Irresistible

Season 2, Episode 13, Aired
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Episode Summary

A mortuary worker who gets his thrills from collecting hair and fingernails from the dead begins killing people to expand his collection sets his seriously disturbed sights on Scully.
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Fan Episode Reviews (17)

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  • "We think of myths as things that entertain or instruct, but their deeper purpose is often to explain or make fanciful desires, wishes, or behavior that society would otherwise deem unacceptable."moreless

    9.5
    "Superb"
    By MattMTRUSTNO1, Aug 12, 2011 Report Abuse
    This episode begins amid the sumptuous camouflage of the modern American funeral: padded satin, flowers, gleaming brass, thick carpets, music...the customary disguise for the ugly truth at its center. But one of the acolytes at this ritual--Donnie Pfaster, a funeral home employee--is not what he seems. Later that night his boss catches him in the act of mutilating a corpse and throws him out. Shortly afterwards, local FBI field Agent Moe Bochs calls in Mulder and Scully to investigate a series of grave desecrations, a crime so repellent that Bochs would rather believe in aliens than accept that a human being would act so vile. Ironically, it is true believer Fox Mulder who must debunk an outrageous theory and bring the investigation down to earth, focusing on the search for a very human psychotic. But this is not a tale about psychosis, or aliens, or even a bizarre sexual fetish. "Irresistible" is a story about fear on many levels -- the fear of "a footfall in a darkened street", the fear of death, the fear of the unknown, the fear of disfigurement -- even the fear of fear. And the focus is not Donnie Pfaster, but Dana Scully.
    Considering that this is halfway through "The X-Files" second season, we know remarkably little about Dana Scully's inner life. We know more about her sister's philosophy and her mother's strong faith than we do about Dana Scully's hopes and fears. Friday night we got a peek into a complex and troubled woman, attempting to come to terms with situations that have broken strong men. From the beginning, when we see the revolting defilement of the disturbed grave, through her nightmares, to the end, when she is literally seeing Pfaster as a ghoul, she must struggle with her fears.
    In a particularly important scene, she goes so far as to consult a counselor. At every turn, she brings conventional weapons into play -- denial, repression, disavowal of her fear. She reminds herself and the shrink that she is a "professional", as though that sets her apart from the run of humankind. We see Scully's view of her relationship to Mulder in her refusal to confess her "weakness" to him: "I don't want him to know how much this is bothering me." To seek his support would be to establish an emotional dependency between them, something she fears--or desires--very deeply. And her forlorn view of her world: "I know that the world is full of predators, just as it has always been", is heart wrenching.
    Throughout "Irresistible", I kept seeing the figure of Dana Scully's warrior father over her shoulder, with his unflinching military bearing and his resolute face. I could see that Dana Scully had him in the back of her mind as well, as she fought a losing battle for control of the fear that this case evoked in her. Gillian Anderson's poignant portrayal of this battle is the centerpiece of this episode. Her mature and restrained work allowed us to feel Dana Scully's deepest fear: loss of control. Rather than the glamorous FBI agent she seems on the surface, the "pretty woman" Mulder calls her, Dana Scully lives in a rather bleak world of work, justice, and strict discipline. One begins to wonder if there is any warmth or comfort in it anywhere.
    So at the end, when Mulder and Bochs rescue her from Donnie Pfaster, it is particularly affecting to see her finally acknowledge that she needs the support of those close to her. Fox Mulder has always touched Scully more frequently than she touches him--the depth of her capitulation is measured in the fact that she puts her arms around him and buries herself completely in his arms, sobbing her heart out. Mulder comforts her the way one would comfort a frightened child--with quiet words and a soft touch. I found nothing sexual in this scene, but rather saw it as a moment of great human warmth and understanding, an effective contrast to the horror and fear incarnate in Pfaster.
    The death/sex fetishist links our deepest fear with our deepest longing in a web of fear and fascination. Because these twin poles of the psyche so frighten and beguile us, we are hypnotized by the ugliness and cannot look away. Chris Carter, the writer for this episode, gives us a much better, much scarier villain than the "Flukeman". Donnie Pfaster, like Jeffrey Dahmer, is a far more dangerous enemy, a human who captures our attention because he embodies the shadow side of us, the acting-out of fears and compulsions that threaten not just society, but our understanding of human nature itself.
    If we see more than a superficial resemblance to "Silence of the Lambs" and "Psycho", it is because all three stories concern themselves with the smiling monster in our midst, what Mulder calls "the devil in a button-down shirt". The evil that Scully and Mulder are confronted with does not twitch or drool in public, but hides behind a handsome face and a bland smile.
    Pfaster, wonderfully played by Nick Chinlund, is almost an image of Mulder himself -- a blank expression and affectless voice hide an extreme obsession to which all else in life is subordinate. So little separates them -- but that little is powerful and profound. Mulder is the champion of truth: Pfaster seeks only the fulfillment of his own ego, a quest which requires the increasing objectification of his victims. His dehumanization of his victims drives him to ritualized murder. It is a signal characteristic of the serial killer and the psychotic that they must follow specific, highly detailed scripts to appease their inner demons. The environment Pfaster creates for himself--the cold, darkened tomb-like house, its furnishings shrouded in plastic; the bedroom tricked out in satin and flowers, the luxurious trappings of the funerary rite--reflect the vacuum within, the dead heart in the living man. Only the bathroom is lit, with rows of shampoo bottles and bath oils echoing the jars of embalming fluids arranged like condiments in the mortuary workroom. We see the focus of Pfaster's desire through his eyes -- a feast for the senses -- but drowned in cruel death and cold water.
    I can appreciate the humor and the comfortable in-jokes in "Irresistible" as much as anyone (is it mere coincidence that the football game Mulder and Scully are missing is Minnesota v. Washington, the two teams who each have a "Chris Carter" in their ranks?). But in the long run, what will count in any final assessment of this series is the way it tells its stories with depth and heart, the way Carter and his crew speak directly to the subconscious through intelligent direction, strong visuals, and good storytelling.moreless

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  • Scully and Mulder hunt an eerie guy who steals hair, fingernails and other things from dead and live women.

    7.5
    "Good"
    By JaCkKbAuEr2424, May 30, 2011 Report Abuse
    It seems a lot of people like this episode, but I just couldn't get into it. It started off promising: a guy steals hair from dead bodies and eerily worms his way into people's lives so he can steal their hair and other items. For nearly an hour, it felt as if the show was building to a huge reveal, but as it turns out, the villain here was even less fleshed out than some of the non-human, supernatural things that Scully and Mulder face. By the time we get to episode's end, it doesn't feel as if we've truly understood this man's motive or his reasoning for doing anything he did. I'm not saying that the show has to spell everything out for us, but it helps us to understand things more if they do so.

    But compared to the last few episodes, this episode was pretty thrilling all the way through. There was a great build-up, all the way until we reached the moment where we realize the bad guy is eyeballing Scully as his next victim. It's quite obvious that Scully wouldn't die or be seriously injured, but after the whole "Duane Berry/abduction" arc, I'm not counting anything out.

    It just felt as if there was too much unresolved by episode's end.. we get an awesome build-up with this villain and there's no explanation, no understanding and no reason why Scully was seeing the man shapeshift before her very eyes. Was this man supernatural or was it her stressed out mind playing tricks with her? Perhaps she had been taking too many X-Files cases with Mulder... Either way, it didn't make much sense to me.

    I keep hoping that Season 2 will do something to sweep me off of my feet, but so far, it's been slightly disappointing compared to how enthralling Season 1 was on a consistent basis.moreless

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  • NOT paranormal X-files.

    9.0
    "Superb"
    By vodazz, Feb 20, 2011 Report Abuse
    This was the first episode of X-files where everything was "normal" (well as far as X-files can go of course), but it was as good as any other episode. I just didn't understand the part when the killer was shown as some sort of goblin or elf. At first I thought that Scully imagined that this is how the fetishist looked like, but at the beginning of the episode another man saw Donnie as a strange creature. Oh well it just wasn't explained... Then, we saw a vulnerable side of Scully. I thought that she will not show her feelings to Mulder in this episode, but in the ending - she did.moreless

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    2 0

  • Irrestistible is right.

    10
    "Perfect"
    By RJNeb2, Sep 27, 2010 Report Abuse
    So we've had our scary encounters with various weird and wonderful things in the X Files pantheon. But in the cold light of day when you really scrutinise it, there's something faintly ridiculous about a hibernatory liver-eating mutant who can stretch himself to fit into the smallest of apertures. Or a giant flukeworm that lives in the sewers. And yet "Irresistible" is probably the scariest X File of all, precisely because it doesn't feature mutants or flukeworms or killer spores that burst out of your throat. It's because it features Donnie Pfaster, a seemingly normal man. And therefore a very plausible villain. This ranks up there with Jonathon Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" and David Fincher's "Se7en" with its ability to unsettle by showing us what we'd rather not see how inhumanly depraved we humans can actually be. And by setting it in a universe that we have come to love by showing the effect these horrific crimes on our conduit in the show, Agent Scully the episode becomes twice as powerful. (One does wonder how it ever got past the TV standards board seeing as the theme is necrophilia, not your average subject matter in most television shows.)

    To tell the truth, the scenes where Pfaster morphs into some kind of demon are largely unnecessary. Nick Chinlund plays the man so effectively, by using a deliberately slow speech pattern, and movements that match, that he is more than adequately terrifying in that incarnation. The addition of the demon seems to spring out of a need to make this a proper X File when it actually isn't. It's a death fetishist working out of the Minneapolis area. It's only by accident that Mulder and Scully are involved. But it's Pfaster's apparent normalcy, the fact that people don't seem to think him strange that is what frightens us here. Not some kind of projected image where he morphs into something truly terrifying in the darkened shadows. (And full kudos to director of photography John Bartley for using that darkness to the utmost effect. When Pfaster is in killing mode, the blackness is almost impenetrable, but allows us to see enough to know what is taking place.)

    Gillian Anderson's performance here is on a par with her outstanding work in Season 1's "Beyond the Sea" (there's even a tacit reminder of that seminal episode when the counsellor mentions the recent death of her father). Scully is an internaliser but Anderson allows us enough chinks in the armour to see how thoroughly rattled she is by this case. Mulder seems completely unfazed by it all probably his years on Violent Crimes helped him acclimatise but it actually seems that he knows how upset she is, and is using his customary flippancy to help her feel at ease. And the fact that he readily agrees to let Scully go back to Quantico on a fairly spurious reason to find more evidence shows that he has understood the level of her disquiet. The famous Scully line "I'm fine" when she's patently not, makes a large appearance here. Probably the most telling sequence in the whole episode (and the one where we can really see Anderson do her stuff) is when Scully on the spur of a moment decides to visit an FBI counsellor. This scene is in many ways a pivotal one as we've never seen Scully externalise or articulate her feelings to such a degree before. But open up she does, and the meaning of the scene becomes clear. WE are Scully in this episode. WE too are rattled by the horrific deaths that are taking place. WE can't for the life of us fathom why Donnie Pfaster is doing what he does. WE know we have to soldier on and keep a brave front up before we can get to the bottom of this most disturbing of cases. As an actress Anderson handles the scene beautifully, never resorting to weepy histrionics. As an FBI agent it creates incredible sympathy for Scully as we see that she is being drawn into a case that she doesn't want to go anywhere near. Scully's weathered some tough stuff in her time on the X Files, but nothing like this. Consequently with that level of sympathy banked it makes the old lady-in-peril scenario all the more involving. It's also the first time that Mulder gets scared on this case. In "Born Again" when Scully was being held captive, she was able to use her powers of persuasion to get her out of a hostile situation. We can't really comment on her abduction experience as she doesn't remember much about it, and we never really saw what happened. But here, the danger is much more real. There is a very strong possibility that some genuine harm could come to her. Obviously the constraints of serial television shows mean that nothing does, but Scully leaves this episode with some very definite emotional scars (ones that were reopened to quite savage effect in Season 7's sequel "Orison"). And when she breaks down and collapses into Mulder's arms it's a hugely affecting moment because we've never seen Scully so vulnerable, so naked. We ache for her pain in the same way that all Mulder can do is put his arms around her and say "It's all right".

    This seminal episode ends with some of the most chilling images of all. A little boy's dour face staring hostilely back at us from the cosy setting of normal family photographs while Mulder's voiceover ruminates on how such a monster could be bred from such regular surroundings. And that's what makes "Irresistible" such a frightening piece of work in that we don't know what dark secrets and desires are harboured in the hearts of those around us. 10/10moreless

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    3 0

  • Scully deals with the Devil

    10
    "Perfect"
    By OnePerCentClub, Sep 27, 2010 Report Abuse
    One of the best episodes of the series. Scully finds herself dealing with a man who is so evil and the aftermath of her abduction. It was very important for her to talk about her fears and try to stop being the tough person she is, because she can be fragile too. The conversation with the psychologist said it all.
    Mulder supporting Scully is very understandable. He knew that this wasn't the common X-file case. Pfaster is one of the worst kind of murderers and again Scully is abducted. Mulder's profile was accurate once again and the last scene is very sweet. Scully needed to do that, she had to let it all out, to express her fears, to not be ashamed. Fortunately Mulder comforts her and feels for her.moreless

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    1 0
 

Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions

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  • Trivia

    ADD TRIVIA
    • Mulder came to Minnesota for the sole purpose to see the Redskins and Vikings play. The episode takes place 1994. But at no point in the 1994 NFL Season did these two teams play each other. Edit
    • In "Firewalker," Mulder reports that the day is November 11 and that he and Scully ended up in a 30-day quarantine. Scully reports that the date for the autopsy in "Irresistible" is November 14, which conflicts with the quarantine. Edit
    • At the beginning, Mulder, Scully and Bocks are looking over an unearthed grave in the rain. Wouldn't they have needed to have the grave covered to keep any evidence from washing away? Edit

  • Notes

    ADD NOTES
    • This episode, "Irresistible" inspired the spin-off TV show from The X-Files, called Millennium, which was also created by Chris Carter. Edit
    • Karen Kossoff mentions that Scully had lost her father the previous year. This happened in the episode "Beyond The Sea." Edit
    • The original title of this episode was "Fascination." Edit

  • Quotes

    ADD QUOTES
    • Donnie Pfaster: (to Scully) There's no way out, girlie-girl... I know this house, girlie-girl, there's nowhere to hide. Edit
    • Mulder: Are you staying on there, Scully? Scully: No. I'm coming back tonight. Mulder: Look, I know this is a pretty horrific case, but if … Scully: I'm okay with it, Mulder. Anyway you could use my help. Mulder: Always. Edit
    • Mulder: (voiceover) The conquest of fear lies in the moment of its acceptance. And understanding what scares us most is that which is most familiar, most common place... It's been said that the fear of the unknown is an irrational response to the excesses of the imagination. But our fear of the everyday, of the lurking stranger, and the sound of foot-falls on the stairs, the fear of violent death and the primitive impulse to survive, are as frightening as any X-file, as real as the acceptance that it could happen to you. Edit

  • Allusions

    ADD ALLUSIONS
    • Agent Bocks: People wondered why it took them so long to catch this kid in Milwaukee. Thought someone should have noticed he was killing all those young boys. The truth is, no one ever believed it could happen. He's most likely referring to cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Edit
    • Mulder: They manage to spot Elvis in three cities across America every day. Elvis sightings are a common subject of articles in tabloids like the Weekly World News. Mulder also has a personal interest in Elvis. Edit

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