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syzygy (rewatch)

i really love this episode. mulder and scully are so frustrated with each other, and "out of character" but not really. the most out of character part is the way they're not on the same page about how they investigate, that mulder isn't turning to scully for her thoughts, and scully isn't listening to his theories seriously. but the jealousy, the misunderstanding, their quips really are in character. it's just that they are so frustrated, their actions don't match the way they usually behave. like scully can be mean & petty, but she usually saves that just for mulder. their ribbing is usually friendly & affectionate, but it's like they're trying to piss each other off.

(maybe spoilers for s5) i used to say bad blood seemed more fitting for season three or four, but i think this is the season three version of bad blood. bad blood is so much more good natured, two best friends trying to poke & prod each other and get under the other's skin. syzygy has a similar vibe but not nearly as good natured. they're too frustrated, not listening, not understanding (and not concerned about the trouble they're in like bad blood lol)

anyway. before i get into specific scenes, i feel like i see a lot of people talk about margi & terri like they aren't out of character. i'm sure they have a little bit of mean girl streak in them, like the two best friends giggling in the back of class. i imagine it to be similar to mulder & scully. they save those things for each other and their friendship is something very different than their other relationships. detective white says they're good, smart kids. the last guy they kill, the one that is an accident on their part, he asks what happened to them. they're dressing differently, acting differently. they're mean and aggressive. by the end there's no facade about being nice or scared like there was earlier. they're criticized for being the stereotypical mean teenage girls (or rather, chris carter for writing them like this) but i kind of thought that was the point. obviously we don't see what they're like usually, but there are lines to suggest they're not behaving like themselves. and at the end, they are two scared girls, sobbing & leaning on each other. it looks to me like two girls who don't understand what's been happening. once the syzygy ended, moved out of it's powerful alignment, they crack and fall apart. they're going to be dealing with the fallout from this for a long time.

now into the mulder & scully scenes.

the first driving scene, they're already so annoyed with each other and we have no context about why. it's like they've put us right into that uncomfortable situation where a couple is obviously fighting but won't talk about it in front of other people, and you're stuck navigating a tension you don't understand and isn't your business...and it's affecting you anyway. (it's what detective white walks into and she doesn't understand, at the beginning she really is just trying to do her job. she wants the deaths to stop, she wants their help. she's trying to work with them.)

and i feel like i can't talk about this scene now without thinking of this post. mulder's telling scully detective white said a right at the stoplight, scully's arguing well this is a stop sign go left! and she's wrong. the way they keep the camera on the stop sign and then we see mulder driving back in the direction he said to go, chef's kiss.

in my tags on @casuallycryingoverbooks post i say how their headcanon makes this funnier. like. scully confusing her right & left, making her incredibly bad with directions is SO funny. her being to frustrated to listen to mulder (as he listens to another professional, another woman) and consider maybe she was telling him the wrong thing. like i fully believe scully (and others) would confuse their right & left when they have to reverse it constantly. and i think it's something she would generally remember to consider, so she would often catch it before making the mistake.

next scene, they actually meet "the detective" and scully is so unimpressed, it kills me. all of her usual decorum during cases is completely gone. there is no mask, no professionalism, no kindness. AT A FUNERAL. like that really kills me. this is what's out of character lol however, i do think she actually manages to ask her questions about evidence in a relatively typical scully manner. BUT YOU GUYS. @lesbianmarrow made a post about the framing of different shots, and this is the scene where you can see the shift happen.

you can see scully tracking mulder's movement with her eyes, until they switch to this pov. detective white now between them, caught in the middle of something she doesn't understand. in more than one way. (but also, what is he doing with his face!!)

but oh my god it's just so good?! she is so mad at mulder for his interjection about her skepticism, saying "don't ask me" -- something he will repeat at least one more time in this episode. (personally, i think this should have caught on like "sure. fine. whatever." they are both SO classically annoying in this episode. it's no wonder they're driving each other crazy.)

and when white walks away:

normally...they would enjoy this from each other. best friends and all that.

one of the things mulder & scully established in the pilot is the way they listen to each other and take each other seriously. scully doesn't mock mulder the way others do, instead she offers rational reasons for what's happening. she uses science. mulder is inclined to dismiss science because of what he's seen, but he doesn't (usually) outright dismiss it, especially once her science starts to give them some proof or explains the unexplainable or a solid place to start (when given the chance anyway).

and here, they're not really listening to each other, or maybe just not showing that they are. because later, mulder will tell white that scully is "rigid in a wonderful way" and they're still calling each other when terri & margi find them. they're not working together with their different theories as they usually do. both of their perspectives aren't being used to lead them in the right direction. they both follow different trails, and eventually they meet up later at the conclusion, to yell at the townspeople in sync (detective white with the townspeople this time).

anyway. the scene where they're interviewing margi & terri is interesting. these girls are telling mulder & scully separately about themselves. their grades, cheering, their best friend, future plans with their best friend. mulder & scully are so interesting here. scully is usually a little more forceful in interrogations, but i'm not sure this should be treated like an interrogation yet lol we don't see mulder say or ask anything, but we see scully say "yeah" to terri's introduction and ask questions, while mulder is, i don't even know. staring at the ceiling. (would love someone else's insight here. like i love it but i have no thoughts, no reasoning?)

THEN the new trio is back together listening to the recordings. mulder and scully six feet apart. and white another six feet away. none of them facing each other. none of them are actually on the same page and scully gets forceful again. and mulder does the thing AGAIN, only this time about scully's "impatience" and you can see scully's hand go to her hip as he speaks & circles around to white. oh. oh.

white looking up at mulder. idk why this struck me exactly. (and no scully in frame...)

and she asks him to explain the burning coffin -- "don't ask me." cut to scully offering an explanation, merely looking at the body claiming "i see nothing here to suggest otherwise." i just think that's funny because she's not doing any kind of examination, and yeah i'm sure there would be some visible signs that could suggest something. but she states it so definitively, i just think it's funny. (she always has her scientific theories, but i don't usually feel she's stating it's the Truth until she confirms it. like late on in quagmire she says "regardless of what i believe, there's no hard evidence to what you believe.")

we get "sure. fine. whatever." as she snaps on the latex. after telling them they were crazy lol

and this is when he "ditches" her. and like. detective white asks him what he's doing at her house and he literally freaking says "i was hooping you could help me solve the mystery of the horny beast?" like why did he change it from horned to horny. but anyway, is scully not examining the body to try to explain the fire? it's pretty normal for mulder to do something else until she has any information. SO what she's really mad about when they meet up again is that he went off investigating with detective white. which...also makes sense. LMAO scully is just so mad there's another woman he's working with, and seems to be listening to more than her. she HATES it.

but on a more serious note, here it looks to me like she's actually hurt. she really feels like he ditched her after they had a disagreement. and it kind of feels like a callback to conduit. mulder says to her. "okay scully, so we disagree. it's not the first time and it won't be the last." i don't think mulder thought he was ditching her. he was following a lead while she worked on finding something on boom's body. but he also didn't tell her what he was doing, while they were working a case. not necessarily out of the norm, they do often go in different directions, but they've usually had a lot more back & forth and an understanding. which is severely lacking in this episode. and mulder doesn't respond the way he usually would when scully's upset.

and what she doesn't know is that mulder does kind of defend her. "rigid in a wonderful way" suggesting that he does value her input (not in general, but even in this case. he's just frustrated with her behavior too), but right now, she isn't really acting like herself.

the next part kind of KILLS me. scully tries to explain why it isn't satanic cultists and what's really happening, the psychology of it?? (feel like mulder should be more knowledgeable about this and kind of agree lol) but what i really want to talk about is when they find the bones. mulder & scully both walk over, getting their gloves out. they realize the other is getting ready to put them on and take a look.

i couldn't find good shots on the archive but this gifset shows it. to me, it looks like they both thought for a moment they would have a small truce. until mulder kept talking. scully's reactions keeps registering to me more as hurt than anything else. where i think mulder isn't understanding what the problem is at all (which reminds me of never again). there's something about that way he doesn't see these reactions. they're either not facing each other, sometimes scully does this on purpose. but sometimes she's looking at him, and he isn't looking at her. something about that feels intentional too. because mulder can read her. it's why she often avoids his eyes (not that it usually matters). and she can't hide it when she looks in his eyes, that's why he cups her face & lifts her chin (beyond the sea & irresistible). it's something really sweet about them. the way they can't hide. but here, they don't want to share it.

the next scene is really why everything about scully strikes me as jealousy. before this one, it could be written off as professional jealousy. we've seen that in scully since season one. but we got a little taste of other jealousy in wotc.

i love this for so many reasons. scully is actually yelling at him for his behavior, and he may have made the comment about "this may not be the time" but he acts like he has no idea what's wrong here 🤣 and scully's yelling about his "comportment" but she specifically says "i am not going to be humiliated by you, in front of you..." and like. that's Insane! to me, humiliation is a Big feeling. not just embarrassed, humiliated.

mulder leaning on the wall & the script make me think he does actually understand. season three is a real turning point in their relationship. feelings are coming to the surface despite the ways they try to suppress or deny them. there's a growing awareness, and after then hell of season two, how deep their trust goes, how important their partnership & work is...well it's a struggle. i'm always saying it's a journey. and i think of season three as peak best friends, which yes! but it's just never so simple with these two. there have been layers from the beginning.

on top of all that, they're standing so close. mulder leans in to smell her (to see if she's the one wearing "his favorite perfume," they're invading each other's space again. the eye contact happens!!! and when she storms off, mulder falls against the wall "feeling somehow like he's betrayed a lover." which he hasn't, not yet.

and then my personal favorite part, that also makes me a little queasy...

scully is in her motel room, smoking and angrily muttering about detective white. mulder's in his room mixing a drink in the bottle in the craziest way i've ever seen (but i do remember seeing people talk about this before. cannot for the life of me remember what it was, but apparently it isn't unheard of. except for mulder lol)

and when scully gets the call, she just barges into mulder's room. seeing detective white on top of mulder. what she didn't see was mulder trying to get white out of his room and both of them talking about feeling "weird." i think i've said this somewhere but if scully was in her right mind, if she wasn't so mad at mulder & thought they were sticking around for white...she would have clocked what was happening. and this was the betrayal mulder felt, this is why she's been jealous. but they're partners, friends. they aren't dating. but everything has been palpably shifting for them. they're losing their denial.

(and i just have to say that white was assaulting mulder. this was not consensual. if he really had much to drink, unclear. and white isn't in her right mind either. but.....we don't excuse murder & sa because someone feels weird.)

all of it leading to THIS. just incredible. scully's anger (and hurt) kicking up. feeling justified in how she's been feeling & acting (which is also objectively unprofessional. she's usually the one trying not to step on toes & keep a good relationship with the local pd and here she is just. not doing any of that. she is obnoxious & pushy & condescending. her usual empathy & understanding is almost non-existent.) describing mulder as a "big macho man" is so funny. that's never the impression given to the audience, or scully. they were equals from the beginning, respect a core foundation of their relationship. mulder making fun of her height, hilarious, but also i don't think he's ever made fun of her for that before or after this.

in these two scenes they're both muttering about each other, the things the other said that pissed them off. what's going on between them is personal. they don't get like this about disagreeing on a case. scully always follows him, she questions him, she tries to understand but she doesn't get angry — confused & frustrated, absolutely.

mulder asking white to go with scully is also Insane. and i think it was an important decision. he's the driver (i think it helps him) and he doesn't want to drive with white. but it's absolutely insane because white is just. in the middle of whatever they have going on and she has no idea what she stepped into. but she does as asked and scully & white have such a tense car ride and have to team up when they find the townspeople marching down the road with guns. (AND WHO KILLED ALL THESE BIRDS?! just one of my favorite lines. and also top tier comedy when one hits the car windshield. and scully facing an angry mob of people terrified for their kids & towns, just saying like "it's illegal, there are no satanists" is sooooo funny to me. no fear.)

mulder went back to zrinka and then he finds margi in the garage where scott's body still is, as terri found scully. the girls both blame each other and immediately mulder is calling scully. "i've got your suspect and you've got mine. why does that make sense to me at this point?" i love this because this is the closest to a truce they've had this entire episode. they both did their thing and in the end it comes together. they trap margi & terri in a room together until the clocks strike midnight and everything goes quiet. they yell at everyone in sync. white opens the door to two terrified girls sobbing in each other's arms. it ends as the planets move out alignment, and they haven't solved a thing. are these girls even charged? they have absolutely no evidence, so doubtful.

and it ends as it began, mulder & scully in the car only this time they're leaving & scully's driving, speeding out of town. "shut up, mulder." "sure. fine. whatever."