“Duane Barry” – Season 2 Ep. 5

Scully: You okay, Mulder?
Mulder: Yeah.
Scully: Whatever you’re feeling, you did the right thing.
Mulder: It’s just that, ah, I believed him.
Scully: Sometimes when you want to believe so badly you end up looking too hard.

Written by: Christ Carter

Directed by: Chris Carter

Original Air Date: October 14th, 1994

Principal Setting: Marion, Virginia

Episode Summary: 

Mulder is called in to act as a hostage negotiator when a mentally unbalanced convict, Duane Barry (Steve Railsback), takes four people by gunpoint. Dwayne believes he’s a alien abductee and he’s constantly under stress the aliens are coming back to get him. He’s also a former FBI agent, so Mulder has two things in common to hopefully sympathize and relate to Barry. Mulder contacts Scully, and she finds that Barry was shot in the head and the bullet crossed the part of the brain that causes you to basically become a pathological liar, which calls into question everything Duane has said. By the time Mulder gets this information, Mulder has become a hostage and fully believing Barry to hopefully calm him down from hurting anyone.

The authorities finally apprehend Duane by shooting him and goes back to the hospital. They discover foreign pieces of metal in his body, which Scully scans at the grocery store (while curbing her pregnancy cravings buying ice cream and pickles), and it is some sore of cataloging device. Scully may not be safe as the metal piece is still active and Duane is somehow still linked to it.

Personal Commentary:

“Duane Barry” is the start of where Season 2 really picks up momentum. The first few episodes have been slow, but the great acting performance by Steve Railsback as he portrays Duane’s paranoia and fear perfectly, makes this one very intense.  He does such a great job acting crazy by speaking in the first person, although he also has enough fear and desperation in his eyes to believe that he has been abducted by aliens. It really puts the believer vs. skeptic choice for the audience to decide.

I also love to see Alex Krycek be put in his place, when he becomes impatient and asks Agent Lucy Kazdin (CCH Pounder) if he can help in any way, and she gives him an order to go pick up a vanilla cappuccino.

Mulder has been in a bit of a funk these first few episodes of the second season, but once Scully’s life is in danger and he feels the guilt of letting Duane go, he starts on a fervent journey to save Scully and to find the truth and who to trust.

Episode Grade: B+

Favorite Scene: 

The end scene is very tense and begins the story arc of Scully’s disappearance (AKA pregnancy leave).

Fun Facts:

• First two-part episode of the series.
• Spoiler fact…The writers of the show needed a way to film around Gillian Anderson’s late pregnancy and the birth of her baby, so they wrote her disappearance into the show; this is the beginning of that story arc.
• This is Chris Carter’s directorial debut.

Faces You Recognize:

• CCH Pounder is famouos for playing in Avatar, The Shield, and Face/Off.
• Nicholas Lea has played in Vertical Limit and Chaos and more recently famous for being in The Killing and Arrow.