2.03 - Blood

If you’re a sci-fi fan (and chances are good on that front) you’ll recognize the actor playing Ed. It’s William Sanderson, who played J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner. He’s basically a master at producing the hangdog look of a lonely, wounded soul…

…who has rage building inside.

This cold open is fantastic despite being over three minutes long. It utilizes Sanderson’s skills perfectly and the writing is subtle enough we can get by on the mystery being presented, in this case Ed seeing his mail machine telling him to kill everyone in the post office, obviously inspired by the real-life murders committed by USPS workers, which inspired the phrase “going postal.” See, it wasn’t just Twitter that turned everyone into a comedian.

I really appreciate how David Nutter filmed some of this. The scenes showcasing anxiety are done super well and leave you feeling sweaty and claustrophobic, which is particularly noticeable in the elevator scene right before a police officer seriously dumps some truly awkward-ass dialog on set. It sounds like a children’s play for a bit here at the beginning and then on and off throughout the whole episode. Darin Morgan wrote the story but the teleplay is by Glen Morgan and James Wong, who are usually more reliable, I think.

“We thoroughly photographed the scene.” The cop makes these words happen with sounds and then continues doing that for a while, Mulder investigating in the meantime, even managing to get some jokes in about right field and baseball, proving Duchovny is capable of acting with a picket fence if he has to.

Once we finally get back to Ed the episode starts to move again. Ed beats up an ATM after it wants him to grab a security guard’s gun and start slaughtering people and, no jokes here, it’s truly disturbing. Maybe because of the real murders committed by USPS workers starting back in 1986 and onward, and maybe because of the seemingly never-ending cycle of people taking guns into public and shooting randomly or otherwise.

We get some old-fashioned voiceover from Mulder paired with Scully reading his case notes, and a little more humor.

I can’t help but notice Mulder’s hair seems particularly G-Man-ish in this episode, which could be a side effect of the long gap between this watch/blog and the last one (more on that when you get to 2.05 - Duane Barry) — or he’s just flirting with the flattop for a bit.

Wooden Cop takes a break from making word noises and kills a woman who comes at Mulder with a bread knife.

At 21 minutes in we see references to the O.J. Bronco chase, Charles Manson, Rodney King’s beating and the L.A. riots, and Waco as Ed is enticed by some TVs to go buy guns and kill people. This is where it’s even more obvious the episode is extremely reliant on three things: Mulder, Scully, and Ed (more specifically William Sanderson’s performance). The Lone Gunmen appear and give us some history on DDT and Frohike is horny for Scully over and over.

After that, there’s a kind of comical scene where Mulder is crop dusted by a helicopter.

In between the good scenes featuring Ed (Sanderson) there’s a lot of unfortunate dialog that goes down as smooth as a rust milkshake. It’s not a bad episode, but it’s inconsistent as hell. Sanderson’s performance as emotionally broken hits some truly heartbreaking territory as he opens fire with a rifle from the clock tower. It’s horrific as he squeals in fear/shock over what he’s doing. He wipes sweat from his forehead as bullet casings pile up at his feet. Then it ends in a way that can only be described as “there were no more script pages left.”

If the material leading up to the final scene was stronger this one might’ve ended up being more memorable, especially because the final “reveal” is almost pure nonsense.