Rebecca Traister is a little more excited about the new X-Files movie than we are -- and it ain't David Duchovny that's got her excited. But that's ain't the bone we've got to pick with her.
Scully was a leading lady to fall for, a smart-girl icon who was (and
would still be, alas) a rare television bird: professional,
independent, unsentimental. She liked boys' things: Her favorite movie
was "The Exorcist," her favorite book the phallic classic "Moby-Dick";
her nickname from her father was Starbuck; she wrote her thesis on
Einstein's twin paradox. She was the opposite of squeamish. In possibly
the best "X-Files" episode of all time, the vampire farce "Bad Blood,"
there is an ur-Scully scene: She is doing an autopsy after a long day
of chasing the undead through a small Texas town. Annoyed, she
sighingly hoists the departed's heart, lung and intestines onto the
scale, reading their weights into a tape recorder. Then she opens up
the victim's stomach and starts poking around with her scalpel to
determine his last meal. "Pizza, topped with pepperoni, green peppers,
mushrooms." Here she pauses, looks up briefly from the bloody innards.
"Mushrooms. That sounds good." She orders a pizza.
We are with Traister for all of that -- particularly the part where we are reminded of that nickname connection to Battlestar... And then she goes all "Best Episode Ever." Really? "Best episode ever" all the way into Season Six? Post-move to California? Post-Darin Morgan? Post Chris Carter's preoccupation with Millennium? Hmm... To each their own!
