Patience

Theatre of the Mind ~ Patience

1. Holy incredibly ironic weathervane!
2. What a great perk of working at the funeral home a take-home hearse!
3. Hey there, Lurch. You rang?
4. Maybe he needs a deodorant that's made for a woman but strong enough for a man.
5. Is this some kinky mortician foreplay?
6. Tahoma? I thought that was a font. Or a truck.
7. You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than on your porch, smelling of embalming fluid, with your pants around your ankles.
8. Sometimes you should just stay in bed with the covers pulled over your head.
9. Holy Huge Nocturnal Flying Mammal!
10. What happened to those other people who used to carry the flashlights in the credits? I liked them!
11. TWC1: Holy Falling Cow! Well, at least Flailing!Mulder got a good outfit. :::sigh::: I miss him.
12. Stop right there! Put the nameplate down, put your hands in the air, and back away from the desk.
13. You know, in it's original airing, the whole "nameplate in the drawer" thing didn't really bother me that much. My reaction this time was somewhat different. More on that later.
14. This *is* where they send the "bad kids," the FBI's most incorrigible the uncontrollable, the unpopular, the unwanted. Welcome to Mulder's World, Agent Doggett.
15. "I'm not here to be a curiosity, Agent Doggett. I'm here to work."
16. Agent Doggett, are you always this characteristically exuberant?
17. PSC1: Poor John. Nothing better to do this weekend than go through Mulder's drawers?
18. Well, as long as we agree that this was, is, and forever shall be *HIS* office, then, Agent Doggett, I assume that will be your area ... back there.
19. Given that she was just about to put it away, I do like the nameplate as territorial exclamation point.
20. The Scully Slide Show highlighting what will be the first non-SFM case for Agents Dawg'n'Dana is actually very reminiscent of Mulder & Scully's first meeting in the "Pilot," right down to the possible animal bites. Except that it's Scully who's running the projector and Doggett who's taking the quiz.
21. PSC2: Something tells me one of Doggett's credentials is not rewriting Einstein, though.
22. That's why they put the "I" in FBI. Time to leave for the very *plausible* state of Idaho.
23. Holy Time Travel! In Idaho by 11:18 a.m.? Well, at least one thing hasn't changed. That's somewhat comforting.
24. Scully's First Big Mistake: Should have established right up front that just because you're the big macho man it doesn't mean you always get to drive the car.
25. Detective Abbott is a John Goodman look-alike and sound-alike.
26. Talking to the Manly Man/ignoring the Little Redhead could be the Detective's First Big Mistake.
27. Scully say mysterious footprint only has four toes but could be human. She dated an Indian Guide. She knows these things.
28. Scully's not used to limiting her vocabulary to single syllable words.
29. Gee, do you think we might be standing on any other footprints?
30. Do you think she's spooky? Welcome to Mulder's World, Agent Scully.
31. ACM: Scully's comment that Agent Mulder referred to the principle of Occam's Razor (taking every possible explanation and choosing the simplest one) as "Occam's Principle of Limited Imagination" is just the type of Mulder mention I'm looking for. That comment captures the spirit of Mulder in a nutshell and makes me (and Scully) think of him and miss him. And because Scully misses him, she tries to become him.
32. Hey Manly Man, this is the part where you're supposed to say, "You can get the next mutant."
33. PSC3: She's seen much bigger flashlights than that one.
34. Trust me, Agent Doggett. You don't yet know the meaning of the word "regurgitation."
35. Holy Dangling Chiroptera!
36. Human or animal? Indian Guide say you should pick one and stick with it.
37. When exactly is Human Bat Hunting Season in Montana?
38. Five murders every 44 years? Wasn't there a liver eating mutant who got started this way?
39. Isn't it possible that this Bat Guy is simply a case of some lunatic who has watched too many Bela Lugosi movies? Holy disgusting cut to a commercial break!
40. Don't you want to try sticking your fingers in it without the latex covering just once, Manly Man?
41. If Detective Abbott says "yewman" one more time I'm going to send him to Professor Yewenry Yewiggins for some diction lessons.
42. No "communication unspoken" for Agents Dawg'n'Dana.
43. Yeah, Scully's always coming up with those wild and far-fetched theories. She's quite the New-Ager. I mean, she's into those magnetic bracelets and crystals and mood rings, what have you. I mean, God bless her she's a sucker for all that stuff.
44. *Not* the way to score Manly Man points with Scully. She can fight her own bat-tles. That's another 15-yard penalty for Intentional Intervention.
45. I'll say she's seen a lot a lot a lot. But quick to point out that she's not an expert and therefore still "not Mulder."
46. PSC4: I agree it's time for Agent Doggett to take a leap ... a flying one.
47. I thought bat collection day was usually on Fridays. To the Bat Cabin!
48. Holy Keebler Elves! You never know what you'll find in a hollow tree!
49. Diss our Scully and you end up as bat guano. (And I found his death rather ewmorous.)
50. The deputies think Scully has bats in her belfry.
51. An animal that kills with purpose. Where have I seen that before? Yo quiero Taco Bell.
52. That must be the Bat Raft!
53. Agents Dawg'n'Dana need to work on their surveillance techniques. They're not exactly out of sight.
54. John, don't laugh at her jokes too much - people will say you're in love. (And what would Skinnah think?)
55. It's not the rolled up shirtsleeves that remind me of Mulder in this scene ... it's the underscore of the XF theme as Agents Dawg'n'Dana discuss Mulder. Nice musical moment.
56. Somebody's got to be Mulder, Scully. I guess this means he's passing the torch to you.
57. PSC5: Not Oxford educated. Not Fox Mulder. I just want to make it perfectly clear that *he* said it; I didn't.
58. OT: Is it so necessary for you to keep pointing out that 1956 was over 40 years ago?
59. What *he* finds fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of good cop work. The answers are there. The good cops just have to know where to look.
60. Tonight's Discovery Channel Moment: Bats find their prey through echolocation, a sensory system in certain animals, such as bats and dolphins, in which usually high-pitched sounds are emitted and their echoes interpreted to determine the direction and distance of objects.
61. MMM: There's nothing manlier than row, row, rowing your boat gently down the stream.
62. Perhaps Agents Dawg'n'Dana will find Ginger, Mary Ann, and the Professor too.
63. *Now* he's learned the manly man art of letting her get the next mutant.
64. Look out, Manly Man! (Would you think less of me if I said I was rooting for the bat right now? [PSC6]) I'm sorry, Manly Man. I didn't mean it! (Well, I sort of did). But a *real* Manly Man should have been able to handle that little human bat with one hand tied behind his back. Poor Agent Doggett. Lost on his first X-File. Johnny, we hardly knew ye.
65. Scully's used to being stalked by monsters. No biggie. But why did he have to drag poor little Will into it? Doesn't he have enough problems?
66. Not only does he have a stalking Human Bat after him, now Ernie's gonna need a new roof.
67. Okay, the meeting of man and bat by the fireplace was pretty scary.
68. You keep sneaking up on her like that, Doggett, and you'll be peeing through a catheter. (Hey, weren't you just dead? I thought you were no Fox Muldah!)
69. It sort of flew at her - like a flying squirrel. But don't tell that to Skinnah.
70. At least they sent Dr. Dana a new partner who is as injury prone as her old one.
71. PSC7: But the old one always got his shirt ripped off in the heat of ... treatment (tee-hee-hee).
72. Two weeks? I thought Manly Men would have healed much faster.
73. This is where I expect a Scully Rational Explanation. Instead I get a freaked out Scully seeking reassurance from the new guy that the BoogieBat won't come jumping out of the shadows one day. Sadly, I think this might be the exact moment when the character of Scully began to take that downturn.
74. A desk for Doggett! They can finally have that Battleship tournament!
75. Promising Doggett a desk and "thanking" him for being her new partner (although she never calls him her "partner" which is a plus) bothered me far more than the nameplate thing at the time. I saw Scully doing this as a way to make up for what she perceived as some of Mulder's shortcomings (and another way to distinguish that she was *not* Mulder) and while I could understood it, I didn't have to like it. In all fairness to Doggett, he did seem to be trying hard to make the best of a bad situation. But I was upset with how she seemed to let her guard down completely after just one case together, forgetting Agent Doggett started off this "relationship" in a most untrustworthy way. I was disappointed that Scully seemed to forget the Number One Rule she had learned over the past eight years: no matter how paranoid you are, you aren't paranoid enough.
76. I will admit that when I saw this episode originally the "Nameplate Incident" didn't bother me as much as it did others. I felt that by putting the nameplate in the drawer, Scully was in a way saying - I don't want you to see what's happening here, that you've been replaced, that I'm actually trusting this person and reluctantly moving on, so I'm tucking you away for safekeeping so I won't have to face you each day knowing that I've done these things. But in looking at this episode again, I feel a little differently. (It's probably primarily because I know now how the SFM was handled after this point - if Scully had taken that nameplate out once in a while, held it in her hand, looked at it longingly - oh what a difference that might have made.) But it's also because I know what a terrific actress GA is and that she can (and has) brought tears to my eyes with just a look. Because of what she's shown me in the past, I know that there should have been so much more emotional resonance - and it just wasn't there. In fact, in the scene near the beginning of the episode when Scully is preparing to put the nameplate away the first time, there's so little emotional resonance that it appears she's going to drop it in the drawer. And of course, there's the inevitable comparison to the scene in "3" where Mulder is putting away Scully's badge and glasses after her abduction. I can only say in that scene I really felt Mulder's pain, his loss, and his loneliness as he lovingly put those items in the file cabinet. And I just didn't get that from GA in this scene when I know she's capable of so much more. Maybe if she had filed the nameplate under "M" ... maybe right behind "Mothmen."
77. MSRM: But even though she puts the nameplate away, Samantha's picture still sits prominently on the desk, and that gives me hope.
78. As you might have been able to tell in this TOTM, I felt "Patience" seemed to take bits and pieces of a lot of other X-Files episodes and string them together to create a new story that was still pretty familiar. It's all been done before but it'll look different cause there's a new Manly Man in the mix. But it wasn't really the Manly Man that bothered me it was seeing the beginning stages of the dismantling of Dana Scully. And when it was over, I just wanted to say one thing: All this because he didn't get you a desk?

The most challenging part of "Patience" for me was figuring out what the title had to do with anything. After much thought and speculation, I'm assuming it meant that this Human Bat fellow waited 44 years to take his vengeance upon those who killed his signifi-bat other. But maybe it was really a clue for the fans: this is what you had better have because this is the last Mulder Mention for quite a stretch. I guess that's why patience is a virtue. But Mulder Mention or no, I'll continue with the TOTMs till the end of Season 8; frankly, "I never saw it as an option. I'm sure you didn't either."

Well, that's done and amid all the sarcasm I even managed to say something nice about the Manly Man. Now I just have one question:

"What happened to the lynch mob?"

Holy Apologies!

Polly