Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The X-Files: The Jersey Devil (1.5)

The only memorable part of The Jersey Devil is the subplot about Scully's date. Continuing her evolution as a character, it's pretty telling when she ends up realizing it's far more fun tracking down a wild beast-woman than going on a second date with a dull taxman. Unfortunately, the beast-woman story isn't so much fun to begin with.

The Jersey Devil, herself, is neither interesting, nor particularly threatening, and any hint of danger is kept at a pretty low wattage. Mulder's sudden proclamation of "she was beautiful" is extremely corny, too: the most obvious of what amounts to a fair number of corny asides sprinkled throughout the episode, like something out of a melodramatic B-movie.


Writer Chris Carter attempts to develop a metaphor for man's invasion of the wild with the Atlantic City tourism trade subplot, but it never really goes anywhere. Like an idea half-explored before being thrown in the trash. Besides that, the script does have some occasionally humorous banter between our two leads, but it can't save the entire episode.

The show's first real dud, The Jersey Devil doesn't really work on any level, and the most interesting ideas floating around are only briefly explored before being dumped in favor of naked animal-women. Eh. Rating C-

Credits Guest stars Claire Stansfield (The Jersey Devil); Wayne Tippit (Detective Thompson); Gregory Sierra (Dr. Diamond); Michael MacRae (Peter Brullet)
Writer Chris Carter Director Joe Napolitano

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