T&K Go Loopty Loo: The X-Files

[Toast and Kent love time loop stories.  With this "Loopty Loo" series, T&K explore just what's happening in a film or TV show loop, and maybe over time, they will deconstruct what it is that makes for a good time loop]

The X-Files - Season 6, Episode 14: "Monday"

Preamble:
[Kent] I don't know about you, Toasty, but I used to love me some X-Files.  I was a huge, huge fan.  Until season 6.

While I fell off of watching early in season 7 (and peeked back in from time to time in the seasons that followed just to affirm what a train wreck it had become), it was at some point during season 6 I realized there was no grand plan for the mythology of the series, that they were just winging it.  Serialized TV was in its incubation stage, with Buffy and Babylon 5 being the early charge-leader.  The X-Files wanted to be that but they just didn't have the discipline.  They were too stuck in the old model of ratings-driven network TV. 

Season 6 came after the movie, a really neat looking film with a decent budget that felt extraneous from the TV series because it was made with the idea of enticing a general audience rather than servicing the story and fanbase of the show. The movie really made a mess of everything and it just got messier afterward.

The recent revival series [toastypost, kenttype] encapsulated everything I loved and hated about the original series...some really engaging, funny even, uses of virtually every genre trope for stand-alone episodes, and a larger arc that just got more and more convoluted, tedious and/or nonsensical. 

This episode, "Monday", I remember being a standout of Season 6, (along with episode 2, "Drive", both written or co-written by Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul). So I'm curiously excited to revisit, but I'm always trepidatious about going back to The X-Files.

[Toast] I have always had a contentious relationship with The X-Files. I remember when it started, just after I moved to Ottawa to sleep on the floor behind the sofa of Brian's apartment. He didn't do TV, but I did my best to play with an antenna to attempt to watch the pilot episode, as I had read about it somewhere. Not the Internet, so I have no idea. Probably some specfic magazine.

But I didn't have a TV for years, so our watching of the show came and went. We watched some on borrowed copies of VHS tapes, some on TV re-runs and probably dedicated time to a few seasons as I recall being really big fans of the Spotnitz episodes. And I have watched enough in the years since, that I pretty well versed with the mythology, enough that I recognized the whole reference to the water bed and where it came from -- Dreamland II, same season, Episode 5.

How did the Loop Begin?
[Kent] Unknown.

We don't actually get an origin story for the loop.  The episode starts outside a bank.  Cops cars swarm, the boys in blue flow on to the street, armed. A.D. Skinner arrives, not to take over this hostage situation, but out of concern because Mulder and Scully are inside.  

A young, gaunt-looking woman across the street starts running towards Skinner, yelling his name, warning him to stop them. Inside, Mulder is dying from a gunshot wound, Skully's trying to stop the bleeding.  The police storm the building, and the scraggly bearded robber reveals the bomb strapped to his chest, then sets it off.  Boom.  Opening credits.

When we meet the thin, green-eyed woman, Pam, again (and again and again) she indicates that she's been through the day so many times before, and it always plays out the same way and that she's figured out that Mulder is the solution to stopping the Time Loop, but no idea how.

[Toast] Yeah, unlike many episodes of the show, this one didn't delve deep into the exposition, with Mulder learning of an experiment, or telling us how particularly emotional setups can set someone in a loop of fate, or whatever obscure, unlikely thing Mulder is to believe. We get nuttin.

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Kent] This episode is seen though Fox Mulder's eyes (it's a sad fake-out at the beginning where I thought back then, and once again, that this would be a Skinner-centric episode.  They never really did those and I don't understand why not). After the credits we find Mulder awakened to a leak in his waterbed ("You have a waterbed?" Scully asks repeatedly...Yes, Scully, and he also also mirrors on his ceiling.  Fox Mulder is a freak. It's canon that he's portented to die from auto-erotic asphyxiation).  His carpet is soaked and squishy (waterlogged carpet is so gross...), his cell-phone is toast, his alarm clock shorted out, and the water is leaking down to the apartment beneath him...plus he keeps tripping over his shoes.  Damages have to be paid, but he's got to retrieve -- then go deposit -- his latest paycheck in order to cover the cheque he just wrote his landlord.  He's late for a meeting (he probably doesn't care about anyways, seems to be a numbers meeting), but tells Scully to cover for him while he runs his errand.

Someone's come down with a case of the Mondays...

The next time he Loops, after getting shot and/or blowed up, he has a vague sense that something's off but not really sure what. Eventually, as he Loops, he starts getting serious deja vu, starts predicting what some people will say, starts recognizing Pam, sitting in the car outside the bank.  It all just seems strange, but Mulder's whole life is about "strange" so he's kind of into it.

We don't see Pam's first reaction to the Loop, nor do we ever see Pam's day outside of her encounters with Mulder or Scully or sitting outside the bank. I mean, what does she do with the rest of her day after the bank explodes?  Grab a sandwich and live it up?

[Toast] Pam seems a little fatigued by the whole thing. Sure, she has been watching her loser BF blow himself, and a whole bunch of innocents, up and doing her best to end it, but she just seems preternaturally tired. I wonder if we missed all the loops where she did the montage of fun stuff, of suicides, etc. By this stage, she is just concerned with ending the whole fucking thing.

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Kent] Again, strangely unknown.  They don't even ascribe it to some cosmic error.  There's no origin for the Loop.

Toast, any theories? :)

[Toast] There are some Internet theories that it is either the Universe trying to set things right, after Morris Fletcher fucked with Mulder's life (i.e. the waterbed has to go) but that wouldn't tie well together with Pam and the bank explosion. The better theory is that it's actually tied to Scully. A few episodes prior, in Episode 10, Tithonus, an immortal man dies, and seemingly passes the immortality onto Scully. On this day, she is blown up in the bank, and Death / the Universe is not going to so much as knit her back together, as restart the day, until she survives unscathed. Pam is just a chosen avatar of the action.

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Kent] The Loop is probably Pam's whole waking day, but we only ever follow it through to Mulder's death in the bank explosion. 

Toasty, do you think it's possible that while Pam is the only constant of the Loop, that it's happening around Mulder and that when Mulder dies the Loop rests?  

[Toast] Possible, but I like to think it's just "the day" that is happening over and over again, whether or not Mulder dies or not. I think Pam just lives out the day, and at some mystical time on the clock, she wakes up in her bed again, with loser Bernard next to her. I wonder if she tries a few loops of smothering him with her pillow, but no, she still seems to have genuine affection for him, even when we meet them. Affection might be a strong word -- sympathy?

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Kent] Mulder wakes up every day at approximately 7:15 (according to his watch) to the sound of a newspaper hitting his door. Not sure what time an FBI agent's day usually starts but 7:15 seems awfully early to be late for work.

If I cared enough I could start investigating the Washington DC topography and the way the shadows are hitting buildings and start trying to discern what time of day it is by the time the cops arrive or what have you, but a) this was shot in LA (having relocated from Vancouver after Season 5) and b) I don't really want to.

So let's say it's probably around 10:30 to 11 am each time the Bank blows up if allowing for time for Mulder to half-ass deal with his leaky waterbed, get to the office, walk to the bank, and deal with Bernard for a bit.  Even that seems a little optimistic.  I mean, Pam does get into the FBI building tour in one Loop, which can't start any earlier than 9am.

As for Pam, the Loop is driving her loopy.  She's going mad.  By the time the final loop she's all but given up on trying to affect change.

[Toast] She's probably been grasping at straws for a long time. She has probably tried dozens, if not hundreds of ways to stop that bomb explosion, but the world keeps on sending Bernard and her there. Mulder's talk about Fate vs Free Will really plays into it, as the Universe seems to have its set paths, and we only affect minor changes through our own choices and actions. Not much room for a butterfly effect though.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Kent] I think people who are sensitive to the paranormal or have paranormal awareness like Mulder aren't "brought into the Loop" (per the previous question) but they recognize the signs faster with each reset, and, ultimately, they are able to affect their mentality in the next Loop if they tries hard enough.

Most people though seem resistant to understanding there's a Loop. Clearly Pam has tried to make people aware.

[Toast] Yeah, Mulder's sympathetic connection to The Weird really assists him in adding himself into the loop, once her initial influence has him noticing things. I think by the last loop, he is truly on his way to experiencing it the same way Pam is. I wonder what would have happened should Pam had not sacrificed herself, and she and Mulder kept on trying different ways to end it?

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Kent] Hard to say.  Mulder, being a step behind the Loop, is just doing his business, being all heroic, hunky, sleepy-eyed FBI agent.  So yeah, people matter to him, even once he's aware of the Loop.  He's trying to solve it.  But what does Pam think?

Pam thinks she's in Hell. She's not having a good time with the Loop at all. Does she even care about Bernard anymore, having seen him blow himself up and heard him murder people time after time after time.?

She just wants the Loop to end.  I'm not sure she really cares about Mulder or Scully or even herself anymore.  She's stuck in a puzzle she can't solve nor quit.

[Toast] Agreed. Pam does not see these events as "real life" and just wants out.

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Kent] Each Loop is remarkably similar.  It sounds like Pam has gone through so many permutations of trying to affect change in the Loop and eventually realizes that staying in the car is about the only place she ever feels she can make a difference.  

It would also appear that more Loops happen between the Loops we see.  At one point Mulder approaches her in the car, and they have a conversation about the Loop.  The whole "Mulder notices her in the car" is new in the second loop we see, but only a couple Loops pass when this exchange happens and she says they've had the same conversation so many times.  So obviously we're only getting a Cliff Notes version of the whole story of the Loop.

The most surprising thing is how cool the exploding bank looks on a TV budget.  They must have made a big mess with that practical effect.  Today it would just be CGI, but it looks so good.  And they use the hell out of that coverage.

[Toast] I didn't find much of any loop as memorable or outstanding, but I was somewhat annoyed by some of the actions in the loops.

Why does Mulder continue to sit on the bed once he notices the leak? Doofus, just stand up already! Pressure is just making the water flow more quickly. Also, why don't they just shoot Bernard through the eye? Once they have him at the end of a gun barrel, and see he is likely to pull the trigger on the bomb, just shoot the fucker. But this was the 2000s when cops/agents actually tried to talk Bad Guys down, instead of just shooting. But seriously, just shoot Bernard.

How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Kent] Toasty and I were just comment with our last Loopty Loo that it was really neat to see a Time Loop story where the protagonist/lead character of the story/series wasn't the one aware of being stuck in the loop, and here we go with yet another one...so...not so clever anymore are ye, Star Trek:Discovery? 

As noted, this was a standout X-Files episode for me way back when, especially as a signifier of the end of my loving The X-Files.  Good stand alone episodes were getting rare, I was tired of the mythology, and the relationship dynamic between Mulder and Scully had also kind of gotten frustrating.  Going back to it, though, I enjoyed this.  I don't like the music, sounds pretty stock 1990's.  I also still wish it was Skinner that was figuring out the Loop.  The show always needed more Mitch Pileggi (Pileggi also appears the Time Loop series Day Break which will be an eventual Loopty Loo).

[Toast] Yeah yeah, I will eventually watch it.

That said, having dug through a couple dozen Time Loop stories, this ranks low on the totem pole if only because it doesn't really give answers to the whys/hows of the Loop.  It's unsatisfying in that regard.  What do you think, Toasty?

 [Toast] Agreed. Explanation and exposition are inherent to the trope! I want my wish washy science or my timey wimey magic (at least kind of) explaining how we ended up here. Even a follow-up scene at the end of the episode, where Mulder looks at a file about Pam and finds out she was connected to something from a previous episode, or maybe even abducted by aliens!