Gethsemane (1)

Season 4, Episode 24, Aired
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Episode Summary

While investigating the discovery of a preserved alien body found in the mountains of Canada, Mulder is contacted by Michael Kritschgau who tells him about a government conspiracy not to keep alien activity a secret, but to make people believe in them without question and Mulder has been the prime target. With the idea that everything he believes is a lie, Mulder appears to take his own life.moreless
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Fan Episode Reviews (5)

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  • Mulder finds an extraterrestrial hidden in northern caves while Scully learns something about her illness

    9.5
    "Superb"
    By JaCkKbAuEr2424, Feb 16, 2011 Report Abuse
    Unlike last year, which ended the third season on such a lame and obvious cliffhanger that I realized I didn't care much what happened, this cliffhanger does everything right. It doesn't exactly stick us in the middle of a situation and say "To Be Continued." Instead, the episode ends definitively, and the ending line/moment makes us wonder whether or not we'll see agent Mulder again.

    Of course, it'd be foolish to assume Fox is dead.. he's the star of the show along with Scully. However, I'm finding myself very curious as to how in the world they're going to pull off Mulder being alive. For one, they never showed his face when Scully identified him, so there may be some hoax going on. At the same time, that's what makes the cliffhanger so effective: we're left wondering still why Scully seems to be discrediting Mulder so heavily.

    The episode itself had a lot of conspiracy stuff going on, but there was no inclusion of the Cigarette Smoking Man yet. However, there was a great plot involving Mulder and some friends finally finding an alien and doing a legitimate autopsy on it. It was a great revelation for Mulder, who has spent four seasons looking for the truth and having it elude him every time. This time, it appears he may get very close.

    However, a new development arises: a man from the D.o.D appears and claims that the government has been creating all of these "extraterrestrial" hoaxes as a cover-up for secret government missions they're doing. Of course, it's absurd to believe that after all we've seen, but I think the writers do a good job of making us feel like Mulder. It feels like we're getting jerked around, but that's probably how Mulder feels, and by the time the episode ends, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Mulder was actually dead.

    Scully's illness isn't ignored either; the chance that her illness may have been administered simply to keep Mulder believing in the lie is horrifying to think, and hopefully, that doesn't end up being the case. It would turn Mulder from a guy who won't give up at finding the truth into an obsessive guy who lets his compulsions hurt others.

    I'm pumped to see what happens next.. I would definitely say that this is the best season finale so far.moreless

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  • Gethsemane is a great episode of the X-Files in which, for the first time in the show's nine-year run, Mulder and Scully are forced to deeply examine not only their own beliefs, but also the degrees to which their personal quests converge and diverge.moreless

    8.8
    "Great"
    By Dimsum108, Oct 06, 2007 Report Abuse
    Gethsemane is a nearly superb episode of the X-Files that kicks off one of its best multi-part stories. The episode is impressive in its creation of high drama around a pair of internal quests, and in that it does this by keeping Mulder and Scully mostly apart throughout the episode. Perhaps the only drawbacks of this episode are the wordy dialogue and its theatrical delivery during Scully's hearing, and Mulder-is-dead cliffhanger redux. While I appreciate that Mulder's death seems a logical end to his journey through Gethsemane, suicide doesn't fit Mulder's character, and it furthermore distracts us from the exciting ideas in this episode, reducing Gethsemane to an is-he-or-isn't-he moment.

    The art of this episode then is how Chris Carter introduces and interweaves a blend of interpersonal drama, conspiracy mystery, and truly wondrous glimpses of alien life, all wrapped up in a melodramatic framing device. No episode or arc since the Anasazi three-parter so winningly got us excited about all of things at the same time, nor introduced new characters as fresh and well-acted as Bill Scully and Michael Kritschgau. This pair of foils effectively begins to derail both Mulder and Scully, but yet remains sympathetic, an especially remarkable feat for Kritschgau, who knocks a cancer-ridden Scully down a flight of stairs. Also appealing, is the contrast between Scully's spiritual, family-oriented journey and Mulder's solitary, intellectual journey. Particularly in Mulder's case, where we often find him accompanied by the baggage of her sister, by Cancer Man, or by his mother, it's refreshing to see him go this one alone, and it further helps to paint him in the anti-social, maverick light that the show keep telling us about.

    Surely, however, the most interesting thing about Gethsemane is the way in which it anticipates the 'game-changer' trope in TV that wouldn't fully surface for another 5-7 years with serial dramas Alias, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost. Although the season-five episodes that followed wouldn't fully exploit the degree to which Mulder was now skeptical of extraterrestrial life, this episode and arc seemed to promise that the very nature of the show had been irrevocably changed.moreless

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  • Perfect Season Ender

    10
    "Perfect"
    By Anon67683, Mar 17, 2007 Report Abuse
    Wow! What a great closing episode! Perfect in virtually every way and with a whopper of a cliffhanger that would make anyone curse the intervening summer before Season Five (pre-DVD, of course).

    The cinematography is fantastic, especially the wipe open shots of the snow-covered Canadian mountains. Anderson looks her absolute radiant best here. She is just gorgeous.

    I liked the religious subtext of this episode and thought it worked well. Both Scully and Mulder are forced to reexamine the strength of their respective "faiths." Scully because of her apparently impending death and Mulder because of the apparent "death" of his alien theories, which are debunked convincingly by an interesting new character, Michael Kritschgau.

    They manage to pack quite a bit in this episode. Not a minute is wasted and lots of possibilities are opened up for Season Five. A truly great closer, perhaps the best of the series.moreless

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  • The one where Mulder seems to be dead

    9.9
    "Superb"
    By SleepTight, Jul 17, 2006 Report Abuse
    'Gethsemane' is a brilliantly well written episode that makes us believe the lie.

    The episode begins with Scully going to a crime scene and asked to identify a body, the one of Fox Mulder and she says it's him.

    The episode continues in the snow, an alien was found but Scully isn't going with Mulder to investigate it, she doesn't tell him that her cancer results were bad and that they will probably spread through her body and become aggressive.

    When all the investigators in the ice are shot dead, Mulder and a doctor who are going to examine the body find them and only one is alive and tells where he buried the alien's dead body.

    When Scully goes to an office to find something she has been examinating, she finds a guy that took it with him and when she tries to go after him she pushes him off the stairs. Then she tries to look him up in a computer and tries to arrest him, he tells her that if she arrests him the men who put the cancer in her will kill him.

    The guy explains her everything and that the government have used her and Mulder since the beginning.

    Meanwhile a doctor opens the alien's body and when Mulder leaves, a guy enters and kills him with the only survivor that seemed to be behind everything from the start.

    When the guy tells everything to Mulder it upsets him, knowing that everything might have been a lie and that his sister wasn't abducted by aliens.
    We were made to believe that Mulder after realising everything took a gun and shot himself, and that's Scully's statement.

    To Be continued

    The episode was brilliantly done, I would have believed the lie.
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  • Believe the lie!

    9.2
    "Superb"
    By orison731, Aug 03, 2005 Report Abuse
    The changed tagline for "Gethsemane", BELIEVE THE LIE, is programatic: Not only did Mulder allegedly believe in a lie, but we are asked to as well. Are aliens really just a big hoax? Was all the evidence of extraterrestrials we've seen, from clones to bounty hunters to the Black Oil just a fabrication to instill Mulder with faith in his crusade that would send him on a tangent away from the government's real crimes?

    An interesting kind game not unlike "Paper Hearts" that plays with the original X-Files concept of ambivalence that in each case, both the supernatural and the scientific explanation might be right.

    On the other hand, everything that had come before in mytharc terms has been so strong that it was vcery unlikely even here that alienms would turn out not to exist. The tantalizing question in "Gethsemane" is thus why the conspirators would now try this avenue to throw Mulder off, why Scully lies to the FBI board, what will happen to her health and just why Mulder fakes his death. Because seriously, him committing suicide is one lie no one believes.

    As for just the episode, it's a thriller of cinematic proportions. Great visuals, exciting score by Mark Snow, and this just the first part of three!moreless

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Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

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    • Principal Settings: Boston, Massachusetts St. Elias Mountains, Yukon Territory, Canada; Washington, D.C.; Arlington and Sethburg, Virginia. Edit

  • Notes

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    • Actress Tea Leoni, then secret fiancee of David Duchovny, visited him on the set during the filming of this episode. Their wedding was only a week away. Edit
    • An entire set was built by the construction crew inside a refrigerated building to shoot the scenes taking place in the wilderness of the Yukon Territory. The temperature hit the 21 degrees Farenheit below zero and everyone involved in the shooting were required, through a memo, to dress very warmly. Edit
    • The flashbacks during Scully's testimony are to "Pilot" and "Paperclip." Edit

  • Quotes

    ADD QUOTES
    • Scully: Early this morning I got a call from the police asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment. The detective asked me, he needed me to identify a body... Section Chief Blevins: Agent Scully... Scully: Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Edit
    • Scully: Mulder, the only lie here is the one you continue to believe. Mulder: After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's not true! Scully: Because it's easier to believe the lie. Isn't it? Mulder: (hurt) What the hell did that guy say to you, that you believe his story!? Scully: He said that the men behind this hoax... behind these lies... gave me this disease to make you believe. (Mulder turns and walks away) Edit
    • Mulder: You think it's foolish? Scully: I have no opinion, actually. Mulder: You have no opinion? Scully: This is your holy grail, Mulder, not mine. Mulder: What's that supposed to mean? Scully: It just means that proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish. Mulder: How about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? Edit

  • Allusions

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    • Episode Title: Gethsemane This is the place where Jesus was betrayed by Judas (Matthew 26:47-56; Mark 14:43-52; Luke 22:47-53; John 18:2-12) - probably a reference to Scully's (apparent) betrayal of Mulder. Edit

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