All Things

Season 7, Episode 17, Aired
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Episode Summary

A series of coincidences puts Scully in contact with someone from her past, a married man who she once had an affair with during medical school, but is dying. This causes her to question her romantic and professional choices in her life. Meanwhile Mulder investigates crop circles.moreless
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Fan Episode Reviews (27)

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  • A strangely affecting episode that lingered in my mind for days after I saw it.

    9.5
    "Superb"
    By Scarlett_Ohara, May 29, 2011 Report Abuse
    When I first watched this episode I didn't really know what to make of it. It was so unusual for an X file. Very spiritual, focussing on inner struggles and feelings. It made an impact but it took a while for me to process what I was watching. After a day I had to watch it again and that is when I realised that I really liked it. The whole atmosphere, music and style of this episode was just beautiful, almost dream like.

    I liked how the Moby song "The sky is broken" was used throughout the episode as it sounded a bit like Mulders voice. Maybe it's just me? Now I am sure there will be people who do not feel the same way about it. As I said it is not a regular X files episode. There is very little action/scifi and very little Mulder in it, however if you can get past that you can enjoy some fantastic acting from Gillian Anderson who I believe also wrote the script for this episode.

    Highly recommended.moreless

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    5 0

  • Gillian Anderson directs an episode revolving around Scully.

    7.0
    "Good"
    By JaCkKbAuEr2424, May 26, 2011 Report Abuse
    Reading through some of these reviews, once again, I'm hard-pressed to disagree with the praise. While I must laud Gillian Anderson for doing a great job acting wise, as well as with the direction of the episode, the writing is just too poor to consider it a success. I found myself disappointed, irritated and constantly confused as to why we were following Scully through this particular chapter in her life. The attempts to make an X-File out of this is poor at best.

    The basic idea of the plot is that Scully is once again having those doubts that plague here now and then: did she choose the right path in joining the FBI? This time, we have a former lover of hers that she had an affair with in school as a student.. we've never met this guy before, which means the actors have terrible chemistry. Scully learns that he has some sort of heart issue, and while medicine can't heal it, Scully sort of turns to this half-hearted supernatural solution that ends up solving everything. Oh, and it's hinted at that Mulder and Scully hook up, but surprise! it doesn't happen.

    I sound pretty bitter writing this.. the truth is, there's an interesting episode somewhere buried underneath all the negative stuff, but Gillian Anderson, who wrote the episode as well, didn't do enough to make the episode premise interesting.. there's some good chemistry between Mulder and Scully at the beginning, but I almost wish we would've gotten an episode written by Anderson about crop circles.. that would've been cooler than what we got instead.

    Gillian Anderson is a great actress, and I actually think the direction here was very unique and well-done.. if only the script could match how good the rest of the package was, I might've liked it a bit more.moreless

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  • This is by far my favourite episode in the series if not Television series altogether!

    10
    "Perfect"
    By Aly358, Apr 25, 2011 Report Abuse
    Brief recap: After letting Mulder leave on his own to investigate crop-circles Scully meets her former lover and Teacher Daniel Waterson. She reflects on her life and her choices and how different the outcome had she chosen not to go to the FBI.

    By nature this is not a regular X-File. After all it was written by GA herself. It isn't action packed either. So maybe some of you find it dull. I however found it extroadinairy. If there were a 15 rating available I'd rate it that.

    GA captures Scully really well. Not the early in the series Scully who doubts everything from Telekinesis to Aliens but the older one. The one who has let a child die because she saw the Devil in a social worker. (5x17 - All souls) The one who believed that Mr. Peattie might have been able to save his daughter (7x14 - Theef) Scully is becoming a "light" believer and how could she not after all these years trying to explain away the paranormal with her science. She herself put it so eloquently when she said: How many times has my science been able to provide an explanation, Mulder?
    Also Scully has always looked in strange places when her faith in science was shaken. She went to a psychologist and only told her half the truth when she already knew she had been abducted by aliens. She confesses to a priest (All souls) when she knows she saw the devil. And here she visits the crop-circle researcher because she told her to slow down.

    This is actually my favourite scene in the entire episode. GA captures the feeling of this home perfectly! A lot of woodwork, herbal tea, rain outside and an interesting conversation with a smart person - who wouldn't feel comfortable? And this feeling is transported onto the viewer marvelously! Besides... have you noticed that so far the only lesbian couple to appear in the x-files is written my GA?...

    As for the Buddhist scene - Scully does not intentionally meditate in front of a Buddha Statue. She follows this girl into the temple and is touched by the sight of this statue. Seemed to me like she dropped to her knees because they were weak and that her epiphany came from that same place. Scully won't be a buddhist after that but it shows just how all religions are basically the same. Faith.

    So far I have only explained why I consider this to be the finest X-files episode. Lots of character development for Scully (which would have been lots harder in a mythology episode since it is not her quest per se), a peek into the past. I do not need a MOTW especially if it is a monster like tooms...
    But I also consider this one of the best episode through all the shows I have watched wich range from Desperate Housewives to Buffy, from Futurama to Weeds, from Monk to Dexter and from the Gilmore Girls to CSI. Never have I seen a 44min episode that looked as much like a movie. All the shots of things clicking and tapping, the sound, the slow motion effects, the timing, the camera angles, the acting. It all fits perfectly together to create this wonderful masterpiece and I just love it!

    The only thing I would have preferred to be different is a scene almost at the end. Scully sees the girl again and reaches her but it is Mulder. It would have made more sense if it just were someone else and Mulder bumps into her. Other than that there are no continuity issues, no questions raised that are left unanswered, but the viewer is left with a chance to reflect his/her own life. Our own choices.

    Honestly, what more could you ask for?moreless

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    4 0

  • When I first saw this episode back when it first aired, I didn't like it... I was just TOO young to understand it. But once I got a little older, I saw it again, and I really liked it for what it was -- a nicely shot and well written character piece.moreless

    9.0
    "Superb"
    By Frankburnsflagg, Mar 04, 2011 Report Abuse
    It starts out with Scully waking up and getting dressed... then the camera shifts and we see a man in bed, naked -- except for a cover over him in part... then we see that the man is Mulder.

    *dramatic music plays*

    We then know (at least from what we could tell) that they got together. And that now, Scully was looking back at the decisions that she has made in her life.

    This episode was very much a character shaping one for her and Mulder. It lead up to them affirming (for the most part) where they were in terms of their relationship, both professionally and so on.

    It was a very well-written episode that flowed (for the most part) well and was pretty much cohesive. Definitely something different in terms of the X-Files though. Not that I minded (after a second viewing) -- when Scully went to the Buddhist temple, I saw it as just herself realizing that there was more to this life than just one viewpoint in terms of god him/herself.

    As for that mysterious woman that she kept on seeing... I figured that it was her destiny/decisions and whatnot. In the end, the woman turned out to be Mulder. Rather telling in a way, she had went along thinking over her own destiny and life -- and decided that she'd be happy with Mulder. That he made her happy... and was her opposite, and someone that she'd want to spend her life with.

    Not to forget Mulder though... poor guy. I think that was pretty much the main reason why I disliked this episode the first time that I saw it... he got hoodwinked in terms of the whole crop circles thing.

    But watching it for that second time, helped me to see that he was pretty much doing things the opposite that she was, he was living life too fast, and missing out on somethings. In fact, if he would have slowed down -- he would have realized that the crop circles that he was going to see, were nothing more than a prank/hoax.

    I loved the ending though -- just the two of them together. It couldn't get any better than that. Yin and Yang, together and at peace. I'd recommend this episode to anyone who has an open mind and who loves thought provoking television. I just wished that Carter would have let Gillian help with the directing of IWTB -- then it could have been a more cohesive movie... in my opinion.moreless

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    6 0

  • One of the better episodes from season 7 finds Scully questioning her choice to leave a relationship with a married man 10 years ago and join the FBI. But is what she is experiencing real or just a dream?moreless

    8.0
    "Great"
    By dojodan444, Dec 10, 2010 Report Abuse
    My review of the episode:

    This is one of my favorite episodes from season 7 and in my top 15 all-time X-files episodes. Though there are some issues with the story, mostly with it being a bit shallow, the overall effect of the episode is good I think, and it pushes the relationship between Mulder and Scully further to the forefront. Having studied Buddhist philosophies myself, plus traveling to Asia numerous times, and living in Japan for a couple of years left me with the feeling that the Buddhist part of the story should have been set up a bit more substantially, but I think for most viewers it was probably sufficient. Though the topic of "the path not taken" is certainly better covered in many other movies or articles, it was none the less a nice story element here, particularly because we get to see a bit about Dana's background and where she was and what she was doing before joining the FBI. There was a lot of mood set with sounds and music to give the illusion that you are in a dream and you certainly could make the argument that the whole episode was a dream.


    ==Plot==
    The opening scene before the shows familiar intro shows Dana getting dressed in front of the mirror. As she is leaving the bedroom, we see Mulder laying in her bed, half his body covered by her bedsheets, seemingly implying that their relationship may have became romantic. But as this episode had a lot of visions and mystical qualities to it, the viewer must decide for themselves what really happened.

    After the opening sequence, a series of coincidences or fates bring Scully into contact with a former professor with whom she had an affair with during medical school. Dana has an existential crisis when she questions whether she made the right decision to leave him and medicine to pursue her career in the FBI. While Mulder is off in England investigating crop circles he contacts Scully and asks her to go to meet a contact of his to pick up some information. On her way to pick up the information, Dana nearly gets into a car accident as she is distracted when Mulder calls her on her cell phone. But as she is pulling the car out into traffic, a woman appears in the crosswalk forcing Dana to apply the brakes to keep from hitting the woman. As she does this, a diesel truck then whizzes by at a high rate of speed. Had it not been for the woman in the crosswalk, Scully might have been killed.

    When Scully arrives to the house of the woman that Mulder had asked her to meet Scully recognizes her as a woman that she had seen earlier that day in the hospital when she was visiting with her ex lover. At first Scully is dismissive of the woman who seemingly knows that Dana is going through some sort of personal crisis and is trying to offer some guidance to her. A few strange coincidences or fates later, Dana decides to return to visit the same woman to offer an apology for being so dismissive and to see what she has to say. The woman tells her about Eastern philosophies of Buddhism, the collective unconscious, and her own personal aura that might explain why she is experiencing these strange occurrences. As Dana leaves the woman's house she is walking through Chinatown and sees the same woman who had appeared in the crosswalk before, so she follows her. The woman goes into a small Buddhist temple and seemingly vanishes. Dana, who has followed the mysterious woman into the temple, has a vision while looking at the statue of the Buddha.

    The next scene then shows Dana back at the hospital visiting her ex lover and accompanied by the woman who she spoke with earlier about the Buddhist philosophies. The woman and another healer provide alternative treatment to Dana's ex and the man later fully recovers. He proclaims that he still wants a relationship with Dana, but she has now realized that she is no longer the same person she was 10 years ago, and she leaves the room. As she is sitting outside on a bench on the hospital grounds she sees the mysterious woman from the crosswalk and Buddhist temple again and chases her down. When she catches the woman and the woman turns around, she sees it is actually Mulder.

    The next scene shows Mulder who is really back from England and Scully sitting on the sofa together in her apartment talking about the events of the last few days. As Mulder begins to speak more existentially about what transpired with Scully and seemingly implying that fate has brought them together, he turns to her and sees that she has fallen asleep.moreless

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

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    • The music Mulder is dancing to after the theme is played is: Moby - The Sky Is Broken. It also features prominently throughout the episode. Edit

  • Notes

    ADD NOTES
    • Goof: In the scene when Scully is at the hospital, and right before Daniel Waterston codes, the camera moves to the other side of the room and you see a hand pushing the IV pole towards the bed. Edit
    • Is Gillian a buddhist? When Scully enters the hospital room you hear the sound of a bell ringing. This is an integral part of meditation, the bell is rung at the beginning and the end of meditation. Throughout the show, there's quite a bit of reference to slowing down and "being in the now" or "living in the moment." Also, when Gillian Anderson married Clyde Klotz, their ceremony was performed by a buddhist monk. Edit
    • "All things" has one of the most controversial teasers of the entire series. Scully is seen dressing in front of a bathroom mirror, and then we pan out to find it's Mulder's apartment, and he's in bed without any clothes on... hmmm... Edit

  • Quotes

    ADD QUOTES
    • Scully: You've come at such a strange time. Daniel Waterston: I know, I know. you-- you have a life. Scully: I don't know what I have. I mean... your X-rays were in the wrong envelope. I never would have even known you were here if it wasn't for a mix-up. It's just... Daniel Waterston: What do you want, Dana? Scully: I want everything I should want at this time of my life. Maybe I want the life I didn't choose. Edit
    • Maggie Waterston: You come off so rational, but maybe you know less than you think. Edit
    • Scully: Look, we're always running. We're always chasing the next big thing. Why don't you ever just stay still? Mulder: I wouldn't know what I'd be missing. Edit

  • Allusions

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    • Mulder: That's like saying you're having David Crosby's baby. Singer-songwriter David Crosby is a former member of the Byrds and the band Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The "baby" comment refers to his being a sperm donor for singer Melissa Etheridge and her former partner Julie Cypher. Cypher gave birth to two babies fathered by Crosby, named Bailey Jean and Beckett. Edit

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