The Rogue's Eye View
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M I L L E N N I U M
100. PILOT (AKA "THE FRENCHMAN")

Written by Chris Carter
Directed by David Nutter
Original Air Date: October 25, 1996


Brief summary: After moving to Seattle with his wife Catherine and daughter Jordan, former FBI agent Frank Black finds himself consulting for the enigmatic Millennium Group and assisting the local police department in the apprehension of a murderer who is preaching the apocalypse.

Rogue's Review: Arriving at their new home, Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) laughingly reveals his plans for peace and sanctuary (symbolized in the yellow house) to his family – lovely, demure Catherine (Megan Gallagher), and spunky Jordan (Brittany Tiplady). They greet Frank's new beginning with excitement and joy... but it's all too short-lived as Frank almost immediately begins reading grisly news headlines... realizing there's darkness here in Seattle too. A darkness he can, perhaps, do something about.

One of the initially controversial elements of MILLENNIUM was Frank's "gift/curse," his ability to look into the minds of killers and see what they see. "I become the thing we fear the most – I become capability," he tells Bob Bletcher (Bill Smitrovich), his longtime friend and former colleague on the Seattle police force. But is Frank's gift psychic, empathic, natural or otherworldly? Though Chris Carter early and vehemently denied a supernatural element to MILLENNIUM, it quickly became evident there was more to Frank's visions than simple deductive reasoning and emotional transference – he is in fact reliving the horrors of the murders he investigates, most often from the viewpoint of the killer, but occasionally from that of the victim. The depths of suffering and stress this ability must cause Frank are only marginally explored – it is apparently something he has learned to harness and use to his advantage, despite the toll on his psyche, the pain evident only in his haunted blue eye...

In the pilot episode, sometimes referred to as "The Frenchman" (the name was used for the true-to-screen but disappointingly uninspired novel adaptation by author Elizabeth Hand), our first glimpse of Frank's abilities come when he assists Bletcher in looking into the particularly brutal killing of a local stripper. Critics have called these opening sequences – in which scantily clad dancers thrust and grind while blood streams down walls behind them and spatters over their flesh (all to pulsing death rock of the Nine Inch Nails variety) – unnecessarily risque... titillation for sadistic minds. But to the Rogue's Eye, it's an effective plunge into the black waters MILLENNIUM so boldly plumbs. Like its most commonly associated cousin, the excellent suspense thriller SE7EN, MILLENNIUM seeks not to downplay the ugliness of our world, but to expose it for all to see.

One problem voiced early on in the season by viewers and critics alike was that Frank's ability gives the series' writers a far too easy means of propelling their story – on occasion, his second sight allows him to make leaps of logic that might stump even the most gifted profilers, or replaces actual profiling. In the pilot, however, Frank first and foremost uses standard police and Bureau procedure to help determine a profile of the killer, based on interviews with the victim's coworkers and exhaustive research into the strange, poetic words the killer spoke at the scene (as recorded by a closed-camera video).

Frank's investigation begins to affect his marriage once more. "The real world begins to seep in," Catherine tells him. "You can't stop it." Frank's reply is both understandably nobel and foolish: "I want you to make believe that I can." A nice example of the unique and almost desperate bravery of the profiler.

In fact, nearly everything about the episode clicks, from the introduction of the Blacks, Bletcher, and Group representative Peter Watts (the always stellar Terry O'Quinn) to the predations of the killer (some truly horrifying visuals of a victim buried alive, eyes and mouth sewn shut) and the grim determination of those tracking him. The storyline is crippled only by a rushed conclusion, in which, despite excellent deductive reasoning and investigative techniques, the good guys basically stumble onto the killer, leading to a gripping confrontation in which the Frenchman screams at Frank, "This is how it ends! You can't stop it!" He echoes Catherine's earlier remark, and promises a blood-dimmed tide of violence to come...

Three elements worth noting: 1) Frank's next-door neighbor is a cheerful, nosy fellow named Jack Meredith, who immediately became a figure of mistrust for many X-FILES fans – a show that of course breeds paranoia like guppies! Is Jack what he seems – Every Neighbor? Or is he something more? 2) We learn that Jordan suffers from occasional spells of fever and illness, seemingly without origin, but of course in the future discovered to be linked somehow to the gift her father possesses – one he may or may not have passed on to Jordan. 3) Finally, we learn something about a truly dark period in Frank's past – a killer he tracked once who stalked Frank's family, sending him Polaroid photographs of Jordan and Catherine to taunt the lawman. Though the original stalker is now behind bars, Frank receives a package in the mail – a new set of Polaroids of his wife and daughter, here in their supposedly safe new home. [Rating: 9/10]

"I become capability. I become the horror--what we know we can become only in our heart of darkness. It's my gift. It's my curse. That's why I retired." -- Frank Black


reviews by Rick Smith (1996 - present) and website by Matt Asendorf (2004)
all material property of Paper Street Productions ~ http://www.paperstreetprod.com