Millennium: "Seven and One" (April 30, 1999)

"Evil dwells where fear lives.  In a heart without fear, Evil can find no purchase. 

God, love, goodness...these things reside in our connections with other people...

...it is those who feel the strongest that Evil wants the most."

- from "Seven and One," by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz.

The future in full flower.

There are a few programs and films I absolutely refuse to watch when I'm at home alone.  The Exorcist (1973), Halloween (1978)...and select episodes of Millennium..

Why do I find Millennium (1996-1999) so disturbing? Well, occasionally Chris Carter's second series achieves a level of deep, unrelenting spiritual terror.  That terror is not necessarily due to the egregious presence of a drooling demon or an insane serial killer.  Instead that sense of evil -- of wrongness-- is somehow amorphous, yet suffusing. It casts this doom-laden shadow over the entire enterprise.  It's a cerebral, existential terror...and it has an inescapable feel.

In my interview with Chris Carter in December of 2009, I termed this unsettling brand of horror (which was also featured in The X-Files...) as something like anticipatory anxiety.  It was a mood of looming paranoia; it was a feeling of intense uncertainty about our shared future.

Frank Black senses the presence of Evil close to home.

This unsettled vibe was partially a result of events in the narrative on any given week, but with Millennium, sometimes you can't necessarily point to any clear or comprehensible source of the feeling -- of the fear -- if that makes sense. 

In other words, evil things are clearly occurring, but you don't always understand exactly what, who is doing it, or precisely why. Clarity eludes you...and your imagination starts to fill in the black spots.

This paradigm was especially evident in Millennium's final season, 1998-1999 on Fox. As Millennium moved towards its inconclusive last hour  and crept up towards Y2K the storytelling grew creepier and yet -- at the same time -- more deliciously opaque. 

Stories such as "Bardo Thodol," "Saturn Dreaming of Mercury" and the subject of this review, "Seven and One" were utterly bizarre, ambiguous...and unnerving.  All these episodes are laden with potent symbolism and require some amount of deciphering; of interpretation.  They are mysteries wrapped in enigma...just the way an active, engaged viewer might prefer.

Birthday cakes and butcher knives.

"Seven and One" -- written by the team of Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz -- opens immediately with that sense of amorphous anxiety, and with a surfeit of symbols. 

It is young Jordan Black's (Brittany Tiplady) eighth birthday, which should be a joyous occasion.   

But, as is so often the case in Millennium, peaceful domesticity is violated by an unexpected invasion, a home invasion often.

Here, director Peter Markle shoots the little girl's birthday party in a manner roughly akin to Benjamin Braddock's graduation party in The Graduate (1967) -- it's almost a first-person point-of-view assault on the senses.  We're down on kid's eye level, surrounded by dancing children, and it's a little weird; a little off. 

Very shortly, another disturbing image occurs: Jordan's grandfather gleefully cuts the birthday cake with a very large butcher knife.  This is a foreshadowing that something is amiss, a hint of dangers to come. 



Finally, Frank Black -- the incomparable Henriksen -- senses something is wrong in paradise, and the clock on the wall literally stops ticking (in an expressive shot highly reminiscent of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2). 

The doorbell rings, and the heretofore unseen (but already felt) Evil finally arrives.  Someone has sent Frank creepy polaroid photographs; photographs that reveal Frank drowned in his own bath tub.



Polaroid prophecy.

The F.B.I. investigates the Polaroids, led by Frank's partner, Emma Hollis (Klea Scott). 

A profiler, Boxer (Dean Norris) begins to live up to his name, subsequently "boxing in" Frank, and arriving at the conclusion that Frank himself is the culprit behind the photographs;  that he is experiencing "the beginnings of a breakdown." 

Though he can't prove it, Frank understands something else is occurring.  Someone is attempting to terrify him using personal fears only he knows about.  Specifically, Frank has long held a fear of drowning, following a childhood incident at a swimming hole (recounted in  glorious silver-and-black, night-time flashbacks.)  It is a terror that Frank simply can't get past, as he unhappily acknowledges to Emma.

Meanwhile, the shadowy, violent figure behind the polaroids escalates his criminal activities.  He murders Frank's psychiatrist, further framing Frank by utilizing the same butcher knife we saw deployed at Jordan's party.  And the killer also buries Emma alive (her worst fear, we are led to understand...), though Frank rescues her.



Finally -- alone in his house -- Frank confronts his fear of drowing as his locked bathroom floods and escape proves impossible.  Sinking deep beneath the surface of the roiling water, Frank finally "comes out the other side" of his fear, so-to-speak, and accepts his own mortality.  He experiences a vision in which his life (with Catherine and Jordan flashes )before his eyes.  He sees flickering candles in the dream too -- a symbolic lamp-post; a light in the darkness.

In extreme high angle, Frank faces his fear of drowning.

At this point, the bathroom door suddenly opens, and Frank escapes, the flood gates literally having been opened (another canny symbol; the dam of Frank's emotions and fears finally shattering...).  

The tidal wave of water also represents the flood gates of understanding opening up. 

Having moved past his own personal sense of fear, Frank insightfully ties his experience here  -- confronting his terror at drowning -- with a Millennial Prophecy about seven  plus one equaling not just 8, but the year 1999 (and also Jordan's age in 1999; at her birthday party)...the so-called last year of peace before the onset of millennial catastrophe.

The episode concludes with a voice-over from Frank, as he holds a terrorized Emma Hollis (who has seen her own doppelganger apparently commit suicide...).   In that voice-over, Frank concludes that if he does see into the darkness, it is because there is also light there; and that the light can guide him. 

Furthermore, Black notes that the world seems to be in for a spell of trials and tribulations the likes of which it has not encountered before.  He doesn't know how right he is, at least if we go by real life.  The peace and prosperity of the 1990s was coming to an end indeed as the millennium changed, and since 2000 (and the U.S.S. Cole bombing, perhaps), the world has seen a decade of war, torture, and natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes of terrible proportions).

Of course, writers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz could not have known this would be the path of the decade, but they adroitly plug into this communal fear of the future.  And in retrospect, it's surprising (and a little bit freaky...) how this and other millennial-type prophecies featured on the series often ring true, at least after a fashion.

But on the surface,  "Seven and One" is a baffling, mysterious and opaque installment of Millennium.  An unknown, possibly demonic, shape-shifting villain frames Frank for murder, attempts to drive him from the F.B.I, shape-shifts into Boxer and Hollis, threatens Frank and Jordan, and then, after apparently committing suicide in the form of Hollis, disappears into thin air. 

Very briefly, the episode reveals this Loki-type character as Mabius (Bob Wilde), the assassin we have seen before, in the employ of the shadowy Millennium Group.

The flood gates of water -- and understanding -- are opened.

But Mabius is never seen by the dramatis personae for who he really is (or if they do...they die, as in the case of the psychiatrist).  Furthermore, the Millennium Group is never even mentioned by name at all. 

The episode thus expects intelligence and puzzle-solving capability from the audience, and we are left to ponder a big question. 

Is the Millennium Group trying to drive Frank Black insane -- separating him from the F.B.I. -- so as to prepare him for his role in their diabolical turn-of-the-century plot? (As seen in the X-Files episode Millennium, Frank was being groomed for suicide...and zombie resurrection, right?)

Or contrarily, is the Millennium Group helping Frank -- albeit in extremely bloody fashion -- to move past his personal fear so that he can see the terror of the millennium without such fear when it finally  arrives?  This seems to fit the pattern.  In the past, the Millennium Group has also attempted to "innoculate" Frank from a contagion; though in that case it was viral, not one based in the emotion of fear.

Again, this is all speculative material that must be sussed out from the action that occurs on screen.  Carter and Spotnitz spoon-feed the audience almost nothing.  They expect us to keep up.

Thus, the best way to understand what occurs in "Seven in One" is to understand and track the highly-cinematic visuals.

First, we have the butcher knife -- the murder weapon -- cutting into the future (as represented by a child's birthday cake).  In horror films and programs, children always represent tomorrow/the future, and that's what is being explicitly imperiled here. 

Then we have the idea that Frank is "drowning," literally, without Catherine....without human connection.  He has lost his wife and his yellow house, and is teetering on the breaking point.  As he tells his psychiatrist in a session (seen on video in "Seven and One,") he isn't sure he wants to get better "this time."  Life for Frank Black has turned fearful and frightening because he feels alone.

Frank confronts his fear, and experiences the happy vision of his life -- of the good things (as initiated by the imagery of a red flower in boom; see top of post).   He sees the light (the flickering candles...) too. 

Ending on Connection

Frank recognizes Catherine, Jordan and his yellow house, and comes through the fear at last.  

Then the floodgates of understanding (the flood in the bathroom) are opened, literally, and understanding comes to Frank. 

He knows he will be a warrior in the darkness against the grave and gathering threats of the rapidly-approaching 21st century.

Finally, Frank understands that to be that warrior, he must follow the advice of the Catholic priest at Catherine's parish at St. Timothy's...he must not run away from his fears and separate himself from humanity (which is what Boxer recommends), he must seek humanity out; gain strength from those bonds. 

The episode ends on the explicit visual of Frank doing just that with his young apprentice of sorts, Emma Hollis.

I might add, this "connection" to the world seems to be the great challenge of the archetypal Chris Carter male, so far as The X-Files and Millennium are concerned.  Both Mulder and Frank Black are extremely intelligent men who go to great lengths to help others; but always seem to refuse help themselves, even from their loved ones.  They demand emotional clarity from others, but themselves are emotionally remote; distant.

"Seven and One" is an authentically creepy episode of Millennium, an installment about the (changing) shape of fears yet to come; yet known.  Since anticipatory anxiety is hard if not to impossible to feature or embody as a character, I submit that "Seven and One" captures the vibe of the upcoming Millennial "doomsday" with all effective symbolism, a cerebral, cinematic intimation of indescribable Evil.  I don't know that Millennium could always operate on this highly visual, highly symbolic level, but I appreciate this episode for dwelling at that apex with so much audacity, confidence and mystery.

What's even more terrifying than "Seven and One," perhaps, is the downward spiral of the series' last few episodes.  Emma Hollis -- Frank's apprentice and true friend -- allies herself to the Millennium Group, leaving him very much alone in his battle against the darkness. 

And, finally, betrayed, Frank does have to run away.  Staying connected to the dangerous world is not a viable option when he learns of the Millennium Group's plans for his daughter.  He takes Jordan out of school, grabs her hand...and flees.

The darkness has won, at least for the moment.  

But we have not yet seen the last stand of Frank Black. (At least I hope we haven't...)

Millennium: "Thirteen Years Later" (October 30, 1998)

While investigating “The Madman Maniac” case on a horror movie set in Trinity, South Carolina, F.B.I. detective Emma Hollis (Klea Scott) asks profiler-extraordinaire Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) an important question about their current investigation.

She asks him if he recalls the serial killer called “The Frenchman” -- a figure depicted so memorably in Millennium’s pilot episode in 1996 -- and wonders if this case could be similar in an important way.

Except that instead of a Scripture-quoting serial killer, the contemporary investigation involves one who utilizes horror movie “quotations” or allusions as his source of creativity.

Quite reasonably, this raises a procedural question. Shouldn’t the case’s investigators be watching and researching horror films to glean a sense of the Madman Maniac killer’s next move, as well as his motivations?

Frank is impressed and agreeable regarding this course of action.

Queue John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)…

This short scene is very much the linchpin of the Millennium third season episode, “Thirteen Years Later,” and for two important reasons.

First and foremost, it suggests the leitmotif of Michael B. Perry’s complex story: horror movies serving as important clues in capturing a serial killer. And secondly, the very act of a horror-themed TV show delving into the horror genre (and referring to a previous episode in Millennium canon too…) heavily reflects the cultural context of the episode’s epoch.

Specifically, the year 1998 represented the pinnacle of the 1990s self-reflexive, post-modernist horror movement in cinema. This was the era of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Scream 2 (1997), Urban Legend (1997) and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998).

More or less, all of these scary movies thrived upon the notion of killers taking horror movies as inspiration for violent behavior. And to varying degrees, the characters in these new-styled slasher films, realize they have actually landed in a horror film and either act accordingly and survive, or fail to…and die.

Intentionally mimicking this then-popular horror movie format, “Thirteen Years Later” both gazes at Millennium’s internal history (the events of the pilot, as well as Frank’s old case of over a dozen years ago) and the genre the series belongs to.

To succeed as self-reflexive satire of the horror format, this Millennium episode must first ape that form, and this is where “Thirteen Years Later” proves rather clever. In particular terms, the episode closely mirrors and rigorously conforms to the “Slasher Movie Paradigm” I excavated in my 2007 McFarland book, Horror Films of the 1980s.

As the title of the Millennium episode suggests, the narrative involves a crime or transgression in the past, in this case, a crime Frank investigated over a decade back. More significantly, it boasts what I termed an organizing principle or “umbrella of unity” too, in this case a world or venue from which all the killings draw inspiration and creativity.

In my book, I noted that: “The organizing principle is what every slasher film ultimately hangs its hooks upon. It is the key to every aspect of the film: from setting to character motivations to mode of kills and even final chase.” (page 20).

In Friday the 13th (1980), that organizing principle was the summer camp, Camp Crystal Lake. In He Knows You’re Alone (1981), the organizing principle was the world of weddings (brides, a church, a dress shop, a dress tailor…). In A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the killings by Freddy Krueger all occurred in the dream world.

In “Thirteen Years Later,” the organizing principle is simply the cutthroat world of contemporary, Hollywood: a 1990s-era movie set. This organizing principle makes way for the episode’s prospective victim pool (personal trainers, producers, ingénues, pampered Shakespearean actors, etc.), muddies the water in terms of useful clues (is that human blood or stage blood at the crime scenes?) and provides the critical clue about secret identity of the killer (hint: he’s a method actor).

Delightfully, the episode also positions Emma Hollis as that archetypal slasher movie character: the Final Girl. The final girl -- a term created by Carol J. Clover -- is “chased, cornered, wounded…but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued (Ending A) or to kill him herself (Ending B).” (Carol J. Clover. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton University Press, 1992, page 35).

In “Thirteen Years Later’s” tense finale, after the killings are believed to be over, the real killer threatens Emma in her hotel room while she is alone, and she must summon the strength and composure to defeat him…even if he sounds an awful lot like her beloved mentor, Frank Black. She succeeds ably and proves her worth as a horror movie Final Girl.

By co-opting the crime in the past, the organizing principle, the victim pool and the Final Girl character from the Slasher Paradigm, “Thirteen Years Later” emerges as a full-on, affectionate celebration of the slasher genre. The segment’s best scene, not coincidentally, involves Frank Black’s lightning fast, unimpressed (but impressive) psychological profile of such slasher film icons as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and even Norman Bates.

We’ve all seen these films and these characters over and over again – and cherished them – and yet Frank comes in -- and after watching only a little clip from each film -- diagnoses these Bogeymen in the most nonplussed and clinical (and therefore amusing) manner imaginable. This is a terrific moment, and one that reveals how adeptly Lance Henriksen broaches humor in what many viewers might perceive as an essentially humorless role. He plays the scene straight, thereby allowing the audience to detect the humor for itself instead of camping-it-up and going for obvious laughs. The moment is funny because Frank accomplishes in mere moments what a century of film heroes, psychologists and final girls cannot: he unearths the motivations for the seemingly unstoppable silver screen slashers.

The self-reflexive component of “Thirteen Years Later,” largely emerges -- Kevin Williamson-style -- in the number and specificity of the horror movie allusions. The episode tags not only Psycho, Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, it pauses to remember The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Omen (1976), Motel Hell (1980) and The Hitcher (1987). The killer re-creates the chainsaw attack from Leatherface’s film, and the severed finger in a lunch meal, from The Hitcher, to offer some specifics.

But most interesting, perhaps, is one relatively obscure literary reference seeded into the proceedings. Specifically, a relaxing Emma Hollis is seen reading an interesting book: Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths (1962).

This is a critically-feted collection of short stories by a celebrated modernist who subscribed to the theory that anarchy and chaos dominate the world; and who, on several occasions, actually wrote “hoax” reviews of literary works that did not actually exist…by authors that likewise, did not exist.

Ultimately then, author Borges played with literary form in the same fashion that “Thirteen Years Later” plays with cinematic or visual form. The episode is about a killer who has no understandable pattern, but who is making a movie (that doesn’t exist) about a historical case (that also doesn’t exist). This is a fake form referencing a fake form, referencing a fake event.

You can’t get much more post-modern than that.

In terms of visuals “Thirteen Years Later” also deliberately apes the slasher milieu. The installment opens with imagery reminiscent of Psycho: a shower-head facing the camera (screen-wise above and before the audience), a playful composition which makes the audience remember Janet Leigh’s infamous stay at the Bates Motel and ultimately puts us in the shower.

The film’s first death set-piece then co-mingles stage-blood and real human blood; a visual metaphor for a twisting narrative which purposefully blends “the reality” of Frank’s old case with the illusions produced by commercial Hollywood,

After the action settles down in Trinity, South Carolina (a town named after the central location of the 1995 Sam Raimi/Shaun Cassidy horror serial, American Gothic), the visuals grow increasingly claustrophobic. By the time of the climax, in which Emma is imperiled, tight horror movie-styled framing rules the day. Thanks to accomplished director Thomas J. Wright, we get some lovely close-ups of Scott, and Emma’s space in the frame is increasingly restricted, bracketed on both sides by encroaching door frames and other objects.

In some ways, “Thirteen Years Later” feels like an atypical, out-of-step installment of the very serious Millennium. But digging a little deeper, one detects how the episode’s crazy killer echoes the modus operandi of previous serial killers seen on the program, only with a horror movie twist.

And more so, the self-reflexive, post-modern message -- epitomized by the presence of that book, Labyrinths -- reveals much about the episode’s intelligent approach.

Trying to determine reality and not artifice in “Thirteen Years Later” is enough to make even the stalwart Frank Black go insane, for the third time in his life.

Two severed thumbs up?

Millennium: Five Favorite Frank Black Moments

There can be little doubt that Lance Henriksen's Frank Black is our sturdy anchor in the great Chris Carter series, Millennium (1996 - 1999). 

Over a span of three seasons and more than sixty-five episodes, this remarkable dramatic program accommodated many different brands and styles of storytelling -- including some unexpected lunges into comedy -- and the face who always held it all together belongs to Lance Henriksen.

Selecting just five favorite Frank Black moments is not an easy task because Henriksen and the series writers/producers/directors gave us so damn many of 'em in those three wondrous seasons. 

Anyway, these five "great Frank Black moments" come in no particular order, and from all three seasons of the series.

1. "Pilot" Frank introduces his family to their perfect yellow house. 

As the series opens, Frank Black and his family relocate to rainy Seattle, but -- caring spouse and supporting father that he is -- Frank has made certain that their lives have at least a ray of sunshine in them. 

Here, he shows them their gorgeous new home, a shining yellow house far away from the repellent darkness of Frank's work. 

In a beautiful, spontaneous moment, little Jordan (Brittany Tiplady) is so excited to see the new family home, she licks her Daddy's nose.  It's an innocent, childish gesture (caught in perfect close-up) that really cements the Black family bond, and reveals the closeness between father and daughter.  

2. "Lamentations"  Frank is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Far away from the yellow house in Seattle, Frank Black deciphers a clue that suggests Evil Itself (in the form of Sarah Jane-Redmond's Lucy Butler), is on the way to "visit" his imperiled family.  And this time, Frank is too far away to help them. 

The expressions that cross Frank's face as he attempts to figure out what is happening, and if his family is safe, probably represent the closest thing to panic we ever see on the guy. 

If something can drive the solid, even-tempered, brave Frank Black to that unprecedented level of concern...watch-out. 

And sure enough, when Frank's friend Bletch enters the yellow house during a storm -- now a yellow house of horrors -- be afraid.  Be very afraid...

3. "Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense:" Don't Be Dark, Frank.

In this caustic satire of Scientology (called Self-osophy in Millennium), Frank attempts to ferret out the identity of a killer by using a copyrighted Self-osophy self-help technique. 

With a tape titled "How Not to Be Dark" and a gimmicky head set, Frank engages in "Easy Visualization Therapy," and is asked by the taped voice to "picture something that disturbed him."

At that exact moment, the episode cuts ironically to a blood-curdling montage of every grisly vision from Millennium's first season and-a-half.

Horrified, Black rips off the head-set and nurses the mother of all headaches. But the point is that Frank doesn't run from the darkness or try to deny it.  He faces it.  He isn't about "self" (or Self-osophy) and sometimes we all genuinely need to "be dark."

4. "Luminary:" Frank Black to the rescue.

An exhausted, freezing Frank Black carries an injured young man named Alex through the hostile, wooded terrain of wild Alaska in the uplifting "Luminary." 

When the young man's stretcher tilts and dumps the boy in the river rapids far below, Frank -- without batting an eye or hesitating a second -- jumps in after the boy. 

This courageous and self-less act represents Frank's ethos in a nutshell.  It's that father instinct.  It's that tenacious unwillingness to give up on someone he has sworn to protect. He will literally do anything to help another human being, even at great risk to himself.

5. "The Sound of Snow:"  "Every day, I want to be with you."

Alone in the wild again, Frank is badly injured and experiences a vision that, in some small way, forces him to face his greatest loss. 

This moment reveals to us Frank at his most vulnerable and emotional, and does so with the one person that he can be so vulnerable with, his beloved Catherine (Megan Gallagher). 

It's a haunting, affecting moment, because we see beneath Frank's strong facade and see -- truly see -- his sense of pain and loss.  This moment always moves me, every time I watch "The Sound of Snow."  Frank faces guilt, loss, sadness and a future that isn't what he hoped it would be.  But finally, he gets to say goodbye...

Millennium: A Retrospective of Season 3

While generally acknowledged as a brilliant and forward-thinking TV series, Chris Carter’s Millennium (1996 – 1999) suffers from the same malady as the original Star Trek.  There is a wide disagreement among fans about the quality and direction of the series’ third and final season.

The first season and second season of Millennium are each widely (and rightly) championed, though they feature vastly different visions of Frank Black’s world.

But the third season fails to win much love, even though it attempts a fusion of the two earlier formats.  I have never fully understood this lack of appreciation for the final batch of episodes, especially since the producers were faced with the difficult task of bringing the series back from the precipice of apocalypse after the second season cliffhanger. 

Essentially, they had to re-boot the world of criminal profiler Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) to accommodate for the  many world-shattering changes of “The Fourth Horseman,”/”The Time is Now.” 

These changes included the death of Frank’s wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher), and the knowledge that the Millennium Group had unloosed a plague upon America, or more specifically, the Pacific-Northwest.

In crafting the third season, producers and writers returned Frank Black to the FBI in Virginia, thus moving away from the series’ familiar Seattle setting and yellow house (now Paradise Lost). 

There, on the East Coast, the producers and writers gave Frank a young partner whom Frank could mentor, agent Emma Hollis (Klea Scott).  I have always believed that Emma worked remarkably well as a central character because she clarified and reinforced the “Frank Black as Father figure” aspect of the series.  

Emma was someone Frank could teach and care for, and that paradigm worked well, since it gave Frank room and space to explain his beliefs and philosophies without his monologues seeming like dull exposition. 

When Emma’s biological father came into the mix, and she had to choose which “father” to honor, the series reached an emotional apotheosis of sorts.  That moral crucible -- in which Emma had to make an unenviable selection -- also demonstrated beautifully the cunning of The Millennium Group.  It would always attack where a prospective member or enemy was weakest. 

The season-long idea of Frank as Father Figure also tied into the final episode’s discussion that “we are all shepherds.”  A father of course, is very much a shepherd, and in Millennium we see that Frank actually has two daughters to shepherd to the light.  One -- Jordan -- looks like she’ll make it.  Emma, however is, in the end, consumed by darkness.  (Though I always believed and hoped that once Frank got Jordan safe, he would return for Emma and help her…)

The other big shift in approach during Millennium’s third season involved the shadowy Millennium Group.  I have seen how some fans quibble with the idea that the Group is out-and-out villainous.  But as I often point out, there was plainly no other way to play the third season, given the specifics of the second season finale. 

Furthermore, the decision to feature the Group as the villain makes sense in terms of a series story arc.

The overall arc of the series sees Frank learning more and more about the Group, from first season to third.  The first season is about a romance of sort between the Group and Frank, as he considers membership.  He thus sees only the “good things” the Group wishes him to see.

In the second season, as Frank’s orbit brings him closer to membership, he starts questioning motives and means, and begins to feel that the Group is manipulative and hiding important information. By the end of the second season, Frank sees the Group as a dark force trying to “force the end” for its own agenda.

So let’s face facts: if an organization engineers and releases a plague on American citizens, it’s tough to walk that action back. 

The third season follows that arc or through-line, with Frank acting accordingly on the information he possesses about the Group.

Some aficionados have viewed this shift to villainy as an insult to the Millennium Group’s real life inspiration: the Academy Group. But again, it is pretty clear that by the second season, the fictional Millennium Group of the TV series had taken off on its own path, and no longer owed its identity to any real life group or agency.  

I mean, are we to assume the Academy Group was run by an “Old Man” and populated by doomsday scholars – “Roosters” and “Owls” – who differed on the exact date of “The End?”

Again, it is crucially important to note that the shift in the portrayal of the Millennium Group started some time in Season Two.  So to curse Season three for legitimately following up on that storyline seems silly and downright inaccurate.

And since Frank’s wife, Catherine (Meghan Gallagher) died because of the Millennium Group’s release of the deadly plague I can’t honestly see how the series would have worked in any other way but to feature the Millennium Group as the primary villain.

How else could Frank have reacted, but to launch a crusade against the Group?  Any other response, especially forgiveness, would have certainly been untrue to Frank’s character at that juncture, and dishonored his relationship with Catherine.  The Millennium Group cost him his family, and cost his child her mother.  There was no way he was going to make nice with it, or return to the fold.

In terms of specific stories, the third season catalog blends season one and season two style stories, with a mix of naturalistic real-life-style serial killer/crime stories (“Closure,” “Through a Glass Darkly,” “Darwin’s Eye,” and  “Nostalgia,”) and the more horror/fantasy-oriented fare like “Borrowed Time,” “Antipas” and the creepy-as-hell “Saturn Dreaming of Mercury.”  Those latter titles feel more like second season offerings to me, on the order of something like “Beware of Dog” or “Monster.”

In considering the catalog, it seems plain that Season Three of Millennium attempts to assimilate what was best about both Season One and Season Two, and fit those approaches together.  In my estimation, more often than not, the alchemy worked.

Some folks have also complained about Millennium Season Three that it ages Frank Black, side-lines him, and at times even makes him look insane.  On the surface, this argument is no doubt true, but if the new dynamic was to be Frank Black vs. The Millennium Group, then the villain had be strong, and represent a serious threat to Frank, his family, and his professional standing.  The Group was trying to knock Frank further from his stride, and sometimes it succeeded.

Again, it’s difficult to argue what Millennium Season Three could have done much differently here, besides sending Frank on a sometimes frustrating, sometimes maddening crusade to bring his wife’s killers to justice.  The problem, structurally speaking, was that the series would end once he got the Group so that meant there could never be any definitive “wins” for Frank. 

And yet, that idea of an ongoing, multi-faceted fight reflects reality and shades of gray.  Victories are few and far between, and life has a way of undercutting them with new problems and conflicts.

When I judge Millennium’s third season positively, I think first and foremost of the following five episodes:

1.“Teotwawki” by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz and directed by Thomas J. Wright. 

Millennium was always at its very best when tapping into the roiling Zeitgeist of the 1990s.  The (then) upcoming Y2K or “Millennium Bug” problem provided the series with a perfect, real-life doomsday scenario to explore. 

“Teotwawki” (or The End of the World as We Know It) seemed to tie the 1990s school shooting epidemic (pre-Columbine) with the Y2K Bug, and then postulate a youth generation that had lost hope for a better future. 

Today, we know that the Millennium Bug was a dud, but in October of 1998 when the episode initially aired “Teotwawki” benefited from a sense of creepy inevitability and realism.  In other words, we were on a countdown already to this “Doomsday Scenario” -- and knew when it would occur -- but we didn’t know how it would turn out.  “Teotwawki” asks what might happen to kids living in that scenario of “advanced knowledge of the end,” when disaster is speeding at them -- and our modern technological society too -- like a runaway freight train. It’s a powerful hour.

2. “Skull and Bones” by Chip Johannessen and Ken Horton, and directed by Paul Shapiro.  

This third season episode offers two absolutely irresistible mysteries.  The first involves a Millennium Group “killing fields,” in case you ever wondered where all the bodies are buried.  The second involves a seer named Ed (played by Arye Gross) who has, over the years, accumulated notebooks filled with detailed notes about the Millennium Group’s every move. 

I fully realize the world of Millennium is fictional, and yet this episode adds much to the series mythology, and makes it all feel frighteningly real. When I first watched this episode, I wanted more than anything to pour through Ed’s journals.   The promise of discovering “secret history” is alluring. But beyond that notion, this episode is powerful because it makes us wonder if Frank is destined, like Ed, to lose his mind and spend his days alone, isolated, and broken…while the Millennium Group continues to bury its enemies in unmarked mass graves.

I admire “Skull and Bones” because it suggests that the Group has had an unofficial chronicler, one who has seen and understood everything.  And in many ways, the third season of the series very much concerns this notion (and curse) of seers, from the remote visionaries of “The Innocents”/”Exegesis” to the creepy (supernatural) severed eyes of “Saturn Dreaming of Mercury,” to the insanity of the percipient in “Darwin’s Eye.”  Do we put Frank in this category of “seer?”  And if we do, what does that mean for his future?

3. “Seven in One” by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, and directed by Peter Markle. 

This episode came near the end of the series and we finally get some clues about the Millennium Group’s end game: its effort to drive Frank irretrievably to the brink of sanity.  This episode is rife with symbolic imagery but offers no clear answers in the text itself. The episode is electric with anticipatory anxiety and a mood of looming paranoia.  If the episode is to be understood successfully, one must literally dissect the assort images, from birthday cakes, butcher knives and a flower in bloom, to the climactic flood which “washes over” Frank and bring him new knowledge. 

2. “Bardo Thodol.”  Written by Virginia Stock and Chip Johannessen, and directed by Thomas J. Wright. 

This multi-layered tale, I believe, visually and thematically encodes an important way of interpreting or “seeing” Millennium.  You can read more about my specific theory regarding this episode and its importance to the overall canon by purchasing the Back to Frank Black book.  

I spell it all out there, but suffice it to say that this episode -- for all its delicious opacity -- is a critical one in analyzing the series’ big picture.  On the surface, the episode concerns strange science, but beneath that narrative there is a thematic obsession with the Tibetan Book of the Dead that reveals something critical about Frank’s journey and how, as viewers, can experience it.

1.”The Sound of Snow” by Patrick Harbinson and directed by Paul Shapiro. 

This installment is another opaque, hard-to-interpret installment, but one that proves highly-rewarding.  A mysterious sender is delivering static-filled audio tapes to victims.  These unusual tapes induce hallucinations in listeners and ultimately lead to death.  Frank receives one such tape and finds himself reliving the outbreak near Seattle, and having a last encounter with his wife Catherine.

Again, this is a pivotal episode of Millennium because it represents the point in season three wherein Frank can purge his feelings of guilt, and finally put the past behind him.  It’s a haunting, deeply-affecting hour, and my personal favorite from the third year.

Other episodes in the catalog deserve an “honorable mention too, from the post-modern “Thirteen Years Later” to “Matryoshka.” 

If the former episode is a meta-analysis of slasher films and celebration of all-things horror, then the latter is certainly an expression of deep fear and anxiety over the Human Genome Project, which the episode specifically compares to atom bomb testing in 1945.  Nuclear science and genetic science are both parsed as Pandora’s Box, here, and both involve the idea of playing God.

So far as I can see, the only genuinely sub-par episode of Millennium’s final season, is “Human Essence,” a story about drugs and human/animal chimeras that fails to gel, and which places Millennium and The X-Files in separate worlds, since The X-Files is seen playing on television during one scene.

When I re-watch Millennium’s third season, I  reflect that the final batch of episodes, from “The Sound of Snow” to “Goodbye to All That…” descends into a creepy ambiguity that, while confounding for lack of answers, significantly deepens the story-line, and rewards multiple viewings.  There is so much imagination and artistry in these shows it’s a shame that more fans don’t try to engage with them on their own terms. 

Some viewers may dismiss these episodes as falling into baffling, David Lynchian, Twin Peaks territory, but, I would assert that Millennium in its final chapter lives up to its potential as described perfectly by X-Pose Magazine in June of 1999:

“Millennium has at least become a clear artistic success, making sense out of an often chaotic, disturbing world with consummate intelligence and powerful emotions.”

Yep. That about says it all.

Millennium: "The Curse of Frank Black" (October 31, 1997)

On Halloween night, Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) takes Jordan (dressed as Marge Simpson) trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. A fleeting glimpse of a ghost spurs Frank’s memory of a Halloween night from his own childhood.

A freak breakdown of Frank’s car and cellphone then lands him back at his yellow house. Now, it is a strangely vacant (and ominous….) place filled with ghosts too. 

One such ghost belongs to a tortured World War II veteran who knew Frank as a child, and who has returned, on this night, with a grave warning about the afterlife.

My favorite Halloween TV episode has to be Millennium’s “The Curse of Frank Black,” the second season entry by Glen Morgan and James Wong.  I admire this story for its human dimension and its importance to the larger series continuity, but mainly as an exploration of Halloween, and the idea that Frank Black has become --thanks to teenagers in the neighborhood -- the stuff of urban legends and local fears.

If we didn’t know Frank as we do, if we only had gossip and news stories to go on, what would we think of him?  This episode of Millennium allows us to adopt a dual perspective of the character.

The episode features a perfect symmetry in my opinion.  There are the flashback scenes of Frank as a child, trick-or-treating in the early 1950s and visiting the home of a troubled veteran (Dean Winters).  Frank and his buddies think that the “old man” is weird and scary, and tip-toe around his place.  They fear what they don’t understand.  And they most certainly don’t understand him.

Meanwhile, in the present, Frank finds himself in the familiar position of that long-dead veteran.  Now he is the one who is being whispered about by the young. Now he is the creepy adult; the one with secrets and mysterious.

I have always felt this is a great commentary on how quickly life seems to pass one by.  One minute, you’re the kid afraid of that strange, inscrutable grown-up who lives down the street.  Then before you know it, you’re the grown-up the kids are talking about so suspiciously. 

Life goes by in a flash.

“The Curse of Frank Black” features a lot of iconic (and quite welcome) Halloween symbolism, from Frank’s fearsome jack-o-lantern and the black cat perched outside his bungalow, to the trick-or-treating ritual with his child, Jordan (Brittany Tiplady), who is dressed-up as Marge Simpson.

But I particularly enjoy how the episode suggests that every day in Frank's life is, essentially, Halloween.  Or at least it could be, if he allows it to happen.  

After all, Frank sees monsters and demons lurking in the corner of his periphery and must, by sheer force of will, force himself not to notice them.  He must constantly avert his gaze.  At least if we are to believe he is gifted not just with insight, but with psychic abilities.

There’s something incredibly lonely and sad about this element of Black’s life, and it reminds us that Frank’s gift of insight is indeed the character’s curse.  He sees evil’s presence even when he wants to be blind to it; even at the moments we all take for granted (like trick or treating with our kids.)

I also get a kick out of the way “The Curse of Frank Black” uses legends about Halloween.  The episode remembers that this is a night in which the spirits of the dead can return to visit the living.  Accordingly, a ghost issues Frank a dire warning about how dangerously anti-social he risks becoming if he doesn't change his ways. Other series have also utilized this premise (“Hellowe’en” on Friday the 13^th: The Series, for instance), but none have done so better than Millennium's holiday themed show.  Basically, in this case, a ghost tells Frank to lighten up.

I also often return to this episode of Millennium because it’s nearly a one man show, with Lance Henriksen holding the screen alone for the better part of an hour and proving absolutely riveting.  I can think of a lot worse ways to spend Halloween than with his Frank Black character, or in the care of this particular actor.  I find the character tragic, and a little sad in this hour of the drama. Frank manages to finds moment of delight and bemusement when he is alone, but overall, seems very sad and lonely.