The X-Files (TV Series)
Pusher (1996)
Gillian Anderson: Dana Scully
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Quotes
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[last lines]
[Mulder looks at Modell, lying in a coma. Scully enters]
Scully : There's no telling how long he'll hang on, but he'll never regain consciousness.
Mulder : You know, we thought he was undergoing treatment. We were wrong.
Scully : What do you mean?
Mulder : Read his chart. The MRI's were a way to gauge how much life he had left, but he consistently refused treatment. The tumor remained operable right up until the end, but he refused to have it removed.
Scully : Why?
Mulder : I think it's like you said. He was always such a little man. This was finally something that made him feel big.
[Scully takes his hand]
Scully : I say we don't let him take up another minute of our time.
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[Mulder theorizes that Modell's suggestive ability comes from a brain tumor]
Scully : Mulder, more to the point, if Modell did have a brain tumor, the effects on his health would be more debilitating. It's likely he simply wouldn't be well enough to play these cat-and-mouse games with us.
Mulder : Maybe he isn't. Maybe that's the whole point.
Scully : What do you mean?
Mulder : At the driving range, he didn't let us capture him. He was too sick, too tired, too wiped out. I mean, why would a killer who was so proficient confess to fourteen murders that he'd already gotten away with? Maybe he's dying.
Scully : And he wants to go out in a blaze of glory.
Mulder : Not with a whimper but with a bang.
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Scully : I dug up a few things on a Robert Patrick Modell.
Mulder : Let me guess: he was an average student, he went to an average community college, and he did an average stint in the military.
Scully : Which branch of service?
Mulder : Not his first choice. He wanted to be a Navy SEAL, and then he wanted to be an Army Special Forces Green Beret, was promptly washed out of both, though not for lack of intelligence. Ended up becoming a supply clerk at Fort Bragg. Served two years, general discharge.
Scully : Did you know that he applied to the FBI?
[Mulder's expression makes clear that he didn't]
Scully : He didn't even come close to passing the psych screenings.
Mulder : You got a copy of that?
Scully : Yeah. They found him to be "acutely ego-centered." He has no regard for the feelings of others and insists on perceiving people as objects. He is extremely suspicious of governments and authority...
Mulder : Yet he wants to be *in* authority.
Scully : The screener caught him in a dozen self-aggrandizing lies, saying he was a master of martial arts, that he had been trained by Gurkhas in Nepal and ninjas in Japan...
Mulder : Well, ninjas are said to be able to cloud the minds of their opponents.
Scully : Are we talking kung fu movies, Mulder?
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Mulder : I don't know, maybe it's an aspect of some Eastern martial art. You know, a specific alteration of the brain's chemistry caused by some specific timbre or cadence in Modell's voice. His voice seems to be the key.
Scully : Mulder, Modell's last employment was as a convenience store clerk. He has never been trained by ninjas, he has never even been outside the U.S. He is just a little man who wishes that he were someone big. And we're feeding that wish! That failed psych screening? If Modell could actually control people's minds, right now he'd be an FBI agent, right? He'd be a Green Beret, a Navy SEAL...
