With summer quickly approaching, pretty much every show worth watching is coming to an end. That makes the summer the perfect time to binge watch what you missed along with some old classics. That’s where the Multiversity Summer TV Binge comes from. One of my personal favorite shows ever is The X-Files, and it is my mission in life to make everyone ever watch it. This summer, I’ll be looking back at season one. This week we look at “Miracle Man,” a “monster of the week” episode that takes lots of twists and turns but makes for a solid episode.
1. The Premise
“Miracle Man” begins in the past after a terrible car accident. A preacher and his son approach one of the victims as he’s being sealed into a body bag and the boy commands him to wake up and heal. As all the rescue workers clear the scene and get ready to take him away, the man in the bag grabs the hand of the boy. He’s brought back to life somehow by this young boy and the episode then jumps ahead a decade. The preacher, Calvin Hartley and his son Samuel Hartley are now stars of sorts. They have an extremely profitable and popular mission where Samuel heals people. Unfortunately things have gone badly at their church as people have died after coming into contact with Samuel. “Miracle Man” is a strange episode that almost feels like it isn’t an episode of this show but gets weird in a really good way.
2. Not An X-File
The thing that’s interesting about “Miracle Man” is that it isn’t an actual X-Files. Scully is called in because the police department where this church is asked for medical expertise from the F.B.I. They don’t know how to explain what happened to these victims and they want to know what Samuel can actually do. This is interesting because the events of this episode would have still unfolded without Mulder and Scully. They don’t exactly take a backseat to things but they aren’t the catalyst and that makes this episode feel very different.
3. Religion and the Unexplained
“Miracle Man” is the first episode of The X-Files that examines religion and it won’t be the last. The problem with this is that it doesn’t really present any nuance. This episode doesn’t look at belief but instead makes everyone very stereotypical and that’s unfortunate. Later on in the series, we’ll see Scully’s faith examined but this was a good place to maybe start that. Instead, we got your typical bible thumpers with some unfortunate southern stereotypes. I don’t belong to any of those groups but I felt like this was a bit of a missed opportunity with the town. However, this episode does have some very good guest actors as Samuel Hartley, played by Scott Bairstow steals the show. He’s charismatic and tortured and seems to play the role as if he was trying to be a 90’s version of Jesus Christ. It’s a really interesting portrayal and helps make the episode a bit more compelling than it has any right to be.
4. We Make Our Beliefs
One of the things that comes up a lot in this episode is Mulder’s sister. When Mulder and Samuel first meet, they discuss Mulder’s sister because Samuel can see the pain Mulder carries. At this point, Mulder becomes a believer in what Samuel can do because he begins to have visions of his sister. Mulder is a man who tends to believe in things more freely than Scully and he begins to want to help Samuel and learn more about him. This is the only time beliefs are looked at with a little more nuance because Mulder kind of gets caught up in all of this. It’s also worth noting in this recap/review because it’s rare that this comes up outside of mythology episodes. Usually the overaching stuff only comes in mythology episodes but this is a slight change for the show. We start to see things pop up a little more here and there instead of being contained to specific episodes. This is a good thing and it makes the show feel more cohesive.
Continued below5. What Was Real?
The big twist of “Miracle Man” is that Samuel hasn’t actually killed anyone and he hasn’t brought plagues with him. Leonard Vance, the man he saved a decade ago, is the one doing the killings. He didn’t want to live because of how badly burned he was and he blamed Samuel and hated him for it. He decided to take revenge by doing what he did and ultimately kills himself. Everything that happened in this episode, up until Samuel’s death is done by Vance. He wanted to ruin the church and he did just that. However, things don’t end there. After Samuel dies in jail (heavily implied to be by the hand of the Sheriff) his body goes missing and we’re left to wonder if he was resurrected like Jesus. We’re left with that and it’s an open ending that makes a lot of sense given the religious overtones. We never really know if Samuel was a healer and we don’t know if he lived. We have to believe in it one way or another and it puts a big bow over an episode that isn’t great but is one of the better monster of the week episodes of the first season.
