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randomfoggytiger · 1 year

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How the Ghosts Stole Christmas In-Depth (Part V): Mulder Parries and Plays into Lyda's Parlor Tricks

Part V's here-- let's go!

Mulder is scrabbling up the staircase-less ledge, determined to get OUT since Maurice left him alone to go… do something somewhere else. He is not going to be limited by a stupid brick wall (discussed here and here), he determines... and he’s also not going to address it with a ten-foot pole.

Lyda sweeps in, amused at his antics and herself; and sweeps back out to appear above her next victim, gloating at his ill success.

“Are you Agent Mulder?”

Mulder, unfazed, answers a question with a question: “Who are you, now?”

“What are you doing using my chair as a ladder,” Lyda chastises.

“I’m trying to get out of this room.”

“Trying to get out?”

“Excuse me--”

“No, no!” threatens Lyda, blocking the door. “You can’t get out that way.”

Mulder’ will not be deterred: with a swallow to brace against the enormity of his experiment, he reaches out to bop the ghost’s shoulder, testing its manipulability. She, fascinated with the oddities of his mind, lets him; and is amused (and annoyed) when he pokes so hard her head bobs back.

There is no Victorian tragedy to be had for Mulder in corporeality; and he sets about sorting this situation in a swift, investigative move. He sweeps her off her feet in the loosest terms-- shoving her, kindly, aside-- and Lyda plays into it (teetering the line between faux innocence and sharp admittance.)

“Masher,” she snipes. (According to… sources… this is a Victorian term meaning womanizer; which plays perfectly into Lyda’s game discussed below.)

“Frump,” he retorts with a sarcastic head bob back and forth. Never let it be said Mulder is completely a gentleman: he weaponizes his petty side whenever he possibly can.

Mulder finds himself face to face with another door; and turns just as his hostess descends on a ladder that appeared out of thin air.

“I don’t know who you’re calling a 'frump' but I don’t appreciate that,” she reprimands, a little quiver of actual hurt in her voice. Hitting on his insecurity-- Fe Inferior, Typing post here-- she subtly sneaks in another innuendo quip (her calling card): “--being manhandled or called names… certainly not at this hour.”

Lyda is the brains of the operation, enjoying the game of someone understanding the chess board and having the intellectual brains to match her every move. Of course, she’s convinced she will win; but when she loses, this ghostess is content to have had a good time showing off her ingenious and insidious game-rigging abilities.

“You’re a ghost,” Mulder asserts darkly.

“Ha! More names.” Another manipulation tactic: Lyda called Mulder a name first, then he shot back; and now she’s twisting his truth seeking into name calling (as Phoebe Green did with Mulder’s pot shots in Fire.)

Mulder goes down the stairs like a cryptid: Check Two.

“What happened to the star-crossed lovers?” Mulder questions, puzzled. Lyda hasn’t said a thing about her dissatisfactory relationship; but he’s one of the best profilers in the game, and her snide and dismissive frustrations invite curiosity. He sees her weakness and exploits it, just as she (and Maurice) see his and exploits it. Scully, meanwhile, is too straightforward and honest to bother with word games and double meanings.

“Ho, let me tell you-- the romance is the first thing to go.” Exactly what Alfred Fellig tells Scully later this season (Tithonus.)

“It’s you.”

Lyda responds immediately, turning promptly and staring intently at Mulder. She wants, still, to be recognized as the special person she believes herself to be: suicide was the means to escape boredom and poverty and destruction by locking Maurice down to be with her for all eternity; and she was even more pleased it brought her notoriety and attention in her afterlife. But as the years passed, Lyda found that no one cared enough to know her history or reenact the foolish choice she and Maurice made all those years ago in this haunted Christmas house. The romance is dead-- or so she believes-- and all she has left is spite. Mulder’s open-minded and earnest interest sparks that deadened side, setting her mind crackling with attention and diabolical possibilities. Here would be a victim worthy of a back pat, a prize to gloat over forever.

“You’re Lyda-- and that’s Maurice!” Mulder is delighted; then disappointment as even the manifestation of his paranormal hopes are tainted by reality: “But… you’ve aged.”

“I hope your partner finds you a lot more charming than I do,” she sniffs, miffed. She then glides away to the bookcase like a Victorian supermodel-- wavering about back and forth with her hands clasped primly in front of her-- for the express purpose of showing off her more of her powers.

Mulder is amazed as she slides the books in and out of the shelves, childlike glee and wonder blooming across his face; but dodges quickly when Lyda pops a book out right by his head. It’s the biographical account (read: flowery memoir) of her and Maurice’s love and sacrifice (titled “The Ghosts Who Stole Christmas” written by R. Grimes. …That’s got to be a reference to something else.)

“I was young and beautiful once just like your partner.”

Lyda sweeps back to the chair and fireplace, giving an ecstatic “Whoop!” as she bundles down to read her own love story the way a washed-up actress will pull out the revered movies of her youth to relive the faded glory. And, while it is a ploy and a lure to her guest, there is truth to her actions-- one she is shameless to admit to inquiring minds (in this case, her victim.)

Mulder is startled by the suddenly roaring fire; but snaps back to reality to take her proffered book (“Maurice was so handsome! He didn’t have a gut!”), his mind making quick leaps of logic while staring at the page Lyda left open for him.

“I hope you’re not expecting any great advantages to all this,” she says, slithering deeper into her chair.

“To all what?” he grills, not liking where this is going.

“Well I assume you came here with similar misconceptions,” Lyda fishes.

Mulder’s really not liking where this is going. “We came here looking for you.”

“Mmm, yeah? You didn’t come here to… be together for eternity?“ she teases, prods, baits.

An interesting note: I like the moments when paranormal or supernatural people prod Mulder with questions about his intentions, namely Lyda and Jenn (Je Souhaite), because it reveals how much Mulder autopilots his life and how little time he chooses to take for reflection. (It's also the most important aspect of his relationship withe the Dales' brothers-- both Arthurs-- serving as a tool to understand his father and his partner better... but also himself through unnatural amounts of self-discovery.)

The concept is ridiculous to Mulder (if his pulled-up-short head snap and uncomfortable laughter is anything to go by)… or so he’d have her (and himself) to believe. Mulder’s not suicidal to any degree; but to his agnostic beliefs, eternity with Scully means poking around as many haunted houses as possible before the years roll on and Death claims them.

By the way, Lyda has handed Mulder her romantic tome because she’s telling him, to his face, that she’s reading him like a book.

“Because you’re filled with despair and woeful Christmas melancholy?” Lyda is still teasing, prodding, and baiting.

Mulder doesn’t answer at first-- or directly at all: “...Why?”

Time to switch tactics. Madame Ghostess sees that the denial rot is just as deeply ingrown in this man as in Scully; and puts into action what she learned in her previous interactions with that piece of work: in order to take down one, you must take down both.

“Maybe it was your partner, then.”

That strikes a nerve-- that old fear Mulder harbors about Scully and how many Christmases she will want to devote her life to him; and he crosses his arms protectively (while metaphorically tucking the book away out of sight and closer to his chest.)

“What about her?”

Lyda smiles, cat-who-caught-the-canary grin splattering over her face. “You knew this house was haunted.”

“Yeah.” Mulder relaxes slightly, the topic having swapped back to 'work'.

“Maybe you two should have discussed your true feelings before you came out here,” she spits venomously, launching a full assault. “I’m speaking from experience.”

In rejoinder, he deflects the topic away from his relationship with Scully, choosing to probe at his hostess’s thinly veiled warning. “What experiences?”

“I’m not going to get into semantics,” she replies, to his immense annoyance.

“A murder suicide is all about trust--” Lyda pivots.

“--I thought you had a lover’s pact?” Mulder cuts in, her point simultaneously hitting too close to home (which he sniffs out, cutting off her intentions) and demanding clarity of her earlier, dangled point.

Lyda laughs at this. “Poetic allusions aside, the outcome, Mulder, is pretty much the same.” She quickly stands and flashes her ripped open torso at him to his stomach-roiling disgust (“Hoooooooh.”)

She doesn’t show her hole to just anyone.

“Why are you showing it to me??”

“Well, it isn’t like you’re going to be eating any Christmas ham, is it?”

Ahhhhhh, Mulder thinks, the diabolical plot becomes clear.

“Are you trying to tell me that Scully’s going to shoot me?” he mocks, sticking out his neck to accent the ‘shoot’ part.

“Scully is not going to shoot me.”

“Suit yourself,” Lyda niggles, sarcastically nodding her head. “But if you shoot first--”

Mulder swiftly shakes his own head. That is not an option.

“--for her, the rest is an act of faith.”

And Lyda is proved half-right here (and in Field Trip): Scully follows Mulder’s insanity based on acts of faith. But Lyda is also proved half-wrong (in Field Trip as well): Scully never compromises what she believes to be sane rationality, even in the face of her partner's persuasive wheedling or self-doubt. She won’t kill herself even if Mulder were to do so; even when Mulder pulls a gun on her, she won't shoot him, either. Because that’s not what Scully does (which leads to a more thorough understanding of why killing Pfaster in Orison was such a crushing blow to her belief in herself and her faith.)

“I wouldn’t shoot her,” Mulder insists gently.

“Maybe she shoots herself.”

“I wouldn’t let her.” The shadow of Kitsunegari stretches long; and the mistake of not being quick enough to prevent Scully’s (read: Linda Bowman’s) shot to the head will not be repeated.

Lyda has been trying out variables to see what will stick: Mulder won’t shoot Scully, and he won’t let her shoot herself. Therefore, Scully must shoot him, the same method she knows must be used with the other woman.

She shifts strategies. “The bodies under the floor… maybe that was some kind of Jungian symbolism. Or maybe… there’s some kind of secret lover’s pact.”

(Chris Carter wrote this. He addressed the rumors of romance off-screen for Mulder and Scully. This is a script he wrote and had filmed. Amazing.)

Mulder exhales, loudly and purposefully, defensively amused: “We’re not lovers.”

An important note: the way David Duchovny delivers this line is key. Mulder is matter of fact, giving as little away as possible while sending Lyda a clear signal to back off… but the timber of his voice is weighed down and tinged slightly with resignation and regret.

“This isn’t a pure science,” Lyda explains, angling Jung but really talking about his and Scully’s chemistry and partnership, “but you’re both so attractive.” She breathes out the end of her sentence, giving as much weight as possible to her statement. (CHRIS CARTER.)

Mulder is nonplussed; which slowly melts into trepidation as she continues.

“And there’ll be a lot of time to work that out. Go ahead--” she hands over his gun “--take it! …Take it,” reinforcing her offer with a pout.

Mulder panics, grabbing nothing but air in his holster; and he barely registers catching his weapon mid-air after lightning strikes, thunder cracks, and Lyda doles out “Think of it as the last Christmas you’ll ever spend alone" before vanishing into thin air.

Now all that's left for the ghosts to do is to set their destructive plan into action.

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

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