“Brand X” demonstrates three points about The X-Files. First, the seventh season truly is running out of steam. Unless an episode is written by a cast member at this point, there is not a whole lot to hold viewer attention. Second, the show never does social commentary well. Finally, The X-Files is very self-aware of my first two points, si it compensates with gross out scenes as it generally does with weak scripts.
The episode features skinner personally guarding a tobacco company researcher the night before he is to testify against Morley Tobacco about some deep, dark secret for which the company would kill him for rather than let be revealed. Here we have our first big problem with “Brand X.” I am sorry, folks, but corporations are not inherently evil, even if they do manufacture and market cancer sticks. They are not in the business of murdering people to keep corporate secrets. Morley Tobacco is presented as unquestionably evil as any terrorist group out there. I have a tough time buying it.
“Brand X” aired in spring 2000 when the huge tobacco settlement in favor of states was heavy in the news. Presenting tobacco companies as evil corporations peddling death was the media motif. It was pretty easy to pass off a tobacco company as the bad guy on television. However, I am big on personal responsibility. No one makes a person smoke or eat four Big Macs a week. Lung cancer and heart attacks are the consequences of personal choices, not the company providing them. It is how I feel, so I have a difficult time getting into the evil corporation mood in the first place, much less one in which the company is murdering to keep new research quiet.
I will give some props that things are not exactly as they seem. While Morley is ultimately trying to protect itself, the deaths which do occur, including the whistleblower’s, are not a direct murder. Morley was attempting to create a safer cigarette. What it wound up doing was genetically engineering a carnivorous tobacco beetle whose larva is carried into the lungs, grows into a bug, then eats its way out. Quite graphically, I might add. Three of four test subjects died. The fourt survived, but is being paid off by Morley to keep quiet. That is what the whistle blower was going to reveal.
I might have an easier time buying into the premise if the script was stronger, but there are some major flaws. Darryl Weaver, the surviving test subject, is dirt poor, but willing to be paid off in cigarettes. It is not that he is a moron, mind you. It is a commentary on how dangerously addictive cigarettes are. Way too over the top to be believed. Not to mention preachy. For good measure, one has to ask why, if the company is trying to keep a lid on cigarettes that cause killer bugs to grow in people’s lungs would they offer a lifetime supply to an amoral chain smoker who is leaving behind a trail of bodies with their throats eaten out by beetles?
The script attempts to distract from the illogic by infecting Mulder in the penultimate act. His life is in danger. We are supposed to both fear for him and empathize with scully over his impending death. But it happens so quickly, and the emotions so forced, I wind up more irritated at how I am being cheaply manipulated instead. It feels like the writers are just throwing the scenario in to give the audience an emotional stake in what has thus far been a lackluster episode. Things do not improve from there. Even after everyone knows the tobacco smoke from the genetically engineered cigarettes carries the bug larva, no one protects themselves from Weaver’s smoking. Not even so much as surgical masks, much less gas masks or haz mat suits. The cure for Mulder turns out to be nicotine. It is poisonous to the larva/beetles. Weaver is immune to them because he is a four pack a day smoker. I have a difficult time buying the idea. Surely there are plenty of smokers who puff away that much. Why is weaver so special? The answer is he is not. The resolution is a cheap cop out which further diminishes the already weak episode.
There is one high point. Weaver is played with splendid creepiness by Tobin Bell. ’Brand x” takes place four years before he will shoot to horror movie fame with his role in the Saw series. Those films have a tough time competing against the heyday slasher horror flicks of the ’80’s, but bell is quite good in them. I would not be surprised, considering the similarities between characters, if “Brand X” did not land him in Saw He is the second Saw actor to appear on The X-Files. South Carolina’s own Shawnee Smith appeared in the second season.’s “Firewalker.” Ironically, that episode was about airborne spores growing large fungus in people’s lungs.
Skip “Brand X.” Outside of Bell’s performance and a larger, proactive role for Skinner, there is not much else to see. The episode is meant to preach a sermon I do not care to hear. It does not do that particularly well, either. Even the most adamant shippers never mention the scenes of scully holding the dying mulder’s hand towards the end. Considering how desperately they read into every little thing, that ought to tell you about the episode’s poor quality.
Rating: ** (out of 5)
“Brand X” demonstrates three points about The X-Files. First, the seventh season truly is running out of steam. Unless an episode is written by a cast member at this point, there is not a whole lot to hold viewer attention. Second, the show never does social commentary well. Finally, The X-Files is very self-aware of my first two points, si it compensates with gross out scenes as it generally does with weak scripts.
