Empty Bottles x "Not the Doctor" (Track 11/12)

"Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom." (a lyric that took me 25 years to understand)

So many of Scully's love interests are empty bottles: men looking to her to fill their needs, to perform a role, while doing nothing to fix those things in themselves they're asking her to tend to. To Padgett she is character to be controlled and adored, so long as she never steps outside the narrative he has written in his own head about her. To Ed Jerse she is someone to hold him together when the rest of his life is falling apart. To Daniel she is a memory, a dream, an ideal that can never be met because ultimately the past can never be recreated and she will again never be the same person she was back then. To Jack she is a way to bring back the thrill of his youth, the fresh young cadet on the brink of adventure while he is mostly resigned to teaching the next generation.

Rather than see her as a whole, complete, and complex person, they reduce her to these archetypes in order to make themselves feel less empty. No wonder Mulder - who worships her in all her varied shades, and in fact begs to be let in to those parts of her that she has learned to hide and suppress - is a breath of fresh air.