A Day In The Life of Fox W. Mulder

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"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him
mad."
-George Bernard Shaw

Like a ride through a fun house, a year in the life of Fox Mulder is freaky
and perplexing and over all too soon. Opting out of his blue period of
season five, he shifted back into zealot mode at the sight of that enormous
interloping craft rifting the Antarctic sky; once again he embraced time
warps, tulpas, devil babies and monsters of the deep, while Scully waxed
skeptical and inquired more than once whether he was out of his mind.

As our key deliverer from the menace of colonization, it has been a relief
to see him regain his old faith. The decay of his convictions last year
(epitomized by the cremation of his poster) rattled his infrastructure, what
he stands for, instigating loss of direction and a general disenchantment
that possibly led to Scully's decision to leave him during the Movie. But as
deep-seated as his crusade originally seemed, was it really? Didn't it all
start in 1989 when he was sprayed with the paranoiac hallucinogen
ergotamine-histamine gas? (Unusual Suspects)

Up until this point Mulder's education had consumed him; he graduated summa
cum laude from Oxford U. and was the top of his class at Quantico, then two
intense years profiling in Behavioral Science followed by three years
working cases in Violent Crimes. He seemed non-plussed by Byers' improbably
tale, but a month after the E-H incident he underwent his first hypnotic
regression session with Dr. Heitz Werber, and began drumming up the memories
of the evening Samantha disappeared. The question is, did the hallucinogen
trigger paranoid delusions or did it truly activate Mulder's memories of
witnessing an alien abduction? In other words, was he disturbed because he
saw it, or did he see it because he was disturbed? Whatever the case, this
belief became his life, and by association, Scully's too, until the suicidal
overthrow of his canons in 'Gethsemane'. His cold scorn toward the UFO
community at that point was aggravated by Scully's emerging suspicion that
the inconceivable just might be reality, but the two of them never manage to
remain on the same page, and when Mulder experienced his faith switcheroo at
the sight of the saucer, Scully, having just bellyflopped off a mothership,
planted her face in the snow for some good old-fashioned Scullydenial.

This season has brought Mulder back into certifiable youfer territory; he
lapped up Dales II's e.t. tale, abducted a grey, pursued a newborn beastie
in a nuclear reactor, and ended up possibly driven insane by an artifact of
otherworldly origin. Scully stood on another buried spaceship, but it's hard
to say what she thought. Mulder's rapture at having a pet alien in his
bedroom was the excitement of a true believer. (Who knows what he was
planning on feeding it.)

Oddly enough, Mulder, who wants to believe, is as earthbound as they come,
while people around him get shanghaied by the 'kids' right and left, and
despite his courage in walking into the light during the Brown Mountain
shrooming. (Even if it was just Scully's flashlight.) Remember how
frightened he was of the landing lights in 'Little Green Men'?

The core things in his life - Samantha, his partnership with Scully, and his
journey-work, have all been threatened at times. As Rob Bowman elucidated,
the Movie was about Mulder accepting how much he needs Scully. Mulder
couldn't deal with Scully getting a new partner in 'Tithonus'; he worked the
case with her by phone as if it was just the two of them, and she responded
in kind. The ep ended with Mulder's veiled but virulent Ritter death threat.
In some ways, Mulder seems to be a person just awakening from years of a
seclusive, monkish life, perhaps it is beginning to dawn on him that some of
the things he seeks are right in front of him. The truth is in her, as he
has pointed out more than once.

Phoebe was vixenish; Diana rather dangerous, but Scully is likely the first
true-hearted woman he's ever been involved with. She is as forthright as
they come, and genuinely cares about him and his life. The
Scully-as-substitute-sister line is still applicable, especially in light of
her own abduction experiences, and the fact that she is barely a month
younger than Sam. Mulder probably found something very redeeming
Samantha-wise in going to the South Pole to wrest Scully from aliens and The
Smoking Man, as in his original Skyland Mountain rendezvous. But it begins
to be clear that Scully is more to him than just makeshift family, the
albatross of self-redemption, or alleviator of his survivor guilt. The
cancer days evinced that Mulder, from the morass of his supernatural tunnel
vision, has allowed himself to cultivate a friendship deep and true,
something as important to his life as his cardboard quests. The devastation
of incipient Scully-loss, coupled with his quest-disillusionment, seemed the
recipe of his extinction. He develops a physical attachment to the people he
loves; the calamitous upending he felt in 'Herrenvolk' when his mother was
sick seems to reflect his original closeness to his sister.

Mulder's awakening this season has brought new awareness of the importance
of relationships in his life. You could say this mid-life renaissance was
symbolized in 'Triangle' when he literally awoke, looked up, and told Scully
he loves her. He is awakening to a new stage in his life. This new honesty
has had a slow and awkward metamorphosis; in 'Tempus Fugit' Mulder
acknowledged Scully's birthday for the first time (despite what he said in
'The List' about remembering her birthday, Scully seemed to convey that this
was the first time for the occurrence of this particular phenomenon.) He was
nervous about the whole situation, uncertain of his place in her life,
vowing to treat her better because of her illness, but unsure of what vibes
he wanted to be putting out. He seemed to have sworn off women in general
and Scully in particular, with KK the only exception in seven years. Scully
originally would have allowed him closer, which made him uneasy at the time,
hence the whole 'don't call me Fox' scenario, despite the exchanging of keys
to each other's apartments, and the fact that they have shared enough terror
and horror to bond for several lifetimes. It's pointed out that partnered
agents are often emotionally closer than they are to their spouses, and
Mulder and Scully obviously share this link. Mulder took Scully's decision
to quit the X Files in summer of 1998 as a personal blow - her dissolving of
the fellowship, her reneging of their parity, although originally he had not
wanted a partner.

Obviously, they've become two parts of the whole. As the New Yorker put it,
'Mulder and Scully have a platonic bond that fosters significant eye contact
and enough sublimation to power a motorboat'. Mulder can't seem to sweat out
a delirium without dragging her along for the ride. In his mind, Scully has
not only saved the world from atomic annihilation, she's rendered Mulder the
Loner co-dependent.

This trend was re-emphasized at Christmas as he watched Scrooge's
transformation in "A Christmas Carol'; Scully, like his own transforming
Marley's Ghost, simultaneously appeared at the door.

His bed is another sign of his personal change; even though he didn't get it
himself, he certainly wasted no time ensconcing himself in the water bed
shenanigans. Perhaps he is less resigned to living like a frat boy. He
played house with Scully, slept with Scully in Kansas, got her a Christmas
present, awoke saying her name, and was hideously jealous of Phillip
Padgett.

Mulder is a visionary. He stands above his time, he's aware of his existence
not just in this small world, in this small life, but in a larger spectrum,
in vaster realities. He told Clyde Bruckman that he sometimes has prophetic
dreams, and he would now seem to have an overactive God Module.

Bill Mulder hoped that his son would be able to do what he could not -
reveal the conspiracy and halt the infiltration of interplanetary slavers.
Scully makes Mulder a whole person through her belief in him, and with her
by his side I think he will have the fortitude to challenge the ultimate
evils and fulfill the legacy of his birth.

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