The X-Files - Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose/Tithonus

On this side of the televisions screen...

The sixth article in a series exploring the best monster of the week episodes of "The X-Files" leading up to the premiere of the new movie July 25th.

"The X-Files" was famous for its long, unwieldy conspiracy involving aliens and the eventual end of civilization. These episodes were interconnected and required faithful viewership to fully understand. However, the weekly monster mashes also had some continuity behind them to reward the devoted viewers as well. There were straight sequel stories, such as "Squeeze" and "Tooms" that offered closure to storylines, and then there were little jewels peppered in across seasons that enticed the audience with exciting possibilities.

Across the gulf of three seasons, just such a connection is made between two otherwise unrelated episodes, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and "Tithonus."

Clyde Bruckman (the late Peter Boyle) is a life insurance salesman with the psychic ability to foretell a person's death. This comes in handy when Mulder and Scully are investigating the case of a serial killer specifically targeting psychics. The episode itself is a gem, and ranked number ten in a 1997 TV Guide list of the greatest Television episodes of all time. Boyle's dry performance is priceless, and well worth the Emmy award he received for it.

Towards the end of the episode Mr. Bruckman gives agent Scully some very shocking news. After correctly predicting the deaths of several agents, as well as comically predicting Mulder's due to auto-erotic asphyxiation, Scully finally breaks down and asks how she dies; with wide, earnest eyes, Bruckman quizzically responds, "You don't!"

That proclamation is very creepy in and of itself, but could very easily be dismissed as an old man's game, or perhaps he just didn't want to tell her the truth. However, in the sixth season Scully is on a case that bears out the meaning of that phrase.

Called to New York to look into the possibility that a crime scene photographer, who always arrives at the scene before police officers, may in fact be the killer, Scully discovers that Alfred Fellig (Geoffrey Lewis) has another secret altogether. Fellig was, actually, well over a century old.

As he tells it, while sick in the hospital he actually saw death coming for him, and turned away from it. Death took the person in the bed next to him instead, never to visit him again, and ever since he's been chasing death hoping to have it finally take him and end his too-long life. Ultimately, Scully is shot and death comes for her, but Fellig convinces her to turn away from it and it finally takes him in her place. She lives. Presumably, Scully is now left with the same curse as Felling -- immortality.

Intriguing as this notion may be, the series did not return to it in its remaining three seasons. No further explanation was ever given, so by the show's own internal logic Dana Scully cannot die until she convinces death to take her instead of someone else.

Perhaps this is something Chris Carter is saving for the eventual endgame showdown between man and alien in 2012, or perhaps it's just a sloppy loose end they forgot to get around to before the series' close. Either way, it's an open ended element to the grander story I think rewards long-time fans with rich possibilities.

~J. Spellman