It was only a matter of time until a series based on government conspiracies and cover-ups eventually got around to the Grandest Conspiracy of Them All, the JFK assassination. "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man", by Glen Morgan, finally addresses this mother of all intrigues by showing us the life of Mulder's nemesis, the title character played by William B. Davis.
The series has dropped hints about his character over the years--his lack of wife or family, his addiction to Morley's cigarettes. We now learn something--a very little something--of the man behind the steel blue eyes. From a case file narrated by Frohike of the Lone Gunmen to an unseen Mulder and Scully, we learn that the unnamed Smoking Man "appeared" in Louisiana in 1940 and progressed through a series of orphanages to Army service, ending up as bunkmate to Bill Mulder when Fox Mulder was one year old. The man we later call the Smoking Man is at this point the Non-Smoking Man, and is recruited to assassinate Kennedy in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He does so, and takes his first puff on a cigarette given him by the doomed Lee Harvey Oswald. The Smoking Man goes on to become the Machiavelli of this century, involved in every plot from murder of public figures to alien coverups to rigging the Olympics. In a lovely bit of irony, he hides his clandestine organization in the heart of the FBI. More to the point, in a flashback to the pilot episode we see that the Smoking Man has been involved in The X-Files since day one; the Cancerman puffs away in the office corner where Scully is being assigned to work with Fox Mulder.
The Cigarette-Smoking Man is not who he thinks he is. He is addressed by his stooge Lee Oswald as "Mr. Hunt", and like the E. Howard Hunt of Watergate notoriety, we learn that the Smoking Man's secret desire is to become a published writer of spy thrillers a la John Le Carre. But although he would rather read a bad novel than watch a good movie, he finds himself watching World War II movies in reruns. He can quote Aeschylus from memory, yet his ambition is to write like Tom Clancy. His own life--in which he assassinates even men he admires, like Martin Luther King, Jr.--turns him into the anti-Forrest Gump, a man present at most of the turning points of recent history, the moving force behind the scenes who never steps out of the shadows to be acknowledged. As befits a rational man in these post-Freudian days, he is ironically aware that his life resembles the melodramatic contrivances of spy fiction. Yet the Smoking Man's real life falls short of both James Bond and Ian Fleming, and he discovers too late that the life he has created has betrayed him. After a lifetime of rewriting history with a bullet, he learns what it is like to have his own ending rewritten, "to be eviscerated by the actions of another".
I must applaud William B. Davis for a fine piece of work. He was able to go from utter frigidity, as in the scenes of the EBE execution, to bubbling naivete in a phone call to an editor. It's hard to out-deadpan David Duchovny, but what other actor could have delivered the "box of chocolates" speech straight-faced? He handled both of the tools of his trade--the scope mounted rifle of the assassin and the typewriter of the novelist--with practiced ease and skill. And his look of weariness and despair at the end, as he decides not to kill Frohike, revealed the Smoking Man's hopelessness and disappointment in life without adding a word to the script. Although there can be no "second chances" for him, he grants one, albeit unknown, to someone else.
It was wonderful to see Deep Throat again, and the scenes with him and the Cigarette-Smoking Man together were pure gold. Comrades in conspiracy, their conversation was marked by bitter undercurrents of distrust and pessimism appropriate for two men who have manipulated and lied until it is second nature. I was frankly surprised that Deep Throat trusted the Cigarette-Smoking Man enough to let him toss his own coin for the task of executing the E.B.E.--I'd have checked to make sure it wasn't a double headed coin. Jerry Hardin gave Deep Throat just the right look of revulsion as he entered the chamber to kill the alien. Morgan Weisser is as outstanding as I expected him to be, as the edgy, wary Oswald who realizes, too late, his role in this carefully scripted assassination. This is a difficult role to play, as so many movies and TV shows have shown us so many different versions of Oswald. Achieving a new or original interpretation is tough, but Weisser nailed it from the nervous tics and jaw clenches right down to the slight Texas accent.
Frohike will never know how close he came to annihilation, and the Smoking Man cannot tell him. I must applaud Morgan for an excellent character study, which shows us the Smoking Man's inward journey from a frustrated outsider to a cynical insider, a man who, morally ambiguous but potentially redeemable at the outset, became by one decision after another the monster we see sighting down a gun barrel in the first act. No one is born evil, but becomes so by his own decisions. Morgan avoids preachiness by lightening the mood; he spoofs his own script when we go from a smoke-filled meeting where the Cigarette-Smoking Man plots the death of Martin Luther King to a smoke-filled meeting where he decrees that the Bills will never win a Super Bowl "while he lives".
However, by now, we should know the Smoking Man's name. How could Frohike get all this information about the Smoking Man and not have his name? Of course he knows it, and that means Mulder and Scully know it. Byers knows it. Langly knows it. Probably Skinner knows it. Why can't we know it?
Much has been made of the chronological difficulties set up in this episode, and they were both important and disturbing. Having established in "Apocrypha" that the Smoking Man in 1953 was in his twenties or early thirties, and already working with Bill Mulder in the State Department, it is hard to reconcile Frohike's statement in "Musings" that the Smoking Man was born around 1940. It is even more difficult to reconcile Mulder's statements in "The Field Where I Died" that the Smoking Man was a Gestapo officer in Poland during the war. This is not the first time irreconcilable details have messed up the story. One can dismiss this sort of thing as "nit-picking", but this series heavily depends on realistic details to make Mulder and Scully credible against the background of the fantastic and bizarre that they must work with.
The mood was uneven and the chronology confusing, but the character study and the acting were excellent. Of course we don't really learn much about the Smoking Man, but at this late date who thought we would?moreless
EDIT
Episode Summary
Frohike pieces together and recites to Mulder and Scully what could be the possible life story of the Cigarette Smoking Man; from a young captain in the US Army recruited to assassinate President Kennedy, to becoming the mysterious man in the shadows at the height of a global conspiracy.''What measures will the CSM take to ensure that he remains a mystery forever?moreless
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David Duchovny
Special Agent Fox Mulder
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Gillian Anderson
Special Agent Dana Scully
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William B. Davis
Cigarette Smoking Man
Trivia, Notes, Quotes and Allusions
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Trivia
ADD TRIVIA- Mulder's first word was JFK. Edit
- The scene where the young CSM is first recruited to assassinate JFK is reminiscent of the scene in which Martin Sheen is given his mission to assassinate Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz in the film Apocalypse Now (1979). The scene may also reference The Day of the Jackal, since CSM and the Jackal both count Rafael Trujillo and Patrice Lumumba among their successful past missions. Edit
- Factual Error: CSM pulls out stationery for Endeavor International Press that lists an address as 389 La Cienega Blvd., Pasadena. La Cienega Blvd. runs through a large portion of Los Angeles, but it goes nowhere near Pasadena. Edit
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Notes
ADD NOTES- According to a documentary concerning The Lone Gunmen TV Series, CSM was originally written to shoot Frohike dead. However, the writers liked the characters of TLG so much they hated the idea of killing one off. So they re-wrote the episode to having CSM have Frohike in his sights, but deciding not to kill him. Edit
- On one of the covers in the newsstand where the Cigarette-Smoking Man picks up a copy of 'Roman à Clef' bears the cover line "Where the hell is Darin Morgan?". This is a reference to the departure of Darin Morgan from the writing staff of The X-Files. Edit
- Walden Roth, the editor who finally buys the Cigarette-Smoking Man's story, is named after Dana Walden, 20th Century Fox's head of drama, and Peter Roth, president of the Entertainment Group for Fox Broadcasting Company. Edit
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Quotes
ADD QUOTES- William Mulder: My one year old just said his first word. Smoking Man: What was the word? William Mulder: JFK. Smoking Man: Catch you later, Mulder. Edit
- Lyndon: I'm working on next month's Oscar nominations. Any preference? CSM: I couldn't care less. What I don't want to see is the Bills winning the Super Bowl. As long as I'm alive, that doesn't happen. Jones: That'll be tough, sir. Buffalo wants it bad. CSM: So did the Soviets in '80. Edit
- Deep Throat: The craft matches the dimensions of the vehicle spotted over Hanoi when I was in Vietnam with the company that the Marines couldn't shoot down CSM: Occupant? Deep Throat: Critical. CSM: Timing couldn't be worse. The Roswell story we concocted had them all looking in the wrong direction Edit
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Allusions
ADD ALLUSIONS- Magazine Title: Roman à Clef The title of the magazine to which the Cigarette Smoking Man submits his stories is Roman à Clef. The literal translation of this French phrase is "novel with a key." It is a novel in which real events are written up as fiction. The key referred to is not in the text, but in the reader's knowledge of the actual events being described under the guise of fiction. Two well-known romans à clef are Primary Colors, a book supposedly based on William Clinton's presidential campaign, and the film Citizen Kane, a fictionalized account of the life of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. Edit
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References: Space: Above and Beyond
There are several references to Morgan and Wong's former series "Space: Above and Beyond" in this episode:
1. The Cigarette-Smoking Man's first novel is called 'Take a Chance'. This is the catch phrase from the series.
2. Certain cases are 'classified compartmentalized. This is a level of secrecy invented by Morgan and Wong for their show.
3. The main character in the Cigarette-Smoking Man's novels is named Jack Colquitt. This was also the name of a soldier in the "Space: Above and Beyond" episode 'Who Monitors the Birds?'. Edit -
CSM: Life is like a box of chocolates...
The first line of the Cigarette Smoking Man's rant is taken from the 1993 Robert Zemekis film Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks. Edit
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