After not-so-great "The Jersey Devil", the series again returns to its horror roots with this episode. "Shadows" is another stand-alone piece of season 1, but unlike "Squeeze" and "The Jersey Devil" which focused on human killers with unnatural abilities, this one delves deeper into supernatural territory and deals with more mystical force.
The episode is centered on young woman Lauren Kyte whose boss Howard Graves died by commiting shortly before the events of this episode. Whenever she appeared in danger or something didn't go her way, a mysterious force intervened and protected her. Whether it was mugging, issues at work or the agents interrogating her, the mystical force was always there. Initially seeming that she has a psychic powers herself, the events started to imply on spiritual presence of another being that had something to do with Graves's death.
In my opinion, the most positive thing about this episode is that it is scary and almost feels like a horror movie. There are scenes of people getting killed in gruesome way, including their throat slowly being crushed by unseen force, a scene of a bath tub slowly filling with blood while screams of a man are heard, and an ominous presence of a shady government agency that refuse to reveal anything to the agents. There is uneasy atmosphere in the air all the time and the central character is visibly frightened through all the story.
But on negative note, I could see the twist of this episode incoming from a mile away. Despite the scary scenes, the revelation that Howard Graves has been murdered by Lauren's current boss Robert Dorlund and that his spirit returned to this world to exact revenge and help Lauren was something I could sense incoming and left me quite underwhelmed. It turned out Dorlund was the true antagonist to the story, not the mystical presence, and the story resolved in a way that Lauren convinced Graves's vengeful spirit to spare Dorlund, putting his spirit to rest in the process. For an episode that started on very scary note, this whole resolution took away a lot of horror impact in my eyes.
To wrap it up, "Shadows" is a creepy episode and an improvement over its predecessor, but ultimately fails to deliver an intriguing story in my eyes, thus being one of my less favorite S1 episodes. It's the first of many episodes where spirits return from the dead, but not the best one among them. So my final verdict for this episode would be a low 7/10.
A poltergeist protects a woman whenever she happens to get into trouble. It also goes after his crooked business partner and gets him busted right in front of Scully and Mulder. I like the ghost angle.
Secondary characters in this episode: None
Not necessarily a great episode and a remarkable outlier considering the tremendous body of work of Morgan & Wong, especially throughout the first season. The central storyline here is pretty unremarkable but Scully & Mulder's incredible onscreen rapport, some wonderfully witty dialogue and a very impressive guest performance by Lisa Waltz as the secretary Lauren Kyte, haunted by the ghost of her boss, makes this a perfectly watchable episode. It's no Squeeze or Ice or Beyond the Sea, the phenomenal Morgan & Wong episodes of the first season but it's fine.
Poor woman! I would be freaking out too if I was her.
Shout by ShmuckleBlockedParent2022-11-06T23:48:50Z
At first I thought it was going to be like that Angel episode where The girl had telekinetic abilities and killed those two guys. Decent episode!