The Best of Rats, the Worst of Rats
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| Title: | The Best of Rats, the Worst of Rats (title on the essay), A thank-you to Nick Lea (title on the webpage list) |
| Creator: | LoneThinker |
| Date(s): | 2000? |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | X-Files |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Alex Krycek/Nick Lea: a thank-you, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Best of Rats, the Worst of Rats is an essay by LoneThinker.
It is one of many essays at The Cave's X-Files Commentary Archives.
Excerpts
What we got once the cameras rolled was much more than a rubber-stamped villain. We got a deceiver who was nevertheless genuinely fascinated with his victim; who killed but was nervous; who wasn't in smug, confident control but when asking for information from his employer, was taken aback at the chilling response that he had no rights, only orders to be carried out.
Krycek is a villain caught, as Shakespeare says of Laertes, in his own treachery, sucked into the workings of the larger conspiracy of which he has become a part but over which he has no control, convinced in his conscious practicality that he needs first and foremost to save himself, and that Mulder is naive and self-focused. Still, he seems impressed by Mulder's constancy and conviction. When he learns of the alien rebel threat, it is Mulder he goes to for help, not the members of the Consortium who have chosen the supposedly safer path of capitulation over the fragile possibility of saving their human selves intact. Mulder and Krycek are parallels, moving on opposite sides of the fence with different methods and tactics, one more blatantly 'light' and the other more sharply 'dark' but both equally unwilling to give up on the human race, whether consciously or unconsciously, whether for selfish or overtly ethical reasons.
There are those who condemned the character of Alex Krycek for his duplicity and lack of ethics, and those who loved him for his tenacity, boldness, and willingness to take hard, necessary actions at the point where conventional wisdom fails to save us. As Nick himself has said, Alex Krycek was often misunderstood. But thanks to Nick's compelling portrayal he was complex, human and always vital. He will be missed... and remembered.