Mediocrity at its Finest

Take this with a grain of salt but I find it interesting and have spent a decade in arguments about it, so. The (US) audience for many hands-on / interactive events that appeal to both kids and adults, based on all the marketing data I have personally collected or paid tens of thousands of dollars for from third-party agencies, basically says that women ages 30-45 are driving almost all the social media views. Many of those women are trying to plan educational and fun excursions for their children ages 2-13.

The problem comes when you, the adult who is actually invited to participate in said activities, comes to an event with a lot of families with children ages 2-13. People with social graces will say: "I need to let the children enjoy this; it is uncomfortable if I take a spot from a child. Also if I am a man or otherwise have some caution I might be worried that as a solo adult surrounded by kids I will be seen as suspicious." So they just watch from a distance and then usually go home. Which to me sucks because there's often nothing inherent about the activity that makes it enjoyable only to kids.

But too many events don't seem to be at the stage of understanding you need to signal in 1) the advertising and 2) the actual physical setup that both adults and kids are welcome, or need separate stations, or hours that are for certain age groups. I think this is why a lot of museums started doing adult nights, especially science museums. If you ever go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, this will be abundantly clear: the museum is genuinely designed to be fascinating to anyone from a preschooler to a postdoc but unless there's space to allow for all and curated exhibit design with big and small tables, for example, it triggers the mental block of "let the kids have this".

Anyway I spent a decade of my life arguing two things:

Built the event so that both kids and adults have separate and mixed space and train the activity leaders how to welcome and engage the whole spectrum of participants.

Recognize that sometimes you actually do need to provide a separate interaction time or space to make the adults feel welcome, especially childless adults, or at least signage to make sure everyone understands that no, it's actually the point.

I usually work on events that have "low threshold, high ceiling" activities so your mileage may vary. (Meaning: anyone can try doing the thing, even at a very basic or shallow level; the ones who want to go deep focus or discussion about what's behind the activity will find the presenters are VERY capable of talking details or having a back-and-forth about it all day.)

I had a really fun time running an event at a big public television station's festival where just as many adults without kids accompanying them did the activity as kids did, and stayed for a full hour or more as it really was pure fun, and also sensory-friendly compared to much of the other activities. I also wore myself out trying to argue with co-event organizers over the years that hands-on stuff really does appeal to everybody BUT sit-down performances and lectures usually really do have age categories, and it can be a big waste of money to try to combine the two in one mega-event if you don't have ticket revenue or reservations to judge interest by in advance.

That said, I definitely find more events run by neurodivergent people or audiences try harder to be welcoming – especially if the presenters get to engage in their special interests with all kinds of people.

In Detour, she smiles over Mulder's quips and believes he's taking an opportunity to get them (personally) out of the conference. While not out of the ordinary for her partner, it's a tantalizing insight: Scully thinks Mulder maneuvered time alone with her, away from work obligations, and is shocked not only by his engrossment in the case but also his decision to run past her celebratory platter after creatures in the dark.

Still, this didn't dampen her spirits. She gamely trudges into the woods, rescues her partner, and initiates the topic of her cancer-- a previously unheard of emotional exposure. Then, giving up on the fire, she wordlessly draws her partner closer. (Mulder resists the gesture at first, quickly quipping away the newness of this intimacy. Scully shows no such compunction.) She even sings him to sleep at his request, though under a save-face pretext.

Despite its narrative unreliability, The Post-Modern Prometheus ends with Mulder and Scully escorting the newly-released Fly Man to Cher's concert and closing the night in a dance, together. It speaks to Scully's mind set (or Mulder's perception of it): accepting her partner's advances, letting him draw her close, opening herself up to him-- so different than standing side by side, physically close but emotionally separate.

Narratively, Season Five's purpose is to build towards Fight the Future's wedge. Mulder loses his belief in aliens, sinks into depression, and becomes quietly listless. So listless, in fact, that his partner is unaware of the damage Gethsemane-Redux I inflicted until Patient X. Scully, by contrast, begins to believe; is then frightened out of that belief; and sinks lower and lower in her own estimation as Mulder flounders and slides deeper into himself. This culminates in Diana Fowley's introduction and the burning of the files (to be discussed.)

But this sequential degredation begins in A Christmas Carol.

Scully doesn't call her partner at first, chasing phantom voices and tangled leads until she winds up in legal requests and adoption interviews. Reverting to old patterns, she licks her wounds (infertility) alone and chooses to leave the FBI without consulting her family (or talking with Mulder), viewing this path as redemption for former griefs. When Mulder does fly in and pry for an explanation, she answers, "Because I couldn't believe it. But I need you now to be a witness on my behalf in this hearing." Then she faces her illness again by proxy, watching over Emily as the little girl resignedly (and fearfully) undergoes test after test in vain. Scully is forced to make peace yet again with death only for that peace to be robbed at her daughter's wake. And slowly, she distances further and further emotionally.

Why couldn't she reach out to her partner-- symbolically, to believe-- for this second chance? For the same reason she closes back up and remains closed the rest of the season: not only is she processing remission, infertility, and a niece turned very ill daughter, she must also confront and accept her and Mulder's differing wants. Mulder arrives, Mulder testifies on her behalf, Mulder scoops up her daughter... but Mulder remains apart, turning away from a white lie (the kind he's told a thousand times) presented on a silver platter outside Emily's hospital room. When an on-call physician asks, "Now, are you two the parents?" Scully looks to Mulder, waiting for his reaction; and when he turns, drifts away down the hall, her face falls (posts here and here.)

Whatever this means (and there are many theories), their interaction boils down to Scully needing something from her partner and not receiving it. Unlike Scully, Mulder is not ready for that second chance. Unlike Scully, Mulder is not prepared to walk away from the files.

Worse still, he voices what she's been brushing aside: "No matter how much you love this little girl, she's a miracle that was never meant to be, Scully." Later, as her daughter lays dying, she concludes, "You were right, this child was not meant to be," and gently sends her partner away when he offers to stay. The episode's ending underlines this point: she stands alone as Emily's guardian, attached to her by circumstance and responsibility-- a role Mulder stepped back from taking in the hospital. Scully reflects on this divide-- the forked path in their journeys, the remove in their perspectives-- in her monologue: "It begins where it ends, in nothingness. A nightmare born from deepest fears, coming to me unguarded. Whispering images unlocked from time and distance. A soul unbound-- touched by others but never held. On a course charted by some unseen hand. The journey ahead promising no more than my past reflecting back upon me. Until at last, I reach the end. Facing a truth I can no longer deny. Alone, as ever."

She has opened and received pain. It's at this point she closes, and remains closed until Fight the Future.

Kitsunegari begins the arc of doubt that has spread from her partner to herself. She questions Mulder's lucidity before he runs off into Linda Bowman's trap. They've both lost; and the seeds for her dispirited resignation are sown (but not quite grown) here.

In Chinga their roles are reversed but recovering, with Mulder quipping "marry me" at a safe distance and Scully feeling satisfied enough to send the detective a copy of Mulder's poster. Kill Switch switches their positions back to normal, and her trust and skill saves his life (while another couple hurdles willingly into cyberspace.) Even Bad Blood doesn't pose a threat to their partnership, in spite of petty disagreements or entertaining bickering.

This spate of episodes, in combination with those that came before, demonstrate how solidly Scully has her feet under her. During the cancer arc (and for most of Season 4), there were questions of where she stood in relation to herself, her loved ones, and that "endless line." For all the bubbling confusion soon to rise, she knows which direction her compass points. However, the previous dilemma will return in a new shape. The indecision has shifted from directionless spinning to increasingly dispirited driving: from Memento Mori to Redux II, Scully chose the files (and her partner)... but is she necessary for their continuance? Building off of her monologue in Emily, is she wanted-- or, more importantly, is she needed? With Mulder unmoored (to be discussed below), she isn't sure if her presence is helping or hindering them both.

Patient X-The Red and the Black is where we observe the second order effects of Scully's "second chance." She is afraid, not to believe but that she does believe. An alien abductee, chips, Skyland Mountain-- all wounds she had thought healed are broken open and burned. Instinct tells her that Cassandra Spender's words are true.

More terrifying to her stability is Mulder. More specifically, his lack of stability, his unbelief. Until Patient X, Scully hadn't realized how lost her partner truly was. Of course Mulder wouldn't want to talk about her cancer in the woods, of course Mulder wasn't prepared to leave the files for her daughter. These can be rationalized away. He still danced with her in Memphis, still chased after spooks in the night. So she is shocked, shaken, to discover how far Mulder has sunk-- the depths of which exceed what she's ever known or observed. Never has she witnessed him in the grips of sheer hopelessness, having been shielded from his despair by her absence (Ascension-One Breath) or illness (Memento Mori, Zero Sum, Gethsemane, Redux II.) The few glimpses she's caught in the past were always in alignment with his beliefs (e.g. Grotesque) and never to the obstinate degree she faces in Patient X and The Red and the Black.

This matters because her own beliefs are solidifying. They're blinding freewill and leading her to a truth she and he are unable to prevent (another trip to Skyland Mountain), leaving her singed and lucky to be alive. This matters because fear begins to choke her belief. She needs her memories to continue following Mulder: again, that distrust from Kitsunegari creeps up on them. She reaches for his hand during her hypnosis, he leaves unsettled afterward. She reaches for his hand again after yet another loss, stares into his tormented eyes as he mutters, "I don't know." This matters because she lapses into skepticism, unable to face the unknown of her experiences (again) without his help.

This matters because Scully's isolation is deepening. Before she could bottle up her emotions and depend on her partner: as she revealed in Elegy, "I guess I never realized how much I rely on him before this. His passion. He's been a great source of strength that I've drawn on." Now she has become vulnerable after her cancer, lifting wobbly legs forward to renew acquaintance with life. But after Emily's death and Mulder's withdrawal, she's at sea. Her partner has lost himself and now she's losing herself.

All Souls unveils the breadth of this mire. She retreats from aliens towards miracles and God's divinity, but Mulder is so lost to both that he doesn't show up at first. When he arrives, it's Kitsunegari but flipped: he doubts her ability to judge clearly and advises she step back from the case. She battles her demons alone.

More personally, All Souls grapples with her open wounds. Dana Scully, unable to let people go; Dana Scully, who sees her father and sister and daughter because of unfinished business (post here.) Dana Scully, who fears the emptiness of absence. Dana Scully, who cannot find absolution because she cannot fully forgive herself (post here.) (Dana Scully, who will see her partner's wraith and collapse in grief, yet put her lessons to work and move forward, post here.) Saving Emily (twice) is still a loss.

The burgeoning sense of failure begins to take root and sprout.

The Pine Bluff Variant gives her courage-- her instincts were right, Mulder hadn't defected-- which Folie a Deux immediately crushes-- she'd doubted her partner's sanity, again, and nearly sealed his fate. She couldn't admit to the truth of her experiences-- had she seen what she'd seen?-- officially or otherwise.

And a second realization dawns as The End approaches: the files are teetering with the higher ups. Scully is the X-Files's credibility, is Mulder's credibility; but the doubts they've collected this season have undermined her trust in herself (a pattern of cyclical self-doubt, post here.) She begins to believe what is untrue: as stated in Fight the Future, "You don't need me, Mulder. You never have. I've just held you back."

Scully is a woman who takes her failures, her "sins," very personally. Her father's pride, her sister's murder and its investigation, her struggle to believe in God, her daughter's death, her failing attempts to raise her sinking partner.

And in this moment of weakness, Diana Fowley walks in.

Curiously, Mulder is as wary of his past as Scully is. However, she doesn't witness his strained glance at Fowley in the mirror, nor his gentle rebuff of the latter's advances. All Scully sees are their smiles and Diana's familiarity, a gesture Mulder doesn't reciprocate when she hugs him in their ashen basement. All she sees are Diana's firm beliefs in the paranormal, her scientific pronouncements, and her partner's renewed hope to prove an aspect of his life's work.

And despite the twin hope and belief she's excluded from, their mission fails and the X-Files falls.

The second chance at life has seemingly gone up in flames.

As irrational as it may be, Scully internalizes this failure. Perhaps if she had been the partner Mulder needed, this wouldn't have happened. Perhaps yet another person wouldn't have been shot and yet another proof taken from them. Perhaps they wouldn't have lost Mulder's only way forward (she believes.) She hugs him and internalizes his lack of response, his devastation.

CONCLUSION

Season 5 was a limbo of sorts: Mulder and Scully didn't draw further apart-- they smiled, consulted, danced, saved each other-- yet they didn't draw closer together, either. Their trust was whole but their self-belief tarnished.

And limbo is not a state Scully does very well in.

Thanks for reading~