The X-Files: The “Truth” Hardly Seems To Matter Anymore
(Episode 11.06)
Photo: Shane Harvey/FOX
On this episode of The X-Files, we learn that Assistant Director Walter Skinner’s (Mitch Pileggi) nickname in the Vietnam War was “Eagle,” a moniker derived, as Mulder (David Duchovny) conjectures, from Skinner’s gentlemanly baldness, even though a cold open flashback and a series of photographs from his deployment depict the erstwhile X-Files ally sporting a full head of youthful locks. Granted, Mulder’s attachment of “Eagle” to the bird’s white dome and not its American-ness could be a coincidence, as could be Skinner’s late-in-life loss of hair, but none of this episode’s writing (scripted by Gabe Rotter, a regular series crew member in his first credited screenplay) leaves that nickname open to ambiguous deduction, which means that it simply exists. It’s semi-clever connecting tissue, not meant to be questioned, nor to anecdotally lead a whole review about the episode in which it unfortunately appears.
Were that episode—called “Kitten” after another of Skinner’s war buddy’s nicknames—more functional than a mid-season reminder that Skinner is still a main character, with main-character-level backstory we’ve previously not been privy to, who, up until this point in his arc, may’ve been far too embroiled in shady dealings with the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis), and therefore more of a liability to Mulder and Scully (Gillian Anderson) than friend. Were that episode a compelling examination of Skinner’s dubious place within The X-Files mythos, an attempt not to explain but to dissect the background of a person who’s devoted his life to serving a government he knows full well doesn’t deserve such loyalty, a career law enforcement man who, after 40-plus years of that service, has finally found himself at a point where he has to make a choice: between the edifice he’s spent a lifetime building, and the moral truth he’s spent a lifetime of complicity covering up. Were “Kitten” that episode, we might rejoice in such a historically overlooked character given, after all this time, some serious ethical attention besides the crisis at hand whenever Mulder and Scully find themselves in a pickle beyond their purviews.
“Kitten” is not that episode. Essentially, though, it operates as a way to understand the precarious role Skinner holds in Mulder and Scully’s lives, implying that he’s been knowledgeable of the government’s nefarious doings since long before he held any position of importance—a revelation that’s admittedly important to the 11th season’s narrative arc, since Mulder and Scully have spent much of the past season relying on Skinner while never quite trusting him, and we all know how important “trust” is to The X-Files. In “Kitten,” a message alluding to an event in Vietnam, in which Skinner witnessed first-hand the U.S. government’s trial run in biological warfare—in this case, mind-control gas that convinces those exposed that they’re being attacked by monsters (see last week’s “Ghouli” for more government mind-control chicanery), codenamed “MK Naomi”—draws the Assistant Director into a clandestine hunt for his old army pals and whatever dirty secrets have been buried. Contacted by known stick-in-the-mud Deputy Director Kersh (James Pickens Jr.), a man still berating Mulder and Scully for their “spooky” work like he’s just chronically out of the loop—because at this point you probably couldn’t walk five steps in the FBI without stumbling upon some recently declassified shocker—our two agents travel to Mud Lick, Kentucky, to find Skinner finding Kitten.