Daemonicus
Okay, ‘Dæmonicus’ is not the X Files at its best. But, then, very little of Season Nine is.
That said, I quite like this episode. It is episodes like this that makes me thankful I’m not a TV critic. If I was, I would have to agree with them0vieblog.com when it says that:
The dynamic between Mulder and Scully was always that he was open to extreme possibilities and she the sceptic. For eight seasons – or seven and a half – it worked fine. It isn’t, however, Season Nine. Now we have a whole new dynamic and need to approach the show from an entirely different perspective. If we keep measuring it by previous standards, what hope is there? That this episode gave us something completely new, despite them0vieblog.com’s emphasis on the generic, offers hope that there remains a story to tell.
Love should not have to depend upon the routine, the expected, and, definitely not, the ordinary. Because I love this show, I am not willing to readily consign it to the expected or the ordinary. And, for God’s sake, if the Devil was predictable, he wouldn’t be half so frightening. Think about the devil. Why, on any level, would he give us precisely what we expected? God doesn’t! And God means no evil! To reduce this episode to human expectations is to completely and utterly miss the nature of evil.
James Remar is a great character actor and brings gravitas and threat to his performance. And, yes, there is far too much vomiting, but, after ‘The Exorcist’, how can you do satanic presence without a wee bit of vomit? It’s a trope that’s a tad bit overdone in this episode. It doesn’t diminish the Satanic threat that runs throughout the episode. The whole point of evil is that it is something that we normal people wouldn’t do, couldn’t do, shouldn’t even think of doing.
Thirteen ‘children’ have recently been found shackled and emaciated, held captive by their parents. Who, in their right minds, is able to comprehend the motivations of David and Louise Turpin? Who, of those living in that neighbourhood, was able to get invested in what was happening in that house? There just is no way for those of us who are not evil to predict or understand those who are. Just because many of us fall far short of the ideal of what it means to be human doesn’t mean that we understand evil.
Evil is a term we bandy about far too easily. Donald Trump is a racist, granted. That makes him a bad human being. It doesn’t make him evil. Adolf Hitler was a racist. And evil. There is a difference.
As remarkable as it sounds, accounts of the Holocaust are, in a sense racist. When we talk of the Holocaust, we talk in terms of the number of Jews who lost their lives. While they were the single largest group, they weren’t the only ones. We find evil difficult to comprehend, so six million Jews, while staggering, is easier to figure than the total number.
To criticize ‘Dæmonicus’ on the basis of not understanding the motivations of the Devil is kind of like saying Elvis is shit because you don’t like his music. You only demonstrate you own ignorance.
That said, I quite like this episode. It is episodes like this that makes me thankful I’m not a TV critic. If I was, I would have to agree with them0vieblog.com when it says that:
There are no tangible stakes, because there’s never a sense that the audience knows the limitations or the motivations of the bad guy. It is hard to get too invested in the chase when Josef Kobold will always be one step ahead because of convenient plotting and (possibly) supernatural ability.
I don’t want to agree with this justifiable criticism simply because it precisely delineates the reason why I like the episode. I like the fact that, for once, there is no Mulder or Scully expounding a theory, that there is a possibility of things happening that haven’t been previously catalogued and filed away.The dynamic between Mulder and Scully was always that he was open to extreme possibilities and she the sceptic. For eight seasons – or seven and a half – it worked fine. It isn’t, however, Season Nine. Now we have a whole new dynamic and need to approach the show from an entirely different perspective. If we keep measuring it by previous standards, what hope is there? That this episode gave us something completely new, despite them0vieblog.com’s emphasis on the generic, offers hope that there remains a story to tell.
Love should not have to depend upon the routine, the expected, and, definitely not, the ordinary. Because I love this show, I am not willing to readily consign it to the expected or the ordinary. And, for God’s sake, if the Devil was predictable, he wouldn’t be half so frightening. Think about the devil. Why, on any level, would he give us precisely what we expected? God doesn’t! And God means no evil! To reduce this episode to human expectations is to completely and utterly miss the nature of evil.
James Remar is a great character actor and brings gravitas and threat to his performance. And, yes, there is far too much vomiting, but, after ‘The Exorcist’, how can you do satanic presence without a wee bit of vomit? It’s a trope that’s a tad bit overdone in this episode. It doesn’t diminish the Satanic threat that runs throughout the episode. The whole point of evil is that it is something that we normal people wouldn’t do, couldn’t do, shouldn’t even think of doing.
Thirteen ‘children’ have recently been found shackled and emaciated, held captive by their parents. Who, in their right minds, is able to comprehend the motivations of David and Louise Turpin? Who, of those living in that neighbourhood, was able to get invested in what was happening in that house? There just is no way for those of us who are not evil to predict or understand those who are. Just because many of us fall far short of the ideal of what it means to be human doesn’t mean that we understand evil.
Evil is a term we bandy about far too easily. Donald Trump is a racist, granted. That makes him a bad human being. It doesn’t make him evil. Adolf Hitler was a racist. And evil. There is a difference.
As remarkable as it sounds, accounts of the Holocaust are, in a sense racist. When we talk of the Holocaust, we talk in terms of the number of Jews who lost their lives. While they were the single largest group, they weren’t the only ones. We find evil difficult to comprehend, so six million Jews, while staggering, is easier to figure than the total number.
To criticize ‘Dæmonicus’ on the basis of not understanding the motivations of the Devil is kind of like saying Elvis is shit because you don’t like his music. You only demonstrate you own ignorance.
Comments
Post a Comment