Lazarus

Lazarus is a fine, body-switching episode. Although it's difficult to tell who got the better end of the deal. True, Jack Willis' body is still alive, but he has another man's soul in him. Warren Dupre has lost his body, but his soul is very much alive in another man's body. What a perfect disguise for a criminal, as an officer of the law! In Fire, two episodes before, Mulder had a past love interest show up. In Lazarus, it's Scully's turn, as Jack Willis is her former FBI academy instructor whom she dated. But the results are not similar, as Mulder shows no hints of jealousy at all. In Tempus Fugit, Scully comments that in the four years she's known Mulder he's never remembered her birthday. In Lazarus, Mulder gives Scully a birthday card signed by Willis two months early to test him. I wouldn't exactly call that never remembering. Another excellent guest performance given by Christopher Allport as Jack Willis. Plus, this episode has a nice little twist at the end that surprised me.

38:20 into the episode, Mulder says they have 1000 households to check. They have 100 officers, and each officer can check 30 households per hour. He says they will cover the area in 3 hours.

100 officers x 30 = 3000 households per hour. 3 hours should be 9000 households. They should be able to check the 1000 households in 20 minutes, not 3 hours. It's strange no one of the cast or production team realized this.

I struggled with this episode, it definitely has some nice ideas, but the execution of them just doesn't work somehow, and it's the first time this series I've been kind of bored.

I am fascinated by the idea of transference, it's a great concept, but here it was too heavy handed, they could have done it in a subtle, menacing way, and it just doesn't work.

The idea of the tattoo has been copied since, if anyone has watched Dr Who's spinoff Class, I'd argue they lifted ideas from here.

It's forgettable, 5/10.

The Gordon and Gansa scripts of season one were admittedly not the finest moments of that particular year, and for every "Conduit" and "Fallen Angel" we were given a "Ghost in the Machine" and "Born Again." Episode fifteen, "Lazarus," falls somewhere in the middle of the pack, offering up a mildly interesting premise but failing to deliver the tension that made classic X-Files such delicious TV candy.

I think the concept of "body-switching," of transposing one consciousness independent of its physical body into another, is quite interesting. Even in more recent times, on shows such as Lost, the concept is used in various fashions. There have been enough reported cases of near-death and out-of-body experiences to give the phenomenon some sort of foothold in the backdrop of reality. It is certainly an idea that provides food for thought.

While "Lazarus" manages to execute this idea in a believable fashion, the pieces don't completely come together. The case revolves around Scully's ex-boyfriend Jack Willis. While it's nice to see the writers once again delving into Scully's pre X-Files life, our only glimpse of him is in the teaser, as he is shot during a bank robbery and subsequently "possessed" by the shooter, Dupre. Thus, we don't really have a baseline to compare his later actions. There are also quite a few gaps in logic, just in the hospital scenes alone. How anyone could not have noticed Dupre's body convulsing on the stretcher remains an X-File in itself, and it makes absolutely no sense that a physically and psychologically suffering Willis would have been allowed right back on the case.

Still, this episode earns points for Scully's scenes. Duped by Dupre/Willis during a chase of his girlfriend Lula, Scully is kidnapped (for the first of many times), yet never lets her situation get the best of her. There are some great Scully "backbone" moments here, including the final scene in which she attempts to resurrect memories in Willis's trapped conscience. It provides tension in an otherwise tension-lacking affair.

"Lazarus" earns points for a solid premise (that would later be revisited in a different manner in "Dreamland"), fine acting and for reminding us that Scully has a spine. If it were a more engaging, logically consistent episode, I would probably rank it higher. As is, I give it a 6 out of 10.

This provides the usual X atmosphere plus a few standard TV thrills. Not a favorite with the fans it seems, but I think it is as deep as X-Files has been.

Which is to say, it is not mind-bending stuff because we have a 'real' super-reality but within those limits, it exemplifies some worthwhile layering much better than usual for the series. Usually, what extralogical forces Mulder and Scully encounter can be understood as inner mental urges of the characters, standard noir rules; Mulder's fear of a fiery love affair from his past as the volatile combustions of Fire, Scully's assertion of feminine independence in Jersey Devil and so on.

The story here is that simultaneously two men die, FBI agent and psychopathic robber, one is resuscitated back to life but in those few minutes of dead time the identities have shifted, the 'evil' consciousness returning in the agent's body.

The robber (as the agent) seeks to be reunited with his girlfriend accomplice, with whom they had a deep, dangerous love affair, this is mirrored in the past love affair Scully had with the colleague she resuscitated. So her ex- is now 'evil' and acting strange, which from Scully's always hesitant pov becomes the reluctance for commitment we know from Jersey Devil.

In the latter stages, we have Scully 'trapped' between the passionate couple, seeing as helpless observer the kind of corrosive passion she has kept from herself, conjuring in the man's mind memories of a past trip together as her attempt to awaken the 'good' person she knew.

Even more tantalizing: in this quasi-magical reality of having survived death, the robber experiences a nightmare of betrayal and heartbreak, with love as a sham.

So this is an attractive episode in narrative terms, again constrained by hard presentation. It is deep, in the sense that you can read a series of altered realities as inter-leavened dreams from opposing pairs of eyes.