not saying much. The story was drawn out at least one episode too long. The whole aliens seeded human life story never goes anywhere from here, either. But the heart of this episode is personal. It is about fate and accepting the things you are given. Amor Fati is a latin term meaning “Love of Fate.’ it is a religious concept that says we should lobe our lives no matter what we get because it has been ordained by God. Another bit of Calvinism in The X-Files, folks. I like “Amor Fati” all right, but I expect something bigger out of the conclusion to what was assumed to be the final season premiere storyline.

Rating: *** (out of 5)