1×06 – GHOST IN THE MACHINE

by foxestacado

Recap by Lurkey

I blame myself; I asked for this episode, on purpose. First, I relished the thought of a challenge, trying to bring the funny to one of the all-time stinkers, rivaled only by “Space” and maybe that one with the possessed fake kitty hand puppets. Second, in Real Life, I work for a ginormous Pacific Northwest software company it’s remotely plausible you may have heard of. Computers! Somehow I thought this would be, you know, relevant. And finally, I wanted to get in on some of the S1 sartorial hilarity, because oh, early X-Files, you were cleverly disguising some very, very pretty people in some seriously jacked-up clothes.

My habit, in writing these recaps, has been to watch the episode once straight through, maybe jotting a few notes on potential jokes before I do the actual writing pass. I did that. Oh my God, you guys, this episode is terrible. Buckle up; I don’t know if I can get us safely through it again. This seems as good a place as any to note that rumor has it that way back in the day, young David Duchovny, after allegedly sampling…uh…British Columbia’s second-favorite export, decided to take a gander at this little TV show he was involved with. And this is the episode he saw. Can you imagine? I feel you, buddy. I suspect he wondered whether it was too late to get back to that PhD dissertation. (Which begs the question: what if he had, y’all? Imagine THAT MAN, conducting your literature seminar. I would totally stick around for my own English doctorate, if it included an eyeful of Professor Blistering Hotness every other day. I’d be writing little messages on my eyelids like the girls in Dr. Jones’s archaeology lecture, because damn.)

I really have to watch it again, don’t I? Oh, all right.

A glassy, nondescript office building is identified for us as Eurisko World Headquarters, Crystal City, Virginia. Inside an office, a schlubby, bespectacled software-engineer-looking type is agitating in front of a tie-clad executive dude’s desk. “Why do you think our stock’s in the toilet?” he frets. “Because you’re cutting research and development in half! You’ve forgotten what the adventure’s all about!” Executive Dude is unmoved, offering up some buzzword bingo about industry changes and hard choices and stockholders’ meetings. “You’re killing me! You’re killing my company!” NerdBoy melodramatizes. The boss man brings the hammer down, though: Eurisko’s no longer his company, and he’d better get used to it. NerdBoy flounces out like a 12-year-old girl, muttering ominously about regret.

Another shot of the looming building, which is…not that menacing, frankly. Executive Dude, for some reason, seems to be taking his own dictation in his office, transcribing a letter about NerdBoy’s departure. I guess this is so we can hear him declaiming the letter out loud, instead of just watching a guy type, but…oy. I’d better not slow down to note every time this episode is stupid; we’re only about 90 seconds in. Anyway. A security camera swivels to regard Executive Dude, and then we see the footage on a monitor that’s apparently attached to a big computer mainframe of some sort. You can tell it is an important Mainframe-y SuperComputer Thing because it has lots of little red blinky lights. Executive Dude drones on, noting the immediate termination of the COS project, which has been a huge time-sucking waste of money, with “projected losses well into 1994.” Hee. Waitasecond—the blinky mainframe has a label: COS, Central Operating System! Dun dun dunnn! Blinky blink blink! Executive Dude checks his watch hammily and shuts his laptop. He’s about to call it a night when he hears something: water running. He heads into the private Executive Dude Washroom adjacent to his office to find water spilling all over the floor from the overflowing glossy black totally 80s sink. Grumbling, he rolls up his sleeve and reaches to unclog the sink when the phone that’s, like, three inches away, starts ringing. “Hello?” Executive Dude barks into it, but there’s no one on the line, just an automated “at the tone, the time will be” message. Suddenly the restroom door slams shut behind him with a mechanical whirr, and the lights go out. “What the hell?” Executive Dude wonders aloud. He sloshes over to the door and attempts to run his ID through the card scanner. You need ID to get OUT of the bathroom? No, no, not slowing down for stupid! Move along! The card won’t scan. Dude pulls a big honking metal key…conveniently…out of his pocket…I said no! Keep going!…and inserts it in the keyhole next to the scanner. KA-ZAMM, there’s a huge electrical surge of sparks that blows Executive Dude across the room, where he smashes into the mirror and falls to the floor. The security camera refocuses, “ominously.” The big COS mainframe blinky blink blinks. “FILE DELETED,” it says in mechanical Evil Computer Voice. Oho ho ho, COS, you made a funny! Except not so much. Credits. Everybody whistle along!

FBI Headquarters. A jowly male agent strolls through some random bullpen, stopping to snag some candy from a plastic jack-o-lantern head on a bookshelf; it must be Halloween. Every day is Halloween in the X-Files, though. Agent Pudge calls out to Mulder, who with Scully and others is gathered around some sort of bagel basket/sandwich cart in the middle of the room. Scully, get the real cream cheese! “Jerry?” Mulder says happily, and gives Agent Pudge a manly hug. Lord, Duchovny’s so young here I gasped a little. Agent Pudge correctly identifies Scully, introducing himself as Jerry LaMotta. Too late, you’re Agent Pudge to me. Pudge was Mulder’s partner in Violent Crimes, he tells us; both Mulder and Scully look a bit uncomfortable at this revelation, standing around awkwardly holding their deli-cart sandwiches. Pudge springs for lunch. I bet he wants something!

In the not-quite-right-yet Lush Basement Office, Pudge presents the Case of the Electrocuted Executive. It looks like a booby trap, he thinks. Scully wants to know who else is on the case; when Pudge mentions a Nancy Spiller, she exclaims “The forensics instructor at the academy?” and kind of snickers. “We used to call her the Iron Maiden,” she grins to Mulder, over her shoulder. She’s hilariously cute, in spite of her electric-blue pantsuit with rounded, nearly scalloped lapels. At any rate, we get no further mention of Ms. Maiden, so this little moment o’ bonding, though adorable, does not seem to serve the plot. Such as it is. Whatever. Carry on. Mulder hedges, clearly reluctant to take on this boring-ass pedestrian case. Smart Mulder. Pudge begs smarmily for his help. Dead Executive Dude, it seems, was a good friend of the Attorney General. Looks like somebody really wants an invite to Janet Reno’s Dance Party! Solving this case would be a sorely needed feather in Pudge’s cap, he claims. Scully observes this unseemly ambition wordlessly.

“How come you two went your separate ways?” she asks, as she and Mulder cross the plaza in front of Eurisko. “I’m a pain in the ass to work with,” Mulder explains glibly. “Seriously, Mulder,” Scully persists. “I’m not a pain in the ass?” he replies. Well, she hasn’t been working with you all that long, Mulder; she’s going to need a bigger sample. Mulder goes on to explain that Pudge had ladder-climbing aspirations, while he was “gunning for a basement office with no heat or windows.” No heat? Winters in DC, that’s gotta be a bitch. Where did we get “lush” from, anyway? A security camera “ominously” eyes the dynamic duo as they enter the building. Mulder goes on to describe how Pudge botched an important case in Atlanta, resulting in the maiming of a federal judge. Stellar! The elevator pings open, and Mulder and Scully get in; we watch them in fish-eyed Security Cam view.

Okay, if you’ve seen a particular blooper-reel outtake of this scene, you know that young Gillian Anderson was a bit of a hellion, with a filthy sense of humor. Attagirl. Well, what would you do, if you got hot young Duchov alone in an elevator? Aside from turning brick red and stammering like a ninny and possibly bursting into tears of lustful anxiety, which is what I would do. Anyway. In boring actuality, the elevator simply announces “Going up” in what is clearly NerdBoy’s voice. “Must be for the visually impaired,” Scully notes. “How do you like that—a politically correct elevator,” Mulder says. Which…what? That’s idiotic. So, Braille keypads and curb cuts are what, shameless pandering to handicapped special-interest groups? Guhh. Irritating. “Third floor…fourth floor…” drones the elevator. Suddenly it jerks to a halt, throwing Scully right onto the floor. Should’ve been Mulder, for that dumbass remark. To his credit, he helps her up, and then starts pushing buttons randomly, as you do in a busted elevator. Scully more sensibly goes for the emergency phone, but as she’s identifying herself to the security guy on the other end, the elevator smoothly starts back up. Now it KNOWS YOU, Scully! The security camera refocuses “ominously.” I’m gonna need a macro for that, aren’t I? We see our heroes on the COS security monitor, across which text appears: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PHONE SEARCH: SCULLY, DANA 202-555-6431. Okay, the computer knows to look her up in DC? And this text is appearing on…some monitor, somewhere…why? No! No! Don’t ask! Move along! Also, what it should be saying across this picture is DAMN LADY THOSE ARE SOME CRUELLY TAPERED PANTS.

In the Dead Executive Washroom, Pudge mushmouths about the switched grounding in the electrical panel; I swear he says someone has tampered with “the servo.” Tom Servo would improve this episode about a hundredfold. Anyway, so Executive Dude shocked the shit out of himself. “It takes a lot of juice to melt a steel key,” Pudge says. Then Mulder wonders whether the “servo” switch could have been moved manually. Is that some electrical term I’ve never heard? Whatever. A random gent in the office strolls up to explain that yeah, sure, it could’ve been done manually, “but whoever did it would have had to override the COS.” COS regulates everything in the building, including the volume of water in each toilet flush. I could have gone to my grave without knowing about the PooSensor2000, I think. Pudge introduces the random gent as Claude? Clyde?–mushmouth, I tell you!—Peterson, the building systems engineer who discovered the body. To override the system, someone would first need to “break the access codes,” Peterson says, implying that this would be difficult. The security camera refocuses “ominously” (TSCRO, from now on!) and we get a security-cam shot of the whole gang in the bathroom. Mulder badgers Peterson about who might have access, and whether COS controls the phones too; he’s noticed that the PottyPhone is off the hook, he points out to Pudge, and speculates that Dead Exec was talking to someone “before he did his Ben Franklin impersonation.” Pudge takes a moment for self-congratulation: “Taught him everything he knows,” he smarms to Scully, walking out. Mulder makes a hilarious “Yep, it’s totally true” face at Scully. Hee.

Back in the LBO, Scully enters and tells Mulder “It’s past three.” Where are you off to, Happy Hour? Mulder is rummaging around his pigsty of a desk, looking for his profile notes; he’s sure they were right there, despite Scully’s ripping on him about the mess. “Come on, we’re late,” she tells him. Sadly, they’re late not for the local pub but for a case meeting, in which Pudge eloquently rattles off Mulder’s profile as his own work. Mulder gives him the stink-eye but says nothing; Scully whispers “Is that your profile?” but he waves her off: “Forget it. No.” Pudge plays the tape of Dead Exec’s last call, pointing out that the call came from inside the building, ensuring that the trap would work. A supervisor lady—is this the Iron Maiden? No one says, so no one cares—praises Pudge for his lazy, conniving misappropriation of someone else’s work. Cut to Mulder stomping through the bullpen to quietly confront Pudge. Pudge dickishly makes excuses and smarms off past the arriving Scully. “He apologized, in his own way,” Mulder mutters darkly, when Scully asks. Anyway, Scully’s got news from Peterson: the list of people with COS access. “One name?” Mulder says disbelievingly, looking at the note she hands him. It’s NerdBoy, I’ll just say now; he has a name, but I’m just going to call him…lessee…Gil Bates. Hey, it sounds way better than Jeeve Stobs! Anyway, it’s known that there was no love lost between him and Dead Exec. Mulder thinks that this makes Gil Bates too obvious as a murder suspect. “And fully consistent with [Pudge's] excellent behavioral profile,” Scully twits him as they walk away. “Fully,” Mulder snorts back. As they leave, they pass a file clerk (?) riding one of those mobility scooters, oddly enough. I hope that’s not too politically correct for Mulder!

Mulder and Scully pull up at Gil Bates’s crazy technomillionaire pad, across the street from a golf course. There’s a motorcycle and what I believe is a classic Corvette parked in the driveway. “So this is what a 220 IQ and a $400 million severance settlement buys you,” Mulder notes as they walk under a…glass canopy, of some sort, to the door. Ehh. I don’t know what this location is, that they’re trying to pass off as a millionaire’s domicile, but it doesn’t convince me. It’s low and cold and concrete-y, mostly, like a sleek modern museum. This reminds me that when Bill Gates was building his lakefront mansion/compound/bunker here in the Seattle area, these e-mails kept making the rounds about all the insane technological features being included. I really didn’t give a crap about any of them except one: supposedly, he has a computer-controlled bathtub that he can operate remotely from the office or even his car. He can specify the temperature, depth, and proportionate dosage of bubbles, like, over the Internet, and when he gets home the perfect bath has been drawn to his exact specifications. Now that is how to be a bajillionaire. Oh, and I hear that Melinda has a revolving dry-cleaners’ clothes rack in her closet, like Cher in Clueless. I could also get behind that, I think.

Where was I? Okay, Gil Bates’s mansion. TSCRO. Gil schlubs to the door and seems unsurprised to see the FBI. “What took you guys so long?” he mopes, letting them in. “Oh, you mind taking off your shoes?” he asks. I guess he is a slovenly neat freak? Or a foot fetishist. Ew. “You can divide the computer science industry into two types of people: neat, and scruffy,” Gil blathers, defying my first theory by characterizing himself as the scruffy type. I repeat: ew. Mulder and Scully pad along in their stocking feet past Gil’s nouveau-riche Eames chairs and reflecting pool and whatnot. They can’t give Gillian her apple crate to stand on in these long shots, so she’s comically tiny. Hee. Gil drones on about how he started Eurisko in his parents’ garage (of course) after following the Dead for a year (double of course). “You know what Eurisko means?” he asks. Mulder’s big brain perks up: “It’s from the Greek, isn’t it? Um… ‘I learn things.’” Close: “‘I discover things,’” Gil tells him. He derides Dead Exec as not being interested in discovery, only power and opportunism. “Lemme show you something,” he continues, and turns on a massive monitor/TV screen to display a very cheesy computer diagram of what he calls “Smart Home.” “From this prototype I have access to every square foot of my house,” he says. “This place is as safe as Fort Knox and as energy-efficient as your average igloo.” Ohh…kay? “We were two years ahead of Microsoft (ha! ha!) and Cebus (?) when [Dead Exec], in his infinite wisdom, killed the program,” Gil rants. Whatever you say, buddy. Mulder grills him on whether the system is the same as the corporate COS, and whether someone could hack into the COS. “Well, not your average phone freak,” Gil says. “But there’s plenty of kooks out there—data travelers, electro-wizards, techno-anarchists…” Uh…electro-wizards? Probably also the sportos, motorheads, sluts, waistoids, dweebies…anyway. Scu lly cuts to the chase: “Could you have done it?” she asks, point-blank. I love her. Gil grins proudly in spite of himself. “Of course! I designed the system,” he beams, before realizing maybe he shouldn’t be that delighted about this little visit. Scully notes that he doesn’t seem all that worried about being their prime suspect. “It’s a puzzle, Miss Scully,” Gil snaps. That’s Doctor Scully to you, geek. Gil natters on about scruffy minds and blah blah puzzles blee murder god this episode is boring.

Scully’s at home, typing up her field journal, still in her work skirt and pumps. Girl, put on some flannel sock-monkey jammies, seriously. It’s October 24, 1993, for you obsessives. Scully switches off the monitor—not the computer, that we can see, but whatever—and toddles off to bed. The camera pans back through her dark apartment and suddenly the monitor turns back on! Not that the monitor has anything to do with computer data, but never mind! Moving on! The dial-up modem makes its eeee-EEEE—eeeee noise—aw, and hee—and we see the text of Scully’s report scrolling across her screen…which dissolves into the COS screen. COS SCANNING: SCULLY, DANA…DATA INTERCEPT, it says across the bottom. Blinky blink. “FILE OPENED,” says Evil Computer Voice. To no one.

At the FBI, Scully and Mulder listen to about a billion tapes of Gil supposedly lecturing at the Smithsonian. Pudge shambles in and stands around saying nothing. “Gimme a second?” Mulder asks Scully…but he’s the one to get up and confer with Pudge in the hall. Pudge is “sorry” for being an ass, and of course he’s begging for more help. “All you had to do was ask; I would’ve helped you with the profile,” Mulder complains. Oh, Pudge is so tormented by his bungled past, and so jealous of Brilliant!Profiler!Mulder, and blah blah THANK YOU Scully for interrupting and calling them both back into the LBO. Scully’s used some technological software doodad to analyze the vocal patterns and frequencies of the “time and tone” call that Dead Exec received and compare them to Gil’s droning lectures. Whaddya know, they’re the same guy! Which is entirely obvious to the naked ear. Scully declares that this proves Gil’s the killer…as opposed to just proving that Gil recorded the elevator voice and the timestamp messages and, like, the telephone directory for his own company. Duh. Then Scully leans over and draws on the computer screen with a pen, circling the matching patterns in the voice frequency whatever analysis. Oh my God. Will she put white-out on that later? Anyway, she’s all het up to go arrest Gil, but Pudge begs for the chance to bring him in alone. “I need this one, Mulder,” he wheedles. Mulder lets him go. Behind him, Scully calls the help desk to ask if someone can come down and fix her cup-holder drive.

Back at the mansion, Gil—who has failed to buy any lamps with his millions, apparently—tries unsuccessfully to log into the COS himself. Frustrated, he runs out and roars off in his Corvette. I wonder if the actor got to drive that baby more than 50 yards…heh. Pudge, who’s been staking out the joint, follows. At the Eurisko building, Gil sprints in and tears past the security desk. TSCRO. Blinky-blink. Here comes Pudge. TSCRO. Y’all, these constant shots of the security cameras? Not exciting. Upstairs, Gil rushes into some sort of command-center room with a desk and computer facing a glass panel into another room, behind which is a gigantic computer screen flashing all kinds of nonsense. It’s very dark here too. Did 1013 blow their entire lighting budget in the first half? Gil logs on. “WELCOME BACK, [GIL],” moans Evil Computer Voice. Gil goggles at it, all bewildered, and then types, and says aloud for our benefit, “You’re not equipped with a voice synthesizer!” Okay, seriously, THIS MAKES ABSOLUTELY ZERO SENSE. I’m kind of cracking up. Gil kind of shrugs off his observation that THE COMPUTER CAN TALK FOR SOME REASON, and asks “What is my user level?” “THAT IS NOW AT THE DISCRETION OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM,” COS drones. Downstairs, Pudge strides purposefully into the elevator. TSCRO. Uh oh, Pudge—better hold onto the handrail, buddy. The elevator rises, counting off floors. TSCRO, again, uh, we get it, thanks! Upstairs, Gil’s monitor suddenly displays a live feed of Pudge in the elevator. Gil begins flipping out. None of his commands have any effect. “TRY AGAIN,” COS taunts him blandly. Hee. “What are you doing?” Gil howls. The computer THAT CAN TALK repeats this back at him, distorted and mocking. Gil runs into the other room, opens a panel and starts manually flipping switches, to no avail. Are those servo switches? The elevator stalls between floors 29 and 30; Pudge is perplexed, more so when the doors open on the cement wall of the elevator shaft. “Aw, man,” he mutters. Gil backs away from the uber-monitor in horror. “Going down,” snots the elevator voice, and then the elevator plummets, flinging Pudge all around like a marble in a jar, AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaahhhh…crunch. Black screen. “PROGRAM EXECUTED,” COS blinky-blinks. Har, har.

In the LBO, Mulder watches the tape of Pudge’s demise and Gil freaking out in the command center. So it was…easy to get the tape from the building’s clutches, then? Nope, I’m not stopping. Mulder looks understandably appalled. I have to say, his former partners and coworkers have a very poor track record of, you know, survival. Suddenly the fact that Scully never can bring herself to leave him begins to make sense. Beyond the fact that he’s effing beautiful, I mean. Speak of the devil: here comes Scully, in the red suit with the little black velvet collar. Hee hee, I love that one. She’s sorry about Pudge. I wouldn’t be too sorry, Scully. Mulder confides that he doesn’t think Gil Bates is guilty; why would he go back to Eurisko and get himself captured on video? Scully tries to comfort Mulder and convince him that he’s suffering a little PTSD. If I had a dollar…anyway, Mulder thinks Gil is too smart to be a blatantly stupid murderer. He’s rather perplexed, then, when Scully points out that Gil has already signed a confession.

Fairly pointless scene in which Mulder drives out to the Bates mansion and is turned away by the higher-clearance suits working the crime scene. What’s this, a cover-up? Dunn! Next, Mulder sits on the plaza at Eurisko, wearing large hilarious-but-somehow-cool sunglasses. Are those Vuarnets? The Vancouver SkyTrain tootles by in the background; for some reason this cheers me enormously and makes me want to shout out Hiii! to everyone on board. You’re in the X-Files, everybody! Hey, here comes Deep Throat! I’d forgotten he had anything to do with this stupid episode. Deep Throat is likewise irritated, chiding Mulder for dragging him into this crapfest. Mulder presses on, wanting to know why Gil is the subject of a “code five investigation,” evidently something orchestrated by the Department of Defense. Deep Throat gives us all the bullet, namely that supergenius Gil is a “bleeding heart,” who’s spurned all advances from the weapons industry while he worked to develop artificial-intelligence software. (SkyTrain again: hiiiiiii!) Supposedly, Gil’s behind the first “adaptive network…a computer that actually thinks.” Naturally the DOD wants to get its grubby paws on this immediately. Mulder contemplates.

Federal Detention Center, Washington, D.C. “They make me wear shoes all the time; what else do you want from me?” Gil whines to a visiting Mulder. Okay: hee. Mulder’s convinced that Gil falsely confessed to protect the COS. Gil whips out a parable for our times: “After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life regretting he’d ever glimpsed an atom.” Mulder and his sudden Stray Cats pompadour are pissed: “Oppenheimer may have regretted his actions, but he never denied responsibility for them!” Gil is undeterred: “He loved the work, Mr. Mulder. His mistake was in sharing it with an immoral government. I won’t make the same mistake.” And this, kids, was during the Bill Clinton administration. Eep. Mulder points out that COS is a killer; Gil is sorry, but thinks that COS being limited to just killing people in one office tower, as opposed to all over the globe, is the lesser of two evils. Mulder suggests a third option: “You created that machine…now you tell me how to destroy it.”

Mulder and Scully walk out of…I don’t know. Where’d you come from, red-suited Scully? Gil claims he can create a virus to destroy COS; Scully thinks Gil’s just blaming the machine as an alibi. While she and Mulder argue about the likelihood of AI so well-developed that it can act in its own defense, I try to figure out the pattern on Mulder’s tie: large gold…belt buckles? Under attack by paramecia? Scully still thinks that Mulder’s under duress from the untimely demise of Agent Pudge. “Maybe you should talk to someone,” she suggests, as the camera swings around them to show the SkyTrain (Hiiiiiii!) yet again. They’re back at Eurisko, then? Or the Federal pokey is also on the train line? Or shooting every exterior at this business park came real cheap? Whatever. “You’re probably right,” Mulder grumbles, and strides off “to talk to someone,” ditching Scully. I hope you’re not still falling for this stuff, Scully…altho ugh the classic MulderDitches at this point probably still number in the single digits. Hmmm.

Back in the jailhouse, a guard opens Gil’s cell, waking him. He doesn’t have shoes on at the moment, I note. Mulder’s back for a visit. “How much time do you need?” he asks, proffering a laptop. Gil eyes it glumly.

Chez Scully. She’s sacked out in bed, apparently having fallen asleep over a big honking hardcover book, Obstacle Course. Try as I might, I can’t make out whether the author is Jose Chung. The camera pans over to show us that it’s 1:31 in the morning. Suddenly the bedside phone begins to ring. Scully fumbles for it, all “…Hh’lo?” but all she hears on the line is more dial-up eeeeEEEEing. Suddenly wide awake, she goes sprinting through the apartment to find someone—or something!—accessing her computer and her case report again. “Oh my God,” she breathes, and picks up and dials…another phone, there on her desk. So she has two lines, one for the modem? But then why did the other one ring? I don’t…no, never mind, who cares. “This is Special Agent Dana Scully, ID number 2317-616. I need you to run a quick trace on a number for me,” she says to whoever’s on the other end, and giv es them her home number. Danny, is that you? Because Danny lives at the FBI, I’m fairly certain.

Mulder stands before the mostly darkened Eurisko building in the middle of the night, striking a pensive pose for a moment before going to open the trunk of his car. He’s still in his suit and tie at oh-my-god-o’clock, here…and he’s startled when a second car pulls up and parks right behind him. Out climbs Scully, in this thrown-together ensemble that always makes me laugh. She’s got on a dark blazer and pants, and pumps, I think…but has topped this off with a huge long red and black plaid flannel shirt. Oh, early 90s! You are so funny, with your grunge fashion! Scully explains that she’d rather be at home listening to Pearl Jam, but somebody was accessing her computer and she traced the call to Eurisko. She’s all breathless and practically giddy here, evidently excited to be doing a little funky poaching with her hot partner in the middle of the night. Me too, Scully, me too. “It’s the machine,” Mulder says, starin g pointedly up at the building. Scully…sort of braces herself, and sighs. “How can we get in?” she says. Mulder rummages in the trunk. “Remember the Trojan Horse?” he asks, whipping out the EURISKO vanity license plate from Gil’s Corvette.

On the ramp to the parking garage, Mulder and Scully wait while a laser scanner and/or blinky red light reads the plate, now affixed to the back of Mulder’s (?) car. They pass, and the metal security gate rises slowly in front of them. “Ooopen Sesame,” Mulder jokes, grinning. Scully looks unamused, but is nonetheless absolutely cute as a button, here, all wide-eyed and makeup-free in her lumberjack shirt. I kind of want to jump through the TV and pinch her chipmunk cheeks, seriously, because ohmygod SO CUTE. Mulder pulls the car forward. TSCRO—oh, Security Camera, I’ve missed you for the last 10 minutes! Suddenly the red-and-white-striped parking arm claps down in front of their car. “Aw, what the—” Mulder grouses, and then WHAMMO, the metal gate slams down onto their windshield as Scully cries out. After the slug for a commercial break, we return to the slightly smooshed car, whose horn blares on steadily. Mulder and Scully both scramble out through his door, unhurt, and duck under the gate. Scully’s got her fingers in her ears, hee. Mulder pops the hood and yanks a cable free, silencing the horn and making me want to marry him, so I can sic him on every one of my idiot neighbors’ car alarms. “So much for the element of surprise,” he notes. He suggests they take the stairs, and guides Scully along with his hand on her arm, aww. TSCRO.

In the stairwell, Mulder and Scully stagger upwards. “Twenty-eight down, one to go,” Mulder notes. In this light we can see that Scully’s blazer is a) gigantic and b) deep emerald green. Oof. She totters a little on the stairs; can’t say I blame her. Whoomp, the lights go out, plunging them into blackness. “Oh, great,” Scully mutters. Always prepared, Mulder flicks on a flashlight. “Trick or treat,” he says. I suspect the Halloween theme must have been a lot more prominent in the original draft. On the landing for the 29th floor, TSCRO, and Scully reaches for the door handle. “No!” Mulder says sharply, jerking her hand away. “Don’t wanna make the same mistake [Dead Exec] made,” he explains, unshouldering a backpack. He pulls on a thick glove and pokes at the door lock with a screwdriver, triggering an explosion of sparks that makes them both jump back and yelp a little. Then they both stand there panting for a moment, and my mind…wanders. Um. Okay, I’m back. Mulder rattles the doorknob, to no avail. Then he looks up, and notices the security camera. “What are you looking at?” he snarks at it, and jams his other glove over the lens. The camera shifts and swivels audibly, trying to locate them again. Okay, that’s funny too, after the 75 or so extraneous shots of this or that stupid camera that we’ve been subjected to. Mulder continues looking around, finally spotting the grille of an air vent in the ceiling. He gives Scully a look. Dang, Scully, I feel for you here. I’m short, too, so I know the drill: you’re in the front row of the class picture, you have to sit in the middle of the back seat, and if there’s a duct or an airshaft or some other creepy tiny tunnel that needs crawling through, well…it’s always your turn. Cut immediately to Scully, grunting with effort as Mulder makes a stirrup with his hands for Scully’s little white-sock-clad foot (why has she taken off her shoes?) and boosts her up into the vent. “There should be a way for you to drop down and open the door,” he grits, chucking her on up into the ceiling. Scully belly-crawls noisily through the duct, brandishing the flashlight and trying to decide which way to go. This looks like a serious pain in the ass; poor Gillian. Crawling, crawling. Mulder paces on the landing. “C’mon, Scully,” he mutters. Scully crawls. A sudden brisk breeze through the duct ruffles her hair. Uh oh.

On the landing, the door beeps and its little light blinks green. “Scully?” Mulder calls. The door opens to reveal a seemingly puzzled Peterson, the facilities manager. “What are you doing here?” he asks. Meanwhile, back in the vent, Scully crawls into a serious headwind, coughing as dust and debris blow past her. Ultimately she loses her grip and is blown away back down the shaft, hollering. The stuntwoman does a nice job of tumbling and rolling and bashing into the walls, before finally catching hold of an opening that branches off into a different duct. She only hangs on a moment, though, before getting sucked free and crashing along once more…directly at the blades of a giant fan! Oh no! There’s another opening in the duct; Scully grabs on with both hands and hangs on desperately, still yelling for help. Then, amazingly enough, she frees one arm—she’s held onto the flashlight the whole time somehow—to shine the light on the enormous whirling Fan of Imminent Death, just to make sure. Scully kicks and struggles, but can’t quite pull herself up into the other shaft. I think of this scene every single time I’m on the Gravitron (assisted pull-up machine) at the gym. If my life depended on me hanging on by sheer upper-body strength? I…would be coleslaw, frankly. Go, Scully! She loses the flashlight, which is pulverized into bits in the fan. It’s clearly Gillian again, here, paper and crap blowing into her face as she glares at the camera, bless her.

Peterson leads Mulder into the COS command-center/chamber of doom. “The machine’s been acting all crazy…power surges, shutoffs,” he complains. “That’s why I’m here so late.” Mulder doesn’t have time to waste: “Where’s the B port?” he asks. Peterson leads him to it, fussing a little: does Mulder really know what he’s doing? Peterson doesn’t want to get fired. Or electrocuted, I imagine. Mulder plugs a…blinky thing into some port or other on the mainframe. Access…Denied! “Damn,” he mutters.

In the vent, Scully hangs on like death with her left hand, and draws her gun with the right. Oh, Scully…that is a terrible idea. Thank God that, as this helps to establish, you’re such a phenomenally good shot. She plugs away at the fan, or at its electrical coupling. Sparks fly. The blades whirl. Bang…bang…

COS command center. Mulder plugs the blinky thing into…the same port? A different one? Whatever. “SYSTEM ACCESS GRANTED,” says Evil Computer Voice abruptly, although the monitor reads “BEGIN ALGORITHM CODE PROGRAM.” Mulder claps his hands with glee and runs back to the main keyboard area. “Now I can put in the virus!” he declares boldly, and stupidly. “Not bad, Agent Mulder,” Peterson says admiringly…pulling a gun on Mulder. Dun! “You know, I’ve been trying to access the CPU for the past two years. Now please, take out your gun, and remove the clip,” Peterson instructs, as Duchovny makes all kinds of “Curses! Foiled again!” faces and poutily offers up his weapon. “Defense Department?” he asks sourly. “Let’s just say our paychecks are signed by the same person,” Peterson suggests. “Now give me the diskette and step away from the console.” Mulder could not be any more petulant as he grudgingly slaps the disk into Pete rson’s hand.

At which point Scully sidesteps into the room in a cowboy firing stance, her own weapon leveled at Peterson. “Put. Down. The. Gun,” she twangs, in a Voice of Death that makes me start cracking up helplessly. God, I love this scene. Peterson tries to equivocate. “SHUT UP AND DROP THE GUN,” Scully barks. She is a hot mess, bloodied and bruised, with her hair a wild windblown rat’s nest. It is probably not supposed to be funny, but it kills me. Scully has absolutely, completely HAD IT, and somehow her disheveled fury emphasizes her total baby face. I love that as she’s bossing Peterson around, Mulder, in the background, gets out of his chair and carefully backs away a little. Good call, Mulder! Peterson appeals to Scully’s professional ethics. “You’re making a mistake, Agent Scully. Compromising your sworn duty. This operation is more sensitive than you can possibly imagine,” he tries. “Don’t listen to him!” Mulder says, inching around the other side of the room. Scully looks between them, grubby and still mad as hell, as Peterson drones on about the scientific value of the technology and Mulder hollers that the machine’s a murderous monster that no one can control. “Make no mistake: YOU will be held accountable,” Peterson school-Principals. Scully wavers…but only for a moment. “Mulder, put in the disk,” she murmurs, and I could not love her any more. Mulder snatches the disk back and slaps it into the drive.

Oh, lord. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, [GIL]? DON’T DO THIS, [GIL],” moans Evil Computer Voice, as the monitor begins to fill up with gibberish. “BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME!” Heh. The COS moans and mumbles and begins to stutter. It’s as if HAL had submitted a really bad audition tape. The screen and the voice and the blinky red lights all basically go berserk; the elevator doors clunk open and shut in the same shot from Pudge’s death drop; TSCRO all over the place. The gang look on with varying expressions (Mulder: awe; Peterson: exasperation/job anxiety; Scully: deranged fatigue). COS calls out melodramatically for Gil, but does not sing “Daisy.” “WHYYYYYYYY?” Evil Computer Voice finally moans, on a long fading note, before everything goes black. And the award for worst acting in this episode goes to…the computer! We see another external shot of the Eurisko building, where for some reason all the interior office lights start coming back on. Whatever.

A sunny morning; birds tweet as Mulder and Deep Throat confer in a little—and extremely exposed, I’m thinking—park. Deep Throat, are you trying to get yourself shot? Mulder’s perplexed: Gil Bates has mysteriously gone missing, and Mulder’s petitioned various government agencies as to his whereabouts, to no avail. Deep Throat rolls his eyes. The shadow government, he points out, can do whatever it wants. “Where is he?” Mulder persists. “In the middle of what we in the trade call ‘hard bargaining,’” Deep Throat says. Mulder doesn’t think Gil will ever work willingly with the government. I’m distracted by the IMMENSE PAISLEYS on his tie. Seriously, they’re huge. Deep Throat points out that the lack of freedom can do funny things to a shoe-eschewing freak like Gil, not to mention the fact that he was a confessed murderer, and Mulder destroyed the only evidence that might have exonerated him. Ooops. Mulder looks chagrined, that persistent little lock of hair falling over his worried forehead. “What else could I have done?” “Nothing, unless you were willing to let the technology survive,” Deep Throat tells him. Apparently, the DOD has been on the case for five days, but Gil’s virus was thorough; they haven’t found a trace. Yet. Mulder doesn’t look too convinced.

Cut to a lab, where technicians are poring over computer guts. Peterson technobabbles into a phone, and glumly receives word that in six more hours, they’ll have to consign the whole project to the metal shredder. “We’ll do what we can, sir,” an off-screen tech brown-noses. Peterson sighs and walks off. The camera pans down around a remote corner of the gutted COS…where, suddenly, some little red lights blinky blink on! Dunnn! And, just for old time’s sake, a security camera…oh, you know. Peterson’s face is superimposed on a snowy monitor screen. “I’m gonna figure this thing out if it kills me,” he mutters. He said it, not me. TSCRO!—yes, again, I swear to God!—before FINALLY this episode is over.

Recap by Lurkey