Beyond the Sea

I become an X-files fan after the show had been on awhile. So just now, I'm starting over.

The episodes go by: okay, so-so, good, okay, okay, pretty good... and then WHAM! comes this episode, as if from another series.

Knowing what an amazing actress Gillian Anderson is, I'd noted how subdued she's been, not really given the opportunity to do much. But come this episode, amigo, there it is. I don't know whether it was the material, or whether it was partly Brad Dourif's stand-out performance challenging her to come up a notch (as David Duchovny's anemic metro-sexual character couldn't), but wow.

I'll leave it at "wow." That says it. That Gillian Anderson hasn't gone on to take her place by Meryl Streep remains a mystery to me.

James Wong and Glen Morgan wrote some brilliant episodes for "The X-Files", but mostly just straightforward standalone thrillers. "Beyond the Sea" differs in that it is really where Scully's character comes to the forefront and where Gillian Anderson first gets a real chance to shine. It's a wonderful, intelligent, wistful, dramatic, thrilling 45 minutes of television that holds a rare degree of power and resonance.

The complexity and depth of characterization here is especially impressive, as Scully is dealing with her father's death and questioning her skeptical ways as she is confronted with an emotional connection through supposed psychic Luther Lee Boggs, played brilliantly by Brad Dourif. The questions of faith, of life and death, of moral consequences raised by this episode are legitimate and display a surprising amount of depth for a first season episode.

Thank heavens David Nutter got the directing job here. His visuals are excellent as usual and I'm sure he had something to do with Dourif's spectacular performance. What a classic episode, one I never tire of watching, and one that grows in my estimation just about every time I see it. "Ice" may have been a taut thriller of an episode, but this is the first sign of brilliance on "The X-Files".

10/10

Wow! I cant put into words my feelings towards this amazing episode. When i first watched this i had just recently lost a loved one and upon watching this it touched me so deeply. Brad Dourif's performance is at the heart of this episode, it is awe-inspiring. He is such an underrated actor. I don't believe in "channeling" but he certainly made it look real! As a Scully centered episode it serves to showcase Gillian Anderson's talent. She amazed me in this, the emotion she portrays is so real you can almost grasp it. Glenn Morgan and James Wong wrote another masterpiece here.

It is easily the best episode of season one. Heck! One of the best episodes in the entire series run.

Scully: Im afraid to believe...

This may prove to be a turning point in the show.

So far X-Files has been a mixed bag, but scrap the often silly 'monster' aspect and at root what is worth investigating in the show is the noir notion of an extralogical reality that comes alive according to the narrator's desire. So far Scully's raison d'etre had been to provide the logical counterpoint to spooky Mulder, inserting again and again the possibility of logical explanation to phenomena.

Here she has her own breakthrough, tied to loss and bereavement of her dead father. Usually in the context of the show we have 'hard' presentation of extralogical forces as 'real' outside of mind, but for the first time we have some 'soft' ambiguity; the thing may be only as real as the story we choose to remember, and yet no less ontologically real for that.

Anchored on one end in a powerhouse performance by Brad Dourif as spiritual conduit (or charlatan), on another we have what another reviewer astutely noted as the Twin Peaks connection. I did make a note of resemblance in my post for the Pilot, so it's nice to see it confirmed here.

"Beyond the Sea" was the first episode to center around Scully, as precious little about her life had been known previously, and is arguably the best of the episodes that did so. The frenzied Luther Boggs, played impeccably by Brad Dourif, leaves such an imprint that every monster-of-the-week from this point forward faces the challenge of living up to him. His spotlight is shared by Gillian Anderson's Emmy-warranting performance, that peaks in a confrontation with Boggs shortly after Mulder has been shot ("no one will be able to stop me from being the one that will throw the switch and gas you out of this life for good, you son of a bitch!").

This is easily the best episode of the first season and very likely one of the best of the entire series. David Nutter's directing sheds animation at every angle, with multiple scenes feeling like something out of a David Lynch film. Although numerous episodes would tackle Scully's struggle between belief and denial, "Beyond the Sea" was the first to do so, and the on-screen chemistry between Anderson and Dourif is one of the best pairings on any X-File, if not television. The only negative thing about it is that it made me wish Boggs had been brought back in a future ep! 10/10