2 replies on “X-Files Retrospective Podcast 011: “Eve””

  1. EVE is the X-FILES beginning to show it’s form and format. The stories begin to move away from the ‘ghost who helps solve it’s own death’ type of typical 80’s show plot lines, and focus on the X-FILE itself for the twists and turns. I like that the writers start using these new conventions to mislead and trick us. This playful subversion of our expectations, done with solid writing and character development, is what lifts this series in quality over previous episodic television. This episode is a great example of this.

    In EVE, we naturally assume the girls are innocent. On a second viewing, it is unnerving to see the first girl read Mulder in a way that prompts her to suggest alien abduction phraseology to him. Her statement sets the tug of war in motion between Mulder and Scully. Is it an alien abduction, or two serial killers working in tandem? I love seeing both agents try to persuade the other to their point of view in these cases over the many seasons of the X-FILES, and that Mulder is not always right. This sets up some doubt in him that both makes it more believable and sets up some great drama later in the series.

    Later, when the little girls are able to subvert the blame to their biological mom EVE 7, we are watching the show transcend it’s ancestors. In previous television, the mother, who is the older, more intelligent and cunning one, would be the perpetrator. And yet we get to see the young girls resolve here as the masterminds of their own fate, using the FBI, police and even EVE 7 to get them where they want to be.

    We also get a hint at the mythology. Deep Throat suggests that there were experiments on genetics in children. These types of experiments also get revisited later in the season, and in the series. I like that the writers show that the government is always playing with fire in these cases. You can’t genetically increase strength and intelligence in these cases without an increased psychosis.

    Lastly, I like the two parted ending. The first where Mulder figures out its the girls and not to underestimate them even up to their capture. And then I REALLY like the creepy second ending, where all the EVES seemed to know that the final missing EVE 8 would be coming for them in the asylum. I recently watched a season 2 episode DIE HAND DIE VERLEZT that had a similar format, and the way the writers pull these off from time to time is really fun. EVE is one of the first episodes that leads you in certain comfortable directions and then pulls the rug out from underneath you. This shows the start of the evolution towards playing on our own expectations, which makes the show all the more stimulating.

    One thing though, if the 2 girls were artificially implanted in separate mothers, would they still be perfectly identical? I’m guessing if the embryos were cloned, and implanted, then the host mothers genetics would not be contributed. I looked it up on Google but couldn’t decipher the answers!

    • Your final question touches on cutting-edge stuff. Apparently, tiny effects of the mother’s mitochondrial DNA would be felt, but the children, if clones, would certainly look identical, for all practical purposes be identical and (if I understand this correctly) their minute differences would not have been detectable by the tests available in the 1990s.

      Perhaps someone with more of a genetics background could weigh in, however.

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