The X-Files - 3.
The Blessing Way
3.1 The Blessing Way
German title: Das Ritual
translation: The Ritual
French title: La Chemin De La Bénédiction
translation: The Blessing Way
Italian title: Il file da non aprire
US Airdate: September 22, 1995
writer: Chris Carter
director: R.W. Goodwin
David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully
Guest Cast:
Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman as Albert Hosteen
Tim Michael as Albert's son
Dakota House as Eric Hosteen
Mitch Davies as Camouflage Man
William B. Davis as Cancer Man
Michael David Simms as Senior Agent
Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner
Don Williams as 1st Elder
Stanley Walsh as 2nd Elder
John Moore as 3rd Elder
John Neville as Well-Manicured Man
Sheila Larken as Margaret Scully
Melinda McGraw as Melissa Scully
Tom Braidwood as Frohike
Peter Donat as Bill Mulder
Jerry Hardin as Deep Throat
Benita Ha as Tour Guide
Ernie Foort as Security Guard
Forbes Angus as MD
Alf Humphreys as Dr. Pomerantz
Rebecca Toolan as Mrs Mulder
Nicholas Lea as Agent Krycek
Lenno Britos as Hispanic Man
Ian Victor as Minister
MULDER HANGS BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH AS DANA SCULLY IS OUSTED FROM THE FBI; THE CIGARETTE-SMOKING MAN CLOSES IN ON THE MISSING DATA TAPE AS ASSASSINS TRACK SCULLY.
Dana Scully visits Albert Hosteen's family, and finds them badly beaten by the Cigarette-Smoking Man's thugs. She immediately goes in search of Mulder but finds only a charred ruin. Believing her partner is dead, she starts home to Washington, DC, but is stopped and searched by troops demanding the DAT tape Mulder received from his informant, The Thinker. Back at the FBI, she finds herself suspended and must surrender her badge and gun. She discovers a strange implant in her neck, and visits a hypnotist to try to access memories of her abduction. Meanwhile, Albert Hosteen has found Mulder dying in the desert, and conducts a "Blessing Way" ceremony to let the Navaho Holy People heal his soul. While he hangs between worlds, Mulder experiences visions of Deep Throat and his father, urging him to complete his quest. Scully attends the funeral of Mulder's father, and there meets the Well-Manicured Man, a member of the Cigarette-Smoking Man's cabal, who warns her that she has been targeted for murder. Mulder returns to his father's house, where confronts his mother with old photographs showing his father, Deep Throat, and other familiar faces taken in 1972, the year his sister disappeared. The Cigarette Smoking Man, increasingly desperate for the missing tape, pressures Skinner to find it. Scully's sister Melissa is gunned down by Krycek and his minion, who mistake her for Dana Scully. Events race to an explosive standoff as Scully, convinced that Skinner is intent on killing her, holds him at gunpoint in Mulder's apartment...as they hear footsteps approach the door. Part 2 of 3.
The title refers to the name of the chant the Indians use to bring back Mulder's spirit.
After some inaccuracies in "Anasazi", Chris Carter was asked to attend a Navajo night chant and the Native American Church Peyote Ritual, which Carter considered a great honor. He does however admit it was "excrutiatingly painful to sit on the ground, Native American-style, for eight hours" during the ceremony.
Here's where we first meet the latest of the X-Files characters with those fab nicknames, the Well-Manicured Man, played by the marvelous John Neville.
Interesting to note that in real life actors Melinda McGraw (Melissa) and Nicholas Lea (Krycek) were dating at the time, which adds a bit of an extra sting to him shooting her, don't you think?!
The ending reads, "In Memoriam. Larry Wells. 1946-1995." Wells was a costume designer for the series.
Albert Hosteen's opening monologue, heard as we watch flames engulfing the refrigerated boxcar:
"There is an ancient Indian saying, that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who would douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of Truth. Beware these men, for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the Truth."
Cancer Man: (to Albert) "I want Mulder and I want those files!"
(after Scully has been suspended)
Skinner: "We'd also ask that you make yourself available to answer further questions in our investigation into Agent Mulder's whereabouts."
Scully: "I've told you everything I know. To the best of my knowledge, Agent Mulder is dead."
(after she's stormed out of the office)
Skinner: "Agent Scully!"
Scully: (referring to the men in Skinner's office) "Who are these people?!"
Skinner: "These people are doing a job."
Scully: "What they're doing is putting an official stamp on the perpetuation of a lie!"
Skinner: "These people have a protocol to follow, which is something you and Agent Mulder did not do!"
Scully: "The people who were poisoning Agent Mulder's water, whose protocol was that?"
Skinner: "The investigation into..."
Scully: "The investigation will be an exercise! The men who killed Agent Mulder and the people who killed his father, they're not meant to be found!"
Skinner: "We will find them."
Scully: "With all due respect, sir, I think you overestimate your position in the chain of command."
(meeting with the Consortium)
Cancer Man: "Gentlemen, we have control. The files have been recovered and the men involved in their theft have been removed without incident. There is a small matter of concern with the FBI, but we'll handle that internally as usual. The media attention will amount to nothing more than a few scattered obituaries."
First Elder: "The Mulder problem."
Cancer Man: "Special Agent Mulder is dead. His body will not be recovered, he will be officially listed as missing until the matter can be resolved quietly."
Scully: (answering her door to a drunken Frohike) "Frohike?"
Frohike: "I know it's late, but I heard the news....maybe I should go, pardon my presumptuosness."
Scully: "How much have you had to drink?" (Frohike holds up a near-empty bottle of J&B Scotch)
Frohike: "Do you recycle? (he comes in and sits at the kitchen table while she makes him a coffee...awwww) He was a good friend. A redwood among mere sprouts. I guess this means he's passing you the torch?"
Scully: "Uh, I'm afraid not. I'm soon to be out of a job."
Frohike: "Those sons of bitches! They're rigging the game."
Scully: "And like rats they just scatter back into the wood pile."
Frohike: (pulls out an article about The Thinker's death) "The rats that killed the cat."
(as the Indians perform the Blessing Way ceremony, we see into Mulder's mind)
Deep Throat in Mulder's dream: "I was first struck by the absence of time, having depended on it so completely as a measure of myself and my life. Moving backwards into the perpetual night that consumes purpose and deed, all passion and will. I come to you, old friend, with the dull clarity of the dead, *not* to beckon you, but to feel the fire and intensity that still live in you, and the heavy weight of your burdens, which I had once borne. There is truth here old friend, if that's all you seek, but there's no justice or judgement without which truth is a vast...dead... hollow. Go back, do not look into the abyss or let the abyss look into you, awaken the sleep of reason and *fight* the monsters within and without."
Bill Mulder in Mulder's dream: "Hello son, I did not dare hope to see you so soon, nor ever again hope to broker fate with a life to which I gave life. The lies I told you are a pox and poison to my soul, and now you are here because of them. Lies I thought might bury forever a truth I could not live with. I stand here ashamed of the choices I made so long ago, when you were just a boy. You are the memory Fox, it lives in you. If you were to die now, the truth will die and only the lies survive us."
Mulder: "My sister? Is she here?"
Bill Mulder: "No. The thing that would destroy me, the truth I felt you must never learn, is the truth you will find if you are to go forward."
Guard: "Making you come in the front door, are they Agent Scully?"
Scully: "For now."
(Scully asks Skinner to look into whether The Thinker and Bill Mulder were killed by the same gun)
Scully: "You don't want to check?!"
Skinner: "Miss Scully, I think you underestimate the duties and responsibilities of my position as Assistant Director." (Scully gives him a look, acknowledging his use of her own phrase)
Scully: "I was just trying to cooperate with your investigation sir."
Skinner: "To mitigate your situation and enhance your chances at reinstatement, isn't that right?"
Scully: "No! I just want answers!"
Skinner: "And so do I! I want to know why I was asked to execute a search warrant on your apartment? To look for a digital cassette?"
Scully: "I don't have it."
Skinner: "Is this tape what agent Mulder died for?"
Scully: "I believe so."
Skinner: "You want to bring me a smoking gun Scully? You bring me this tape. Otherwise, I would ask you to go home, sit tight and let *us* do our job."
Scully: "Is that all sir?"
Skinner: "Yes that's all." (Scully leaves, Cancer Man appears from another room)
Cancer Man: "Did you ask her about the tape?"
Skinner: "She says she doesn't have it."
Cancer Man: "Is that what she says?"
Skinner: (through gritted teeth) "Yes, that's what she says."
Cancer Man: "Well that's unfortunate for everyone."
Guard: (as his metal detector keeps going nuts when Scully walks through) "That thing is more sensitive than a toothache."
(Scully's hypnosis session)
Dr. Pomerants: "You told me of your experience of being taken away and losing time, do you remember how you felt just before this happened?"
Scully: "I was afraid."
Dr. P: "Do you remember what you were afraid of?"
Scully: "That I would die."
Dr. P: "But you didn't die, someone must have cared for you, do you remember who that someone was?"
Scully: "There were men, a man took me...there was a light and....loud sounds...my ears were bound."
Dr. P: "They performed a procedure on you, do you remember any pain during this?"
Scully: "I'm trying...the sound is all screwed up....there was an alarm...I remember they wanted to know if I was alright."
Dr. P: "Maybe you trusted them not to hurt you. Could this be possible?"
Scully: "I don't know."
Dr. P: "At the FBI you work with people you must entrust with your life. Could it have been one of these people?"
Scully: "I had to trust someone...I was powerless...I couldn't...I could not resist them."
Dr. P: "If this is too painful, I want you to go back to that comfortable place where we began and try again."
Scully: "No!... (wakes up) I'm sorry, I'm trying, I'm trying. I don't think this is working, I don't think we're getting anywhere, thank you, but you'll have to excuse me." (she walks out and sees Skinner leaving her apartment)
Albert: "You must be careful now to end the ceremony properly. If you leave, you must not do any work, change clothes or bathe for four days."
Mulder: "That's really gonna cut into my social life." (they all laugh)
Mulder in Scully's dream: "I have been on the bridge that spans two worlds, the link between all souls by which we cross into our own true nature. You were here today looking for a truth that was taken from you, the truth which was never to be spoken but which now binds us together in dangerous purpose. I have returned from the dead to continue with you. But I fear that this danger is now close at hand, and I may be too late." (Scully wakes up)
(at Bill Mulder's funeral)
Well Manicured-Man: (to Scully) "Hello, I see you're a friend of the family, so am I. Do you think we might find a moment to speak?"
Scully: "About?"
WMM: "A very serious matter. Please, could we find some place away from the others? (they begin walking) I couldn't help overhearing your conversation, do you think the son is still alive?"
Scully: "Who are you?"
WMM: "I'm a member of a kind of consortium, we represent certain global interests."
Scully: "What kind of interests?"
WMM: "Interests that would be extremely threatened by the digital tape that you are no longer in possession of."
Scully: "Threatened enough to murder?"
WMM: "Oh my, yes."
Scully: "What do you know about Mulder?"
WMM: "That he *is* dead, quid pro quo." (I think he says this, which means compensation)
Scully: "You're lying."
WMM: "I'm not here to tell you lies."
Scully: "What *are* you here for?"
WMM: "To tell you *your* life is in danger too."
Scully: "Leave me alone."
WMM: "They'll kill you one of two ways. They'll send someone, possibly two men, to kill you in your home or in the garage with an unregistered weapon, which will be left at the scene. Using false documents, supplied by associates of mine, they'll be out of the country in less than two hours."
Scully: "You said there were two ways?"
WMM: "Yes...he, or she, will be someone close to you, someone you trust. They'll arrange a meeting or come to your house unexpectedly. Do you have someplace else you might stay?"
Scully: "Why, why kill me?"
WMM: "You want something they don't, justice. And because they are now quite certain you don't have a computer copy of the files they're looking for."
Scully: "Why are you protecting me?"
WMM: "I feel my colleagues are acting impulsively. And your death would draw unnecessary attention to our group."
Scully: "You're not protecting me, you're protecting yourself."
WMM: "Why should that surprise you? Motives are rarely unselfish."
Scully: "What kind of business are you in?"
WMM: "We predict the future. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Good day young lady."
Scully: (pulls a gun on Skinner) "Eyes forward, put your hands where I can see them, don't turn around or I'll blow your head off! Don't think I won't do it, you son of a bitch."
(still holding a gun on him)
Scully: "I wanna know who sent you, whose errand boy you are."
Skinner: "No one sent me."
Scully: "You got the rest of your life to give me answers."
Linux From Scratch! Q: What is printed on the bottom of beer bottles in Minnesota?
A: Open other end.