SEASON 1

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SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

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SEASON 8

SEASON 9

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Back at the hospital, now in a rosy private room, Melissa and Maggie by Dana's bed. Everything that was lit cold and blue before is now warm and yellowy. (I have been hugely remiss, by the way, in not mentioning this episode's director, R.W. Goodwin, except in the context of his being married to Sheila Larken, and that's only because I'm ign'ant and don't know exactly which things directors are responsible for and so it's not easy to pick on them like it is to pick on the writers. But it's safe to say that he did a phenomenal, beautiful job with this episode.) The door opens and there's Mulder, a shy yet no less shit-eating grin on his face. "Hello, Fox," Maggie says. There's movement on the bed, and Scully pipes up: "Not Fox. Mulder." See, Mulder? Way to give her a complex! She gets out of a coma and it's the first thing she says. Also, Scully, now that you're not dead you might want to buy a lock for your diary. Just a word to the wise. Hee hee, I'm as giddy as they are that she's awake. She turns her head, and focuses her big blue eyes on her partner, smiling at him. Mulder? Looks tired. Hee. He smiles back. "How you feeling?" he mumbles, his glee -- for Mulder -- written all over his face. Her face clouds a little as she says that she doesn't remember anything. He interrupts her, waving his hand: it doesn't matter. Right now, he really believes that. Scully closes her eyes. She is very, very freckly. Aww, this is Gillian's most strenuous scene of the episode, although on second thought it might actually be tied with the boat thing, since here she gets to lie down and it's inside and like, not in a boat, even though she has to actually act and say lines. May I point out that, right now, she is wearing a baggy pale-yellow hospital gown and is tucked under a sheet, and there is NO noticeable gazonga barrier between the camera and her face, so I ask again, would it have been so hard to do this for the whole episode? Mulder, because he is a dumbass (I say with total affection), reaches into a blue plastic bag and pulls out a present: a video, Super Stars of the Super Bowls. But he's our dumbass. He hands it to her, and gets what he wanted: Scully jokes back, voice quavering, "I knew there was a reason to live." Yay! Scully's OK!! (There's something else in the bag, which some of us scientific-inaccuracy-nitpicking Internet types know is Hockey's Hardest Hitters, for Melissa, but it's probably good they let that go.) Mulder looks like he just won a million dollars (again, for Mulder). He mumbles that he's going to let her rest; he just came by to see how she was and say hi. He holds her hand, then lets go, and as he's going she says, "Mulder?" and he turns around, just like he did when her mother said "Fox" when they were deciding to turn off the breathing machine. "I had the strength of your beliefs," Scully says softly. Mulder blinks. He nods. He looks like he's just thought of something, and he feels around in his pockets and pulls out her cross necklace, which if you'll recall Ma Scully told him to give to her when he found her, in "Ascension." "I was holding this for you," he says, handing it to her. That is a MUCH better present, Mulder. If you'd remembered you had that you could have saved the $9.97 you spent on the video. We get one of TXF's traditional glowing extreme closeups of the cross necklace in Scully's hand. She looks at her mother, than back at Mulder, and moves her lips a little bit, not really saying anything that we can hear. He moves his own lips back at her. I love them and their secret languages. Mulder exchanges a glance with Melissa, then turns and leaves and closes the door. See, Mulder? See?

One MORE glowing cross closeup, for good measure, and then we fade to the cross around Scully's neck. She fingers it. Now Nurse Howard Graves Etc. is there with some pills for her to take, and Scully asks her if she can see Nurse Owens: "I've got something I'd like her to have." Hmmmm, I kind of don't approve of Scully regifting the cross after Mulder just gave it back to her, but since it's completely moot anyway I won't worry about it. "Nurse who?" asks Nurse HGIVD, and Scully takes the pills and swallows them before answering (which is a scene I sort of enjoy watching in complete awe, since it takes me like five minutes to swallow a pill, not the short pause between asking a question and answering it), then repeats, "Owens." She describes her and says she watched over her in intensive care and she'd like to thank her. Nurse No, Seriously, He's Dead, I Removed His Organs Myself, You Basementy Freaks says that she's worked at the hospital for ten years, and there's no one here named Nurse Owens. She goes out, leaving Dana alone, looking off into the middle distance and thinking about the mystery of who helped her, or possibly about why Mulder always writes a period after his name when he's signing a letter. Such things were not meant for man to know.

There we go. I hope this wasn't too boring and bombastic. I do love this episode so very, very much. The only thing that would have made it better would be if they could have put some white tights on Scully while she was in the ICU. As a bonus, it really would have drawn some attention away from the boobs. The end.