Arg! Why won't they tell us what Mulder and Scully got!

ANP

I was first! Yes! Yes! Yes!

I don't know about this one. It was wierd and wacky. I wonder what happened to the myth-arch?
I also noticed that in every episode since the premiere Mulder and Scully's love interest in each other has been a main subject.

No real nits, except that I really thought Mulder and Scully shot.

ANP

Who actully where those two under the the floorboards? Was that soething like Picard's Moby Dick analogy?

Well, wasn't this one tough to nitpick? The only thing I could think of was, blowing a hole clean through your stomach isn't(to my limited knowledge) a common method of committing suicide ... or was that the front end of a murder/suicide?

I stand corrected. This was *impossible* to nitpick.

Anyone else wonder what Mulder and Scully got each other? Mulder's gift looked like a videotape. I can just imagine Scully shopping in the 'adult' section of her local Blockbuster ... or maybe it was that alien autopsy video from the Stupendous Yappi! (Yeah, it's not nitpicking, but we'll have to fill this page *somehow*.)

Are the creators trying to make it hard to nitpick this season? The last 4 are next ot impossible to nitpick (Ghosts, Dreamland I-II, and Triangle). The only two this season that are nitpickable thus far are The Beginning and Drive.

Man, when Chris Carter wants a scary show, he gets it. I must've jumped three or four times. And did they have me going with Mulder and scully getting shot! WOW! I give that an 11 out of 10. Great episode! The creators are sure makin it tough to nitpick this season aren't they? I agree with Shane T. Scully prolly gave Mulder something along the lines of "The best of '98" I can't even begin to imagine what Scully's gift could be.

Again, cool episode!

Maybe Mulder got her a new flashlight... It was the right size.

ANP

Good episode. :-) And yeah, TPTB have been writing in the love interest between our duo. Does this mean this is going to be the last season of XFiles? I think in one interview G.A. said that when they decide to end the series, they'd want the 2 to end up together.

BTW, the radio station Mulder was listening to was 101.3 :-)

There were a lot of terms used on this one -> Mulder as "narcissistic ... egomaniac" ... :-)

When Scully was trying not to go after Mulder into the house, she said something like she made a New Year's Resolution. Hmm, wonder if it's last year's or this coming New Year. :-)

Mulder : "What is xmas ... 365 shopping days" ... shouldn't that be 364 since I guess people won't be shopping on xmas day itself. ;-)

Lily Tomlin : "We almost had them didn't I?"

Guess we'll all be guessing about the xmas gifts.

Had fun watching this.

BTW, Happy Holidays everyone. :-) Been fun reading and adding notes here.

Man, this *was* a hard ep to pick. Carter either had me screaming in terror (okay, not
literally) or staring at the screen going "HUH?!!" However, the Shippers ARE Happy. We
Have Delivered Our Verdict. Actually, this season has made me wonder if Ra Enright
went ahead with her threat of holding a gun to Carter's head til he promised MSR.
She's just weird enough to do it. (Oh, come on, you know who Ra is. The 18-year-old
fanfic author who jumps up and down while screaming "Carter, CARTER!!" twice a day
at 10:13.) Moving along, I kinda liked the pop pyschology bit. And my dad would like
to point out that Scully was *very* highpitched in this ep. I guess that's what she
does when she gets scared. (Duh.)
I, too, wonder what they gave each other for Christmas.

My favorite moment during this episode was when our dynamic duo was attempting to get out the front door at the end....right after they got out of the house, they looked at each other, and the look on their faces was priceless!

Another gem was when Mulder walked into the invisible brick wall!

Greatest dialogue:
Scully:"Look, Mulder, I've got gifts to wrap..."
Mulder: (Looks at pile of wrapped gifts in Scully's trunk) "Oh, ok."

I thought Scully was going to unwrap her gift on air and it was going to be an "I Want To Believe" poster, then Mulder's was going to be a copy of the book "The Ghosts That Stole Xmas." Carter's ending was better tho.

Shane Tourtellotte:

I would have to agree with you that suicide or murder by shooting someone in the stomache would be a bad method. It would cause tremendous pain and you would only die after bleeding to death. If they really were lovers then if he killed her I don't think he'd want her to suffer, and if she killed herself, well I don't think she'd want herself to suffer.

But I must say that even though I knew that they didn't really shoot each other (come on guys you actually thought that Mulder or Scully would shoot the other to _kill_????) it was a pretty good episode.

Well that was... peculiar. I enjoyed it through.

Why didn't Mulder mention the factoid about the three triple-murders until they were inside?

Everyone seems to forget about Mulder's training in psychology.

"But you've aged", says Mulder. Yeah. Why are they that age? It certainly doesn't jive with them being around in 1919!

to K.N.D.

I've compiled a list of TV shows you should really see. If there are parentheses after the show name then it is a title of that show that you should make a point to see.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (Chuckles bites the dust)
The Bob Newhart Show (Moo-Goo Gai Pan)
I Dream Of Jeanie
I Love Lucy
Bewitched
Dragnet
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Soap

There are more I just can't think of them now.
Most of them can be found on Nick-at-Night.

Forgot:

Get Smart!

Oh, I just remembered a NIT. Hooray!

Mulder says Scully wouldn't shoot him. Ah, wait a second Spooky, Scully shot you before back at the end of season two (Right? That was the right season? The boxcar in the desert and the DoD encypted files?).

ANP

This episode left me scratching my head, wondering what really happened. Did M&S really get shot, or did they just think they were? Obviously, they didn't really get shot, but how come they THOUGHT they got shot? Mind controll ghosts??

At one point, a very frightened Scully asks Mrs Ghost where her Christmas Tree is. Mrs Ghost responds that she and her husband are Jewish. Which makes me wonder about Mrs. Ghost's choice of words at the end when she says "We know the spirit of Christmas"

Oooh! I love "A Christmas Carol" with Alister Simm. CC made me grin on that one!

Looked to me like Scully was using a Sig/Sauer pistol in this episode. If that was the same last episode, then the sound of the hammer cocking the gun is correct (or at least possible).

Scully really needs to practice her draw from concealment--she fumbled a *long* time before getting that pistol out.

She also needs a refresher on the FBI-approved gun techniques. Many, many times she was pointing her gun at somebody who was not posing a physical threat to her--and with her finger on the trigger, no less. What with adrenaline dumps under such stress, this is how multi-million dollar civil cases (not to mention criminal charges of negligent homicide) come to be. Of course, ghosts don't tend to die (let alone file lawsuits), but she didn't know they were ghosts at the time, did she?

Anonymous, I have watched I Love Lucy on occasion. However I will freely admit that
I have no life. Here's my standard day (really!):
4:30 Gets up and surfs on the net for half an hour before going down to the barn to
take care of her twenty-four goats. (Aah! I just realized that's a reversed 42! And in
case you wondered, I have an allergy to cow milk. That's why we have goats.)
6:30-10:30 Cleans the kitchen and does schoolwork. (I'm homeschooled.)
10:30-4:30 Surfs the net, reading X-File fanfic, talking on X-File and Star Trek BBSs,
and emailing people (usually about ST or XF). Occasionally goes on CNN to read the
news. Sometimes calls her non-net friends up to rage about the fact that Scully has
no desk, or something similar. (Yesterday I did a hourlong diatribe on the fact that in
space THERE IS NO SOUND!! Thusly, most space battles are shown wrongly.)
4:30 Dad's home!
5:30 Those stupid goats again.
6:30 Reading, if I'm lucky. If not, I'm calling my friends up to get them to tape
whatever's on, while I go to 4-H to sing a bunch of inane little songs. At least they
haven't thought of the Barney song. Yet.

All done.

Shane, the alien autopsy video (if you're refering to the one from"Nisei") was from some guy in Allentown, PA.

Did anyone else get the impression that Scully overreacted a lot in this episode?

Just like in Star Trek's "Spectre of the Gun, " the bullets were not real.

Shirlyn Wong, it was Xmas eve, so there were 365 shopping days till the next xmas.

Great line:

Mulder to Scully: "When have you ever proven me wrong?"

I guess I liked it, although Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin's underplaying did not mesh well with Duchovny and Anderson's overplaying (the only bad parts were Anderson confronting Mrs. Ghost, and Duchovny about to shoot Scully [of course, that wasn't really him])

The hoary ghost cliches did not help, either. My favorite part was the when the ghosts complained about using the "pop psychology junk".

Maybe the two under the floorboards were actually glimpses into their future showing what would happen if they succumbed to the house and how Mulder realized that they were not actully wounded.

Very cute. A great shippy episode.

As for the plot...what the heck was that all about?

Still, I liked it.

Yet another "reset switch"/"dream" episode. How about some myth-arc episodes that "really" happen.

Though I bet this one made the shippers happy.
-12-

ScottN, I was discounting the xmas day from the shopping year 'coz I thought of giving it a rest on that day at least. ;-) But I guess after opening presents, we're all planning for next xmas already. Ok, point taken.

I think that the Ms. Ghost claiming they were Jewish was just a line she made up to answer Scully's question. It beats, "We're ghosts that only appear one night a year and try to get people to kill each other."

There was an "Unrequited" shot, of course. If you recall, or if I'm giving the wrong title, Unrequited is the episode with an invisible guy named Teager who people for a reason I can't remember. In that episode, there was a scene where the camera panned across someplace and showed, among other things, a guy standing next to a tree. It panned back and the guy was gone. I'm sorry if the details aren't right, I read about it in my X-phile guide and I'm working from memory. The point I'm making is that there is a similer shot in this episode. In the beggining when M&S are inside the house, a shot shows Scully and lightning flashs. You can see the female ghost in the background. Maybe ten seconds later, in the same scene, lightning flashes again and she's gone!

BTW, I was right about my comments on the pre-show board. Look at it: It's suspenseful (M&S dead by eachother's hand!), creepy (the "Unrequited" shot), provides some interesting thoughts (what seperates what happens from what we percieve as happening) and the characters show growth at the end! Very, very, good!

my favorite line:
(lily tomlin to mulder)
..."I don't show my hole to just anyone".

Anon: Wrong title. I saw that Bob Newhart epiosode. I forgot the actual title but I do know for certain that that wasn't it. Nothing quite so funny as a therapist, one of his patients, a dentist, and a pilot all getting drunk together.

Just to show KND that s/he isn't the only one without a life,I will entertain you (yeah right) with my daily schedule.
6:30 Alarm goes off
7:00 get up
7:30 go to school
3:30 get home
3:30-5:00(maybe later) use computer
5:00-6:00 watch TV
6:00-7:00 dinner
7:00-9:00 do homework (depending on how much I have. Or if it's sunday. then I watch X-Files >;-)
9:00-10:00 use computer
10:00 go to bed and watch movie (I have a TV and VCR in my room)

SEE! You are not alone! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
(I really need to lay oof the sugar)

Ben Jackson

P.S. Sorry about that. I have some occasionally outbursts like that. If you're around me a lot, you get used to it :-)

Since most stores are closed on Easter and Thanksgiving it would only be 362 shopping days. (Not to mention the fact that Christmas eve shouldn't count because most places close early.) I should know this stuff because I work in a department store.

Let me add my voice to those who were annoyed by Scully's freaking out. Was she under some kind of spell, or what? She's been abducted, twice, found (then lost!) a daughter she never knew she had, knows now that she can never have children again, has confronted werewolves and serial killers, even been thrown around the room by the shapeshifting bounty hunter! Some repeating rooms and sudden fires should pretty much leave her unfazed, I would think.

BTW, why do *both* characters continue to point guns at the ghosts, even after they know they're ghosts?

The Bob Newhart Show episode is "Over the River and Through the Woods".

>>> Mrs Ghost responds that she and her husband are Jewish. Which makes me wonder
about Mrs. Ghost's choice of words at the end when she says "We know the spirit of Christmas" >>>

She was screwing with Scully's head.

>>Maybe the two under the floorboards were actually glimpses into their future showing what would happen if they succumbed to the house and how Mulder realized that
they were not actully wounded.
>>

They were illusions put there by the ghosts to screw with M/S's heads.

Historical notes from them of us who grew up in the seventies to them who did not:

Ed Asner played Lou Grant on the TV series "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Lou Grant."

Michael McKean played David St. Hubbins in the classic film _This is Spinal Tap_, and he was also part of the Lenny & Squiggy duo on "Laverne and Shirley," which was one of several spinoffs of "Happy Days." (Other Happy Days spinoffs include "Mork and Mindy," "Joanie Loves Chachi," and "Backdraft.") I think he played Lenny.

Thank you, Ben, for your support. 8-p Yes, The Shippers Have Made Our Decree. We
Enjoyed This Ep.
re Scully freaking over the ghosts: Maybe Sclly is just one of those people who are
easily freaked out by 'ghosts'. Some people have arachnophobia, some have
claustrophobia, some have...uh... dead-people-who-aren't-very-dead-phobia. Or
whatever you call it. I did think that Gillian over-acted a teeny bit; I think Scully
would have regained her composure faster.

<alien smiley> :::-)

Actually Ed Asner and I think also Lily Tomlin
are both Jewish in real life,so that remark of
Mrs.Ghost:"We're Jewish."did make sense.

Thought it was the weirdest episode to date.

Loved Scully's reaction when she uncovers Ed
Asner's head and sees the bullet hole,she faints
dead away!:)

Just one other person without much of a life.
Highlights of my life in winter:
shovel snow if any on the garage roof and sidewalk
walk the dog to get the mail
feed the cows
feed the cats
Fridays work at the library(volunteer)
As you can see winter is the slow time where I
live.It gets much busier around here when the
snow melts and Spring begins,then I shall be
outside working on a lot of projects.
Forgot:also get wood in.
Actually the fun thing is trying to get the cows
together to move them,cows is dumb so you end up
chasing them all over creation unless they have
hay to follow.

David Duchovny said in an interview that like
Mulder he enjoys porno.(Maybe he's the one that
REALLY needs a life!)

Until it turns out that Scully,Samantha and Seven
are one and the same person!!:)

re your last paragraph": Nooo!!! (running for the hills)

Actually, Scott, your life doesn't sound that pathetic. I would love to do volenteer
work at the library, but my mom has me signed up for helping at a daycare, which is
probably the worst job I will ever have. All those screaming little kids... Well, the
cow part is pretty pathetic. My best friend has cows and they are, IMO, the third
stupidest creatures on God's green earth, right after turkeys and sheep.

this has been a complete waste of cyberspace. Thank you for your t

More of an observation here than a nit. If I recall correctly, near the beginning, Mulder said that "technically, they're called apparitions". While I'm not an expert, I've read a fair bit on ghost hunting, and if you ask ten different ghost hunters about the classification of ghosts, you would get thirteen different classification systems. The point is that there is no classification system that is even remotely universally accepted among ghost hunters.

Hey, KND, I misspent one summer of my youth working at a day camp (that was so long ago, I don't even want to remember... lets just say you were *MAYBE* a gleam in your parents' eyes) and it wasn't that bad...

Actually, you want a cushy job? Try lifeguard at a retirement home... I got paid to sit in the sun, be nice to the residents, and get a tan...

Wow......right now, besides volunteering, I have four paper routes that I wrap on
Tuesday and deliver on Wensdays. Nine hundred papers. i hate in this weather
(currently 10 degrees NOT counting wind chill.)
Happy Holidays

Returning to the show, people have been calling this a 'shipper episode. The only 'ship I'm getting out of this one is friendship.

The shippy stuff was the "only doomed lovers who kill each other come to this house"
bit. It implyed that deeep down they weren't *exactly* platonic.

KND> But it "isn't an exact science". :-) Nah, I'm a 'shipper, too. I freaked out at the end of Triangle.

Maybe Mulder got Scully another keychain... :P

The ghosts were Lyda and Maurice, right? So why does the press release list Lily and Ed?

I agree that Scully's present to Mulder did look like a videotape. Scully seems pretty cool with Mulder's pornography habits, so maybe she got him another video tape to add to that drawer with "all those other video tapes that aren't his". Or maybe she just rewrapped her copy of "Superstars of the Superbowls".

The initial brick wall Special Agent Fox Mulder bumps into (literally) is briefly glimpsed without a door to its right. Keep your eyes open as he and the male ghost are sitting down discussing psychological issues. Happy holidays!

And the point of this episode was ....?

Once Mulder realised that the two of them hadn't really been shot, how come they were still covered in blood when they stood up? Also, when he hauled Scully to her feet, why didn't she scream? At that point she still believed that she had been shot - it wasn't until she was on her feet that she realised it was all in her mind, so being pulled to her feet should have hurt.

And the point of this episode was ....?

A little fun(?)... and a little bit of exploration of the M&S relationship.

-12-

Who actully where those two under the the floorboards? Was that soething like Picard's Moby Dick analogy?

Mulder and Scully themselves, as rotted corpses.

This episode left me scratching my head, wondering what really happened. Did M&S really get shot, or did they just think they were? Obviously, they didn't really get shot, but how come they THOUGHT they got shot? Mind controll ghosts??

I think the blood and wounds were only illusions created by the ghosts, like the weird library itself and all the other stuff.

I think that's also the reason for the ridiculosly large bullet wounds the ghosts show - it reminded me of "Death becomes her".

Let me add my voice to those who were annoyed by Scully's freaking out. Was she under some kind of spell, or what? She's been abducted, twice, found (then lost!) a daughter she never knew she had, knows now that she can never have children again, has confronted werewolves and serial killers, even been thrown around the room by the shapeshifting bounty hunter! Some repeating rooms and sudden fires should pretty much leave her unfazed, I would think.

People are afraid of different things in different degrees. E.g. Indiana Jones flips out when he sees snakes, but doesn't mind skeletons and spiders.
Maybe Scully's so freaked because a gun won't help against ghosts? Werewolves can be battled; and being abducted is hard emotionally, but she knows she can eventually deal with it cos she's strong. But how could she kill bad ghosts?

Necro here, but there's a nice bit of trivia. The clock at the end says on the face "J Cameron & Sons Kilmarnock".

As was common with older timepieces etc, this was the retailers, not the makers name. J Camerons and Sons did exist in the town of Kilmarnock till the mid-late 20th Century. The name Kilmarnock might be familiar to other people as the home of Johnny Walker whisky.