Given how often I’ve espoused Chris Carter’s serial killer-centric show MILLENNIUM, it will shock no one that I routinely rewatch select episodes every October.
One of those eps is “Jose Chung’s ‘Doomsday Defense’”. Penned by Darin Morgan, ‘Doomsday’ sees profiler Frank Black investigating the murder of an excommunicated ‘Selfosophy’ church member, a man who died wearing a Selfosophy visor and a forced, teeth-clenched grin on his face.
Beloved, aging cult author Jose Chung — previously seen in Morgan’s acclaimed THE X-FILES ep “Jose Chung from Outer Space” — enters the picture. Chung is a ’Selfosophy’ expert, as he was friends with Onan Goopta, the creator of the barely-disguised take on Scientology. Goopta was an aspiring writer under the literary umbrella as Chung, and heavily inspired by his work.
It features a number of Morgan’s creative tics: unreliable narrators, absurd antics, real-life riffs, and double-negatives. In other words, it’s the same sort of inventive, off-beat, singularly satirical work you expect from him. It’s also brilliant complimented by another beloved cult figure, Charles Nelson Reilly, who infuses Chung with an irreverent but melancholy air.
While I frequently come back to this episode for how unique and nuanced it is, there is one scene that has haunted me:
Chung is alone, sitting at his desk scribbling away at his latest novel and musing to himself.
CHUNG (sighs): “This book will be the death of me. I just can’t write any more. What possessed me to want to be a writer, anyway?”
CHUNG pours a shot of whiskey.
CHUNG: “What kind of life is this? What else can I do now with no other skills or abilities?”
CHUNG drops two Alka-Seltzers into the shot and stares at the fizzing glass.
CHUNG: “My life has fizzled away. Only two options left: Suicide, or become a television weather man.”
CHUNG picks up his pen and commences writing again.
CHUNG: “…like television weathermen, getting information one could gather simply by looking out the window, forensic profilers provide little of practical matter. Mr. Blork, however…”
This scene perfectly captures both being a writer — or any vastly interior profession — and the act of writing. Sneakily, it also provides the crux of the episode, all about writers and readers. Chung and Goopta being two-sides of the same published coin, both seeking readers in their own way, both finding readers seeking meaning in words, and Frank following the impact of those words.
“Jose Chung’s ‘Doomsday Defense’” could be a navel-gazing work about one’s craft, but instead it a ruminates on why we create and how your creations resonate once they’re out in the world, how your works can be celebrated, misinterpreted, abused, used for good or for evil, or all of the above.
Now that, dear reader, is a writer’s horror story.
ADDENDUM
Finally, there’s a single line of dialogue that I also frequently return to. I wish more folks were familiar with this episode so I could use it as a contextual joke. In a scene that segues into the above internal monologue, a Selfosophy member is in a coffee shop, seated in front of his laptop, writing a scene detailing how he thinks Chung goes about his process. To showcase to use Selfosophy’s emphasis on positivity, he declares to himself:
“Boy, my writing has really improved since I got this software!”
Has it? Has it really?