S08 E19–21 & Season Wrap-Up
8x19 Alone*
This house in rural New York is pleasingly creepy. There’s an old man being looked after by his middle aged complaining son. The son gets busy microwaving a delicious plastic pack of frozen vegetables (?) only to find that his ole dad has vanished screaming and there is some sort of slithering giant creature in the room lunging towards him. Not good! Think about the wasted vegetables!
S is packing up. End of the road for M last week getting fired, now S is filling her box with priceless XF mementos (which would be great things to own if the show had a prop sale) like the fused coin and the name tag Queequeg, which was of course was S’s beloved dog. She found Q in the classic Clyde Bruckman episode, then tragically lost the dog, eaten by an alligator. Perils of the job. S is out the door on her mat leave. I don’t feel like she’s coming back, at least no in spirit.
So somehow, in a pretty short period of time, Dog has gone from skeptically reassigned former NYPD cop to guarder of the XF flame/basement dwelling outcast. May as well embrace it! But before Dog can turn around he’s got a new partner! She has the same hair (but blonde) and pantsuit as S, and looks a little bit like Lacey Chabert (but is not) and she’s already booked them on a flight to Buffalo to look into a monster! I can’t find any notes on this, but I remember the network wanting a hot blonde to partner M at the start of the show and I wonder if this is a little joking nod to that.
Dog is doing the heavy lifting here. Special Agent Leyla (SAL) seems to be more just in awe of the whole XF thing. In fact, turns out this is her first time in the field. Kush pushed her into this job to fuck with Dog and to bust up the XF. But too bad on Kush, this is SAL’s dream job! She was the accountant who dealt with the expenses for years for the XF (unsurprisingly they needed someone full time to deal with that madness) so SAL knows the XF inside and out. Right away she’s dropping knowledge about how they could be looking for a bile eating liver mutant (Toombs!) or an alien who sheds his skin (every other episode!).
HA this is the first actual funny episode of this season. Only took 19 tries. I love SAL, she should get a spinoff. It’s also sort of preempting the postmodern Cobra Kai thing of treating (nonsensical) previous events in the history of the show as real events that happened to real people. Most of the times on these shows there’s no reckoning for all the things that have happened over the years, especially not viewed from another perspective, so it’s hilarious to add the context of the accountant reading the case files to clear the expense records, and being like ‘OK, so they bought cross country first class tickets to chase a liver eating mutant into an escalator (in the mall where I used to do my grocery shopping) then chartered a private plane to Michigan? Approved!’
It’s also a much better fit for Dog to be the straight man to all this bubbly enthusiasm, he fits that role so well. The snake monster thing is in the house somewhere but it’s ability to up walls/ceilings etc make it hard to get a bead on, to the extent that Dog almost shoots SAL as he’s chasing it. He tells her to stand outside and maybe take the safety of her gun in case it reaches her. So uhh, wouldn’t Kush be under investigation for assigning an accountant to a dangerous field agent mission? Seems like she has no training and is going to die/kill someone. Right away Dog hears shots fired and SAL has vanished. And now Dog falls down some trapdoor and maybe this is the end of the XF, and also a congressional hearing/imprisonment for Kush.
S’s mat leave lasted like a day because now she’s on the phone with Skinman about coming to look for these two lost goons. Dog is ok though, he’s in a pit sure, but he’s alive. S sticks to doing the autopsy, accompanied of course by M who is able to apparently wander away from a tour he’s doing of the FBI HQ and get into the autopsy room, which seems like a literal federal offense, but it’s fine. They argue over how neither of them should be involved in this, yet here we are.
The tunnels under the house seem to go on forever. Dog is crawling around in them, when he finds SAL, and also the monster, and also the son. Problem is, the monster squirted something in all their eyes so they’re bumbling around pretty much blind in this huge tunnel network. SAL suggests another old XF with a man who lived in underground tunnels but Dog is like, ‘don’t worry these are just old bootlegger tunnels, we can find our way out!’
What’s more likely is that M can help. He shows up at the giant FBI search and Skinman is like yeah what the hell, join in and look for Dog. Why not get involved in your second federal crime of the day. Of course M knows just where to look and finds the fused coin S gifted to Dog earlier. He also finds the owner of the property, and acts like he’s director Kush (impersonating a federal officer, strike 3 in what the last hour?) but the guy acts super weird and is like ‘nothing to see here, def no monster dwelling in underground tunnels, please leave.’ Then the guy boots Dog back into the hole.
M is not perturbed though, hanging around until it’s dark so he can chase after the monster which moves kinda like the alien from the movie Alien rather than the aliens M usually apprehends. M has figured out that the dude who owns the house is pals with the alien and he didn’t mean it to escape and eat the caretaker’s dad or whatever. SAL is the one who identifies that the owner of the house isn’t protecting the monster but rather IS the monster! Which makes it not great that they’re all locked inside with monster-man and all blinded and all armed and this can’t end well! M gives some high stakes William Tell advice to Dog, telling him when to shoot, as the monster leaps towards M’s head. Dog dead eyes (literally) the monster and they all escape.
M & S pop into the hospital to say thanks to Dog and SAL. Too bad for Sal this was too much excitement for her and she’s asked to transfer off the XF immediately. Like she had a choice? M & S take the fused coin and give it to SAL who is near tears in thanks. SAL finishes with a hilarious and awesome question (and a direct poke at the comic book guy fans) about how (at the end of the movie) when M ran out of gas in Antarctica, how did you get back to civilization? HA!
I could have used way more of SAL! This whole season might have benefited from her being assigned to XF. (Sidenote, the character was named after a legendary writer of XF fan fiction who died.)
Man, that was kinda an average episode, made great because of the context. It’s the last monster of the week for the old team, last ride for M & S. They’ll still do aliens and stuff and I think that they’re still in the 9th and final season (of the original run) but this really feels like the bell tolling on the end of an era. When Dog walks off down the corridor alone at the end, it’s a moment.
8x20 Essence
Oof, a vague M voice over starts us off. Not usually a super good sign for a great episode. Billy the once nice kid now an alien SUPERSOLDIER, burns down a lab full of info about hybrid aliens, killing everyone etc and I think this is the main plot line for the final regular season.
M somehow knows about this (I guess it’s on the TV news, not super subtle these super soldiers) and interrupts Dog at home to have him go along to investigate. Dog goes along with M breaking into medical facilities and I’m not sure that is a great plan. Does Dog want to get fired and end up a security guard? What if this guy M is actually just insane and gets lucky here and there? I don’t know if you want to have your wagon hitched to him.
Sure enough, a doctor interrupts M’s illegal search/robbery and Dog jumps on questioning the guy. Doc has a hard time defending a room full of jars of hybrid aliens. Not a great look! Apparently though these are just birth defects, def not aliens or anything. This might all lead back to S, who has some new nurse that’s fooling around with her medication. Bad Nurse is in on the conspiracy!
The doc who didn’t seem totally bad when M and Dog spoke with him now runs into Billy, and into a similar fate to the other guys Billy chats to. Speaking of unstoppable killing machines that WILL NOT STOP, Dog draws his gun and shoots Billy a bunch of times, to no effect and M doesn’t help much, getting chucked through a window. They’re going to need a bigger gun. Maybe a laser gun for aliens? Dog thinks Billy isn’t a true alien, since he bleeds red not green. M assures him this is EVEN WORSE!
Billy is off decapitating more doctors and it’s starting to look like this whole thing is about the wiping out any hybrids or humans that have the capacity to fight the incoming aliens. Which again, no doubt, is related to S’s monster baby. Skinman tells Dog (& M who is hanging around) that the dead doctors were involved in monitoring S’s baby. Skinman demands M tell him who the father is, which seems weird, but apparently it’s to help better protect S, rather than win the office pool on who the daddy is.
S catches the shenanigans going on with her medication but turns out it’s for a good cause or something. They want to protect the baby! Riiiiight. S finally breaks down yelling about how she can’t take being the subject of some unending XF and, yup, you and me both Big Red. The sooner this whole thing wraps up and we focus on monsters of the week, the better. I guess you could just make a playlist of just MOW episodes and that would make me very happy. That would be one perfect season, since it probably gets to about twenty episodes over the course of nine seasons.
Billy turns himself in but guess what, that’s about as great a news as when Kevin Spacey does the same thing at the end of Se7en. Billy is after M & S and by that I mean the baybeeee. Too for Billy though, just as his plan is working out, he’s run down by double agent K who is now working on the good side or something? Maybe K should just get out of this whole business, nobody likes him even when he’s doing good.
For some reason Reyes is involved (she flew up from New Orleans?) and they’re all working together. The plan seems to be, M and Skinman push Billy off a roof then grind him up in a garbage truck. I’m not sure if that’s certain death for SUPERSOLDIERS but seems to do the trick.
Alas, there’s another one, we see from the marks on his neck! To Be Continued. Yet sadly, never concluded it would seem.
8x21 Existence
This is the end — for M at least. He’s out the door until the show got rebooted many many years later. He’s on the case with Dog, investigating how Billy got ground up into dust and yet, his metal chip grew him back? It’s funny how after all the shit Skinman has seen, this is what he absolutely can’t believe happened. K is like yeah and he’s after that baby dude, he ain’t gonna stop. I wonder if Skinman ever feels like, ‘why the hell did I ever mixed up with this bunch of clowns? I should have just stuck to my day job and gone home at 5pm.’
Reyes (is it weird she’s not actually Latina?) and S are headed south to deliver the baby. The baby is apparently the first homegrown SUPERSOLDIER who is going to be y’know one of the good kind, and help fight the bad aliens. Sure. I’m not sure why Reyes is making whale sounds and making the baby room pretty and talking about how beautiful S looks, because it’s not like S is going to live in the house, but here we are. They need to give Reyes some sort of personality outside of: kook who smokes.
Skinman sure doesn’t like having K around which makes sense, K being the second least trustworthy man ever after Roger Stone. K seems to be a magnet for the bad aliens and Skinman gets knocked out trying to contain K before he I don’t know, sells the FBI out to the aliens to protect himself? K for one, welcomes our new alien overlords.
Dog explains to M that he understands the whole deal because Baldwin explained it to him. M is like nah this guy is full of shit, he’s just spreading another cover up! The truth! Out there somewhere! Ever heard that?
S and Reyes have a local sheriff looking out for them (played by an awesome character actor) who is no doubt some sort of alien herself. Doesn’t take too long for her to intervene because heeeere’s Billy but the sheriff blows him away, and it’s finalllllly baby time. We know that because the weird ass sheriff intones “This Baby Will Be Born.” OK pal!
There’s a bit where Dog is arguing w/M about this whole conspiracy and Dog’s losing it, like “I don’t understand! Covering up what??” and you and me both brother.
K talks about how he could have killed M so many times and at this point, hasn’t M died and come back so many times and K too? Death is meaningless, go ahead K, do it, shoot them all. Skinman shows up and shoots K dead, something I feel like he’s been looking for an excuse to do for a loooooong time. Next Baldwin dies because of Dog, although we don’t see him def die, just the flames of the car crash, which doesn’t mean much in XF world.
Dog and Reyes are getting chewed out by Kush who is basically calling the whole enterprise total nonsense. I mean, at least Kush seems to understand whatever the hell is going on with the report. Dog tells Kush he’s appointed Reyes as his new full time XF partner and Kush can go fuck himself, because he’s under his own investigation for his dealings with (now dead) Baldwin. This shuts up ole Kush who has been an super underwhelming adversary. All he ever did was be mad with no explanations as to why or what his end goal with, he’s no CSM. He’s like Bobby The Brain, the old wrestling commentator, always on the side of the heel no matter the actual events.
The baby seems normal, but who knows. TLG show up and they seem to think it’s all fine and if anyone would know about babies health, it’s for sure those three dudes. I guess M didn’t want to believe it was a hybrid or alien or whatever because he wants the baby to be his w/S? Seems at the very end like this might be the case, because they finally finally— with M’s last XF action — kiss for real for real.
Great?
Season 8 Wrap-Up
What’s interesting about watching a show in this way, streaming, many years after it aired, watching 3–4 episodes in a row, is that it strips away all the noise around the show. It presses fast forward on the thinking part, the part where you spent time in between, during the week, thinking ‘hmm that was OK or bad or great, I wonder what will happen next week.’
So while at the time I’m sure there was a lot of complaining about M leaving, the show not being what it once was etc, there’s none of that here in the vacuum. It’s only TV and movies this works for. People never do this with sports. Go back and watch the entirety of a team’s NFL games from say the 96/97 season. Just one game after another, with no talking heads chiming in, no week to week momentum or think pieces. It lets you evaluate it in a more pure way I think. It makes the flaws or flows more obvious.
Here the big flaw is fairly central; Duchovny and Anderson wanted to leave the show, which is fair enough after seven long years. Both creatively — how much story is left to tell, and financially — it’s a big enough success that they can do whatever they want. Given that background, ’s hard to make a case why they’d stay on. For whatever reason they managed to get Anderson back for season nine, but Duchovny was finally out, although given his contributions in this season you might argue he was out long before that.
The idea that you could continue the show with different leads isn’t that terrible. It might have worked if they’d done it earlier, but it’s pretty much doomed to failure this late in the game. You’re asking for too much push back, nobody is ever going to like the new guys as much as they loved the originals. You have to evolve it over time.
I didn’t enjoy much at all of this season, pretty much a joyless trek through low stakes monsters or world ending alien conspiracies. All the alien stuff has been going on for so long I doubt even the writers or directors could explain clearly what the hell is going on at this point. As Eminem said, “goodbye levity, goodbye brevity.” Or like the Dark Knight said, you either “die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.” At this point I’m not sure who the villains are but my vote might go for the network executives renewing the show to squeeze any last dollars out of its carcass.
One season to go of the original run!
Best Episodes: 03, 10, 19
