The X-Files “Rush”

OK, I can make some lame jokes about deadly teenagers, and there’s a good chance I probably will before this write-up is over, but the guest cast here…Ann Dowd, the formidable Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale, I almost didn’t recognize her.  But of the three teens in the episode, the lone girl was played by one Nicki Aycox.  I bring her up because she also appeared in the second X-Files movie.  Meanwhile, one of the boys was played by Scott Cooper.  Cooper has since moved behind the camera as a writer and director, and a lot of his work has been good.  He directed Jeff Bridges to an Oscar with Crazy Heart, plus two movies I saw and liked, namely Antlers and Hostiles.

So, wow.

The Case:  Superfast Teens!

The Rest:  In some small town in Virginia, teenager Max (Cooper) and his girlfriend Chastity (Aycox) try enticing their pal Tony to come check out their secret spot.  That’s eventually revealed to be a cave that grants teenagers, and only teenagers, temporary superspeed.  Tony doesn’t get there right away, there’s a drug addiction analogy, and Chastity spends half the episode being kinda unpleasant before becoming not that.

How do I know these two are unpleasant?  Well, Max killed a sheriff’s deputy with the man’s own flashlight and one hit, and his dad is the sheriff, so he may get away with it.  And the two call Scully old.

This is one of those cases where Mulder and Scully aren’t ever really sure what’s going on.  Max ends up killing a couple folks before the episode is over, and it turns out that superspeed is not good for the human body.  But Scully doesn’t even try to come up with a theory this time while Mulder just tosses off all kinds of all kinds of ideas and never quite gets there until the end.  And when Max and Chastity are both dead while Tony is in superspeed withdrawal, there’s no real explanation for what gave the kids the superspeed aside from the obvious fact that it did just that.

That said, Max’s death is rather impressive.  Or maybe Chastity’s is.  She shoots Max in the back, then “walks” in front of him, tells Tony he’s a good one, and then lets the bullet that just killed Max kill her.

And I’m not sure how the science teacher died exactly, but that may be because the cafeteria table that hit the guy didn’t seem to be moving at superspeed.

Oh well, looks like I did get away without making a joke about how dangerous teenagers are.

Up next, ooooh, what a lucky man, he is.