Friday September 22, 1995
3X01
Scully finds her career with the FBI in jeopardy as Mulder is still missing and The Cigarette Smoking Man is pursuing the stolen files. The Navajo elders find Mulder's body in a cave and perform an ancient ceremony to call the spirit back to the empty vessel.
Write a Recap »And you thought Mulder was dead... hide show
Not! But obviously we knew he wasn't.
Scully loses her job for protecting Mulder, however, I never saw any hint or sign of sorrow in her. Maybe what they said was true, she was the Ice Queen.
Pretty shocking news, Scully having an implant embedded in her neck, I think this subplot created some of the best episodes of the series.
It was really sad to see Melissa get shot because I was hoping that her character could be developed and see her interact more with Scully, being the two of them so different could've brought great moments.
Poor Scully, she faced a big dilemma not knowing who was coming after her, who to trust, believing Mulder was alive and then told he was dead, but I now think it was to much for her to process to waste time crying for him.
The second part of what I consider the best X-Files trilogy! hide show
After the excellent second season's finale, The Blessing Way is the ideal continuation to the series and the best way to start the third season. This episode may not be as action packed as Anasazi or Paper Clip are but what it lacks in action it pays it back in atmosphere and character development. The introduction of the Syndicate and Scully's discovery of the implant in the base of her neck set for an amazing continuation to the mythology and raise the bar for the future episodes. I also liked how they included the Native American myths and Navajo's story in the shows mythology and I loved Scully and Skinner's interaction. Their scenes were very powerful and Mitch Pileggi and Gillian Anderson did a fantastic job. Among my favorite parts are also the conversation between Scully and Well Manicured Man, Frohike's visit to Scully, Scully's visit to her mother, Deep Throat's appearance and the final scene with Scully and Skinner at the standoff.
2nd of the 3 parter classic hide show
The Blessing Way is the continuation of season two's finale Anasazi where Fox Mulder was supposedly killed by an explosion in a buried rail car. Anasazi was at such a high level of drama and excitement, it would be hard to follow it up with as much intensity. The Blessing Way is a great episode but falls a little short of Anasazi. A lot of the episode deals with Mulder's recovery through a Native American ritual called 'the blessing way'. For me, that's where the episode loses a lot of its tension. Mulder lying on a bed being talked about by a Native American and being talked to by deceased persons doesn't do it for me. The other half of the story has to do with Scully dealing with Skinner, a member of the Consortium, and finding an implant in your neck. The Scully side of the story has a lot of good drama and intensity. That's why I gave this episode an 8. The end of the episode is worth the wait, and takes us into the third part of this story, Paper Clip.
Some interesting developments hide show
And so we return to the X Files universe after last season's show-stopping season ender, only to open up with a curiously broken-backed episode. That's not to say that "The Blessing Way" is lacking in action – quite the contrary – but by dividing itself into two distinct halves it suffers from a stop-go pace. This is because the Scully story pushes on with a great dynamic, and one of the finest revelations that this series has ever sprung on us. The Mulder story however is largely comatose like the character himself and this only helps in slowing down the action. The main focus here though is on Scully and her ever-increasing efforts to rail against the conspiracy against the agents. There is a real feeling that this conspiracy is just alarmingly big, coming in the form of military personnel swooping down on her from the sky, or from within the ranks of the FBI itself as she finds herself stripped of her status. But clearly working with Mulder has galvanised Scully and in this episode she is not afraid to buck the system or ask the questions that need to be asked. This is particularly true with regard to her very spiky relationship with Skinner, whose motivations are most intriguingly shadowy. The fact is that the more Scully ferrets away at getting answers, the greater risk she runs of exposing herself and her family to extreme danger. Already we are familiar with the insidious nature of the Cigarette Smoking Man's duplicity, although his role is surprisingly cut back in the episode, presumably to make way for the introduction of the Syndicate.
This is a shrewd move on Chris Carter's part and it gives the conspiracy a respectable face. CSM's actions are usually so suspect and out there that it's interesting to see that he actually answers to a cabal that is coated with the veneer of respectability. Somehow this makes it seem more dangerous, and the implication is that these are all important businessmen, presumably with some very highly powered connections. The casting of John Neville as the Well Manicured Man pays off excellently. He is gloriously sleek and sinister in his major scene when he confronts Scully at Bill Mulder's funeral.
Never afraid to up the ante and increase pressure on the protagonists, Carter does away with Scully's vaguely irritating new age sister. We know that this will have impact on Scully at a later date but the major revelation of this episode has to be that defining moment when she walks through the FBI's main entrance metal detector and discovers her implant. This brings the conspiracy shockingly and frighteningly home to her. Not only was she a victim of a staged abduction but she has also been some kind of monitored guinea pig following it. As a plot twist, it's a superb choice, giving Scully some real hard concrete vested interest in finding out why this has been done to her. The fact that her repressive nature doesn't exactly make her a good candidate for regressive hypnosis means that we should be able to get some valuable mileage from this exciting plot development. Meanwhile, back in the land of American Indian mysticism, Mulder sits the episode out, having occasional visions of dead people. And it doesn't work. The visitations of Deep Throat and his father serve no real purpose only to allow Carter to write some of his most portentous dialogue. In fact the whole Mulder lying on the brink of death scenario is the episode's weakest factor. Partly because we never for one single moment buy the fact that we are going to be without David Duchovny, and also because it just all feels like padding. Indian rituals are all very well, but "The Blessing Way" overplays its hand in this department. (The one intriguing aspect of Mulder's spirit-like state is in his pretentiously worded "appearance" to Scully in a dream, which suggests that she has a lot more in common with Melissa than she would have us believe.) So overall, a welcome return, with some wonderful new plot developments that bode well for the continued longevity and intrigue of the series. We just need Mulder back in action now. 7/10
Mulder Goes There And Back Again hide show
What a great episode! Loved the title, which I recognized from the book referenced in the notes section. The Navajo spiritualism really worked for me and I adored the Navajo narrator, his slow and easy warmth was a nice counterpoint to the frenetic action of last season's closer, "Anasazi." And what a great idea to make this season's opener only part 2 of a 3 part Mythology story arc! Some criticisms I have are that the Mulder-as-Christ symbolism was a bit too heavy and the whole firing/rehiring of Scully and Mulder is getting predictable and old. Also it is unfortunate that they are killing off Scully's hot, hot, hot sister....
With this great season opener, the series seems to have found its groove as the production values and the writing have reached a very high level.
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