Several points strike me right between the eyes about “Scary Monsters.” First, many of the elements are lifted straight from the classic “It’s a Good Life” from The Twilight Zone. Second, what is not lifted from "It’s a Good Life” reminds me way too much of the worst episode of the revived Doctor who series "Fear Her.” Finally, the sardonic self-awareness is awfully melancholy. Even the show itself is making excuses as to why it has been cancelled.
Agent Leyla Harrison, last seen in “Alone,” approaches scully with a case she swears is an X-File. A young boy’s grandmother has urged authorities to check in on him after his mother stabs herself to death. The boy told her about monsters doing the deed instead. All parties but Harrison think the boy has an overactive imagination. As we will soon discover, he does.
Tommy has the ability to make his imagination come to life by drawing. He created some sort of large bugs that ate his mother from the inside out. She stabbed herself in an attempt to cut them out of her stomach. The boy’s cat killed itself for the same reason. Now his father is being held prisoner by his sadistically demented son. Eventually, Doggett, reyes, and Harrison are trapped, too, and tormented by Tommy’s imagination. Doggett eventually figures a way to stop Tommy--by not believing his creations are real. It works. Tommy is inexplicably incapacitated before Reyes is eaten from the inside by the bugs and Harrison bleeds to death from her eyes.
Out of all the evil kids that have been monsters of the week, Tommy is one of the best. He is very manipulative in luring people into his traps. There is a strong hin the has a crush on Reyes, too. He makes every effort to hover around her, always seeking comfort from her. His previous behavior makes it even cooler when he decides to kill her in the worst manner he can imagine. The glee he has when showing her the picture he drew of her with a bug in her stomach is priceless.
The heart of the episode is not Tommy’s sadism, however. Good thing, too, because it is incredibly derivative of past kids with reality bending powers stories from all over science fiction. What the episode is really about is Harrison speaking for the fans. She is irritated every step of the way how Doggett and Reyes are handling the case. Specifically, she hounds the two that Mulder and Scully would be doing things far better. At one point, Doggett snaps at her that Mulder and Scully are not around anymore, then privately confides in Reyes he believes Harrison is right. He and Reyes are completely in over their heads. He thinks they lack the ability to think outside the box enough to solve x-Files cases. Indeed, it is Doggett’s lack of imagination which allows him to survive Tommy’s death trap for him and eventually subdue the kid. The solution is supposed to be ironic, but it really reinforces the notion The X-Files was best left to Mulder and Scully.
“Scary Monsters” has a decent mix of horror and comedy. I have already described how Tommy manipulates reyes into feeling sorry for him to the point she is always holding him. I half expected him to try unhooking her bra at some point. On a dime, he shows her a drawing of how he plans to kill her and--boom--here we go. Hilariously jarring, as his her commenting, as she suffers under the pain , what a brat he is. Leyla’s over-enthusiastic boyfriend is thrown into the mix. He has been told he will get laid if he digs up the family cat for Scully to autopsy. He shows up at Scully’s door with the feline. Hilarity ensues. The whole sequence feels like just a way of getting Gillian Anderson into the episode. She is phoning it in, just like she has been for the last season and a half. You can see it on her face: End it! End it! For the love of God, end it! I’m moving to London. End it!
I am mocking “Scary Monsters” unmercifully, but it is not really that bad. The problem is how obvious it is everyone involved knows the show is over because the fans no longer care. They are cashing thir paychecks, and that is about it. Annabeth Gish is hoping her role on The West Wing gets extended. It does not, I am afraid. She has to take her clothes off in her next movie to get anyone’s attention. So does Anderson, now that I recall, but not full frontal like Gish. Poor Robert Patrick shows up in one episode of Stargate: Atlantis only to be killed off in the second act. Judge for yourself how Harrison’s Jolie Jenkins has done for herself. I recognize her in many television guest spots. Still cute, too.
Rating; *** (out of 5)
Several points strike me right between the eyes about “Scary Monsters.” First, many of the elements are lifted straight from the classic “It’s a Good Life” from The Twilight Zone. Second, what is not lifted from "It’s a Good Life” reminds me way too much of the worst episode of the revived Doctor who series "Fear Her.” Finally, the sardonic self-awareness is awfully melancholy. Even the show itself is making excuses as to why it has been cancelled.
