"My people live with ghosts, the ghosts of our fathers and our
father's fathers. They call to us from distant memory showing
us the path."

"No ghosts called to those men - you did - by preying on their
hopelessness and desperation."

There were no real ghosts in "Hell Money" despite the presence
of our favorite ghost busters (as Mulder says "Who ya gonna
call?"). The ghosts that were witnessed were in the minds of
the victims. No doubt the "this wasn't an X-File" troops will be
whining in full force about this one. However, if I may point
out, this show gave us something that many folks have been
asking for for a long, long time. What we have beneath all
the mystical cultural layers is basically an X-File case that
turns out to be a hoax and that our dear Dr. Scully solves.
While Mulder goes on about haunted houses Scully methodically
pokes and prods at glass eyes and cut up cadavers to give us
the real answer to the string of mysterious deaths.

This was an interesting episode, certainly not a great one.
I have often wondered why the show didn't tap more into the
cultural myths that abound in the realm of the paranormal.
"Dod Kalm" took a stab at some Norse mythology and "Teso", well
who knows what that was a stab at. Instead of just giving us
our usual teaser foreign language lesson, this one continues
through the entire episode. Jeffery Vlaming, in his choice to
keep much of the episode's dialog in Cantonese, throws the 
audience into the atmosphere of the episode. We must try to 
figure out the rules of the game without being explicitly told.

We rely, like Mulder and Scully, on Detective Chao to give us
the answers that we need to the barriers of language and
culture. This allows the audience in a way to take the same
journey they do and to begin to have the same doubts. While Chao
hides his own guilt by using the mysteries of his culture - those
of Hell Money and the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts - he lets it
slip early on that it is his mortgage that haunts him.

This episode did have a prime example of something that we
have seen before, in fact it was present in the other Vlaming
written piece this season, that being a further glimpse into
just why Dana Scully is an FBI agent and doesn't have that
lovely family practice somewhere in Vermont. She just really
despises people that prey on others and really truly longs for
justice. Whenever we get these 'Scully confronts the guilty
criminal' scenes Gillian Anderson just infuses Scully with
contempt. Her delivery of the line "I understand that you are
going to prison for a very long time" is rife with her anger.
This is one of the reasons we love Scully, her frustration for
people forced into desperate situations and her prevailing sense
of justice despite all that she has seen. She just hates those
bad guys.

We also had some fun Mulder/Scully interaction as usual. Scully's
silent sigh as Mulder starts in on his "haunted" theories. Mulder
jumping in the grave as Lt. Neary asks Scully "What the hell is
he doing?" and her slight shake of the head in reply as she
waits along with him for the answer. And of course the delightful 
autopsy scene (only in the X-Files can you ever call an autopsy 
scene delightful). I like the fact that Scully is allowing herself to 
crack the slightest of smiles (not too much, wouldn't want to 
encourage him) at Mulder's quips. The "Do you know how much 
the human body is worth Mulder?" and his reply "Depends on 
the body." was fun enough that  Scully even allows herself to 
crack the worst joke to Mulder's delight: "this is one man who 
left his heart in San Francisco".

So what didn't work? Why was this episode not as successful as it
could have been? For me the major reasons were the heavy 
handedness of the social issues and the pacing. The story could 
have done without the overstated moral lessons (or at least picked 
one instead of such a grab bag). Here we have the plight of immigrants, 
the poor, and the uninsured. Mr. Hsin being forced into the game
to save his sick daughter - not because he is a bad man.
Additionally, we have the ABC (American Born Chinese) Detective
Chao who must wrestle with protecting his people (which he really
isn't doing) or paying his mortgage with the real "Hell Money" -
that gained from the lottery that could never be won. We ended up
being asked to feel sorry for these people for too many reasons
instead of one compelling one.

All this also slowed the story down considerably. I don't mind
reading subtitles, but the scenes between the father and daughter
just dragged. Nothing was happening. They were exposition only
for social commentary. Also, I don't know about you folks, but
I figured out the rules of the game the first time around so that 
by the third time we had to watch it things had just become 
repetitive instead of intense.

Even the attempted theme of luck doesn't really pan out for me.
We see it first early on with the discussion between Mulder and
the Lieutenant: "We got lucky with this one." M:"Lucky? That's
an interesting word for it." Luck is infused in the no-win lottery 
and again in Mr. Hsin's pleas of "Maybe I'm not so lucky." 
However despite introducing this prevailing theme it really went 
no where. Again an idea half formed.

Random Musings
-------------------------

-Wow, win a chance to lose your eye. Here I've been stupidly
playing the Colorado lottery. What a fool I've been.

-The shots in the beginning of the cremation alive were
very hot, so to speak.

-Bear gall bladder soup. Yum.

-You know if you are going to bring back the frogs I can't
think of a better way than to have one crawl out of a body
during an autopsy. Boy those run of the mill bodies must just
bore Dana to tears these days.

-Fun little Mulder moment with him rolling his eyes and sighing
at the fireworks as Scully pokes fun at him with the "looks like
you just saw a ghost" comment.

-Do good people ever wear pinky rings or is that reserved for the
truly evil?

Autumn
"What a way to go"