Página PrincipalDirected by Kim Manners
Internal dating: No specific date given, but one of the letters Padgett received was postmarked February 8th, and there was a Valentine's Day wish in the paper, both suggesting mid-February. However, this conflicts with Arcadia, set in late February and supposedly Mulder and Scully's first case back with the X-Files. Episode aired 18th April 1999
The episode opens on a man sitting in a room bare save for a desk, chair, lamp, and typewriter. Throughout the teaser we hear a softly beating heart mixed in with the score. He sits at the desk, sometimes staring at a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter, sometimes turning around and around in his chair. He paces as he smokes. Drinks a glass of water and then holds the glass up to one wall of the apartment and presses his ear to the glass. We can see that hours have passed by the changing light through the window. He goes into the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. Then he puts his hand inside his shirt and begins to gouge at his chest. We see blood seeping through the shirt, running down his arm. He pulls his hand out of the shirt, and he's holding his own beating heart in his hand.
Opening credits
The man from the teaser is in the basement, throwing a paper bag containing something we don't see into the incinerator. Cut to Scully getting into the elevator in Mulder's apartment building with the man. She half-smiles at him and then ignores him, but during the entire ride he stares at her intently. She begins to notice and as the elevator stops and she gets off, she glances back over her shoulder to see him following her. When she stops at Mulder's apartment, the man stops at the one next door, still staring at her. Scully looks relieved when the man goes inside. She knocks on Mulder's door, and he comes to it brushing his teeth.
They sit on his couch and as she opens the file she brought, she asks him about his neighbor. Mulder says he's met him, that he's a writer, but he doesn't know of what. Scully turns her attention to the file saying it's the autopsy report from the second victim. At this point, we see the man next door standing on a chair in his apartment so he can eavesdrop on their conversation through a vent.
Scully tells Mulder that the victim's heart was removed from the body without any sort of marks being left, no cutting. Mulder proposes that it's a case of psychic surgery, a notion that Scully dismisses as "some man dipping his hand in a bucket of chicken guts and pretending to remove tumors from the sick and gullible." Mulder says there's no M.O., no other way of accounting for the murders... that it could be the perfect crime. Scully tells him to find the motive of the killer and he'll find the man.
The next scene is late at night in a dark, woodsy area. A young couple are sitting in a SUV arguing. The woman jumps out and takes off through the brush. After a few seconds the young man follows, and is approached by a man wearing a hooded jacket. The figure wrestles the kid to the ground and reaches into his chest, extracting his bloody, beating heart.
Cut to the writer in his apartment where he is typing out a similar scene.
The next morning Scully opens Mulder's office door and walks in, stepping on an envelope in the floor in her hurry to answer the ringing phone. It's Mulder calling to tell her of the discovery of another victim.
M: A sixteen-year-old kid out on lover's lane.
Scully: Are you sure?
Mulder: Yeah. I'm sure many a person's had their heart broken out here, but not quite like this. I was hoping you'd be here to explain it in medical terms to the local PD.
Scully: I'm not sure I could. Did anybody see anybody?
Mulder: No, nothing. It's like there's no where to start on this case. Nothing to ask them, to say.
Scully: Well, there's got to be something, Mulder. Something about his victims. Why he chooses them, a pattern.
Scully: (picks up the phone and walks over to get the envelope from the floor.) An envelope's been slipped under your door.
Mulder: Yeah, from who?
Scully: It's unmarked. (rips open the envelope and pours the contents into her hand.) It's some kind of a pendant, like a charm. (looks at the upraised human heart engraved on it).
Cut to the guy at the typewriter, as he's describing Scully examining the pendant. We see her as we hear his words: "Her prompt mind ran through the possibilities. Was this trinket from the killer? Was there a message contained in its symbolism? Was he a religious fanatic who had in fervent haste licked the envelope, leaving behind telltale DNA that would begin his unravelling. She had a (something) certainty that the killer was a male, and now as she held the cold metal at her fingertips, she imagined him doing the same, trying to picture his face. It would be a plain face, an average face, a face people would be prone to trust. She knew this inherently, being naturally trusting herself. But the image she conjured up was no better than the useless sketch composites that littered her files. Preconsiously, she knew this wasn't her strength as an investigator. She was a marshall of cold facts, quick to organize, connect, shuffle, reorder and synthesize their relative hard values into discreet categories. Imprecision would only invite sexist criticism, that she was soft, malleable, not up to her male counterparts. Even now, as she pushed an errant strand of titian hair behind her ear, she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess. To be thought of as simply a beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable. But she was beautiful, fatally. Stunningly prepossessing. Yet the compensatory respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart. To let it open. To let someone in."
Later when Mulder returns to the office she gives him the pendant and tells him it's called a milagro, a Spanish word for miracle. Says that a young man in his late 20's or early 30's dropped the envelope by the front desk. She wasn't able to get any prints or other evidence from it. Mulder doesn't think it's from the killer, but Scully does, and says she's going to check it out. He informs her that she has something else to do as he's made her an appointment to autopsy the young boy they found. She tells him rather sarcastically that she appreciates him scheduling her appointments, but that she's going to be late for that particular one.
The next scene finds Scully entering a large church where she walks down the main aisle straight to a painting of Christ holding his own heart in his hand. As she looks at it, the writer walks up beside her. He tells her the story of the painting, and then when she asks why he's following her, he says he's not... that he just imagined she'd go there. The writer then proceeds to tell her pretty specific things about her life, even down to the date on her Georgetown parking permits on her car. He admits to sending her the pendant... that he has a "secret attraction." Scully seems bothered by how much he knows about her, tears are even welling in her eyes. He sees this and says: "I see this is making you uncomfortable. And I'm sorry. It's just that I'm taken with you. That never happens to me. We're alike that way."
Scully heads to where the autopsy is being performed and apologizes to Mulder for being late. She then apologizes again for thinking the pendant belonged to the murderer, but he stops her and says that he thinks now that it does. She tells him about her encounter at the church:
Scully: Mulder, this is nothing more than a tool used by a lovelorn Romeo who just happens to be your next-door neighbor.
Mulder: Who, the writer?
Scully: Yes. My secret admirer, who claims to know the mysteries of my heart.
Mulder: You're kidding.
Scully: No, I wish I were. He cornered me today and told me my life's story. It was kind of frightening, actually.
Mulder: Is he our killer?
Scully: No. Frightening as in too much information and intimate detail. What kills you is his audacity.
Mulder: Did you get his name?
Scully: No, but that shouldn't be so hard to find out, should it?
Back at his building, Mulder picks the lock of the writer's mailbox and finds out his name is Philip Padgett. He takes the mail and a newspaper from a stack in the floor and heads for the elevator. Padgett gets on with him, and Mulder asks if he's written anything he might have heard of. Padgett says he doesn't think so. As they're both about to enter their apartments, Padgett makes the observation that Mulder is an FBI agent and asks if he's working on anything interesting. A murder case is Mulder's reply. Padgett echos Mulder's earlier question, "Anything I'd know about?" and Mulder responds with, "Possibly."
The next scene is that of Padgett writing his novel at the typewriter. He's describing Scully and her reaction to him as we see her changing after participating in an autopsy. She again takes out the pendant from her pocket and looks at it. Padgett begins to imagine a love scene between him and Scully. They're lying on the bed kissing, his hand moving slowly up her leg. He unbuttons her black blouse to reveal a lacy black bra underneath. He hovers over her for a second and then they begin to kiss again.
In his apartment, Mulder is looking at Padgett's mail, noting on his phone bill that he's made no calls. He mutters, "Mr. Popularity."
Scully gets off the elevator and is just about to knock on Mulder's door when she hears Padgett typing in his apartment. He's writing about an overwhelming compulsion. Next we see him opening his door to Scully. She's there to return his pendant because she says she can't return the gesture. She notices his lack of furniture and questions him about writing, wondering why he's suddenly feeling good about the novel he's working on now.
Scully: Why now all of a sudden?
Padgett: Best not to question it. See? You are curious about me.
Scully: You lead a curious life.
Padgett: It's not so different from yours, I'd imagine. Lonely.
Scully: Loneliness is a choice.
Padgett: So how about a cup of coffee?
She goes inside with him, and he reveals to her that he's writing about her. Tells her that he wanted to get an apartment in her building, so he could observe her, but it was filled up, so he moved to Mulder's. He asks her to sit down, but the only place available is his bed. He carries his lamp into the bedroom and plugs it in, but the light keeps going out. He changes the bulb in the lamp, and they sit down on the bed. All is silent until Mulder bursts into the room with his gun drawn. He asks if Scully's okay, and she responds in the affirmative. He starts going through Padgett's manuscript and then announces that he's putting the man under arrest.
Mulder, Scully, and Padgett are all in a jail cell, Mulder standing over the writer questioning him about how he found his victims... thinking he found them through the personal ads they placed.
Padgett: They were lovers.
Mulder: And you targeted them.
Padgett: I only write about them.
Mulder: No, you targeted them...
Scully: Mulder. Not without his lawyer.
Padgett: I don't need a lawyer. I'm telling the truth.
Mulder: (holding up enormous pile of manuscript in plastic evidence bag) and this is your confession?
Padgett: No, that's my novel.
Mulder: It's all in there, every detail, every murder, all laid out. How did you do it Mr. Padgett?
Padgett: If I sit long enough it just comes to me.
Mulder: The murder?
Padgett: I only knew what was in my mind and wished to express it clearly.
Mulder: How 'bout The Stranger. Is that you? How 'bout Ken Naciamiento?
Padgett: The self-proclaimed Brazlian psychic surgeon?
Mulder: Is that your accomplice?
Padgett: Guess you could say that. He's a central character.
Mulder: Did you direct him to do it?
Padgett: Jungians would say it's the characters that choose the writer, not the other way around, so I guess you could argue he directed me.
Mulder: Which is the truth?
Padgett: By their nature, words are imprecise and layered with meaning. The signs of things, not the things themselves. It's difficult to say who's in charge.
Mulder, frustrated, takes a menacing step towards the cot. He's stopped by Scully's light touch on his arm and her whisper of his name. Padgett stares at her hand on his arm and at them. Mulder and Scully leave the cell and walk down the hall. Mulder says he's going to find the Brazilian psychic surgeon, but Scully says that she found him... he's been dead for two years.
Mulder: Padgett couldn't have done this alone.
Scully: Maybe he didn't do it at all.
Mulder: Scully, it's all on the page. How else would he know it?
Scully: Maybe he imagined it, like he said. Like Shakespeare or Freud or Jung. Maybe he has some gift, some clear window into human nature.
Mulder: No one can predict human behavior, no one can tell you what another person's gonna go.
Scully: Isn't that what you do, Mulder, as a behavioral profiler? You imagine the killer's mind so well that you know what they're going to do next.
Mulder: He imagines it, it's a priori, before the fact. I think that's pretty clear from what he wrote about you. You know you're in here, don't you?
Scully: I read a chapter. What does he say?
Mulder: Let's just say it ends with you doing the naked pretzel with The Stranger on a bed in an unfurnished fourth floor apartment. (he pauses) I'm assuming that's a priori, too?
Scully: I think you know me better than that, Mulder.
Mulder: Well, you might want to finish it.
Mulder gives her the novel and she goes to an empty room and sits down to read through it. A guard comes by and brings her a legal pad on which Padgett says he's written a statement. Scully reads aloud the scene there in which the girlfriend of the murdered boy is killed in the same way when she goes to visit his grave.
The next scene finds Mulder and Scully at the cemetary, but they find no sign of her. A worker pulls up in a truck filled with wilted flowers, and Mulder, thinking he's the killer tackles him. He realizes that it's just a worker, but still goes to check the back of the truck and finds the girl's body in it underneath the flowers.
Mulder and Scully are on their way back to Padgett's cell when they stop in the hallway.
Scully: How did you know, Mulder, that the body was in the truck?
Mulder: I imagined it.
Scully: There's still no evidence that Padgett directed the killer.
Mulder: What do you need, a signed work order? Of course he directed him.
Scully: Mulder, you are making critical assumptions without any facts! What about time of death, what about...(Mulder places his hands on her shoulders and reverses their positions 180 degrees) What are you doing?
Mulder: Well, you're about to argue my usual side, aren't you?
Scully: Mulder, why couldn't he have imagined it, why couldn't he have just been in the killer's head?
Mulder: You read his book, you read what he wrote about you, are you trying to tell me that he got inside your head, that what I read is true?
Scully: Of course not.
Mulder: I don't know how they communicate. This is the only way I can think to catch him.
Mulder goes to Padgett's cell and gives him back his manuscript, apologizing and telling him he's free to go finish his book. Padgett takes it and starts to walk out and away from them, but he pauses and says that he was wrong about something, too. He says: "In my book I'd written that Agent Scully falls in love, but that's obviously impossible. Agent Scully is already in love."
Moving foward to Mulder's apartment, he's setting up a camera surveillance in the vent of his apartment so he and Scully can watch Padgett. Scully's sitting on the couch, watching the screen that's set up in a briefcase-like thing, and she's listening on headphones. She's made herself at home, even taking off her black boots. So far all the writer is doing that they can see, is typing at his desk.
But in Padgett's apartment, The Stranger who looks like the central character in his novel, the murderer, has entered. He wants to know why he's being made to kill all these people.... what motivation the writer has given him. He says there can be only one true ending... she (Scully) dies.
Next door, Scully looks at the screen and sees Padgett typing away. He gets up from the table then and walks away, slamming the door on the way out of his apartment. Mulder follows him, but Scully is slowed down by having to put her shoes back on.
When Mulder reaches the basement, Padgett is there about to throw his manuscript into the fire. He tells Mulder that The Stranger is going to kill Scully, but Mulder doesn't believe him until he hears gunshots from upstairs. He races back upstairs. Meanwhile, Scully had headed out the door, when The Stranger rushed in and pushed her down onto the floor. He's reaching into her chest, trying to remove her heart... she's bleeding, but still struggling against him, trying to reach her gun. Finally she pulls it out and empties her clip into him, but it doesn't faze him. Downstairs, Padgett throws his novel into the fire, watching it go up into flames.
Mulder rushes into his apartment and finds Scully lying unconscious in his living room floor. He kneels over her and she startles awake, almost screaming before she realizes it's him. She reaches up and grabs him, holding onto him, her nails clawing his back almost as though she seeks to climb in him. Mulder puts his arms around her, holding her tight as she buries her face in his shoulder/neck and begins to sob.
Padgett's voiceover follows the camera back down to the basement... "A story can have only one true ending. Even as The Stranger felt compelled to commit his final words to paper, he did it knowing it must never be read. To see the sum of his work was to see inside his own emptiness, the heart of a destroyer, not a creator. And yet reflected back upon him at last he could see his own ending. And in this final act of destruction, a chance to give what he could not receive..." Padgett is lying on his back, with his own bloody heart in his hand.
Página Anterior