The X-Files “Milagro”

Oh hey!  John Hawkes!  That guy’s good, and he’s had a really good career with a lot of really good roles in a lot of really good movies.

Here he is in a somewhat odd episode of The X-Files.

The Case:  Evil Psychic Surgeon!

The Rest:  Hawkes is playing an author here named Phillip Padgett.  He lives in a spartan apartment next to Mulder, and he has a thing for Scully, even going so far as to tell Scully that he moved into Mulder’s building because he couldn’t afford to live in Scully’s.  And that may be one of the least creepy things about him.

Meanwhile, the agents are looking into some serial killer who’s been ripping the hearts out of his victims or something along those lines.  Mulder thinks he’s a psychic surgeon turned evil. Scully thinks that’s nonsense.

OK, turns out they’re both kinda right.  There is a psychic surgeon involved.  Padgett seems to be able to pull his own heart out and put it back or something.  There are reasons why I am not sure.  Mostly because he only seems to do it twice and only when he’s alone.  See, Padgett’s book mirrors the case.  He claims he just took the names of the victims from the classified pages, but his book is recounting what’s going on very, very well.  So well that Mulder arrests the guy after reading the manuscript while Scully is hanging out with the guy in his apartment and he makes some awkward flirtations.

Is this Scully’s new thing now?  Just hanging out with weirdo suspects?

So, is this guy guilty or innocent?

Um, I’m not sure.  See, the killer is a creation of Padgett’s imagination, a cranky one at that, one who only seems to be visible to Padgett and the latest victims.  Padgett was hoping his book would allow him to get closer to Scully before concluding she was really in love with Mulder.

Really?  Eh, never mind.

Finally, he decides to burn the manuscript in his building’s furnace, leading Mulder to try and stop him since it looked like he was destroying evidence.  Mulder was convinced the guy had a partner who was doing all the killing.  Again, he was maybe partially right.  But then the killer attacks Scully, Mulder goes to rescue her, and Padgett finishes burning the manuscript.  The killer disappears.  And Padgett seems to be dead after pulling his own heart.

I think.

I don’t know.

Up next, take me out to the ballgame.