This episode starts off good but becomes confusing and falls apart near the end. Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz obviously didn't know how to end this so they wrote some dumb, ridiculous entire-bathroom-fills-up-with-water scenario that turns out to be all in Frank's mind. The confusing thing is was Mabius Agent Boxer the whole time or did Mabius just disguise himself as Boxer when he killed the psychiatrist? And why does Frank identify a dead man as the person who was taking the polaroids when it was obviously Mabius?
3 Reviews
Mabius directly interferes with Frank
XweAponX10 April 2022
There was some question as to who was causing Frank trouble in this episode, somebody mentioned "Lucy Butler". That's not it, not directly.
In fact that commenter, has been writing reviews of Millennium episodes and completely missing the point; I am here today to straighten out.
In order to do that we have to go back to the beginnings of the show, to the first episodes of the first season.
There is an evil that is after Frank Black, the first episode where they take note of Frank is in season one, "The Judge". That is the name of the episode as well as the character that reveals itself. But "The Judge" was simply the episode that begins that entities' involvement with Frank, before that, Frank was simply aware that it existed. And, so did we.
There was another episode before that called "Gehenna", where young Russian men are enticed to work for a telephone bank that offers "free" goodies to people- as long as the shills are able to acquire the mark's credit card numbers. If the shill is successful in acquiring credit card numbers from people, then they rise in the organization and they are able to buy expensive German cars. But if you are not successful in acquiring credit card numbers, you ended up in an industrial microwave oven after being given LSD in a parking lot, stranded, accosted by a daemon, and then Frank Black discovers you as ashes later. Maybe even fragments of teeth and bones. The name of that company was "Gehenna", The person running it was Mabius. Oh, he had a different name other than Homer B Pettey back then, it was Ricardo Clement. But it was definitely Mabius. He was even arrested, but that did not seem to hold him. The actor Bob Wilde plays Clement, Mabius and Pettey. He was also unlisted as unnamed FBI agents and other peripheral characters in the X-Files and here even. It is too bad that he dropped off the map after the movie "Spook" in 2003, which employed other actors that had been in the X-Files/Millennium universe, we can admire this actors' portrayal of Mabius, he speaks very rarely, he never lets on what he is doing. The perfect actor to portray the official Millennium group "assassin".
And then there were two episodes, one where we met Dr. Efriam Fabricant, his Kidney, and his "wife", Lucy Butler. That was the episode where Frank's friend "Blecch" was killed by what looked like some kind of daemon-creature. But it was also Lucy Butler (Sarah Jane Redmond), and it was also a long-haired man, usually played by Scott Heindl (with remarkable blue eyes). We also saw the daemon creature when Frank Black was locating the remains of the Russian victims. We are given the character of Dr. Efriam fabricant as a distraction as he was being kept alive by the FBI as somebody to study as "The end-all of evil", which was something Frank was so wrong about, and he doesn't even hear Fabricant tell him to "run, it knows who you are".
And then we met the lawyer, Al Pepper, whose own actions allowed the "Angel" Sammael, who at that time was in the form of a teenage kid (Child Actor Rodney Eastman), to kill Al with a bolt of lightning (which Frank saw as a bolt of lightning but everybody else saw as a pistol being fired). But Al Pepper was also Lucy Butler. Do ya get it yet?
We know that this person uses the identities of dead people (re: Al Pepper had died on an operating table, but then came back) to walk around on the earth: we learned more about that in "Room with no View", another episode that you completely missed the point of- that episode reveals that "Lucy Butler" was really a girl named Annie Martin, who had "vanished" in 1911, A victim of this entity, which then took her form. But, if you turn your head for a second, you might miss details like this. The X-Files talks about this kind of phenomenon, when somebody dies and a different soul occupies their body. This is called "walk-ins", it is mentioned in Red Museum as well as in Season 7's "Closure".
The shape changing aspects of this entity has been apparent since the earliest episodes of the series.
So. Whether they are pretending to be Lucy Butler or in this case a so-called FBI investigator named "Del Boxer", they are all the same person or entity, they use the identities to perform the different roles of their agenda. The Lucy Butler identity, we already know what she wants, and that is to have a child with Frank. Refer to "Antipas". The Judge and Al Pepper, they wanted to form a business relationship with Frank, where they both promised that Frank's significant troubles would be abated, if they "joined forces" so to speak. In this episode, "Del Boxer" has a different agenda, which appears to be to prove that Frank is crazy and get him out of the FBI. But here it is a little bit more complicated, which requires careful viewing of the episode. Some thing which was not done by that other commentator. And I wish they really had watched it and understood what was happening, because they did make some other interesting points.
But this episode mainly focuses on changes in Frank's Gift. For the first time in season three, Emma Hollis witnesses some of these unexplainable events, directly. You don't hear her trying to rationalize the things that happened to her here, not this time, we know that she is not dismissing it as "she imagined it"... she knows these things really happened.
In this episode it is the direct involvement of Mabius. We don't know if there was a real "Del Boxer" (Dean Norris from Total Recall and starship troopers, he is currently in "United States of Al" as "Art") here, he starts his investigation in what appears to be a normal way and then he gets more and more invasive with Frank, more and more accusatory, wanting to blame Frank, wanting to find something wrong.
But meanwhile something is happening with Frank's gift. It is changing into something new. Can you tell me what? Can you tell me, after watching the episode again, really watching it? Hint: it has to do with the name of the episode.
But in order to understand the name of the episode, you have to remember how search engines were in 1998. I don't think we had Google back then, back then it was Yahoo. If we did have Google, it was a brand new novel thing. But search engines have changed radically since 1998, perhaps not for the better. For instance, I don't think Frank would have been able to do as much of a comprehensive search as he did here in this episode. Back then, you could literally find anything you were looking for, these days you are prevented from doing this.
It is because of this interference by Mabius that Frank's gift goes in a brand new unexpected and wonderous direction...
In fact that commenter, has been writing reviews of Millennium episodes and completely missing the point; I am here today to straighten out.
In order to do that we have to go back to the beginnings of the show, to the first episodes of the first season.
There is an evil that is after Frank Black, the first episode where they take note of Frank is in season one, "The Judge". That is the name of the episode as well as the character that reveals itself. But "The Judge" was simply the episode that begins that entities' involvement with Frank, before that, Frank was simply aware that it existed. And, so did we.
There was another episode before that called "Gehenna", where young Russian men are enticed to work for a telephone bank that offers "free" goodies to people- as long as the shills are able to acquire the mark's credit card numbers. If the shill is successful in acquiring credit card numbers from people, then they rise in the organization and they are able to buy expensive German cars. But if you are not successful in acquiring credit card numbers, you ended up in an industrial microwave oven after being given LSD in a parking lot, stranded, accosted by a daemon, and then Frank Black discovers you as ashes later. Maybe even fragments of teeth and bones. The name of that company was "Gehenna", The person running it was Mabius. Oh, he had a different name other than Homer B Pettey back then, it was Ricardo Clement. But it was definitely Mabius. He was even arrested, but that did not seem to hold him. The actor Bob Wilde plays Clement, Mabius and Pettey. He was also unlisted as unnamed FBI agents and other peripheral characters in the X-Files and here even. It is too bad that he dropped off the map after the movie "Spook" in 2003, which employed other actors that had been in the X-Files/Millennium universe, we can admire this actors' portrayal of Mabius, he speaks very rarely, he never lets on what he is doing. The perfect actor to portray the official Millennium group "assassin".
And then there were two episodes, one where we met Dr. Efriam Fabricant, his Kidney, and his "wife", Lucy Butler. That was the episode where Frank's friend "Blecch" was killed by what looked like some kind of daemon-creature. But it was also Lucy Butler (Sarah Jane Redmond), and it was also a long-haired man, usually played by Scott Heindl (with remarkable blue eyes). We also saw the daemon creature when Frank Black was locating the remains of the Russian victims. We are given the character of Dr. Efriam fabricant as a distraction as he was being kept alive by the FBI as somebody to study as "The end-all of evil", which was something Frank was so wrong about, and he doesn't even hear Fabricant tell him to "run, it knows who you are".
And then we met the lawyer, Al Pepper, whose own actions allowed the "Angel" Sammael, who at that time was in the form of a teenage kid (Child Actor Rodney Eastman), to kill Al with a bolt of lightning (which Frank saw as a bolt of lightning but everybody else saw as a pistol being fired). But Al Pepper was also Lucy Butler. Do ya get it yet?
We know that this person uses the identities of dead people (re: Al Pepper had died on an operating table, but then came back) to walk around on the earth: we learned more about that in "Room with no View", another episode that you completely missed the point of- that episode reveals that "Lucy Butler" was really a girl named Annie Martin, who had "vanished" in 1911, A victim of this entity, which then took her form. But, if you turn your head for a second, you might miss details like this. The X-Files talks about this kind of phenomenon, when somebody dies and a different soul occupies their body. This is called "walk-ins", it is mentioned in Red Museum as well as in Season 7's "Closure".
The shape changing aspects of this entity has been apparent since the earliest episodes of the series.
So. Whether they are pretending to be Lucy Butler or in this case a so-called FBI investigator named "Del Boxer", they are all the same person or entity, they use the identities to perform the different roles of their agenda. The Lucy Butler identity, we already know what she wants, and that is to have a child with Frank. Refer to "Antipas". The Judge and Al Pepper, they wanted to form a business relationship with Frank, where they both promised that Frank's significant troubles would be abated, if they "joined forces" so to speak. In this episode, "Del Boxer" has a different agenda, which appears to be to prove that Frank is crazy and get him out of the FBI. But here it is a little bit more complicated, which requires careful viewing of the episode. Some thing which was not done by that other commentator. And I wish they really had watched it and understood what was happening, because they did make some other interesting points.
But this episode mainly focuses on changes in Frank's Gift. For the first time in season three, Emma Hollis witnesses some of these unexplainable events, directly. You don't hear her trying to rationalize the things that happened to her here, not this time, we know that she is not dismissing it as "she imagined it"... she knows these things really happened.
In this episode it is the direct involvement of Mabius. We don't know if there was a real "Del Boxer" (Dean Norris from Total Recall and starship troopers, he is currently in "United States of Al" as "Art") here, he starts his investigation in what appears to be a normal way and then he gets more and more invasive with Frank, more and more accusatory, wanting to blame Frank, wanting to find something wrong.
But meanwhile something is happening with Frank's gift. It is changing into something new. Can you tell me what? Can you tell me, after watching the episode again, really watching it? Hint: it has to do with the name of the episode.
But in order to understand the name of the episode, you have to remember how search engines were in 1998. I don't think we had Google back then, back then it was Yahoo. If we did have Google, it was a brand new novel thing. But search engines have changed radically since 1998, perhaps not for the better. For instance, I don't think Frank would have been able to do as much of a comprehensive search as he did here in this episode. Back then, you could literally find anything you were looking for, these days you are prevented from doing this.
It is because of this interference by Mabius that Frank's gift goes in a brand new unexpected and wonderous direction...
Yeah okay.
bombersflyup28 November 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Seven and One is so bloody vague. Is it erm Lucy or what... Someone killed the psychiatrist and shut and nailed Hollis in the coffin, it's not entirely seeing things and this new guy will be involved or just gone next episode... Who knows!
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