"Fire
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Larry Shaw


In which Mulder is faced with one of his greatest fears: Scully meeting one of the really nasty girls he used to date when he was avoiding his family at Oxford. Oh, and fire, too...

Synopsis - Analysis - Memorable Quotes - Observations


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"Now this is a case against binge drinking..."


Synopsis

The episode begins in Bosham, England, 70 miles southwest of London. A man and his wife, both apparently members of the aristocracy, are walking along the front of their house. The man’s car is waiting for him, presumably for driving off to something important. He briefly acknowledges the help, especially a young man named Cecil. As the man prepares to enter his car, he waves to his wife. His arm is suddenly on fire, and then he is consumed. Everyone but Cecil runs to his aid, but it’s too late. Cecil looks on with a smile.

Sometime later, Mulder and Scully are leaving a session in court. From Mulder’s comments, it would seem that they have been working on more mundane casework recently. As Mulder reaches for the keys to their car, Scully realizes that the doors are unlocked. Mulder is sure that he locked the doors, but they get in anyway. Scully notices a cassette tape on the dashboard, and Mulder promptly slides it into the car stereo.

On the tape, a woman with a British accent calmly relates the sad story of Minister of Parliament Reggie Ellicot, who six months previously had been killed by a car bomb triggered by the insertion of a cassette tape into the stereo and the subsequent attempt to open the door and run. As Mulder and Scully begin to panic (and of course, we only see Scully actually reacting), the door opens, scaring them both out of their seats. A woman, the same one on the tape, looks in on them, her expression priceless.

The woman is Phoebe Green, an inspector from Scotland Yard, whom Mulder refers to as “an old friend”. They immediately mention their previous relationship at Oxford ten years earlier, and how it ended badly. (Apparently speaking in exposition is an old Oxford tradition!) Phoebe promptly plants a kiss on Mulder, at which point Scully wonders if Phoebe is aware that she’s watching. Of course, Scully is…and Phoebe can already tell that Scully doesn’t like her. (Gee, does anyone?)

Back at the basement office of the Hoover Building, Mulder reviews some pictures of severely burnt corpses. Phoebe tells Mulder that someone is burning his aristocratic victims alive, as well as setting fire to historical buildings and such for good measure. The killer sends love letters to the young wives of these terribly important men, and then burns them to death. The most recent target, Malcolm Marsden, have fled to the wilds of Cape Cod until the Yard can track their man down. Phoebe figured that Mulder would love to get involved in this kind of case. Mulder promises to run it by their Bureau’s arson specialist.

Scully, who has been standing there the entire time, inquires as to the nature of Mulder’s past relationship with Phoebe as soon as the other woman walks out the door. Mulder explains that he found her to be brilliant when they were students together at Oxford, but he was in over his head. Scully seems to think that he’s falling right under her spell again, but Mulder simply waves it off as professional courtesy. Scully’s not so convinced, even though like the audience, she’s probably not too sure what Mulder saw in her to begin with.

At the arson lab, official FBI freak of nature Agent Beatty inspects the evidence. He takes a certain amount of glee in running through the evidence with the agents and inspector. He points out that the victims would have needed to have some kind of accelerant introduced into their system to allow the bodies to burn as they have. After a completely pointless diversion into some other cases he happens to be working on, Agent Beatty disputes Mulder’s claim that it’s the work of a pyrokinetic.

Sometime later, in Cape Cod, Cecil L’Ively (the aforementioned killer) is painting the walls of a rather nice house with rocket fuel. He watches as the Marsdens come up the to the house. As soon as the car stops, two young boys jump out, chasing after a small and annoying dog. Mrs. Marsden, a young and lovely woman, is taken by the house. Mr. Marsden, a man of little personality, just directs the movers where to put the boxes.

Cecil steps out of the house and introduces himself as Bob, the caretaker. The Marsdens compliment him on the state of the house, and generally seem to like him very much. (Apparently, they don’t remember why they fled England.) They notice, as they walk up the stairs, that there is a large painting of Mrs. Marsden already hanging on the wall. Outside, as the boys play soccer, the little dog begins digging up something in the yard. Cecil kicks the dog away, and we see that it’s the body of the real caretaker.

Back at the basement office, Scully asks Mulder about the state of the case. He tells her that he doesn’t want her working on the case, because she’d wind up getting pulled into one of Phoebe’s little mind games. Mulder tells Scully that he’s deadly afraid of fire, something Phoebe is well aware of. She is deliberately getting Mulder involved to toy with him.

That night, Cecil is watching Mrs. Marsden make tea, when he hears coughing coming from the garage. It’s the driver for the Marsdens, who apparently thinks smoking in the middle of a Massachusetts winter while nursing the flu is a damned good idea. Cecil offers to get him some cough medicine. While he’s out, he stops at Hennesey’s Bar. As he waits for a pint, a woman slides onto the stool next to his and starts hitting on him. She pulls out a cigarette, and he offers to light it for her. He first lights his finger, which she thinks is a cool trick. Then he lights his entire arm, which she finds less appealing. He then decides that burning down the entire bar would be an even better trick.

The next morning, Mulder and Phoebe arrive at Boston Mercy Hospital. The woman is being treated there. Even though the bar had been right across the street from a fire station, it was ashes before they could even respond. They convince the woman to help create a composite sketch of the apparent arsonist, and after a little verbal sparring about more Oxford follies, the woman mentions that the arsonist had an English accent.

Back in Washington, now quite concerned for Mulder, Scully begins working up a profile on the arsonist. As she adds her own inferences to the profile, we see Cecil actions bearing them out. She recognizes that he has unusually intimate access to the victims, which his charming persona facilitates. Scully believes that he acts out of impulse, satisfying his sexual urges or insecurities through destructive behavior. We see Cecil demonstrating a cigarette trick to the Marsden boys, and then pushing his luck by trying to pressure them into smoking one.

Having pulled together her initial profile, Scully goes to Agent Beatty to find out if the arsonist might introduce one of the rocket fuel accelerants into something else…like hand cream or some other personal product. Beatty, as usual, is excited to inform Scully that even a small concentration of the fuel would produce extremely high temperatures.

Just before one of the Marsden boys takes the bait, Mrs. Marsden calls them to the house. She sees Cecil (who has conveniently hidden the cigarettes) and asks him if he could fill in for their driver, who’s taken ill. As Cecil agrees, Scully finishes up her profile by noting that the arsonist would be prone to having fantasies of women or men inaccessible to him. Also, his pattern suggests that he followed the Marsdens to the United States. Another agent hands her a lost of recent immigrants to the Boston area, which she believes could hold the key.

At the same time, Mulder and Phoebe have come to a stalemate in their search for the arsonist. When Phoebe mentions that that the Marsdens were scheduled to attend a party, Mulder suggests uses it to set a trap. Phoebe agrees, and asks Mulder to check out the hotel ahead of time...starting with the room she’s already booked at the hotel.

The hotel room is rather well stocked, with a huge four-poster bed, and Mulder knows that he’s in over his head. Scully calls him from Washington, informing him that she might have information on the arson suspect. She wants to come up to Boston to meet him, which doesn’t exactly set Mulder at ease.

That night, at the party, Phoebe arrives with the Marsdens wearing a form-fitting gown, and promptly sets her sights on Mulder for some after dinner entertainment. Scully arrives just as Phoebe starts putting her moves on Mulder, and Scully resists the urge to interrupt them. As she’s waiting, she notices Cecil watching her oddly from the hallway. She looks away to check on Mulder, and Phoebe is kissing him. Getting very impatient, she turns away again…and notices that Cecil is missing.

Almost immediately, the fire alarms begin ringing for the 14th floor, where the Marsden boys are. Mulder runs up the stairs, and after a tense moment of fighting his fears, tries to get down the smoky hallway to the children. He doesn’t get very far before the smoke and fear begins to overwhelm him. By the time firemen rescue him and take him downstairs, Cecil is being congratulated for saving the children’s lives.

Back in the hotel room the next morning, Mulder is kicking himself for giving in to his fears. Still, he’s comfortable walking around half-naked and bickering with Scully, until Phoebe shows up. Then he shuts down and covers up, obviously ill at ease. Sensing Mulder’s discomfort, Scully switches gears to tell him what she’s uncovered.

She gives him a list of the possible accelerants used in the arson cases, as well as a list of the servants and help that the victims had hired at the time of their deaths. Only one name matched: Cecil L’Ively. And he came up as having entered the US through Boston two weeks priorly. Mulder immediately rushes to warn Phoebe, asking Scully to get the composite drawing that the woman from Hennesey’s Bar had provided. When Scully gets it, it matches Cecil.

When Mulder arrives at the house in Cape Cod, he gets there just in time to see Phoebe embracing Mr. Marsden. It doesn’t shock Mulder, but it sure as hell disappoints him. Mulder tells Phoebe that they need to get the family away from the house, but it’s soon apparent that Cecil is upstairs with the children. Mulder and Scully run up the stairs, and look in the driver’s room. They find the man’s charred body positioned over the toilet, as though he were vomiting.

When things begin to burn around the house, Mulder realizes that the entire place has been laced with the rocket fuel. He has Scully and Phoebe escort the Marsdens out of the house, and he goes up the stairs to try and save the children. He tries to get a locked door open, but Cecil arrives first and sets the hallway paintings ablaze. Mulder drops to the ground.

Cecil attempts to get past Scully at the bottom of the stairs, making it clear that any gunplay could make the house explode. Just as Cecil is about to attack, Phoebe jumps out and splashes Cecil with his own supply of accelerant. Meanwhile, Mulder overcomes his fears and forces the locked door open, saving the children and their annoying little dog, too. Cecil, who has been flipping out on the front lawn, oddly sets himself on fire rather than simply give up and take a good shower. It all ends with the badly burned Cecil burning on the ground.

Sometime later, back in the basement, Scully drops by for lunch. She asks after Phoebe, but she’s left without stopping to see Mulder again. She did send him a cassette tape, however, which thrills him endlessly. Later, Scully adds an addendum to Mulder’s newly opened X-File on Cecil L’Ively. She notes that even though his burns ought to have been fatal, Cecil is actually regenerating towards full recovery. At Boston Mercy Hospital, we see Cecil confined to a hyperbaric chamber until he can be put on trial.


Analysis

Much as with “Space”, the previous offering by Chris Carter, this is an episode that hinges entirely on concepts that struck Carter’s fancy. That was the only basis for developing the situation encountered in this episode, and the requisite lack of forethought does not work any better here than it did in “Space”.

We get four basic concepts colliding here, and none of them fit together very well. First and foremost, there is the past relationship between Mulder and Phoebe Green. Phoebe comes across as a none-too-subtle manipulator, whose mind games don’t exactly provide much inspiration. For a skilled profiler and psychology major like Mulder, her constant attempts to control the situation ought to have been entirely transparent.

Instead, we are told that Mulder finds the woman almost irresistible. I’m still trying to figure out why, since her appearance in this episode is hardly flattering. Yet Mulder falls under her spell almost immediately. It presages a similar reaction to another woman with a similar effect on his better judgment, and that character was equally reviled by most fans of the series.

The second concept that we encounter is Mulder’s fear of fire. While I admit that this is certainly possible, it comes across as too facile. Even Mulder’s explanation for his fear of fire doesn’t make much sense. If his best friend’s house burnt down, why would he have to defend it against looters? Where the hell was he living? The middle of the woods?

Not according to the previous episodes! They had him living in a rather high income area, where defending against looters would likely be the job of law enforcement. Of course, if the house was burnt down, one has to wonder what Mulder could have possibly been protecting. And when did this happen, anyway? How old was he when he was forced to defend a burnt-out husk of a home overnight by himself?

The third concept is that of a pyromaniac. This was probably the one that would make the most sense, except that it doesn’t follow how a man with such incredible impulse control problems could escape notice or capture so long. I mean, this guy is the only one not to help when his friendly employer is burning to death, he sets himself on fire in public, and he doesn’t use an alias. Beyond that, he seems to have a complete death wish. I still cannot figure out why he decided to set himself ablaze at the end of the episode. It was utterly pointless!

Which brings me to the fourth and final concept, and the one that started this mess: Phoebe Green, the star inspector from the Scotland Yard. Chris Carter had apparently seen a documentary on Scotland Yard, and so he was all hot and bothered (excuse the pun) to develop a recurring Yard inspector for his series. Of course, what he came up with was a character that ought to have been fired even faster than Mulder from the FBI.

Phoebe, as written, is just as wildly impulsive as Cecil, and in just as destructive a manner. She goes after men in such a forward manner that one would think that it might have gotten back to her superiors by now. And since she has been dealing with aristocracy, exactly how long are we supposed to believe they would turn the other cheek? Considering how many clues she missed in looking for Cecil, apparently a very long time.

But of course, that’s not why she turned out to be such a terrible character. After all, she might have been written as more competent, except for the need to tease the nascent ‘shippers in the first season audience. And so Phoebe becomes the lunatic that she is in this episode, and Scully is written to show a very uncharacteristic bit of underlying jealousy.

The fact that all of these illogically executed concepts are lumped together in a script with clunky dialogue and uninspired direction, it’s no wonder that this Chris Carter episode is once again one of the failures of the first season.


Memorable Quotes

MULDER: “Well, that’s one of the luxuries of hunting down aliens and genetic mutants. You rarely get to press charges.”

GREEN: “Oh, come on, don’t tell me you left your sense of humor in Oxford ten years ago.”
MULDER: “No, actually…that’s one of the few things you didn’t drive a stake through.”

SCULLY: “Mulder, you just keep unfolding like a flower.”

MULDER: “Oh, I was merely extending her a professional courtesy.”
SCULLY: “Oh, is that what you were extending?”


Observations

- You know, if I were a paranoid conspiracy theorist who had recently had his livelihood and existence threatened, I might not get into my car when I find it mysteriously unlocked…

- Whatever Phoebe had done to her hair, she ought to sue her stylist!

- I don’t recall Amanda Pays chewing on dialogue quite so badly as she does here…

- Has Mrs. Marsden been sucking on helium balloons?

- The Marsden lads look like extras from “Village of the Damned”...

- I think Ms. Kotchek should look into some serious dental work. Going with Phoebe to a new hair stylist might also be a wise move!

- Mulder looks so young in that tux!

- Apparently Mulder has good reason to fear fire. After all, he has no idea what to do when encountering a hallway filled with smoke. Other than collapse, of course…

- So…exactly who undressed Mulder, anyway?

- I also notice that he walks around in his civvies for Scully, but when Phoebe walks in, he covers up! What the hell did the woman do to him…

- It’s also great how Scully picks the one place in the entire room where she can sit with a full view up Mulder’s robe!

- Ah, Scully in black leather gloves…add that sexy English accent, and things could get interesting…

- OK, exactly how long was the driver missing? What, no one could smell the charred dead man in the water closet?

- Nice fire shots…even if they don’t even remotely match the scenes they are edited into…

- I think we actually hear the moment when David gets his hand burnt. He lets out a yelp and pulls his hand away at the end of an extended shot.

Overall, this is one of those classic examples of Chris Carter taking one of his “cool” ideas and dragging it where it has no business showing up. The dialogue is stilted and often meandering, the entire concept of Phoebe Green is just plain annoying, and I couldn’t wait for the episode to end.

I give it a 3/10.


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