The X-Files 11×03 Review: Plus One

While I wasn’t fond of the season 11 premiere, it’s safe to say that The X-Files is back on track with “Plus One”, which was a great follow-up to last week’s “This”.

I’ll get this out of the way – perhaps I missed something, but the one thing that confused me about “Plus One” was how Mulder and Scully ended up chatting with the schizophrenic woman who ended up being one of the people involved in the murders they were trying to solve. I don’t want to harp on this too much because again, I completely admit that I might have missed something, but it seemed to me that they were interviewing Dr. Russell about the general problem of people being mysteriously killed after seeing their doubles/doppelgangers for a period of time and just happened to stumble upon “Little Judy”.

Anyway, as X-Files revival issues go, that was a minor one, and please leave a comment if I did in fact miss something there because I’d love to be able to wipe it away entirely. Outside of the question of how they found Little Judy, “Plus One” was a great mystery-of-the-week episode that also featured more awesome Mulder/Scully interaction. And in the end, in true X-Files fashion, we never did find out if people were letting their bad thoughts get the better of them, or if these were *actually* supernatural occurrences. (Personally I think they were leaning toward the former, as Scully was apparently able to banish her double by acknowledging, “My rational mind knows that you are only a manifest psychic ideation born of blatant hostility”…but then again, she also said, “maybe Mulder is right – you’re evil incarnate, that’s all you are”, so who really knows?)

I realize that I’ve gotten way ahead of myself, but at the same time I often spend a lot of words recapping parts of television episodes because I’m worried I won’t have enough to say regarding my feelings about them, and that just isn’t the case with “Plus One”. Was it a perfect episode of television? No, of course not. In fact, if anything, it was pretty darn predictable. As soon as Mulder showed up at Chuckie Poundstone’s house the dots just connected themselves, and while I was surprised that they weren’t able to save Dean the Lawyer, when Mulder and Scully’s doubles finally appeared I pretty much just thought, “Well, it’s about time.”

As I mentioned, there was definitely some great Mulder/Scully interaction in this episode, too, and it blended pretty seamlessly with the mystery of the doubles and the hangman-playing twins who caused them. While I felt like Scully was almost being too much her old self (as in, her very-early-seasons-of-The X-Files old self) at times, what can I say, I’ll always be a sucker for Mulder/Scully sweetness. I just wish that in this case it hadn’t had to involve her being worried about her age and Mulder finding someone [else?] to be with, because she’s better than that, Chris Carter! (And yes, as much as I love this Mulder/Scully stuff, I still think she’s too good for him. I will reiterate that until I turn blue in the face if I have to.)

One last thing I really wanted to make note of – I actually didn’t realize that Little Judy and Chuckie Poundstone, the twins who were the episode’s antagonists, were both played by actor Karin Konoval! Finding that out as I was in the midst of writing this review definitely floored me for a minute; but then, I do have very, very bad eyesight. Regardless, it was an amazing performance, so bravo, Ms. Konoval!

Did you know that the same actor played both twins? How did you feel about the Mulder/Scully developments in “Plus One”? Let us know in the comments!

Author: Tara Lynne

Tara Lynne is an author, fandom and geek culture expert, and public speaker. She founded Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones convention in the US, and now runs its parent company Saga Event Planning.

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