The X-Files
"En Ami"

Airdate: March 19, 2000

The truth is hanging out there...

Suffice it to say that the last four years of The X-Files have not been good to Gillian Anderson. In fact, they've been pretty darn crappy. When I say this, I'm not talking about the lack of screen time, good storylines or quality dialogue Agent Dana Scully has received since mid-season four, although this is certainly a factor. I'm not talking about the ever-shrinking waistline, bad haircut (let it grow, girl!) or even the omnipresent Wonderbra that passes as late X-Files female character development. (Although I will, soon.) I'm not even talking about how the show, the cast, and the writing have grown so beaten and worn that no one is immune from the general downward slide.

What I'm talking about is pity. Fangirl pity.

Every genre-loving woman (or sensitive, sympathetic male counterpart) knows what I'm talking about here. It's that feeling you get when you go to a comic convention and more guys are staring at you than at the guest speaker. It's the icky, squirming sensation of knowing that the cute Trekkie (Ha! Just kidding -- we'll make that, um, Buffy fan) you're talking to has thousands of digitally altered pics of Seven of Nine on his PC. It's the reaction you have when, in line for Episode 1, some boy heralds you with the supersuave pick-up line, "Um, I couldn't help but notice that you're a girl and you like Star Wars." It is the feeling of being a lone girl in a guy geek world and knowing that, despite how cool and friendly these men may seem, one of them undoubtedly has some kinky drawing of you in a Witchblade outfit.

Cancer Man, making a booty call.

This is what I imagine it must be like for Gillian Anderson to work on The X-Files.

Think about it. In the last two years, we've seen Scully be stalked by Chris Carter -- er, by a really, really bad fiction writer -- in "Milagro", and she was supposed to like it. In "Biogenesis" we saw that it's not just the truth that's out there in the first indication of Scully's newfound affection for Wonderbras. In the skin-crawling end to "First Person Shooter", we are greeted with the sight of a digitalized Scully in thigh-high boots, a black thong, and not much else. Over the last two seasons, we've seen the once-selective Scully (mmmm, Rodney Rowland) kiss Mulder, kiss Skinner, and flirt with Frohike -- is there no cast member she doesn't hit on? And now, in "En Ami", we enter the mind of dirty old man and episode writer William B. Davis, who, like the rest of the 1013 staff, seems inappropriately enamored with the talented Ms. Anderson. Yuck.

Now don't get me wrong. I've got no problem with sex, or with anyone showing a little skin, including a little Wonderbra-clad skin (I am, after all, a die-hard Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan.) What I do have a problem with is the degradation of a terrific actress, and a once-pioneering female character, as a toy for the sexual fantasies of the men on board. There is no other way to describe "En Ami". Whatever attempts made at good storytelling and smart dialogue -- and in the beginning of the episode, there actually are some -- are completely lost in the sheer ick factor of Cancer Man wanting to get it on with our favorite female agent. I'm sorry, but this is just gross. He's old. He's wrinkly. He's the freaking Cancer Man, people! The epitome of pure evil. Are we really supposed to believe that Scully would go along with this?

Apparently so. The episode opens with the discovery that a boy with terminal cancer has been cured by a miracle. Scully investigates and find that the boy has a chip in his neck, ala her cancer-halting alien implant. Cancer Man shows up and claims he's cured both of them, that he's dying, and that he wants to give her the miracle chips before he departs this earthly realm.

"And if I jump ship, they'll probably just film me in a wet T-shirt... crap."

Now, despite the fact that Cancer Man was already dying of lung cancer (he now has a brain lesion) a few seasons back, this is a pretty good plot, as far as X-Files go. At first I was excited, thinking that maybe William B. Davis had followed the Duchovnyan path of writing his own dialogue just to get some good lines. But then came... the bra.

Scully, the intrepid FBI agent that she is, wisely wired herself with a recorder to capture everything the CSM said. We know this because the wire is located in her Wonderbra, shown in extreme close-up for far longer than necessary - you know, just so we know what's going on, that kind of clarity always being such an X-Files concern. The gratuitous bra scene certainly merited an eye roll, but honestly it's not as bad as what was to come. Because then Cancer Man starts talking. Musing, really, only not about world domination or any other typical CSM venture but about Scully's love life, and her "relationships with men". Scully is apparently drawn to powerful men (read: him) but won't get too close. Not that, this time, she even has a choice.

See, because then Cancer Man drugs her, and dresses her up in satin pajamas. He asks her out to dinner under the guise of meeting their "contact" and gets her a sexy evening dress, which Scully, so thrilled to have received such a pretty outfit from the man who murdered her sister, happily wears. He babbles more about her love life -- her relationship with Mulder, her oddly aloof nature. And in the midst of all this rampant old man randiness, some sort of plot emerges that manages to feature the Lone Gunmen and Skinner (yay!), yet does not answer anything except just how much of a horndog William B. Davis can be (ew!).

"En Ami" utterly wastes a decent premise, a great actress, and, actually, a decent writer. Had William B. Davis denied his Scullylust for even half the episode it might have been salvageable. For now, I'm just waiting for the talented and happily married David Duchovny (author of "The Unnatural" and the charming ode, "Tea Leoni, Why Don't You Blow Me?") to pen another episode, or even better, for that upcoming show written and directed by none other than Gillian Anderson herself. The woman desperately needs some new material.

-- Sarah Kendzior

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

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