Rush
A murder
is committed by someone who can move faster than the eye can see.
I don't like "teen angst" dramas. Even ones which are well done, I find irritating. So this episode, with its hardly-what-you'd-call-subtle subplot of teenagers versus adults, doesn't rate as one of my favourites. By a long way. Apart from the fact that it reminded me of the equally unremarkable Schizogeny, I found a lot of the "adult-teenager divide" stuff a little too blatant, although I did like the contrast of various high emotions tempered by Scully's biological explanation of adolescence.
As with any X Files episode, there were good points. I liked the way the writers managed to introduce a very human element to the murder storyline, firstly with the Sheriff's announcement that he had "to call Ron Foster's widow and tell her that I've got to turn his killer loose" and then with the scene between Max and his mother. She had to deal with the fact that her son was accused of murder, and however much she wanted to believe in his innocence, the evidence indicated his guilt and, although she must have hated herself for it, she had to have doubted his story. Her feeble attempt to relate to him ("I was your age once"), although less than subtle, was something I quite liked, not as a symbol of a mother-son divide but as a demonstration of her inability to relate to someone who appeared to have committed such a terrible crime.
I didn't think any of the three principal characters in Rush were particularly interesting. Max seemed basically two-dimensionally arrogant, with a chip on his shoulder the size of Westminster Abbey, and even when he stuck up for Tony ("You wanna stare at someone, stare at me"), he did so through intimidation. Despite this, I enjoyed seeing him show up the surly Babbit and pass the test. And I did share his anger when he was given an F.
Tony was given little to do except look lost and scared, I think maybe the writers could have explored his character a little more and given him some more personality. The most interesting character, Chastity, was also, in my opinion, under-explored. She was trapped in something she didn't know how to get out of, probably wanted to warn Tony away from it and basically didn't know what to do or how to deal with it. Like Max, she was either an outsider by choice or had chosen to accept her inability to fit in to the point where it appeared to be a choice - look at her abusive jacket. So did the rush make her feel like none of that mattered, like she didn't need to fit in? It would have been interesting to have been given more idea of her motivation.
Babbit's death was effectively gory - I especially liked the flying chair. However, the camera following his screaming face seemed slightly comical and deadened the effect a little. Mulder's attempt at a scientific explanation for the killing made me smile. He seemed to just throw in a random equation ("Force equals mass times acceleration") to lend his theory some credence, but unfortunately the formula didn't seem to be that relevant. One true sentence does not make the whole statement true. It's like saying "I have a banana instead of a spleen, energy equals Planck's constant times frequency" and expecting people to believe you have a soft yellow fruit in your abdomen.
I've heard the expression "wrapped around a tree" applied to car accidents, but the crashing of Max and Tony's car was the first time I've ever actually seen it. I know it's only TV, but I didn't realise the phrase could apply so literally. I think that, for me, was the most memorable image in the episode.
I was glad to see Chuck Burks make another appearance with his computer wizardry. SCAG seems like a great programme idea, and so logical that there must be similar programmes in use. If not, it was a nice piece of creativity to invent it for the script J .
I liked the shooting at the end, and I thought it was a nice touch to have it in what was slow motion for Tony, Chastity and Max, but normal speed for everyone else. The stillness and quiet before the explosion of sound and motion as the bullet hit Chastity were what made this scene stand out above the rest of the episode.
The one thing I really didn't like about Rush was the complete lack of an explanation. I'm all in support of ambiguous endings and I don't usually like to be spoon-fed answers, but one or two theories beyond "maybe this, maybe that" would have been nice. It seemed like the writers had the idea for the plot (incredibly fast movement) but couldn't think how to explain it. I wouldn't mind so much if they'd left it completely unexplained, but Mulder's final attempts at a theory seemed so half-hearted.
All in all, not great, but better than nothing. One final comment - St Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, so probably not the best person to name a hospital after J.
Best Lines
Scully: Mulder - rather than spirits, can we at least start with Tony's friends? Please? Just…for me?
Chuck: I cross-referenced the shape of the silhouette against every organic and inorganic object in the Library of Congress database. The closest match was a Soviet akula class submarine.
Scully: I think we can rule that out.
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