The X-Files
"Closure"

Airdate: February 13, 2000

"So, uh, what's it like being an irrelevant plot point?"

In 1998, Millennium -- Chris Carter's other canceled series -- was rumored to be airing an episode that would clear up all the plot threads left dangling since its superior second season. The episode, we learned, would be entitled "Closure". As the show's airdate grew nearer and plot details began to surface, two things became apparent. The first was that this episode had absolutely nothing to do with the storylines and characters that had enthralled us over the past two seasons. The second was that the people running this show couldn't write a script worthy of housebreaking my dog on. "Closure", when it aired, was irrelevant and horrible. And not surprisingly, it resolved nothing.

So I wasn't too surprised when rumors of an X-Files episode purporting to solve the entire Samantha mytharc called -- what else? -- "Closure" began to appear last fall. And nor was I surprised that this episode also went on to disappoint, bringing an unsatisfactory conclusion to one of the most intriguing storylines ever aired on genre television. But what was surprising about "Closure" is that, unlike past X-Files fiascoes (sending the Syndicate to outer space, for example), the plot of this one didn't seem utterly random. It actually seemed purposeful, and it actually utilized previous characters in the series -- Spender, Cancer Man, Mulder's mom -- that hadn't been seen in ages. "Closure" was well-directed and well-acted, and certainly several steps up from last week's dreadful "Sein und Zeit". And yet, somehow, it still sucked.

"What's a hunk like me doing on a show like this? Sometimes I wonder."

If Mulder's search for Samantha was the heart of the X-Files, then "Closure" is the knife that cut off the mytharc's barely beating pulse once and for all. The Samantha storyline was everything to the series -- the reason Mulder investigated the X-Files in the first place, the reason for Cancer Man's involvement with his family, and quite possibly the reason for his attachment to Scully. From the Samantha storyline, directly or indirectly, came the aliens, the black oil, the Syndicate, and all those other great, compelling elements that tied up the modems of geeks like us for seven years. And now that we've discovered -- and don't read on if you haven't seen the episode, or have somehow managed to actually sustain hope since season five -- that Samantha is simply dead, so goes the crux of the series with her.

Yes, Samantha has gone to that great X-Files place in the sky, that place where live such interesting characters as Deep Throat, X, Spender, Albert Hosteen, Mr. and Mrs. Mulder, Melissa Scully, Krycek (hey, might as well be!) and countless others. She has apparently been there since long before season one, having been kidnapped by the Cigarette-Smoking Man, subjected to gruesome experiments, and ultimately rescued by "walk-in spirits" that apparently save kids in peril by, you know, killing them. So not all is lost, as notes a grinning Mulder -- see, the fact that Samantha's dead is actually a good thing, since she's now able to hang with all the other dead kids. In the twilight. Where the dead kids frolic. Yeah, um, okay.

"That redhead meant nothing to me, man! Nothing!"

Had "Closure" been just an ordinary episode, it wouldn't have been so spectacularly bad, but the problem here is the gravity of its resolution lessens the quality of older, superior episodes that came before it. The "Anasazi" trilogy led up to this? And was the horror of an episode where it really did seem like Samantha was dead and Mulder's quest was over -- say, "Paper Hearts -- really forsaken in lieu of a happy ending? This is the friggin' X-Files! You think they're going somewhere -- to quote Chris Carter, we believed the lie -- and it turns out the whole scenario was a moot point all along. Dead, alive -- it's irrelevant, so long as the end resolution is a mix of pretentious new age aphorisms and pseudo-spirituality. David Duchovny carried a performance in "Closure" that made it seem more than that, and to an extent, Mulder's discovery was still somewhat moving. But just barely. The only thing "Closure" adamantly proved is that in the world of The X-Files, things are better left wide open.

-- Sarah Kendzior

The X-Files airs at 9pm EST/8pm MNT, Sundays on Fox.

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