Irresistible the Limerick:
Evil is embodied in Donnie
Whose fetish was to love a dead bonnie
He cuts off nails and hair
And gives hookers a scare
And took Scully to the house of his mommy.
This is truly one of the front runners for what has grown into a fascination in our society of shows about criminal psychology and serial killers. Granted the fascination with serial killers was big in the 70's but it wasn't as prominent as a venue of entertainment on television. Irresistible is also a front runner for that other great Chris Carter show Millennium which is (like Criminal Minds) about a different serial killer every episode. The episode begins with a very good teaser. The use of the song Gymnopedie No 1 in the funeral is a great choice as a haunting yet soothing element. Then we meet Donnie Pfaster. At first he seems just kind of weird but we soon find out that he really is a freak. The final shot in the teaser is a great way to leave a kind of signature on the episode and is used again in the sequel later in season 7. Scully is quite disturbed by this case understandably. I mean who wouldn't be? This episode is really I think one of the first moments that I began to see Scully as more than just a character on a show I liked. And Donnie. Could you really ask for a creepier character? The scariest thing about this episode is the fact that there is nothing paranormal about Donnie and what he does. And there are people like him out there. I think one of the scariest things in the episode is the lady who he goes to deliver the groceries to who lets him into her house cheerfully and tells him that they always leave the backdoor open like he is one of the family. Little does she know that if Donnie hadn't been caught her and probably more likely her daughter would have been killed. I find two elements of the episode that really kind of sum up what Chris Carter was trying to do with this episode in my opinion. The first is what Donnie's professor is teaching as Donnie stares at his wouldbe victim.
TEACHER: The necessity of the story, the myth or the legend in a culture is almost universal. We think of myths as things that entertain or instruct, but their deeper purpose is often to explain, or make fanciful, wishes, desires or behavior that society would otherwise deem unacceptable. Myths often disguise thoughts that are simply too terrible to think about, but because they are conveyed in a wrapping of untruth - the story - these thoughts become harmless fiction.
Take for example stories that we recite for children, such as Snow White or Alice in Wonderland. The subtextural themes where the Queen orders "off with her head", or the prince wakens Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, are what Freud would describe as death/wish imagining.
To me this sounds like a kind of commentary on the fact that we watch these things on television as a form of entertainment, but we often tend to look past the fact that these things but they are real. I don't know that it is good or bad. Its just a fact. And this episode's goal really is to make us feel vulnerable to reality and Scully is the mechanism through which this is done.
The second part that explains the episode is Mulder's final commentary.
MULDER'S VOICE OVER: The conquest of fear lies in the moment of its acceptance. And understanding what scares us most is that which is most familiar, most common place. That boy next door, Donnie Pfaster, the unremarkable younger brother of four older sisters, extraordinary only in his ordinariness, could grow up to be the devil in a buttoned-down shirt. It's been said that the fear of the unknown is an irrational response to the excesses of the imagination. But our fear of the everyday, of the lurking stranger, and the sound of foot-falls on the stairs. The fear of violent death and the primitive impulse to survive, are as frightening as any x-file, as real as the acceptance that it could happen to you.
The message is pretty clear. I like the episode. 10 out of 10.
Evil is embodied in Donnie
Whose fetish was to love a dead bonnie
He cuts off nails and hair
And gives hookers a scare
And took Scully to the house of his mommy.
This is truly one of the front runners for what has grown into a fascination in our society of shows about criminal psychology and serial killers. Granted the fascination with serial killers was big in the 70's but it wasn't as prominent as a venue of entertainment on television. Irresistible is also a front runner for that other great Chris Carter show Millennium which is (like Criminal Minds) about a different serial killer every episode. The episode begins with a very good teaser. The use of the song Gymnopedie No 1 in the funeral is a great choice as a haunting yet soothing element. Then we meet Donnie Pfaster. At first he seems just kind of weird but we soon find out that he really is a freak. The final shot in the teaser is a great way to leave a kind of signature on the episode and is used again in the sequel later in season 7. Scully is quite disturbed by this case understandably. I mean who wouldn't be? This episode is really I think one of the first moments that I began to see Scully as more than just a character on a show I liked. And Donnie. Could you really ask for a creepier character? The scariest thing about this episode is the fact that there is nothing paranormal about Donnie and what he does. And there are people like him out there. I think one of the scariest things in the episode is the lady who he goes to deliver the groceries to who lets him into her house cheerfully and tells him that they always leave the backdoor open like he is one of the family. Little does she know that if Donnie hadn't been caught her and probably more likely her daughter would have been killed. I find two elements of the episode that really kind of sum up what Chris Carter was trying to do with this episode in my opinion. The first is what Donnie's professor is teaching as Donnie stares at his wouldbe victim.
TEACHER: The necessity of the story, the myth or the legend in a culture is almost universal. We think of myths as things that entertain or instruct, but their deeper purpose is often to explain, or make fanciful, wishes, desires or behavior that society would otherwise deem unacceptable. Myths often disguise thoughts that are simply too terrible to think about, but because they are conveyed in a wrapping of untruth - the story - these thoughts become harmless fiction.
Take for example stories that we recite for children, such as Snow White or Alice in Wonderland. The subtextural themes where the Queen orders "off with her head", or the prince wakens Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, are what Freud would describe as death/wish imagining.
To me this sounds like a kind of commentary on the fact that we watch these things on television as a form of entertainment, but we often tend to look past the fact that these things but they are real. I don't know that it is good or bad. Its just a fact. And this episode's goal really is to make us feel vulnerable to reality and Scully is the mechanism through which this is done.
The second part that explains the episode is Mulder's final commentary.
MULDER'S VOICE OVER: The conquest of fear lies in the moment of its acceptance. And understanding what scares us most is that which is most familiar, most common place. That boy next door, Donnie Pfaster, the unremarkable younger brother of four older sisters, extraordinary only in his ordinariness, could grow up to be the devil in a buttoned-down shirt. It's been said that the fear of the unknown is an irrational response to the excesses of the imagination. But our fear of the everyday, of the lurking stranger, and the sound of foot-falls on the stairs. The fear of violent death and the primitive impulse to survive, are as frightening as any x-file, as real as the acceptance that it could happen to you.
The message is pretty clear. I like the episode. 10 out of 10.