1x01: Season 1, Episode 2 (September 17, 1993)
(Director of Photography: John S. Bartley)
Much as I love the look of the whole series, there was something special about the work of John S. Bartley (he photographed Season 1 sans the “Pilot” and all of Seasons 2 and 3 of The X-Files). This episode—directed by the very talented Daniel Sackheim, and written by series creator Chris Carter—does a lot with reflections: in mirrors (Mulder’s “Deep Throat” informant, played by Jerry Hardin, appears to materialize in one); in metallic surfaces (Scully twinned in a polished-to-a-sheen car roof); and here, in glass-covered photos of the disappeared Colonel Robert Budahas (Andrew Johnston), which cleave the characters in eye-catching ways. Budahas’s wife, Anita, is played by Gabrielle Rose, a Canadian actress I’m always delighted to see whenever she turns up in (inevitable, it seems) supporting-to-cameo roles. Here, as well as in Darin Morgan’s despairing yet hilarious Millennium episode “Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me” (1998), her talent for barely-keeping-it-together emotional turmoil gets as much of a showcase as in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997), in which she played the guilt-ridden school bus driver Dolores Driscoll. Speaking of Millennium, the exterior of the Budahas home was later reused in The X-Files’s sister series as the luminously yellow-painted sanctuary, quick to be demonically defiled, of Lance Henriksen’s criminal profiler protagonist Frank Black.
All this and stoner Seth Green, too.
Afterimages
“Deep Throat” materializes
Scully twinned
Gabrielle Rose, barely keeping it together
The Budahas home in “Deep Throat” (top) and Millennium’s opening credits (bottom)
Stoner Seth Green, and burger