Our body is a truly mysterious thing. It provides us with a husk to live our life through and it gives us the ability to do all the things that are needed to truly be able to know what it feels like to be alive. We're a unique species because of our bodies and how we're able to experience it; in contrast to many other creatures who will never get the full potential out of life through their bodies. However, it's also an organism that will constantly come up with new and improved ways to try and kill you; almost like your soul is the disease and your body provides a virus to kill the disease. But in classic "X-Files" fashion, the show now wants to provide an alternative. An alternative that brings all of these things together and suggests that if you live with all of them in perfect harmony, you will actually be able to live forever. It provides the backdrop for one of the most interesting episodes of the show, not necessarily because it does anything new, but because it puts such a different spin on its case, as well as providing us with some truly creepy and scary scenes throughout it.
The first place the episode does something different is in terms of its antagonist. Leonard Betts is not necessarily an interesting character on the surface, but it's the underlying idea behind him. This is a guy who kills, not because he wants to, but because he needs to in order to survive. There is a biological evolution that allows him an extraordinary ability to cheat death, but it needs something to survive. It forces him to tap into his animalistic senses, bringing him back in the evolutionary food chain, which is a very fascinating contrast to bring up inside Betts.
It's the most human approach to a character that has been presented so far when it comes to their "antagonists." He has a very human will to survive and he wants to go on living, not really with any goal in mind, but the chance of life, but he has been reduced to doing this in order to actually get there. I love the guts of the writers to take him in such a deranged direction, yet still manage to find the sympathetic side of him and constantly present that to the audience instead of making him scary yet again.
It also presents an exciting new direction for the show, providing Scully with some insane character development. In a season that has been very heavy on the Mulder character arc, it's nice to see that they're tapping into an area that is going to be very critical for Scully going forward and for their relationship as well. It's also a big way of ending the episode, and using the "monster-of-the-week" model to also incorporate important information into the main storyline of the show. It'll be interesting to see where it goes and what it brings along for these beloved characters.
"Leonard Betts" is a different kind of "monster-of-the-week" episode and it works as one of its best because of its approach to its central "monster." It's a much more sympathetic approach, and it goes throughout the entire episode, with the ending reveal being one of the most gut-wrenching things to come out of the show.
The first place the episode does something different is in terms of its antagonist. Leonard Betts is not necessarily an interesting character on the surface, but it's the underlying idea behind him. This is a guy who kills, not because he wants to, but because he needs to in order to survive. There is a biological evolution that allows him an extraordinary ability to cheat death, but it needs something to survive. It forces him to tap into his animalistic senses, bringing him back in the evolutionary food chain, which is a very fascinating contrast to bring up inside Betts.
It's the most human approach to a character that has been presented so far when it comes to their "antagonists." He has a very human will to survive and he wants to go on living, not really with any goal in mind, but the chance of life, but he has been reduced to doing this in order to actually get there. I love the guts of the writers to take him in such a deranged direction, yet still manage to find the sympathetic side of him and constantly present that to the audience instead of making him scary yet again.
It also presents an exciting new direction for the show, providing Scully with some insane character development. In a season that has been very heavy on the Mulder character arc, it's nice to see that they're tapping into an area that is going to be very critical for Scully going forward and for their relationship as well. It's also a big way of ending the episode, and using the "monster-of-the-week" model to also incorporate important information into the main storyline of the show. It'll be interesting to see where it goes and what it brings along for these beloved characters.
"Leonard Betts" is a different kind of "monster-of-the-week" episode and it works as one of its best because of its approach to its central "monster." It's a much more sympathetic approach, and it goes throughout the entire episode, with the ending reveal being one of the most gut-wrenching things to come out of the show.