I’ve said it several times in the past few weeks, and it remains true after this rewatch:
“Beyond the Sea” is my absolute favourite episode of The X-Files. Genuinely everything about the episode is incredible. The acting from Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and Brad Dourif (what an incredible get for the show). The directing, and the way they depict the atmosphere and mood of the entire episode. The music. The storyline, and the deeper themes the episode explores. The smaller characters, and actors, are also amazing. Don Davis barely has any words in the episode as Scully’s father, and he still shines in his small role. Gillian Anderson (Yes I already said it, but holy shit, seriously, what a performance).
Now I’m not saying that The X-Files peaks with this episode. There are many later episodes that I also love, and I think season 4 is my favourite overall season of the show. But as stand alone episodes of the show go, this remains my favourite, for several reasons.
“Beyond the Sea” is also one of Gillian Anderson’s favourite episode. So, twinsies. 🤩
A little bit of disclaimer/warning (?) about some of what this review will get into…before we actually get into it:
I mentioned that one of the reasons I love this episode is the deeper themes of the episode. At the beginning of the episode, Scully quite suddenly loses her father, learning that he died of a massive heart attack just hours after her mother and father visited her for dinner. Her actions and thoughts through the rest of the episode are quite certainly driven by this sudden loss, and her fears that her father was disappointed in her; it seems, to some extent, like possibly Scully and her father had not really been getting along in the year (or so) leading up to his death, and this makes the loss even harder.
This is my first time rewatching this episode since I lost my stepmother in 2019, under somewhat similar but also very different circumstances. My stepmom’s death was perhaps not quite as much of a surprise, but I similarly had been in a…complicated relationship with her in the months leading up to her death, and so in the four years since her passing, I have also dealt with a lot of very complicated grief, in that there was so much left unsaid between us and so much I still wish she knew and could believe and could trust, about both me, and herself. For that reason, I connected even more with Scully throughout this episode than I have on previous watches.
On this rewatch, I am also now the same age as Scully is in the show, and her father is likely around the same age as my dad is (in real life, Don Davis was around 51 when this episode was filmed, but given that Scully is supposed to be 30 and has two older siblings, I do not think her father was 21 when she was born, so we’re going with likely in his late 50s or very early 60s). Now, I have an excellent relationship still with my father (my dad is also actually I think still the only one who reads these reviews every week, so hello Dad! 👋). On the grief aspect and relating to Scully losing her father in her circumstances, as I said, I related that to losing my stepmom 4 years ago. But even still, I did relate to Scully losing her father at her age, because just the thought of losing my father at my age made my heart break.
Christ, I haven’t even gotten into the review yet and I’ve already written 600 words. All of that was basically just to say that within this review, I will be relating my own experiences to Scully and thus why I think everything in this episode is so well done, and absolutely incredible.
Anyway, let’s get into the actual episode review, shall we?
Scully and her father
The episode actually doesn’t really explore their relationship all that much, instead hinting at the idea that, likely, Scully and her father still weren’t quite getting along at this point in time.
We are, essentially, reminded of her line from the “Pilot”: “My parents still think it (joining the FBI) was an act of rebellion”.
Despite the fact that Scully does seem to have found herself in her work, and she is already distinguishing herself at the FBI, she is still troubled by the idea that her father disapproves of the work she has chosen to do.
What I’m a little bit curious about here is why, exactly, her father disapproved of her joining the FBI. Because it clearly is/was the idea of her joining the FBI at all, and not just the fact that she has been assigned to the “X-files” unit since that (obviously) doesn’t happen until the “Pilot”. William Scully was a naval captain, and Scully’s older brother (also named William…there are so many Williams on this show…) also becomes an officer in the navy. As we will continue to learn, Scully grew up in a very “military” environment, so doesn’t it seem somewhat natural that she would be drawn to a government career, where she can find order and feel she is making a difference?
Now we will learn (much) later some of the reasons why Scully quits her medical career, but given the somewhat “distant” relationship she has with her father, I do have a hard time believing her father knew that reason. Though it’s more likely Scully told her mother or older sister, and that information got passed on to her father and is the real cause of his disappointment. Because it really does seem surprising to me that her father would really be that upset about his youngest daughter joining the FBI. I suppose given the time the show was set in, and the career William Scully had himself, it’s likely he is worried about his daughter and doesn’t think the FBI is a safe or good place for a woman.
Overall, the Scully family is quite “rigid” and definitely does not seem like the type of family that ever talked about their feelings. Scully’s father was away for work a lot when she was a child, and he likely did not often (if ever?) directly tell her how much he loved her or was proud of her.
In the end, I believe (or want to believe 😉) in the sentiment expressed by both Scully and her mother in the line “He was my father.” Of course William Scully loved his daughter, and of course he was proud of her. I don’t think he truly was disappointed in her, but rather he was worried about her and the (seemingly quite quick) decision she made to leave medicine. He loves her, and he supports her, but he doesn’t know how to express all of that love to his daughter. And so, in the months since Scully joined the FBI, I do also believe that she was afraid her father was disappointed in her, because how else would she interpret what he likely told her immediately after her decision, and his subsequent reticence?
That’s a very tough relationship to have and to navigate: a now-adult child and a parent, struggling to navigate each new life, with the child desperate still to have their parent’s love, and the parent unsure how to communicate. As I stated, I have a very good relationship as an adult with my father (hello again Dad 👋), and we do talk about our feelings, our fears, and our lives. But even so, I have wondered many times if my own father is disappointed that I didn’t pursue a PhD or disappointed in the career I chose or disappointed in the single life I am (still) leading. And all of that with knowing that my father loves me, and I love him, and knowing and understanding that my fears and worries are mine, and not his.
So, poor Scully, loving her father, and her father loving her, but both unsure how to interact now as adults, probably exacerbated by their limited pure loving interactions in her childhood. I am glad that by the end of the episode, she does seem to truly believe that she knows her father loved her, and she doesn’t need to prove herself to him. Being herself and working hard is enough, because she’s his daughter. Just being happy is enough.
“I need to work”: Grief of Sudden Loss
We explore Scully’s grief a lot more throughout the episode, but I appreciate the fact that we never see Scully sobbing or even really openly tearing up, because that is a very real reaction to sudden loss, especially when at the time of someone’s passing, you don’t have the best or closest relationship with them anymore.
Throughout the entire episode it is clear that Scully doesn’t want to appear weak, and she wants to keep pushing on with her work, both to make her father proud and to distract herself from her very complicated grief about her father’s passing.
Rather than crying, we see in Scully some often overlooked, more subtle signs of grief:
Her increased recklessness, with her going in to follow Boggs’ “signs” without any backup, despite the fact that it was night, could very well have been a trap, and she’s a trained agent who knows better
Increased defensiveness of her actions and beliefs with Mulder
A need to keep pushing on and acting like everything is fine. To prove herself to her father, who she believes would have wanted her to keep working. And also possibly because she believes, if she didn’t have that close of a relationship with her father, who is she to break down in tears over his passing?
A lot of fear. Fear of what she is seeing, fear of believing, and perhaps even fear of herself.
With some of this, I acknowledge I’m probably projecting my own experience losing my stepmom at a time when I didn’t have a good relationship with her any longer. And at a (relatively) young age. I don’t say this to discount how difficult it is to lose a parent as a child, or even to lose a parent at an old(er) age. But, there is something uniquely difficult I think about losing a parent when you yourself have just become an adult, even when you have a good relationship with that parent. Because you yourself are just starting out in your adult life, and there is still so much you need your parent for. So much still that you want to share with your parent, and tell them about. You are likely still learning how to navigate the relationship of adult child with adult parent. And you want to continue to grow that relationship, for many years still.
And that’s all to consider if you do have a good relationship with the parent in question at the time of their passing. If you don’t, for whatever reason, then you also have to grapple with all that was left unsaid and what you wish they knew, or wish you could hear from them.
My situation was different from Scully’s, in several ways. I won’t get into all the details…because as much as I am currently sharing a lot of very personal stuff, I don’t want to get too personal. But in the months leading up to my stepmom’s passing, we were not speaking. She was very sick, and became a very difficult person to be around because she wouldn’t (or couldn’t) get help. In order to protect myself, I had to limit our contact. It was very painful, because I did love her very much, but I could not love the person she was in those last few months, and being around her at the time was incredibly distressing. I actually found myself a little bit jealous of Scully in this episode, because she had talked to her father just hours before he passed. I honestly cannot remember when the last time I actually talked to my stepmom before she passed.
When I learned of my stepmom’s passing, I of course was sad, though not surprised and a little bit relieved if I’m honest, because her passing was not exactly unexpected to those of us close to her. But my grief, like Scully’s in this episode, was very complicated. I also felt a lot of guilt, and a lot of worry and fear. I knew, rationally, that I had to pull myself away from her in those months, but that still didn’t stop me from feeling guilty and thinking I could have done more to help her. I worried that she didn’t know how much I still loved her, and I worried that because of how I pulled away, she was disappointed in me and didn’t love me either by the end. I have to hope that she did know deep down how much I still loved her, but I still struggle a lot with that and how our relationship broke apart in the last months of her life. I still feel a lot of complicated grief almost 4 years later, in that I am happy she is at peace (a feeling which just by itself comes with guilt) but I also miss her a whole lot, and every day I find something I wish I could share with her still.
Like Scully, after my stepmom passed, I threw myself into work, because what else was I supposed to do? I didn’t talk about it much (and I still haven’t, really), because how do you talk to anyone about such a confusing and complicated relationship, and such complex grief?
Now, again, of course my experience and Scully’s experience are different in a lot of ways, but the foundation is there: Losing an adult parent in your own early adulthood, at a time when there is so much you wish you could do to mend the relationship you had at the time of their passing.
All of this is to say, really, that I related to Scully an awful lot in this episode. If given the opportunity after her death to speak to my stepmother, or hear her speak to me, I don’t know that I would have been able to just walk away. Actually, I still don’t know that I would just be able to walk away all these years later, even knowing rationally that psychics are not real. And poor Scully has the extra factors of seeing apparitions of her father and Boggs seeming to know things about her life he should have no way of knowing. So of course Scully is confused, and of course she is more open to believing in psychic ability. She wants to believe there is still some way she can speak with her father.
And I also just really, really want to praise how Scully’s grief was portrayed in the episode, and Gillian’s beautiful acting. In movies and TV grief after losing a parent or child is most often portrayed as sobbing or at least a lot of crying, and I don’t think we see enough of the stoic, quiet grief that is often a reality.
Thinking about it a bit more, I think this is also the reason why I love The West Wing episode “Drought Conditions” so much. There’s an incredible portrayal of complicated grief in that episode as well, and it is beautiful. As is this episode, and Gillian Anderson’s acting above all.
Mulder as the non-believer
Moving away now from all of my rambling and personal life. Apologies, maybe?
One of the other key aspects of this episode is that it is Mulder who doesn’t believe in the psychic ability.
Now, it is completely understandable that Mulder believes Boggs is a fraud. Mulder is the one who profiled Boggs and put him in prison. He knows Boggs will do anything to avoid execution. We will see a couple of other episodes of Mulder working with serial killers, but it is already overall clear that Mulder has zero sympathy for people like Boggs who commit horrific crimes and then still try anything to weasel their way out of prison or out of execution.
Even so, I was surprised at how mean Mulder is to Scully at points in this episode
Mulder: What you're really saying is that you didn't want to go on record admitting that you believed in Boggs! The bureau would expect something like that from "Spooky" Mulder, but not Dana Scully.
Jesus Fucking Christ, Mulder. Scully just lost her father and she is quite clearly (if quietly) suffering from a crisis of faith and belief in herself. Why are you being so mean to her?!
I can only think that Mulder, too, is worried about Scully and her insistence in working, but he also doesn’t know how to communicate to her (Christ, everyone on this show needs a loooooot of therapy). And that worry comes through as anger.
Mulder does take a frustrating turn at the end of the episode, as Scully tries to rationalize everything that Boggs seemed to know about her father and her life. Then he seems upset that she still isn’t willing to believe. Even though he believed, and still believes, that Boggs was a fraud. Which is it, Mulder? Do you want Scully to believe in psychic ability and be more open to possibilities “outside” of science, or not?
This doesn’t really fit here, but it also doesn’t fit in any other section, and I need to call Mulder out a second time for what he says here:
Mulder: Now, if being on the job now makes you feel guilty or uncomfortable or uneasy, I think you should back away because if it's clouding your judgement, you're putting yourself in danger.
Quite the hypocrite you are there, Mulder, with how many times your judgment in cases is clouded by your sister’s abduction, and really the fact that your entire career is based on that event.
“I'm afraid to believe.”
By the end of the episode, I really don’t think Scully knows still what she believes.
It is very off-putting that Boggs seems to know so much about her, and even though I also don’t believe in psychics, there are some things that even make me go “Uh…no, that’s a little too weird to just be random”:
Boggs singing “Beyond the Sea”. This one I suppose could be completely random. Maybe Boggs goes around the prison singing to himself all the time. But singing that song around Scully is very creepy, indeed.
Boggs using the nickname “Starbuck” for Scully
While I could accept the above being random, and I could maybe fathom Boggs learning that Scully had recently lost her father, this one is too weird
It’s not like “Starbuck” is a common nickname for a father to use for his daughter
Other aspects, Boggs could have learned through newspapers I suppose, but even if Boggs found a DC obituary for Scully’s father somehow, I highly doubt Scully’s nickname would have been published with that.
Scully tries to rationalize everything as “Boggs could have learned about me as soon as he heard I was your partner”, but I question that myself and I wonder if she really believes that.
Somewhat frustratingly, we aren’t given an exact time frame for the events in this episode. It is unclear if Scully’s return to work is the day after her father died, or a few days later, or week later. It does seem that her return was quite soon though, and so how much time would Boggs have to learn about Scully? Especially given that this was the 90s, so finding a random DC obituary would be quite difficult.
I’ll get more into Boggs in a little bit here, but as I, also a scientist, try to rationalize this like Scully, I will say it is very possible that Boggs did plan this kidnapping, and had been planning it for years to show off his “talents”. Maybe he did learn that Scully was Mulder’s partner months ago, and spent time learning about her while he was also figuring out a way to get back at Mulder. Scully also was definitely giving off the vibes of “I’m someone who recently suffered a loss” during the episode, and her father would be an “easy” guess for Boggs to make.
His use of the nickname “Starbuck” though, I cannot rationalize. And I don’t truly think that Scully could, either, no matter what she tells Mulder.
But I do 100% think that Scully doesn’t want to admit the possibility to herself, because that possibility changes everything she knows about science and reality. She already lost her father and went through a crisis of faith in herself. Suddenly truly believing in psychic ability of course would be terrifying.
The Kidnapping Case
I suppose before I get into Luther Lee Boggs, I should spend just a little bit of time at least discussing the actual case Mulder and Scully are working in this episode. The case itself really is in the background here, but it is still important, and even this “background” aspect of the episode is really well done.
In the episode, a young college couple is kidnapped by someone impersonating a cop. We are told that similar kidnapping occurred a year earlier, with that couple being tortured for a week before they were killed, so this case presumably also has a deadline of one week.
As an aside, it seems like a bit of a stretch to connect this kidnapping to a random one that occurred a year before at a completely different university? I mean, it turns out to be a good thing that they did connect the two cases, but I do wonder. Did all of the information about this kidnapping come from Boggs? Particularly if we assume he was orchestrating it? And, was that case from a year previous actually done by Boggs’ possible partner, Lucas Henry? If Henry is in fact “reliving” that traumatic car crash he was in, then these specific dates would make sense (in a twisted way). But it is also possible that kidnapping was completely separate from these two killers, and Boggs and Henry just orchestrated the kidnapping in this episode to resemble a previous one, perhaps to better catch the attention of local authorities, and, ultimately, Mulder.
Anyway. In this case, Henry Lucas is the one who kidnaps the college couple and holds them hostage. With Boggs’ “help” (psychic or inside knowledge), Mulder and Scully are able to save this couple, first the girl and then the boy. And Lucas is killed after he “follows the blue devil” that Boggs warned Scully about.
Luther Lee Boggs
So. Luther Lee Boggs. A fraud, or a psychic? Has he been laying a trap for Mulder, or did his near death experience truly give him psychic abilities?
As the viewers, we are left with a lot of questions about Boggs’ true intentions and his true role in the case. It is only thanks to him (and to Scully believing him) that the college students are saved, but it is equally likely that he orchestrated the whole kidnapping, particularly if Lucas Henry was his partner for some of Boggs’ previous crimes.
One thing I do wonder is why/how Scully was saved by Boggs. There is of course the possibility that Boggs is psychic and warned her because he “saw” the floor collapsing. Because, presumably, as Scully said, if Boggs was in on it with Lucas, he would have warned Lucas about that trap too, right?
Perhaps. But I question that for a couple of reasons. For one, how would Boggs have known about that particular “trap”, even if he was working with Henry and told him to go to that abandoned brewery? Boggs has been in prison for at least the last 8 years, he would have no way of knowing that a random part of the floor was going to collapse! Other than the fact that it’s an abandoned brewery…and probably any part of that walkway would be equally likely to collapse. So Boggs had no reason to need to warn Lucas of anything other than like “dude, don’t be stupid while you run around these abandoned places”.
Second, who’s to say that Boggs particularly “liked” Lucas, anyway? Say Boggs did somehow get inside knowledge of the places in that brewery most likely to collapse. Why would he bother warning his potential partner about that? We already know that Boggs is a heartless killer, and I imagine that if they were partners previously, Boggs probably doesn’t particularly like Henry, since Boggs is stuck on death row while Henry is out free. So I’m sure Boggs is happy, honestly, that Henry is dead. And that he himself may have “caused” that death by not warning Henry about the “blue devil” trap.
So, I think it’s possible that Boggs grew to like Scully, because she was the only person that seemed to believe in his psychic abilities. And that’s why he warned her about the “trap” and not his partner in the kidnapping.
Anyway. A little bit more about Boggs and Brad Dourif.
Boggs is a truly delightfully and horrifyingly creepy character, made perfect because of the way Brad Dourif just brings him to life. The scenes of Boggs “chanelling” spirits or seeing visions or whatever could be cheesy if done by another actor, but with Dourif, they are actually scary and real. And the way he describes that previous walk to the gas chamber, with the family he murdered watching him, is just. My god. Incredible. That scene is aided by the incredible directing choice of showing that walk as well, but genuinely every movement that Dourif makes in his character just brings Boggs to life. The facial expressions, the way he moves his head, his walk, everything.
Somehow, I’ve actually only seen two other works that Brad Dourif was in, and they are by no means his “classics”. But he played Grima Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and he also had a one-off role in a Law and Order: SVU episode. And he was incredible in both of those as well, with, believe it or not, his small role in the SVU episode particularly blowing me away. It’s easy for one-off actors to just slide on by in the background in that show, but Dourif absolutely shines in the episode he is in, and really helps to make a somewhat mediocre episode (of a somewhat mediocre TV show that I nonetheless binge in the background while weighing 💩 in the lab) much better.
So it was really a huge get for The X-Files to have Dourif play this role. I am very glad that Carter convinced the Fox executives to pay for the (expensive) Dourif to guest role in this episode. I think this episode would’ve still been incredible with a different actor, because Gillian Anderson just kills it here. But the interaction between those two in their scenes is really something special.
Gillian fucking Anderson, y’all
I just need to state once again: Holy. Crap.
Gillian Anderson is an an incredible actress. Absolutely fucking incredible.
The small ways her voice breaks when she talks about her father. The awkward but loving interaction she has with her father at the very start of the episode. The way Scully’s complicated grief just shines through, shown with sadness and anger and fear of what she is seeing and what she believes.
I know most of you reading this (maybe…3 readers currently? 😅) are not watching the show concurrently with reading my reviews, but I really encourage you to watch this episode at least. It can be watched without watching the rest of the show, and it really deserves a detailed rewatch (or first watch?).
But, if you do not want to or do not have time to, I do need to at least include this incredible clip that showcases the complexity of Scully’s emotions and Gillian’s incredible acting:
The way her voice breaks just slightly when she says “if he dies” is just. So good.
Our “Completely Platonic Coworkers”
Now there isn’t any overt flirting in this episode, which is good, because it would feel very out of place and very inappropriate here.
We do have two things I want to focus on briefly though:
Scully teasing Mulder about his porn addiction, and confirmation that she has 100% walked in on him
What the fuck is this, Mulder? Who just randomly reaches out and strokes their coworker’s face to comfort them???? I mean, because Scully does seem comforted by it, it ends up being very sweet. But it’s also very weird, even if you consider that Mulder and Scully are more like friends now than “just” coworkers. Because, uh, my first instinct wouldn’t be to stroke a friend’s cheek, either. A hug, or a shoulder squeeze, yes. But stroking their cheek?!?! Jesus Christ, Mulder.
The 90s™
There’s also not too much “heehee, this was definitely the 90s!” in this episode.
Two very brief things:
The use of a gas chamber for execution. Because I am me, I actually did do some research into this, and yes, like I thought, the vast majority of states had stopped using gas chambers for executions by the 90s because they really were very unusually cruel and often caused slow, agonizing deaths. It is still of course believable that Boggs was sentenced to die by the gas chamber before it was outlawed, and so I don’t have a problem with that or anything. But just the idea of a gas chamber being used for execution is very “Oh. Wow. Yeah, I guess we used to do that…”
Mulder’s silly cell phone with its antenna he has to pull out to accept the call:
Goofs/Bloopers/Fun Facts
I don’t have any real “goofs” from this episode, so have some fun facts:
Luther Lee Boggs most likely killed his family in either 1984 or 1986, the most recent years that the Packers and Lions played each other on Thanksgiving. Given Boggs’ and Mulder’s ages, I’d place my bets on it being 1986, if Mulder was truly the one that put Boggs in prison for that crime. I think Mulder also canonically graduated from Oxford in 86, so that year makes more sense.
The “Blue Devil Brewery” is likely based on the Duke Blue Devils (if we assume for once that the writers did their homework)
There is a Jordan Lake in North Carolina! Again, either a win for the writers or a happy coincidence
This is the first episode when Mulder calls Scully just “Dana”, without her last name
Scully’s father is mouthing The Lord’s Prayer when he appears to her after his death
In the original run (and still on my DVD version), Bobby Darin’s version of “Beyond the Sea” is playing at the funeral. On all streaming services, however, instead the French version “La Mer” is what plays, presumably due to rights issues
The names "Luther Lee Boggs" and "Lucas Henry" were inspired by real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.
Mulder has held on to Max Fenig’s NICAP cap from “Fallen Angel”🥹
Overall Thoughts/Summary
Episode rating: 10/10. Absolutely. I mean, can I rate it 20/10? It truly is absolute perfection, in every possible way. As I’ve said, the episode hits even harder if you are someone who has dealt with the loss of a parent, or the loss of anyone you were previously close to but at the time of their death had a…complicated relationship. This episode is a true masterpiece in how it shows complex, stoic, quiet grief. Again, I just really have to praise Gillian Anderson for how well she portrays that. And overall how she portrays Scully grappling with new possibilities and opening herself up to the “extreme” under such circumstances. The character of Luther Lee Boggs is another true brilliance of this episode, and thank god the showrunners were able to get Brad Dourif to play that role.
Mulder/David Duchovny has a much smaller role in this episode, but I’m actually really glad about that. Mulder is in the episode just enough to act as the “skeptic” for Scully in this episode, but his role in that sense is not overbearing. We are able to focus on Scully, her grief, and her (perhaps reckless) insistence that she can still solve this case after all she has been through.
X-files cases “solved” to date: You know what, I’m going to give it to them. 10.5/13 cases solved. Technically they do not figure out who was behind the kidnapping, but it doesn’t end up mattering, as both Henry and Boggs are dead by the end of the episode. They are able to save the kidnapped college students by following Boggs’ “visions”, because Scully believed in him, as much as she might not have wanted to. If Scully hadn’t been there, and been in such this vulnerable state, I don’t know that any authorities would have been able to save the kids in time. No one else wanted to listen to Boggs, evidently.
I think I have now beaten my “Ice” review by at least 1,000 words, which is fitting for my absolute favourite episode of the show.
Hopefully my own rambling about my complicated grief wasn’t too much; I just felt like it was necessary to explain why I love this episode as much as I do. This episode was already my favourite before 2019, but on this rewatch I loved it even more because its portrayal of grief is so real.
Anyway, next week we pivot hard with “Gender Bender”, which, uh, I remember nothing about except that it involves an Amish-like community and an early guest appearance by Nicholas Lea, who will later go on to play a different key character in the show. Mostly, I’m hoping that, given the episode’s title, it doesn’t end up being problematic in retrospect. But we shall see! Until next week.