Hosting a relapse
"OK this is my penance for having got pregnant when they had invested so much in the show and me." (cf. 'Gillian Anderson bares all)
"They would have loved to have punished me but they realised there was steam picking up… I would have been bloody p---ed if I had been them and had cast a girl, against my better judgement, who got pregnant after the first season." (cf. 'Gillian Anderson bares all
Gillian Anderson was well aware she wasn't everyone's first pick for the role of Dana Scully. Clearly, the name 'Anderson' was fated, but the executives of Fox wanted it to be Pamela rather than Gillian.
She's right though. Almost the whole of Season Two can be seen as 'them' being p---ed at Anderson.
After getting to play the hero in the Season opener, 'Little Green Men', Scully is then abducted in 'Duane Barry', experimented on in 'Ascension', Mulder deals with his loneliness by having a fling with another woman in '3', she dies in 'One Breath', handcuffed to a spore carrier in 'Firewalker', abducted again in 'Irresistible' albeit by a very human serial killer, subject to attack by voodoo in 'Fresh Bones', oh hum, abducted a third time in 'Colony/End Game' and used as bait and a hostage swap (a reminder that she can always be swapped for Pamela, maybe?), and who can forget the elephant autopsy in 'Fearful Symmetry' (and Mulder thought he got the shit jobs in 'The Host'), aged terribly in 'Død Kalm' (what woman wants to see herself so wrinkled?), thrown around the room in 'The Calusari' (not for the first time), left alone in the highly contagious prison in 'F. Emasculata' (though, after 'Firewalker' you'd think she'd know not to get so close), reminded how difficult it is for a woman to succeed in a man's world in 'Soft Light', nearly beheaded and eaten in 'Our Town' (after being abducted, of course), and finally getting some satisfaction in 'Anasazi' when she shoots Mulder.
But the most telling episode is 'The Host'.
Mulder's acknowledgment to Skinner, "You know, you had a pair of agents that could have handled a case like this," is revealing in that it implies he can't handle it by himself, but the episode as a whole really shows how, even if subconsciously, Anderson had really pissed 'them' off.
'The Host' is about nothing but impregnation. Flukeman isn't really evil, as such, he's just trying to fulfill life's prime directive, to have babies. But notice 'he' only 'impregnates' men. All the victims in this episode are men.
If you now consider that of the 58 members of the production team listed on x-files.wikia.com 46 of them are male and only 12 are female - script editors not script writers, art director not director - you begin to realise the meaning. Pardon my use of Germanic origin words, but, quite clearly, in this episode we have the sense of a bunch of guys thinking "We're fucked!"
Understandable, really. Chris Carter had stuck his neck out in support of Gillian Anderson over the preferred choice. The first season of any series is a prolonged establishing shot and now all that had been established must have seemed threatened. And just to punctuate the point, as the flukeman penetrates his victims, he leaves an X shaped wound.
Let us not forget - but how can we, after the number of times I've referred to it? - Mulder's more than figurative wading in shit! Whichever way we look at this episode, we see 'them' 'p---ed' at the 'girl'.
"They would have loved to have punished me but they realised there was steam picking up… I would have been bloody p---ed if I had been them and had cast a girl, against my better judgement, who got pregnant after the first season." (cf. 'Gillian Anderson bares all
Gillian Anderson was well aware she wasn't everyone's first pick for the role of Dana Scully. Clearly, the name 'Anderson' was fated, but the executives of Fox wanted it to be Pamela rather than Gillian.
She's right though. Almost the whole of Season Two can be seen as 'them' being p---ed at Anderson.
After getting to play the hero in the Season opener, 'Little Green Men', Scully is then abducted in 'Duane Barry', experimented on in 'Ascension', Mulder deals with his loneliness by having a fling with another woman in '3', she dies in 'One Breath', handcuffed to a spore carrier in 'Firewalker', abducted again in 'Irresistible' albeit by a very human serial killer, subject to attack by voodoo in 'Fresh Bones', oh hum, abducted a third time in 'Colony/End Game' and used as bait and a hostage swap (a reminder that she can always be swapped for Pamela, maybe?), and who can forget the elephant autopsy in 'Fearful Symmetry' (and Mulder thought he got the shit jobs in 'The Host'), aged terribly in 'Død Kalm' (what woman wants to see herself so wrinkled?), thrown around the room in 'The Calusari' (not for the first time), left alone in the highly contagious prison in 'F. Emasculata' (though, after 'Firewalker' you'd think she'd know not to get so close), reminded how difficult it is for a woman to succeed in a man's world in 'Soft Light', nearly beheaded and eaten in 'Our Town' (after being abducted, of course), and finally getting some satisfaction in 'Anasazi' when she shoots Mulder.
But the most telling episode is 'The Host'.
Mulder's acknowledgment to Skinner, "You know, you had a pair of agents that could have handled a case like this," is revealing in that it implies he can't handle it by himself, but the episode as a whole really shows how, even if subconsciously, Anderson had really pissed 'them' off.
'The Host' is about nothing but impregnation. Flukeman isn't really evil, as such, he's just trying to fulfill life's prime directive, to have babies. But notice 'he' only 'impregnates' men. All the victims in this episode are men.
If you now consider that of the 58 members of the production team listed on x-files.wikia.com 46 of them are male and only 12 are female - script editors not script writers, art director not director - you begin to realise the meaning. Pardon my use of Germanic origin words, but, quite clearly, in this episode we have the sense of a bunch of guys thinking "We're fucked!"
Understandable, really. Chris Carter had stuck his neck out in support of Gillian Anderson over the preferred choice. The first season of any series is a prolonged establishing shot and now all that had been established must have seemed threatened. And just to punctuate the point, as the flukeman penetrates his victims, he leaves an X shaped wound.
Comments
Post a Comment