Improbable

Thanks, first of all, to the lovely and talented Heathen, for covering the recaplet for me this week while I was at a wedding. Second: why is Chandler on Ally McBeal, and why is he so tan?

Instead of jumping right into this week's episode, I need to discuss the teaser. It's Gillian Anderson and Annabeth Gish and Robert Patrick, all doing that Stand Around and Look Serious With Your Arms Crossed thing, but in the middle of SAaLSWYACing, Gillian Anderson falls over. Everyone laughs. I think this might actually have been a legitimate blooper, from their reactions, since I haven't seen any of them look that realistically surprised all season.

We open in Vegas (baby, Vegas), on a close shot of a hand dealing cards. Wacky cha cha music wiggles its hips in the background. I love Vegas. It's so delightfully tacky. The last time I was there, I was browsing in a gift shop and found a snow globe which featured -- instead of the usual fairies or angels or replicas of New York, New York -- Christ on the cross. In a snow globe. Vegas, man. It's horrible in the best possible way. We move to a split screen revealing a series of pathetic-looking saps waiting for their hand in what looks like Pai Gow poker. Last time I was in Vegas, actually, fellow recapper Heathen almost got us thrown out of the Sahara in a highly dramatic Pai Gow poker incident. See, apparently there's a very specific way you need to present your hand to the dealer and Heathen accidentally did it backwards (we were just learning how to play, and it's quite complicated), and I swear to God, the dealer acted like Heathen pulled the severed head of Danny Gans (Vegas's Entertainer of the Year!) out of her pocket and threw it on the table and then disappeared in a burst of flames. They called the pit boss over and everything. In the end, of course, everything was smoothed over and neither Heathen nor I ended up in a Las Vegasean jail or on an episode of C.S.I. Good times, people. Unfortunately, nothing of that sort happens here in the episode, although this one Scary Dude does give his hand the evil eye, toss it angrily down on the table, and stomp off in a huff. The French Cha Cha music continues to cha cha cha merrily in the background. SD ambles over to the slots, eyeing a desperate-looking blonde. She doesn't look at him directly, but stiffens when he invades her personal space. He watches her pull the lever on the slot machine, with no success.

Cha cha cha over to the bar, where Burt Reynolds orders "a seven and Seven, pack of Morleys." SD stomps over and orders the same. The bartender smiles at Burt, who genially announces that they "have a winner!" SD glares. "Do I know you?" he asks. "Do you know me?" Burt responds. "Come on, Wayno [his name is Wayno?], I'm part of the regular game. You know your problem, my friend? It's not the cards. It's playing the hand you were dealt. Plenty of guys get a bad deal. It's all in what you do with it. Know what I'm saying, partner?" Wayno just glares. "You can think. Cards can't," Burt continues. "You have to make them work for you." Suddenly, I notice that Burt's been playing Solitaire this entire time. He calls each card before he turns it over. Wayno watches warily. And I have a confession to make. Five minutes in and I already sort of love Burt, who's currently listing the probability of getting a flush, a straight, a full house, or a pair in poker. Shorthand: it's hard to get a decent hand. In poker, or in life. "The game can't beat the man," Burt says. "The man only beats himself. And so on and so forth." He notices Wayno (his name can't really be Wayno, can it?) eyeing the Desperate Blonde at the slots. "She comes here every Friday, loses her paycheck, cries all week," Burt says, nodding at her. Eventually, DB gets off her stool and treads dejectedly to the bathroom. Wayno watches. Burt watches him watch, then wonders if Wayno's about ready to call it a night. Wayno just gets up and begins to follow DB. Burt grabs him. "Hey, Wayno? You're bluffing me, right?" he asks. Wayno glares. Burt asks Wayno to "walk out and surprise [him]," but Wayno just tears his arm away from Burt and heads for the head. He pauses for a moment, acting as if he might just go into the little boy's room to powder his nose. At the last moment, though, he goes into the ladies' room. Burt shakes his head. In the background, the DB's machine pays off, and a guy begins to yell gleefully. Shortly thereafter, a woman comes running out of the ladies' room, screaming for help. "There's a woman who's been murdered!" she yelps. Burt looks down at the ace of clubs in his hands. Mark Snow turns off the cha cha, cues up Dum Dum Dum Duuuuuum (# 67) and has another donut.

Credits. This week, instead of The Truth is Out There, we get "Dio Te Ama," which is, I believe, "God Loves You," in Italian. Thanks for that daily affirmation, Chris Carter!

FBI HQ, Home of the Cheery Cha Cha. Moronica's reading about the Vegas murder as she walks through the halls of the FBI. There is a truly great overhead shot of her walking through the hallway, people bustling around her, in time to the music. The ceiling beams (through which this shot is framed) make a sort of grid pattern above her. It's a really nice effect. Don't say I never did nothing for you, Carter. I know you directed this. And you did a nice job. Seriously. I really mean it. I do. Moronica, still reading, gets into the elevator. Everyone lines up neatly in front of her. Cha cha cha.

LBO. Moronica sits at Mulder's desk...okay, Doggett's desk. Scully's desk. I don't know. There's still only one desk down there that I can see. Anyway, she's sitting there, counting on her fingers and staring at some files. I wonder if this episode -- which really is all about numbers and counting and patterns in addition to, like, fate and shit -- has anything to do with the fact that 1013 (and heavens, now that I think about it, it seems that Chris Carter really does like the significance of numbers) is counting down to the end of the show. For some reason, that sort of cracks me up. I'm getting soft, I guess. Last week I liked Dawson and now this. Please don't fire me. Moronica's still counting on her fingers. I'd make fun of her for that, except that I do it all the time. I also have to sing the Alphabet Song to myself if I need to alphabetize something. Scully stomps into the office. Shouldn't she be at Quantico? What happened to her new job? Maybe it's Spring Break and all of her supercilious students are at Fort Lauderdale. Special Agents Gone Wild! here we come. "What are you doing?" Scully asks, as Moronica abandons the fingers and starts counting out loud. Finally she stops, and asks Scully to "open [her] mind to something," and not think Moronica is "crazy." Eyebrow. "Why would I think you're crazy?" Scully asks, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "Do you believe the universe is knowable as a mathematic calculation of the whole? Reduced to a single equation?" Moronica asks. Oh, dear God, please don't let this episode be about math. Because that would be torture for me. I hate math. It's right there in my bio, people. ["The other day, my sister and I took a good five minutes to try to calculate 20% of $12. I have two advanced degrees, and she's a university student. We were on the subway at the time, and I'm sure our fellow passengers thought we were simple. It was embarrassing." -- Wing Chun] Scully shakes her head. "No," she says, explaining that the world is too complex to reduce to a single set of numbers. But, she adds, some people do believe in what is called the Unified Theory, "what physicists often refer to as the Theory of Everything, an equation so simple they say that it might be printed on a t-shirt. It's the Holy Grail of science, potentially the most important question mankind has ever asked. But that such a complex calculation is even possible is a subject of enormous controversy," Scully narrates. "Is that what you mean?" she asks. "Um, potentially," Moronica says, in a way that actually means, "Scully, no one likes a math geek."

thing you know, Moronica's showing Scully overheads of several murdered women, including DB. Oh, all right: heh. Not at the dead girls. At the overheads. It's very Mulder of her, and I sort of like it. It's old school, y'all. Moronica intones each victim's name and birthday. I'm so sad that they didn't name a dead girl after me. Come on, Chris! I just said you did a really great job with that overhead shot, and I don't think I've called you a hack in, like, over a week! You know I tease because I love, right? Well, I used to love. I sort of love. It's a thin line between love and hate, anyway. Very thin! The thinnest! Call me! Anyway, Scully doesn't see the connection between all these unsolved crimes. "Am I to presume that you've solved these murders using some kind of numerical calculation?" she eyebrows. Moronica has. "Math sucks!" the Mulder action figure yells from inside his shoe box office, where, yesterday, I caught him lifting weights (the weights being two Lifesavers stuck on a toothpick). "I would never come up with some stupid math -- ouch!" There's a loud thud. The box shakes. Moronica tells Scully that she has: basically, numerology. (According to Astrology-Numerology.com, numerology "is perhaps the easiest of the occult arts to understand and use. All you need is the birth date and the complete name of an individual to unlock all of the secrets that the numbers hold. There are eleven numbers used in constructing Numerology charts. These numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 22. Larger numbers that occur from adding the numbers in the complete birth date or from the values assigned to each name, are reduced by adding the digits together until the sum achieved is one of the core numbers. Merely add the components of the larger number together (repeatedly, if necessary) until a single digit (or the "master" numbers 11 or 22) results. Each of these numbers represents different characteristics and expressions." That's the short version, anyway).

Scully dismisses numerology as "essentially a child's game." Moronica tries to bring in some backup by pointing out that Pythagoras used it for...something. His theorem? I seriously don't know. The name Pythagoras comes up, I flash back to Geometry and Mrs. Schlossberg, and everything just goes dark. Scully makes a skeptical face and asks Moronica where she learned numerology. Moronica is forced to admit that she learned it as a child. Really? Because I learned about numerology from the back of Cosmo, where I read that numbers could unlock the secrets of my destiny and bring me happiness, a rich husband, and a twenty-three-inch waist. I also learned that rouging your nipples is sexy, which just goes to show you can't believe everything you read in Cosmo. Of course, I don't even read Cosmo anymore, so maybe it's all about quantum physics and forensic pathology now. Moronica explains that she still uses numerology as a party trick -- an icebreaker. She figured out that each of the murdered women was a "cosmic number": a 10, a 13, a 16. But she still has no hard forensic evidence to connect the murders to a single killer, she admits. The girls look at the last overhead for a long moment; then Scully asks Moronica to enlarge it. DB has a series of small circles on her cheek -- maybe, Scully posits, from the killer's ring. They check the rest of the women's faces. Bingo. Scully shrugs that the murders are connected, after all. "So, numerology may be driving the killer and I'm definitely not crazy," Moronica says. "Well, maybe you're both crazy," Scully offers.