Nothing more than what we are
What makes a person who they are?
The X Files asked this question back in Season One’s ‘Ice’ when Richter announced, “We’re not … who … we are.”
It has continued to ask this question through Mulder and Scully, both of whom have had plenty of cause to question just who they are, who they would like to be, and whether they like being who they appear to be. Mulder’s crisis of faith has forced him to face this question, as Scully has had to face it after meeting Emily and the choices she felt she needed to make for ‘her’ child.
All of us are faced with this question, probably more often than we know. In a toxic relationship, we must ask ourselves if we wish to be the person we seemed forced to be? In a job that makes us unhappy, we must ask if we wish to force ourselves to be someone we’d prefer not to be? Returning home after many years away, we must ask ourselves if we are the person remembered by those who stayed or someone who has grown beyond what they can know?
Who is Alex Krycek?
He could have been a clean-cut hero of the FBI, as he first appeared in ‘Sleepless’. In reality, he was little more than a stooge for the Cigarette Smoking Man, a puppet dancing according to how his strings were pulled. The very antithesis, in that regard, to Mulder, who always has a pair of scissors at the ready to cut any strings others might think they have him dangling by. Krycek doesn’t come into his own until his strings are cut for him – the car bomb in ‘Paper Clip’ serving that purpose.
Why, at this point, did Krycek not return to the FBI? His natural instinct seems to have been to go on the run, to disappear, only to resurface in ‘Piper Maru’ as a rogue.
Krycek had options. None of those options were without risk but was going back to the FBI any more risky that a life on the run? Yet this is the life Krycek choose for himself. Why?
Was Alex Krycek born bad? If his instinct was to run was it because he naturally was compelled to do so? Did he even for a moment contemplate returning to the FBI? It would appear not.
Certainly, in ‘Patient X’, Krycek shows a side to his character that is even more brutal than the CSM has ever shown. In truth, Krycek is a better bad guy than the CSM, it’s just a shame that the show never gave him more of an opportunity to shine. The CSM wanders around and has a knack of positioning himself in such a way he reaps the benefits of the actions of others. Krycek is more proactive, more deliberately evil. For God’s sake, he sews the mouth and eye lids of an innocent Kazakhstani boy shut! The CSM never does anything remotely as brutal! Not personally! The CSM might order it done; Krycek actually does it!
Let’s remember, this is a one handed Krycek, having lost his left arm to those who would ‘protect’ him in ‘Terma’. Surely, after having a hand amputated, you have every excuse to take yourself out of the game? Krycek isn’t just a person who has done bad things in his life, he is a person driven to do bad things, above and beyond what could be expected of any self-respecting bad guy.
We’ve seen this before. Ted Bundy escaped from Pitkin Co. Law Library, Colorado, in June 1977. Five days later, he was apprehended again in Aspen, Colorado. They managed to hold him for six months before he again escaped. If ever a man needed to learn from his mistakes and disappear into the woodwork it was Ted Bundy. Yet, within two weeks of his escape, he breaks into the Chi Omega Sorority House in Tallahassee, killing two young women. As uncharacteristic as this attack is, Bundy then abducted and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Ann Leach.
We can fool ourselves into thinking Bundy was a monster, thereby making him ‘other’ and not as we are. But who of us X Philes doesn’t love Krycek? And we love him precisely because he is so evil! And, like Bundy, Krycek is so damned good looking! Are we so superficial?
I prefer to think that we are not. I do believe that, never being secure in our understanding of who we are as individuals, we find something attractive in that person who stands beyond the rule of law and society – a part of us wishes that we too could be so independent, if not so brutal. I think that most of the human race are cowards and that we allow ourselves to be brutalized by the system. In our shame, we seek to lash out at those that are deserving of our hatred but are scared of taking action because we have an inkling that we might do something as terrible as a Bundy or a Krycek.
As much as we know these are bad people, yet they do what we wish we had the character to do!
I do not, for a minute, believe that most of us would go as far as Bundy or Krycek. We just wish that we had the strength to do what we would need to do to shuck the yoke from our shoulders. (cf. Is. 10:27)
Who is Alex Krycek?
He is what we are afraid of becoming. So, we become nothing more than what we are.
The X Files asked this question back in Season One’s ‘Ice’ when Richter announced, “We’re not … who … we are.”
It has continued to ask this question through Mulder and Scully, both of whom have had plenty of cause to question just who they are, who they would like to be, and whether they like being who they appear to be. Mulder’s crisis of faith has forced him to face this question, as Scully has had to face it after meeting Emily and the choices she felt she needed to make for ‘her’ child.
All of us are faced with this question, probably more often than we know. In a toxic relationship, we must ask ourselves if we wish to be the person we seemed forced to be? In a job that makes us unhappy, we must ask if we wish to force ourselves to be someone we’d prefer not to be? Returning home after many years away, we must ask ourselves if we are the person remembered by those who stayed or someone who has grown beyond what they can know?
Who is Alex Krycek?
He could have been a clean-cut hero of the FBI, as he first appeared in ‘Sleepless’. In reality, he was little more than a stooge for the Cigarette Smoking Man, a puppet dancing according to how his strings were pulled. The very antithesis, in that regard, to Mulder, who always has a pair of scissors at the ready to cut any strings others might think they have him dangling by. Krycek doesn’t come into his own until his strings are cut for him – the car bomb in ‘Paper Clip’ serving that purpose.
Why, at this point, did Krycek not return to the FBI? His natural instinct seems to have been to go on the run, to disappear, only to resurface in ‘Piper Maru’ as a rogue.
Krycek had options. None of those options were without risk but was going back to the FBI any more risky that a life on the run? Yet this is the life Krycek choose for himself. Why?
Was Alex Krycek born bad? If his instinct was to run was it because he naturally was compelled to do so? Did he even for a moment contemplate returning to the FBI? It would appear not.
Certainly, in ‘Patient X’, Krycek shows a side to his character that is even more brutal than the CSM has ever shown. In truth, Krycek is a better bad guy than the CSM, it’s just a shame that the show never gave him more of an opportunity to shine. The CSM wanders around and has a knack of positioning himself in such a way he reaps the benefits of the actions of others. Krycek is more proactive, more deliberately evil. For God’s sake, he sews the mouth and eye lids of an innocent Kazakhstani boy shut! The CSM never does anything remotely as brutal! Not personally! The CSM might order it done; Krycek actually does it!
Let’s remember, this is a one handed Krycek, having lost his left arm to those who would ‘protect’ him in ‘Terma’. Surely, after having a hand amputated, you have every excuse to take yourself out of the game? Krycek isn’t just a person who has done bad things in his life, he is a person driven to do bad things, above and beyond what could be expected of any self-respecting bad guy.
We’ve seen this before. Ted Bundy escaped from Pitkin Co. Law Library, Colorado, in June 1977. Five days later, he was apprehended again in Aspen, Colorado. They managed to hold him for six months before he again escaped. If ever a man needed to learn from his mistakes and disappear into the woodwork it was Ted Bundy. Yet, within two weeks of his escape, he breaks into the Chi Omega Sorority House in Tallahassee, killing two young women. As uncharacteristic as this attack is, Bundy then abducted and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Ann Leach.
We can fool ourselves into thinking Bundy was a monster, thereby making him ‘other’ and not as we are. But who of us X Philes doesn’t love Krycek? And we love him precisely because he is so evil! And, like Bundy, Krycek is so damned good looking! Are we so superficial?
I prefer to think that we are not. I do believe that, never being secure in our understanding of who we are as individuals, we find something attractive in that person who stands beyond the rule of law and society – a part of us wishes that we too could be so independent, if not so brutal. I think that most of the human race are cowards and that we allow ourselves to be brutalized by the system. In our shame, we seek to lash out at those that are deserving of our hatred but are scared of taking action because we have an inkling that we might do something as terrible as a Bundy or a Krycek.
As much as we know these are bad people, yet they do what we wish we had the character to do!
I do not, for a minute, believe that most of us would go as far as Bundy or Krycek. We just wish that we had the strength to do what we would need to do to shuck the yoke from our shoulders. (cf. Is. 10:27)
Who is Alex Krycek?
He is what we are afraid of becoming. So, we become nothing more than what we are.
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