Review: Revisiting The X-Files 3x03: “D.P.O.”

Written by Howard Gordon Directed by Kim Manners

After a massive trilogy of conspiracy episodes, this installment turns attention back to a typical casefile. This time, there are a slew of victims of, apparently, lightning strikes, but the forensic evidence doesn’t fully support such a conclusion. Where Scully sees a gap, Mulder sees the paranormal, as is typically the case.

Other than a comment from Scully about everything they went through from “Anasazi” through “Paper Clip”, things haven’t changed particularly much. On one hand, this is a fairly formulaic “monster of the week” episode. Mulder and Scully even have to contend with the local law enforcement being hostile (mostly Scully, which is very annoying). On the other hand, this has a solid guest cast with some familiar names.

Giovanni Ribisi gives a fairly compelling performance as Darin Peter Oswald, which elevates the episode to a large degree. (Jack Black makes an appearance as Oswald’s ill-fated friend Zero.) There were a couple of times during the episode where I felt like this could have been a solid feature-length story. As much as I say this was a bit formulaic, sometimes working within a formula means that the cast can stretch in surprising ways.

Oswald is not some misunderstood teen. He’s clearly got some emotional and psychological issues, and having the ability to control lightning is definitely not a plus under those circumstances. He is also obsessed with his boss’s young wife, who taught him remedial English. (There’s a bit of an undercurrent that Oswald’s issues are tied to the suggestion of limited intelligence, which is a bit unnecessary and unfortunate.)

One might have hoped that the previous conspiracy episodes might have led to a shift in the dynamic between Mulder and Scully. However, Chris Carter wanted to limit any serialization (despite it working so well in the early second season), which means this is largely standalone. While Scully challenges Mulder’s belief that there is foul play at work, I do think she is a tad less skeptical. But it’s somewhat annoying that there couldn’t be a stronger attempt to have a throughline of sorts. Not having explicit references to the conspiracy doesn’t have to equate to the episode feeling disconnected from prior events. (This is something that shows like Supernatural or Fringe, as heirs to The X-Files, tended to address better.)

One moment that stood out, early in the episode, is the scene where Scully is pointing out the anomalies in a recent autopsy and the local sheriff is being a sexist piece of garbage. Scully holds her own, but Mulder is conspicuously watching and refusing to step in. Scully is a bit annoyed at Mulder when all is said and done. I can see where Mulder might have thought that letting Scully handle it herself was the right move, since it felt like the sheriff was demeaning Scully because she was a woman, but part of it was also that the sheriff had little patience for federal “interference”. It feels like Mulder could have backed his partner without undermining Scully in the process. (He does, however, take pointed shots at the sheriff later in the episode, so there’s that.)

While this may be a fairly standard episodic entry for The X-Files, this was the period for the series where everything was a well-oiled machine. I might have preferred a more holistically unified format for the series, but that was not the typical format of the times.