Line #8 Recap/TheXFilesS03E07TheWalk


1	[[WMG:[[center:[-'''RECAP:'''\
2	[[Recap/TheXFiles Index]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E01TheBlessingWay 1]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E02PaperClip 2]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E03DPO 3]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E04ClydeBruckmansFinalRepose 4]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E05TheList 5]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E06TwoShy 6]] \| '''7''' \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E08Oubliette 8]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E09Nisei 9]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E10SevenThreeOne 10]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E11Revelations 11]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E12WarOfTheCoprophages 12]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E13Syzygy 13]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E14Grotesque 14]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E15PiperMaru 15]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E16Apocrypha 16]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E17Pusher 17]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E18TesoDosBichos 18]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E19HellMoney 19]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E20JoseChungsFromOuterSpace 20]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E21Avatar 21]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E22Quagmire 22]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E23Wetwired 23]] \| [[Recap/TheXFilesS03E24TalithaCumi 24]]]]-]]]
3	'''Season 3, Episode 07:'''
4	!The Walk
5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thexfilesthewalk.png]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:''"I know a lot of crips have the same dream: [[TitleDrop 'The Walk']]."'']]
7	->Written by John Shiban\
8	Directed by Rob Bowman
9
10	->''"This is about all the grunts and all the crips and all the boys who came home in a BOX! The enemy must be defeated. And we're going to do it!"''
11	-->-- '''Leonard "Rappo" Trimble'''
12
13	A military hospital is menaced by a "phantom soldier" who seems to target the friends and families of officers.
14	----
15	!!Tropes:
16	* AstralProjection: Rappo, the MonsterOfTheWeek, has the ability to detach himself from his body.
17	-->'''Scully:''' What you're saying is this man, Rappo, is leaving his body and floating around town killing people?
18	* BungledSuicide: The episode opens Lt. Colonel Stans attempting suicide by drowning himself in boiling water and failing because he can't die. Mulder and Scully come to investigate it.
19	* BuriedAlive: How Rappo kills Callahan's son in the sandbox.
20	* CruelMercy: Callahan comes to kill Rappo over what he did to his wife and son. However, he simply fires off rounds into the wall above his head, missing intentionally, telling the surprised Rappo, "No, you suffer like the rest of us."
21	* DeathOfAChild: Several children die. One boy on-screen.
22	* DespairEventHorizon: Stans has already reached this point by the time the episode begins, and Rappo is working very hard to ensure General Callahan reaches it next.
23	* DisproportionateRetribution: Rappo blames the Army and people in general for not caring about common soldiers' suffering. He edges close to [[JerkassHasAPoint making a valid point]] during his MotiveRant, but his extreme methods of revenge make it impossible to sympathize with him.
24	* EvilCripple: Rappo is a quadruple amputee who kills even kids as part of his revenge. The episode goes out of its way to avoid making him at all sympathetic.
25	* FiveSecondForeshadowing: As Trevor is playing with toy soldiers in a sandpit, Rappo's astral projection makes his presence known by tipping sand down some of those toys. The boy picks them up from their partially buried state and seconds later, the astral projection buries Trevor alive, killing him. That trick was foreshadowing Trevor's death.
26	* ICannotSelfTerminate: Part of the revenge. The villain-of-the-week won't let his victims commit suicide after having murdered their families. This is part of why he's committing the murders as well. By the time Callahan confronts him, Rappo is daring the general to kill him.
27	* MonsterOfTheWeek: A crippled war veteran who can use Astral Projection to kill the families of the commanding officers he blames for his quadruple amputation.
28	* MotiveRant: Late in the episode, Rappo gives a speech to Mulder about how much he resents the public's indifference towards the military, and particularly soldiers wounded or traumatized in war, so long as it doesn't effect their daily lives.
29	* NoOSHACompliance: The hydrotherapy room where Stans attempts ([[ICannotSelfTerminate and fails]]) to commit suicide by boiling himself alive has no safeguards against people [[ShapedLikeItself being boiled alive]] in the hydrotherapy tank, has a bunch of weights just lying around on the floor, and neither any of this equipment or the room itself is secured or locked in any way when not in use. In fact, the door can only be locked from the inside using a sliding latch. The room is also much larger and much creepier than it needs to be.
30	* NoodleIncident: We never get a solid explanation for how Rappo was wounded or why he blames Callahan and Stans for what happened to him. The original script explains that he was the victim of friendly fire but (apparently under network pressure) this explanation was cut from the episode.
31	* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Though combative at first, Gen. Callahan quickly realizes that he needs Mulder and Scully's help after the death of his subordinate.
32	* RedHerring: A soldier named Roach is suspected of carrying out the murders at Rappo's behest. Roach does effectively work for Rappo by delivering mail to the homes of his intended victims.
33	* RevengeByProxy: Exaggerated. Rappo kills off all family members of his chain of command.
34	* ShoutOut: Captain Draper's death while swimming is one, to ''Film/CatPeople''. And John Shiban essentially wrote the episode as ''The Men'', a 1950 drama starring Creator/MarlonBrando as a paraplegic veteran, but with horror elements added.
35	* VorpalPillow: [[spoiler: How Stans ends Rappo's killing spree; while the lattter is in a trance during his astral projection during the climax, Stans is able to kill his former subordonate with a pillow.]]
36	* WouldHurtAChild: One of the things keeping Rappo from being at all sympathetic.
37	* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: When Roache, Rappo's "mailman" who deilvers stolen mail from the victims homes to give Rappo a link to his victims when he astral projects, is arrested and locked in solitary, Rappo kills him.
38	----

Context Recap / TheXFilesS03E07TheWalk