#oubliette

In I Want to Believe, Mulder pursues a kidnapped case because it is the ticket to his (and Scully's) freedom; yet Scully takes up his old mantle of projection and lays his obsession at Samantha's feet while, at the same time, projecting her own son onto ailing Christian Fearon. In the Revival, it's Scully who sees herself (and her son) in nearly every case. Mulder, meanwhile, keeps a detached distance, pulling out his emotional side only when necessary to comfort his partner (or to remember William, once, in private.) Scully panics and runs into danger and falls apart visibly while her partner becomes the stronger head with his nose mostly wiped and his shoes mostly tied.

Which begs the question: if the time between I Want to Believe and the Revival was supposedly when Mulder and Scully separated and individually underwent treatment for their mental health, why did that possible therapy and medication swap their responses-- not substitute them for healthier techniques, but completely swap them? And again: why were their responses already switched up in I Want to Believe? If the switch up was a result of compounding trauma, why wasn't it already present in Season 8-- when Mulder had been abducted, killed, and resurrected, and Scully had to carry on in his absence while pregnant-- instead of years after the fact, with time apart? Or in Season 9 after William's adoption, or Mulder's death sentence? And if it is the result of compounding trauma regardless, effects as dramatic as switching up not only their coping skills but also their real-time responses would have been compared to past medical records and likely gotten them disqualified from FBI re-entry.

There also doesn't appear to be a consistent pattern indicating previous off-screen growth or change, because the Revival flips back and forth on the swaps, too. Sometimes Scully will internalize (Ghouli), sometimes she will project (My Struggle I, Founder's Mutation, Home Again, My Struggle III, This, Plus One, Nothing Lasts Forever, My Struggle IV.) Most times Mulder keeps a personal distance but sometimes he will fixate and reconnect (Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster and Kitten.) These switches are applied haphazardly and never addressed except for a throwaway line (Mulder's "I feel like I've had to put that behind me" in Founder's Mutation, Scully's "I believed I could protect our son, and I failed. I believed that we could live together, and I fled. I gave up on that, too" in Nothing Lasts Forever) that are undermined either a scene or an episode later (Mulder's dream in Founder's Mutation, Scully's proclamation in My Struggle IV.)

To keep a (potentially longer) post short, I ask: Does the Mulder who openly wept over a drowned victim in year three of the series (Oubliette) seem the same Mulder who didn't shed a tear after his son's "body" was recovered (Ghouli)? Does the Scully who adopted out William for his safety seem the same Scully to internalize a metaphor about treating people/her son like trash (Home Again)? Does the Scully unconcerned with plastic surgery (Sanguinarium) seem the same Scully to care about her age deterring Mulder (Plus One)? Does the same Mulder who put William "behind him" seem like the same Mulder who, mere episodes later, declared, "What am I, if not a father?"

tl;dr: Either Mulder is on some heavy medication and Scully utterly transformed, or the writers (I fear) didn't try very hard to match their characters' reactions with established canonical history.

Thanks for reading~