The X-Files “Two Fathers”

Oh hey, Cassandra Spender is back!  A character I barely got to know and don’t really care about!

I think this rewatch may not have been the best idea now that I think about it.  This show doesn’t hold up as well as I had hoped it would.

The Case:  Cassandra’s Back!

The Rest:  OK, to be fair, this isn’t bad television. It’s just not great television.  Part of that is just due to the fact that I more or less know what’s coming, and it’s a whole lot of nothin’ in many cases.  The show hasn’t really invested enough to make me care about Cassandra or Jeffrey Spender.  It does come up that the Smoking Man is Cassandra’s ex-husband and Jeffrey’s father, but even the record in the government database is probably an assumed name.

Here’s the problem:  Mulder and the Smoker both make assumptions about Jeffrey and where he stands in all this mess.  But the problem is putting Jeffrey in charge of the X-Files doesn’t mean much because he doesn’t give a hoot about the X-Files.  He’s less open-minded than Scully, and she spends most of this episode just showing up to give exposition.  Heck, she’s at Mulder’s place for no real reason at the end of this episode.  But Spender?  Mulder hates him for taking a job Spender doesn’t want, and the Smoking Man is disappointed that Jeffrey isn’t the guy he wanted his son to be.

Why should Jeffrey be what either man wants?  Yes, there’s some plot here that the alien rebels have infiltrated the Syndicate and proposing a team-up to fight the alien colonists, which is apparently a bad idea to the Syndicate, and Spender doesn’t have it in him to kill one in part because he doesn’t believe in aliens.  Likewise, Krycek is there to do the job because at some point he became part of their inner circle.  Why?  When?  I have no idea.

I’ll add “alien rebels” to the short list of people Krycek can take out.

The long and the short of it is Cassandra is the first successful alien/human hybrid, someone designed to survive the alien colonizers (who used to live on Earth or something before the dawn of humanity), and that would make her the first of a slave race.

Wait, why is the Syndicate doing that?  The vaccine to stop the black oil seemed like a smarter plan.  Why not team up with the rebels?

Eh, does it matter?

But Jeffrey doesn’t want Mulder to see Cassandra.  Mulder initially doesn’t want to either, but he thinks seeing her is a trap.  Skinner is mostly there to ferry Spender places so Spender can actually do his job, and the Syndicate may want Cassandra dead, but she certainly wants herself dead before the Syndicate gets their hands on her.

Did anyone ask what Jeffrey wanted?  Like, talked to him as if he was something other than a pawn of his father and treated him like a human being?  I mean, sure, the guy is something of a weasel, but no one seems to treat him like a person, not even the Smoking Man who has been telling his new unseen partner the entire story thus far.

That partner was Diana Fowley, who I found suspicious the last time I saw her even as the naturally suspicious Mulder excused her.

Up next, the end of this two-parter.