2.05 - Duane Barry
It took me almost a year and a half to watch season two after I finished season one for this marathon. This episode and the next, Ascension, are why.
This cold open isn’t bad, it’s around the typical length of under three minutes. We get some glimpses of aliens in Duane Barry’s room and we’re even shown a pretty cool image of a UFO hovering above his house with a bright white light shining down into the roof.
I want to give this episode the benefit of the doubt but the truth is that’s going to be hard. I loathe Steve Railsback’s performance as Duane Barry. He seems sort of perpetually aware of the camera, something you can pick up here and as he yells and freaks the hell out in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce too. Some of this isn’t his fault because Chris Carter’s script (he also directed this one) makes Duane Barry say things like…
“Duane Barry’s not like these other guys,” through gritted teeth. He does almost everything through gritted teeth or bookended with a wild bellow. He’s like a kid throwing a tantrum in the checkout lane at Target.
The episode opens with Duane Barry jolting awake in bed and literally saying “I can’t breathe,” which is, you know, impossible if you can’t breathe. But whatever. I don’t want to shit on this episode for 15 or 20 paragraphs, so I’m going to focus on the positives.
Mulder is doing laps in the FBI pool and we’re treated to him climbing out in a red Speedo and, legitimately, it’s surprising how much of his dick is visible in the wet swimsuit. I guess maybe it’s more surprising how Fox (the channel, not the Handsome) was like “Yeah whatever, send it out on the airwaves.”
As mentioned previously in this blog and in the special features on the Blu-Ray discs, this and the next episode sets up Scully’s disappearance so Gillian Anderson can have her baby. Some plots appear much later in the series because of what happens here.
“Don’t try and B.S. Duane Barry,” Duane Barry says right before a flashback to his abduction. We see more glimpses of the aliens - in this case small Greys - with a light strobing so quickly and harshly it’s undoubtedly dangerous for anyone with epilepsy.
“How could you ever know what Duane Barry’s been through,” Duane Barry asks. “How could anyone know?”
“It happened to my sister,” Mulder says. I’m sort of curious if Duchovny and Anderson lucked into being the perfect actors to deliver Chris Carter’s dialogue, which can sometimes come across as melodramatic.
I do like the image of Duane Barry sitting, defeated and sweaty as he details how the aliens talk to him without saying a word. The best image of the entire episode is Barry inside the UFO, aliens watching like a college class learning about dentistry. He’s spreadeagled on a table with glowing glyphs beneath him. A drill descends and blasts a laser into Duane Barry’s teeth, finally justifying Railsback’s yelling.
Mulder can see the thread from Barry to his sister, the other end dangling in the sky. It’s one of the only reasons this episode is connected to the “mytharc” - the main alien-related story/stories sprinkled throughout the seasons - along with Barry talking about the conspiracy inside the government. Otherwise, this episode is largely forgettable.
I liked seeing Scully say, “Mulder, it’s me” in the earpiece during the hostage scene. After you make it through this and Ascension, you have the more classic X-Files content to look forward to.