1×21: BORN AGAIN
by foxestacado
Recap by Crass
Outside the 14th Precinct House, Buffalo, New York. A pair of detective-type men get out of a car and go into the building. One of them is carrying a brown bag. Is it his lunch? Evidence? I’m sure all will soon be revealed…or not. They mustn’t be too busy, as they stop to sexually harass an attractive woman cop who gives as good as she gets. Cool! It’s Maggie Wheeler, who is a friend (and I believe an ex-girlfriend) of Duchovny’s and got him his first movie role in New Year’s Day. Fans and those appreciative of quality nudity should check it out – there’s even penis! Duchovny must have been in his mid-20s then and my-oh-my, what a gorgeous young man he was, even if his hair did need a good cut. There must have been a trail of moist knickers left all around Yale while he was working on his Masters and PhD. Maybe some soggy jocks too. Mmm-mmm. Moving on. Maggie’s wearing jeans and tops them off with a blue shirt, some sort of white unbuttoned vest, and a jacket over the top. It must be cold for her to be wearing so many layers. She says, “See ya,” to the other cops and leaves the building, but as she goes around the corner, she sees a little blonde girl sitting by herself in the alley way. She asks the kid if she’s all right, and if she’s lost, but the kid just looks at her and sort of nods.
So much for getting home and getting some sleep – Maggie’s back in the precinct and she’s left the kid with the detective who harassed her earlier. She’s also taken off the jacket and when can see the vest in its full, horrible glory. It has pockets, people! Pockets above the breast, pockets that serve no practical purpose whatsoever. Ah, early nineties’ fashion – even worse than the eighties, in my jaded opinion. Detective Sexual Harassment Panda is bitching about being left with the kid. Why should he assume Maggie would be better with kids, just because she’s female? Gah. They go into the holding room and Maggie tells the little girl that Detective Barbala is going to help find her parents. He calls the little girl ‘sweetheart’ and asks what her name is. Apparently, it’s Michelle. She looks thrilled to bits at being left with Detective Sleaze and Maggie tells her not to be scared and leaves the room. Detective Sleaze gets out his notepad and starts to question Michelle Ma Belle about her parents. Her last name is Bishop. He continues to question her but Michelle is giving him the hairy eyeball and then BAM! He flies out of the window in a hail of broken glass, for no apparent reason. Maggie, her attempt to go home thwarted yet again, runs back into the room and looks out the broken window. Detective Sleaze has landed right on top of a car. I hope that’s his own car he’s ruined. Michelle Ma Belle is still sitting at the table, looking non-nonplussed by the turn of events. She’s got some nasty luggage under the eyes for a young kid. Maybe she should get her liver checked out? Doo DOO doo doo doo DOO – you know the drill.
Lucky police! They have a crime scene right outside the front door, which really saves on travel time. The press have just turned up and are filming away. Inside the precinct and YAY! It’s Moose and Squirrel! Turns out Maggie has called them in especially, as her brother was a cop on the Tooms case in Baltimore. Good to see that Mulder’s shenanigans impress someone other than Scully. She goes on to tell Mulder that Detective Sleaze never won any popularity contests at the 14th (hard to believe, I know) but he was still a cop and Maggie can’t let it go. Scully asks her about the little girl who witnessed what happened and Maggie tells Scully that the little girl said there was another man in the room. Scully starts to say that it stands to reason, but Maggie cuts right over her to say that she was right outside and that Detective Sleaze and the little girl were alone in the room. Mulder asks her if she got a description and she exasperated says, “I’m telling you, there was no one else.” She tells Moose and Squirrel that the department is treating this as a suicide but she says: “I knew this guy. There was no way he did himself.” Oh, and not the most believable scenario that he’d choose to do it in front of a little girl he was interviewing. Searching in vain for a scientific explanation, Scully asks if he was depressed or under psychiatric care of any kind. You just keep plugging away, Scully. I’m sure one day it will all make sense. One day. Maggie says, “Nah. The only time he ever looked at himself was in the mirror, and he always liked what he saw.” Ouch! Just as well he’s dead, or he’d be occupying the Burn Unit at the local hospital after that comment. Mulder walks past the crime scene techs and makes the comment that most jumpers tend to open the window before they jump out. I guess getting a face full of glass before your plunge to the unforgiving pavement (or unfortunately parked car) would sort of be adding insult to injury. Maggie tells them that the little girl was picked up by her mother an hour ago. Scully says that surely Maggie doesn’t think that the little girl has anything to do with Detective Sleaze’s untimely encounter with gravitational force, but Maggie says, “I don’t know what to believe.” Come sit by me, Maggie. You’ll fit right in. Have you heard of this concept called the mytharc? Apparently the kid gives her the wig. Anytime any kid appears on The X-Files, there’s something evil afoot.
Ack – closeup of Michelle Ma Belle, and I hope those bags under her eyes are being enhanced with makeup to play up the creepy, because otherwise she needs some urgent medical attention. Mulder is asking her questions about what the man looked like – he’s got a Photo-fit computer programme that some geek is running for him. Why they need two of them to do this is beyond me. Surely it would be less threatening for the child just to have the Photo-fit guy there. Mulder gets the guy to put a funny moustache on the picture to make Michelle laugh, I suppose in an attempt to make her feel more comfortable. Well, it would help if you stopped looming over her, Mulder. Then the computer program sort of glitches and the moustache changes to a normal one. Spooky. Mulder asks Michelle if the man’s moustache was like that and she nods, slowly and creepily. She’s a weird kid. Meanwhile, Scully’s interviewing Michelle’s mother. Wherever they live is over half an hour’s drive from Buffalo, and when Michelle’s Mum got home, Mrs. Dougherty was locked in the wine cellar. I hope Michelle’s Mum checked Mrs. Dougherty’s handbag for stray bottles of Bolly before she left for the day. It’s so hard to get good help these days. It turns out that Michelle has already gone through four nannies this year and it’s only April! Michelle is a problem child. She should call that Jo Supernanny woman. After a few sessions on the ‘naughty stair’, I’m sure Michelle would be right as a trivet!
I’m trying to take this scene seriously, but Michelle’s Mum is wearing a strand of pearls with some sort of brown basket-weave cardigan that appears to have shoulder-pads. Avert your eyes! Save yourself! Even Scully appears to be mesmerised by the horror, much in the same way that traffic slows when there’s been an accident. She tells Scully that Michelle frightens her, and judging by her fashion choices, she’s made of stern stuff indeed. We should be afraid, very afraid. Scully’s hair is looking rather attractive for Season 1, although we haven’t yet seen what she’s wearing under her huge dark trench coat. Michelle’s Mum tells Scully that Michelle isn’t like other little girls, that she doesn’t have friends and hardly ever smiles, and that she feels terrible because she can’t comfort her. Turns out that Michelle sees things that other people can’t and hears people yelling in her head. Time for the Thorazine, I think. They had to cover the pool because she started to scream every time she got near the water. Perhaps they should check her for raccoon bites. Just to make this story a little sadder, it turns out that Michelle’s parents are divorced. And in a particularly gruesome addition, Mulder comes out of the house with the picture of the man Michelle says she saw, and his trench coat blows open and he’s wearing some sort of light purple suit. I kid you not, light purple. Whose bright idea was that? Not that he doesn’t carry it off (he does), but it’s rather a bizarre styling choice. Of course Mum’s never seen the man before, and the Sheila that Michelle was talking about is Dr. Braun, a developmental psychologist. Mulder looks up at Michelle, who throws a blue origami bird out of the window at him. Mulder thinks it looks like a hawk or a falcon. He asks Michelle’s Mum where Michelle learnt how to do origami, but she has no idea. The kid’s better at it than I am, but that’s not much of a stretch, as I am completely crap at origami. Mulder sends Scully off to do the autopsy, while he goes to have a chat to Dr. Braun at Brylin Hospital. He wants Scully to check for burns or lesions on Detective Sleaze’s body. Sceptically, Scully asks why and Mulder tells her that psychokinesis is usually associated with electric charge. Psychokinesis? That’s quite a leap. We still haven’t ruled out a man that can become invisible or who can squeeze out through the vents of the building yet. OK, now we get a look at what Scully’s got on under her navy-blue trench coat. It’s some sort of double-breasted suit, in a truly horrible brown pin stripe with some sort of royal blue blouse underneath. I’m thinking there’s layer upon layer upon layer of shoulder pads in this outfit, as it makes her look chunky. It’s the Sara Lee of Scully outfits. Mulder is speculating that a 60-pound kid threw a 200-pound detective out the window using only the power of her mind. Scully is somewhat less than enchanted with this theory and shows it by rolling her eyes and pursing her lips. Ooh, debunk me, baby!
Boom-chaka-laka over to the Brylin Psychiatric Hospital, where Dr. Sheila is telling Mulder that she doesn’t recognise the man in the picture. I think I’ve seen him before, but I think it’s in my collection of seventies porn trailers that I keep for amusement value. Duchovny is the only man I’ve ever seen that can actually rock the pornstache, but I prefer him without it. To the pornstache, boys and girls, Just Say No. The actress playing this part was also in Die Hand Die Verletzt in Season 3 as one of the satanic P&Cers. She feels that it’s possible that Michelle completely fantasized the man alleged to be in the room, dissociative disorders blee, intensity of patient’s emotions blah, too much for one personality to process yadda yadda yadda. Part of the personality splits itself off fishcakes. Mulder says: “Like in schizophrenia?” Did you find that PhD in psychology in a Cornflakes packet, Mulder? Contrary to popular belief, schizophrenia is not interchangeable with Multiple Personality Disorder. Schizophrenics usually experience auditory (and sometimes other) hallucinations, and often exhibit paranoid behaviour. Sheila’s talking about MPD. Jeepers. Maybe you aren’t really a psychologist after all. Sheila’s primary challenge has been to discover the source of Michelle’s extreme rage and goes on to say that in most cases it’s attributable to a traumatic event in the person’s life. Like, say, early exposure to extremely unfortunate fashion choices perhaps? As part of the treatment, Dr. Sheila sometimes leaves Michelle alone with a doll, which Michelle disfigures in exactly the same way every time – she’s torn off the left arm and blackened the right eye. Hey, is she getting psychic premonitions of what is going to happen to Krycek in Tunguska? You should look into that, Mulder. Sheila first thought that Michelle was being abused, but she had some sessions with her parents and discovered that wasn’t the case, so now she’s at a loss to explain it. Mulder asks if she’s tried deep progression hypnosis, but Dr. Sheila thinks it’s unreliable. You should give her Scully’s cell number, Mulder. They could get together and discuss confabulation over a latte. Sheila has been relying on Thorazine (am I good or what?) to regulate Michelle’s more bizarre behaviour. Mulder chooses this point in the conversation to go off the reservation, asking whether Dr. Sheila has observed any unexplained phenomena in Michelle’s presence, like inordinate strength, psychic ability, telekinesis? Dr. Sheila gives Mulder a look like she’s mentally writing out his script for Thorazine, and is trying to calculate his body weight to get the right dosage. She asks him if he’s joking, and when it’s clear he’s not, she tells him she has a patient waiting and throws him out politely.
Yoink! We have a close-up of a foot with a toe tag attached, which announces the body to be that of Rudolph Barbala. Hee, I didn’t know his first name was Rudolph. Maybe he was a smouldering Latin lover – either that or a Red Nosed Reindeer. I bet his childhood was hellish. Scully’s in her scrubs and performing an autopsy eleven hours and forty-five minutes after death was pronounced. She reluctantly notes a raised lesion approximately seven centimetres below the sternum. Damn that Mulder for being right all the frickin’ time! There’s deep necrosis inconsistent with cause of death determined by Dr. Guilder, but it is consistent with electrocution. Pulling herself together, Scully says that a further tissue analysis will be necessary. You go Scully! Prove him wrong! Deeeeeebuuuuunnnkkk him. Detective Maggie is lurking in the background, wanting to talk to Scully for a second, and trying really hard not to look at the body. I’d have thought police detectives would be a bit more hardened, but I’ll give her a break as it’s someone she actually knew. That would be weird. Scully leaves her attendant to take some pictures, and Maggie shows her a photo that could be a match for the Photo-fit. It’s Officer Charlie Morris, who used to work Narcotics out of the 27. Scully seems happy that there’s going to be a rational explanation for the killing, but of course she’s in for disappointment yet again. Charlie Morris has been dead for nine years that means that the little girl saw a ghost. I’d say that’s the least of her problems, judging by Mulder’s confab with her psychiatrist.
Back at the 14, Scully’s shown up with the Greatest Hits of Charlie Morris for Mulder and … Dear God! She’s wearing a sort of mushroom-coloured skirt suit, with a black scoop-neck top underneath. The skirt cuts her right in half, making her look not only short, but chunky to boot. What was Wardrobe thinking? Had they ingested some sort of hallucinatory fungus? It makes Mulder’s tie look tasteful and understated and he looks even taller than usual. By the way, he’s just sort of nodding away as Scully talks. I think he’s daydreaming about growing a pornstache and making some money on the side. At any rate, he’s not paying much attention to Scully, who’s making cracks about Michelle seeing poltergeists. To Scully’s chagrin, Mulder just throws her own findings back at her, saying that she found the lesion on Detective Sleaze’s body that could have been caused by electrothermal energy. Scully won’t back down though – she’s waiting for the lab results. Mulder loses patience with her and raises his voice a little, asking her why it’s so hard for her to believe when the evidence is there. Scully then busts out her evidence of Charlie Morris and shows Mulder a picture of him in a trophy case on the wall in the police station, offering an explanation for where Michelle got her description of the other man. But Scully, who threw the detective through the window? Mulder’s not ready to give up on his theory yet. He asks Scully for the grisly details of Charlie Morris’s death (the subtitling for the hearing impaired spells it ‘grizzly’, so for a while I’m misled, wondering how a bear got involved all of a sudden). Mulder and Scully are really not getting on well at all in this episode. Scully seems completely pissed-off with her role as the Sceptical Sidekick, and Mulder is just running the investigation like she’s not even there. It turns out that Charlie Morris’s left arm was severed by a chainsaw and his eye was gouged out. Is anyone flashing back to Scarface here? Oh, just me? All right. Mulder then pulls out one of the disfigured dolls and shows Scully, saying: “Hell of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?” He’s really laying down the law to Scully here. “Before we discount anything I think we should find out more about Charlie Morris.” Scully’s looking a bit chastised and embarrassed. She doesn’t like being uncertain and Mulder’s just thrown her for a loop. Get used to it, girly-girl.
Fiore Residence, Kenmore, New York. Mulder and Scully knock on the door and Detective Fiore opens it a crack, acting in a completely non-suspicious (shyeah right) manner when Mulder asks him if he knows this man, while flourishing the Photo-fit of Charlie Morris. Fiore unchains the door and comes out onto the porch. He’s a squirrelly little man with a receding hairline who wants to talk outside as he says he doesn’t want to wake his wife. Fiore admits that the picture is of Charlie Morris and that they used to be partners. Mulder asks about the circumstances surrounding Charlie’s death and Fiore sort of coughs and heads down towards the end of the porch. No, nothing suspicious going on here. After all that, Fiore tells Mulder and Scully that the matter is still under investigation, so he can’t comment on it. What’s with the scurrying down the porch then? Porch-scurrier. Scully gives Fiore the bad news that she and Mulder are working under the auspices of Captain Gresham at the 14 and Fiore’s all – I never worked at the 14, whassup? Mulder gives him the news that he believes that Barbala’s death is connected somehow to Charlie Morris’s death. Fiore counters Mulder, saying that Barbala flipped his wig and jumped out the window. Mulder blathers on a bit more asking about Charlie’s death and Fiore tells him that it was a payback for a major police sweep against the Woo Shing Woo Triad. I’ll have a side-order of Woo Shing Woo, it sounds delicious! Lots of heroin was stopped from hitting the streets and Fiore speculates that there were a lot of pissed-off people playing mah-jongg that week. I was probably one of them – I used to play a lot of mah-jongg with my Dad and a mutual friend back then, whose wife used to think it was funny to cheat. God, she was annoying! You can get quite worked up over mah-jongg, at least in my experience. Mulder asks if Charlie was killed as a warning to the police to back off. Fiore says, “I think they picked a cop, any cop, and they whacked him.” A woman appears at the door, asking what’s going on. Ooh, I bet that’s the wife Fiore lied about before, saying she was sleeping. She doesn’t look like she’s been sleeping. Actually, what she does look like is a Poor Man’s Minnie Driver. She’s wiping her hands with a dishtowel, so it looks like she’s been washing the dishes. Sleep-dishwashing. Huh, I wonder if Thorazine works for that? Fiore then blahs on about it being the weekend and sort of hurries Moose and Squirrel along. Doesn’t he know that crime doesn’t take the weekend off? Mulder’s not very impressed with Fiore, and Scully says that Poor Man’s Minnie Driver had baking flour on her hands. Oh, well-spotted, Scully. Sleep-baking. That Poor Man’s Minnie Driver is a woman of many talents.
Cha-ching! Buffalo Mutual Life. Someone’s telling Fiore (who’s now wearing a suit instead of the nondescript tracksuit from the last scene), that something is not a big deal, and that Fiore’s ‘acting like a little bug”. Ooh, good call. Fiore’s all amped-up about the FBI investigation, but if I were him I’d spare some angst over his wardrobe choice. The suit he’s wearing is sort of grey-green, but the tie is dark purply-blue with BRIGHT RED diagonal stripes! My eyes! My eyes! Someone call the Fashion Victims Unit – that tie is HEINOUS! Doink doink! The other guy is sitting in the shadows, so I can’t see what he’s wearing in any detail. He seems to think that Mulder and Scully are just going through the motions, and that they don’t really know anything. He obviously hasn’t met Our Lad Spooky, who is faster than a speeding hypothesis and leaps to unsubstantiated conclusions with a single bound. Fiore refuses to be calmed (after all, he has seen the obsessive look in Mulder’s eye for himself) and demands to go to Citibank for the safety box. His friend refuses to be panicked, and suggests jokingly that they make a donation to the Little Sisters for the Poor. Fiore wants to ‘dump it somewhere’. I’m guessing this is ill-gotten gains of some sort. The Life Insurance Man says, “There’s only two of us left now, that’s over a million each.” Fiore yells, “Take it all! I don’t care!” and makes a crack about his dream of Costa Rica. Shadow Guy then starts to bitch about how much it sucks to be selling disability insurance to morons. I’m thinking it would suck more to have your arm chain-sawed off and your eye gouged out. I’m just sayin’. Shadow Guy then points at Fiore threateningly and says, “You listen to me, Tony. We agreed to wait ten years and that is exactly what we’re gonna do.” Fiore’s not taking this lying down: “I listened to you once before and look what happened.” Shadow Guy then starts to justify himself: “Nobody! Not me, not Barbala, wanted to see Charlie wind up like that. We were just trying to scare a little sense into him. It was an accident.” Oh, riiiigghhhttt. He must have fallen over on the chainsaw and inadvertently bumped it and turned it on, while accidentally gouging out his own eye with a convenient fork. Perhaps the gouging was deliberate, considering that it was the eighties and maybe he was confronted with someone wearing fluorescent pink bike shorts. God knows, I’ve considered it myself. Shadow Guy tells Fiore he’d better pull himself together. Big mistake for Fiore to mess with Shadow Guy.
Night-time. Shadow Guy is sort of furtively, but purposefully, making his way down a darkened street. He’s accosted by a homeless woman, but he blows her off, thereby demonstrating his evil nature and helping to justify what I believe will be his upcoming demise. A downtown bus pulls around the corner and stops. Shadow Guy gets on and the bus pulls out again. The Plinking Strings of Suspense clue us in to the fact that someone’s gonna be in big trouble, any time now. Shadow Guy gets off the bus and throws his red scarf around his neck. Uh-oh, something unseen (but I suspect fishing line manipulated by a stage-hand) is pulling the end of his scarf back towards the bus. Oh no! It’s caught in the door mechanism and winds itself round and round it for good measure. Shadow Guy calls out, but no one can hear him and the bus pulls out, dragging him with it. So far, he’s keeping up and the Black Dude driving the bus sees him and tries to put on the brakes, but an unseen foot is pressing down on the accelerator. Shadow Guy’s getting more and more frantic, screaming for help, then he loses his footing and he is being dragged by his neck. Black Dude is pumping the brakes, but it’s not helping. Finally the bus stops, but by then it’s too late. Michelle Ma Belle is sitting in the bus, looking out the window at Shadow Guy’s body, hanging by the neck from the door. Does her mother ever watch this kid? Dun DUNNNNN!!!!!
Back at the ol’ 14, and a cop is leading a woman up the stairs. Based on what she is wearing, perhaps she has been arrested for crimes against fashion (enormous buckle, anyone?), but it’s more likely she’s meant to be a hooker. Anyhoo, she’s just some background colour. Mulder and Scully are sitting with Michelle’s mother, who’s looking a lot less put-together than in her previous scene. Scully’s still wearing the mushroom suit, but has had the good taste to mostly conceal it under her trench coat, which is now allowing me to notice for the first time the sheer offensiveness of Mulder’s purple paisley tie. Have mercy! It’s like Prince designed Mulder’s outfit. Perhaps if he took the trench off, we’d be able to see where the arse has been cut completely out of the trousers. Not that I wouldn’t like that look on Mulder, but it’s not a fashion choice I’d endorse. Scully tells Mrs Bishop that Michelle has now witnessed two murders, and Mrs Bishop cries and says that Michelle is only eight years old and couldn’t have done anything, while Mulder assures her that Michelle is not being accused of any crime. Sure. Fine. Whatever. Scully asks if there’s anything that she hasn’t told them, but Mrs Bishop denies knowing anything at all. Scully tells her that the police department will put Mrs Bishop and Michelle up at the Sheraton until all this is sorted out. Nice. I’ll bet Mulder and Scully are at the Motel Six. Detective Maggie is back and she’s wearing a red vest this time. It’s got useless pockets on it too! What are they trying to tell us about Detective Maggie? She’s got some information for Mulder. It transpires that Shadow Guy’s name was Leon Felder and that before he started selling insurance, he was a cop out of the 14 and he used to be Detective Sleaze’s partner.
Mulder and Scully are now in what looks like a schoolroom, but is probably an incident room, going over the evidence. Mulder has the scent of chalk-dust in his nostrils and has written the names of all four cops involved in the same drug bust in Chinatown, three of whom are now dead. It’s become clear that Fiore was lying when he said he didn’t really know Barbala and Scully’s now realised there’s a page missing from Charlie Morris’s homicide file. She checks the log sheet, and Tony Fiore was the last person to have the file out. Uh-oh. He mustn’t be much of a cop to leave that sort of obvious evidence behind. So of course Mulder and Scully go along to his house to interview him, only to be confronted by Poor Man’s Minnie Driver in a flowered brunch coat. Yes, that is as horrible as it sounds. In a strong Noo Yawk accent, she tells Mulder and Scully that her husband didn’t come home last night. Mulder bulls his way inside. The next shot is of a little blue plastic diver in a fish tank. Mulder’s checking it out, in his role as aquarium connoisseur. Perhaps he’s thinking of giving up the fish altogether and getting plastic crap instead. At least it would cut down on the death toll. Poor Man’s Minnie Driver has some pretty tropical fish. She also has a pretty impressive collection of origami animals, little zebras and hippos, there’s even a pig, a frill-necked lizard a camel and an antelope. Woah, someone has way too much time on their hands. Unlike people who spend their time productively, recapping 15-year-old X-Files episodes. Ahem. Poor Man’s Minnie Driver comes back with a tray of coffee (she’s hospitable!) and tells Mulder and Scully that Tony told her he was working, but when she called the precinct, they told her he wasn’t rostered on. PMMD is very worried about her husband; she’s been on the phone all night calling family and friends looking for him. She asks Scully if Tony’s in any trouble; Scully asks her in turn if Tony knew Rudy Barbala and Leon Felder. She says she doesn’t and that she and Tony don’t normally socialise with other cops. Mulder brings up the origami collection, and PMMD drops the clanger that the origami was Charlie’s hobby. As in, Charlie Morris, her first husband, who was born in Japan and was Tony’s ex-partner. She was waiting for him to come home too, nine years ago, just like this. Poor Poor Man’s Minnie Driver. Apparently he was working on the whole set of animals from the painting hanging on the wall, but he never got to the giraffe.
Of course, this now gives Mulder a new theory. Scully does herself a favour and says it for him – reincarnation. Mulder, not to be outdone, then drones on: “Metempsychosis, transmigration, re-embodiment – call it what you will.” Ooh, Mulder, just keep on talking while I look at your pretty, pretty face. Scully busts him for basing his theory on the fact that Charlie Morris and Michelle Bishop both practice origami. Mulder comes straight back with the dolls and the two deaths. I have to agree with him, Scully. This time it’s making some sort of sense. As Mulder remarks, reincarnation is a tenet of many major religions, but Scully has her teeth set into the logic and asks him to explain how an eight-year-old girl can kill two grown men. Mulder comes out with the psychic abilities chestnut, but Scully isn’t buying what he’s selling, when he claims that they’re one short step away from proving the existence of the human soul. Scully wisely shuts up at this point, knowing that no matter what she says, Mulder will be all – “ Scully’s mouth is moving, but I wonder if I fed my fish before I left DC? Huh.”
Now we’re watching Michelle Ma Belle being hypnotised on the TV screen. Mulder just loves his hypnotherapy. Dr. Sheila is supervising the session but the hypnotist is another doctor. He takes Michelle back and she says she’s at home, it’s nighttime and she’s 24 years old. What the…? Scully is wearing a really nice blouse that comes all the way down to her thighs. Some might say it’s a bit piratey, but I like it. However, I could do without the vest covering it. Michelle yells, “No, we can’t! We can’t do this! It’s wrong!” Dr. Sheila has had enough – she storms out of the room to confront Mulder who tries to reassure her that Dr. Spitz (for that is his name) is experienced and will not harm Michelle, but Dr. Sheila says that it may push Michelle further into withdrawal and that it’s dangerous. Mulder comes back with “Is it any more dangerous than pumping her full of Thorazine?” Good one, Spooky. Michelle’s still screaming, “They’re killing me! They’re killing me!” I’ve just noticed that she’s also wearing a vest, a blue one with the useless pockets. That’s some fashion statement. I don’t remember owning anything remotely like that in the early nineties, and believe me; I’m old enough to remember. Mrs. Bishop can’t take it any more and bursts into the session, cuddling Michelle and soothing her.
Cut to Mulder, frustrated and knocking his head gently against the wall. Scully comes out of the room and turns to him and hello pregnancy. She must have popped out during the shooting of this episode, hence the thigh-length blouse. I just like it because it would do a good job of hiding the rolls of middle-aged spread I have accumulated. Mulder’s upset because he thinks they were only moments from a revelation. Scully doesn’t necessarily disagree, but she’s realistic about Mrs. Bishop being unwilling to put Michelle through the hypnosis again. Mulder can be a bit ruthless with people when he’s searching for the Truth. Scully doesn’t want to put Michelle through the trauma again; instead she wants to pursue Fiore. Mulder is not confident that they will find Fiore alive and he sees Michelle as the key to solving the mystery of what happened to Charlie Morris. Scully looks rather disgusted with Mulder and begins to walk away. Mulder makes the mistake of going on about getting Michelle back and Scully turns around and lets him have it, both barrels. About time – he’s been a real ass during this case. Mulder’s not backing down though. He makes a crack about Michelle having to grow a moustache before Scully will believe she’s the reincarnation of Charlie Morris. But Scully’s got the bit between her teeth, and she makes the point that even if Mulder gets Michelle re-hypnotised, the evidence he collects will not be admissible before a Grand Jury anyway, so what is the point? Why traumatise the child just to prove yourself right? Take that Mulder, you giant ass. Mulder’s got no comeback for that, and, revelling in her victory, Scully stalks out.
FBI Regional Office, Buffalo. Mulder’s writing in his journal, basically justifying his point of view regarding the therapeutic value of hypnosis. Uh, I don’t think Mulder’s primary objective is healing Michelle Bishop. He wants her re-hypnotised to prove his reincarnation theory, whether it’s good for the child or not. Wow, he really did mellow over the years. Scully must have knocked a lot of the sheer arrogance out of him. He’s watching the footage of the hypnosis again, and notices a glitch in the tape. He rewinds it a couple of times, then starts to advance it frame by frame.
Chung-chung over to the House of Origami. Poor Man’s Minnie Driver is on the phone. She’s still wearing the same bloody brunch coat. For the love of God, woman, put on some trakky-dakkies at least! Tooling around the house in your brunch coat all day is so fifties pre-Feminine Mystique. I’ll bet she has a bottle of valium and a fifth of Scotch hidden under the kitchen sink too. She’s still looking for her husband and the actress is attempting to show nervousness by sort of scratching and pulling at the back of her neck, but it looks like she has a case of nits. She’s overdoing it just a touch. She hangs up the phone, turns out the light and heads upstairs, only to be interrupted by a knock to the door. Uh-oh, this is a Bad Sign. She calls out, “Tony,” though why he’d be knocking at his own door is a bit of a mystery. She rushes down to the door and opens it, but there is no one to be seen. She looks down, and sees a little origami giraffe on the stoop. She picks it up, and then looks around, all creeped-out.
FBI Regional Headquarters, Buffalo. Mulder’s called in the guy who was doing the Photo-fit earlier to check out the glitch in the footage. He must some all-purpose techy guy. Sort of like Frohicke, Langly and Byers, but with a real job and without the paranoid delusions. His professional opinion is that whatever the image is, it was recorded in the room with the girl and is not a fault of the tape. Naturally, Scully is sceptical. Sceptico ergo Scully. Of course, Mulder busts out with a documented case of a man from Porlock, Ohio who could influence undeveloped film. Scully, you may want to take some notes as I’m sure this will become horribly relevant to you within about, oh, two years, give or take a month or so. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. She’s got her arms crossed and is looking at Mulder like he’s some sort of exotic butterfly she can’t wait to pin to a board and examine more closely. Detective Maggie comes in – she’s found the missing page from the autopsy report by tracking down the original pathologist who had all of his files backed up on disk. Scully makes a remark about pathologists being paranoid. Oh, Scully, after nine seasons of this you’ll be President of the Paranoid Pathologists’ Support Group. Scully looks over the pathology report while Agent All-Purpose Techy Guy works on the footage. It turns out that Charlie Morris didn’t die as a result of his injuries. The pathology report indicates he drowned. Mulder speculates that he was drowned first, and only then did the mutilation take place to make it look like a gangland execution. Detective Maggie says that the only indications of immersion were around the head and face. Scully concludes that he may have been killed in a bathtub or toilet except… “The marked bradycardia. It indicates a raised plasma sodium level.” OK, and that means what exactly? Come on Scully, enlighten us! “He was killed in sea-water.”
House of Origami. Tony “the Squirrel” Fiore is finally home. He’s still wearing the same suit and finally we learn that Poor Man’s Minnie Driver’s real name is Anita, as he bellows it up the stairs. Don’t plan on her leaving the house in a hurry – she hasn’t even bothered to get dressed today. She rushes downstairs and embraces him, asking him what’s going on. Tony tells her to go upstairs and pack a bag. She asks him what kind of trouble he’s in and he tells her he thinks someone’s trying to kill him, but he doesn’t know who. PMMD wants to know why someone would want to kill him. He deserves it for the tie alone. She keeps asking him, but he yells at her and tells her to do what he’s asked her to. He says he’s her husband and he loves her, but he needs her to trust him on this, OK? She still doesn’t hop to it, so he heads upstairs on his own. The camera pulls back and swings around to show us Michelle Ma Belle lurking just outside the partially open door.
Back at the FBI, Agent All-Purpose Techy Guy has almost finished cleaning up all the ‘noise’ from the video signal. What he’s done is map the frequencies of the interference then some random tech talk, during which you can see Mulder wishing for unconsciousness until the poor guy stops the techno-babble. He gets rid of the excess stuff (technical term for whatever I like) and holy crap! It looks like some sort of spaceman! Now Mulder’s interest is truly piqued. Duchovny has his hand up to his mouth and it looks like he’s got a nasty burn on the back of it about the size of a five-cent piece, with a blister and everything. I wonder how that happened and can I kiss it better (Edit: I think he was burned during Fire. – Starbucket)? Mulder is putting the pieces together. It’s just as well he was so interested in the aquarium earlier – he recognises this suspect! Charlie Morris was drowned in his own tropical fish tank and the little plastic diver was the last thing he saw! Of course! Now it all makes sense! Mulder dials quickly, apparently checking that Michelle Bishop is at home, tucked in bed.
Aha! Now we know where Tony “The Squirrel” Fiore has been. The bag he was lugging around is full of money, no doubt the dirty money from the drug bust. He’s frantically packing, but Poor Man’s Minnie Driver is still in her brunch coat and being less than helpful. She tells him about the origami giraffe, but Tony won’t answer her when she asks who left it on the doorstep. The lights suddenly go out (but it’s so dark anyway, it’s a bit hard to tell). Tony pulls his gun and tells PMMD to stay in the bedroom and keep the door closed. Close-up on the key, which turns by itself in the keyhole, locking PMMD in the room. Tony creeps down the stairs with his gun pointed. He’s casing the house, but he can’t see anyone. The camera helpfully shows us, the audience, an electrical lead unplugging from the wall, like an invisible hand is tugging it out. It whips out and wraps around Tony’s knees, causing him to fall down. PMMD hears the thump and his yell as he falls, and calls out asking if he is all right. Tony’s dropped his gun (I thought only Mulder did that), and he’s desperately trying to reach for it, but it’s moved back out of the way by the same invisible hand. Eek! It’s the creepy kid and she’s in da house, fo’shizzle!
Here come the cavalry, or the next best thing, Moose and Squirrel. Regardless of the sense of urgency in their previous scene, they don’t seem to be in too much of a hurry. Well, Scully isn’t anyway. Mulder rushes past her, up the stairs to the porch, but he’s too late and the door slams in his face. He tries to get in, but can’t. Poor Man’s Minnie Driver is still calling out, asking what’s happening, and Mulder tries to go through the window, only to have the shutters slam in his face. The creepy kid has now smashed the glass in the animal picture with the power of her mind, and all the origami animals fall down. Mulder and Scully can hear all the crashing and banging from outside, but Scully’s found a back door with a glass pane. Mulder smashes it with his elbow and reaches in to undo the lock.
Face-off between Tony and the creepy kid. Tony seems to know that Michelle is Charlie, and he tries to talk her out of killing him. He says, “They said they were just gonna talk to you. Talk some sense into you. What was I supposed to do, huh?” Oh, I don’t know. Refuse to take part in official corruption and being an accessory to murder? Could that be the choice you should have made? “All you had to do was take the money, man! Why didn’t you just take the money?” Um, because it was – what’s the word I’m searching for – wrong? Argh! Attack of the Flying Fire-Poker! And that’s one hideous vase we won’t be seeing again. Mulder and Scully are indoors now, and Mulder sends Scully upstairs to check on Poor Man’s Minnie Driver. She’s hollerin’ up a storm. Some tacky little crystal figurines are the next thing to go, and Mulder walks in just as the last one smashes on the wall. He tries to reason with Michelle/Charlie, saying that killing Tony won’t make right what happened. Scully finds the key to the bedroom and lets PMMD out – she’s still in the brunch coat. You would have thought she’d have used the time to get changed for when the Emergency Services showed up, but no. She rushes over to Tony, who’s still on the floor in front of Michelle. He admits to her he knew what they did to Charlie. PMMD takes this rather badly and begins to cry, whispering no over and over. Tony says, “I just wanted to take care of you. Who else would have taken care of you?” Eeew. How much of what happened is attributable to Tony’s lust for Charlie’s wife? And how is she going to live with it? An intense blue light starts to glow and the fish tank begins to shake on its stand. All of the remaining glass in the house starts to smash and PMMD begs Michelle/Charlie, “Please don’t hurt him any more.” We get a shot of Tony’s bald spot, perhaps in an attempt to make him look pathetic or something, I don’t know. Suddenly, the tropical fish tank explodes outwards in a hail of water and glass. Then, the lights come back on and everything is normal. Scully has the presence of mind to walk over to Michelle and pick up Tony’s gun and Michelle just turns and walks away. The little plastic diver is lying on the wet carpet with pieces of glass all around. I want to know what happened to the poor, innocent angelfish.
Mulder voiceover: “Closing entry. File number X40271. Detective Anthony Fiore pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to charges of first-degree murder after the fact, grand larceny, and obstruction of justice. The deaths of Detective Rudy Barbala and former police officer Leon Felder are being ruled as accidental, although their complicity in the murder of Officer Charlie Morris has been definitively established. No charges have been brought against Michelle Bishop, who today took her first swimming lesson. She claims no memory of the preceding events and both her mother and Doctor Braun have denied my requests for a second past-life regression. End of field journal, April 19, 1994. Agents of record: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Status: unexplained.” While this voiceover is happening, Mulder is walking by the pool with Mrs. Bishop while Michelle splashes in the pool with another little girl and a woman, who is probably the swim teacher. He’s standing awfully close to Mrs. Bishop – I’m almost expecting her to call Michelle out of the pool to introduce her to her new daddy. We end with a close-up on Mulder, who’s wondering if he can get Mrs. Bishop to agree to the regression if he buys a nice bottle of wine and shows her how he can shell sunflower seeds with his tongue. Credits. I’m just now realising we never did get told what Detective Maggie’s actual name was. She’ll always be Detective Maggie to me.
Recap by Crass