Andrew Cook
The X-Files digs into Mulder as a character with its fourth episode, “Conduit,” teasing out some of the various threads established before and turning them into searing human drama. The episode serves as our introduction to the writing duo of Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, though this one has significant uncredited help from Chris Carter. Gordon especially will emerge as another of the show’s creative mainstays in these early seasons. He fills an interesting niche on the staff, typically weaving back and forth between pulp horror and Tom Clancy-esque thrillers. The latter of which will become his bread and butter on later shows like Homeland and 24.
The teaser begins at night, with a family camping out at a lake. Two kids, a little boy and a teenage girl, sleep outside in sleeping bags while their mom is in a camper. The camper shakes violently as a bright, white light shines outside. It stops as suddenly as it began, and the woman burns her hand on a super-heated door handle as she runs out to check on her kids. The little boy is fine, but his sister is gone.
“Conduit” begins with Carter and company confirming their interest in serialization. Blevins returns with Scully summoned to his office to discuss Mulder’s latest case request. Mulder himself has not been invited, reaffirming Blevins’ view of Scully as a check on Mulder’s activity. Blevins is concerned because the only attached evidence to the request is a tabloid article about UFOs. He suggests Mulder’s lack of proper protocol is driven by the disappearance of his sister, itself logged as an X-File. With this, the driving question of the episode becomes clear: is Mulder’s judgment being affected by this case, and if so, will it ruin him? It also adds to why Mulder is missing from the scene, to plant the question in the audience’s mind without giving him the opportunity to answer for himself.
Scully goes to Mulder and presses him on the rigidity of his interest without revealing he’s on thin ice with Blevins. He hits her with another slideshow, revealing the mother of the missing girl had her own famous extraterrestrial experience years prior. Here the other central question becomes clear, further unpacking an idea seeded previously: how can Mulder thread the needle as a believer and an investigator, seeking to uncover things his employers would prefer stay hidden?
Despite his interest being purely paranormal, Scully covers for him and they head out to investigate. The mother, Darlene, is happy to see them. Mulder is distracted by pictures of the missing girl on the wall. He tries to remain stoic, but Scully still notices. They talk with Darlene, and she quickly states her belief that Ruby was abducted. Mulder reveals his knowledge of her previous encounter, and she asks him if “they” took her. He refuses to answer, now acutely aware of the friction between his beliefs and his obligations, and the fact that he just overstepped without even thinking. Academy Award nominee Carrie Snodgress does a great job as Darlene, her pain and unpretentious Midwestern honesty highlighting Mulder’s awareness of his own discomfort.
He excuses himself to talk to Kevin, another boy with a missing sister. Kevin draws out a section of binary code he says is coming from static in the television, a nod to Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist. Mulder and Scully fax the code over for analysis and speak with the Sheriff, who reveals he made little effort to investigate the disappearance. He holds Ruby in contempt due to underage drinking and premarital sex. Mulder predictably antagonizes him, questioning his competence. Afterward, he gets an upbraiding from Scully and offers one of his patented defensive quips.
They speak with Ruby’s friend Tessa, who directs them to Ruby’s bartender boyfriend Greg. She says he knocked Ruby up and they were planning to leave town as a result. This raises another of the episode’s many interesting ideas: police bias and the concept of “invisible people.” The Sheriff chose not to focus on Ruby’s disappearance, writing her off as riffraff “from the wrong side of the tracks” and “destined for a bad end” even though she’s only a teenager. He’s removed her from his radar as an officer of the law, rendering her invisible. This will become a recurring theme as Mulder and Scully’s investigations often see them treading among the invisible, the disbelieved and the easily exploited.
They go to Greg’s biker bar and find he hasn’t shown up for work, so they go back to the hotel and get strong-armed by the NSA. The NSA says the kid’s drawing is a transmission from a defense satellite and a matter of national security. Mulder refuses to cooperate, at first playing dumb to pierce through their bluster and tease some information out of them, then stonewalling to protect the kid. They threaten him with professional consequences for his actions, further emphasizing his liminal existence, torn between two worlds. Scully gives up the information, though, sparing Mulder’s career, a favor he doesn’t seem to respect.
The NSA ransacks Darlene’s home and accosts her and Kevin, highlighting Mulder’s existence within the oppressive power structure, and destroying the trust she had in him. Not only must Mulder contend with the internal and professional struggle of his position, he must contend with skepticism and distrust from his fellow believers as well. He’s on the outside looking in, mistrusted in both worlds.
The results from Kevin’s drawing come in and only a small section of it is from the satellite transmission. The bulk of the code is fragmentary, skipping around between art, music, science, etc. Mulder outlines his theory: he believes Kevin has become a conduit for some greater intelligence with an interest in humankind, and that intelligence is responsible for Ruby’s abduction. Scully tries to broach the topic of Samantha, but Mulder isn’t receptive, so she gently points out there simply is no evidence that Ruby was taken. Mulder, petulant, refuses to accept this and drives to the lake.
When they arrive, they find evidence of the same extreme heat that burnt Darlene. They find a lone white wolf near the tree line, a stark visual metaphor for Mulder, isolated and constantly on the prowl. They follow it back to another, trying to get at a shallow grave and symbolizing both agents and their pursuit now. They clear the wolves out and Mulder is possessed by the power of his obsessions, compelled to dig up the grave despite Scully’s protest. She has to physically intervene to stop him, and the icy front he’s put up to hide his emotional attachment to this case finally begins to crack. The grave turns out to belong to Ruby’s boyfriend Greg. The Sheriff makes another crack at Ruby’s expense, but Mulder finds evidence Greg had knocked Tessa up behind Ruby’s back. They track her down and Mulder leans on her hard, making us and Scully wonder if he’s still under control. Her tough-talking pose quickly breaks, revealing she’s a foolish and naive young woman with a total lack of guidance who killed Greg out of jealousy. Shelley Owens does a great job as Tessa, her tough, tossed-off demeanor and phony deep voice cracks during the interrogation, at which point her voice up shoots up about an octave.
Scully wants to leave town, ready to pin the disappearance on Tessa, but Mulder refuses. He wants to try his luck with the Morris family again, so she finally comes out with it, telling him obsessing over Ruby’s disappearance won’t bring Samantha back. Mulder stops in his tracks, establishing his quickness to take offense at his sister’s mention, and his distaste at having his motivation be reduced to a search for her.
They find Darlene and Kevin aren’t home, but the door isn’t locked and a massive portrait of Ruby, comprised entirely of binary code, is laid out on the floor. They return to the lake and find Darlene and Kevin looking for Ruby. Kevin has wandered off and Mulder goes looking for him, finding him just before he’s run over by a local biker gang. Kevin is adamant Ruby has returned, and sure enough Scully finds her a moment later. She’s still alive, though in a coma, and at the hospital they find evidence she may have been exposed to prolonged weightlessness. Ruby doesn’t want to talk about her experience, and Darlene rebuffs Mulder’s attempts to change her mind. Their relationship is still broken, as is Darlene’s investment in the truth. After all, it’s done nothing but hurt her.
As the episode draws to a close, Scully reviews the tapes of Mulder’s hypnotic regression therapy, listening to his account of Samantha’s disappearance. With the investigation over Mulder can finally let out how much the case got to him as he looks at an old picture of Samantha in a church. Mulder’s atheism has yet to be identified, making this scene far more interesting on rewatch, when you truly understand how this case shook him to the core.
“Deep Throat” director Daniel Sackheim returns behind the camera. He largely utilizes a down-to-earth, kitchen-sink realism here. He beautifully captures the crushing sense of the mundane that swirls around both the workaday existence of Darlene and the tragic, senseless violence of the crowd Ruby’s falling into. What takes the craft of this episode up a level is the way Sackheim punctuates the realism with occasional moments of striking, moody surrealism. The rich darkness of the teaser, the wolf by the lake, and the uncanny sequence of Kevin and the bikers at the end are the most striking examples. This plays well with the writing, which is purposefully kept open to interpretation. We aren’t given a firm answer as to what exactly happened. Was Ruby abducted, or did she simply spend a rough weekend with some bikers? Did Mulder almost throw his career away for a wild goose chase? Was Kevin in concert with alien intelligence or simply a creative kid, perhaps a savant, dealing with his sister’s disappearance? Both visually and narratively, “Conduit” is a story of the mundane being pierced by the uncanny, things which resist explanation. This ambiguity works well because it isn’t a plot driven episode. It’s a study in mood, emotion, and character. Mark Snow’s score is particularly good here, adding to that mood with a light and gentle sadness which prompts us to empathize with Mulder’s obsession.
Writer Howard Gordon made a point in his tenure to explore Mulder’s character, and from the start he dives in headfirst. What was merely exposition and general motivation becomes a heartfelt and powerful examination of personal trauma. We see in painful detail how cases involving children dig it up and affect his judgment. He once again acts out of unchecked emotion and crosses a line, forcing Scully to put herself at risk to cover for him. Even as she shares the doubts of his superiors, she wants to believe in his mind and his skill as an investigator.
“Conduit” also explores an interesting aspect of Mulder and Scully’s dynamic, one implied in “Deep Throat” and, to an extent, “Squeeze.” The pilot establishes Mulder and Scully are a good team because he can make singular leaps for which she’s singularly equipped to find evidence. By “Conduit,” it’s clear Scully also must occasionally keep Mulder upright, to navigate his at times fragile emotional state in order to keep him from destroying himself and enable him to work his magic.
“Conduit” is an excellent episode, perhaps the best so far. It still feels like an early episode, of a cast and crew still laying the groundwork to define the language of their craft and characters, but it’s a remarkably bold and emotive piece of work. It makes an important early statement, that The X-Files isn’t just capable of good horror, isn’t just capable of good science fiction, isn’t just capable of delivering truly cinematic craft on the small screen week after week, but is capable of piercing character study as well.
