07.14.2012

Posted by in baseball, Review, Sports, TV programs, X-Files | 2 Comments

The (E)X(ley)-Files: Reviewing “The Unnatural”

Obviously aliens: Josh Exley…

Full disclosure: BuckBokai always hated the X-Files, considering the series essentially a science-fiction bastard child of obnoxious 1980s cop melodrama Miami Vice and the early 90s stupidity that was Twin Peaks. Nevertheless, since, as per the mainstream American TV norm, the ‘Files include a baseball-themed episode, season six’s “The Unnatural,” BuckBokai today turns back the clock 13 years for a viewing and reviewing of the episode.

Those familiar with the exploits of super-secret government agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully can recall that scripts mostly consisted of a load of unlikely lines and in-references poorly delivered by the principals. “The Unnatural” is happily at least half an exception here, a standalone episode with the presence of Mulder and Scully kept to a minimum via means of a frame-story device; David Duchovny directed this one and actually incorporates some nice visual touches linking the two eras of the story.

Setting for the story’s bulk is good old Roswell, New Mexico, circa July 2, 1947. “Flying saucer” incident, yadda yadda.

In focus is Josh Exley, sort of an amalgamation of Joe Bauman and Josh Gibson, a player for the barnstorming “Roswell Grays” of the Negro Leagues. Oddly, said Cactus League appears to be quite poor indeed, as a game between the Grays and the “Southwest All-Stars” in which Exley may hit his all-time record 61st home run in a season (in early July, mind you) is attended by no one other than a lotta saguaro cacti.

(As a long-time resident of New Mexico, this writer is hereby obligated to point out that saguaros are not native to the state and are instead found in Arizona, California and Mexico. Please make a note of it.)

While being scouted by the New York Yankees – in real life the team that resisted dipping into the Negro League ranks until picking up Elston Howard in 1954, even famously labeling Willie Mays as “not Yankee material” – Exley receives anonymous death threats, thus earning him a white police officer (soon up to his ears in conspiracy, natch) as full-time escort. Incidentally, this both neatly sets up the frame story and immediately conveys to the tube-watching public that this episode takes place in that happy color-blind world of 90s American TV.

…and Willie Mays

And this is where the story of “The Unnatural” is done the most disservice. What might have been a proper comment on racist structure of high-level professional sport in pre-Jackie Robinson times instead becomes a combination of clichéd paeans to baseball and already well-worn tropes. (Example of the latter: Mulder, who mysteriously has rarely even mentioned the game through six seasons of shenanigans, is suddenly obsessed enough with baseball to instantly recall the number of home runs Mickey Mantle hit lifetime from both sides of the plate – 373 lefty, 163 righty, by the way.)

What American sports fans should recall is that Negro League clubs saw fantastic financial success, regularly attracting crowds of ten of thousands, as opposed to the folksy few hundred in attendance for “Unnatural” games – and they sure didn’t have franchises in small towns like Roswell, New Mexico. And if you think BuckBokai is nitpicking, such economic success is critically important to racial equality in that country: “the three major Negro League circuits … steadily built what was to become one of the largest and most successful black-owned enterprises in America. The existence and success of these leagues stood as a testament to the determination and resolve of black America to forge ahead in the face of racial segregation and social disadvantage.”

Especially weird in the racially-charged light is a run of lines from Jesse L. Martin as Exley: “They don’t like for us to intermingle with your people. Their philosophy is: we stick to ourselves, you stick to yourselves, everybody’s happy.” Now BuckBokai knows he’s talking about aliens, but the echoes of apartheid there make the mots seem a bit twisted.

Duchovny’s script does manage a couple moments of cleverness, such as the bit on the all-time greats who are secretly aliens: Mantle, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays (“obviously,” asserts man-in-the-know-of-the-week M. Emmet Walsh), Sandy Koufax, and Bob and/or Kirk Gibson. And Exley’s memorable lines on baseball’s appeal – “The game was meaningless … it was useless but perfect.” – could easily apply to sports in our day. (Okay, maybe not handball.)

But all in all, “The Unnatural” is a swing and a miss, a baseball story watered down for the fan when it didn’t need to be. At least Duchovny gets to sport a sweet replica Homestead Grays jersey with Josh Gibson’s #20 for the final scene … one can almost ignore the woodenly delivered flirty babble of Mulder and Scully. Almost.

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  1. Joe Bauman and Josh Gibson: Real-life inspirations for Josh Exley | Buck Bokai - [...] viewing and reviewing the X-Files season six episode, “The Unnatural,” BuckBokai thought it only right to give a couple…

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