The X-Files: Milagro (6.18)

I struggled writing a review for this episode, which is really saying something since I find I always struggle to say anything interesting or insightful about The X-Files. That's nothing to do with the quality of the show in general, I just find it hard to articulate my feelings about certain episodes, and Milagro was one of them. This is another experimental X-File, and a trademark Chris Carter script. It's pretty clear when Carter's fingerprints are all over an X-Files episode, if only because of the pretentious and overwritten dialogue. But this time around that's actually what makes Milagro so interesting, as it explores the job of a writer and how a writer forms the characters he creates.

Milagro, in a lot of ways, is Chris Carter's attempt to satirize the 'Mary-Sue' concept, where a writer inserts a new character into their fictitious universe and bends everything to that character's will, even if it undermines all the other people around them. Here we have Scully behaving insanely out-of-character as she becomes romantically intrigued by a writer neighbor of Mulder's. It's such a ridiculous concept, as Scully grows infatuated with this clearly disturbed and stalkerish individual, but what makes Milagro different is the fact that none of the events here have any basis in reality. The writer, Phillip Padgett, uses elaborate prose to construct his idea of Scully as a person, while the 'Lovers Lane killer' is absolutely incidental. It's the themes that form the bones of the story, not so much the interaction between the characters or the plot twists. It ends with Scully getting her heart ripped out, only to survive, and we have an open ending that implies suicide via a similar method. If this were played straight, it would be a major fail of epic proportions, but in this format it becomes something decent.

So this is interesting. But it's an experiment that literally only works on that level. Shows like Buffy and The Simpsons have done similar episodes which broke down narrative 'walls' and played around with the formula, but remained within the respective universes of the series themselves. The events depicted in Milagro don't actually happen, resulting in a script that feels a lot like a collection of ideas strung together. Like a thesis paper.

Before I get jumped on, I still really liked it. It looks gorgeous, has some wonderful acting and the aforementioned ideas are fascinating. But, for me, it doesn't rank up there with the greatest of X-Files experiments, since it feels almost too anti-show to truly work. But it's an admirable deconstruction of genre conventions on its own. B+

Credits
Guest stars John Hawkes (Phillip Padgett); Nestor Serrano (Ken Naciamento); Michael Bailey Smith (Guard); Angelo Vacco (Kevin); Jillian Bach (Maggie)
Teleplay Chris Carter Story John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz Director Kim Manners