Recap / The X-Files S06 E10 "Tithonus"

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Season 6, Episode 10:

Tithonus

"This is it. This is what I do. Looking for the shot."

Written by Vince Gilligan
Directed by Michael Watkins

"You have, Mr. Fellig, a long and uncanny history of being the first person at the scene of a death. You also have a history of covering up that fact. Why?"

— Dana Scully

Scully, but not Mulder, is assigned to investigate Alfred Fellig, a New York City crime scene photographer with a suspicious knack of turning up when somebody is about to die.

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Tropes:

• Agent Mulder: With the actual Mulder out of the case, Scully takes over his role while Ritter plays The Scully.
• Balancing Death's Books: Fellig recounts how he became immortal when a nurse took his death for him. At the end of the episode, he does the same for Scully, gaining the death he desires and implicitly leaving her immortal in turn.
• Blessed with Suck: How Fellig sees immortality, as he's been stuck an old man now for over a century and has forgotten a large portion of his life, along with living very isolated from other people (probably to cover all this up).
• Busman's Holiday: Mulder is forced out of the action, but still helps Scully as much as he can.
• By-the-Book Cop: Peyton Ritter, the NYC-based agent Scully is partnered with, criticizes Scully for going off the book and blames it on Mulder's influence.
• Chekhov's Gun: One dating all the way back to the Season 3 episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". In that episode, Bruckman claimed to be able to see people's deaths, and when Scully asked him how she's going to die, he replied, "You don't". This episode ends with Fellig apparently transferring his immortality to Scully.
• The Cynic: Fellig, in spades. The only thing keeping him from going full Misanthrope Supreme is that he's not an Omnicidal Maniac. Not now, at least.
• Deadpan Snarker: Fellig.
  Scully: Mr. Fellig... I know that you know more about photography than I do... but this is just a lens flare.
  Fellig: You're right... I do know more about photography than you do.
• Death Seeker: Fellig tried several times to commit suicide, but nothing works. He's only in pain.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Alfred Fellig sees when people are about to die. Their color fades and he sees them in black and white.
• Elderly Immortal: Alfred Fellig was already in his 60s when he became immortal, and didn't get youth along with immortality.

• Exposition of Immortality: Done first when Scully and Ritter find Fellig's crime scene working licenses going back to 1964, all showing he hasn't aged a day since the first. Second offscreen, when Mulder runs his prints through the system and finds them in documents going to before 1938, with the oldest one showing he entered his birth date as 1849. Later, Fellig tells Scully he became immortal during New York City's final yellow fever epidemic, which ended in 1799 (being in his 60s at the time, this puts his birth back somewhere in the 1730s or so).
• Fate Worse than Death: Fellig certainly thinks so. Mulder lampshades it thus:
  Mulder: Now we're talking about a guy for whom the phrase "life in prison" carries some seriously weighty connotations. I think you should get to him before he vanishes and becomes someone else.
• The Fog of Ages: Fellig mentions this as one of many downsides to his immortality. He tells Scully he'd once tried to look up information on his wife at the hall of records... then realized he'd forgotten what her name was, since it had been so long. As "Arthur Fellig" was just one of many identities he'd adopted too, it's possible that he's also forgotten what his real name was over two hundred plus years. He used this as an argument to Scully that anyone living past 75 years loses everything worth it, since their memories fade.
• Healing Factor: Fellig has this as a side-effect of his immortality, being able to recover from being stabbed repeatedly over a couple of days. The ending implies that he has passed this on to Scully, as she's told by Mulder that her exceptionally quick recovery from her gunshot wound have left the hospital staff in awe.
• Hero on Hiatus: Mulder is left out of the case, resulting in a Scully-centric episode.
• Holding Hands:
  • Fellig takes Scully's hand after they are shot and tells her to not look Death in the eye, so he can take her place.
  • Mulder holds Scully's hand in the hospital.
• I Have Many Names: Fellig comes up with a new name when he has to renovate his working license. He has been "Alfred Fellig", "Henry Strand", "L.H. Rice" and "Lewis Brady" at different times since 1929.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: All Fellig wants is to die. He thinks living beyond 75 is nonsense.
• Implied Death Threat: Mulder coldly towards Agent Ritter over accidentally shooting Scully, and her recovering from it.
  Mulder: You're a lucky man.
• Inspector Javert: Ritter is convinced that Fellig is a murderer and is out to arrest him before Scully even joins him.
• Major Injury Underreaction: After Fellig gets stabbed several times, he takes the knife out of his back and goes about his business with just a little pain and enough blood loss to be taken for a murder victim. He answers the FBI's call to interrogate him with the still open wounds in his back.
• Meaningful Name: Alfred Fellig's aliases are references to historical American crime and war reporters going back to The American Civil War.
• No Antagonist: Fellig isn't murdering people in reality, and the only reason he doesn't come clean to the FBI in the first place is because they won't believe him. It turns out he did murder some people in 1929 however, hoping to "catch Death" by doing so, but hasn't since his imprisonment (and subsequent escape) for that.
• Older Than They Look: Fellig is over 200 years old. He looks no older than 65.
• Really 700 Years Old: Fellig is revealed to be over two centuries old, while he looks around 65.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: The beginning of the episode shows Mulder and Scully having been assigned to make routinary calls in an office.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Ritter bursts into the room and shoots Fellig right away, who's only armed with a camera. He hits Scully, who is standing behind Fellig.
• Retired Monster: In the past, Fellig tried to attract Death by murdering people himself. But not anymore.
• Revisiting the Cold Case: Mulder investigates the name "Lewis Brady" that Scully found in one of Fellig's photographs and finds that it belongs to a man convicted for murder in 1929 and a fugitive since 1930. The arrest warrant was never called off, so Mulder encourages Ritter to arrest Fellig on it, 69 years later.
• Spooky Photographs: Fellig tries to get the spectral snap type of the trope and get a photograph of Death. The actual photos are more of the foreboding type because he can sense who is gonna die.
• They Call Me Mr Tibbs: During a tense conversation with Ritter, Scully tells him to stop calling her "Dana" and use her last name.
• Wall Slump: Scully. Agent Ritter shoots Fellig, but the bullet passes through him and into Scully (and apparently out again, as there's blood on the wall behind her). Once Fellig falls, there's a second or two before Scully follows.
• Wham Shot: Fellig's POV usually colors the people who will die in black and white. Later in the episode, he sees Scully with those colors, marking her for death.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Fellig lives a miserable unending existence, where life has become a purgatory, and he lives only to take pictures of the dead hoping to finally glimpse death. When Scully says that immortality would allow you to learn and experience and love new things, Fellig ruefully says that he can't even remember his dead wife's name, and considers every one of the many people he has watched die to be "lucky bastards". By the end of the episode, Scully is mortally wounded but Fellig takes the opportunity to look at Death and dies in her place, meaning Scully is now immortal, but it seems like she hasn't realized it yet.
• You Can't Fight Fate: When Fellig demonstrates his death perception to Scully by pointing out a woman who's about to die, Scully intervenes and prevents an attack on the woman, only for the woman to get hit by a passing truck.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Mulder calls Ritter and tells him to arrest Fellig because he thinks Scully is in danger, using the fact that Fellig escaped prison and has been a fugitive since 1930. Ritter is understandably confused, but Mulder tells him to do it instead of wasting their time with math. Unusually for Mulder, it works this time.

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"I-I just think that... that death only looks for you... once you seek its opposite."