It didn't scare me. It didn't make me jump. There wasn't that much tension. It didn't make me laugh, either deliberately or unintentionally. And most of the time it didn't really make me feel much of anything. It did have a few redeeming features, but overall I thought Signs and Wonders was a pretty weak episode.

Some good points first though. I liked the fact that this was a religious episode without being a "Scully is religious" episode. Her faith was mentioned, but never Dealt With, which was nice. It's not realistic to have every encounter with a religious zealot make Scully question or reaffirm her faith and it doesn’t have to become an Issue. I did think, though, that this episode might have been a good point at which to make some reference back to Scully's actions in Orison, in keeping with the theme of divine judgement. I don't mean I wanted an all-out "Scully wrestles with her conscience" episode - another completely Scully-focussed episode this soon after Orison would probably be a bad idea - but some acknowledgement of her shooting of Pfaster and the issues of who would judge her would have been a nice piece of continuity. Adding that in could have given the episode some extra depth and a more interesting sub-plot but, on the other hand, if it wasn't handled sensitively it would have made a Scully fan like me cringe. Maybe if the episode as a whole had been better, it would have been appropriate to put in a bit of Scully angst. As it was, I did wonder if Scully's face after Gracie told her "He'll be judged as he deserves. Can't nobody avoid it" was significant. And reached the conclusion that it almost certainly wasn't. I just really want some continuity from Orison, and I think I'm looking too hard for it.

I thought Mulder's comment that Scully's faith and O'Connor's were "based on the same book" was interesting, but kind of a broad interpretation. I suppose that, as he says, a snake testing the unrighteous is no less likely than transubstantiation, but I'm coming at this from a non-religious viewpoint. Faith is very personal, but it seems to me that as long as you're not hurting anybody or forcing your beliefs upon them, you have the right to worship however you see fit. Of course the point in Signs and Wonders was that O'Connor was hurting people (or at least that's how it seemed to begin with), but I think the tendency is to assume that anyone with unusual beliefs or practices is doing something wrong. And that's not always true.

I liked the intercut scenes of the two Churches and their different styles of worship. The slightly different versions of the Bible were interesting to hear, as they made it clear that while Mulder was right in that the two belief systems were "based on the same book," they used vastly different interpretations of that book.

Another thing I liked was the lack of prominence given to Scully's snake phobia (is that ophidiaphobia? If anyone can help, I'd be interested to know). She may be over it now, the handling of the snake in One Breath may have forced her to overcome it, or it could have been a momentary thing after which she was still afraid of them. She did look more than a little disconcerted on finding the caged snakes in the trailer, but then she knew they were deadly and she couldn't be certain she was alone. I thought the scenes with Scully in the trailer were reasonably tense, but not enough to lift my opinion of the episode very much. And she did deliberately avoid going back into the Signs and Wonders Church, presumably to avoid the snakes - but again, that could be just because they're dangerous rather than because of a phobia.

I think the only feeling Signs and Wonders evoked for any of its characters (besides pity for Gracie, and that was achieved simply by killing her boyfriend and implicating her father) was hatred for O'Connor after the implication that he raped her. But I did love the fact that the "bad guy" turned out to be the good guy, and the man who appeared to be a caring, Christian pillar of the community was actually the killer.

I found the idea of Gracie giving birth to snakes utterly ridiculous. How many times has that happened in cheap schlock-horror movies? She should sue whoever she got her antenatal care from. Shouldn't snakes show up on an ultrasound? J I'm guessing it was supposed to be dramatic but I found it pretty damn funny.

I don't even have anything to say about the climax, except - I wonder how many shippers were waiting for Scully to suck out the poison? And as for the ending - please. Any remaining credibility vanished.

So all in all, there wasn't anything I really liked, but there wasn't really anything I hated. It was just a little lacking in originality (I may be biased when I say that, having seen two things about religious snake-handling a short time before watching the episode, maybe that's influencing my opinion) and felt like the series was treading water until the ratings-grabbing mid-season two-parter.

Scully: Serpents and religion have gone hand in hand, they've represented the temptation of Eve, Original Sin. They've been feared and hated throughout history as they've been thought to embody Satan, to serve evil itself.

Mulder: Maybe these ones actually do.

Scully: These particular serpents actually were serving evil? Are you going to type that on our travel request?

Scully: Snake-handling. Didn't learn that in Catechism class.

Mulder: That's funny, I knew a couple of Catholic schoolgirls who were expert at it.

Mulder: Where's the light switch?

Scully: The nearest one? Probably ten miles from here.

Mulder: When you get right down to it, is snake-handling any harder to buy into that Communion wafers or transubstantiation?

Scully: Or believing in flying saucers for that matter?

O'Connor: Your FBI partner could have learned something about herself if you hadn't stopped me. Some powerful good news, maybe.

Mulder: I'd say it's good news for you that she's not here right now, considering what you tried to do to her.

Scully: Tennessee. Snakes. Thank you, Mulder, thank you so much.

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