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alexpgpLast night's episode of The X Files was absolutely the best thing I've seen on the tube in a long time.
As usual, the teaser opener leaves us guessing really hard as to what the hell is going on. It turns out - at least in my case - that I am always a couple of steps behind the protagonist, who is played by Joe Morton (who, by the way, played the role of Miles Bennett Dyson, the man who invented the technology that made the "Terminator" possible. We all remember "Terminator 2"...the one with Robert Patrick as the new-and-improved killer android?).
Morton plays a prosecutor, Martin Wells, who wakes up, in jail, not knowing what has happened over the past few days. While being transferred from one jail facility to another, he is shot dead by his father-in-law, ostensibly because it appears he (Wells) has murdered his wife.
He wakes again, except this time, it's a day earlier. And the plot thickens, day by day, and thickens yet again, until it is so thick, you can erect tall, heavy buildings on it. As the hour was coming to a close, there was no way of telling what was going on, or when, or what the possible outcome of it all might be.
In the end, I realized that this episode ("Redrum") is a variation on the theme introduced by Dickens in A Christmas Carol: the idea that unexplainable things happen to a person, who is thus offered a "second chance." Those things change his life forever...presumably for the better. The only difference, though, is that the actions that befall Scrooge and the changes in him that result are understandable to the reader, who can feel some measure of superiority over poor Ebenezer, since the path being traversed in the story is easily understood, as is the path that must be traveled in the future.
Not so in last night's tale, where we, the viewers, were kept as much in the dark as possible, requiring Wells to vocalize his "Aha!" moments so that we could follow along.
Kind of.
Wells was living his future in the present, with no knowledge of the past, which was being gradually revealed to him. Once the episode was over, with Wells again in a jail cell, it all snapped into focus for me. Martin Wells had been given a second chance.
Enough fooling around...I've got to turn to, and do a little editing.
Cheers...
As usual, the teaser opener leaves us guessing really hard as to what the hell is going on. It turns out - at least in my case - that I am always a couple of steps behind the protagonist, who is played by Joe Morton (who, by the way, played the role of Miles Bennett Dyson, the man who invented the technology that made the "Terminator" possible. We all remember "Terminator 2"...the one with Robert Patrick as the new-and-improved killer android?).
Morton plays a prosecutor, Martin Wells, who wakes up, in jail, not knowing what has happened over the past few days. While being transferred from one jail facility to another, he is shot dead by his father-in-law, ostensibly because it appears he (Wells) has murdered his wife.
He wakes again, except this time, it's a day earlier. And the plot thickens, day by day, and thickens yet again, until it is so thick, you can erect tall, heavy buildings on it. As the hour was coming to a close, there was no way of telling what was going on, or when, or what the possible outcome of it all might be.
In the end, I realized that this episode ("Redrum") is a variation on the theme introduced by Dickens in A Christmas Carol: the idea that unexplainable things happen to a person, who is thus offered a "second chance." Those things change his life forever...presumably for the better. The only difference, though, is that the actions that befall Scrooge and the changes in him that result are understandable to the reader, who can feel some measure of superiority over poor Ebenezer, since the path being traversed in the story is easily understood, as is the path that must be traveled in the future.
Not so in last night's tale, where we, the viewers, were kept as much in the dark as possible, requiring Wells to vocalize his "Aha!" moments so that we could follow along.
Kind of.
Wells was living his future in the present, with no knowledge of the past, which was being gradually revealed to him. Once the episode was over, with Wells again in a jail cell, it all snapped into focus for me. Martin Wells had been given a second chance.
Enough fooling around...I've got to turn to, and do a little editing.
Cheers...
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Confusion
Date: 2000-12-11 06:21 pm (UTC)It reminds me of some random episode of the Twilight Zone, though I forget which. In retrospect, I can take it as so much as having a second chance, but failing in rectifying his wrong (which was to NOT arrest the murderer's brother)...
Or, perhaps, he didn't in himself receive a second chance. Rather, he was recalling the events of the week, and slowly revealed to himself what had truly happened and how he might have stopped it... though, I am most probably wrong there.
ANYWAY, clarification would be great.
Re: Confusion
I saw Wells' "second chance" as being able to save his wife, even if the circumstances of his life (jail, for a completely different reason) don't change much.
Cheers...