The X-Files season 11: Grey Gardens with a taste for gore

For an X-Files episode about a cannibalistic cult, Nothing Lasts Forever had some interesting female characters and a lot to say about religion.

More often than I would like to admit, The X-Files has proven itself guilty of tokenism. As much as we love her, Dana Scully has often been the only woman in a room. At the very least, she’s often been the only woman who’s depicted as competent or tough, though there have been a few notable exceptions.

Besides, Scully often gets short shrift. As she’s pointed out before: why doesn’t she normally drive? Also, will Scully ever get her own desk in the X-Files office.

But this week’s episode, Nothing Lasts Forever, is pretty well stocked with interesting female characters. There’s Scully, of course, as competent and brave as ever, with some interesting asides about her own religion. Then we get the vengeful Juliet, her sister Olivia, and venomous cult leader Barbara Beaumont.

Female villains

Beaumont is especially interesting. How often have we gotten a really good female villain? There’s substitute teacher Phyllis H. Paddock, from Die Hand Die Verletzt, but I’m not sure that she should count. Phyllis may be an actual demon, after all (that’s not really a spoiler, I promise). There are the Eve clones, though they’re more spooky children.

Chinga is a doll, so not much leeway there. You might also count Betty the tattoo, but she’s a bunch of ink sitting underneath someone’s skin and not a flesh and blood woman.

In all, that leaves us pretty bereft of interest female baddies. It’s frustrating when women are restricted to only a few types of roles, especially if they’re reduced to “strong female characters” or victims. Not to take away from Dana Scully, either, who was often more complex and interesting than any character before her.

Still, villains can be an awful lot of fun. That’s why Barbara is so satisfying. I mean, it’s not great to have a self-obsessed cult leader representing your gender, sure. But she wasn’t.

In Nothing Lasts Forever, we get a richer array of female characters than we’ve seen on The X-Files in a long time. None of them has to be perfect in order to defend her gender. Neither do the evil or weak deeds of one woman necessarily condemn the others. There are enough women that they can be allowed to be as complex as they need to be.

Well, okay, maybe not Barbara.

She’s a darn good gothic villain, looking like she stepped out of some blood-soaked Grey Gardens, clutching to tapes of her show with perfectly manicured claws and all the blue cream eyeshadow she can handle.

Yes, I really liked Barbara. Not as a person, mind you. But as a nightmare figure, she’ll stick with me for a long time to come.

THE X-FILES: L-R: Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in the “Nothing Lasts Forever” episode of THE X-FILES airing Wednesday, March 14 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2018 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Shane Harvey/FOX

Faith, religion, and vengeance

Religion also proved to be a big theme in Nothing Lasts Forever. The episode kind of knocks you over the head with it, showing Juliet muttering prayers and Bible verses and Scully moping around a cathedral.

Juliet’s faith is, as one suspects, very black-and-white. There is evil, and she must fight it, regardless of the cost to herself. Scully’s faith, meanwhile, is more nuanced. She recalls praying for her young brother’s recovery thusly.

“Did I ever tell you how I came to believe in God?” Scully asks Mulder during an early scene.

She tells the story of her sick baby brother and how the family prayed for his recovery.

“Only after the first couple of nights, I wasn’t praying for him. I was praying for a puppy. And we got one that Christmas. I thought God had performed a miracle”.

“I don’t know if I believe in miracles,” she adds. “But I do know the power of faith”.

Later in the episode, she maintains that prayers are more like a conversation with God, rather than requests or demands.

That’s in stark contrast to Barbara, who is a supposedly divine figure with many demands on her followers. Just ask the guy who offered himself up as “dinnie”.

And what, exactly, is Juliet’s relationship with God? She certainly believes in God. But is her faith based on dialogue or on her own bloody desires? Was she saving her sister out of the goodness of her heart?

Probably, yes, but I also wonder if she wanted some of the glory for her deeds, either in this life or the next.

The life eternal

And what about living forever? Juliet might think she’ll have eternal life for killing a bunch of organ thieves, but I can’t be sure. Barbara was making good progress, though at the cost of her humanity.

Mulder seems especially sensitive to the affair of aging, getting all bashful about his glasses (which, I have to say, look pretty all right on him). Scully lamely “comforts” him by mentioning the impending fun of gout.

Wouldn’t you know it, gout is caused by purine-rich foods like organ meat. Wonder if Barbara or her mad scientist boyfriend ever had to deal with that issue?

Next: The X-Files season 11 episode 9 recap and review: Nothing Lasts Forever

Anyway, Nothing Lasts Forever turned out to be a lot of fun. There may have been some points where the plot didn’t quite come together or things were a little too easy, like when Juliet walked into the same church as Mulder and Scully.

Still, thanks to Barbara Beaumont and a lot of gore, it was delightfully menacing.