"Tithonus"

A picture-perfect ending to a fabulous episode

A young mail distributor gets her cart caught on the edge of the platform on her floor and is helped by an old man.  As she delivers the mail she notices him following her and becomes more and more distressed.  Getting onto an elevator, she nearly makes it "to safety" before the mysterious old man stops the doors and gets on.  He pushes the button for the 17th floor and watches the people around him.  They are reflected in the mirror as black and white.  He gets off and shortly thereafter the elevator malfunctions and crashes.  The old man is waiting at the basement floor, taking pictures.

While doing boring background checks, Scully is called into Kersh's office...alone.  She meets Agent Ritter who tells her about a case in which a man always seems to be at the scene of a crime before anyone else.  This has happened several times over many years and, being young and ambitious, he wants to investigate.  Scully is surprised to find that Kersh plans on assigning her, and only her, to this case because of her expertise.  He feels that Agent Mulder is and always will be, "a lost cause."

Mulder found out about the case nosing around and tells her that he's eating his heart out at this turn of events.  He really wants to go with her but obviously can't.  Scully and Agent Ritter arrive in New York and begin sifting through hundreds upon hundreds of files looking for evidence about the old man, Alfred Felig.  Scully notes that in all the photos, dating back fifty or sixty years, look exactly the same.  Agent Ritter doesn't catch on and dismisses it, saying that the guy's probably always been a geezer.

Someone flees, chased by another person.  The two of them run into an alley where the attacker stabs the victim and takes his running shoes (the ever-so-cool light-up kind).  Suddenly the attacker hears the click-click of a shutter and realizes that Felig is photographing him.  He flees (temporarily), which allows Felig to climb down and photograph the stabbed man.  Suddenly, Mr. Felig finds himself face-to-face with the murderer and stabbed, himself.  His camera is stolen and he lies motionless on the sidewalk for several seconds before he gets up, unharmed, pulling the blade from his back.

Unfortunately Felig's prints got on the murder weapon, and Agent Ritter calls him in for questioning.  He tells him how death must fascinate him, yadda yadda, but Scully doesn't seem quite so harsh in her allegations.  She discovers that he has large gouges on his back from when he was attacked and sends him out for an examination.  Mulder phones Scully and begins with a statement he knows will make her smile:

Quote of the Week:

Mulder: (in a geeky voice) Hi, this is Fox Mulder.  We used to sit next to each other at the FBI?

She grins and he asks her how the X-File case is going.  She says that it isn't an X-File as far as she can tell, but Mulder says that he wants to do a background check anyhow.  When she protests he tells her, smiling, that it's his job and that he's getting good at it.

Scully relieves Agent Ritter of his stake-out duties and climbs into their rental car which is parked across the street from Felig's apartment.  When she hears a noise she looks up to discover Felig taking pictures of her from his window (what is it with Scully and old men?)  Confronting him, he asks her to go for a ride with him.  They cruise around until they come across a hooker who Felig sees in black and white again.  Scully tells him that his plans aren't going to work and he retorts that he hasn't got any plans.  It's just going to happen.

Scully looks up to see a man harassing the hooker who is trying to get away from him.  She jumps out of the car and runs to the girl's rescue, tackling the man and handcuffing him.  In his pocket she finds a handgun.  "The gun's not mine, Red," he sneers at her, to which she responds by calmly pocketing the gun and backhanding him one across the face (go girl!)  "I wanna get outta here," the hooker says, walking out into the street where she is hit head-on by a semi-trailer.  Felig's predictions were right, even with Scully's intervention.

Scully phones Mulder, who asks her how her case is going.  She tells him that it is, indeed, an X-File and that  has an uncanny ability to know when someone is about to die.  Mulder had done some digging for her and discovered evidence that  has had at least two other personas dating back to April, 1849.  This would make him 149 years old!  Scully tells him that it's impossible, that he couldn't be more than 65 years old.

Agent Ritter confronts her about the case and how she blew the surveilance.  She snaps back that the surveilance was already blown and she was trying to get a straight answer out of him.  Ritter tells her that Kersh warned him about Scully and the reputation that proceeds her because of her partner.  He threatens her with serious action if she "mucks up his investigation."  

Ritter: Are we through, Dana?

Scully: Scully.  And we are done with this conversation.

Only Mulder calls her Dana.  The mere idea that anyone would use her name, which has become a very intimate, special term of endearment for her, greatly pisses her off.  Case in point: the last time it was used, it was some body-switching low-life who was pretending to be Mulder.  Don't mess with the first name.  It is to be uttered by Mulder's lips only in the privacy of an intimate moment between them. :o)

Paying Felig another visit, Scully tells him that if it is true, that if he can know when people are about to die then why doesn't he try to stop it.  He tells her that he considers them lucky, that he has tried pills, slitting his wrists, gas, bridges, everything and he can't die.  This is the result of an experience he had when Yellow Fever was all over New York.  He saw Death taking people away in the medical ward he was in, but when Death came for him, he turned his face away and wouldn't look at it.  As a result, the nurse who was with him died and took his place and he can no longer be taken.

Scully and Felig proceed to discuss whether it would be good to live forever.  Scully asks him how anyone could have too much life but he tells her that life isn't worth living without love and excitement and that lasts only around 75 years.  It's funny that love keeps coming up as a subject for Scully - I'm hoping that it's foreshadowing.  Suddenly, Felig looks at Scully in his doorway and sees her as black and white.

When Felig mumbles something about her being lucky, Scully picks up on this and realizes that he thinks she's going to die.  It's true.  Felig raises his camera to get the shot just as Agent Ritter comes through the curtain separating the living room from Felig's photography studio.  Drawing his gun, Ritter manages to shoot through the lens of the camera, through Felig and hit Scully.  She stands, frozen, a tiny spot of blood on her blouse oozing more and more as she collapses.  Agent Ritter panics and calls for help, trying to stop the massive bleeding that has begun.  

Looking at Scully, Felig turns, unharmed, and reaches for his camera to get a photograph of her death.  He sees the sorrow and dispair in her eyes and puts the camera down, holds her hand and tells her not to look at Death, to close her eyes.  She does, slowly, and the colour fades back into her body, the red of her blood spilled suddenly vibrant again as the old man turns black and white and is finally taken away.

One week later, Mulder watches from outside a hospital room as Agent Ritter talks with Scully, who has recovered.  As he exits the room, Mulder stares at him, stony-faced, and tells him that he's a lucky man.  There's no need to fill in the rest which would be a blatantly obvious, 'because if you killed my partner and soul mate I would have tortured you for the rest of your life and haunted you in your next life, too you sonofabitch.'  Ritter slinks off with a nod.  

Entering Scully's room, Mulder smiles shyly at her.  Their hands find each other and Mulder softly caresses hers, their fingers playing over one another in contentment and familiarity.  It is so subtle, yet almost erotic and far beyond what "only friends" would do.  His thumb softly strokes hers and he caresses her palm as he tells her with relief that she is making a miraculous recovery, faster than anyone before.  She tells him that she can't believe that she even entertained the notion that Felig could live forever.  Mulder looks into her face and tells her that he believes that death only finds people when they seek its opposite.  They hold each other's gaze for a long time before it slowly fades to black.

*** Just a side note here and one to do with continuity.  In season three's Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, Mr. Bruckman (who knows how people are going to die) tells Scully that she doesn't die.  If  took Scully's place in Tithonus, metaphorically it is being implied that she will live forever or is getting a second chance at life.  In this second chance, don't you think it's more than coincidental that the episodes, Two Fathers and One Son are coming up during which Mulder and Scully supposedly get the X-Files back?  It's something to think about...

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