Good Cop, Insane Cop: The Adventures of Moose & Squirrel

Welcome to the Premiere of Season 6! A season whose tone is so up and down, you’d think Mulder and Scully were bipolar. There are many things you have to look forward to this season. Like Scully bitching at Mulder and Mulder bitching at Scully! And don’t forget Diana Fowley’s campaign to prove to Mulder that she has everything that Scully lacks! There’s also some stuff about weird weather, psycho-analyzing ghosts, and baseball. But before we can get there, we have to start at the beginning. Do you see what I did just there? With “the beginning”? Get it?

Previously on The X-Files: CSM tried to have a 12 yr old chess prodigy named Gibson Praise assassinated because he could read minds. Mulder’s ex Diana Fowley came back from Europe just as Mulder and Scully were on the verge of making a breakthrough with their work. Diana then worked alongside them as they tried to protect Gibson. While watching Gibson, Diana was shot and X-Philes everywhere prayed for her death. Mulder and Scully were taken off the X-Files and their office was burnt to a crisp. While they were working on a terrorist threat in Texas, Shadowman Michaud let a building blow up in his face to hide some bodies infected with the alien virus. The FBI’s OPR tried to split Mulder and Scully up, blaming them for the building even though that makes no sense whatsoever. Strughold, a Syndicate member we’d never seen before, lisped all over the place and used some bad grammar which became a staple in the X-Philes universe. Mulder almost kissed Scully in his hallway but was thwarted by a bee containing the alien virus that waited 12 hrs to sting her. A fake ambulance took Scully to the airport, where CSM escorted her to Antarctica. Mulder got the vaccine and Scully’s location from WMM before he offed himself in an exploding limousine. Mulder rescued Scully from an alien spacecraft buried in a glacier, but the vaccine woke the ship up and they barely made it out alive. Mulder watched the ship fly away for a minute before he passed out. Then Scully, who conveniently didn’t see the ship, hugged him until he felt better. Afterwards, they somehow made it back to Washington even though Mulder’s hellcat was out of gas and nobody on the planet knew where they were. Then while Strughold was looking over his corn crops in Tunisia, he got a telegram stating that the X-Files had been reopened. Everybody up to speed?

Phoenix, Arizona. We’re greeted with an opening shot of the blazing sun, and it’s pretty blinding. Thanks for rubbing it in our faces, 1013. Two men run out of the desert and onto a white van that was parked on the side of the road. The van has a DNA double helix Roush Technologies logo on the side. Oooh! That was the company Blevins was in cahoots with. Weren’t they exposed in Redux II for messing around with the alien virus and basically being a front for the conspiracy’s activities? Well, I guess it’s nice to know they’re still going strong. So the van is basically a group carpooling home from work and one of the nerds calls the other two guys “dipwads” for needing a potty break. What a jerk. I already hate him and I hope that there’s some chance he gets killed by an alien. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Dipwad #1 gives The Jerk the finger and then he says the most awesome comeback ever! “Is that your IQ or the number of dipwads your mother had?” I really hope the van gets attacked by some mutated aliens.

A little later, this dude sitting next to The Jerk is sweating profusely and shivering uncontrollably. The Jerk calls him “Sandy” and tells him that he has to hold it until he gets home. I don’t know about you guys, but having to pee really badly doesn’t make me break out into a sweat or give me the chills. It looks as though he’s got the flu. So, the van drops Sandy off at home and he looks really sick. When he gets inside his house, he turns the central air/heating box all the way up to HI. Instead of going upstairs to bed, he decides to sit on the couch and shiver. He looks as though he’s in pain and as he lifts his hand, he sees that its gone all transparent and gooey-looking. He then starts convulsing a little bit.

Next morning. The Nerd Carpool is back and The Jerk runs into the house to get Sandy . He notices that the house is stifling and he sees Sandy sitting on the couch. He calls to him. “Sandman? Hot Dog? Corn Dog? Hot Pocket?” But Sandy doesn’t move. As he walks around the couch, we’re given a lovely scene of Sandy ’s open gaping hole in his chest. It’s all bloody and gross. The Jerk is freaked out and makes for the front door. Then we hear the familiar alien screeching sound from the movie and The Jerk turns around, looking horrified. Then the alien lunges for The Jerk and he’s all, “Help me!” He’s bloody and running for the door. Just as he gets his hand on the doorknob, he’s attacked again. Darn. So close! We hear some screaming and then fade to…

Credits. Ok, how stupid is CSM and the Syndicate for studying the mutated virus in Arizona ? In the movie, weren’t they practically having aneurysms over keeping it contained and sticking to their “Deny Everything” mantra? They know the alien virus thrives on heat! And why weren’t these scientist nerds under heavy security? No wonder the Syndicate got burned up. Man, I have a feeling this is going to be one long recap.

FBI Lab. Mulder’s working at this computer, putting burned pieces of paper together. They look like his burned up X-Files cases. Then Mulder is sitting in front of a table filled with Assistant Directors, including one Walter Skinner. Yay for Skinner! Mulder is telling them that he’s been working on restoring his cases with adding moisture to the burned paper and then gluing them back to together. Something like that. I guess he succeeds because apparently, ALL THOSE X-Files Doggett read was enough for him to think it was an actual accomplishment. Anyways, Mulder feels confident that he and Scully can begin working immediately. As if on cue, Scully walks in and she looks as though this is the last place she wants to be. A.D. Maslin, Wendie Malick, who played Nina on Just Shoot Me!, is having some trouble with Mulder’s “pie-in-the-sky” report about colonization and then she calls his account “omnibus.” Know what became really omnibus? The mytharc. Mulder says that he can back his report up. Then Random A.D. #1 says that Mulder’s “renowned arrogance” is still intact and he’s shocked that Mulder expects them to believe all this crap about an alien spaceship. Scully looks uncomfortable. Mulder then tells them that the ship melted the ice, and then rose up out of it. Random A.D. #1 tells Mulder this this report is “essentially unintelligible.” Mulder wants them to focus on his and Scully’s resulting medical conditions. Random A.D. #2 asks Mulder if the aliens he saw were similar to the aliens in Men in Black. Mulder hasn’t seen it. Random A.D. #2 says that it was “a damn good movie.” I bet he has a Will Smith poster above his bed. Mulder agrees that his report sounds like science fiction, but they have facts to prove it. Now Scully looks really uncomfortable.

A.D. Maslin wants to get this straight, because she’s probably a little confused by all this. Well, welcome to the life of an X-Phile. “The plot is for these spacelings to take over the planet aided by a group of men here on earth?” Then Mulder says that it’s a conspiracy in the government and then Skinner looks constipated. “Who are growing corn in the middle of the desert which features pollen which was genetically altered to hold a virus which will be taken away by bees whose sting transmits the virus, causing the growth of an extraterrestrial biological entity inside the human host?” Mulder says that he and Scully will prove it now that the X-Files are reopened. You’re going to prove it, huh? Except you never do because 1013 completely threw this whole section of mytharc out the window. Then Random A.D. #1 says something like Mulder’s presumptuousness is greater that the actuality of working on the X-Files. Mulder doesn’t understand and Random A.D. #1 tells him that he’s justifying their placement on the X-Files with a “rattletrap” story about adventures in Antarctica. Random A.D. #2 then grumbles about travel expenses. Mulder shoots him the stank-eye. Mulder’s not down with auditing, yo. A.D. Maslin says that the FBI isn’t a school for science or a place to grind personal axes, and she hopes that Mulder and Scully can provide some hard evidence. Mulder then gets on his high horse and proclaims that “Agent Scully was assigned to the X-Files as a scientist, was stung by one of these bees and was infected with this virus. She is here today with hard and incontrovertible evidence… Scientific proof that the virus she was infected with is, in fact, extraterrestrial.” Mulder looks at Scully. Scully is probably wishing that the earth would open up and swallow her. She’s speechless and Mulder is stunned that she’s not backing him up.

Hallway. Mulder is pissed. “Next time, I’ll wear a clown suit and do balloon tricks.” Special Agent Dana “I’ve Seen Things I Cannot Deny, Except Right Now I Am” Scully says that she hoped it wouldn’t come up. What wouldn’t come up? What happened in Antarctica? Her name? Mulder tells her that the only reason he was in that meeting was because she assured him there was a scientific explanation for what they saw. Scully, of course, didn’t actually see very much. Mulder has grown tired of her excuses and adamantly reminds her that she was there and was infected with the virus. Scully agrees that there is a scientific basis and she was infected with a virus, but the DNA in the virus isn’t extraterrestrial. Say it with me: Huh? Mulder then tells her that he saw the aliens feeding on the innards of human bodies. Scully then gets pissy herself, anger dimples and all, saying that the virus destroys human cells but it creates nothing! Then Scully eases up a bit and tells Mulder that she doesn’t like having to tell him this(I somehow doubt that) and he can question her all he wants but he can’t question the science. Mulder says nothing and just walks away. Scully wonders when they’re just gonna cut the crap and get it on. Geez. What’s with these two? A mere weeks ago they were proclaiming eternal devotion in Mulder’s hallway. Well, kind of. In their own way. They at least re-forged their bond to each other and to their work. At the end of the movie, Scully was so firm with OPR when she handed them the dead bee. And now she’s completely backing down. What? Is? Going? On? No wonder Mulder’s pissed.

NYC. The Syndicate is consorting in their conference room. CSM is showing the other Elders the pictures of Sandy ’s corpse. CSM tells them that he trumped up some story of a crazy Native American man on the loose. He then explains that Sandy was working for them and must’ve accidentally injected himself with the virus. And then it took only 12 hrs to gestate. Know why? Because of the heat, nimrods! Don’t they know this? Isn’t that why they were sending all those bodies down to Antarctica? To slow the process down? CSM tells them that the alien killed The Jerk and now it’s on the loose. The other elders freak out and they want CSM to find it and kill it. Yo, where’s Strughold? I miss his lisp. Oh, and WMM. Why’d they have to kill him off?

FBI Lab. Mulder’s working on his burned up X-Files. Skinner comes in and tells him that his and Scully’s assignment on the X-Files has been denied. Mulder is angry and demands to know how it can be denied and who’s arguing their case. I know who! CSM. He’s obviously behind all this. Keeping Mulder and Scully off the X-Files and replacing them with his lackeys. Skinner wants to know when Mulder’s gonna get it through his head that he can never bring the conspiracy to justice. Mulder wants to know if there was a vote and Skinner tells him that it was unanimous against. Oh, no! Not you too, Skinman. Mulder shuts down his computer, grabs his box and goes to leave. Skinner stands in his way. Skinner wants to help, but Mulder doesn’t think there’s anything he can do. Skinner wants Mulder to prove his theory about the virus. Mulder says that he ain’t got proof. Skinner then tells him of a file on his old desk in the basement.

Basement Office That Was Once Lush, But Now Has A Fowl Stench. Mulder enters the office and we see that it’s no longer looking crispy fried. But it looks weirdly empty. There’s a desk, but there’s really nothing on the walls. Hey! Weren’t Mulder’s pencils in the ceiling from Chinga burned up, too? But don’t we see them again in a later season? Continuity, anyone? Well, I guess Mulder could’ve added more pencils later. Whatever. So Mulder picks up a file on the desk, and we see the picture of Sandy’s corpse. While Mulder’s looking at it, Special Agent Jeffrey “Daddy Issues” Spender walks in. He asks Mulder if that file is for him. Mulder gets all territorial and cracks that Spender’s doing his filing. Mulder wants to know why Spender is in his office. Spender’s like, “I think you got your wires crossed there, Agent Moooooooouuuuuuulder.” Wait, that’s Doggett. Sorry. But Spender does tell Mulder of the “miscommunication” and that someone didn’t inform Mulder what’s what. Mulder gets pissy and basically says that if Spender’s taking over it’s a “failure of simple judgment” and he’s not going to let some “brown-noser” waltz in and take over his life’s work. Spender tells him that he doesn’t give a shiznit about the paranormal “mumbo jumbo” and he’s not the one taking Mulder’s place. I guess he’s taking Scully’s place. And then in walks Diana “The Stench That Is” Fowley. She calls him “Fox”. He gestures towards her and says “Diana, back on your feet.” I’d like to knock her off her feet. Mulder then grabs his box, and says “I guess that’s the only way you could stab me in the back,” as he walks out. Yes, Mulder! She’s betrayed you. It’s nice to see you’ve realized this. As Diana and Spender head to the back of the office, or “Scully’s area”, the camera pans the desk and we see that the file is gone.

Secret Government Medical Facility. CSM is outside an operating room, smoking a death stick and completely ignoring the “No Smoking” sign. He walks in and we see Project Doctors operating on somebody’s head. CSM wants the patient put back together and dressed because they’re taking a trip. The doctor thinks he’s crazy and says the boy could die. “Let me put it to you simply: it’s him or it’s us.” CSM leaves and we see that doctors are working on the brain of Gibson Praise. He’s awake. And he’s bald. What have they done to Gibson? Aww. Sidebar: Where are Gibson’s parents? He gets shot at in Vancouver, then he’s living in a hotel being watched over by the FBI and then CSM kidnaps him. Was it ever explained or even asked if the kid had parents? Or am I having a brain fart? (Ed. Note: No, I think Chris Carter had a brain fart. You’re fine. — Starbucket)

Phoenix, Arizona. Mulder and Scully have arrived at Sandy ’s house. Mulder cuts through the “Crime Scene” tape across the front door and walks in the house. Scully lingers in the doorway. “Mulder, I just want to remind you that by not informing local PD we are in technical violation of state laws prohibiting contamination of a crime scene.” Mulder’s not paying attention to her. “Why do I bother?” she mutters. Scully closes the door and examines the scratched and bloody doorknob. Mulder calls Scully to come and take a look at something. She walks into the hall and sees deep scratch marks in the wall, about 2-3 feet long. Mulder says the investigator reported that they’re from an attack “by a Native American man on a scientist” and that he used his bare hands. Scully’s like, “That’s BS.” Mulder removes a dark object from one of the scratch marks and holds it up in the light. “Aw. Somebody broke a nail.” Mulder places it in Scully’s hand. “Is it animal?” she asks. “Mineral? Vegetable?” Mulder makes a lame Ru Paul crack and then summarizes the attack for Scully: basically what we saw in the teaser. Scully guesses that the attacker never left the house. Mulder retorts, “There wasn’t an attack. I think it was celebrating its birthday. The first victim must have gotten infected with the virus somehow. Right here on the sofa was where the creature was born.” Scully shoots Mulder a warning, trying to reign him in. But he keeps going, “That would account for the violence done to the man’s torso. The virus producing an extraterrestrial biological entity that ripped away his chest as it birthed itself right here.” Then he shows Scully the picture of Sandy’s corpse. How many times do we need to see it? Seriously. Scully comments on the unbelievably fast gestation time and then putting science aside, asks Mulder, “you’re saying this was done by something newborn?” That’s exactly what Mulder’s saying.

Outside the house, CSM pulls up and he’s got Gibson with him. Gibson’s head is bandaged but he’s bleeding through. Gibson tells CSM that the alien was at the house, but now it’s gone. The driver wants to go inside and take a look. Gibson then looks nervous and emphatically tells CSM that it’s not there. He knows Mulder and Scully are in the house. Aww, he’s protecting them. Go, Gibson. Wait, so he must know that CSM has some kind of evil intentions towards them. Does that make sense? He then says that CSM is afraid of him. CSM says that he’s not. Where can you get with lying to someone who can read your mind? Not far. “You think I can destroy you for what I know, because of what I am. You’re thinking you could’ve destroyed me, too and if I don’t find this creature, you will. And this lady you’re using to manipulate Mulder cooked you blueberry pancakes this morning, with bacon and home fries. And after breakfast, you read Cracked magazine while you took your morning dump.” CSM tells the driver that Gibson will find the alien.

Right before they drive off, Mulder and Scully are in mid-fight. “I don’t see there’s any argument here. You admit yourself that the crime report is a lie.” Scully looks exasperated. “Mulder, that doesn’t mean that I can just accept your theory.” Just as CSM drives off, Mulder and Scully walk out of the house. “What does it take? For this thing to come up and bite you on the ass?” Mulder snits. “I saw these creatures. I saw them burst to life. You would’ve seen them, too but you were infected with that virus. You were passed out over my shoulder.” Scully looks at Mulder imploringly. “Mulder, I know what you did. I know what happened to me but without ignoring the science, I can’t… Listen, Mulder …” Scully grabs Mulder’s hand. “You told me that my science kept you honest. That it made you question your assumptions. That by it, I’d made you a whole person. If I change now… It wouldn’t be right… or honest.” Is it just me, or is having Scully recap the hallway scene really irritating? But when she grabs his hand and reminds him of it, he does momentarily look like he might kiss her. Or he’s at least thinking about it. Maybe. “I’m talking about extraterrestrial life alive on this planet in our lifetime. Forces that dwarf and precede all human history. I’m sorry, Scully, but this time your science is wrong.” And then he just walks away from her. What is wrong when the people annoying me the most in an episode are Mulder and Scully? This is not the Fight the Future-Mulder and Scully. What is going on with them? First, Scully is wrong. At this moment, her science isn’t proving anything but that doesn’t mean she can just deny what’s clearly in her face: aliens. Second, Scully’s science is what Mulder said keeps him honest, but not much time goes by before he completely throws it out the window. Argh!

Rolling Hills Nuclear Plant, 60 Miles East of Phoenix . I’m just gonna skim through this because this recap is getting LONG. So, Homer Simpson the engineer is sleeping and then he wakes up, goes to check on a systems malfunction in the plant and then the alien grabs his face. Ok, how did an alien end up going 60 miles from Sandy’s house without being noticed? How did it get through security at the plant? And then even after Homer is murdered, it still hangs around? I’m getting a headache.

Outside the plant cops, fire trucks, etc are all over the place. Mulder and Scully drive up in their red Sensible Rental Car (Scully was driving!) and try to get in, but are blocked by Spender. He tells them that they are not authorized to be there. Scully tells him that they got a call about a murder. “Who called you? A.D. Skinner?” Mulder and Scully don’t answer, so you know it was him. Spender then bitches about how Mulder has no right to be there and he’s going to have Mulder censured, as well as Skinner. Diana “Smells Really” Fowley walks up and Mulder demands that she let him and Scully in. Diana says that the plant has been closed by the NRC. Mulder tells her someone was murdered. Diana says that it was just an accident caused by a systems malfunction. Mulder wants to know why she’s there then. Diana tells him that she and Spender got a call about a possible connection to other deaths, from a file that was stolen from their office. “That’s my office, bitch.” Mulder doesn’t really say that. But you know he was thinking it. Mulder tells her that there is a connection. Scully then grabs Mulder’s arm and tells him they should leave. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Diana. I hope you know whose errand you’re running.” Diana tells him she does. OK! SIDEBAR!!!: Based on this conversation, it is obvious that Diana’s loyalties are compromised. Mulder recognizes this and you can see he feels betrayed. Since Mulder’s dedication to Scully was strengthened even more just recently in the movie, his judgment concerning Diana shouldn’t be clouded at all. Which makes Mulder’s actions for the rest of this episode, and not to mention the debacle that is Two Fathers/One Son, completely nonsensical. Anyways, Mulder lets Scully lead him back to the car. You know he loves it when she grabs him. When they get to the car, Mulder glances into the back seat and tells Scully to give him the keys. Scully looks into the back seat, then gets in next to Gibson. He’s lying down and she places his head in her lap. She tries to wake him, but he won’t respond.

Davy Crockett Motor Court. Whoops! Camelback View Motel. Gibson’s lying on the bed and Scully is removing his bandages. Mulder walks in the room and then sits on the bed next to Gibson. Mulder and Scully check out Gibson’s wounds, which are really gross. Gibson asks them if they really think he looks like Frankenstein. Scully looks down, and tells him that he was worked on by some really good doctors and they did a fine job with his stitches. How far can you get lying to someone who can read minds? “You think they were butchers.” Yeah, not far. Mulder, who knows that it’s pointless to lie, affirms the butcher opinion. Scully is in Mommy Mode, and gently tells Gibson that the doctors should’ve changed his bandages, that he’s got some swelling and infection. Scully asks Gibson why this happened. “‘Cause I can read people’s minds.” Mulder asks Gibson how he got in their Sensible Rental Car. “When they weren’t looking, I snuck away. It’s easy when you know what they’re thinking.” Mulder wants to know why Gibson’s in Arizona. “They were using me ’cause I can communicate with it.” Scully’s like, “What’s ‘it’?” Gibson calls her out on her denial, saying “You already know. You just don’t want to believe it.” Mulder and Scully share one of their Fortuitous Glances, and Mulder gestures her over to the other side of the room. Mulder wants to use Gibson as an Alien Detector and Scully wants to protect him, saying that he belongs in the hospital and that he needs to be cared for. Scully says that she’s acting in Mulder’s best interest and they have to make sure that nothing happens to Gibson. Yeah, because that worked out so well before. Scully says that Gibson is their scientific evidence, the key to everything in the X-Files. Mulder whines that they don’t have the X-Files anymore. Scully tells him that maybe Gibson can confirm everything Mulder’s been saying that he might be their “last, best chance”. They look over at Gibson, who’s falling asleep.

Later, Mulder carries Gibson out to the car and Scully’s in the driver seat. She’s getting a lot of driving in this episode. Just as Mulder puts Gibson in the back seat, a car pulls up with its high beams on. Oh, man. It’s Diana ” I Believe You, Mulder!” Fowley. She tells him that she’s getting out of the car. “I’m alone, alright?” As in, Spender’s not with her. Mulder shuts the car door and walks over to Diana’s car. “Diana, what are you doing here?” Mulder’s in no mood, ya’ll. This is the tone he should’ve kept with her for the rest of the season. Heck, the rest of this episode. Diana tells him that she had to put up a front earlier, that she was only offered the assignment and she took a chance to take it. Yeah, CSM offered it. “I’m listening.” No! Mulder, don’t listen to her! Diana tells him that she’s only serving his best interests because she believes in the work. Then she reminds him that it was she who discovered the X-Files with him. That is such crap. You know even that act alone was probably a manipulation. Diana joins the FBI in 1991, just happens to come across the X-Files and shows Mulder. Then she skips town. I bet her getting together with Mulder when he was in the Academy was planned. She’s probably been working for CSM all along. Anyways, Mulder ain’t exactly buying this line and wants to know who sent her. She says that she’s here on her own. “Why? To convince me of your noble intentions?” he sarcasms. She then tells him about the alien in the plant and they have to go find it before “they” destroy it. “You need proof, Fox. You’re so close. Why can’t you see that?” I seriously want to puke. Mulder goes back to Scully’s car and Scully wants to know what’s up. He tells her to take Gibson. And that he’s going to find the alien. Mulder then goes back to Diana’s car. Scully wonders where “that woman” is taking her boyfriend. Ok, he’s ditching Scully for Diana? What? Ooh! I think I’m getting this. So, CSM has stationed Diana in a position to make Mulder think he has an ally against Spender. But really, she’s just there to manipulate Mulder and to keep him controlled. Forcing a wedge between Mulder and Scully is obviously one of CSM’s intentions. Mulder’s decision to leave Scully and go off with Diana is proof that CSM’s plan is working. But Mulder’s actions make no sense. He has to know she’s compromised, and yet he’ll just trust her blindly. Whatever.

Car With A Fowl Stench. Diana’s in mid-exposit of her explanation of how her and Spender came out to Arizona. She tells Mulder that they got a phone call and came out immediately. NRC got to the plant first and removed the body before her and Spender could see it. Mulder wants to know who removed the body. Diana doesn’t know and she couldn’t get a straight answer. NRC closed off blah “number four reactor” blee “problem” blah blee “heat transfer systems” blahbity blee blee. Mulder guesses that the alien needs heat so that’s why it’s at the nuclear plant. He comments on the abnormally fast gestation and guesses that heat activates it. Mulder then wonders why the alien still needs heat. Diana says that maybe it’s still developing. “You’re not under the impression what we’re looking for makes sense in any conventional way?” she asks. Nothing on this show makes sense in a conventional way. Mulder looks kind of surprised, and maybe a little pleased, to have someone agree with him. And I’d really like to punch him. Hard.

Phoenix Samaritan Medical Center . Gibson’s being wheeled around on a gurney and Scully tells him that he’s going to be ok. Gibson accuses Scully of running more tests on him. Scully tells him that they’re going to make him well. Gibson continues to call her out, saying that she may say that she just wants to care for him but she’s just like the other doctors who run tests on him. Scully seems kind of sorry that they have to run more tests. “You want to make me well but you’re just thinking about yourself and what you can learn from me.” The orderlies place Gibson on a hospital bed. Scully tells Gibson that he’s a “very special boy.” Gibson isn’t very happy. “I’m a very special lab rat.” Scully looks guilty, as the orderlies close the curtain. Ok, I do feel sorry for Gibson. He’s the victim here, and all people want to do is use him. But on the other hand, he was just in the possession of CSM and you’d think he’d be a little more grateful that he’s now with Scully.

Nuclear Plant Of Alien Slime. Mulder and Diana Fowley are running around, searching the area where Homer Simpson was killed. Diana says that she thinks the body was found around here. Mulder comments on the hot room temperature. Diana blah blahs about how they’re near the broken heat transfer system. Mulder steps in a puddle of alien goop. Diana says that it looks organic. And Mulder fingers the goop and cracks that “somebody’s got the flu.” But this time he doesn’t betray his manly exterior by freaking out over the slime. Which I would’ve done. That is, if I had a manly exterior. So they follow the goop into some pipes, Mulder sees some goopy stuff and just reaches on in there. He grabs something squishy and then jerks back. Does Mulder have selective amnesia? Why would he use his bare hands to grab something he knows is dangerous? Mulder then reaches back in and grabs a huge piece of alien gooey skin. Gross. Mulder drops it on the floor. Um, Mulder? Now’s the time to break off a piece of that and shove it in your pocket so Scully can examine it later. But hey, we’ve already established that your actions in this episode make no sense. So just go ahead and leave it on the floor. Mulder’s cell phone rings and it scares him and Diana. Heh. That’s right. They better be scared. It’s Scully calling to check up on her boyfriend. “Mulder, I found something. I found something you’re not going to believe.” Mulder dittos. “We did blood tests on Gibson and, Mulder, there’s evidence of the virus in his system.” Mulder asks about the virus Scully was infected with. Scully is positive that they’re one in the same. Mulder wants to know what that means. “I don’t know, but I think we’re on to something. We’re on to something huge — a link.” Mulder, apparently a poker player, calls that bet and raises her. Scully wants to know what he means. Mulder just tells her to take care of Gibson. Famous last words. Then Mulder hangs up before Scully can ask him anything about that woman.

Phoenix Hospital of Piss-Poor Security And Neglectful FBI Agents. Scully, who was wandering around the hospital instead of staying right next to Gibson’s room, walks into said room and guess what? He’s gone. That’s a shocker. Scully starts yelling at the staff, because it was clearly their fault. “There was a little boy in that room and he’s gone. Does anybody know what happened to that little boy? His name is Gibson Praise. He was just in that room. Does anybody know what the hell is going on?!” Then one of the orderlies, or maybe he’s a doctor, tells Scully to calm down. Hey! It’s Benito Martinez. He plays Captain David on The Shield. He’s pretty cute. So Scully tells David the “little boy that [she] brought in is missing.” David says that he can’t be missing. Scully brings out her anger dimples again. “He’s not here!” Well, maybe you should’ve thought about that before you decided to go for a walk. You sure did ensure his safety, didn’t you? I mean, every time they have something of utmost importance that they can’t lose, it disappears. How is she not surprised? Anyways, CSM’s driver has stolen an ambulance and Gibson’s lying on a gurney in the back.

Nuclear Plant Of Alien Attacks, Special Connections, And Blatantly Obvious Betrayals. Mulder and Diana “My Hoo Hoo Is” Fowley are still looking around when they see CSM’s driver and Gibson up on some walkway inside the plant. Mulder and Diana go to follow them. Gibson and CSM’s driver enter one of the rooms with pipes coming out of a heated water tank. Gibson tells him that the alien is in the room somewhere. Mulder then comes down the stairs and the door is locked. He starts yelling at CSM’s “son of a bitch” driver to open the door. Diana tells “Fox” that she’s going to go try and find another way in. Sure she is. Mulder continues to pound on the door when Gibson and the driver see the alien in the corner. “I told you it was here.” The alien leaps out and attacks the driver, smearing blood all over the small glass window in the door. Mulder freaks and starts yelling for Gibson. The alien and Gibson are looking at one another. They’re probably communicating telepathically.

Gibson:

I won’t hurt you. My name is Gibson.

Alien:

What’s happenin’ Gibson? My name is A-Dawg. You down with my peoples?

Gibson: Yeah, I think so.

A-Dawg:

I can’t find my family, yo.

Gibson:

I can’t remember if I have a family.

A-Dawg:

Who’s that cracker outside bangin’ on the door?

Gibson:

Nobody. He’ll go away soon. That chick he’s got with him is playing him for a fool.

A-Dawg:

That ain’t right.

Gibson:

Why are you in Arizona?

A-Dawg:

There’s some primetime drugs down here, yo. I got some paper and some fine weed over there in the corner. Maybe later we can get some hookers and blow. You dig?

Gibson:

Sure.

A-Dawg:

Fo’shizzle.

Anyhoo, alarm bells are going off and then here comes a bunch of guards led by Diana, who pulls her gun on Mulder. He looks at her and then turns around to continue pounding on the door and yelling for Gibson. Mulder can’t see him because he’s off in the corner sparking up some doobies.

OPR Conference Room. Mulder and Scully have assumed the usual position. Diana “Chickadee From The Coop That Smells” Fowley is sitting in the back. We see that Skinner’s seat is empty. Uh oh! A.D. Maslin is handing down the punishment. “As I said and as I am forced to reiterate, Agent Mulder, the FBI is not here for vendettas or for the grinding of personal axes. Now, this holds not just for you but for everyone at the Bureau. You force us to put a point on this. To make some hard changes. You and Agent Scully will cease all material association with the X-Files. Refusal to do so will end in immediate dismissal. A probationary period will be set. You will now report to Assistant Director Kersh.” Scully gives Mulder a nervous look. The camera pans over to Kersh. Here marks the beginning of a long relationship with inappropriately over-emphasized words. Mulder and Scully are in for a real treat!

Basement Office That Was Once Lush But Now Reeks Of Cigarettes. CSM and Spender are having a nice get together. Except, Spender is pissed that his dad is there and apparently they had agreed to have no contact. CSM is there to congratulate Spender for how he “handled Mulder.” Spender was just doing as he was asked. CSM comments on how Mulder’s on thin ice now. Spender knows Mulder will be back and that he’ll never give up. “Well there are solutions, of course. Simple but extreme solutions. I’ve used these methods. They have their place. But not here.” So, was CSM planning an “extreme solution” concerning Mulder? Because if he was, he never went through with it. Or did he? Spender asks CSM if he’s killed before. “You can kill a man but you can’t kill what he stands for… Not unless you first break his spirit. That’s a beautiful thing to see.” Ok, so CSM is out to break Mulder’s spirit. He’s taking him away from his life’s work and he’s using Diana to drive a wedge in his relationship with Scully. I think this will tie in with Two Fathers/One Son, with CSM and Diana trying to get Mulder to give up and join their side. But what exactly was the “extreme solution”? Did 1013 decide to burn up the Syndicate just so they didn’t have to tie up these conspiracy storylines? Whatever.

FBI Lab of Pissy Partners. Mulder’s working on gluing back together the burned up X-Files. The door opens and Mulder makes the panic face, but then relaxes when he sees that it’s just Scully. Mulder tells her to shut the door. “It would make it harder for them to see that I’m totally disregarding everything I was told.” Scully gives him an eyebrow. “Everything WE were told, Mulder.” Sidebar: I really, really hate that about Mulder. He’s always all, MY office, MY work, ME ME ME ME. When it’s THEIR office and THEIR work. Gah. Anyways, Mulder tells Scully that they can’t take away the X-Files. “You know, Agent Fowley’s report to OPR painted the facts in an interesting way. I hope you haven’t been betrayed.” Yeah, right. I’d bet my life on the fact that Scully was really hoping Diana would betray him. Mulder refuses to look at Scully and says that Diana was just protecting the X-Files. Oh, my God. What is wrong with him? “Mulder, Agent Fowley’s report states that the man you saw attacked was bludgeoned by an unknown subject. She makes no mention of a little boy who, as it happens, is nowhere to be found. It would seem that her report protects everything but you.” Mulder then defends Diana by saying that she put herself at great risk to help him (OMG! Something Scully would NEVER do!!!), and “[he] saw something that [Scully refuses] to believe in.” He says that Diana saw the alien too, even if she didn’t write it in her report and Diana’s not going to walk around saying she didn’t see it just because science can’t explain it. For crying out loud. Except she totally did deny it by not putting it in her report! Ok, he’s really pissing me off. The Mulder in Fight the Future would never have treated Diana’s betrayal like this. And why is he treating Scully so aggressively? And why does Mulder always forget how important Scully is to him whenever Diana and The Jugs make an appearance? I mean, it’s like he’s tossing Scully out the window, someone who kept him honest and made him a whole person, in exchange for Diana’s supposed unquestioning belief in the paranormal. “I don’t doubt what you saw, Mulder. I don’t doubt you. I’m willing to believe, but not in a lie and not in the opposite of what I can prove. It comes down to a matter of trust.” Mulder finally looks at her. “I guess it always has,” she says. Mulder asks her if she wants him to make a choice. The answer is yes, of course. But she doesn’t exactly say it like that. “I’m asking you to trust my judgment. To trust me.” She hands Mulder a folder. “I can’t accept that. Not if it refutes what I know to be true.” See what I mean? If I were Scully, I’d smack him upside the head. But we are very different people. Scully tells Mulder that the folder contains test results that match the DNA in the virus to the DNA in the claw they found in Sandy’s wall, which matches DNA found in Gibson. Mulder is looking through the folder and you can tell he thinks they’re on the verge of a breakthrough. “You’re saying that Gibson Praise is infected with the virus?” Scully tells Mulder that it’s a part of his DNA, and all humans’ DNA. “It’s inactive junk DNA. Except in Gibson it’s turned on.” Mulder looks at Scully. “So if that were true, that would mean that Gibson is in some part extraterrestrial.” Scully does her patented breathy answer: “It would mean that all of us are.” Didn’t Scully say at the start of the episode that the DNA in the virus isn’t extraterrestrial? So, now she’s saying that it might be? Or that since humans contain the DNA, what is terrestrial is actually extraterrestrial? That whole We All Came From The Aliens thing that gets discussed in later episodes? Or am I just confused? You be the judge.

Nuclear Plant Of A Terrestrial Boy Who Has Extraterrestrial DNA And Can Communicate With An Actual Extraterrestrial Although It’s Never Fully Explained How. Apparently the party’s over because Gibson’s sitting on the floor and A-Dawg is taking a bath in the water tank. And inside the tank, is the fakest looking alien costume I’ve ever seen. Oh hey, he’s having a skin bath. Thankfully it’s not as gross as the Skin Shower. So his skin’s falling off and then we see he’s actually a grey. So, did A-Dawg end up dropping Gibson off at the School for the Deaf? I mean, Gibson got out of the plant somehow and ended up at school by the Season 8 premiere. Will we ever know the answer? Will this show ever make sense in a conventional way? Will Diana ever buy the farm? Wait… yeah, she does die later. And nobody is really going to care. Not even Mulder.

Recap by kschica

We see a flash, and the obligatory beating heart sounds in the background with a strobe light and other effects that shows this is a freaky dream. We then see Samantha in her nightgown telling a full-grown “Fox” that she’s afraid of what is going on downstairs. A sweaty Mulder wakes up, and seems confused by the blood he sees staining his shirt. Luckily, Mulder did a bang up job of following Scully’s habit of always remembering to wear white when he gets good and bloody. It’s so much more dramatic. He naturally calls Scully. The camera flashes to Scully’s bedside clock, which reads 4:50 am. She also looks ridiculously perfect, and in full makeup. This is especially impressive considering she’s dying and all. Scully gets to then say the words we all miss so much, “Mulder, where are you?” Mulder doesn’t know, and looks down at a key in his hand that says he is at a hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. Scully asks him why he is there, and he says he doesn’t know. And that there’s blood all over him. Scully asks if he’s hurt, and he says he doesn’t think so. He thinks it’s someone else’s blood.

Credits. Oh, Young Scully, there’s so much I need to warn you about. And yet, tragically, I cannot.

Providence, Rhode Island . Scully comes barreling in, screeching tires and all. She knocks and calls out Mulder’s name once. She quickly decides to enter, and calls out his name a few more times. Without hesitating very much, she enters into the bathroom, where the water is running. There, she finds Mulder completely naked, quaking in a bathtub. Sadly, she gets little to no thrill out of this, and is firmly in Scully doctor mode. And Mulder makes no quip either, just saying he can’t get warm. Scully says he’s in shock, and much to the collective disappointment of many does not offer warm him up. Apparently they wait three more years for that to come into play. Sigh. She tells him to dry off, and she leaves the room to get him a blanket. She goes into a bunch of doctor like questions, and asks him to track her finger. Mulder apparently woke up with a pounding headache, and doesn’t remember anything. She asks him what day it is, and he ponders this before having to ask. Apparently, it’s Sunday. She asks what he last remembers. He last remembers talking to her on the phone from his apartment. This turns out to have been Friday. Scully has apparently already spotted that he packed an overnight bag, so he must have intended to at least spend the night when he left D.C. After hearing that Mulder isn’t feeling pain nor taken any medication, Scully checks out the bloody clothes. She asks Mulder if he could possibly have cut himself, and he says no. She is clearly already grasping at straws, since she already got a full body view with no signs of lacerations. She asks him where his weapon is, and she quickly finds it. She discharges the cartridge, and the camera zooms in on it. For a second, I was afraid that I was supposed to be smart enough to know what I was looking at. Luckily, Scully explains it to me, “Two rounds have been fired.” Mulder doesn’t remember firing the weapon. Scully tells him he needs to go the hospital. Mulder, of course disagrees, and says he needs to know what happened and that a crime was committed. Scully seems to think it could be an aneurysm, which apparently could drop him in a second. Mulder doesn’t look too concerned, but just hunts around the room a bit and finds some keys. He asks if they are Scully’s, and she says no. He looks closer and sees that they have a keychain that says, “Amy.” How handy those personalized engraved keychains are!

Scully walks out of the hotel office. Apparently Mulder checked in at noon the day before, and made no phone calls and had no visitors. He also apparently drove there, because he registered a car. Scully looks closer at the car in question, and Mulder says it’s not his. This is a good thing, because there is blood on the steering wheel. Mulder goes to get the keys he found earlier, which apparently work because next thing we know Scully is busting open the glovebox. The car is registered to a “David Cassandra,” and the address is there on the registration. Mulder then asks, “Who’s Amy?” It seems this information is not on the car title, so Scully tells him that they will find out, but first Mulder needs to go to a hospital. As one might expect, Mulder disagrees and needs to find out what the hell is going on. Scully says she feels strongly about this, and that he is taking a big risk. Mulder tells her he knows, but that it’s his risk.

We cut to a table with bunches of photos, all of which have a face cut out of them. A man is seen cutting them out, bleeding as though he has a hole in his head. Interesting.

Mulder and Scully knock on a door, and talk with a woman who turns out to be “Amy and David’s” housekeeper. Mulder immediately gravitates to a painting of a house. Mulder has seen the house before, and finds out Amy’s painted it. The housekeeper says that’s all Amy paints, and shows Mulder many, many paintings of the same house. It’s all very Thomas Kincaid. Mulder asks what the housekeeper knows of the house, and she says that it is in…well, it’s an unintelligible sounding town. Luckily, Mulder knows this place because his family had a vacation home in that town, which is in Rhode Island as well. So he could probably spell it and everything. Again, what a coincidence! Or is it?

Mulder and Scully pull up to the house. It looks to be deserted, and not even remotely like Thomas Kincaid now. This prompts Mulder to clutch his head. The weird heartbeat sounds and strobe lights kick in again. Grown Mulder morphs into Young Fox, who is suddenly much smaller than previous incarnations of Young Fox. Young Fox is standing outside the door, listening to his parents argue. His dad finally looks at him for a moment, then shuts the door. Then another man comes from behind the entryway, smoking a cigarette and says, “You’re a little spy.” As there is only one man in the world who smokes cigarettes, we all know this person must be. I’m pretty sure what was Chris Owens’ voice there, but I’m not 100% sure. Mulder comes to, with Scully calling his name out. She explains what happened, and he says he doesn’t remember the pain or blacking out, but that he does remember vivid flashbacks from his childhood. Scully says it was a seizure, or an “electrical storm in the brain.” Mulder says it felt really good. Scully argues that he’s not really good. Scully’s really such a buzzkill. She’s probably just jealous that she doesn’t get groovy flashbacks from her major neurological condition anymore. Mulder ignores her and enters the house, saying he thinks he’s been there before. Mulder goes to check out the upstairs.

The house has long since been abandoned, and is covered in gigantic cobwebs. I’m not even sure I knew such big cobwebs really occurred outside of Halloween, but I try and avoid entering rooms that have been uninhabited for years. Scully walks around, and then spots a body on the floor, covered in blood. Because the woman is wearing a white sweater, Scully can easily tell that there’s been a gunshot wound to her heart. Scully says, “This must be Amy Cassandra,” as Mulder walks up behind her and looks at the body. Scully sees another body, and adds “And her husband.” Mulder walks across the room and looks closely at the male body, and shoots Scully an “Oh, shit,” look.

The police have come to investigate. Scully tells Mulder that the police want to speak with him, and that she has explained his condition. I personally wish we could have seen that scene. “Officer, my partner has no idea what happened, though he was covered in blood and pretty much led me right to the bodies. But he did clutch his head in pain at one point, saying he got vivid, nice feeling flashbacks. No, really, he’s not on drugs. Oh by the way, we are FBI agents who investigate the supernatural.” Mulder, half tongue in cheek, says he should get a lawyer before talking to the police. Scully says she refuses to believe Mulder had any part in this. Mulder decides to be the one to point out the obvious, pretty much summarizing the episode up to this point in ten seconds. Mulder asks if the words “Orenthal James Simpson” mean anything to her. Scully sighs, and a police officer comes sauntering over to question Mulder, asking him how he’s feeling. Mulder says he’s feeling confused. The police officer skeptically says that his partner said that he has had seizures, and just had one right there. This is all in a “how convenient” sort of voice. The officer asks what brought Mulder there. Mulder says he doesn’t know, and thinks he came there as a kid. The officer says, “You think?” Clearly, the officer does not buy it. He questions him some more, and basically Mulder says that he had never met the victims before in his recollection, and that the first time he ever saw them was when he walked into that house, using their keys, finding them on the floor. The officer seems to have a few issues with this story, saying that there are prints in the house, many with blood. He asks Mulder if he really wants to stick with that story. He asks if Mulder wants to come to the station to elaborate. Scully says firmly that the only place Mulder is going is to a hospital. The officer agrees, but wants them all to go together. He wants Mulder to ride with him. Scully decides that she can be a lawyer as well as a doctor, and advises Mulder not to say any more until Scully gets a closer look at the evidence.

The coroner reads out preliminary results, and Scully listens, all ready to slice and dice. I love Autopsy Scully! Now that’s the action figure that would have made me happy, at least as a wardrobe choice for the action figure. Though I might have wanted to go ahead and give her heels anyhow, even if it would be wildly impractical. Anyhow, Scully immediately sees something on the victim’s head, and the coroner asks her what she is looking for. “I’m not sure,” she Mulders. She picks at what looks like a scab on Amy’s head, and then gets out a magnifying glass to look at the wound closer. Scully tells the coroner she wants to do more than an autopsy. She wants a craniotomy and some other exam that I am going to assume has to do with the head. The coroner points out that the cause of death seems pretty clear, with those bullet holes and all. Scully tells him she agrees, but that she is interested more in why they died as opposed to how. They pan away then, but somehow I feel like the coroner might have been wondering why he’s left doing all this on her whim. It really was a nice Mulder sort of move on her part. I love how she’s totally willing to be Mulder when his ass is on the line.

We go to Mulder laying his head on the table at the police station, looking glum. The officer walks in, carrying a bag. For a second, I thought he was giving Mulder lunch. But, it apparently is evidence. And not the good kind. He asks Mulder if he wants to change his story. Mulder says no. In typical, police show banter, the officer eventually makes his point. The murder weapon is Mulder’s gun, and that it had been fired at point blank range, execution style. To me the scene didn’t look terribly like execution style, but whatever. The officer says he would like to believe Mulder when he says he had this memory lapse, and killed them in a blind rage. Finally he lets Mulder look in the bag. Inside is Mulder’s shirt, which apparently has the blood of the two victims on it. Mulder says he can’t explain it. He then asks about the prints, and whether they were his. The officer merely sits in silence. Mulder tells him that he can’t give a confession because he can’t remember. The officer decides to read him his rights. Mulder closes his eyes, and opens them slowly with the officer’s voice fading out.

We fade to Mulder coming in with the orange jumpsuit. I’m trying to recall how many times we’ve seen Mulder in prison. I wonder if Scully’s been abducted more times than Mulder’s been thrown in prison. Of course, Scully has also been in prison once and Mulder has been abducted a few times. There really are no winners in these contests. Anyhow, Scully says she’ll get Mulder out. Mulder points out that she’s a doctor and not a lawyer. Though given the gravity of what’s going on, I’m not sure I get why a real live attorney hasn’t been called. Scully decides to continue to play lawyer and asks Mulder if he confessed, and he assures her he didn’t. Scully turns to the officer and advises him that he might not want to rush into booking Mulder so soon. She explains that new medical information should be considered, as Amy Cassandra had a substance called ketamine in her system. Mulder says that this is a veterinary drug, because between them Mulder and Scully pretty much know everything. Scully says yes, but that when ingested by humans it can cause hallucinations. The officer thus far is unimpressed. Scully goes on to explain that Mulder also has this in his system. Mulder asks how it would have gotten there. Scully says likely through injection. She says another exam of Mulder would probably show such an injection. And that she and Mulder need some time alone for her to look everywhere. Well, that last part went unsaid. Scully says that the presence of the drug could explain the memory loss and blackouts, thus clearing Mulder. Scully really does seem to like the “I was drugged!” defense. The officer doesn’t buy it, and decides to keep Mulder anyhow.

Scully tells Mulder that she doesn’t feel there is enough proof here, especially with the drugs involved. She feels the narrative is too convenient, what with Mulder voluntarily leading the investigation to find victims of a double murder after he woke up covered in blood. I’m honestly not sure what an outsider is supposed to make of this. Luckily Scully is not an outsider, and feels confident that Mulder didn’t do it. Mulder doesn’t seem quite as convinced, but makes a joke that maybe the other explanation is that he is suddenly partying with senior citizens. Then the officer walks up to take Mulder away, and Scully tells him that he’s jailing an innocent man. She says this in a tone like the officer is being a real hardass, which he is to some extent, but I’m not sure what person with half a brain wouldn’t hold Mulder at this point. But God bless Scully’s loyalty and conviction. The officer says that at least he knows Mulder won’t disappear for two days and do something else he won’t remember.

Scully walks away determinedly, and a uniformed officer walks by her toward the cells with equal determination. He moves into an empty cell, and takes out a photo with a picture cut off. It’s the head bleeding guy from earlier with all the cut up pictures. He looks at the picture and starts to get weepy. He then pulls out his gun, and we pan to Scully turning back around on a dime when she hears the gun shot. You know a part of her feels like Mulder must be involved somehow. Scully goes into the cell, reassuring everyone that she is a doctor. As always, no one protests this at all and allows her to go in alone. She looks closely, and uses her medical expertise to say, “He’s dead.” She takes a closer look and sees the same scabbed over hole that she had seen before. She says she needs to talk to Detective Curtis, the officer who had been pressing Mulder so much, immediately.

Scully asks the detective if the officer had a history of depression. Apparently his former partner had come with complaints of odd behavior. Detective Curtis explains that the dead officer had become something of a joke on the force, believing in extraterrestrials. Scully takes this in stride, and starts concentrating on the cut up pictures. She asks if he’s looked at the pictures. He says not really, and doesn’t get where she’s going. Scully explains that cutting oneself out of picture upon picture is not what you’d call healthy, and that it is a sign that the dead officer probably was disturbed and even believed his own stories. Detective Curtis says he thought this would explain Mulder’s case. Scully decides not to go into this, and looks around the room more. And sitting right there is a copy of Abductee Magazine, with Amy Cassandra as the cover girl. I love the whole conceit of a magazine called Abductee. It sounds oddly mainstream, like something all the cool abductees must read to know how best to use their implants as accessories. Scully explains in highly technical terms that all three of the dead people had holes in their head. She thinks it might not have been murder, but more of a suicide pact.

We’re back to Jumpsuit! Mulder laying his head back. We’re in flashback mode, with a young Bill Mulder and CSM talking. Both appear to have had growth spurts at some point in their adulthood, as these two men are much, much shorter than their older counterparts. We see Young Fox running away from where the door closed to the upstairs to spy some more. He comes in and looks at Samantha, then back to the goings on downstairs. His mom is crying and pounding CSM’s chest, yelling, “Not Samantha! Not Samantha!” followed by, “I hate you!” Bill Mulder looks upwards toward Young Fox, and then the flashback ends and we pan back to Mulder. Mulder looks around his cell, getting his bearings. He calls for the guard, saying he needs to talk to someone.

The next morning. Scully comes in, and the Detective tells Scully that Mulder kept everyone up all night wanting to talk to someone. Apparently his memories are coming back. Mulder asks to talk to Scully alone. Mulder tells Scully he didn’t kill those people. She tells him she knows, but that she actually has gone beyond this and found evidence to clear him as well. I think this might be one instance that Scully should point to when Mulder whines about her need for proof. I think every once and awhile Mulder might need a good, “It saved your ass from jail!” The forensics reports showed that the splatter pattern did not match the point of entry. Apparently it was murder suicide, and that Mulder was there. Scully explains that Amy Cassandra claimed to be an abductee, and Mulder naturally surmises that he contacted her. Scully explains that Amy had gotten psychiatric treatment to recover memories, and that the repetitive paintings were a sign of mental trauma. Scully then brings it together with the dead officer, saying they were both suffering from Waxman Geshwin’s Syndrome, which put people in a trancelike state with vivid memories coming in flashback form. She says it is also called Dostoevsky syndrome, as he had been suffering from it as well. Mulder looks at, clearly sensing that this is leading to him soon. He asks what he was doing there, and Scully says she still can’t explain it. But she has pushed up his arraignment to an hour from then, and that they should have enough forensics evidence to clear him by then. Mulder says he still needs to know why. Scully nods, probably knowing that he would say that.

Warwick, Rhode Island. Mulder and Scully get out of Scully’s car. Scully explains that they are at Amy Cassandra’s psychologists’s office. Mulder notices that his car his there. It appears to have been there for several days. Mulder asks what the name of the psychologist was again.

We pan to Dr. Charles Goldsten, Ph.D, PsyD. Given what we find out he does, I’m thinking I might have preferred a psychiatrist to a psychologist here. Not that any of this is rational, but hallucinogenic drugs combined with holes in the head really should only be dealt by those with medical training, or not at all. Of course, not at all would likely always be the best choice. Mulder and Scully enter. Mulder introduces himself, and asks if they’ve met. Dr. Goldstein says that they haven’t. Scully explains that they are there to investigate Amy and David Cassandra’s deaths, and asks whether Amy was a patient. Dr. Goldstein confirms that she was. Dr. Goldstein says he was upset to learn about Amy. He was also the dead officer’s doctor. Scully informs him he is also dead. Scully quizzes the doctor about Waxman Geschwind’s Syndrome. Without Scully really saying much about her opinions, beyond the hint of disdain in her voice, he goes on a diatribe of how many people don’t really suffer when they have it and says that Amy Cassandra was really quite happy a lot of the time. I realized somewhere in here that maybe I should know something about this disorder. So I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently it is a disorder associated with epileptics where they experience other differences in the brain. Significantly, two items listed that some believe occur are guilt and paranoia. Also, it is apparently not widely accepted. And I also really wanted to add this episode somewhere to the Wikipedia entry. But I have never actually added my vast amount of knowledge to the world of Wikipedia, and this seemed like an odd place to start. Though I might think of this as a fun side project for later, cross-referencing X-Files episodes to all kinds of Scully’s odd disorders that she busts out as rational explanations. Anyway, Mulder starts looking like he is recalling things, and says some parting words and steps into the hall. Scully’s not buying any of what Dr. Goldstein is selling and tells him icily, “I know what you do,” and gives him a long, punishing look and walks out. I love when Scully dresses people down.

Mulder and Scully talk in the hall, and Mulder says he remembers being there with Amy Cassandra. Scully says she is pretty sure that this is not all Dr. Goldstein is lying about. Scully says she thinks he administered the ketamine to all the dead folks, as well as to Mulder and that Mulder was “treated” by him. Mulder agrees. Scully asks Mulder why he would do something as crazy and dangerous as this, which seems to be something of an understatement. Mulder has done plenty of crazy and dangerous, but this might really be at least in the top ten. Mulder asked a quack psychologist to put holes in his head while he was high on a veterinary drug, all on the referral of a woman featured in Abductee Magazine. This is some pretty messed up shit, even for Mulder. Scully doesn’t really get the full opportunity to point this all out because Mulder takes this opportunity to start clutching his head in pain again. If the TV didn’t show me this flashback, I would be convinced he was faking it to avoid Scully’s wrath on this. Not that she should show him much sympathy, as the dude voluntarily put holes in his head.

But, here we go on another flashback. We just see Young CSM and Ma Mulder sharing a significant, intense look with CSM clutching her strangely behind the neck. Scully pulls Mulder out of it pretty quickly by loudly calling out his name. Mulder starts to stand up, telling Scully he’s fine. “I’m not taking that for an answer,” Scully yells him. Mulder gives her a brief, significant look that pretty much says, “Sure, whatever, Ms. I’m Fine Except For This Huge Brain Tumor.” Scully tells him he needs to go to the hospital and shouldn’t be working. Which really, again, is pretty rich coming from her, at this stage. Though I think she is also legitimately concerned that Mulder has really and truly gone over the deep end at this point. You know, having holes put in his head and all. Mulder continues to brush her off, glaring at her when she says that he is a danger to both himself and to her. She says he needs treatment, and he says that he doesn’t want to be treated as whatever he has undergone is tapping into his unconscious memories. “The truth is in there, and I’ve gotten access to it,” he tells her. Oh, so that’s where the truth is! It’s in there, not out there. Mulder says he thinks he is remembering details that will lead him to what happened to his sister. Then he asks for the keys. She asks him where he needs to go, willing to hear him out since he used the Samantha card. He tells her he needs to go to his mother’s house in Greenwich. Scully ponders, and agrees, but says she’s driving.

Greenwich, Connecticut. Mulder and Scully show up at Ma Mulder’s house, with Ma Mulder looking out the window at them approaching. As soon as his mother opens the door, without ceremony Mulder busts out with, “I need to speak to you.” His mother asks what’s happened. Mulder tells her that he knows she has been keeping secrets from him, unwilling to meet her line of sight. Ma Mulder turns to Scully, asking her, “What’s the matter with him?” as though Mulder’s not in the room. Scully tells her that Mulder has undergone a “treatment” (I added the airquotes that I think Scully really needed to have used) that has helped him remember things. “Remember what?” she asks Mulder. Mulder tells her indignantly, still looking at the ground, “You told me when they took Samantha that it was because you had to make a choice. But that’s not how it happened, because it wasn’t your choice to make.” Ma Mulder asks what he wants her to say. Mulder still won’t look up at her, and tells her he needs to know what happened at the vacation house in the indecipherable town name I refuse to look up. (I will for some reason look up Waxman Geschwind, but not indecipherable city names. My laziness runs hot and cold, largely depending on my level of interest. Where the Mulder family vacationed isn’t really that high up. And isn’t it funny that someone who grew up on Martha’s Vineyard has a vacation house? Did their money come from renting out their normal home during the peak season?) Anyhow, Mulder says he needs to speak with his mother alone. If this is to spare Scully of the awkwardness, it seems a bit too little too late.

Mulder and his mother go into a closed room, and Mulder strides towards his mom, now looking her straight in the eye. “You had some sort of relationship with him,” Mulder accuses her. Ma Mulder has no idea who he’s talking about. Mulder says she knows who, saying it was the man who used to work with his father. He tells her it was the man who was there at the house when Mulder was 12 and she was forced to choose Samantha. Mulder then jumps to, “You betrayed my father, your husband.” She denies it, saying “Never.” Mulder then, full of disdain, presses on and asks, “How far back did it go?” This gets Ma Mulder really mad, and she rears back and slaps Mulder across the face. Mulder doesn’t seem terribly chagrined, and presses on, asking, “Who is my father?” This gets Ma Mulder even hotter, and she asks Mulder, “What do you want, to kill him again?” Now sort of welling up, Mulder asks her to just answer the question, not being distracted by her attempts to guilt him off this course. She still won’t actually answer the question, and tells him, “I am your mother and I will not tolerate anymore of your questions.” She pauses, and then adds, “You’re bleeding, Fox.”

Sure enough, Mulder is bleeding from those pesky holes he had drilled in his head. Mulder reaches to wipe at the blood, looking a bit confused by it. His mother takes this opportunity to storm out of the room. She rushes right past Scully without looking at her and runs upstairs. Scully enters the room his Ma Mulder left from to check on Mulder, and Mulder isn’t there. She hears a car door slam, and goes to the window to presumably be driving off. This gets my vote as the Worst Mulder Ditch Ever. There are a lot to choose from, but I think the blatant intent to strand her, combined with leaving her in about the most awkward situation ever just really takes the cake. Not to mention that it is presumably Scully’s car. And that he is leaving because he is such a hurry to have a deranged psychologist drill even more holes in his head. I think my first words to Mulder when I next saw him would be, “You asshole. You had to know I wanted to be stuck there with your mom like I wanted a hole in the head. Oh, wait, bad example.”

It is now 9:25 pm, and Dr Goldstein is loading a box in his car. Mulder pulls up behind him, and asks him what he did to him. Dr. Goldstein first tries for denial. Mulder tells him he knows he treated him, so Dr. Goldstein shifts gears. “I did nothing wrong.” “You drilled a hole in my head,” Mulder grits out. Dr. Goldstein’s response: “A slight electrical stimulation.” That cracked me up for some reason. Mulder tells him he triggered his memory, and Dr. Goldstein reminds him that his is what Mulder wanted. Mulder tells him that now he wants him to finish the job. Oh, Mulder.

Dr. Goldstein loads up a syringe with a green liquid, which I am assuming is ketamine, though on this show Lord only knows nothing good comes in the form of green liquid. Dr. Goldstein shoots Mulder up with this which apparently fast acting as he has to help Mulder across the room to lie down. Mulder says, “I want to remember.” Dr. Goldstein then puts on some sort of sensory deprivation goggles onto Mulder’s eyes, which have red lights in them. Mulder starts to have flashbacks in rapid succession, which are basically repeats of the earlier flashbacks. Now Dr. Goldstein decides he should put Mulder in restraints. Mulder starts to relive Samantha’s abduction yet again as Dr. Goldstein loads up his drill and starts sloooowly moving it toward Mulder’s forehead with dramatic music cuing. Outside, we see a police car come screaming around the corner with lights flashing and tires squealing, followed by several more police cars. The detective from earlier busts in and arrests Dr. Goldstein, as the detective notices Mulder is gone. As Dr. Goldstein is being taken to a police car, Scully drives up. I have no idea in what car, though I assume she was responsible for all the police being there. Nice work on Scully’s part, but I’m not even entirely sure what she told them beyond that her nutjob partner was about to get holes drilled in his head. Voluntarily.

Scully asks where Mulder is. The detective tells her Dr. Goldstein wouldn’t tell him. At that moment, the police car containing Dr. Goldstein is driving off, and Scully shouts out to stop that car. Scully gets all super intense, and starts drilling Dr. Goldstein about Mulder’s treatment and whereabouts. Nobody mentions to Scully that he has this pesky right to remain silent, and that if he hasn’t waived the right anything he says at this point would be inadmissible (Ed Note: I thought if he wasn’t read his rights, what he says would be inadmissible. Once they’re read, “anything [he says] can be used against [him]“. Isn’t that right? Wow, I’ve watched too much Law & Order. – Starbucket). Which would really suck for the case and all. But Mulder’s ass is on the line, so Scully really doesn’t care very much about the Constitution. She grabs Dr. Goldstein by the shirt, and yells at him, “Damn it! Answer me!” Her eyes are absolutely blazing, and Dr. Goldstein cowers like the cowardly bastard he is. He admits to treating Mulder, but says he doesn’t know where he went. Scully then lets go of him, tossing him back in disgust. She asks what the last thing Mulder said to him was. Apparently, he said he was going to exorcise his demons. Scully looks troubled, as well she should be.

Quonochontaug, Rhode Island. Of course, now they finally decide to give me a screen cap. I already have forgotten how it’s pronounced. There are many police officers around, and Scully pulls up and begins speaking with one of the officers observing the house. Apparently Scully called them over there to keep an eye out until she could get there. The officer tells her someone is there, and that a light just went on. She explains that Mulder is armed and dangerous, but in dire need of medical attention and not himself. She says she is going in, and to tell the officers that if Mulder flees that they shouldn’t shoot. I’m not entirely sure what their purpose is here. Tackling? Mulder, doped up on animal drugs with several different holes in his head, might be hard to bring down.

Scully warily enters the darkened house. Some sweet Mark Snow score sets the tense mood. Scully calls out for Mulder, who tells her to leave him alone. She, of course, ignores him and enters the room. “Mulder, it’s me,” she tells him. He again tells her to leave him alone. The flashbacks hit Mulder fast and furious yet again, and then we see Mulder lean back in agony, with his gun in hand pointed in the direction of his head. Mulder seems to be fighting off something, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s the memories or the suicidal impulses. “It’s all falling into place,” Mulder says. Scully yells him to put down the gun. “No, don’t try to stop me,” Mulder tells her. Scully steps closer, and levelly but compassionately says, “Please, Mulder.” Mulder sees flashes of Samantha being floating away, followed by his mom’s screams and a smash of glass which then reveals the Young CSM. He takes a long drag, as Samantha drifts away. Mulder yells at Scully to get away, and points the gun at her. Scully asks if he is going to shoot her, if it means that much to him. There are quite a few of these scenes throughout the show, with them pointing their guns at each other, and I just eat it up every single time. Like, I could have a really fun marathon consisting only of episodes where they pull their guns on each other. Throw Skinner into the mix, and then you’ve really got a marathon on your hands. Mulder continues to point the gun at Scully, looking intense.

Scully looks more sad than panicked or worried. She reminds him that he is on a powerful hallucinogen, and that he can’t trust his memories as really being his. “This is not the way to the truth, Mulder. You’ve got to trust me,” she pleads. Mulder looks really agitated, and yells at her to shut up. Scully tells him to put down the gun. “Let it go,” she soothingly whispers in a deep voice. This does not soothe him, and we pan to the police officers outside as we hear shots fired. Oh, my God, Mulder killed Scully! You bastard!

The gunshots continue as the cops charge in. We get an extreme close up of Mulder’s detached, cold face. The camera moves up, and we see Scully. Whoa, he totally just shot the wall! Phew.

Scully is now decked all out in her suit, typing a report as she voiceovers. Apparently, Mulder still doesn’t remember the murder-suicide he witnessed. He’s had no further symptoms, but Scully is concerned that having holes drilled in his head might cause some complications down the road. Like a fatal mysterious brain disease that can only be cured by aliens, perhaps? Scully psychoanalyzes to finish her report, in the typical voiceover fashion. What it amounts to is that she is concerned that Mulder will forever keep chasing these demons from his past, which is something of an impossible pursuit. Luckily, by the next episode, he will be distracted for a bit with Scully’s eminent death.

By Gryffindork

Let’s see…

DVD. Check.

Notebook. Check.

Godmother of all hangovers. Check.

Enough chocolate and Dr. Pepper to make my scales wince in anticipation. Check.

Let’s do this, then.

Aaand we’re opening with the time-honoured ER shot of us in the perspective of the patient, being whisked away under a row of lights along yet another one of those charming hospital corridors. A very serene nurse leans into our field of vision just as we start enjoying that lovely view and tells us to relax, and throws in a “There you go!” just to further vex us. Seriously, Nurse? Outta my face. Btw, our favourite Date/Place stamp informs us that we are actually looking at the ceiling of „Tablers Community Hospital; Martinsburg, West”.

As the camera switches back to regular third person perspective, we get to see and hear the patient for the first time. A) she is obviously very much in labour b) oh my God, it’s the voice of Babe the pig! Her actual name (the charcter, not the actress) is Amanda Nelligan. But she’d be very wrong in thinking that from now on, I shall call her anything but Babe. Anyhow, Babe gives another Nurse her name, Social Security and insurance company for… something or other, and then proceeds to amaze by telling everybody that the father of the baby cannot be contacted. Because he’s from another planet. Huh. Take that for interesting watercooler chit-chat. Insurance nurse and in-your-face nurse exchange bewildered looks. Oh yeah, you are freaked out by this incident with a complete stranger? At least she’s not your favourite female lead of the show…. Not that anything like that would ever happen….

Cut to the actual process of childbirth. The doctor, of course, is unbearably calm. Head of the baby seems to be out (and as compared to “Knocked up”, we don’t get a close-up), and then he veeery calmly and for my taste veeery slowly pulls out the rest of the little ray of sunshine. With no evident pushing on babe’s side. Isn’t there supposed to be pushing? Heaps of it, actually?

Baby’s out, and the Doctor’s face falls. So do the scissors out of a nurse’s hands, accompanied with a shocked gasp. Babe asks whether anything is wrong, but the doctor assures her that everything is fine. Of course it is! Don’t let the dismayed faces fool you! AND, they have every reason to pull the screen between you and your baby as they carry it off for cleaning! Everything is honky-donky! Behind the screen, we see the doctor lift the baby and there’s ten toes and ten fingers and… Uh, gasp!!! One tail!… Seems fitting, for the child of Babe… I guess I have to give the CGI department from a decade ago (my gawd, I’m so old…) props here, that is one cute little tail. But seeing as this baby is a girl, I wince at the thought of what thong-wearing is gonna be like. They might want to contact a certain Mr. And Mrs. Dursley of Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, UK (the world, the Universe…) about that. They have some experience with surgical tail-removal. And, as if the entire Alienbaby-with-a-tail-spiel wasn’t freaky enough, the kid is also a super soldier! No, wait… that is another season. Instead, the Doctor moans “Oh Lord, not another one!” Hmmmmm…..

Credits. How could anyone NOT love those credits?

An issue of “World Weekly Informer” is slapped on screen, informing the entire world (or, more like, loons and trailer park inhabitants) that “Monkey Babies Invade Small Town” with a nifty photo manipulation of a baby with a monkey’s head and tail, which Mulder informs us off-screen “is a little over the top”. Yeah, that, and also terribly put together. I can still see the whites of the former background around the monkey head. Somebody did a lazy cutting job. If I were that somebody, I’d have to bake a cake for next week’s computer application class AND apologize profusely to my Professor. On my knees. Not jokin. This is how my computer class rolls. Just so you know.

Despite almost 4 years of experience, Mulder is still brave enough to ask Scully what she thinks. “Not seriously?” she answers, and thus channels the spirit of our enitre snark-project. Cue the standardised exposition dialogue. I kinda miss a slide show here. Mulder tries to pass it by Scully as an interesting medical condition, also considering that there where a ripe 5 lil’ monkey babies born within the last three months in a town populated by 15.000 people. Scully points out that, yes this definately wants investigation. Only not by them. Which, at the current state of knowledge, is a point well taken. I’ve had both a girl with an extra toe as well as a guy born with 11 fingers in my graduation year. Wish Moose and Squirrel had dropped by to investigate THAT. I would have been the perfect little sidekick. And finally, Scully cuts to the chase and spares us any more BS by bringing the obvious out in the open: We are only here because some doofus claimed that “Visitors from Space” peppered up the local gene-pool.

Having arrived at the hospital, Mulder and Scully visit Babe to hear more of the monkey business concerning her daughter. I know, I am being redundant, but I cannot put enough emphasis on how much I enjoy hearing Babe speak here. Okay, moving on. Basically, the tail is removable, so we are not really worried about it all. The talk moves on to the kid’s dubious lineage, and you can basically see Mulder working his giddy way up to his favourite question, and I think his voice might even quiver a bit with excitement as he gently utters “Were you abducted?” Babe says, no, “He dropped by my apartment one day, and it just sorta happened”. Ah, but Mulder is not yet ready to let go of that bone! Concentrating hard to keep that concerned look on his face, he elaborates: “But the father is an alien?” Ah, everyone, make yourselves ready for great things to come. Babe looks at Mulder like he is a madman (which, coming from any other character might be quite understandable) and says – get this! – :”No, I didn’t say he was an alien, I said he was from another planet. His name is Luke Skywalker. He’s what’s known as a Jedi Knight.”

… I could say SO much right now, but it would just cheapen the moment. Just enjoy it for what it is. The looks on Mulder’s and Scully’s faces? Ye gods, I’d pay good money to have those re-enacted for me every morning, so I can face the cold, mean world outside my apartment with fresh energy. Without even blinking, Scully asks: “Did he have a light saber?”, and this is my cue to excuse myself to build a couple of extra figurines for that Scully-shrine tucked away at the back of my closet. Most. Perfect. Line. Ever.

Oh, and in case you were wondering the same? No, he didn’t bring it. He did, however, sing her a song.

And Babe starts humming the Star Wars theme.

No, seriously.

No, seriously! Yes, I would have cracked that joke, but this is actually happening on screen! What I said about Mulder and Scully’s face a little further up? I take it all back. Just Scully’s face right now will do perfectly well.

(Okay now, hold the phone here for a little while:. If, say Colin Firth (or, who am I to be picky: Matthew MacFadyen) were to drop by my apartment, all tarted up in their full Mr Darcy attire and ready for a cozy DVD night, I would NOT think “Oh my, that 19th century sex god is quite the quick learner when it comes to operating a telly!” but more likely “Oh my, there is a lunatic in a costume roaming my apartment.. now how do I call the authorities without drawing his attention?” But then again, Mr Darcy… scratch that, I get her. Back to the story!)

Whilst I was busy moving into my new, Darcy-inhabited happy-place, Scully took her time to ask exactly how often Babe has seen Star Wars. Turns out she’s soon gonna hit 400, which causes Mulder to finally make a desperate leap for the door. A bit rich coming form a guy who can talk along to many a crummy sci-fi movie, if you ask me. It should be added here that I don’t think Scully has been seen looking this happy in living memory. Oh, I hope she’s gonna lord that over Mulder big time.

Babe finishes the scene for us by worrying whether there’s a chance of Luke being the father of the other four Super-Sayajins. No, there’s not, because – and this pearl of wisdom is coming to you from a freak currently recapping a ten year old show, so cherish it – HE IS NOT REAL, YOU CRAZY BINT!!!

Outside the room of Babe, the alpha-dork, Mulder and the townsfolk have gathered to stare at yet another tail-baby. Or they might just be the relatives of all the other babies on display. Who am I to judge here. Speaking of babies’ relatives: the camera lingers suspiciously long on a maintenance guy named “Eddie” after Mulder has left the frame. Gee, i wonder if this is gonna turn out to be significant. Way to go with the foreshadowing! Jeez…Mulder tells Scully that he “think(s) there is more going on her than Luke Skywalker and his lightsaber.” Which is a line the 13-year old in me enjoys immensly. However, to his own evident astonishment, Scully agrees! Frankly, I think she just hangs on in order to see how the freakshow continues. It’s what I would do. We have a woman who thinks her baby (with a tail!) is the next padawan for the Jedi Academy! That is the kind of job satisfaction everybody wants.

Over at the world-famed “Eastern Appalachian Regional Health Department”, some female official pins chromosome sequences (or whatever…) onto the light-wall-thingies and rants off a bunch of medical facts which, frankly, I am too dumb to get in English. But hey, so is Mulder! Scully then clears things up for both of us by explaining that the 5 kids all share the same father, who probably has a tail of his own. He’s gonna be a tough one to find. Mulder wonders how on earth this could have happened, and once again Scully steals away my snarky thunder by wisecracking the exact same stupid joke that was about to dance off my own tongue, for which she receives some honourary brownie points. Mulder’s twist on the “Let’s fall in love” lyrics following that, though? Ugh, jokes simply CAN be taken too far. Somebody whack him with the witty-stick, please. Well, at least he knows his investigative skillz and points out that according to medical record, all of the five married monkey-mums have received insemination therapy with the same doctor. “So much for not putting all your eggs in one basket!” he cracks. Yeah, you’re better off having them stored in a test tube at your local conspiracy headquarters.

To the Batmobile!

In front of said Doctor’s building, Mulder and Scully witness an angry couple storming up the stairs. The husband tosses a cocky “You, too, huh?” over his shoulder as they pass our agents. Hehe. I love when people think they are a couple. I am simple that way. Also, he calls his wife Babboo, so frankly, I think the baby with the tail was God’s way of punishing those two. And damn right he was.

Inside, the angry mob of betrayed parents is busy assaulting the doc. In a very well-staged circle, that leaves just enough room for, say, a camera in the centre of events. How convenient.. Actually, Babboo-man looks suspiciously like Christian Bale on my tiny little TV, but thankfully is not. The doc suggest (played rather badly, methinks), thats the insemination might not have taken with any of them, seeing as he is certain he’s only used sperm of the respective husbands. Which he’d damn well better be. Upon which we get yet another flat delivery of an actually at least decent line about her not having been with a man for ages from Babboo. Bad acting should be punishable by law. I think I’ll put that in my world domination manifesto, too. In all the hassle, Mulder yet again follows his instincts and leaves the mob to further investigate a noise (!) down the corridor. As he turns a corner, we get a nice shot of Darin Morgan’s (aka Eddie form before) plumber’s cleavage. There are some things I don’t need a few hours before bedtime. Mulder, however, spots a curious scar right above Eddie’s butt crack, just where a tail would be. And the plot thickens…

Blah blah, Agent Mulder, FBI, couple of questions? And Eddie uses the moment to pull off the classic “Yeah, okay…NOT!” line of action and dashes off down the hallway. Mulder rolls his eyes and sprints his toned G-Man body after chubby little Eddie to a racy score and tackles him to an early fall, which causes both of them to slide dramatically right in the midst of the aforementioned angry mob. As Eddie struggles in vain, Mulder once again pulls down Eddie’s belt and tells Scully to “check it out”. Yuck. I know, this is about the scar, but still… Ew, is all I’m saying. Scully seems to be thinking along the same lines, judging from her expression, and slowly the monkey-mums gather around her, with an angry attitude quite of their own. “That’s him?” asks one of them.

You betcha, he is! As next scene’s five paternity tests show us. Eddie is in interrogation with Mulder and Scully, but to my great disappointment, they pull none of the classic cop-roleplays. Shame, really. Eddie, however, states that if he did have sex with five women, who all wanted children, but their husbands were unable, and now they do have kids, and everyone’s happy, where would the crime be? “Hypothetically!” Which is the suspect’s equivalent to telling your parents that “a friend” got knocked up during a drunken party night, what do they think “she” should do? He also seems quite insulted that nobody considers the idea that the women had consensual sex with him. Which Mulder and Scully simply ignore. For which I love them. The point is driven home by the fact that, once outside, Scully wastes no time in telling Mulder that “On behalf of all the women in the world” she highly doubts the consensual sex idea. Heh. Anyway, they’ll keep him in custody under the suspicion that he’s slipped the women the infamous rape-drug on some occasion or other, even though Mulder doubts that these women are the type to do much of anything without their husbands.

Meanwhile, Eddie gives his personal data to some faceless Deputy who, let’s face it, is definitely in for some paranormal crap or other at the hands of Eddie, seeing as he is all alone with him. Generic Deputy 17b seals his fate by forgetting the silent “H” in Eddie’s last name Van Blundht. Everybody forgets the silent H. Eddie seems to be staring at the Deputy quite intensely, and unless I have suddenly dropped into a Will and Grace version with ugly people I am pretty sure something dramatic is about to happen (and also, because I have seen this episode about ten times already). And sure enough, just as the Deputy says “All right, Mr Van Blund-hut” – which is so what I would do – and turns his attention back to Eddie, he as well as the audience is shocked to discover that he is staring at his twin (who we all assume is Eddie, who has changed his appearance off-screen to safe 1013 heaps of money). His evil twin who then proceeds to knock him out with the swear-jar (a pig in a police uniform), which is a nice touch, if you ask me. As the Deputy bleeds all over the floor, Eddie once more informs us that “The H is silent.”. Somebody should consider anger management classes.

Next morning finds the cheeky Deputy shoved under his desk and Mulder and Scully back at the precinct, being informed by yet another police extra that he had seen the Deputy check out the night before, and is quite startled by the fact that he’s obviously been silently bleeding the night away. The now re-awakened Deputy informs Scully that Eddie looked just like himself, the Deputy, just before he knocked him out. Huuuummmmm… With uncanny timing, just as the last pieces fall together in the experienced viewer’s mind, Mulder rings the desk bell to not only catch Scully’s attention in an extremely childish and thus endearing way, but also support our own enlightenment with a classic sound effect. Dude can change his appearance, huh? Well, let’s wait and see what Fox has to say on this.

Actually, he starts off by saying “I have a theory, wanna hear it?” with a little excited grin that suggests that not only does he have a theory, but also an enormous chocolate cake to share with the rest of the class. Scully, however, can smell what the Mul is cookin’ and rants off his entire theory – sans the enthusiasm- before he can even catch a breath. Van Blundt somehow changed his physical appearance to resemble the deputy before knocking him out and walking out the precinct, leaving no one the wiser. Mulder is obviously deeply impressed and suggests that they hit the road immediately to go and pick out china patterns. Heh. Grumpy McSpoilsport decides to trash the “moment” by whining why Mulder can’t go for the obvious answer, that all the witness reports have been thwarted by either tiredness or a blow to the head, and that Van Blundt – and I’m misspelling on purpose – walked out without the Bounty Hunter performance. And thus I have delivered my own smooth transition to mention how Mulder tells her that they both have seen something like this before (see ugly bounty hunters with abnormal icepicks in earlier seasons), but however, he doesn’t think Van Blundt is an alien, “unless they have trailer parks in space”. Now, THIS is a show I would like to see on TV! Financially and intellectually challenged aliens playing their own version of mailbox-baseball… might explain the entire plot of “Independence Day”.

And we’re off to find Eddie at his home. On the way, Mulder poses the very much anticipated question of who Scully would like to be, if she could change her appearance for one day. And she decides to go for the lame-ass answer of “hopefully me” and then, to win some more time, elaborates on how looking like someone isn’t equal to being that person. Which, honestly? Is the whole bloody point of the idea, Dana! Where’s the fun in, say, “being caught” peeing in the Dean’s coffee mug looking like my most hated college-rival, if I have to bear the consequences of that behaviour, too? Exactly, none at all! But even after she’s grasped that concept, she amazes us by the thrilling choice of “Eleanor Roosevelt”. Way to go, you punk! You really know how to live it up, Sculls! And to think that this is the role model of my early teen years. What a sad state of affairs. Mulder poutingly steamrolls that by saying that “You can’t be a dead person.” And I fully back him up.

The dynamic duo has arrived at the Van Blundht door, where the „h” in the nameplate choses that exact moment to drop off the wall. Which is simply hilarious, I’ll have to give 1013 that. Let’s just not let it turn into a habit.

Some old guy in a stereotypical dressing gown opens the door. It’s Eddie’s father. OR IS HE? Sure he is, for certainly that guy doing lawn-work in an adjoining garden, and who we see for the second time now, is the actual Eddie, right? Yeah, right…

Enter the casa del Blundt with its timeless wood paneling and trashy decor. Edward Senior present a well played facade of surprise concerning his newly discovered state of 5-times granddad, but really jumps into life as Mulder points to an advertising poster for “Eddie the Monkey Man” with some freak show. “Yeah, that’s me!” he blurts out with enthusiasm, “Wanna see?”. And he gropes for the belt of his dressing gown, forcibly reminding me of a great-uncle of mine, who apparently has a rather nasty rash on one of his buttocks at the moment. Guess how I know. Scully, with her ever present mind and G-Woman reflexes stops him with a desperate “NO!… thank you.”. So instead Eddie’s “Dad” says that his son “unwisely” had his own tail removed, and how he basically thinks that the tail was the only thing that made Eddie into something special. Wow, what a great Dad! No wonder Eddie has that great confidence in his own personality.

Also, Eddie’s “Dad” calls Mulder by his name. Which he has not been told until now. Eddie’s Dad was right after all, he sure is no Einstein. So yeah, it was Eddie, and he dashes off once again, leaving only his red dressing gown behind on the street, and Mulder charmingly decides to drape it over Scully’s shoulder as they meet up outside. Me, I would’ve used that opportunity to strangle him with the smelly garment.

Cut to the house of Babboo-bimbo, where her husband, who is not Christian Bale, dashes in through the front door. Wearing the same green sweater we’ve seen earlier under a red dressing gown. Yes, it’s Eddie, as we see when he locks himself in the bathroom. Babboo comes by to stand outside the door and ask if he’s okay, and Eddie manages to shake her off. Not, however, before she can call him “Sugar Patootie”. Babboo and Sugar Patootie? Can somebody please put them down? For the sake of mankind? How does one end up in a marriage where people call each other such names and MEAN THEM? God, maybe being single isn’t so bad after all.

Back at the Van Blundt’s, Scully and Mulder search the place, (still revoltingly ugly enough to make any interior designer drop dead on the spot) and find one BIG supply of beef jerky in the attic. Well, actually, it’s not beef jerky, it’s Eddie senior, As evident by the tail visible on the mummy to make Priest Imhotep proud.

Meanwhile, Eddie is still stuck in Babboo’s bathroom as the real Sugar patootie comes home. In an act of brilliance worthy of season 9 Scully, they leave the baby alone in its crib in the living area to go and investigate the stranger together. For Babboo and Sugar Patootie never go anywhere on their own if they can help it, I am sure, Eddie has to think on his feet, which is obviously quite the task for him, and he decides to go with the obvious and.. turn into Mulder. Duchovny looks kinda weird in green, but nevertheless tells the couple from hell that “It’s all clear!”

Time for some slicing and dicing. Or, more like… sawing and grinding.. ew. In a good way.

As Scully digs into the dry mummy with an electric saw, Mulder enters and, being a bit better at the whole concept of “thinking on his feet” quickly covers his coffee cup with his hand to prevent the dust of ancient death™ that’s currently whirling up from the mummy from spoiling his caffeine-induced fun. Way to go Mulder, just what I’d do! Though we don’t know what killed Eddie Senior yet, we DO know that he is basically covered in an extra layer of muscle right underneath his epidermis. “And, thankfully, he is preserved and intact.” Scully states. Just as Mulder manages to snap of the poor bloke’s tail. In the time-honoured tradition of science students who’ve just broken an expensive skeleton, he keeps asking questions about the medical state of the man to draw away Scully’s attention, while frantically trying to force the tail back on by sheer willpower before getting the hell out of there. This entire scene is classic slapstick, and well delivered.

Mulder once again drops by with Babe Skywalker. Only.. something is off with his posture. And facial expression. Which is all very good, because the ensuing dialogue kinda reveals that this is not Mulder after all, but still Eddie in his witty disguise. Though I do wonder where he got that suit from….And we witness how poor little Eddie has to listen to the girl he.. I won’t say love.. kinda likes? rant about how much of a loser he is. Which he is. Also, he’s a rapist. Good job by Duchovny on the increased doofus-level. And yeah, it really pained me to say this.

Just as Eddie Mulder leaves Babe’s room, the real Mulder shows up, Babe finally shows some resemblance to sanity (apart from her opinion of Eddie) by asking Mulder what he’s doing there again already, and Sugar Patootie fulfills his duty as plot point by calling Mulder to ask him exactly why he (Mulder) took his (Patootie) charcoal suit this morning after raiding their bathroom. I can see the fat little hamster running in his little wheel just inside Mulder’s skull as the fact hits him that Eddie has assumed his appearance, and is close by, since he’s just visited Babe. And off he goes, to arrest two guys he finds in the locker room, because he cannot be sure which of them is Van Blundt. If any. He calls Scully over so she can run some blood test on the two to determine their identity (how long do they plan on keeping those poor blokes chained to the showers? Unless the red blood cells decide to cooperate by spelling out the names under the microscope, I am pretty sure that a full identification via blood will take quite a while. But then again, they might just have different blood types from Eddie, and that could already settle the thing).

After hanging up, Mulder notices a loose panel in the ceiling. Huh… Must. Investigate. Yup, it’s Eddie, who does take his time to tell Mulder that he’s one hell of a hunk, before talking him from above with a battle cry.

Next scene shows Mulder apologizing profusely to the two guys he’s arrested earlier in a not so eloquent way. Actually, it’s just “I’m sorry!” over and over again. Something tells me this might not be the Mulder we all know and swear at. Call it phile-senses. Or the fact that I know full well what is going on here. As he sees Scully approaching, he smoothly excuses himself with a „Look, am I done here?” and the proceeds to tell Scully how Van Blundt “cold-cocked” him and legged it and that, in fact, he doesn’t think they’re needed here anymore. Okay, Scully? Hun? THIS is when your spidey senses should start tingling! Mulder! Backing out of a case! Not. Happening. Also, he’s just used the term “Small Potatoes”? The very same thing Eddie Senior said? Also, as you might not know, the title of the episode? HELLO? Am I the only one who gets all the important facts within 43 minutes to properly categorize them? Oh that’s right, I am. My bad.

To her credit, Scully does look a little confused as she moves out of frame. The camera, however, zooms in on a maintenance door to the basement behind her, through it and then along a cluttered area to a little door very reminiscent of “V for Vendetta” V’s prison cell. But that is just the dork in me speaking. However, we discover that there is indeed a prisoner tucked away behind the door. Why, it’s no other than our very own Agent Fox Mulder! Whoever saw that one coming?! Oh, but Eddie does have a heart after all. He’s left Mulder provisions in form of a sandwihich, an apple, and a can of Perk cola. I swear, the kid is such a retard. But still, the shot showing that measly meal in the foreground and Mulder in the back is highly amusing. And kinda cute.

Aw, J. Edgar Hoover building.

“Mulder” sits in Skinner’s office looking rather like a pre-schooler who’s been sent to see the principal, and copies Scully’s rather feminine posture to blend in more efficiently. Skinner snaps their report shut and tartly asks who of the two wrote the report. „Mulder” says he did. Turns out that he’s spelled “Federal Bureau of Investigation” wrong. Twice. Heh, Can”t get any wittier than that, folks. Sorry to once again disappoint on the snark-scale. Maybe this episode is just too good, and I should turn my next attentions on a timeless classic like “El Mundo Gira”. “Mulder” enjoys his own private joke in the vast empty scenery that is his brain as Scully elaborates on the measures she has induced in order to round Van Blundt up. Oh, how much i want to take that stupid face and bash it onto Skinner’s desktop in therepeutic doses.

Down in front of the LBO ( a title which is just too great not to be honoured with further use) “Mulder” fumbles to find the right key to open the door, and fails miserably. Again, Scully: Spidey senses!

Ah, whatever. She is too immersed in telling us for her big plans for this very Friday night. I shall now quote her word by word, because, oh boy, that Dana sure is one wild animal! Here comes the TGIF battle plan: “Well, actually, as it’s Friday, I was thinking I could get some work in on that monograph I’m writing for the penology review. Diminished acetylcholine production in recidivist offenders” The WHAT you’re writing for the HUH? Now, acetycholine I definitely remember from ye olde biology class, but the rest…Must switch to German in the hopes of actually getting what sad activity she’s talking about. Oh gee, they’ve written an entirely new topic for her, with no acetylcholine in it at all. Oh, the wonders of synchronisation. Still not getting it, though. There is a brief glimmer of hope for her feeble existence however, as she says that she might bag that idea. Already I am all aquiver with visions of a night out on town with “The Girls”. What? Skinner’s Secretary seems nice enough. And she could always give old Couvaroubias a ring!

But, oh no, she tells us that actually, the case of strange muscle growth on Van Blundt Senior is far too interesting, and has thus entered at number one on the list of her Friday night priorities. And here I feel socially disfunctional when I spend my weeknights lounging around my apartment in my most hideous jammies, weeping over Jane Austen, drawing Harry Potter fan art or.. well, recapping old TV shows. Turns out I am a bulging ball of charisma as compared to other people. Seriously, woman! Tart yourself up, hit town and get yourself a guy (though nobody with tattoos please.) Or at least go catch a movie! Or a LIFE, for that matter.

Anyway, with that positively thrilling prospect of Scully’s weekend, she leaves and tells Mulder she’ll see him Monday morning.

“Mulder” enters the office, only to sneer at “his” first name (Dude, a smart person would’ve checked out that badge dangling from your breast-pocket before now) as well as the sacred “I Want To Believe” poster, along with the classic “This is where my taxes go?” complaint. Oh, go and die, Van Blundt! At least he possesses the presence of mind to check his driver’s license for his address.

Having arrived at Mulder’s apartment, AKA the fortress of solitude, he whinily complains about the apparent lack of beds in it, and the answering machine gives us a supposedly sad view into Mulder’s private life. Though I admit that the sex-phone lady calling him in person is indeed pretty pathetic, a night of cheese steaks and conspiracy theories with The Lone Gunmen sounds like one helluva party to me! Might as well enjoy the lot while you still have ‘em! And at least Mulder has actual human beings competing for his attention, whereas Scully has.. paperwork. “Mulder” rounds off the scene for us by violating a basketball and doing a hilarious G-Man routine in front of the mirror. However, we shall not laugh at him, because: Who wouldn’t do that when equipped with an FBI badge and a gun? Damn right. I might even envy him a bit. And once again Mulder is “a damn goodlookin man”. Jeez, somebody had some major sucking-up to Duchovny to be done for this episode, didn’t they?

Back at Scully’s place, AKA the coven of shriveled social life, the lady of the house sits on the floor in casuals to tackle that exciting paper. Which I find utterly endearing. And she’s wearing the glasses! Oh, dork-glasses, how have I missed you! Never leave me again!

There’s a knock on the door, and she peeks through the spy to see “Mulder” stand in the hallway with this universe’s biggest dumbass grin on his face. I won’t even bother how he found out her address, when it already took up all his brainpower to figure out Mulder’s. Maybe he has some sort of homing device. In his pants.

As Scully lets him in, we discover that not only is he packing the big grin but also a bottle of wine, and ergo some definite agenda. Thank God Scully has no ova to create little monkey babies with… whoops, I’m not supposed to know that yet, am I?

Scully asks whom the bottle is for. Twentyone. Twentytwo. Still no sound from “Mulder”. Come on Eddie, you can do this! I know it’s a big, difficult word to wrap your tongue around, but just give it your best shot! “Us” he finally mumbles. Well done, good boy!

Scully looks a little bewildered, but accepts the booze nonetheless. She has been to college, after all, and the most important lesson one can learn there is “Never turn down free booze.” As she busies herself in the kitchen, “Mulder” desperately tries to find the coolest and most alluring seating position possible and is thus immersed in a ferocious battle with a cushion.. Considering both participent’s estimated IQ, I think we can safely say that it’s a draw.

As Scully sits down, Van Blundt turns up his mojo and states that Scully and Mulder don’t really talk that much. “No, we don’t, Mulder.” Scully answers in a tone that strongly suggests that she is not about to change any of that. For it shall bring down the entire universe if those two were actually to talk to one another. “Why not?” Van Blundt asks, and here he has such a sincere, simpering look on his face, that with all my heart, I really just want to.. punch him. Hard. Square on the nose. Ugh.

A cut, a bottle of wine, a lit fireside and a considerable amount of fading daylight later, the two are still reclining on the couch. Scully seems pretty sloshed by this time, and I have to say that if one bottle of red wine is all it takes to take out the girl, she should seriously improve her training pattern. By going out in the weekends, for instance. She is actually stumbling for words. Scully. Anything-with-less-than-three-syllables-is-not-a-word-Scully. This is bad.

We are in the middle of a mildly amusing prom night anecdote of Scully’s (though the fact that it’s Scully’s story upgrades the entertainment value of the whole incident tenfold) and as she finishes, “Mulder” correctly estimates that she usually does not tell him stories like that. “No, but I am discovering a whole new side to you Mulder (…), I like it” she tells him with a smile. And this is why I hate Van Blundt. Poor girl, intoxicated as she may be, is utterly glad about the improvement she thinks she has just achieved in the relationship to her partner. And about to experience one big biatch of a shock. Van Blundt transitions to waxing nostalgic and asking Scully whether she ever wishes things had turned out differently. And Mister smooth makes his move, scooting closer to her on the sofa, moving his face ever closer to hers. She does not speak or move back. Their lips are mere inches apart, and even now, on my tenth re-watch, it’s all I can do not to bite my own sofa in anger and frustration and maybe even a bit of pity for poor, poor Scully, as FINALLY the real Mulder kicks the door in (flying pieces of jamb and all), looking rather disarrayed and more than a little shocked at the scene playing out before him.

But that is nothing compared to Scully, who looks from the real Mulder in the door to the fake one inches away from eating her face,and then yelps and slips off the couch from underneath him, quick as a flash, and looks on in horror as Van Blundt performs his one and only onscreen transformation from Mulder back to Eddie. Oh, I so wish she’d just punch him right now. Or Mulder would, for that matter. Maybe he did. Off-screen. Seeing as so many things will happen off-screen in the future, let’s just assume that Mulder kicks his arse big time after the scene closes, yeah?

One month later finds Eddie in the “Cumberland Reformatory”. Mulder drops by for a visit with Eddie. He does not look like a happy camper. Go figure. Eddie, however, is wearing a head that reads “Superstar”. He says his therapist thinks it would boost his self-esteem. Self-esteem my arse, the therapist does that to torture him. As would I. And as if the fact that he has to run around in the loser had wouldn’t be enough satisfaction to us, Eddie further delights by telling us that the other inmates beat himup and steal the head whenever he wears it. And Eddie gets a new one from his Therapist every week. What’s the name of that Therapist? I’d like to send a Christmas Card. Mulder is definately fighting to surpress a grin here. Don’t Mulder! Let it all out!

It seems that Eddie has called Mulder by to give him some last piece of advice. However, he smoothly wins his sympathies first by telling Mulder That “I am a loser by birth. You are one by choice. I don’t get it.” Hear hear, Eddie. Truer words have never been spoken.

Well apart from stating obvious truths about Mulder, Eddie also wants him to live a little. Treat himself. Which, also, is good advice. There must be something in teh food at the Cumberland Reformatory.

On this thought, Mulder leaves the visiting area to find Scully – who is quite busy studying her obviously very interesting shoes – waiting outside. “I don’t imagine you need to be told this, Mulder, but you’re not a loser,” she tells the floortiles. Oh, you filthy little liar, Scully! He so is. And so are you. And we love you for it. Because on some level, we’re all losers (how poetic.. I must write that wisdom down for my autobiography). Mulder retaliates be saying “Yeah, but I’m no Eddie Van Blundt, either.” But you could be, you silly coward! If you are refering to a certain line of action Eddie took. Which I know you are, because you are a mean bastard, and this is all very embarassing for Scully. Oh, but don’t worry, you two, by next week, all this embarassment and frustration will be forgotten, and you can start afresh on square one with that UST of yours. No seriously. No, seriously, this is how the show works.

And we close on one of the inmates wearing Eddie’s hat.

Recap by Buffangel

MEMENTO MORI – Remember to die, remember death, and remember you must die. Screw you Chris Carter!

This is the episode that began it all. I whined and whined about how Jessica should recap this one last episode of the X-Files and someone in the TWOP Meet Market told me to do it myself. Needless to say, I am scared shitless. First of all, this is my first recap ever, and secondly, it is my first proper review of any kind of film material in over twelve years. The only other film reviews I’ve done are of The Glass Menagerie and The Shawshank Redemption in my ninth grade English class. Anyway, that is neither here nor there, so onwards and upwards.

This episode is the end of an unofficial three-parter (in my opinion) that begins with Never Again, flows into Leonard Betts and ends with Scully and cancer. Maybe CC and 1013 are trying to say that if Scully has sex she will die. Which is why we never got to see her and Mulder do it. Or is it? Either way, this is a popular storytelling choice in the Sci-Fi/Horror genre; the reasons for that continue to elude me.

It is my understanding that the episodes were actually aired so that Leonard Betts came before Never Again, but that was just result of the collective Fox/1013 crack-pipe sharing shenanigans talking, so I am going to pretend that never happened. Kind of like most of seasons 8 and 9 — aka the Adventures of Dog and Moron.

Hmm, at the rate I’m going I think this recap is going to be an expression of my own megalomaniacal cosmology.

So we start off with darkness and a rectangular shaped light glows in the center of the screen as Gillian Anderson/Scully begins her heart wrenching voice-over. In the background, the incomparable Mark Snow (who may face any real competition only from Christophe Beck and Bear McCready) plays some tune that can only be described as the sounds of impending sympathetic character death. This is a triple whammy y’all: the music, the image, the voice-over. Ten Thirteen are out to make you cry like a baby — no doubt about it — and they won’t settle for anything less than you curled up in the fetal position screaming, “This is not happening”! I surreptitiously fumble for the Kleenex; I am nothing if prepared. I mean the last episode had an actual cancer-eater tell Scully she had something he needed. Gulp! I reach for my cell-phone and have my finger poised on ‘Mom’. What? She can make this all better. So what if it’s 3 am Canadian time? Parenting is a full-time gig!

So anyway, Gillian Anderson’s voice-over has begun and I wonder with a heavy heart where these poetic sounding words are going to take us in this episode.

“I feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in its passage.”

The white rectangle comes into focus and we see a solitary figure with its back to the camera in a hospital gown.

“I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me. Knowing that you will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other.”

The figure is clearly Scully and she’s studying an X-ray.

“That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions.”

I double gulp and a whimper for good measure. The X-ray is of a skull which clearly shows a rectangle in the nasal-pharyngeal area. The light in the dark that we saw in the opening shot looks exactly like the chip in the X-ray.

“If not for which, I might never have been so strong now as I cross to face you, and look at you, incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you.”

The camera pans on Scully’s face which reflects so many emotions that I can’t even begin to name them. Gillian Anderson is not going to take any prisoners here either! I may be wrong but I don’t think this show has ever written words that affected me as deeply as the ones Scully voice-overs here. And I would like to imagine that Anderson herself got choked up reciting them. And then there is the added bonus of imagining Mulder’s reactions if and when he reads these words. I suddenly get scared thinking that this is a flashback episode and Scully is already dead. You have no idea how hard it was to type that!

Credits.

There’s something very nostalgic and bittersweet about the credits, because now you’re wondering how much longer you are going to see them while secure in the knowledge that you will see Scully and Mulder doing their thing when they are over. Then I have a vision of Mulder left all alone to continue on his quest for the truth, wondering how much he is to blame for Scully’s death and whether or not he still cares to do this without her. Then I get even sadder, frantic and panicked, thinking that I am Mulder and those words Scully spoke were addressed to me. In a way that is not entirely incorrect, because in this instance, we the audience are Mulder: we too have been through this journey that began four years ago. We too (especially those of us who were unspoiled) freaked out when Scully was abducted two years ago. And we were there right beside Mulder rejoicing when she was returned in One Breath. In conclusion, 1013 you sneaky bastards…well played, well played.

Man these credits seem both longer and shorter than usual: I can’t decide. So I am going to use the credits to wipe my eyes and bestill my hammering heart. Let’s find out what “memento mori” means. I love the information super-highway! According to the Tate Britain’s website, it is a “Latin phrase meaning remember you must die. A memento mori painting or sculpture is one designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the brevity and fragility of human life in the face of God and nature.”

So that’s what the X-ray skull was about! It totally ties in with the popular Renaissance art choice of skulls and skeletons, but who cares? Scully’s got cancer and that’s all that matters. I am not even thinking about symbolism or whatever. There is no time!

Holy Cross Memorial Hospital, Washington D.C. Mulder walks in with a bouquet of flowers (sob! I mean sigh. I’m not crying yet!) and asks for directions to Oncology. He hesitates in the doorway when he spies Scully studying that infernal X-ray. As if somewhere deep down he knows what he is about to hear and wants to brace himself or just hold on to the illusion that everything is okay and he is probably worried about nothing.

He walks in and calls out her name. She turns around to look at him and he waves the flowers at her. Aww. They are both smiling at each other here. He proceeds to make a classic Mulder joke about stealing the flowers off a guy with a broken leg. (I laugh through the blur in my eyes and frog in my throat.)

He asks Scully how she is doing. “I guess that’s the question,” she responds. David Duchovny does a great job of showing his apprehensiveness at what she is going to say. She says she feels fine. They gaze at each other and their eyes tell each other to brace themselves. I am not making this up: that is what the look that passes between them communicated to me. Mulder asks what they are looking at. The camera pans on a wall of X-rays of Scully’s skull and some brain x-ray thingies too. Some great directing on Rob Bowman’s part, as the shot has Anderson and Duchovny standing apart with the memento mori x-rays in-between them. This ties in nicely with Scully’s voice-over about crossing to face [Mulder-sic] as he continues on their journey without her. They are coming apart. And so am I. Mulder asks her what they are looking at. Scully does her Dr. Scully no-nonsense routine and tells Mulder in a detached-medical-opinion-kind-of-voice that she has a nasal- pharyngeal mass. Mulder asks if it is a growth and she confirms it’s a tumor. She looks at him bravely and tells him he is the only one she’s called. NoRomo my ass CC! Mulder nods in acceptance and understanding and then tremulously asks Scully if the tumor is operable. She says no, with her brave face still on. Mulder asks if it is treatable then and she explains that it is not. The camera pans on Mulder as he says he refuses to believe that and he falters unable to finish his sentence. The camera angles to film her face over Mulder’s shoulder just as Scully steps in and says that, for all the times that she has said that to him, she is as certain about this as he has ever been. She smiles at him ironically as she says this. The camera goes back to him as he shakes his head slowly from left to right. The stubborn denial and unwillingness to believe her is subtle, but it is perfectly portrayed. Scully’s voice wavers as she spells it out for Mulder and the audience: she has cancer and there is about zero chance of survival if the tumor pushes into her brain. Mulder stammers that he doesn’t accept that, and there must be some people who have received treatment for this that they can… He breaks off again and Scully nods, understanding what he is trying to say. She takes a deep shaky breath and looks up at him before she turns to the X-ray wall, back in doctor mode, and removes the infernal X-ray from the wall, effectively getting rid of the images that divided them in the earlier shot. Folks, Anderson and Duchovny brought whatever is higher and better than their A-game here. I don’t think any writer or director could have imagined that they would bring to this episode, and especially to this scene, what they have. But more on that later. We still have a hallway scene coming up!

Skinman’s Office. Shot of file passing from Scully’s to the Skinman’s hands. He says that this is the worst possible kind of news. No shit Sherlock! And I just have to ask is there something wrong with the entire FBI when it comes to emotion?!

Scully talks to Skinman with her arms crossed against her chest in what I imagine is a half-protective, half-defensive gesture, but could also just be wholly combative. Mulder stands in the background, fidgeting and looking very uncomfortable. I’d like to think in his mind he’s thinking, this is not happening! Scully tells Skinman she wants to exhaust a possible avenue of investigation with Agent Mulder. Said agent is looking at her like he’s unable to comprehend why or how she’s so cool about the cancer gig she’s landed herself. They explain to Skinman that they want to find and question Betsy Hagopean (sp?) a purported abductee from last season’s Nisei/731 two-parter.

Casa de Betsy, Pennsylvania. A woman is scraping a MUFON sticker off a window as the reflection shows Mulder and Scully’s car parking on the sidewalk across the street. Now, I don’t know if it was just 1013’s usual overweening urge to make everything ambiguous, but the woman who turns out to be the realtor sets my Nefarious Character Spidey senses a-tingle. She tells our agents that Betsy is no longer of this world and hasn’t been for the last two and a half weeks. Mulder looks at Scully. Duchovny does a great job of showing Mulder’s concern for Scully, not only health wise, but also for how this news is going to affect her. There is disappointment and encroaching despair on her face, but she does not actually make eye contact with Mulder. I love how attuned these two are to each other, both as actors and as characters. Well played!

As they enter the house, Scully has a flashback wreathed in white misty light of when she first came to this house and met the other abductees in Nisei. Sniff! Why didn’t I see this coming?! She touches the back of her neck in remembrance while Mulder discovers a second line on the phone. She is thankfully distracted from the dangerous path of feeling sorry for herself (we’re here to do that for her) and they run to the basement to discover that someone has remote access to the system. Scully dials a number to their special line in the Bureau that traces the call for them. I have to say — I really wouldn’t mind having a contact like that. Every time someone calls my cell phone and it’s a private number, I would just call my contact and find out who it was. Or maybe I’m oversimplifying things… the bottom line is that is not a bad contact to have.

We’re now outside an apartment block and Scully tells Mulder that apartment 234 is listed under Kurt Crawford: the unscrupulous hacker from Betsy’s computer. Scully rings the buzzer and they do their usual, you-go-in-the-front, I’ll-check-the-back routine. I love their routine. Please don’t let Scully die! Mulder goes to the back and a young-looking Kurt busts out the back door and starts running. Mulder gives chase and Scully turns up and draws her gun yelling, “Stop! Federal Agent! Hold it!” Aww she’s so cute. Mulder slams the guy into the wall and throws him on the ground. From the slightly more emotional tone in Scully’s voice, to the slightly more aggressive handling of Kurt, it’s clearly evident that this time around Moose and Squirrel are personally invested in this case. I am too because I’m shouting, “Yeah, throw his ass to the ground! If he’s not doing anything wrong then why is he running!?” Scully runs up to them gun still drawn demands if the perp is Kurt Crawford. He says yes. Mulder looks up at Scully who’s breathing heavily from the run, and possibly from trying to suppress some of the emotions that keep threatening to get a hold of her. Rob Bowman only shows us Mulder looking up at Scully and we only see the concern on his face. He says, “Scully.” She goes, “What?” He gestures to her nose which we see is bleeding. Duchovny acts the hell out of this scene. The debilitating fear that’s baying at the doors of Mulder’s professionalism, as well as the general ability to function, translates beautifully onto the screen. Scully brings a hand up to her nose sees the blood and tells Mulder she’s fine. I think this is the first nosebleed she has had in front of Mulder and you can see that it shakes her up a little bit. Almost as if by those few drops of blood she can’t pretend that she doesn’t have cancer anymore. She tells Mulder to quit staring at her. He looks at her sadly before he looks away. Mark Snow starts some sad tune. I call my Mom but she doesn’t answer, I think she’s sleeping in my time of need. Figures!

The next shot is of blood dripping into a sink. Scully is so not fine! I know this is compelling storytelling, but I can’t help but ask why 1013 is torturing us. And even though I know what happens in the later seasons, I still can’t help but to think they are going to kill Scully off. Mulder knocks on the door impatiently and asks her if she is okay. Yeah Mulder, she’s fine! She comes out of the bathroom with her Kickass Scully resolve face on. If Mulder has a panic face, Scully so has a brave and a resolve face! I have to admire the writing and acting choice to have Scully be so determined and business-like. It resonates better. She notices that Mulder took Kurt’s cuffs off and she’s not impressed. Mulder explains that Kurt was a member of MUFON and Betsy told him to download those files. Scully asks what I asked: “then why did he run?” Mulder explains Kurt was scared for his life. Scully asks Mulder if he thinks Kurt is credible. Mulder says he knows an awful lot about what happened to Betsy and the other MUFON members. Scully scoffs that that will have to be cross-checked as she turns towards Kurt. Heh. Mulder says they can’t. Scully turns around and asks Mulder why not. Duchovny emotes the reason why very well. Scully’s composure cracks a little here as she realizes that all of the women are dead. She brings the resolve face back on and walks in to talk to Kurt, crossing her arms again. Mulder remains in the background. The guy is having a real hard time dealing with this and so am I, goddamnit. Anyhow, Scully asks Kurt how the women died. He explains it was from brain cancer, and all in the last year. Scully is skeptical when she asks, “All of them?” Kurt says yes, all except for Penny Northern, who’s on her deathbed in hospital. Scully is resolved/determined (or both) as she asks him what makes him think it’s a government conspiracy. Kurt comes back with, “What makes you think it isn’t?” Heh. He then proceeds to tell her that all the women had similar abduction experiences, they all developed the same terminal illness and were all refused State healthcare because of their insistence of the facts and all dead within a year. Scully looks like she’s fighting very hard not to lose her shit. Mulder peels himself off of the hallway wall and gently puts a hand on her back as he pulls her away from Kurt to talk to her. She looks up at him expectantly, and a little impatiently, as he says he wants her to listen to him. She asks him about what and he says about what she won’t admit to herself and what she is denying. Scully’s voice does something funny as she asks him what she is denying. Mulder says where her cancer came from. She tells him it doesn’t matter, he argues it does, and how if the government knows something about her abduction then those are facts that should be brought to light. Mulder? How is this going to stop Scully from dying? If you don’t have anything constructive to contribute to this problem, then don’t say anything until you do! God! Am I the only person looking for a cure here? Scully argues that she doesn’t have any recollections about the abduction or what happened to her, and she doesn’t think these abductions are even abductions. Mulder says all the women are dead. Seriously, Mulder you’re not helping. Scully’s voice wavers as she says not all of them. Penny Northern is still alive. Scully’s face is heartbreaking here. Mulder nods gently and says she should talk to Penny Northern seeing as she won’t listen to him. Dude I’m not even listening to you anymore, Mr. Negativity! Scully, voice still wobbly asks him if she should ask Penny Northern what it feels like to be dying of cancer. Mulder shakes his head sadly. Scully asks if she should ask Penny about how it feels knowing there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Mulder tells her that if that’s too hard for her then she should go in as an investigator, she’s got one remaining witness and Scully looks up at him questioningly. Mulder continues, “I think you’d want to know what her story is.” They exchange one of those long searching and communicating looks like they always do. Okay, I know Mulder was annoying me a little earlier but I totally love him again for that, and so does Scully.

Allentown Medical Centre. Scully pushes open a door and gets a good look at how she’s going to look in less than a year. Penny Northern is in a mismatching outfit made up of a maroon bathrobe and blue towel/turban thing. She smiles serenely at Scully and says, “Dana!” I don’t mean to be harsh, but those colors are not doing Penny any favors. Whatever happened to dying with dignity? If I was on my deathbed I would totally be decked out in silk peignoirs and the like.

Scully asks if Penny knew she was coming, and Penny smiles that serene Madonna smile and says no, she recognized Scully from their shared abduction. She then says she used to sit with Scully and comfort her. Scully apologizes if she appears to be insensitive but she doesn’t share those memories. Penny smiles that smile of hers again and says it is alright. Scully approaches the bedside and sits down telling Penny she is here to ask her some questions. Penny volunteers if the questions are about Dr. Scanlon. Scully says no, and asks who Dr. Scanlon is. I like the way half of Penny’s face is in the light and half of it is in the dark, as is Scully’s. If one was to get all whimsical and deep about this it is like the two women both have a foot in the grave, but they also have that small chance of survival. Penny explains that Scanlon’s the doctor treating her cancer and he treated Betsy’s. He also believes that he could have saved Betsy and Penny if they had caught the cancer sooner. Scully and I both feel the tender wings of hope flutter in our chests. “His name’s Scanlon?” Scully asks. Good call Mulder, I’m sorry I was hating you earlier. This is something that we can work with here!

Mulder is in Betsy’s basement, going through files, when his phone rings. He answers and starts rambling the second Scully confirms it’s her. We hear Mulder try so hard to be cool about the fact that Scully (that with which he cannot live without) is in a hospital interviewing the last living woman who’s dying of the same incurable disease that she has. He talks without letting Scully get a word in edgewise, as if his talking faster will somehow alter the course of events or news that Scully is going to give him. I love false bravado. I employ it all the time. We get a shot of Scully listening to him and she closes her eyes, telling us the information Mulder has found is not that important in the grand scheme of things. She’s also partially trying to steel herself for whatever she’s going to say, and I think she’s worried about how he’s going to take what she is about to say. She tells Mulder to bring her overnight bag to the hospital and call her Mom to ask her to bring up some things, and that whatever he’s found or whatever he will find, she thinks they both know the truth is in her. Can I just say if they both already knew that way back in season 4, why does it take another three years for Mulder to find it in her pants? Or does he? Ugh, yes he does! Anyway, back to the emotional evisceration. Mulder says, “I’ll be right there.” And Duchovny’s face and voice almost finish me off… again. Scully smiles poignantly at the handset as Mulder hangs up, then she grimaces a little. Her face is in shadow but Penny, behind her, is lit. She turns around after a second and faces the light. Get it?

Back at Betsy’s, Mulder shoves the file cabinet door shut angrily, gets up, picks up his jacket and just walks out leaving Kurt in the basement alone wondering what just happened. My God, did Duchovny and Anderson take their acting spinach in this episode or what? Mark Snow’s Drums of Impending Action pick up as we see Mulder get into his car, completely focused on what’s ahead as he drives off. A car parked on the same street starts up and drives into Mulder’s recently vacated space. The drums are still going here. Someone enters Betsy’s and we hear Kurt call out “Agent Mulder?” It so isn’t! Whoever it is pulls out those alien killing spiky things and after a brief futile struggle stabs Kurt in the back of the neck with it. He proceeds to turn into green goo. Oh no! Not Kurt! Does this mean his bad?

Back at the hospital, Scully’s in a bed. She’s sleeping and looks so cute. She wakes up and turns over to look at this bright white light. We see there is a man standing there. I initially thought it was Papa Scully come to visit her from the beyond. But it’s not! It’s a real live man in a white coat watching her. Creepy. I don’t know what the rules of doctor/patient etiquette are but I can’t imagine it is remotely proper for a doctor to stand and watch his patient sleep as he waits for her to wake up. I mean how does he know when she is going to wake up? Is he just going to stand there for hours on end and ignore other patients while he waits? Anyway, they talk shop about her illness, etc. Anderson acts the hell out of this scene when Dr. Scanlon brings up the effects that the chemotherapy and radiation are going to have on her. MaScully comes in, just in time! She’s worried and over-compensating. My memory is a little rusty, but am I correct in assuming we never saw any parents from the Mulder family hover around Mulder whenever he was in hospital? Scully tells her Mom she’s fine. Scanlon leaves, thank God. He gives me the creeps! MaScully, like me, is justifiably upset, and demands to know why Scully didn’t tell her about her illness immediately. Scully tells her Mom she didn’t want to until she had all the facts. MaScully tells Scully she shouldn’t keep her in the dark; she is her only daughter now. (Sob!) She gets all teary and hugs Scully while Scully maintains her composure and holds her Mom, offering more comfort than taking it. Can I just say Anderson is a consummate actress with incredible range? She is so underrated!

Cue Scully’s diary voice-over as they show us Scully undergoing treatment.

In med. school, I learned that cancer arrives in the body unannounced. A dark stranger who takes up residence, turning its new home against itself. This is the evil of cancer; that is starts as an invader, but soon becomes one with the invaded, forcing you to destroy it, but only at the risk of destroying yourself. It is science’s demon possession. My treatments, science’s attempt at exorcism. Mulder, I hope that in these terms you might know it, and know me, and accept this stranger so many recognize, but can not ever completely cast out…

Shot of Mulder entering some dark office with a teeny tiny flashlight.

…and if the darkness should have swallowed me as you read this you must never think there was the possibility of some secret intervention, something you might have done. And though we’ve travelled far together, this last distance must, necessarily, be travelled alone.

Seriously 1013! What are you doing to me?

We learn that the dark office is at the Center for Reproductive Medicine in Pennysylvania. I like the way Mulder is in the dark. It works on as many levels: it’s a nice tie-in to MaScully’s comment about not wanting to be kept in the dark, as well as Scully’s voiceover about the darkness swallowing her. It looks like the darkness is already swallowing Mulder. It also somehow highlights how small even he is in the face of death. Memento mori! Or maybe I’m just overanalyzing. Anyway, Mulder tip taps at a computer trying to get in. Someone comes in he hides then pulls his gun on them. It’s Kurt Crawford! They banter a little then end up teaming up to hack into the computer. They get in. We segue into a shot of Scully opening her eyes to a bright white light, and there’s a drill headed for her nose. Ouch. Scully wakes up and Penny Northern is comforting her: Penny’s hands are clasping Scully’s right hand. I love the way the weaker ones in this episode are the ones displaying the strength. First it was Scully with Mulder, Skinman, and MaScully, and now it’s Penny with Scully. Once again, Penny is in the light and Scully… not so much. She tells Penny she was having a bad dream about the world’s most unpleasant nose job, and she heard Penny’s voice in the dream. Penny explains that they used to let her comfort Scully for some reason. Scully shakes her head in denial and tearfully tells Penny she can’t hear this right now. I can’t say I blame her. Penny tells her she has to try and make sense of it in order to understand why it’s happening to her and deal with the pain. Both women are in the light now.

Skinman’s Office. It’s daylight. Skinman opens his door and Mulder’s sitting there at his wits end, hands clasped. He tells Skinman that he needs him to set up a meeting for him. Skinman shuts the door and asks where Scully is. Mulder says she’s in hospital in Pennsylvania and gets all fired up, showing the disc containing some info that he found at the fertility clinic. Mulder tells Skinman to set up with a meeting with CSM and that he’s ready to deal in a way he wasn’t before. Skinman tells him to find another way. Mulder says no, he needs the meeting to save Scully, and he would sell his soul to the devil himself. Well, in a nutshell, that is what he is saying! Skinman tells him no, and that he cannot ask the truth from a man who trades in lies. Mulder can find out the truth too, he’ll just have to find another way to do it. Mulder walks out. Did I mention I totally love the Skinman!?

TLG Lair. The Lone Gunmen do their hacker thing. We have Frohike in the background looking despondent. Aww. The long and short of it is they end up deciding to go to the Lombard Research Facility because they believe someone may have been trying to figure out a cure for Scully’s cancer, which they believe was activated by a gene code they found in Scully’s blood after her abduction.

Lush Basement Office. CSM is sitting in Mulder’s chair and starts digging at Skinman for having Mulder in the basement. Skinman says at least he doesn’t need to take an elevator to get to work. CSM asks if Skinman thinks he is the devil. Skinman ain’t got no time for no jibber jabber, as he just wants to know what it will take to get Scully better. Aww. The two men are squared off. Skinman tells CSM he needs a miracle. CSM says, “You think an awful lot more of me than you let on Mr. Skinner.” Heh. Skinman demands angrily what it is going to take. CSM says he’ll get back to him on that and then asks Skinman which way the elevator is. Heh, again.

Lombard Research Facility. TLG are in a storm drain with their computers and other high-tech gear. I watched some behind-the-scenes stuff where the actors said they had to tape this scene themselves because the space was too small. This is so not important. We’re more than halfway through the episode and Scully still is not cured! Mulder and Byers get into the facility breaching the security system. He discovers that Dr. Scanlon’s name in the facility and sends Byers to warn Scully to stop treatment. Cue Scully’s voice-over as we see Scully coughing as she writes in her journal. Isn’t her health deteriorating rather rapidly? How long has it been since she agreed to treatment?

I have not written to you in the last 24 hours because the treatment has weakened my spirit, as well as my body. Mulder, it is difficult to describe to you the fear of facing an enemy which I can neither conquer nor escape. Penny Northern has taken a downturn. I now look at her with a respect that can only come from one who is about to walk the same dark path. Seeing her, I can’t help but see myself in a month or a year. I pray that I have her courage to face this journey

Shot of Mulder in the hallway at the facility, as he’s trying doors. They are all locked.

Mulder, I feel you close though, I know you are now pursuing your own path. For that, I am grateful, more than I could ever express. I need to know you’re out there if I am to ever see through this.

He asks Langley where he’s going and Langley says they are losing him. A security car pulls up at the Facility. The feed is so bad TLG can’t warn Mulder. Duchovny looks really delectable in the leather and hands-free ear thingy. He jiggles one particular door and then starts demanding the occupants to open the door. It opens and we see Kurt Crawford in a white lab coat, but there are three of them! Am I the only one that was shocked at this reveal, previous green goo shenanigans aside? Mulder observes they are hybrids. They ask him to come in so they can explain. He walks in and looks around, noticing green tanks with people in them. He wipes the mist off one of them and stares at a boy with his eyes closed. Mulder recognizes the boys are the hybrids. He accuses them of using him. They deny it and say it was just a coincidence. What?! Are the hybrids like the Cylons in the sense that they all have one stream of consciousness? Anyhoodle, they take him into a room with some kind of filing system, where each file has names of women on them. Kurt One (the one who seems to remember everything the previous Kurt we saw green goo-ed said and did with the agents) explains this is a storage system for human ova. One name is Penny’s, then Betsy’s. Kurt One stops in front of the one labeled Dana Scully. Kurt One explains the eggs were harvested during these women’s abductions and that they are half of the raw genetic materials. Mulder’s eyes light up as the penny drops that these are for genetic hybridization and that these women are the hybrids’ birth mothers. Kurt One says that they are trying to help these women because they are their mothers. It’s kinda sweet. Mulder pockets one of Scully’s vials, and leaves the rest behind. Seriously…WTF? Mulder gets out of the lab and TLG are back on the feed telling him there’s trouble. It gets all suspenseful as Mulder tries to get out of the facility, while the man who I am guessing killed the Kurt at Betsy’s, stalks him. Uh oh! There’s some shooting, but luckily the doors are bullet-proof. How convenient! And seriously, what kind of research facility is this? Mulder tells TLG to work faster at getting him out of there and they manage to get the door open just before the shooter gets to him.

He runs into Scully’s room and she’s not there. Her bed is unmade and empty. He finds the diary; it’s open on the last page. He reads the page and puts it back down exactly in the same spot it was. The music swells and I get really worried that 1013 are going to start screwing with my emotions again. Mulder asks a nurse where Scully is, his voice getting louder and louder as his emotions start to get the best of him, too. See? It’s not just me. Byers calls out to him and says he got to Scully in time and she’s in Penny’s room. Mulder bursts into the room, calming down only when he sees Scully sitting at Penny’s bedside. He smiles sweetly with those puppy dog eyes he does so well. I like the way he plays it cool like, hey! I wasn’t freaking out a second ago. Nothing to worry about here! Scully looks at him, reassured, before turning back to Penny who’s asking about Dr. Scanlon, Scully tells her she doesn’t think the Creepy-possibly-Murdering Doctor is coming back. Mulder is still standing there, watching, as Scully strokes Penny’s face gently. Penny manages to spare a serene smile in Mulder’s direction and then tells Dana not to give up hope, and that she’s got to be the one to survive the cancer. Both women are lit now in their shots. Dana says that she hasn’t, and that she won’t, give up. Mulder backs out of the room, looking a little more at ease from hearing that. Scully turns to watch him go before turning back to Penny. Brave face on as the enormity of what Penny’s death, and Dr. Scanlon’s disappearance, means for her sinks in. She loses her composure, tears welling up in her eyes.

5.05 am. Mulder’s sitting outside the room with one hand on his forehead. A nurse runs past him and he gets up, anxiously looking at the door. Scully walks out without seeing him, headed away from him. He seems to hesitate a little then he follows her slowly, softly asking if Penny is gone. Scully turns around trying to bite back the tears and nods. Hold on folks, get your Kleenex ready for the blasted allergies that crop up at the most inopportune times. Mulder says he’s sorry, he knows what she meant to her. Now we hear something similar a few years down the road and I have to say, I hate it when he says that. He moves closer then stops. Scully has this look on her face that I can’t describe as she walks towards him. Mulder gestures to Penny’s door and confesses that when he didn’t find her in her room he got scared. She stops a short distance from him and crosses her arms as she looks up into his face. Mulder also admits he read some of what she wrote in her diary. Now, Mulder is a much better human being than me, because I would totally have gone back and read the rest of her diary. But then again, maybe that’s why I don’t have a tall, dark, handsome, and brilliant partner that loves me more than anything or anyone else in the world. Scully closes her eyes. The tears threaten again as she tells him she didn’t want him to read that and she was going to throw it out. She decided tonight that she came into the hospital able to work and that is how she’s going to leave. Mulder nods with approval. They share a look and smile at each other in understanding. I love their secret language! Mulder asks her if Byers told her about Scanlon, Scully says he did. Mulder says he may have very well killed those women to which Scully gives her Scully answer, “that will have to be proven… if we find him.” Mulder, warming up to the prospect of the return of Moose and Squirrel, corrects her and says, “When we find him.” Aww. I’m smiling too here. He brings on the usual Mulder intensity about how they are going to find out what was done to her and they are going to explain it. And that no matter what she thinks as a scientist, or as a doctor, there is a way and she “will find it to save herself”. She takes a deep breath and tells him that she can’t kid herself any longer and that people live with cancer. They carry on, and so will she. She draws a shaky breath and tells him she’s got things to finish and to prove to herself and to her family (and to him – she doesn’t say that but she so wanted to), but for her own reasons (whatever those are)! Mulder smiles at her in agreement and encouragement. Duchovny looks so pretty in this shot. He says something I can’t hear, I am going to say he says “come on then”. She smiles up at him with what can only be described as love and walks into his open arms. He’s still smiling as he hugs her and rests his chin on the top of her head. They hold each other tight and the camera pans out to show us both their faces, as well as the contrast in their heights, which makes the hug even sweeter. Mulder is smiling and Scully is seriously scared, I think. Mulder says the truth will save her and he thinks it will save both of them. She chokes up, he kisses the top of her head, and she closes her eyes, trying desperately to get a grip. She takes a steadying breath and turns her head as he clasps it in his big beautiful hands. What? Duchovny has big and beautiful hands! I have a thing about hands. He kisses her forehead and she looks up at him. If you freeze frame this moment it looks like they are going to actually kiss. But why would you do that? They do some more silent communication as Mulder strokes the sides of her head and then Scully closes her eyes. She starts to walk away from him. Mulder turns to watch her go, pulling the vial of her ova (eww) out of his pocket he fingers it thoughtfully, still watching her go as he pockets the vial again. Now, I don’t mean to be nitpicky, but unless Mulder went back to the facility with the right storage equipment there is no way they are going to try and convince us that this is the very same vial that Mulder refers to in Per Manum, is there? I mean, I’m no scientist or anything, but isn’t the point of storing them in whatever it is they use to freeze ova is to preserve them? And what happens to the ova in the remaining vials?

ANYWAY, he makes a resolve face and continues to watch her go. In retrospect, it’s a resolve face to keep the truth about her infertility and the Hybrids from her. So much for the truth saving them both then, huh!? I know, I know, he’s only doing it to protect her, blah blah blah.

Next shot is of a phone going off in Skinman’s office. Mulder’s voice says he was just about to leave a message. Skinman’s a bit brusque and asks Mulder what he wants. Mulder tells Skinman that Scully’s doing okay, she’s coming back to work, and that they should find out what CSM knows. However, Skinman was right they should find another way. Skinman says there’s always another way, and as he’s hanging up, we see cigarette smoke. CSM agrees and says there is… if Skinman’s willing to pay the price. He gets up and leaves Skinman staring at the door after him. CSM is such a drama queen! But I have to say I absolutely love how all the people in Scully’s life started falling apart with the advent of her cancer. And no one’s life crashed as much as Mulder’s because he loves her and she loves him and she is the one with which he cannot live without! Or can he?

Next week back to basics with kick-ass Moose and Squirrel action as aliens steal time and magnificent Max returns to our screens… well, sort of!

Recap by Lurkey

Oh, Paper Hearts, how I love you. Maybe it’s odd, that this is one of my absolute favorite episodes, because it actually defies most of the conventions we’ve come to expect from an X-File. It has only the subtlest hint of the supernatural; it flirts with the mytharc, and then turns it on its head and encourages us, and even Mulder, to doubt it entirely. On the other hand, it’s absolutely crammed with layer upon layer of self-referential nods to previous episodes and plot threads, and it gifts us with a singular moment of nakedly emotional character development that absolutely blows the doors off as far as I’m concerned. And, finally, it features the worst, best kind of monster: not an alien, not a mutant or manbat or garbage golem or exploding pustule person. Just…a guy. A creepy, cruel, sick and batshit crazy guy, just one of the everyday monsters that we don’t recognize when they walk among us. It’s perfect, and it destroys me every time.

It occurs to me, belatedly, that this episode is not exactly rife with the chuckles. I’m all snarked up with nowhere to go: dammit. Carrying on.

Night, Mulder’s apartment. Mulder’s sacked out on the couch, but he opens his eyes suddenly and looks up at the ceiling, where there’s a little red laser dot like that from a pointer or one of those laser cat toys. Or a gun sight. Considering how many times Mulder et al have been or will be shot at, in his pad, he doesn’t seem the least bit perturbed. Used to it, probably. He watches as the dot spirals around the ceiling and glides down the wall, where it flickers suddenly into a word: FOLLOW. Mulder rises and obeys, as the dot slides away across the floor. Speaking of cat toys, Mulder, there’s this adage? About cats and curiosity? Maybe you should—Mulder? Hey? Aw, screw it.

Outdoors, at what a sign tells us is the entrance to Bosher’s Run Park. The dot lingers on a white El Camino parked nearby, and flashes the words MAD HAT. Buh? Mulder trots along after it in his Seinfeldian getup of jeans, t-shirt and very white sneakers as the dot wavers into the woods. It slithers down a tree trunk and Mulder creeps up, hypnotized, to see a very gray-faced little girl in flowered jammies, lying on the ground. The dot pauses on the motionless little girl’s chest, flares into the outline of a heart—and then the child sinks silently beneath a swirling carpet of leaves. Yikes. Mulder thinks so, too, gasping awake back on the couch.

In quick succession we see him look up the park address in the phone book, and then pull up at the entrance and repeat his jog into the woods, this time accessorized with his flashlight and leather jacket (yay, to both!). He kneels and parts the fallen leaves with his hands…and we fade into daylight, where a forensics team is carefully digging and sifting the area while Mulder paces and micromanages around them. Pretty, pretty Season 4 Scully calls out to him, arriving with her pretty, pretty Season 4 hair looking longer than I remembered it; it’s brushing her collar. Mulder’s got the floppy bangs going on. They are both a whole lot of pretty juuust on the verge of needing a haircut. Scully asks for the bullet: he’s called for a forensic excavation at 5 a.m. on a Sunday? Mulder hedges, admitting that he’s been having a recurring dream about the little girl; Scully’s just warming up her dubious look when one of the crime team calls them over. They’ve exposed a little skull, buried in the dirt. The ridge of bone around the nasal cavity is shaped like a tiny, perfect, upside-down heart. Credits.

Back at the park, Mulder explains how his dreams led him right to the little girl’s body. The team’s still digging, and still not fast enough for Mulder, who snaps on the latex and impatiently scrapes the dirt away from the child’s chest. He knows the killer’s M.O.: “She was strangled. He used an eight-gauge electrical cord. He took something from the body post-mortem, a trophy: a piece of fabric cut from her clothes in the shape of a heart….John Lee Roche. He killed 13 eight-to-ten-year-old girls.” In the mud we can see the cutout, now. “This makes fourteen,” Mulder says grimly.

LBO. Mulder presents Roche’s file to Scully and coughs up a truly humongous wad of exposition on Roche’s case: ten victims found by 1990, the earliest from 1979, all abducted from their homes. Scully flips through the sad, sad, snapshots and dorky-sweet school photos of the little girls. Mulder explains that Reggie Purdue (aww, Reggie!) brought him into the case to profile Roche—a vacuum cleaner salesman who traveled the East coast, pitching his wares and simultaneously staking out his victims in their own living rooms. “VICAP named the case ‘Paper Hearts’ because of the trophies the killer took,” Mulder says. Which…I don’t get, actually. There’s no paper involved! I suppose “Flame-Retardant Poly-Blend Fabric Hearts” doesn’t roll as nicely off the tongue. Whatever. It’s also not like we can call Reggie and ask him, Mulder. No, no, sorry…you ‘re feeling bad enough already.

They got Roche to confess to 13 murders, but they’d never found his trophies, the hearts. It’s bothered Mulder since—did they really add up to 13? “I guess they didn’t,” he notes sadly. Scully has a theory, namely that Mulder’s kept this case in his head for so long that he sorted out the fourteenth victim in his sleep. “You said it yourself once…that a dream is an answer to a question we haven’t learned how to ask. You did good work, Mulder. Let’s identify this girl so we can put her to rest.” Mulder’s not comforted.

Autopsy bay. Mulder suffers mutely, sitting next to the tiny, tiny skeleton on the table. The little girl’s filthy pajamas lie beside her bones; stitched to the front is a handmade pocket embroidered with a dollar sign. Scully enters with the I.D.: Addie Sparks, missing from King of Prussia, Pennsylvania in June, 1975. Mulder knows that’s not good: Roche started way before they thought he did. With trepidation, Scully wonders if Mulder’s up to verifying the child’s identity with her folks. He thinks so, yes.

Norristown, Pennsylvania. Nice neighborhood, beautiful day; we can hear kids playing, out of sight. Mulder and Scully knock, and one Frank Sparks opens the door. Scully identifies herself and her partner, and Mr. Sparks freezes: he knows why they’re there.

Inside, he takes the dirty scrap of fabric from an evidence bag. “This was for the Tooth Fairy,” he says of the little pocket, fighting back tears. This actor does a tremendous job, here—this man is plainly still shattered, twenty-odd years later. Addie’s mother has passed away, never knowing the fate of her little girl. “You do this full time, telling people this kind of news?” Mr. Sparks asks. No, Scully tries to assure him. “It’s not a good job,” Mulder notes. We all know he’s talking to himself. Bad dog, no biscuit.

“I used to think…that missing was worse than dead because…you never knew what happened,” Mr. Sparks chokes out. “But now that I know…I’m glad my wife’s not here. She got luckier.” The camera closes in, slowly, tight on Mulder’s miserable face. “How many more people like me are you going to visit today?” Mr. Sparks knife-twists. “Were there other victims you didn’t know about?”

Walking back to the car, Mulder flashes back on the El Camino in his dream. It’s Roche’s car, sold at auction when he went to prison. He doesn’t have the hearts with him in the Big House; maybe they’re still in the car? “Don’t you think the car might have been searched at least once already?” Scully asks. “Not by me,” Mulder tells her.

Hollyville, Delaware. The current owner lets our duo into the garage where he’s been customizing the Camino. “Honest-to-God serial killer owned my car? For real?” he asks, a little too delightedly, because he is a dumb dumbass who has clearly never suffered a loss in his doltish life. Punk. Mulder ignores him and he and Scully hop in and start groping all over the inside of the vehicle. Not each other. Patience, y’all. Mulder whips out a knife, a Leatherman I think, and without preamble slices open the seat upholstery stem-to-stern. Eek. My sister collects and restores classic cars; I think this scene would make her pass out. “Helpin’ him detail,” Mulder shrugs when Scully gives him a look. No hearts. Scully gets out to check the underside of the car, and that’s when Mulder realizes the Camino’s camper shell is missing.

Cut to the dipshit owner’s backyard shed, from which Mulder drags the camper shell in a frenzy, sliding on the fallen leaves. He dumps it upside-down, yanks off the plastic tarp and starts stomping around frantically on the quilted upholstery; Scully wisely hangs back a little. Mulder finds the lump he’s looking for and rips the lining from the frame: there in a well of the camper shell is a hardcover copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Ew. Whatever you may think about Lewis Carroll and his relationship with the real Alice Liddell, I personally have always found that book creepy as hell. The baby that turns into a pig? Criminy. Meanwhile…I’ve also long thought that the original Tenniel illustrations, little Alice with her stern, sharp profile, look rather like our Scully, actually. So disgruntled, always, with all the kooky whimsy. Ju st me? Okay.

Anyway. “Mad hat…” Mulder mutters. “Mad Hatter.” Together he and Scully riffle through the book, and there are the hearts, tucked between the pages. Scully identifies Addie Sparks’s PJs. They count. Fourteen…fifteen. Sixteen. Ohhhhh, shit.

Prison. Mulder and Scully check their weapons with the guard station, Mulder stooping to remove the gun from his ankle holster as well. That’ll be important later. They’re ushered into the prison gymnasium, where Roche is shooting solitary hoops.

Okay, kids, John Lee Roche is played by Tom Noonan, who is number two, right behind Nick Chinlund as Donnie Pfaster, on my list of Actors Whose Portrayals Of X-Files Villains Will Prevent Me From Accepting Them In Any Other Role Ever Again for the Rest of Our Mutual Lives. Seriously. I saw Noonan in some indie move, once, where he played a lovelorn guy looking for romance in the personals, and I swear I spent the whole time convinced he was going to lure some lady friend back to his place and then brain her with a cast-iron skillet. He’s also like six foot five, freakishly tall. Whoa: a quick stumble ’round the Internet reveals that he also played the “Tooth Fairy” serial killer in the 1986 movie “Manhunter,” part of the Hannibal Lecter triptych and chock-full of FBI profiling. Is that an in-joke, do you think? This episode is layered like an onion. I’ll spare you my doctoral dissertation.

Anyway… seriously, y’all. Pfaster versus Roche: it’s a very close race. In some ways, I find the character of Roche more frightening. I mean, Donnie is obviously a complete freak from the get-go. You get a look at him, you run for your lives! But Roche…man. Roche is smart and genial and completely vile; he abducts and molests and strangles little girls, he messes with people’s heads, and he relishes every second of it. It’s fucking terrifying.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Roche blithely greets Mulder; he’s nonplussed by our agents and their discovery of Addie Sparks, but he perks up when Scully says they’ve also found his 16 souvenir hearts. Why did he only claim 13? Spill it, Mulder suggests. “You’re in here for life, you’ve got nothing to lose,” Scully points out. “I got nothing to gain,” Roche shrugs. Mulder suggests that Roche might gain a little human decency, but Roche ain’t interested. “I understand you take this very personally, Mulder,” Roche notes, and, you know, whoa, what’s that about? Roche offers a deal, spinning the basketball on one finger. He’s one of Hell’s Globetrotters. “Sink one from there, and I’ll tell ya,” he says. He flips the ball to Mulder and the camera pulls back from them in a nice unbroken shot as David Duchovny easily drops in a rimless three-pointer, swish. I wonder how many takes they did? (Oh, David, hush, I’m sure it was just the one, you stud. Call me.) Mulder looks fractionally proud, for just a second, before Roche snots “You trust a child molester?” and strolls off the court. “You bring me my hearts and give ‘em back to me, I’ll tell you everything you wanna know,” he says. Well, he was so very forthcoming just two seconds ago; I can’t see how anything could go wrong here.

LBO. The hearts are laid out on Mulder’s desk, evidence-bagged, 14 of them labeled with the girls’ names. I have to say, whoever did the set design or set decoration or whatever you call it, putting together the hearts, it’s brutally effective. They’re so familiar, with their Holly Hobbie, Lanz-of-Salzburg calico patterns, their visible flannelly texture. I had jammies exactly like that in the 70s. It’s devastating. Mulder slumps over the hearts at his desk, wearing his glasses (!!), but only for a moment before taking them off and rubbing his eyes wearily. He puts his head down to rest for just one second—and suddenly there is that damn red dot again, dancing on the office wall. It slithers under the door, and Mulder goes after it, blinking foggily.

And whoa: he opens the door, emerging from behind its Fox Mulder, Special Agent nameplate…and into the Mulder living room, Chilmark, Massachusetts, 1973. It’s the scene of Samantha’s abduction, as we saw it in “Little Green Men” in Season 2, when it unfolded in Mulder’s nightmare. Watergate news on the tube, Stratego, eight-year-old Samantha on the floor. “Fox, it’s your move,” she tells him.

Grown-up Mulder in suit and tie drifts into the room. I love how Duchovny plays it here, dreamily repeating the lines that you know Mulder’s rehashed in his memory a thousand thousand times. They bicker over the television, Samantha calls him a buttmunch, yadda yadda. Was that particular insult in vogue, in the Nixon era? I always thought it was an invention of Beavis and Butthead. No matter. Mom and Dad are at the Gallbraths’, they left him in charge. (Do you suppose the Mulders and the Gallbraths ever spoke again, after that night? Worst Tupperware party denouement ever.) The power goes out, and Mulder knows what’s coming. He tells Samantha to run. It’s a lot easier for him to reach his father’s gun this time—and wow, that is truly a horrible 70s buffet/hutch that would not have looked the least bit out of place in my parents’ house, yikes—but still he freezes when the door swings open. This time, though, instead of the spindly silhouette of a possible alien, it’s Roche, in a badass 70s suit and retaining a little more of his hair. He strides into the room with a ghastly grin. Samantha screams for Fox. Mulder, lurching awake in his office, screams for Samantha. He looks with dawning horror at the two unidentified hearts. Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Interrogation room at the prison. Mulder stands, clearly agitated, when Roche comes in and sits fussily at the table. “Did you bring me my hearts?” he asks. Mulder’s twitching like a crackhead. What did Roche mean, about him taking this personally? “Where were you in 1973? November. Twenty-seventh of November,” he asks. Roche…smiles. Shudder. He readily admits he was on the Vineyard, and sold a vacuum cleaner to Bill Mulder, for Teena. (Nice gift, dear, I’m sure that really made a dent in your marital issues.) An ElectroVac, Duchess or Princess model. “He had a really hard time choosing,” Roche notes. I’m going to take that indecisiveness as having implications about old Bill’s two kids, too. “What do you know about my sister?” Mulder rasps. “You bring me my hearts, and maybe I’ll tell you more,” Roche replies. And Mulder loses his shit completely and belts him one, right in the cho ps, knocking Roche out of his chair scrabbling onto the floor. It’s a hell of a punch.

The guard bursts into the room. “This man…this man hit me,” Roche whinges. The guard gives him the stink-eye, finally sneering “I didn’t see it.” Nice cover, dude, after rushing in there to break up the non-fight that you hadn’t noticed. Ehh, it’s Roche. I’ll give it a pass. But Scully won’t: the guard steps aside to reveal her standing in the doorway, looking grim indeed. She saw it, she says darkly. Busted.

Moose and Squirrel pedeconference in the hall. Mulder knows that Roche took Samantha, now, he’s sure of it, saw him right there in the house. Scully storms after him, all “yo, DREAM.” They’re really hauling ass down the corridor. Mulder flips the “dream is an answer to a question” line back at her, naturally. I also want to note, here, that Scully is sporting a dark red, wasp-waisted suit that I am mostly sure is gorgeous, but might almost swerve over the line into odd…I can’t decide. Oh, Vancouver. I really missed the colored suits, after they moved to L.A. and Scully got all glamorously severe. Scully thinks that Roche just looked up some pertinent Mulderfacts on the Internet, like the rest of us. Mulder’s vulnerable, Roche is toying with him, Scully’s worrying her ass off, but it was just a dream. “My last dream came true,” Mulder points out miserably. “Scully, do you believe that my sister Samantha was abducted by aliens? Have you ever believed that?” Ooh, ouch. Scully, chagrined, can’t meet his eyes. “So what do you think happened to her?” Mulder probes. He doesn’t know what to believe, any more; he’s just desperate to find out. He stalks away. Eventually, huge-eyed and pensive, she follows.

Greenwich, Connecticut. Mulder’s klonking around in his mom’s basement. He doesn’t seem to have announced his arrival, as she calls out to him from the stairs. It’s probably like three in the morning, Mulder, damn. Don’t make me regret which kid I surrendered to the multinational evil conspiracy! He’s sorry for waking her; she’s fine but would like to know what the hell he’s up to. Mulder whips out the anonymous hearts, but Teena doesn’t recognize them, or understand why exactly her son is brandishing them in her face. Her memory isn’t what it was, after her stroke. Eventually Mulder stops badgering her and soothes her in a hug. Aw. He’s very sweet-faced here. I always thought Rebecca Toolan was remarkably well-cast, too; she really looks like she could be his mom. They share those Slavic eyes. Mulder rubs her back, and has just one more qu estion: “Dad never bought you a vacuum cleaner, did he?” Well, yes. It’s in the storage area under the stairs. Mulder gets in there and flings jingly boxes of Christmas décor aside (unless, as some have speculated as to Mulder’s religious affiliation, those are actually trimmings for the Hanukkah bush) and pulls out the squat, avocado-green ElectroVac Princess. Shit, shit, shit.

FBI, Skinner’s office. Skinman! He’s yanked Mulder off the Roche case, for gettin’ too close and goin’ too far and takin’ it too personally and all the other Mulderly behaviors we’ve come to know and love. Mulder, Scully and Skinner here demonstrate a masterful volley of accusatory glances and excuses and bargaining requests that culminate in Skinner’s weary acquiescence. He orders Mulder to tread lightly, and Scully to keep Mulder on a very tight leash. From your lips to God’s ear, Scully thinks. You can tell in this scene that Skinner is in one of those cycles where he has frigging HAD IT with the both of them. Just how much hot rogue-agent bickering in his office can one man be expected to take? Lord, beer me strength, Skinner thinks. Actually, beer him a Scotch, if you’re getting up…?

Prison interrogation room. Roche demurs; he’s not talking if Mulder’s gonna hit him again. This time Scully’s there at the table, too. If Roche had any sense he’d know who to be more afraid of here, I think. She leads with her right, Roche. Mulder wordlessly slides the two anonymous hearts across the table; when Roche begins fiddling with the baggie zipper Mulder’s quick to grab his wrist: “No. You don’t get to touch ‘em.” Damn straight. I shudder some more. Mulder demands names, and Roche dicks around: “I think you know one of them already,” he simpers. “Prove it,” Scully bites out. Roche smiles slightly, evilly, and starts spooling out details of the night Samantha was taken. He claims to have been watching them from the window. “If that’s true, tell me where my sister is,” Mulder barely rumbles.

And Roche plays his hand: “Pick her out,” he says, indicating the hearts. “You choose the one that was your sister, and I’ll tell you where she is. Come on, it’s a fifty/fifty chance. Either way I’m giving you a victim.” The tension is so high I have to pause and get up and walk around the room. Mulder chooses, and Roche toys with him a little more: is he sure? Scully slaughters him a thousand times with her eyes. Roche relents, all smiles. “It’s a good choice,” he says.

Cut to the woods, in what the tag tells us is Forks of Cacapon (??), West Virginia. On a big graffiti-tagged boulder are etched the words “MAD HAT.” This must be the place.

Okay, sit up straight, you guys, because this is, I think, my favorite moment of emotional development, and Scully’s character evolution, in the whole series, hands down. It’s a direct callback to a similar moment in Season 1, in the episode “Conduit”. In that episode, searching for a missing girl, Mulder and Scully come across a shallow, hasty grave in the woods. Mulder, already having gone all obsesso about the case and plainly associating it with his sister, gets down and starts hucking boulders off the grave like a madman…and Scully physically grabs his arm, hard, to restrain him. She yells at him to stop, points out that he’s disturbing a crime scene. She’s a by-the-book girl, S1 Scully; she sympathizes with Mulder’s pain, sure, but There Are Rules.

Compare/contrast to now. Mulder crouches beside the inscribed rock and starts digging, barehanded. He’s glassy-eyed, panting…pretty well round the bend at this point. Scully hovers beside him, and so, so gently she touches his shoulder and urges him to wait. They can get a team in there to excavate. “Let somebody else do this,” she pleads. Mulder’s having none of it. “Help me, Scully,” he begs, raw-voiced.

And she does. Without another word, she gets down on the ground and puts her perfect manicure in the mud next to him. Side by side, they claw at the dirt. And oh, it just kills me, you guys. Mulder’s lifelong grief has tormented and isolated him; that’s never been in question. What we see here, though, is how deeply it’s affected Scully, in just a short time—how much it’s humanized her. Their respective losses have bound them together over the years, but this, I think, is where we see what that’s meant to Scully. Here are the lengths to which she’s willing to go, for Mulder. Excuse me a sec—something in my eye. All that digging—I think Mulder and Scully have stirred up the dust in my living room, right through the t.v.

Anyway. It doesn’t take them long, to expose the rotting fabric and its heart-shaped cutout, through which we can glimpse a few staves of a small ribcage.

Autopsy bay. Mulder flips on the lights and stands far, far away, by the door, for a long moment. The little body lies on a table in the foreground, covered by a sheet. Eventually he approaches, and with a heavy sigh peers at an X-ray from her file. Tenderly, wet-eyed, he uncovers the body, and very gently traces his fingertips along the little wing of bone protruding from the frayed shoulder of the girl’s pajama top. Brutal, this scene. Scully enters, and Mulder is quick to voice his thoughts before she can: “It’s not her, Scully. Am I right?” Samantha had broken her left collarbone, falling from a rope swing in their yard, and this little girl’s isn’t broken. “You’re right, Mulder, it’s not a match,” Scully tells him. “It’s not her.” Mulder’s whole body sags over the table, equal parts relief and despair. It takes him a moment to collect himself. “It’s somebody, though,” he says b leakly, turning away. He and Scully stand for a moment, not quite touching, silent.

VERY dusty in here. Sniffle.

Back to Roche. “Tell us the name of that girl,” Scully says, firing words like tiny terse bullets. Roche proceeds to wax rhapsodic about his experience abducting this particular child. He reminisces fondly about the mint that grew beneath her bedroom window: “I stood outside her window atop sprigs of mint. It smelled wonderful.” That detail, and Roche’s obvious pleasure, is magnificently horrific. Scully, taking her little notes, visibly swallows back her revulsion. “What year,” she grits, getting through this interview on sheer force of will. July 1974, Roche says, and then grouses for a bit about his failed sales pitch to the girl’s mother. Scully glares a couple smoking black holes in Roche’s forehead…or so you’d think, considering her expression. Mulder passes over the final heart, and Roche attests that it’s Samantha’s. He gets quickly to the taunting:

“You want to know a lot more than [where], don’t you? You want to know everything, right? The big mystery revealed?…I can’t just tell you. I mean, I know you don’t believe me yet. You need me to show you, you need me to lead you through it because…after all these years, anything less than that’s not going to satisfy you, right?” Mulder knows that Roche just wants to get out of the joint. He’s not wrong. “You’re damn right I do! If only for a day or two; I’m realistic,” Roche says. “And more than that, I…I can’t wait to see your face.”

“Oh GOD,” hisses Scully, shoving her chair back unseen. She’s on her feet, up in Roche’s grill. “You’re gonna see the inside of your cell instead. You’re gonna rot there,” she tells him, her tone glazing the earth under a six-inch crust of ice. Great work by Gillian Anderson here; she nearly smotes me dead with her gaze. She stomps to the door and holds it open pointedly, while Roche has the gall to look a tiny bit delighted at her abject loathing. Hey Roche, too bad you didn’t get the gas chamber; I know just the girl to push the button.

In the hall, Scully checks in with a dazed-seeming Mulder as they both try to pull themselves together. She struggles to console and counsel him not to play Roche’s game, that there has to be a better way to find out the truth. Through the interrogation-room window, Roche sits with his head in his hands a moment, feigning defeat. Then he gets up and…grinnnns, through the chicken-wired glass at Mulder before getting buzzed back out of the room. Oh GOD is right, dude. Holy hell.

Quick shot of Mulder on his couch, contemplating. Oh, no. He picks up the phone, and we hear his voiceover requesting a federal prisoner move order as the action cuts to Roche and Mulder on a plane, en route to Boston. For you compulsive types, Mulder’s badge number here is JTT-0471-01111. Is that last bit binary code?

Roche asks to use the restroom. Mulder drapes something, a jacket or a blanket, over Roche’s cuffed wrists to conceal them, in that way that we’ve all learned from t.v. Perps! Gotta leave them a measure of dignity! In the aisle, Roche promptly scampers past the approaching drink cart and immediately zeros in on the little girl prattling happily a few rows back. “First flight?” he asks her mother, twinkling a smile while Mulder, blocked, does the Hokey Pokey with two beverage-dispensing flight attendants. Mom has not read The Gift of Fear, and cheerfully engages Roche. “What’s your name?” he beams at the little girl. “Caitlin,” Caitlin squeaks back, and ohJesusMulderhurryalreadygoddamn. AT LAST Mulder clears the cart and hustles Roche off to the can. Will R oche even fit, in an airplane bathroom? He’s a damn giant. He’s going to have to sit down to pee.

Oh, tarnation, the Skinman is PISSED, giving Scully his standard what-the-fuck-has-Mulder-done-NOW speech # 473-B in his office. “And where were you while this was happening?” he demands. Scully claims that she’d left Mulder for the day and urged him to get some sleep. In the outer office, Kimberly mutters “goddamn!” and crosses one of her squares off of the Mulder and Scully: Totally Doing It? office pool sheet. Scully thinks she knows where Mulder’s taking Roche, and Skinner digs at her a few more times before they light out together after him.

Mulder ushers Roche into what we can assume is his father’s place on the Vineyard, everything closed up and swathed in plastic. Mulder, maybe you should unload that real estate. Roche strolls around, happy as a pig in shit to resume tormenting Mulder pronto. “You ready?” he asks. “Go,” Mulder says, stone-faced. Roche begins his recitation: the date, the Mulder ‘rents stepping out next door, Roche watching the kids for a while before cutting the power. He paces, smiling puckishly, enjoying this so, so much. Ugh. The front door wasn’t even locked, ha ha, oh, the innocent 70s! He gives Mulder credit for going for his dad’s gun, but he ultimately choked and Roche took Samantha “away from all this. To a happier place.” Mulder’s been listening to all this, motionless, but now he approaches Roche, gets right up in his face. “That’s exactly how it happened? Right here in this room?” he prom pts. Roche agrees, and Mulder takes a moment to breathe before breaking out in a tight, deadly smile of his own. “Wrong house,” he tells Roche. They’re in Bill Mulder’s post-divorce home, an entirely different village six miles from where Samantha disappeared. “You screwed up! You were never here! You didn’t take Samantha!” Mulder goes on, gathering steam. “Wishful thinking,” Roche tries, but Mulder’s got a theory: when he profiled Roche, got inside his head, it somehow opened a connection between them, and Roche in turn got into Mulder’s dreams and memories. This is as paranormal as this episode is going to get, which I like, frankly; in a story that’s otherwise an emotional steamroller, it’s all the woo-woo you need. Roche keeps trying to backpedal. “You’re just resisting me,” he says, and Mulder snaps: “And you’re in the wrong house, you stoopid sonova bitch!” he barks. Duchovny’s New York accent busts out a little here, with the yelling ; it’s a tiny bit funny, and a huge bit SMOKING HOT. Yow.

Roche knows he’s beaten, and sits…but he can’t help a little more taunting. “I heard things about you, Mulder….I heard you go after aliens. From space! It’s like your world will be okay as long as you can believe in, like, flying saucers—” Here, Noonan makes this truly hilarious little buzzy-whistling bbwwweeeeeoooooo! spaceship noise, with accompanying “liftoff” hand gesture; he’s still completely heinous but it’s the single thing in this episode that makes me laugh out loud. “But I’m telling you the God’s honest truth,” he finishes, wagging his finger at Mulder. “I can see you’re not as open-minded as you think you are.” Now that he’s spelled out the theme of this entire plotline for us, I guess I could use a break and a drink. Mulder’s all, whatever, jackass. Enjoy your last night of freedom. You stoopid sonofa bitch!

Davy Crockett Motor Court. Oh, it’s Massachusetts…maybe the Paul Revere Motor Inne? Anyway: motel. Roche lies in the bed, sleeping petulantly, handcuffed to the nightstand. Mulder’s at the table. He’s just going to sit up there all night, stewing in his own bitter triumph. No, he’s not at all sleep-deprived! What are you implying? Frankly, he takes umbrage at the very—hold on. Is that screaming, outside? Mulder hurries to the window. Hey! There’s actually a lighted sign we glimpse for a second: Vineyard Motor Court! Well, it was nice of the crew to knock that together, there. The El Camino’s parked out front; in the passenger seat is little-girl Samantha, crying for help. Casting a frantic glance at the sleeping Roche, Mulder runs out.

The El Camino’s engine revs and revs; Samantha bangs on the window, screaming. “Fox! Unlock me!” she begs, as Mulder races to the car. It’s obviously a nightmare, but hella creepy nonetheless. Hey, Sam, there should be a little button on the thing, there, do you think you could…never mind. In the seamless logic of dreams, Mulder finds the keys in his pocket. He yanks the car door open and hauls Samantha into his arms. Oddly enough, she seems to be dressed in her overalls from her days as a clone grunt-worker on that bee farm in “Herrenvolk.” Mulder doesn’t care; he clutches her to him and spins her around in ecstatic relief, beaming. It’s over! Thank God! Nothing to worry about here, no, never mind the fact that Samantha is apparently a 34-year-old in a second-grader’s body. Mulder holds her away from himself for a second, just to check: yep, it’s really her! Whew! Hurray! He clasps her to him again and, over her shoulder, spies the red dot on the pavement. It winks into a word: BYE. The tires scream. Mulder whips around: his arms are empty. So’s the parking lot.

Furious hammering on the motel-room door. Mulder blearily lifts his head from the table…and discovers he’s handcuffed to it. The bed’s empty; Roche is gone. Mulder manages to stand and flip the table over to free himself, without whacking himself in the face like I would have. It’s Skinner and Scully at the door, Skinner marginally more likely to have his entire head blow off with anger. They quickly assess: Mulder must have freed Roche in his sleep, and Roche took off with the last heart…aaaand Mulder’s badge, cell phone, and gun. Greeaaat. Skinner conveys his considerable disappointment, loudly and about six inches from Mulder’s face. Where might Roche have been headed? Mulder suddenly remembers the little girl on the plane, and borrows Skinner’s phone to request the passenger manifest. Funny coinky-dink: “Special” “Agent” “Fox Mulder” of the FBI just called and requested that same information ten minutes ago!

Multiple carloads of Fibbies and cops come squealing into the New Friends daycare center parking lot in Swampscott, Massachusetts, where little Caitlin’s teacher is having a meltdown: “Agent Mulder” came in claiming that Caitlin’s mother had been in an accident and took the girl away. “Oh my God, what have I done?….It’s all my fault,” she sobs. Mulder leans in. “It’s not your fault. It’s my fault,” he assures her grimly. What a sad, sad, pretty, pretty tormented man, staring so intently at me! she thinks. There will be plenty of time for guilt and self-loathing later, Mulder—let’s find the bastard. Mulder and Scully ping-pong ideas back and forth; Roche can’t have gone far, and he lived in Boston in the early 70s. Scully pulls up the address, 9809 Alice Road, apt. 6. Ding ding ding! Alice Road, Alice in Wonderland…Mulder babbles, flinging himself into the car as Skinner tries to keep up with whatever the hell he’s on about.

Cut to a whole squadron of The Law, kicking in the door to Roche’s nasty, vacant apartment in that same dark, creepy-ass building where every bad guy, monster and mutant in Vancouver ever lived. Everyone storms around pointing their weapons and scuffling through debris on the floor; nobody’s home. “I don’t think he brought her here,” Scully says, as Mulder goes to the window and stares out across a ratty field to the fenced salvage yard, bristling with trolley-bus antennae, in the distance. “He never brought anyone here,” Mulder realizes, and sprints out.

Trolley-bus graveyard, where dozens of rusting, decrepit hulks of buses are parked claustrophobically close together. Mulder clambers over some barrels and other piled garbage and drops down on the other side of the fence. The sun is setting; the lot is shadowy and desolate and still scares the hell out of me somehow. Mulder draws the gun at his ankle, again—Roche missed that one. Thank God that Mulder’s butter-fingered tendencies have led him to carry two pieces. He slinks between the grimy, gloomy dead buses, breaking into a run when he hears Caitlin scream. Where is she, where? Mulder stops, turning around in a gap between the endless rows. It looks cold, to me, in this scene; Duchovny’s nose is red. Compounds the creepy misery. Looking around, Mulder finally notices the trolley antennae on one nearby bus, swaying slightly against the blue sky.

Oh, God—after all these viewings, I just caught the potentially even more horrific implication they’re giving us, here. The bus? With the child molester and victim on it? Is rocking. Ew. Christ on a bike, ew. Mercifully, Mulder does not bother knocking; he shoves the accordion door open and creeps up the steps. More mercifully, Roche and Caitlin are just sitting, way in the back: Caitlin in the last forward-facing seat, Roche behind her on the bench along the side. “I’m beginning to believe we do share that nexus you spoke of,” Roche says genially. “You always seem to find me.” Mulder ignores him, asking Caitlin if she’s all right. His name is Fox and he’s here to take her home. Can I get that as a ring tone? Caitlin looks a little teary but overall way, way calmer than I would be in this situation ; I’d totally be crying and wetting my pants. I’m 37. Roche announces that he has Mulder’s gun…well, one of ‘em.

Mulder distracts Caitlin, asking her to close her eyes and count slowly, aloud, to twenty. When she begins, he strides past her and levels his weapon in Roche’s face. “I will shoot,” Roche warns him; he’s got his gun trained on Caitlin, directly against the seat back. “Don’t make this end badly,” Mulder whispers. Caitlin counts. Seven. Eight. Scully and Skinner creep into the stairwell up front. Roche bargains. He really doesn’t want to go back to prison. He withdraws the last heart from inside his jacket. “You’ve got one left. How are you gonna find her without me? How sure are you it’s not Samantha?” Fifteen. Sixteen. Standoff. Staring. “How do you know?” Roche asks. Eighteen. Nineteen. Roche’s finger tightens on the trigger. Mulder fires. Caitlin flies screaming up the aisle, and we hear Scully mother-hen-ing her off the bus, aww, and Skinner yelling for an ambulance, as Roche sl umps over…leaving most of his brains on the bus window. Blech. Mulder stands over him, stunned.

LBO. The camera pans slowly over all Mulder’s crazy tabloid crop-circle crap tacked to the walls, lingering on The Poster before finding Mulder at his desk, still looking wrecked. Scully knocks (why so formal? Doesn’t she feel at home there? I’m sure the purchase order for her desk is due any…wait. Um.) and then enters, approaching Mulder all sad-eyed. She has lab results from the final heart; a dye analysis puts the fabric’s date sometime between the late 60s and early 70s, but that’s all they’ve got. Still, she’s sure it’s not Samantha, and she’s sure they’ll find this little girl. “How?” Mulder whispers. “I don’t know. But I do know you,” she tells him. He glances up at her for a second, but he’s not really comforted. “Why don’t you go on home and get some sleep,” Scully suggests. Mulder gapes at her for a moment before breaking into a mirthless giggle—is she serious? Scully clos es her eyes over her own poor choice of words, and steps close; Mulder hugs her one-armed around her waist and leans his head against her, somewhere between her shoulder and her hip. It’s remotely plausible that he squeezes her ass. Not that it’s appropriate to the immediate situation—it’s just a strangely placed hug, is all I’m saying. Scully, for her part, strokes his hair gently before slipping away. Hey Scully: I know a damn near guaranteed method for making a man roll over and fall into a blissful slumber. You could take him home, tire him out a little…no? Too soon? All right, all right. Just trying to help.

Scully closes the door behind her, and Mulder’s smile drops off his face like a stone. He holds the unidentified heart in his fingertips for a moment before slipping it into a drawer and out of sight; then he just sits, staring exhausted at nothing. And that is all the resolution we get.

Maybe they’ll find that last little girl in the new movie.

But I don’t think so.

Recap by Crass

We’re in Arlington, Virginia – interior shot of a busy fast-food restaurant. A nutty guy is ranting to himself while everyone around him does a good job of trying to ignore what he is saying. Don’t you hate it when that happens? I’m one of those people who has ‘Tell Me’ written in invisible purple ink on my forehead so I get to hear all about the paranoid fantasies of random strangers. I’ve perfected the understanding nod, the encouraging mmmm and the discreet backing-away which is the only way to deal with this happenstance.

Oh, maybe someone should have tried the understanding nod with this guy, because suddenly he’s snapped, and he’s up yelling, “Nobody moves!” Holy crap, he’s got a gun! Everyone should shut up! Shut up! The shift manager looks like she’s calling 911. But he’s not completely bad – the children can go. Now we’re seeing the gentle side of gun-wielding lunatics. The kiddies run out the door, while a distinguished-looking man slowly stands up. Hey! It’s Roy Thinnes! Wasn’t he in “The Prisoner”? I love how 1013 uses actors that have been in other sci-fi/horror shows. He walks up to the gunman saying, “Please don’t harm anyone.” The nutcase spins around and points the gun at him. He tries to calm the gunman down, who keeps yelling and pointing the gun. He tells him, “They’ve done nothing to you,” but the gunman just shakes his head in a really crazed way, his eyes all red and says: “Oh, you don’t know.” Clearly he’s convinced himself he’s in with all his workmates who disrespected him. Is he a postal worker of some kind? Distinguished Roy asks him to give him the gun and the gunman says, “I am not a loser.” Just as well this isn’t a pantomime, or the audience would now be calling out “Oh yes you are!” That would be enough to tip him right over the edge. I’m just going to call him Loser from now on, as I am not in gunfire range. In the background an official-looking car pulls into the car park. Loser tells Distinguished Roy: “They made me do it.” Is this the existential They? It looks like the cops have turned up – two guys in bad suits who look like they’ve enjoyed a donut or six. Over Roy’s shoulder, a young guy looks like he’s trying to sneak out the door and SWAT have arrived. Like Frohike in a halter-top and tutu, this is going to get ugly!

Distinguished Roy now has his hands on the gun, and is getting Loser to lower it, when Loser hears something. It’s the young guy and his girlfriend, who are trying to sneak out. Loser screams “No!” and shoots them both, then whirls around and shoots a blonde woman in a tweed coat and a young guy in jeans. One of the SWAT team shoots straight through the window and hits Loser in the chest, and he goes down like a porn actress in one of those tapes Mulder doesn’t own. Distinguished Roy kneels down – Loser has a rather nasty entry wound in his chest and blood all over his white T-shirt. He gasps, “I’m gonna die,” but Distinguished Roy says, “Nobody’s going to die.” He places his hand over the wound as the amazed bystanders look on and the hole and the blood disappear, like they were never there. Aaannndddd Credits! Doo DOO doo doo doo DOOOHHH etc etc.

Cool – Moose and Squirrel turn up to the chaotic scene – Mulder has his hand out of the car window in this languid sort of way for no apparent reason, but in the next shot he’s showing the uniforms his ID. How’d you get that in your hand while you were driving, Mulder? Scully (whose hair looks FABULOUS, by the way) marches straight up to a dorky-looking EMT, badges him and asks where the wounded are. He tells her there aren’t any. Now Mulder badges the poor guy and asks if he was the first medic on the scene. He admits he was, but then tells Mulder that it doesn’t make any sense. Boy, are you talking to the right FBI agent! The EMTs got a call that people had been shot, but when they got there, “there wasn’t a damn thing to do.” Dorky EMT guy sort of reminds me of Tom Cruise, but taller and without the crazed look in his eye.

Meanwhile, Scully’s inside the restaurant and badges a detective who’s slouching on a pillar just inside the door. I’m calling him Detective Donut. She wants to talk to someone who can tell her what’s going on. Keep that dream alive, Scully! Detective Donut can tell her what he saw, but then says he doesn’t think there’s a man here who can tell her what happened. Maybe someone should ask a woman then. He then declines to tell her and says she should speak to this man, who was one of the ones shot. It’s the young guy who was sneaking out, so I’ll call him Sneakers and he tells Scully he was shot in the stomach. The bullet hole still appears in his white T-shirt, but there’s no blood and he looks remarkably healthy, even though his mono-brow could do with a pluck. He tells Scully that his legs and arms were numb and he could taste blood in his throat, but he lifts his T-shirt to show Scully that he’s all better now. Scully is giving him the interrogation stare while Sneakers says that the person who healed him was the man who tried to talk Loser out of harming anyone and that he ‘touched me’. If Sneakers was younger, I’d be recommending he call the team from SVU – I’m sure Olivia and Elliot would be interested in the touching thing.

Loser’s now confined in the back of a police car and it’s only going to get worse from here for him, because Mulder opens the door and sits down next to him. Loser asks who he is and manages to contain his amusement as our hero says, “My name is Fox Mulder. I’m an FBI agent.” Loser seems unimpressed by Mulder’s credentials and gives him an ignoring he’s not going to forget in a hurry. It transpires that Loser’s real name is Mr Muntz – on balance, I think he’d probably prefer Loser, so I’ll stick with that. Staring ahead, Loser says, “God…spared my life today. He took pity on my soul and he washed away my sins.” Well, that’s all right then. “He reached down and he healed me with his hand. With the palm of his hand.” Mulder keeps an admirably straight face throughout this malarkey. I’m guessing he’s also a “Tell Me” person and has had to employ the understanding nod, the encouraging mmmmm and the discreet backing-away. I’m also thinking that he’s had that tactic employed upon him a time or two (or three, or four). Loser tells Mulder it was a holy man. Uh-huh. Finally, he turns to face Mulder and tells him it was the Good Lord Himself. Mulder looks like he’s about to say something, but stops himself just in time. I don’t think Loser is in the mood for Mulder’s wit.

As Mulder gets out of the car, and Scully makes her way across the car park, the credits inform us that the teleplay is by Chris Carter and that the story is by David Duchovny and Chris Carter. Yay! Mytharc that makes at least some sort of emotional sense, even if it doesn’t make any other kind of sense. I just know I’m going to end up wanting to make Mulder a big cup of cocoa and letting him use all my Kleenex before this episode’s over. Mulder updates Scully on Loser’s religious epiphany and Scully seems unsurprised by this. Apparently the healer has left the scene before the police could question him, but nobody saw him go. He just vanished. Without a trace. But nothing vanishes without a trace! I have that on good authority!

Now we’re on Quonochontaug, Rhode Island. Mrs Mulder (all dressed in black) is walking up to a house with a key in her hand. She looks upset. However, she is looking good and you can see where Mulder got his ability to wear a trench coat stylishly. She looks through the French doors and the furniture inside is still all covered in plastic. It looks like no one has been here in years. She goes inside, walks through one room into another, and then notices that a door to the outside has been left ajar. I need to stop and congratulate whoever cast Rebecca Toolan in this role. She’s great and not only that; she looks like she could conceivably be Mulder’s mother. She goes outside and turns – eek! It’s the Cigarette-Smoking Man! For some reason, he says, “Everything changes but the sea.” Riiigghhhttt. Teena wants to know what he wants, and he says he wants to reminisce. She looks like she’s willing him to catch on fire right in front of her so she can refrain from spitting on him and tells him she has nothing to say to him. He replies that they used to have so much to say to each other. Eeeewwwww. He talks about the good times they had, her kids, young and energetic. Then he says he remembers water-skiing with Bill, but that Bill wasn’t as good a water-skier as he was, and then he says, “…but that could be said about so many things.” Thanks CSM. Now I need to bleach my brain. Teena’s not enjoying this little jaunt down Memory Lane either. She gives him the evil eye and says: “I repressed it all.” CSM doesn’t believe it – he’s thinking that he’s so impressive that Teena would remember how it was thirty-odd years ago – although if Mulder’s equipment is anything like it’s portrayed in fan-fiction and CSM really is his father, maybe it was that memorable (always assuming it was passed from father to son genetically). He wants her to remember something and moves closer to Teena, all the better to intimidate her. The argument continues soundlessly, and oh no! Someone is spying on them and taking photographs. Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!

Cut to Mulder and Scully, and Detective Donut is telling them that the mystery healing man’s name is Jeremiah Smith, and he lives in Suitland, Virginia. Is that where Hugo Boss comes from? It turns out he gave a phoney PO Box and doesn’t have a driver’s licence. Since when is that a crime? The crime-fighting trio conclude that Distinguished Roy walked from somewhere nearby as all the cars in the parking lot were accounted for. That’s some quality detecting right there! Maybe he got a cab, or a friend dropped him off, or he parachuted in? How is this critical thinking? Detective Donut is still flummoxed as to how Distinguished Roy disappeared. Mulder, who has obviously tuned out Detective Donut, notices a TV OB van outside the window. Just then, his phone rings, mercifully saving him (and us) from further demonstrations of Detective Donut’s investigative acuity. Look out – it’s Assistant Director Skinner’s office and it’s a real X-File how an inanimate object such as an office can call anyone. Mulder ought to open a file on that. However, it’s the hot, bald AD himself and he tells Mulder he has some alarming news. Apparently Mulder’s mother has been admitted to hospital in a serious condition, in a town called Quono….and he can’t pronounce it. Mulder, being a true smartarse, jumps in and says, “Quonochontaug? I’m on my way.”

It’s now 11.21pm and Mulder’s bursting through a door in a corridor. He looks upset and pissed. Does he ever enter a hospital like a normal person, asking politely at the desk after his friend/relative and sitting patiently in the waiting room? I think not. He quickly strides to Room 6 and opens the door, but stops immediately, gutted by the sight of his mother hooked up to a ventilator and all sorts of machines that go ‘Beep’. He walks over slowly and gently takes her hand and lays his other hand on her forehead. Scully has now turned up – I’m guessing her little feet couldn’t keep up with Mulder – and tells Mulder that the nurse said that Teena has had a stroke, they don’t know the nature or severity of it and the doctor’s on his way down. Mulder somehow intuits that his mother is cold and fusses around with her blankets, covering her. Scully is trying to be comforting, telling Mulder that people recover from these situations all the time, but Mulder only has eyes for his Mum. He strokes her hair softly and says, “Mom,” in this really broken, almost little-boy voice. The nurse pipes up and says that Teena is unable to speak. She tells Mulder that a 911 call came in and that the paramedics from Shelter Harbour found Teena on the floor of the house. Mulder keeps stroking Teena’s hair and calls to her again, but this time she opens her eyes and she wants something to write on. Kudos to Duchovny for the way he plays this scene. In fact, I love the way he makes Mulder interact with Teena – it seems like such an authentic Mother-Son relationship, even when things are bad and she slaps him in Demons.

Scully, ever prepared, hands over a notebook and a pen and Mulder holds the notebook for his mother while she scratches out the word – PALM. Over the years, I’ve heard many people assert that what she writes is PLAM, but I’m looking at the paused DVD right now and it’s definitely PALM. Mulder and Scully look puzzled by this development and Mulder says, “Palm?” but we fade to commercial.

Teena’s being wheeled down the corridor on a gurney, past Scully who’s fiddle-faddling at the nurse’s station, followed by a glum Mulder. Teena is being loaded into an ambulance, so she’s obviously being transferred to another facility. It’s a nice shot, with the ambulance lights reflected on the hospital’s glass doors, as Mulder watches his mother being driven away from him. Scully does some medico-babble, telling Mulder that his mother has had a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage, but that they’re hopeful because circulation was restored quickly. It could have been a lot worse. Mulder’s not looking very spry and Scully asks him if he’s all right. He then starts yammering on that he thinks there’s a correlation between the shooting at the fast-food restaurant and what’s happened to his mother. Yoink! Scully is going to get whiplash if he keeps changing direction so quickly. Apparently, he’s riffing on all this just because his mother used the word ‘palm’ and Distinguished Roy healed everyone with the palm of his hand. Personally, I think he’s drawing rather a long bow, but hell, the show’s about him so he gets to be right, at least 99.8% of the time. Driving, at least. Scully, however, is sceptical. She argues, using logic. She doesn’t think that ‘palm’ means anything, even though Mulder is desperate to believe it does. She explains that Teena’s brain and her thought processes have been radically changed by the stroke, but Mulder’s not having a bar of it. Scully offers to drive him to the nearest motel (you go, girl!), but Mulder, oblivious to her charms, insists on going back to DC.

Back in DC, and Mulder’s hitting the videotape (not like that – get your mind out of the gutter!). They aren’t the tapes that aren’t his (if you know what I mean), but are instead the footage shot by the news crew of the shooting incident and subsequent police investigation. There’s Distinguished Roy on tape, talking to Detective Donut. Someone walks in front of the camera, and then Distinguished Roy is just gone! Mulder rewinds the footage, and it’s clear that someone else is standing next to Detective Donut in Distinguished Roy’s clothes. How’d he manage that? Mulder tells Scully to go find out what happened to Distinguished Roy and when she asks in turn where he’s going, he tells her that if he told her, she’d never let him go. Mulder, I’m telling you, stay away from porn theatres. You’ll give your poor mother another stroke. Scully protests that he hasn’t slept in almost 24 hours, but he ignores her and tells her to call him if she finds anything. Disgruntled, Scully turns back to examining the tape.

Now there’s a crane shot of bureaucracy hell – the Social Security Administration in Washington DC. Poor clerical workers, all sitting behind computers on exactly the same desks in the most boring office space in the world. I’m glad my government work doesn’t suck this much. At least I have my Big Gay Boss to keep me amused. Enter a group of Secret Servicy-looking guys, who spread out looking for someone. No one seems to be taking much notice; if that happened in our office, everyone would have their heads up above their cubicles like meerkats. Now another door opens and more agents come in, accompanied by Old Smokey. Distinguished Roy is sitting at one of the desks, so I’m guessing it’s him they’re after. He must be this Season’s Key to the X-Files or something. He tries to slip surreptitiously out a back door, but there’s agents waiting for him there and they grab him. All of the agents leave, but no one in this office seems nonplussed by the apparent arrest of a co-worker. These public servants are either used to this, completely brain-dead or think that there is more paperwork involved. Rule One of the Public Service Code of Conduct – cover your arse. It’s one of those unwritten Australian Public Service rules. Cut to – a prison, and Distinguished Roy is being given the Hannibal Lecter treatment, I believe unfairly as it has yet to be proven that he has eaten anybody’s liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Mulder has driven from DC to Quonochontaug without having slept, but he’s still looking sexy. He enters the house, which is still wrapped in so much plastic you’d mistake it for Laura Palmer (palm again – do you think there’s a connection?). The door his mother noticed is still ajar and he heads outside – is that meant to be sand or snow on the top step? I ask because I am no expert, as I have never seen snow. Considering the sound of seagulls in the background I will go with sand, but feel free to write and correct me if I am wrong. Awww, poor Mulder. He’s got a nasty white stain on his lovely trench coat, probably from leaning up against something. Unexpectedly, X appears from inside the house, saying: “He was here with her.” Mulder shows off that Oxford University education and says, “What?” To which X answers, “With your mother.” Mulder still doesn’t understand, so X explicates further. “The Cancer Man.” Mulder still thinks X has taken a few hits off Chris Carter’s bong, but I think X is just one of those people who thinks knowledge is power and is deliberately unclear when he speaks to keep other people off balance. He shows Mulder the photographs of Teena arguing with Old Smokey, and drops the bomb that Teena and CSM were acquainted. Here we see the first real cracks in the relationship between Mulder and his mother that comes to a climax in Demons. Mulder asked if CSM hurt his mother, but X tells him that she collapsed after CSM left. It turns out that X made the 911 call that saved Teena’s life. Instead of thanking him, Mulder is back on the conspiracy trail, wanting to know what they were arguing about. X doesn’t know – he says he was forced to keep a discreet distance. Now, I’m deaf but you’d think a heated argument like that would carry a bit. X thinks that Teena kept something in the house that Old Smokey wants – perhaps he left his water skis behind? Mulder looks pretty cut-up about the connection between his mother and CSM and tells X that she swore never to set foot in the house again after the divorce from Bill. Then he says: “I know my mother. She kept her word.” Duchovny puts a little wobble in his voice when he says this that just breaks my heart. It makes me want to put my arms around Mulder and stroke his hair and tell him it will be all right. He has such lovely hair, thick and chestnut brown and it looks soft and silky…..OK, I’m back. X is telling Mulder that whatever CSM is looking for could be very old, and Mulder is saying he has no idea, but X keeps pushing. I’m thinking that X is either trying to find out how much Mulder knows, or doesn’t know himself and is trying to get Mulder to give him information without admitting he doesn’t know. Mulder’s finally had enough of the double talk and heads back inside.

Meanwhile, back at FBI Headquarters in Washington DC, Distinguished Roy walks up to Scully and says that there’s been a mistake and that he’s there to clear it up. Wha???? Isn’t he banged up in some sort of secret military prison doing his impression of Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning shenanigans? I don’t think I’ve been hitting the crack pipe too much this week. Scully looks rather confused, even though she’s unaware of the Doppelganger goings-on. Distinguished Roy now has to explain himself to Scully and a group of FBI people, and he claims the whole incident was like a dream and he remembers none of it and certainly doesn’t remember leaving the crime scene. Detective Donut (where did he come from?) is still pissed about being given a phoney address, but Distinguished Roy only apologises and says he doesn’t remember. Skinner asks him what he does remember, and DR says that his memory kicks in the next day at work. Scully reassures DR that he hasn’t done anything wrong and he asks if he can go. Scully looks at Skinner, who says yes, but doesn’t look happy about it and goes on to say that DR needs to notify the FBI if he is going to be out of town for any reason until the matter is cleared up. Distinguished Roy looks pleased enough with that, and goes out the door, leaving a roomful of confused investigators in his wake.

It seems we’re back in the house at Quonochontaug, but it’s hard to tell because someone’s stumbling around in the dark. Turn the bloody lights on, so we can see what’s happening! Oh, it’s Mulder with a flashlight. Not a Maglite, just an ordinary flashlight that appears to be of limited use. Now Mulder has found a light switch, and we can see what’s going on. Weird. This house has a mirror in the kitchen, with a foofy little ruffly thing over it. What’s that about? It’s hideous! And it looks like there’s a spoon collection hanging on the wall next to it. Where do you even find shit like that? No wonder Teena didn’t want to go back inside the house. Mulder’s having a snoop through the cupboards, but not finding much of interest. There appears to be clothes in plastic dry-cleaning bags in the wardrobe – why would you leave good clothes in a house that you were not going to use? I’m too cheap to do that. There’s a truly ugly straw hat there too – I can just see Bill Mulder wearing that with his thin-lipped grimace and his protuberant eyes. I admit it; I don’t like Bill Mulder much. Mulder is totally tossing the place, going through all the drawers and little tchotchkes. He’s even pulling books out of the book-case (and there’s no way I’d ever leave books anywhere) and one of them looks to be an historical romance, but it’s been put on the shelf upside down. I’m supposing that one was Teena’s. There’s even linen left on the beds. Those Mulders must have had more money than sense. Mulder pulls the plastic off a couch and flops down into it, dispirited. Aww, you want some cocoa, Mulder? I’ll get the milk heating on the stove. He pulls out the notepaper with PALM written on it and studies it some more. Ooh, now he’s written LAMP – perhaps Teena’s scrambled speech centres got all the letters right, but they’re all in the wrong order? There are at least half a dozen lamps in shot – who the hell owns that many lamps? – and Mulder starts unscrewing and examining, only to think that maybe something’s hidden in the base, so he throws the ceramic base at the brick fireplace and smashes it to pieces. Just as well Teena’s not coming back here. Fox is going to be in big trouble for smashing the lamps. This is only the beginning of a lamp-smashing frenzy, but on his second attempt, Mulder finds something odd in the lamp base. It looks like a metal cylinder, and irrepressibly curious as always, Mulder presses a little button on the side, to be startled when an ice-pick style thing shoots up and almost takes out one of his eyes. I have to stop here to remark how this chiaroscuro lighting style suits Duchovny – it brings out his great bone structure.

Distinguished Roy I is getting a visitor in da big house. It’s the CSM and I don’t think it’s a social call. At least he has the decency to remove DRI’s gag, then he makes himself comfortable, pulling up a chair and sitting on it. He begins by making all sorts of veiled threats about how he has to clean up the mess etc etc and DRI responds by saying he’s not ashamed of what he has done. CSM remarks that he’s not allowed the luxury of human weakness and penitence, by which I think he means that Distinguished Roy and his Doppelgangers (my next rock band) are trying to make up for their complicity in the huge Government/Alien conspiracy whatchamacallit. DRI says he no longer believes in the greater purpose and CSM goes on threatening someone who obviously does not give a shit and doesn’t mind letting him know it. He tells CSM he has no right and no means to mete out justice. CSM is pretty pissed that DRI has exposed the conspiracy by his laying-on of hands actions, and here we begin to get some explanation of CSM’s motivations. He says: “Who are you to give them hope?” to which DRI asks what CSM gives them. He replies: “We give them happiness. And they give us authority.” He goes on to reveal his contempt for the rest of humankind, calling them weak, corrupt, worthless and restless. I can’t figure out if he’s a sociopath, or if he’s right. They then begin a metaphysical argument about science vs religion that I can’t be arsed recreating. Now DRI freaks out CSM by turning into Deep Throat, so in order for this to be effective, it’s a dead cert that CSM was behind his death in The Erlenmeyer Flask. They threaten each other some more and CSM grows tired of this back and forth and leaves.

Back to the FBI building and Mulder is intimidating Skinner’s secretary and barging into the AD’s office, demanding CSM’s name, rank and serial number. Ooh, Scully was already there- what did Skinner want her for? Paperwork? Mulder busts out the incriminating photographs and blames Old Smokey for his mother’s stroke. Mulder is getting pretty demanding and all up in Skinner’s grill. Skinner admits that he can no longer contact CSM and Mulder finally calms down enough to tell them that CSM’s trying to kill the man from the restaurant shooting. Scully then gives him the startling news that Distinguished Roy came in yesterday and turned himself in. Oh, no he didn’t, Scully – that was a Doppelganger.

Mulder and Scully go to the Social Security Administration looking for Distinguished Roy. Hee, she is so short, she barely comes up to Mulder’s shoulder. Mulder’s looking a little rough – he could use a shave. They find a version of Distinguished Roy and Mulder identifies himself as an FBI agent. He asks Distinguished Roy to come with him, but DR doesn’t see the need and turns to Scully and says accusingly, “I thought they said you’d call if there was anything.” Scully looks a little guilty, but Mulder pushes right ahead with his agenda and leans down to grab D Roy, saying he’s sure he wouldn’t want to cause a scene at work. Go ahead Mulder, those co-workers of Distinguished Roy wouldn’t stop working if a UFO landed in the staff room. D. Roy capitulates and accompanies Moose and Squirrel out of the building, but gives them the slip just as they get off the elevator. They are bemused and bewildered, but there is a lingering shot of a bearded man who happens to be wearing Distinguished Roy’s clothes. Oh, that D. Roy! He’s so tricky!

Back we trot to D. Roy I’s prison. D. Roy accuses CSM of being afraid of him, but CSM denies it. As you would. D. Roy I threatens CSM some more, insinuating that he has more power than CSM knew about. However, CSM isn’t going to take this lying down. CSM accuses D. Roy I of thinking he’s God, but he’s really only a drone, a cataloguer, chattel. He delivers that line with some real venom. D. Roy counters by saying, “What you’re afraid of is they’ll believe I’m God.” Then they start in again on the metaphysical argument blah, blah, blah. D. Roy I then freaks CSM out again by appearing as Bill Mulder. Man, I even hate this fake version of him. I was glad when it turned out he wasn’t Mulder’s real father. I wasn’t that surprised when it turned out to be CSM – after all, Mulder and CSM share many character traits, but like a tarot card, there are light and dark in both. They are both single-minded and obsessive, both have a very black sense of humour and they’re both tall, but Mulder uses his gifts for apparently good reasons, while CSM uses his for eeevvvillll. Even the tall thing. CSM is so rattled he lights another cigarette and D. Roy I as Bill Mulder keeps on turning the knife, then he turns back into Roy Thinnes and tells CSM he is dying of lung cancer. Not a big shock there, considering that he smokes like a chimney, but CSM denies it, saying that D. Roy I just wants to save his own life, by which I’m guessing that CSM thinks that D. Roy I wants to exchange his healing powers for escape.

We get a shot of the outside of the prison and the camera pulls down to reveal the man who escaped from Mulder and Scully, who morphs into the Schwarzenalien. Holy snapping arseholes – where is this going? He’s even brought his own icepick to the party! He gets let in to the prison, only to discover that D. Roy I is no longer in residence. Dun DUNNN!!!

Hospital, in Providence, Rhode Island. We’re at Teena Mulder’s bedside, and Mulder is getting some bad news from her doctor about substantial blood loss during the stroke, which has put pressure on her brain. Mulder asks if she will regain consciousness, but the doctor is doubtful. Mulder’s been crying and his face looks all swollen and awful. I knew I needed to bring Kleenex for this episode. He closes the door, sits down next to his mother, picks up her hand and puts it on his face and starts to cry again.

Mulder pulls himself together and leans in the corridor outside her hospital room, only to hear the flick of a cigarette lighter. He turns to see Old Smokey in the corridor. Continuing his fine record of hospital misbehaviour, he bails Smokey up and sticks his gun in his face. Smokey cracks a smart remark (see, told you he was Mulder’s real dad) so Mulder pulls the cigarette out of Smokey’s mouth and says: “I should shoot you here, but they’d probably save you.” Smokey tells him to do it. Mulder gets even more upset and says: “Or maybe put a bullet through your brain so you’ll be bedridden for the rest of your life like my mother!” Smokey then asks how Teena is and Mulder says: “What do you care?” CSM then says: “I’ve known your mother since before you were born, Fox.” William B. Davis does a great job of putting an insinuating little spin on that line. Mulder is unimpressed by Smokey’s squirming around and doesn’t believe him when he says that he wasn’t looking for anything, but that Teena was. He’s lying of course. He admitted in the scene with Teena that he was the one who had asked to meet her. Mulder calls him a liar, but then Smokey drops the Samantha clue to distract him. A nurse then breaks up this heartfelt family reunion, and Mulder moves back, concealing his gun from her. The nurse knows that something’s going on, but eventually leaves. Mulder continues interrogating CSM, but he tells Mulder that the man who had the information about Samantha has disappeared. Yeah, right. Mulder tells Smokey he has what he wants, but Smokey bluffs him by saying he doesn’t want anything, except to see how Teena’s doing. Smokey then heads on down to the nurse’s station to make inquiries.

And we’re back at the J. Edgar Hoover building. It’s 11.21pm again, and Scully’s got her spectacles on and has found multiple records for Jeremiah Smith through the Social Security Administration. She’s sitting in a darkened office in front of a computer screen and you’d think someone with a medical degree would know how bad that is for your eyes. I’m just sayin’. Holy cow! All of these Jeremiah Smiths are identical! Scully tries to phone Mulder, but he’s sitting somewhere out of mobile phone range, and it looks like he’s eating sunflower seeds. Drink. It looks like some sort of car park. All of a sudden, X appears from the shadows and asks: “Do you have it?” Mulder says: “Yes.” X then demands that Mulder give it to him, but Mulder refuses. X says that it’s of no value to Mulder, but Mulder is not swayed by this argument. After all, it was in Mulder’s house (I’m assuming Bill would have left it to him considering Teena’s declaration she would never return to it), so it’s Mulder’s to keep if he wants. What right does X have to it? I’ll see you in court, homey. Mulder tries to get X to admit that what he’s found is a weapon to use against the Mighty Morphin’ Power Aliens, but X is determined to remain mysterious although he does admit that a gunshot won’t do. He menaces Mulder, telling him that he will be killed for the icepick. I don’t understand why it’s such a singular weapon – it doesn’t look that hard to reverse-engineer. Mulder tries to get X to admit that the date for colonisation is set, but X is having none of that and demands the weapon again. Mulder says no, and I don’t blame him. X is a complete arsehole. As Mulder turns to walk away, X punches him in the back of the head (ouch!). They fight, and Mulder does pretty well against a trained assassin for a guy who hasn’t slept for two days, but eventually X starts to win, so Mulder pulls his gun, prompting X to do the same. It’s a stand-off. Mulder tells X that if he shoots him, he’ll never find it and X responds that he ought to shoot him anyway. I’m guessing Mulder got a couple of good hits in. X tells Mulder he’s a dead man. Like that’s ever stopped Mulder. For Gawd’s sake, he even came back after being buried for three months in Season 8. But of course X is not privy to this information, although I am.

Casa du Scully, 1.12am. That’s some overtime. Scully’s about to make a phone call, but someone’s knock, knock, knocking on her door. She checks the time – how rude to visit at this hour! I hope she gives whoever it is a piece of her mind! She asks who it is and the visitor claims to be Jeremiah Smith and asks to be let in. Scully is taking no chances, so she draws her gun and sidles up to the door, peeking through the spy-hole thingy. Hee, she’s so short she has to stand on tippy-toe. Not that I can talk. I think we’re probably the same height. Scully opens the door and makes him come in with his hands up. He tells her that he has important information that her partner has been seeking. Why is he at Scully’s place then? Is he a shipper – did he expect Mulder to be there half-naked and smelling raunchy? Or have I been reading too much lurid fan-fiction? You be the judge. Distinguished Roy tells Scully that the man she spoke to before, thinking it was him, was an impostor. Scully’s phone rings. That better be important to be calling at this time of night. Of course, it’s Mulder. He’s sporting a split lip and he tells her he’s been up with his mother. Scully tells him that Distinguished Roy is with her and that he needs to talk to Mulder. Mulder tells her that they’re looking for DR and that he wants her to meet him off the I95 on Bond Mill Road.

Scully and Distinguished Roy drive up to what seems to be an abandoned sawmill. I don’t know why Mulder wants her to meet him there, but if I try to make too much sense of a Mytharc episode, I’m in line for an aneurysm myself. Mulder is skulking about and calls out to Scully. He tells Scully to move away from DR and to come stand behind him. Distinguished Roy appears to be a little insulted by Mulder’s precautions and says that he comes to him at great risk and means no harm. Mulder has the alien icepick of death and won’t let go of it. Scully says that DR knows about Samantha and DR tells Mulder that it was him at the restaurant who healed the people. Scully asks how, and DR says he will explain everything to her. Sure you will. That would be a first for this show. Mulder wants Distinguished Roy to come with him to see his mother, presumably to heal her. Just as Distinguished Roy nods agreement, another car pulls up and they are caught dead in the headlights. This can’t be good. Crap. It’s the Schwarzenalien and he has his own alien icepick of death. DR tells Mulder that the Schwarzenalien is here to kill him. Mulder and Scully look confused as the Schwarzenalien comes closer and closer…

To be continued…..MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAH

Episode 3×17 – “Pusher”

Written by Vince Gilligan

Recap written by Adrienne (aka Starbucket)

We fade in on lettuce. Yes, you heard me. Read me. Whatever. Lettuce. Or, as I pronounce it in my head, thanks to an episode of the underappreciated series Ed, “LeToose”. Is this the episode that solves the age-old debate of iceberg vs. romaine? Maybe, but I doubt it. The camera’s moving. Oh. We’re actually in the produce aisle of a market, and we’re following a mid-30ish guy in navy blue sweatpants past various foodstuffs. He picks up some vegetable dip here and some V8 Juice there as the captions tell us, helpfully, that we’re in the Mt. Foodmore Supermarket in Loudun County, Virginia. As Mark Snow’s Music of Mostly Curiosity But Ultimately Impending Doom tinkles in the background, Sweatpant Man stocks up on cans of Carbo-Boost, which is not only on sale, but features a lovely and, I’m sure, steroid-infested arm flexing on the label. Guy loves his Carbo-Boost. Maybe it’s the sweet 47¢ per can deal that entices him so. Or not, since he seems to be loading up on just about every energy-boosting drink in the aisle, whether or not it’s on sale. As Sweatpant Man fills his little shopping basket with cans of Carbo-Boost, a smokin’ but fairly obvious law enforcement type comes around the corner and stealthily examines a box of off-brand Animal Crackers as he watches our guy out of the corner of his lovely brown eye. He subtly-but-not-really follows him to the register, and Sweatpant Guy gets in line behind Curtis from 24. No, really. It’s really him. Guy had to be stationed somewhere before he made it up to CTU, right?

Anyway, SPM picks up a copy of the World Weekly Informer and long-time fans of the show giggle as they see a badly drawn portrait of Fluky the Fluke Worm on the cover, along with a caption that decries, “Depravity Rampant on Hit TV Show” and showing a picture of a scantily clad Jennifer Aniston. Just kidding, but what a foreshadow that would be, eh? With the lawsuit and the sexual innuendo? Anyone? Bueller? Anyway, SPM laughs at the absurdity of the Flukeman – Hey! You have no idea how real he was, buddy? Wait til you’re just sittin’ in a porta-potty, mindin’ your own bidniss, when t hat thing shoves a scolex up your ass! Then, perhaps you’ll realize how true that cover story is! – and takes a gander out the window. He notices a cop’s patrol car enter the parking lot, then sighs, “Let’s get the show on the road.” Sweatpant Man rips off the back of Curtis’ jacket to reveal a tiny little FBI logo as he and his hot cohort spring into action, grabbing our guy and smooshing his face down onto the moving conveyor belt. Police brutality! Police brutality! No one seems to care except for the other FBI agents, who run from all corners of the store toward our cuffed Carbo-Boost buyer. Wow, what’d this guy do?

A big, burly guy in a standard police-issue trenchcoat and Burt Reynolds mustache enters the store and leans over Sweatpant Guy, asking him if he’s Pusher. Whew. Thank goodness he’s got a name that’s easier to type than Sweatpant Guy. Pusher replies, “You must be Frank Burst,” and I’ve never heard a more appropriate name for a character. The guy’s a tree trunk. And Pusher agrees with me, because he thinks that Burst is a great name, too. Great and mildly psycho minds think alike, eh? Burst tells Agent Collins, aka Smokin’ Guy, to read Pusher his rights, and he does as Curtis drags him out of the market, basket of Carbo-Boost forgotten in the uproar. Apparently, this cat’s one bad mother (shut yo’ mouth!), because Burst is demanding leg shackles and a car with a cage and stuff. Is he the next Hannibal Lecter, or Shaft? Let’s find out, shall we? Rows of cop cars drive along the Virginia streets (although I suspect it’s Vancouver. Hm. Don’t know why. Just a feeling.) as Burst asks Pusher what his real name is. Pusher does not oblige. Then Pusher starts talking about how the deputy driving has a stunning blue uniform. The man sounds like a Project Runway castoff as he goes on and on about how soothing that blue is, and the name for that particular shade of blue is “cerulean.” Cerulean Blue. Burst is all, “yeah, we get it. It’s a nice shade of blue.” But Pusher insists, “Cerulean Blue. Cerulean Blue is like a summer breeze.” Burst tells “Mr. Blackwell” to put a sock in it, and I must be too young because I totally don’t get that reference. [Ed. note: Mr. Blackwell is that guy that puts out an annual "worst dressed" list of ladies that, like, Cher is always on. Which…Cher is awesome. Suck it, Blackwell.—Lurkey] Anyway, the deputy is staring out the window as this huge blue Mack truck looms large. But then, like a breeze, it just disappears. The deputy, not seeing the truck, pulls out in front of it and the car gets smashed like a pancake. And, get this, the truck has a logo on the front, and that logo is Cerulean. Oooh.

Aw, credits. Yay. They’re so 90s, yet still kinda creepy. Exactly what I look for in, uh, credits.

The first thing we see is a Cerulean Blue Uniform-clad dead guy lying on the street with a gushing head wound. Lovely. Then, as we pull back, we realize it’s one of Mulder’s awesome slideshows! Yay! But, wait. That’s not Mulder’s sandpaper over honey voice I hear, but Burst’s. Damn, you, Burst! He tells Mulder and Scully that he was knocked unconscious and Pusher escaped because the deputy, in his last dying breath, unlocked Pusher’s cuffs and let him out of the car. Dude. Burst does not look good. < /SPAN>He’s all bruised and battered looking. Nice job, makeup department. And Scully’s wearing red. Bad job, costume department. Don’t you know that redheads should never wear red? Believe me. When I went red, I had to rethink my entire wardrobe. Burst tells them that Pusher cold-called him about a month ago, confessing to a bunch of deaths that the police had ruled as suicides. But Pusher knew stuff about the case that no one else did, and that’s why Mulder immediately jumps to psychic transmission. Just kidding. He’s actually uncharacteri stically silent for this scene as Scully takes the lead. Ooh, she must have bitchslapped him in bed last night for him to be this quiet. Heh. Anyway, Burst continues, telling them about the Cerulean Blue truck and how Pusher went on and on about it until Mulder finally speaks. “So, you think Pusher somehow talked him into doing this? He willed him into doing that?” Did someone not study their lines closely enough this morning, David? Because that would be pretty shoddy writing, in my opinion. And I don’t blame writer Vince Gilligan, because as far as I can see, the man can do no wrong (see every other script he’s written, except maybe Roadrunners, for examples). Anyway, Scully and Burst are all, “Willed him? How?” Mulder doesn’t have a chance to answer before Burst switches slides to one of the words “NIN OR” written in blood on the side of the patrol car. Maybe the guy’s a Nine Inch Nails fan. OR not. Burst can’t figure it out, but Mulder takes one look at it and heads over to the slide machine to flip the image around. It’s still kinda backwards, but we can see more clearly that it spells the word “Ronin”. So, apparently, he’s a fan of Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno movies. We seem to have more in common than ever. I just wish I could push people into doing things. I’d never have to do laundry again. Mulder immediately recognizes the word, and defines it as “A Samurai without a master.” Because he’s smart and well-read? Of course not, silly. He gets his knowledge from movies, just like everyone else. In this case, it’s from Yojimbo. “But what does it mean?” Scully asks, even though he totally just told her what it meant. But he gets what she’s trying to say: “It means I know 10 to 1 what this guy’s got stacked on the back of his toilet.” To which I ask, do people really stack magazines on the back of their toilet? Because, if so, I never want to borrow them. Ever. Mulder, seemingly just seconds later, slaps down an issue of American Ronin, which appears to be a magazine geared towards knife and gun nuts alike. Great. The guy’s a Republican. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Although I guess we’re not as alike as I thought.

Oh, wait. It’s later. Burst is gone, and Mulder and Scully are thumbing through issues of a magazine that exists only because middle aged white men like to fantasize about being Japanese or in the Army or something. Holly, a doe-eyed, pixie stick of an FBI, um, assistant? brings them more issues of the magazine. Mulder digs into the stack, characteristically oblivious (otherwise lovingly known as “focused”) as Scully notices that little Holly (named after Vince’s girlfriend, natch) has a shiner. Holly explains that she was mugged in Georgetown, which is kinda sad because when I did a semester in DC in college, Georgetown was, like, the coolest and most laid back place ever. Scully’s all, “Aww,” and kicks Mulder under the table. Mulder’s all, “Huh?” then asks if they caught the guy. Holly’s all, “Uh, no. Do they ever?” then, because she works for the FBI and isn’t a total idiot, adds, “No offense.” She walks away as Scully begins to tell Mulder about that time when she was mugged in New York and then Mulder shares a story about… just kidding. You know these crazy kids never get personal! Until, y’know, all the sex starts.

They go right back to the case without giving Holly and her poor black eye another thought. Scully asks what they’re looking for and Mulder’s not sure but “let’s waste taxpayers’ money, anyway, because I’m in the market for a used AK-47.” When she asks him what he thinks is going on (dangerous question, Scully), he tells her that suggestion is very powerful and that “the science of hypnosis is predicated on it, as are most TV commercials.” And most video games, as you’d know if you ever played the original PC X-Files game that had subliminal messages that popped up every few minutes to exact fear and panic from the player. Which, lemme tell ya, is exactly what I want to be feeling when I play a video game. Anyway, Scully argues, kind of smugly, that “inducing someone to buy hair color is a little different than inducing them to drive in front of a speeding truck.” I don’t know. Those stupid “You’re Worth It” L’Oreal commercials make me want to drive in front of a speeding truck sometimes. Mulder smugly replies that the mechanism is basically the same, even if it’s stronger in this case. I mean – well, he means – the guy calls himself “Pusher.” “Can’t we take that to mean that he pushes his will onto other people?” Then Scully counters, asking why Pusher would crash a car he was in, and Mulder counters her counter with the possibility that he really didn’t want to go to jail. As they argue – eh-hem, I mean discuss – they get closer and closer and when he’s done talking, they stare at each other, breathing heavy, until Scully finally breaks the tension and launches at Mulder’s mouth with her own. Oh, wait. That’s every other show on television. But not this one. What really happens is that Mulder finds an ad in one of those magazines and the sexual tension is dissipated. Whew. Or, damn, depending on your shipper/noromo status.

The ad reads, “I solve problems. Osu.” Scully guesses Ohio State University, which I would have guessed, too, because I had a friend in high school who ended up graduating from there. But Mulder notices that the area code on the phone number is Virginia, not Ohio, so that can’t be it. He also mentions that he’s seen the ad in every magazine since April, 1994, which would have been good to know two hours ago, so they needn’t've wasted all this time! Anyway, he gets his handy dandy Japanese-English dictionary down off the shelf and looks “Osu” up. What a coink-i-dink! It means “to push.” I think we’ve found our smoking gun.

That night, Mulder and Scully are parked on the Beltway Commuter Lot in Falls Church, VA, which is a stone’s throw from where I was living in Arlington, but oddly doesn’t look familiar at all. They’re there because they ran a trace on the phone number in the ad and it came from a phone booth in this parking lot. Oh, how quaint. Phone booths. I remember them. The disposable cell phone of the 90s. Good times. But back to the parking lot. Inside their FBI-requisitioned car, Mulder calls the phone booth on his cell while Scully snoozes in the passenger seat. No luck so far. With the calling, I mean. I’m sure he’s gotten plenty lucky with her by now. He hangs up the phone and caresses her cheek with his pinky to wake her up. Aw. She gasps. He tells her she drooled on him. She apologizes before realizing that he was joking, then, once she does, looks kind of embarrassed. It’s a very cute moment. Mulder launches right in, telling her there’s no luck here or at any of the other pay phones that Burst has staked out. Just as they’re about to call it a night, the pay phone ring s. And Mulder isn’t calling it! Gasp! They hop out of the car and full sprint to catch the phone. I wonder how many times they had to shoot that. If it was more than three, then they probably didn’t need to hit the gym that day.

Mulder picks up the phone as Scully leans in close (hee) to listen in. Pusher’s on the line, asking them if they’re just going to stay in the car necking all night. They’re like, “What? That – that’s just crazy! We w-weren’t –” but he’s all, “Cut the crap, Mulder. I totally saw you! But don’t bother hunting around for me. I’m far away.” Scully calls someone, I’m guessing the elusive Danny, to run a trace on the call while Mulder keeps him talking. Pusher is questioning Mulder’s relationship with Scully, but asking questions that no one would ask, like “do you work well together?” Any real person, bad guy or good, would be all, “so, do you sleep together?” Or, at the very least, use air quotes when saying “work.” Except he’s on the phone. Shut up. Mulder asks for his name, but Pusher calls him a G-man and tells him he needs to follow his bread-crumb trail to prove his worth. I love the whole G-man thing, because later, when Mulder calls Scully a G-woman, it’s totally just like in Redux when he’s watching her undress in her bedroom. For those who know what I’m talking about, it’s a fairly smile-inducing memory. For those who don’t, Ha! He watched her strip and you’ve never seen it! Nya, nya! Anyway, no names for Mulder. Mulder’s not having fun playing Pusher’s game, but does so anyway. Pusher tells him to “let [his] fingers do the walking,” then hangs up. Scully can’t get a complete trace because of some “digital scrambler” type thing, which leaves me impressed that they even know what “digital” is back in 1995. So, what does “let your fingers do the walking” mean, you ask? Scully suggests the phone book, but because she’s always wrong and he’s always right, Mulder is all, “No, silly. It’s the phone.” I’m not sure how he made that leap, but that’s why he’s got a photographic memory and an IQ of 180, while I can’t even get my thesis started six months after I finished school. Scully calls Danny back to get the last number dialed from that phone, and it turns out to be some random driving range. “So, he’s a killer and a golfer,” she snarks as Mulder hangs up. He asks if that rings a bell, and I’m left wondering if this some vague reference to OJ Simpson. Have many other golfers committed homicide? OJ is a golfer, right? Wouldn’t it make more sense to be calling some kind of football playing place, since OJ played football? I don’t know. But Mulder clearly knows exactly what’s going on, and is about to sprint back to the car when he practically purrs, “Let’s go, G-woman.” She looks at him suggestively, and Mulder makes a mental note to call her that again later when they get into bed.

Apparently that driving range was far away, because here we are the following morning and our intrepid duo still hasn’t caught up with him. In fact, Pusher is just casually hitting some golf balls with Asian tourists and pronouncing “good shot” as though he were, I dunno, Canadian, or something. Weird. He tells them that the ball he’s using has a core of uranium. Yeah, right. Oh, I get it. Joke. Heh. Also, it “gets up there like Sputnik”, which I find hilarious because the first time I saw this, when I was 15, I had absolutely NO idea what Sputnik was. Ah, the gullibility of youth. Anyway, he hits the ball, then pumps his fist, then notices several heavily armed SWAT members in camouflage 300 yards away hiding behind trees. Wow, he’s got good vision. He konichiwas the tourists and takes off running as other SWAT members surround the building. One of them finds Pusher and points his gigantic gun with the little tiny red laser light at him. Pusher’s half in shadow, his hands raised in surrender, as he tells the cop to relax. Over and over. SWAT Man obliges, lowering the gun, taking off his helmet and mask as Pusher calls him Colin (so, 1. Pusher knows his name? and 2. What a cute name. Wonder if he’s British and prone to playing droll aristocratic hotties?) and soothes him into a hypnotic state. Pusher steps into the light and my goodness, he’s sweating like crazy. He picks up a tin can full of gasoline (How do I know this? Because the can reads “Gasoline” in big yellow letters, that’s why!) and asks Colin if he’ll do something for him. Colin looks confused, but obliges.

Outside, Mulder and Scully finally arrive at the scene, with Scully in her massive brown overcoat and both of them wielding their firearms. Scully notices Colin, whose name is actually Collins, walking out of the building, soaking wet, holding the can of gas, and trying to light a match while crying. Eeshk. This will not end well. Mulder, Scully, and Burst approach the officer slowly, kind of in disbelief over what he seems to be about to do. Collins screams, “Stop me!” as Mulder tries to convince him to put the lighter down. Scully runs off somewhere, presumably to find some water or a blanket or a fire extinguisher, or something, as Collins finally gets the lighter to flame up. He shakes his head, struggling against himself, as Mulder prepares for the inevitable by taking off his coat. It’s about to get hot out here. Collins goes up like a Christmas tree for a second before Mulder rushes at him with his now ruined Brooks Brothers coat, and Scully douses them both with the retrieved extinguisher. Burst just stands there in horror. Way to be proactive, there, Burst. Mulder and Scully pat Collins down and man, he’s burned up bad. Still alive, though, although I’m not sure that’s a good thing, and muttering, “light it up” over and over. Burst finally springs into action, calling in a burn unit, as Mulder hears a car horn honking insistently nearby.

He leaves the scene and heads over to a white Cadillac parked alone in the adjacent lot, and yanks open the door, gun drawn. Pusher’s in there, looking wiped out and leaning on the horn. He’s muttering, “light it up” over and over, just like Collins. When he notices Mulder, he smiles at him tiredly and snarks, “Betcha five bucks I get off.” Is that Canadian or American bucks, there, Pusher? Because $5 Canadian won’t get you nearly as far, especially in 1995. Ironically, if this happened today, Modell would be specifying Canadian money to get more bang for his buck.

Later, presumably days later, we’re in the Loudon County Courthouse and Pusher is at a hearing for all of these supposed murders. As he rattles off his full name and address (Robert Patrick Modell, for those not in the know), I notice that his lawyer looks like a poorly dressed version of Janet Reno. How unfortunate for her. The judge is sitting at this rinky-dink little table instead of on one of those big bench things, which makes me wonder if all the money budgeted for set design went into the hospital scene that’s at the end of the episode. This crew couldn’t just use the ER set like every other show on television, since they’re in Canada. They probably had to use the Dia gnosis Murder set. Yuck. Anyway, back to the scene. Mulder’s on the stand, trying in vain to explain how Pusher, née Modell, pushes people into doing stuff like killing themselves, while Scully just watches on, her head in her hands. ‘When will he learn not to share his harebrained theories in public?’ she muses. When the judge asks Modell why he confessed to all these murders, he just kinda shrugs, “I was drugged.” Just kidding. He tells them, through his lawyer, that the confession phone call was made as a drunken prank and that he knew crime scene details because he just happened to be in the area. Then Mark Snow’s Violin s of People Being Pushed fades in as we can see the judge begin to waver. Mulder can see this too, and watches helplessly as Modell pushes the judge into letting him go. Mulder’s all, “Holy fuck! He’s doing it right now!”

Later, after the case is dismissed, Modell approaches Mulder and his posse (that would be Scully and Burst, since the trio are so tight nowadays) and demands his five dollars. Mulder moves to retrieve his cash as Modell smiles smugly at Burst, who gives him one hell of an evil eye back. Scully’s just, sorta, “whatever” as Mulder opens his wallet. “Hey, your shoe’s untied,” Mulder teases and Modell looks down. “Made ya look,” Mulder continues, and boy does he look hot in this scene, nay, this episode, “How do you do it?” Mulder pulls out the $5 (American, in case you were curious) and fakes like he’s gonna give it to Modell, but then pulls it back. Modell smiles and walks away. Doesn’t he know Mulder’s too cheap to get rid of $5 that easily? You didn’t even bring him a pizza. But don’t sweat it, Pusher. You may be out $5, but at least you’ve got your freedom. For now. As Modell continues out of the building, Burst chases after him for about .5 seconds, shouting, “I know your name now! I know where you live!” but Mulder just shakes his head like, “it’s no use.”

Even later, as Mulder works out his frustrations with Scully in the bedroom – I mean, at the shooting range – Scully begins to tell him more about their suspect. But Mulder interjects, in that frustratingly charming way, and tells her what she’s about to tell him, “Let me guess. He was an average student, he attended an average community college, he did an average stint in the military.” She’s mildly impressed, although probably used to him doing this, and retorts, “Which branch of service?” To which Mr. Know-it-all replies, “Not his first choice. He wanted to be a Navy Seal and then he wanted to be an Army Special Forces Green Beret. Promptly washed out of both, though not for lack of intelligence. He ended up being a supply clerk at Fort Bragg. Served two years, general discharge.” By now, hopefully she suspects that he already did his own research on Pusher, which makes him a TOTAL ASS for not sharing it with her before. Then she finally surprises him, telling Mulder that Pusher tried to get into the FBI but, surprise! didn’t pass the psych screening. He told a bunch of lame lies, like he was really a ninja. Oh, yeah, I believe that. In the words of Wayne and Garth: Not. Mulder argues that ninjas can cloud the minds of their opponents, just like Pusher did when he put the whammy on the judge in that courtroom. Scully replies, in one of the single greatest lines ever in the history of this series, “Please explain to me the scientific nature of The Whammy.” I’m just going to give you a second to let the brilliance of that line sink in. Done? Okay, so basically, the rest of the conversation is about figuring out that this Whammy phenomenon is recent, because if he could always do it, why isn’t he in the FBI? Hm. Good question. So, his pushing is recent, say, in the past two years? Which is, coincidentally, the time span of the murders. And how does he do it? I’ll let Mulder explain that one: “I don’t know, maybe, maybe it’s some mental aspect of some eastern martial art. You know, the temporary suppressio n of the brain’s chemistry, produced by a specific timbre or cadence in Modell’s voice. His voice seems to be the key.” Yeah.

So, meanwhile, Pusher is walking right through the doors of the FBI but isn’t really because I’ve been on the FBI tour and that isn’t the FBI. Though it’s a pretty good attempt. Anyway, he has a slip of paper sticking out of his pocket that reads PASS, and walks right past Dave Grohl and the guards and right through the metal detectors. Glad to know the FBI security is this top notch. No wonder they’re continually getting their asses handed to them. One thing I do like about the guy who plays Modell is that he’s got the coolest voice. Very whammy-able. Not quite sandpaper over honey, but pretty good, nonetheless. Modell is heading towards the Computer Records department (How archaic is the FBI that, in 1995, they had to differentiate between paper and computer records?) and strides confidently down the more familiar hallways of the X-Files universe. He enters the records office to find Holly, who apparently works in both the Research and Personnel departments. Maybe they’re short-staffed today. Pusher immediately puts the Whammy on her, asking for her help in finding some stuff out as he closes all the blinds in the office. He leans in behind her as she types her way into the personnel files, even though he mouse would be a far more likely tool to use. A window pops up on the screen, which reads, “Warning. The contents of personnel files are the sole property of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No access without the express authorization of the director.” Why would they have this kind of warning on a system that, theoretically, can only be accessed from inside the FBI? I think those people pretty much already know that those files are confidential. Duh. But I guess maybe your mother could stop by the office for a visit, sneak into the personnel department, and type her way into the files because she has a hankerin’ to find out if that nice-looking young man in the basement is married. But believe me, Mom, those computers don’t know jack, because they list him as single even though Duchovny, to the fru strations of several million people, gave Mulder an old wedding ring in a future episode. As a joke. Ha ha ha… NO. NOT FUNNY. Anyway, Holly, who works for the FBI, bypasses the warning and hands the reins over to Pusher, who pulls up a specific file. He asks Holly for a printout and a cup of coffee, which is only mildly chauvinistic of him, but then notices her bruise from the mugging. He rubs it lightly, telling her that he wishes he could avenge her. He’d make him pay. Which is kinda sweet of Pusher to say, actually. Aside from the fact that he’s a lunatic serial killer.

Holly just sort of stares blankly at Pusher for a moment as Skinner walks by the office and notices the drawn blinds. Ah, Skinner. I heart you so. You look so much like my big brother, it’s creepy, so I find it personally revolting when people ask me if I think you’re hot. Nonetheless, you’re awesome. He enters the office to see Pusher and Holly standing over a printout, and he gets instantly defensive. “May I help you?” he asks Pusher. He notices that Pusher was accessing confidential files and puts him in a headlock, slamming him against a filing cabinet. Pusher makes some refere nce to Mel Cooley, who I think is a bald guy from TV or something (yet another reference that I’m too young for), as Skinner warns him to shut up. [Ed. note: Yup. Mel Cooley was the bald, bespectacled, persnickety boss on the Dick Van Dyke Show. Well. I'll just walk myself on back to the Retirement Castle. –Lurkey] Pusher tells Holly that Skinner’s the one who mugged her while Skinner’s just trying to get her to call security. Holly, still officially Whammied, pulls out a can of mace and squirts Skinner in the eye. Pusher escapes as Holly starts kicking Skinner in the gut with remarkable strength for such a small girl.

Moments later, Holly’s all doe eyes and apologies as she explains how she doesn’t know what came over her. Scully’s in Skinner’s office now, too, along with several members of security. Skinner, clearly embarrassed that he was just beaten up by a girl, shoos the other agents out of the office until it’s just the three of them. He closes the door and Scully launches into her interview spiel with the same gusto that she normally uses for orphaned demon children or baseball-loving, liver-needing, pre- Indy 4 Shia LeBouf types. Holly explains that she was watching herself beat Skinner up without controlling her own body, kind of like what those worms in Ice did, but this isn’t mentioned because continuity is in no way t his show’s strong suit. Mulder quietly enters the room, mumbling to himself, “Do we have to pretend to care about her again?” all whiny before realizing that she’s now involved in the Pusher case. His face brightens. Mulder asks to speak with The Skinman outside and Scully tags along. Mulder tells them about Pusher coming right through security in the same disbelieving tone I used in my head earlier when describing that scene. Skinner remarks, “and you’re saying this mysterious phenomenon is the same reason I have a size seven heel mark on my face?” Heh. Yup. Scully agrees with Mulder ( what?!), but (whew) isn’t sure how Pusher does it.

Skinner asks Mulder why Pusher is so interested in him, but we all know the answer to that question: It’s always about Mulder. Duh. Skinner makes a point to say that Mulder’s file is the only one accessed (take a note for later), and Scully’s all worried because now Pusher knows where he lives. “You can stay at my place, Mulder,” she offers suggestively as Skinner rolls his eyes, “I just changed the sheets,” she continues, but then tries to cover when she realizes that Skinner’s still with them, “… on the sofa bed, I mean.” She blushes.

Skinner orders them to put a warrant out on Pusher for criminal trespass, and the very next scene is SWAT busting down Pusher’s apartment door. I guess this level of efficiency makes up for dropping the ball back at the golf course, although it’s dark now, so maybe they’re just as bad as before. SWAT swarm through the empty apartment before Mulder and Scully enter. Svengali is appropriately playing on the television (he could hypnotize people, right?) as Mulder sticks the aforementioned warrant to Sven’s face. A gun-toting badass informs them that, indeed, the apartment is empty, and he’s told to search neighboring buildings because “Modell likes to watch from a distance.” Burst makes himself known now, and tells them that he’ll talk to all the other tenants. Who, I’m sure, will invite him in and show him to the smooth-talkin’ killer in the kitchen. As Burst heads out the door, Mulder snaps on the latex (which he knows Scully loves), and decides to help himself to a midnight snack. He pulls open the fridge door to find a massive amount of Carbo-Boost drinks. If these are the same ones from the teaser, he must have escaped from the cop car and gone back to the store. Guy really likes his Carbo-Boost. Mulder informs us, helpfully, that the flavor that Pusher prefers is “Mango Kiwi Tropical Swirl”. Yum. < /SPAN>Now we know we’re dealing with a madman. Oh, wait. I didn’t think that last line. It came out of Mulder’s mouth. Oops.

Morning. Or a few minutes later, depending on how important lighting really is to you. Mulder’s looking at Modell’s astonishingly bad book collection (which includes titles such as The Modular Brain and Living By Zen) as Scully’s on the phone doing… something medical. She hangs up and holds up a bottle of Tegratol (forgive me if I spelled that wrong, because it’s so not worth looking up), explaining that Modell has “temporal lobe epilepsy” and has had it for about a year. They guess that it was caused by a tumor and Mulder launches into his “theory” (air quotes necessary) that “Modell’s suggestive ability is a form of psychokinesis brought on by the brain tumor”. Scully kinda buys it, but argues that Modell must have one helluva headache, or as she puts it, “he simply wouldn’t be well enough to play these cat-and-mouse games.” There’s a joke here about Mulder playfully chasing Scully around the couch a la cat and mouse, but I can’t quite get the bat off my shoulder on that one. Anyway, this sets Mulder theorizing that Modell didn’t want to be captured at the driving range, but that he was too sick to escape. Doesn’t it suck that his random theories which he seems to pull out of his ass always end up being right? I mean, like, 98.9% of the time? And, on that note, do you know why I’m referencing other episodes like every other sentence? Becau se it’s driving me nuts. Even if it’s kinda fun. Well, we all know where this is going. Something about bangs and whimpers as the phone rings.

Burst, back now, picks up the phone while cops scramble to get the tracer. Mulder picks up the bedroom line as Scully sits down on the bed beside him (They’re close together? In the bedroom? Is that some kind of message, Chris Carter? If so, IT’S TOO VAGUE!). Modell asks for the duo, and Mulder answers that they’re there. Hey, it’s Curtis working the trace! Cool! Anyway, Curtis motions to Burst that the trace is up and running and Burst tries to keep Modell on the phone long enough to get a signal. Modell starts talking about Burst’s siz e and weight and how he’s “built like a Mack truck”, which doesn’t sound as good as my “the guy’s a tree” from before, but whatever. The point is, Mulder and Scully listen helplessly as Pusher basically wills Burst into a heart attack. Mulder wants Burst to hang up but he’s determined to get a trace. Ooh, there he goes. Down like a… tree. Beeeeeeeeep. Scully is held back by the SWAT guys, who apparently like to watch people have heart attacks in front of them, as Mulder picks up the phone. Modell wants a worthy adversary, and has picked Mulder based on his FBI file. And because, as I may have mentioned before, it’s ALL about Mul der.

Mulder calls Modell on his illness and he shrugs it off with “everybody dies” before they hurl clichés at each other in a way that is both less clever and less cutesy than in The Unnatural three years later. Mulder implores Modell to tell them where he is, and he willingly gives them the phone number that Burst just died for. It’s just a pay phone, he tells them, and he’ll be gone in a minute. Curtis is shocked – shocked! – that Modell just killed Burst for nothing. Have you not been paying attention, Curtis? Modell just killed his adversary because he wasn’t worthy! Hello? It’s kind a what he’s been going on and on about all episode. Anyway, Mulder tells Modell that he’s a “sick bastard’ for killing Burst just as Modell hangs up. Mulder tosses the phone on the ground with a loud thunk as Curtis shows him where the pay phone is on a nifty computerized map (this must be before Mapquest, right?). Right by the hospital where that Tegratol was prescribed. Finally, Scully has some lines. She tells him that must be where Pusher gets his regular treatments.

More SWAT, this time surrounding Fairfax County Hospital. Wow, those SWAT extras are really getting a lot of face time today. Ooh, one of them points out a warm car, which turns out to be Modell’s. Mulder and Scully are hanging out in a van with Curtis as Scully finds out that Modell has a 2:30 MRI. Right now. So it really is daytime. My bad. Mulder wants to go in to the hospital on his own. Scully’s all worried, but Mulder’s explanation that one SWAT member can be turned against the others makes sense. Plus, it’s all about Mulder. Scully’s really not happy about this whole situation, but says nothing as Mulder gets loaded up with his little side-of-face camera and microphone, complete with tiny backpack! He jokes about getting the Playboy Channel before panning over to Scully, whose face says two things. 1. Really? Here? You’re talking about porn here? And 2. I don’t like this one bit. He tells her to smile, but knows how worried she is. He hands her his firearm, insisting that he doesn’t want to end up firing it at anyone except Modell. They hold hands for a moment and do that eye-talking thing before Mulder heads inside the hospital.

I love how he just walks into the hospital, all SWAT-geared out, while people are staring at him like he’s a total freak. Then he flashes his badge and tells people to go about their business, “as usual.” If I saw someone dressed like that, with his freaked-out expression, I’d be running for the nearest exit. But whatever. Mulder finds the MRI… area… as Curtis and Scully watch Mulder’s video feed. Ooh, two shots are fired and Mulder starts running. OF COURSE his camera goes out. Scully sprints for the door but then Mulder’s video feed returns. Dead bodies. That’s never good. At least none of them is Mulder. “It looks like the guard shot the technician and then shot himself.” The guard’s gun is missing. Mulder warns Curtis (whose character’s name is actually Brophy, but I like Curtis better) that Modell is armed, and he forwards that information on to the SWAT boys. As Mulder is passing Modell’s brain scan on the computer, Scully tells him to get closer so she can read it. Look at these two, eh? Communication, like, unspoken. Nice. Except, in this case, it’s spoken. So, they were right – it’s a tumor (Does anyone else have the urge to shout “It’s not a Tooomah” in an Ahnold voice? No? Just me? Okay…). Mulder’s sweating buckets as he discovers that – duh – Modell’s dying. Scully begs him to get out of there, but it’s no use. Modell has the guard’s gun to Mulder’s head. Dun. Dun. Duuuuun.

Scully runs into the hospital, Curtis trailing behind, trying to get her to at least put on a damn bullet-proof vest, woman! Who do you think you are, Jack Bauer? You don’t even have a man-bag! She hands off her weapon as the SWAT guys clear her for entry into the hallway. She enters one of the hospital rooms to find Mulder and Modell calmly sitting at a small table. They’re just… staring at each other. Uh, oh. Mulder’s been whammied. As Scully tells Modell how hopeless his situation really is, I can’t help but gasp in amazement at how the light catches her hair. It’s so pretty. I tried so hard to replicate that color and, lemme tell you, that shit is hard. Plus, I learned that my naturally dark brown hair grows REALLY fast. But that’s neither here nor there.

Scully notices the gun, placed between Modell’s resting hands, as she moves to sit down. Her eyes never leave the gun as Modell picks it up, blathering on about ninja warriors and nemeses and it all sounds very comic-book-y. Mulder’s expression can best be described as a cross between his panic face and what must be his constipation face. It’s a little funny, actually. Which it shouldn’t be because this scene both kicks ass and is hella tense. Modell tells Mulder that he’s trained to “disregard his own death” and basically challenges Mulder to a little game called Russian Roulette. A one in six chance to take out his enemy. M ulder picks up the gun, but Modell stops him, reminding him with fear in his voice – one pull. Mulder lifts the gun, all the while Scully imploring him to come to his damn senses and put the gun down. He’s not listening. As usual. He pulls the trigger, but the gun doesn’t go off. One in six. Now it’s Mulder’s turn, and this is where Scully starts to panic. She’s practically begging as Mulder doesn’t even think before pulling the trigger at his own forehead. Whew. No bullet there, either. Scully stands, shouting at Pusher, “Damn you!” Mulder grabs her arm and slowly points the gun at her. Ahh, there’s his panic face. Oh, and there’s hers, too. She’s all, “What the fuck??” as he practically begs her with his eyes to stop him. This has been mentioned a ton, but it means a lot when it’s harder for him to shoot her than it is to shoot himself. It says a lot about how he feels about her, as well as how little regard he has for his own life. But that’s an analysis for a more serious discussion. This is supposed to be fun and snarky, right? Anyway, Scully’s tearing up and Modell’s encouraging him to shoot her like she did him b ecause he “read it in her file”. Which – remember when I said to pay attention when Skinner mentioned that Mulder’s file was the only one accessed? Ever heard of a plot hole? Because I think we all just fell in a big one. Anyway, as Modell is ranting and Mulder is struggling, Scully checks herself out in the mirror over in front of her. Just kidding. She notices the fire alarm pull thingy and slowly backs up toward it. Mulder tells her to run while almost pulling the trigger. She succeeds in tripping the alarm, which snaps Mulder out of being whammied just enough to alter his aim, and he blows Modell away. Yeah! Modell’s down, Scully’s safe, and Mulder’s trying helplessly to unload the rest of the nonexistent bullets into Modell’s prone body. He’s really pissed. SWAT rush the room as Scully stares at Mulder, who stares at Modell. He sits down and hands her the gun, resting his face in his hands.

Later. Modell is hooked up to a ventilator with bandages all over his face. Apparently those nonexistent bullets hit something because it didn’t appear that he’d gotten shot in the head at all. Scully walks up to Mulder, explaining that Modell will never gain consciousness (wow, for a Medical Doctor, she sure can misdiagnose). Mulder explains that Modell had been refusing treatment because he liked his power so much he didn’t want the tumor taken out. Scully reaches for Mulder’s hand and suggests that Modell not take up another minute of their time. She lets go, and he follows her out of the room. The end. Finally! I’ve been working on this one for like three months! Next up? Kitsunegari. Groan.

Recap by Crass

What a great opening – I love a bit of nudity in my shows. Which is why I liked Californication so much, I suppose. Just let me pause this for a moment and enjoy the view. Aaaaahhhhh, that’s nice. Apparently it’s the George Washington University Extension Program – so what is it exactly that they’re extending? Enquiring minds want to know… Apparently sitting still and modelling like that is quite difficult. I can imagine the cramps. Still, I don’t have enough sympathy for this young man to want him to move just yet (how long can you pause DVDs without damage?). He’s rather a sight to behold – tanned skin, long, dark, curly hair, nice muscles…. sorry, I drifted off for a moment there. I’m now officially a dirty old woman. Moving on…

Oh, it really is an art class. There are lots of students beavering away at their interpretations of “Nude Man on a very small stool” and I take a moment to reflect how jealous I am of anyone with talent in the visual arts. I can’t even draw stick people well. Mark Snow’s Theme of Impending Creepiness is yawing about on the soundtrack, so I’m sure there will be some sort of reveal soon (I mean on top of the reveal we’ve already had…and now I’m just digging myself in deeper, aren’t I?). Now the camera has focused on a bug-eyed man with very short hair who seems to have a very different interpretation of the life drawing from everyone else. He’s a sweaty sort of individual who needs a shave and some very strong sort of soap. He looks as if he smells a bit. He has a rather odd way of holding his pencil (not that I’m an expert) and he is staring so intensely at the model that Nude Man on a very small stool is getting a bit creeped-out by it. Ugh, a close-up of his buggy eyes. I’m certain it’s not natural to have that much white showing and we’re so close in you can see the individual blood vessels. Yuck. Mark Snow gives us an audio prod and we see that Creepy Sweaty Guy is actually drawing some sort of gargoyle, and it’s clear that even the insane are much more artistically talented than I am. Sigh. CSG is working so intently on his drawing that he breaks the pencil, so he has to use his Exacto knife to resharpen it, but cuts his finger instead, causing blood to flow. He just looks at it for a moment, then goes right back to work, incorporating the blood into the picture. They call that mixed media, don’t they?

All of a sudden, the art class is over. The instructor covers up the model with a blanket (aaawwww) and tells everyone that they’re done for the night. Creepy Sweaty Guy throws all of his equipment into a wooden case and quickly puts on his coat. He’s in some sort of a hurry. He pushes past his classmates, ignoring them when they complain and the instructor and the model watch him leave. CSG’s outside now, pauses for a minute to look around furtively, then scurries off into the night. The camera pulls back and up and focuses on a stone gargoyle perched on the roof of the building.

Now we see an alleyway and there’s a hulking shadow on the wall, but fake-out! It’s only no-longer Nude model returning to his car. I don’t think there’s a woman alive who would be foolish enough to park in such a dark, deserted place, but I suppose if you’re young and muscular, or if you carry a gun, you probably wouldn’t think much about it. He’s about to get into the car (some sort of low-slung sporty thing, but a bit old), and he hears a noise. As he fumbles for his car-keys, we get a shot of someone’s hand, outlined in that blue-steel lighting that TV shows use for night. Ruh-roh, someone’s shoved an art pencil in the door lock of the car. I’d be really pissed off right now – parts for that sort of car are going to be hard to get and expensive. We see a sudden flash of Exacto knife, then a masculine scream (not girly). It’s so dark you can’t really see anything else.

Alarm clock buzzing, and it wakes up Creepy Sweaty Guy, who looks like he has a horrible headache and is in need of a shower. Bang – his door is kicked in and there’s a group of men yelling, “FBI!” and they proceed to arrest CSG, reading him his rights. They’re all heavily armed and are toting flashlights as they haul him out of bed and he yells incoherently and scrabbles at the floor. They handcuff him and pull him to his feet and the camera swings back for a close-up of Kurtwood Smith, one of my favourite character actors. You young’uns will recognise him as Red Foreman from That 70s Show, but I remember him most fondly as Clarence Boddicker in Robocop, a truly evil son-of-a-bitch. CSG bites one of the arresting agents and is bundled outside while Kurtwood snaps on the latex and begins to examine the unusual wallpaper until his gaze lights upon the art supplies shoved underneath a small table. He picks up the Exacto knife and pushes the blade up. Dun dun DUHHHNNNN! It’s all bloody! Cue old-school titles – the Truth is Out There – still. That’s sort of comforting.

Slideshow! It’s the mug shot of Creepy Sweaty Guy, whose name we now learn is John Mostow, divorced, with no children. Mulder’s monotone drawls out all the information about Mostow, who is from Uzbekistan and spent time in a mental institution there. Don’t worry Mulder, I’m sure your time will come to experience the thrill of five-point restraints and anti-psychotic medication. Scully is reading the file, and is dressed in what appears to be a rust-coloured skirt suit. Apparently CSG has been killing young men, but there’s no evidence of sexual assault, death being caused by massive blood loss due to facial mutilation. As Mulder talks about the wound pattern, he makes this funny sort of circular hand motion around his own face that cracks me up a bit. He really wants to leave the FBI and interview for Vanna White’s job. Mulder changes the slide as Scully reads out the litany of abuse and she gasps a little at the bloody sight that we can only see from side on because we’re the audience and some of us might become unbalanced if we saw anything so horrifying. She tells us that the level of violence and overkill suggest the work of a very angry individual. Mulder’s sitting at his desk with his foot up – while Scully seems more than a little rattled by these goings-on, he seems totally relaxed. Must be that profiling BSU background. His tie is rather subdued and tasteful, especially compared to other examples we’ve seen on this show. It’s in differing diagonal stripes of blue, with a white stripe for contrast. Perhaps Scully chose it for him this morning and he was so sated from the night before that he didn’t have the strength to argue. Or was that a fanfic I read? Anyway, he looks rather delish.

Of course, now that he’s looking so attractive, he has to go and spoil it by dropping a paranormal bombshell – he tells Scully that Mostow claims he was possessed by an evil spirit who was actually responsible for the murders. Scully, of course, is sceptical. She trots out that it’s a common thing for criminals with dissociative disorders to make these claims and disavow responsibility for their crimes. However, as usual, Mulder’s got something to back up his bullshit; the murder of a nineteen-year-old man with identical facial wounds, just last night. Since when are nineteen-year-olds men? Now I’m showing my age. Scully, of course, is no slouch when it comes to the Moose and Squirrel version of Pong, and comes straight back with “A copycat?” Mulder isn’t that easily vanquished when he catches a hint of that old paranormal bouquet, and tells Scully that the details of the facial mutilation were never released and that only members of the team tracking Mostow knew. Apparently Mostow’s been in custody for five days, so it couldn’t have been him. Ooh, and the credits now tell us that this episode was written by Howard Gordon, now of 24 fame. Perhaps this means we’ll get some super-spy action!

Now we’re at the DC Correctional Complex at Lorton, Virginia. I suspect it is actually no such place, but it looks sufficiently forbidding, although the razor wire is still nice and shiny. Creepy Sweaty Guy is in his cell, complaining about the light hurting his eyes in a vaguely Eastern-European accent. Hoorah! It’s Moose and Squirrel, all trenchcoated-up and looking yummy! How I miss them! CSG’s in a straitjacket and sitting on the floor. Scully asks him why he isn’t using his nice, soft bunk (suuurrree) and Mulder says that CSG’s been working. They’re both looming over the CSG, quite deliberately to intimidate, I suspect, but then Mulder squats down close and asks CSG what he’s drawn on the floor, which appears to be a gargoyle. CSG whispers, “It killed those men,” and Mulder asks, “Does it have a name to go with that face?” CSG comes across all metaphysical and says, “All men know its name.” What about the women? Surely we’d know too? Or are all serial killers misogynist? Wait, I think I answered my own question there.

Mulder, doing what he does best, speculates, and asks CSG if it is called Satan or the Devil, but Scully can’t resist dragging this conversation back into the realm of the realistic and says, “Maybe it’s just the name of your accomplice,” in her interrogation voice. Creepy Sweaty Guy gets upset and denies having an accomplice. Scully keeps her blank face on and says, “You killed all those young men yourself?” making it clear she thinks he’s not capable of it. This upsets him even more and he spits out “It killed them. How many times do I have to tell you?” Scully comes back with the fact that Mostow’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon and sounds just a little bored and pissed-off, (a dangerous Scully combination) also dropping the fact that he will be tried for seven murders under the death penalty. If possible, Mostow becomes even more sweaty and creepy, and tells Scully that “It laughs at fools like you.” Oh, she’s not happy about that and you can see that she’s envisaging him in the ‘lectric chair and is even fantasizing about how she’ll cackle as the switch is thrown. Then Mostow turns to Mulder saying, “Fools who would pretend evil can be brought to heel like a brindle bitch. Or be held by your pathetic gulags.” Mulder looks unimpressed by Mostow’s comments so he goes on to say, “While, with a snap of its fingers, it makes men lick the greasy floor of hell…just to see its reflection.” Nice image, that. Naturally, Scully is not going to take this lying down. She continues to interrogate him, even though he’s clearly insane, asking him about the young man who was killed last night. Mostow looks surprised at this, and Scully gives him a disbelieving look, complete with half-mast right Eyebrow, while Mostow begins to shake and cough, just like that old man in that book by Nabokov. He posits, “ It found somebody, somebody new. Just like it found me.”

Bzzzzzzztttt. The door opens and it’s our old friend Kurtwood Smith, who addresses Mulder and asks to see him and Scully outside. Scully, like the good little FBI agent she is, leaves immediately, but Mulder rather reluctantly stands and finally walks out. Duchovny plays this scene as though Mulder is a sulky adolescent who’s been caught with Dad’s car-keys and a six-pack of Heineken. He’s all hunched-over and won’t look anyone in the eye. Kurtwood starts to lay into him, “So what is it, Mulder? Little green men? Evil spirits? Hounds of hell?” Was he listening through the bars or what? Mulder doesn’t answer him, but instead turns to Scully and says, “Scully, this is Bill Patterson. He runs the Investigative Support Unit at Quantico.” Oh, so that’s who Kurtwood is. Scully tries to get this meeting back on a more professional and friendly track by saying it’s an honour to meet him. B-Pat has no interest in being professional or friendly however, and asks Scully if she also thinks Mostow is possessed by some dark spirit. He’s being a bit unfair here – so far Mulder hasn’t expressed any sort of opinion about whether Mostow is truly possessed. Scully does a beautiful double-take (B-Pat obviously hasn’t heard much about her) and denies it. B-Pat then comes back with, “Strange company you keep then.” Obviously, he doesn’t appreciate the back view of Mulder that Scully and the female audience (and certain sections of the male audience) find so appealing. B-Pat’s flunky seems quite uncomfortable with the repartee and keeps his mouth shut. Mulder really has trouble looking B-Pat in the eye, but then he sort of laughs before reaching down, finding his balls, and looking him square in the eye and telling B-Pat how mean-spirited he is, before turning to walk away. B-Pat follows him, telling Mulder that the arrest of John Mostow was the culmination of three years’ work by the ISU and that they were upset by the recent murder and by the suspect floating his possession theory. Mulder counters, saying that B-Pat now thinks Mostow has an accomplice, even though B-Pat’s own profile said that Mostow would definitely be working alone. Well, I suppose it’s not an exact science, now is it? B-Pat tries to save some face by saying that Mostow did act alone, and that last night’s murder was by a second killer, and he acted alone too. How right you are, B-Pat, how right you are. Mulder and B-Pat play their little pissing game a bit more, and it comes out that Mostow draws the gargoyles to keep the demon away. Doesn’t appear to have been terribly effective, now does it? Mulder makes an attempt at giving B-Pat a history lesson about the use of gargoyles at Notre Dame and Chartres, but B-Pat tells him to talk to the hand and shuts him down much more quickly than Scully ever manages to. Mulder loses his temper a little bit (probably because of the cut-short lecture, just as he was getting on a roll) and tells B-Pat he was asked to look into this case and to take it up with AD Skinner. Ding-ding! Two bald macho guys head to head! I’d pay to see that! Mulder stalks off in a huff, leaving Scully and B-Pat’s sidekick to exchange embarrassed glances, before Scully follows him.

Cut to – Mulder and Scully walking together down some sort of creepy corridor or laneway (it’s hard to tell – 10:13 must have saved heaps on lighting in these early seasons) and Scully asks Mulder when his love affair with B-Pat ended. I love Scully’s sense of humour. She seems to know just what to say to bring Mulder out of his black moods. Apparently, we’re back at Mostow’s warehouse. Mulder tells Scully that B-Pat never liked him, but Scully expresses disbelief (what a surprise!) and says, “Weren’t you considered the fair-haired boy at the Bureau?” That must have been some time ago. Mulder tells Scully that B-Pat never liked him because Mulder didn’t want to get his knees dirty. That’s disappointing for Scully. Mulder couldn’t quite cast himself in the role of the dutiful student. Well, I’m not surprised, and Scully is barely coming up to Mulder’s shoulder in this scene, even wearing high heels. Hee, she’s tiny! Scully goes on a bit about how men wanted to worship B-Pat and that a lot of men joined the Bureau because they wanted to be him. Mulder is still annoyed, although he’s trying manfully not to take it out on Scully, but he rips the crime scene tape off and throws it down rather vindictively. He tells Scully that B-Pat had a saying, “…if you wanted to know an artist, you had to look at his art. What he meant was: if you wanted to catch a monster you had to become one yourself.” Aaandd, with a push to the door, they’re inside Mostow’s studio. It hasn’t improved any since B-Pat was there and the walls are literally papered with pictures of gargoyles. A gargoyle here, a gargoyle there, here a gargoyle, there a gargoyle, everywhere a gargoyle. Old John Mostow had a farm, EIEIO.

A cat jumps out of nowhere and startles Scully. I’ve never actually known a cat to do that – perhaps it’s something they save for when they’re cast in horror movies and creepy TV shows? Maybe Scully has some sort of horrible premonition about Teso dos Bichos as she seems uncharacteristically unnerved by the feline hijinks. Mulder mans it up and investigates the cat’s hiding place, noting that there’s air coming through and that there must be something on the other side of the wall. He and Scully start tapping around and looking behind the pictures until they find a door. Mulder goes straight in, but Scully hangs back and asks Mulder to wait until they can get some more light. However, Mulder is as prepared as a Boy Scout (or an Indian Guide) and has a flashlight. Scully gets her gun out to back him up as he prowls through the doorway (he really does prowl, it’s not just a figure of speech). Mulder is back on the hunt. The beam from his flashlight reveals even more gargoyles, this time sculpted in clay. Scully asks the question on everyone’s mind, “Why would he keep them in a secret room?” Why indeed? Mulder touches one and the clay still appears to be wet. Holding his flashlight in his mouth (launching a thousand slash-fics) and thus unable to answer Scully’s increasingly worried questions, he digs at the clay with his fingers, revealing a real face underneath (or a good sfx fake face). Aaannnnddd – Scene.

Now we’re watching a young man doing some glass-blowing (and no, it’s not a euphemism, he really is blowing glass). Why do all these people insist on working in large, dark warehouses? It’s just asking for trouble in my opinion. He pauses for a moment as he hears a door slam, but goes back to his work when no-one appears. As the audience, we get to see a shadow creeping around, through the shelves with the finished glass, coming up behind the young artist, who just keeps on working with the molten glass. He turns and screams, dropping the stick with the red-hot glass on the floor, where it begins to burn. Fade out, and we’re at the George Washington University Hospital, in Washington DC. That Washington sure had a lot of stuff named after him. Funnily enough, most Australians would be able to tell you that he was the first President of the United States of America, but would be unable to name the first Prime Minister of Australia. Sir Edmund Barton, for those of you playing along at home. He was also one of the first three High Court judges. Thus endeth the Australian History lecture. Our glassblower is in hospital, with bandages all over his face (I recognise his hair, all right?). The doctor isn’t encouraged by his signs, so I’m guessing he’s not doing too well. B-Pat’s sidekick is there and yay! Scully turns up filling him in on the fact that they found five dismembered bodies in the secret room, all with their faces mutilated like the latest victim, our glassblowing friend in the hospital room. B-Pat’s sidekick tells Scully that the latest victim is still alive, but was subjected to the same facial mutilation as the other victims. B-Pat’s sidekick hasn’t yet spoken to B-Pat about the latest victim, but Scully theorises that she and Mulder’s finding Mostow’s secret gallery (which B-Pat’s team apparently missed) is not going to endear them any further with B-Pat. I’m thinking B-Pat will go for the ball-gag next time, along with the kneeling. Then B-Pat’s sidekick drops the bomb on Scully that he thinks that B-Pat went to Skinner and requested Mulder secretly. Scully evinces disbelief (shocking, I know!), but B-Pat’s sidekick goes on to say that he has worked with B-Pat for three years on the Mostow case and that it nearly killed B-Pat, and the first copy-cat murder had thrown B-Pat “for a loss”. Scully confides that Mulder thinks that B-Pat never thought very highly of him. B-Pat’s sidekick says, “That’s just Patterson. Late night, couple of beers in him, he starts telling me Mulder stories, how he’s some kind of crack genius.” Scully looks down and asks Sidekick about the stitches in his hand, and he tells her that Mostow bit him (I think this was meant to be like a werewolf-style red herring or something, to make us think that Sidekick is the copycat murderer).

B-Pat finally shows up and asks about whether the victim could identify his attacker, but Sidekick says that the doctor says it’s too early to even try and that they’re not even sure he’s going to make it. In a show of utter insensitivity, they’re all standing at the foot of glassblower’s bed while they’re having this conversation. Glassblower is starting to shake and moan, but the FBI agents just keep on talking. Sheesh, no wonder Scully’s a pathologist. Her bedside manner sucks like an Electrolux. Finally, a nurse who’s holding glassblower’s hand and trying to calm him down boots all three of them out. About time, too. They don’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed.

Now the camera is investigating the bookshelves of the Georgetown University Library, as Mulder voiceovers all sorts of information about gargoyles. Yawn, but keep rolling up those shirtsleeves, pretty boy. He’s leafing through books about gargoyles, with pictures of gargoyles and comparing them to Mostow’s drawings. This scene would have been improved if Mulder had been wearing his glasses. He must be writing his own profile of the copycat killer. Finally, he is put to sleep, possibly by his own monotonous voiceover. B-Pat wakes him, telling him that “They’re closing up in a few minutes,” and critiquing Mulder’s work, while Mulder looks put-upon, sulky and unshaven. B-Pat tries to get Mulder to tell him about his theory, but Mulder isn’t playing. B-Pat says he knows where Mulder is going with this, but that he’s already been there and Mulder is wasting his time. Mulder and B-Pat indulge in some badinage in which Mulder tries to push B-Pat into admitting There’s Something About Gargoyles, but B-Pat won’t go there, instead telling Mulder that Mulder has disappointed him. Mulder sits back in an attempt to look down his nose at a man leaning over him (A+ for effort) and says: “I wouldn’t want to disappoint you by not disappointing you.” Ouch. I think my son said something like that to me once when he was about 16. B-Pat tries to keep the argument going, but Mulder refuses to play his silly game and B-Pat stalks out in high dudgeon. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary the word dudgeon means: a wood used especially for dagger hilts. I’m guessing the term high dudgeon means that you are so angry you’ve pulled your dagger partway out so the hilt is visible or something. I’ve always wanted to know, but that was surprisingly unhelpful. But we digress. Back to the action. Mulder makes his rumpled but sexy way to the window and looks out to see a stone gargoyle looking back in at him.

Casa de Mulder. Scully’s knocking on the door and not getting an answer, so she lets herself in with her key. No really, they’re not sleeping together, I swear! She turns the light on in his foyer and walks through to his lounge-room, where the circling camera makes it clear that Mulder has begun to take his decorating tips from John Mostow, the Creepy, Sweaty Serial Killer. In a nice dissolve from one picture of a gargoyle to the next, we’re with Mulder in Mostow’s studio. He’s revisiting the portrait gallery and apparently there are unearthly whispers on the soundtrack, or so the closed captioning tells me. Mulder is staring intently at one of the pictures, and running his fingers over it. Now it appears Mulder has decided to take up sculpture. He’s a Renaissance Man! The camera pulls back and he’s surrounded by creepy torsoes sculpted in clay. Weird. It’s now 3.43am and Mulder has fallen asleep there. How? I’d be afraid something would come to life and freak me out! Oh no! A shadow falls over him and he wakes with a gasp! A chase ensues through the poorly lit warehouse, so that all we can see is that Mulder is chasing a humanoid figure with a bald head and pointy ears. Is it Skinner? Our mysterious friend could also do with some Body Shop Hemp hand lotion if the camerawork is anything to go by. Mulder chases him up ladders and across catwalks, and it’s making me a little tired just watching it. Mulder’s gun is still in the holster (if it had been Scully, she would have just busted out her loudest “Freeze! FBI!” and fired a warning shot at his head). At least this time he won’t have a chance to drop it. Oh, I spoke too soon. He’s drawn his weapon at last, but the intruder was hiding behind some boxes and leaps out, cutting Mulder on the face and pushing him off the catwalk into some conveniently located drop-cloths or something. At any rate, they’re soft and they break Mulder’s fall nicely.

Mulder is now being patched up by a paramedic while Scully berates him about turning off his phone and she actually tells him she was scared when she couldn’t contact him. The paramedic finishes the butterfly sutures and Mulder doesn’t even thank him, just gets up and flounces off, leaving Scully to say “Thanks” and if I was the paramedic I’d be feeling pretty unappreciated right about now. Talk about being in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel, which is exactly how this plays. Mulder is shrugging on his coat, and walking very quickly out of the warehouse, but Scully is like a little terrier, following him doggedly and nipping at his heels. She is not going to let this go. Apparently Scully has been unable to get hold of Mulder for two days – he hasn’t been returning her calls. He attempts to distract her from this line of questioning by saying, “This thing exists Scully. It’s real.” Scully is getting really exasperated by this stage, reiterating that Mostow is the killer and that there is a copycat. Mulder asserts that whatever attacked him wasn’t a person, but when Scully asks him if he actually saw it, he refuses to answer, instead rolling his eyes and looking as though he is barely restraining himself from saying something to Scully he’ll truly regret later. She says that maybe he’s only seeing what he wants to see, which tips Mulder over the edge and he yells at her: “What makes you think I would want to see that!” Scully is a little taken aback, but keeps on going. She tells him that he should listen to himself and admits to him that she went to his apartment when she couldn’t reach him and that she saw his new wallpaper. Mulder picks up quite quickly that she thought it in bad taste. Then she drops the clanger that B-Pat is testing Mulder and that he asked for him on the case specifically. Mulder just gets into his car without another word and drives off. Scully looks pretty annoyed at this point, but at least she knows he’s alive and relatively sane, right?

Her primary target fled, Scully looks around for someone else to take out her temper on. And look, it’s B-Pat and sidekick lurking in the alley. How convenient. Get ready for a dose of Hurricane Scully boys – you’d better batten down the hatches. She asks B-Pat for a minute – in private. Sidekick, realising he has just been handed a golden opportunity to save his genitals from serious damage, leaves B-Pat to Scully’s tender mercies. She bails B-Pat up about requesting Mulder on the case, and of knowing exactly how deeply it would affect him. B-Pat squirms a bit on the hook, saying that Scully should take up Agent Mulder’s conduct with Mulder himself. Scully says that he knows she has already done that and B-Pat asks what she expects him to do about it. Scully accuses B-Pat of trying to payback Mulder for quitting the ISU to work on the X-Files and B-Pat denies that his motivations are that petty. He all but admits he needs Mulder to solve the case for him, and Scully softens at the compliment, but then B-Pat spoils it all by giving Scully a warning to let Mulder do what he has to do, telling her not to get in his way or to try to hold him back, because she won’t be able to. Why she’s taking advice on her love life from B-Pat, I’ll never know. Sidekick has been watching all this from a distance, stroking at his stitches. That must be itching like hell by now. Resigned, Scully makes her way back to her car. She gets in and starts it, just happening to look over at the tyre of another car parked next to her. Dun DUN DUHHHNNNN!!!!! There’s a blade from an Exacto knife stuck in the rubber! She grabs her trusty flashlight and goes over to investigate. Pulling some latex from her pocket, she removes it from the tyre and looks at it closely. She decides further investigation is warranted and looks underneath the vehicle, finding the rest of the Exacto knife, sitting in an oil spot. Isn’t that always the way?

Bzzzztttt. Mulder’s back at the prison. He asks Mostow why the creature didn’t kill him like it killed the others. Perhaps because you had a gun, Mulder? Mostow continues his runaround bullshit and looks extremely greasy in this scene. Eeeewww. Mulder wants Mostow to help him get inside its head so he can understand what it wants. Mostow just keeps giving him his Eastern-European Vincent Price impression, which is not helping at all. Mulder quickly reaches the end of his tether and indulges in some police brutality. Moist! However, it doesn’t help. Mostow probably thinks Mulder’s a bit of an amateur compared to the KGB, so Mulder leaves.

Meanwhile, Scully’s over at the FBI Sci-Crime Lab, in the Latent Fingerprint Section. Wow. I wonder if the FBI really is that specific? Unlike Mulder, Scully knows how to play nice with the other agents, and the Sci-Crime lady has worked hard and gotten some results for Scully. I sometimes wonder how much of the missing X-Files evidence has to do with Mulder pissing off his fellow agents, and how much is actually conspiracy-related. Sci-Crime Lady dusted the blade with Redwop (Scully goes Wha?) and Sci-Crime Lady has to admit to a geek in-joke – it’s powder spelled backwards. Oh, the yuks in the Sci-Crime lab must be something to see! She and Scully are wearing some rad sunglasses, possibly to protect their eyes from the UV. Apparently the real name for Redwop is fluorescent lycopodium. You learn something new every day in this show. You can tell Scully’s storing that little bit of information up so she can impress Mulder with it later. There’s a partial index on the blade, and a full thumb on the haft of the handle. The prints are oriented where someone would grip the knife, which is why Sci-Crime Lady thought she had Scully’s guy (oh, really), but it turns out that the prints were Mulder’s. Scully is rather disturbed by this information, but I’m thinking that if Mulder were the killer, he’d have enough knowledge of forensic science not to be so sloppy as to leave his fingerprints on a murder weapon. Unless he was being extra clever, but this could go round and round in circles.

Scully runs straight down to the evidence room (Section L7 if anyone’s that interested), determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Exacto knife. The clerk obligingly gets the box down for her (I don’t think she would have been able to reach it without a step ladder) and she knocks back the offer of using the table, instead asking him to put it on the floor for her. His phone rings and he leaves Scully alone with the evidence box. In a move that makes me grasp my poor old knees and moan in sympathy, Scully squats down and looks through the box, finding the plastic baggie for the knife is empty. Nice chain of custody there, FBI people. Also, some advice for the young’uns – if you’re going to play squash and indulge in competitive gymnastics, do something to protect your knees. Any attempt to use my knees in any weight-bearing sort of way results in sounds like firecrackers going off. Gilly must be a lot fitter than I am. She sighs in exasperation, then gets the uplifting news that the phone call was the Skinman, looking for her.

Chugga chugga chugga – Office du Skinman. That is a very nice double-breasted pantsuit Scully’s wearing. Skinner questions Scully about her search for the Exacto knife of Mystery. He asks if it is her opinion that the knife missing from Evidence is the same knife she found at the crime scene. Scully says she’s not absolutely certain. Skinner knows that Mulder’s prints were found on it and there’s a particular Sci-Crime Lady who’s now off Scully’s Christmas card list. Skinner starts questioning Scully about Mulder’s mental state. Jeez, everyone on this show just assumes that Scully is Mulder’s keeper. How about treating him like an adult and asking him yourself? No wonder he acts like a sulky adolescent. Next they’ll be asking Scully if he wets the bed or has any interesting dreams, and by the way, what really happened to your little dog, Scully? Are you sure he has a phobia about fire? Scully gives Skinman the old stonewall, and Skinner admits he’s worried about Mulder. Well, maybe you should take that up with him, Skinman.

Meanwhile at Mostow’s Museum of Morbidity, Mulder is musing. I love alliteration. He’s walking around with his flashlight looking at the sculptures, when he is attacked again. But no! It’s B-Pat, his Sidekick and some Sidekickettes. Mulder fights back, only to seemingly slash himself on the cheek with the Exacto knife of Mystery. Then he wakes up. It was all a horrible dream and he’s on his couch, surrounded by examples of Mostow’s art. That would be enough to give anyone nightmares. He’s still in his work clothes and was wearing his gun. He must have been really tired, because that could not be comfortable. He puts his trench-coat on and he’s outta there! He goes back to Mostow’s lair in the dark. Man, Mulder must have a backbone of sheer titanium (much like a SuperSoldier) because there is absolutely NO WAY I’d be visiting the scene of one of my nightmares in the middle of the night on my own, even if I had a gun. Entering the secret gallery with a determined stride, Mulder notices that there’s a new work of art, the clay still wet, on the bench. Our friend, the kitty cat, is licking up blood from the floor. Lawks! Mulder follows the blood trail and finds a disembodied arm. Oh my paws and whiskers! Do you think the cat did it?

Scully’s finally made it home to discover a message on her answering machine. It’s from a Greg Nemhauser and he asks her to call him right away on 555 0143. I’m guessing this is Sidekick’s actual name. Halfway through the message, Nemhauser is cut off. That is never a good sign on The X-Files. Conscientious as ever, Scully dials Nemhauser’s number. Briiiiinnnggggg. We’re back in Mostow’s Museum of Morbidity and someone’s phone is ringing, startling Mulder. He goes looking for the sound. One of the things that frustrates me the most about my hearing loss is that I don’t have any directional hearing any more and you use it more than you would think. It freaks me out to see people put their phones to their right ears as it just seems so wrong to me now. In Mulder’s position, I’d be hopelessly lost. Mulder finds a discarded coat that coincidentally contains a ringing cellphone. I’ll bet that’s Scully on the other end. Of course I’m right because I’ve seen this episode before, but Mulder, being the nosy parker that he is, just can’t resist answering it, and of course it’s Scully on the other end, wondering why Mulder’s answering Nemhauser’s phone. Uh-oh, Mulder is now getting some idea about whose arm he just found. Scully is also taking the opportunity to drag him over the coals about the Exacto knife of Mystery, stolen from Evidence, found at a crime scene with Mulder’s prints all over it. Mulder admits to examining Mostow’s knife in the Evidence room, but denies taking it. Scully tells Mulder to stay where he is and that she will be there soon to work things out together, OK? This sounds more and more like conversations I have had with teenage children. Mulder is staring at the new piece of art and hangs up on Scully to examine it further. I bet she hates when he does that. Suddenly, Mulder tears at the clay to reveal Nemhauser’s poor, mutilated face underneath. He draws his gun and swings around to confront B-Pat, who has snuck up behind him. He lowers his weapon and tells B-Pat that he has found Nemhauser. Then he looks suspiciously at B-Pat and says: “But you already knew that, didn’t you?” He accuses B-Pat of killing Nemhauser because Nemhauser suspected that B-Pat was the second killer. Mulder’s now holding his gun on B-Pat again, while B-Pat tells Mulder he’s out of his mind (a common misconception). B-Pat orders Mulder to put the gun down, but Mulder refuses unless B-Pat tells him what he’s doing there. Mulder tells B-Pat to look at his hands. He does, and they are covered in clay. B-Pat is now not sure what he’s doing there, but Mulder is happy to fill him in. B-Pat lived the horror show that was inside John Mostow’s head for three years and caught the crazy himself.

At the worst possible moment, Scully turns up and shines her flashlight directly in Mulder’s eyes, shocked that he’s holding a gun on the head of the ISU. B-Pat takes the opportunity to push over one of the sculptures on top of Mulder, then he barrels right over the top of Scully in an attempt to escape. Mulder helps her up and tells her that the killer is B-Pat, who’s doing a pretty good job of running away for an old guy, but it’s clear that Mulder is going to catch him easily. I think they must have asked Duchovny to wind back the speed in this scene to make it seem like Kurtwood could perhaps outrun him because he looks like he’s just loping along without much effort. Mulder and Scully chase B-Pat up onto the roof, and search around for him, guns and flashlights at the ready. Mulder startles some sleeping pigeons and climbs up over a low wall leading to another section of the roof. B-Pat jumps him from out of the shadows causing Mulder to drop his gun (groan) and a struggle ensues. There is a gunshot, and it appears that Mulder has been successful in getting his gun back and has shot B-Pat, wounding him. Scully rolls B-Pat over, checking his pulse and telling Mulder to call an ambulance. I think at this point Mulder would be perfectly happy to let B-Pat bleed out on the roof, but he calls the paramedics as the camera pulls back to reveal yet another roof-top gargoyle. Does Washington DC really have this many gargoyles dotted around? I don’t think I’ve ever seen any in Australia. I think it’s a gargoyle-free zone.

Two weeks later, and we’re back in the prison, or at least on the prison set. B-Pat is behind bars, having a conniption fit because no one will listen to him. He is protesting his innocence. Just to add insult to B-Pat’s injury, we now get a Mulder voiceover as the camera zooms in close on a gargoyle drawn in blood on the wall: “We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man’s character is his fate, this fight is not a choice but a calling. And sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter, breaching the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monsters without to turn within. And we are left alone, staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness.” I think there’s something in that for all of us.

CREDITS.

By jennisaurusrex

Cleveland, Ohio. A seedy looking chap is sweet talkin’ some honey (Get it? Huh? Sweet? Honey? Anyone? Oh brother, this is gonna be a long one…) while they sit in a car. At night. In the middle of nowhere. This is always a bad omen, especially when accompanied by Mark Snow’s High Synth Notes of Misfortune, but forget what ya heard and keep on. Honey is expressing that she was afraid of being rejected, and Seedy’s all, “No, I love your beliefs and how you see the world! We have a real connection!”. He’s spreading it on real thick (not unlike honey…which is a sick pun that will work on all sorts of levels as the episode goes on, trust me), saying how most men don’t know what they’re missing and all that jazz. Honey’s all “I can’t believe after three months we’ve finally met! I’m really enjoying myself!” Because this is 1995, and because I have half a brain, I’m gonna guess that they were internet sweethearts. Oh, the beginning of digital courtship! My heart thrums to the beat of a dial-up modem just thinking about these two little rascals meeting up in some beta-based chatroom, hoping to find love. Sure, I was 11 in 1995, but I had a dream! I had a dream that one day, when I was old enough, love would be as close as my iBook G4! That I would turn it on and find the man of my dreams, all Arial size 12 font with a little icon of Salvador Dali and… wait, you know what? Nevermind.

Honey’s broke her necklace. Ripped it straight off her neck, I suppose from being so damn nervous. Seedy comes to the rescue, and then we notice he has some nasty skin thing on his neck, which makes me want to start calling him Skinny instead of Seedy. “Skinny” works on a whole lot of levels too, but I’ll spare you. Honey doesn’t notice Seedy’s skin(ny) problem though, and starts telling him how her sister gave her that necklace for good luck–it’s a silver four leaf clover– and Seedy’s all, “It’s beautiful” like he’s one of those weirdos in the black and white Calvin Klein commercials that whisper about CK1 with some bizarrely thoughtful look in their eyes. Then he leans in for the kiss and it doesn’t take long before Honey realises that something’s not quite right. She starts making all of these groany sounds and when Seedy backs away, her mouth is full of this phlegmy bubbly goo and she’s trying to scream through it but her scream is all muffled. Seedy seems pleased with his work and goes in for the kill. The camera pans to the car rocking back and forth, but I can tell you with some amount of certainty that it’s not from any boot knockin’, that’s for sure.

Morning. A police vehicle pulls out to the back of an abandoned warehouse where Honey’s little brown car is sitting. The police officer gets out of his vehicle and knocks on the window of Honey’s car. “Cockadoodle doo!” he says. “Rise and shine in there!” The windows of the car are foggy, and the officer wipes them off to look inside. “Mother of God!” he exclaims. We don’t really get to see what he does, which I’m kind of grateful for, but we do get to see Honey’s good luck charm amidst what’s left of her body.

Oooh, it’s opening credits. Do you realise how much I get made fun of at work for humming the theme song from the X-Files? I don’t mean to or anything, it just kinda happens. My co-workers are like, “Freak! The X-Files has been off the air for years now!” and I’m like “It’s just a hobby!”. Then again, they don’t know I’m recapping an episode of a television series that aired twelve years ago. And they’re never gonna, either. ‘Cos if they find out, one of you is getting CUT!

Uh, yeah, anyway. The seagulls are squawking and the detectives are..detectin’? A man walks over to where Mulder and Scully are standing and introduces himself as Allen Cross of the Cleveland P.D. Mulder’s wearing sunglasses that make him look like a Blues Brothers escapee and Scully’s wearing a suit that’s blue in all the wrong ways. It reminds me of those patches of carpet that they spill wine on in those infomercials for stain removal where the host screams a lot for no real reason. “LOOK AT THESE STAINS DISAPPEAR!”, he yells. “LOOK AT AGENT SCULLY’S SUIT DISAPPEAR ON AGENT MULDER’S BEDROOM FLOOR!” Oh wait, it’s only Season 3. The removal of business suits for sweet love makin’ doesn’t happen until Season…what was it? Whatever. Cross says he’s found Honey’s license in the car and that Honey’s name isn’t actually Honey, it’s Lauren Mackelby. Are you as surprised as I am? She looked like a Honey, anyway. Cross says he thinks that the body they’ve found is Honey–er, Lauren Mackelby– but he can’t be sure with what’s left it, and we soon find out what he means by that. Most of the skin from the body has dissolved, leaving just a thin coating of muscle and blood over a skeleton, along with some pretty nasty clear goo. Scully wants to know if there’s a cause of death, but Cross says it was impossible to tell and that they were just lucky to be able to get her body without it falling apart. Mulder wastes no time in collecting some of the goo and asks if it was found anywhere else in the car. Cross states that no, it was only on the body, but he’s curious why Mulder asks, and wonders if he has any idea on what happened. Mulder just says, “No, not yet” and walks away, leaving Scully with the niceties of saying she’ll let Cross know when they find anything concrete.

After they’ve walked away, Scully asks Mulder what he thinks happened. He starts running off at the mouth about four women who disappeared in Aberdeen a few months ago and how only one of the bodies was found, but it was too decomposed to perform an autopsy. Scully’s all, “But this isn’t decomposition!” and Mulder’s like, “I know that, bitch! Now go do me an autopsy!” and smacks her ass. Something along those lines, anyhow. He hands Scully the vile of goo and sends her off to the Coroner’s office while he goes to find out if Honey was a “Lonely Heart”. Apparently all the missing Aberdeen women had answered personal ads online, and Mulder’s afraid that if it’s the same killer, he’ll strike again. See where the internet gets you, guys? Your Arial-font using, Salvador Dali lovin’ sweetie from the information superhighway will lead you to meet your maker!

Uh oh, someone hasn’t learned her lesson! Someone with the handle “Huggs” is typing “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for us to meet” in some pre-historic text box that’s supposed to be an instant message. I guess it actually was what an instant message looked like in 1995, but I wasn’t looking for love when I was 11, so I wouldn’t know. I’m not looking for love now or anything, but you know what I mean, right? I don’t have to clarify this again? Listen, I don’t even like Salvador Dali, okay? Anyhow, guess who Huggs is talking to? That’s right, it’s Seedy! Only Seedy has an awesome online handle, “Timid”. Isn’t that kinda cool that there was a time you could get a one word screenname like that? If Seedy lived today, he would be “Timid38304″, but in 1995, he was a visionary, being the first of many to use a single adjective as an internet chatting handle!

“Timid” asks “Huggs” what she’s afraid of and she lists disappointment and rejection, among others. Timid/Seedy’s all understanding like “I’ve been down that road once or twice, but don’t hide behind your computer!” We catch a glimpse of Huggs, who is an average looking woman in her late 30’s or so with glasses and a mouth frozen in a perpetual worried grimace. She seems to be reading his words aloud to herself and getting her think on.

Before she can answer him, someone knocks at Timid/Seedy’s door. He gets up to answer it and finds his Landlady there. She’s all desperately flirty and makes the excuse of giving him the keys to his storage closets (uh, what?) and he tries to close the door quickly on her but she intercepts him. She says she knows what he does, and also mentions that his name is “Mr. Encanto”. Uh, no. His name is Seedy, lady. LandLady goes on a schpiel about how Seedy must be a writer cos he receives so many packages from publishers in NY and cos he types a lot. Wrong again, muchacha. He’s actually a weird, goo-emitting internet killer. However, Seedy goes along with this and when LandLady mentions she’s also a writer, he tries to get rid of her by asking, “Shouldn’t you be off somewhere, writing?” LandLady isn’t a bit put off by this, and instead asks Seedy to read some of her poetry (which is no doubt as pathetic as she is), he agrees and shuts the door.

Down at the Coyahoga County Morgue, Cross is staring at his watch impatiently, seemingly waiting for someone. Scully walks in and he’s all, “Oh, it’s you”. Scully says, “That’s not a problem, is it?”, which is a lot more graceful than what my response would have been, which is along the lines of “Get stuffed, wanker”, but that’s why Scully’s got a boyfriend and I have to meet them in Surrealist Art chatrooms. I mean, Scully doesn’t have a boyfriend. And I don’t meet them in chatrooms. Shut up. Anyhow, Cross says he didn’t know Scully was observing the autopsy and she kinda smirks as she tells him that she’s not observing, she’s doing it herself. Cross can’t believe that Scully is a medical doctor because he’s “old fashioned in certain regards”, whatever that means. Scully doesn’t seem to know what it means either, and she’s only half paying attention to his misogynist explanation of questioning assignment of female officers to certain cases. He tries to act all noble, like he’s doing Scully a favour by not wanting her involved. He explains that the killer has an attitude towards women so it must be affecting her judgement, but she just looks at him with her startlingly blue eyes and pretty much tells him to get over it, she just wants to solve the case like he does. Cross feels the need to clarify that he’s not being sexist, though clearly he is, and Scully just asks where to send the autopsy report. Cross leaves all disgruntled and Scully gets to work.

From Scully’s record, we find out it’s August 29th, 4:15pm. That doesn’t really matter, but I’m telling you anyway, so deal with it. She states Honey’s name and race, and then says that the time and cause of death are uncertain. As she’s talking, she walks over to the drawer where the body is being kept and sees a bloody liquid dripping down the steel surface. Clicking off the tape recorder, she opens the door and slides the tray out, splashing something that looks like regurgitated Hamburger Helper off the tray and onto the floor. The camera shoots from above and while Scully stares at the tray with her arms out, we see that all that’s left of Honey is a skeleton. And the afore mentioned regurgitated Hamburger Helper. Mm, who’s hungry? Pause for dinner break!!

Mulder’s speaking with a woman who knew Lauren Mackelby, talking about how Seedy seemed so nice “on the computer”, only Seedy was going by “2Shy” then, not “Timid”…notice a theme, here? No, not the corny screennames, but the fact that this guy is apparently a bit reserved with the ladies? Mulder is interested to know that they met online, and asks what chatroom they were in. Honey’s friend tells Mulder it was the Big & Beautiful chat, and that Honey had a bit of a weight problem but that 2Shy didn’t seem to care because he wasn’t all about sex. Apparently Seedy was a Romeo in written form as well, as Honey’s friend tells Mulder that he wrote amazing letters, and that she just happened to keep copies of them, which I find almost as creepy as Timid himself. As she goes to find them, he calls Scully, who is standing in front of dinner–er, what’s left of Honey’s body– in the Coroner’s office. Mulder tells Scully he’s putting out a local internet warning about the guy, and he knows it’s the same guy as the Aberdeen victims he was talking about earlier cos he opened the account with one of their credit cards. Scully asks Mulder to come down to the Coroner’s office as soon as possible. Mulder wants to know if she found something in the autopsy, but she tells him there isn’t going to be one.

At the Coroner, Scully is holding what looks like an old chicken bone in a pair of tweezers. Wait, am I just hungry? The “chicken bone” is actually a metacarpal from Honey’s hand. Scully explains that bone, in life or death, is as strong as forged iron, but this one is all squishy and she squeezes it like a sponge. She tells him that the goo is organic, probably hydrochloric acid, similar to something secreted by the gastric mucousa, and that it also contained pepsin, which is a digestive enzyme. Hold up, time out. Can I just say that Gillian Anderson is awesome? I had to pause and rewind the scene about twelve times just to get those terms down. Sure she fills up the blooper reels, but I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if it doesn’t come out soundin’ real impressive in the finals. Okay, back to business.

Mulder starts asking how this could have happened and if anything is missing, and Scully says the only thing missing was fatty tissue, which “could explain the weight discrepancy”. Apparently the M.E. had Honey listed at 122lbs, while her driver’s license listed her as 165lbs. Wait a second, was 165lbs classified as “Big & Beautiful” in 1995? ‘Cos I’m actually kind of horrified right now. Uh, I’m just gonna go on, here…Scully says Honey must’ve lost weight since the license was issued, but Mulder says the letter-saving roommate he talked to earlier said that Honey had actually put on some weight, and that’s why she was nervous about meeting 2Shy/Timid/Seedy/Skinny. Scully gets all offended and is like, “Who would remove someone’s fatty tissue?! Who do you think we’re dealing with here?!” with this look of disgust on her face that kind of freaks me out, it’s so earnest. By the way, Mulder doesn’t know who they’re dealing with, here. Some help he is. Boy, for such a good looking guy, you’d think…well I don’t know what you’d think, other than that he’s good looking. Oh well, I tried.

Oooh, guess who’s gettin’ ready to go out? It’s “Huggs”, whose name is Ellen, if we’re to go by her friend calling her that. I assume we should, since usually your friend would know your name. Most of my friends know mine, except for the few I make call me “Bearclaw”. Don’t ask. Huggs’s friend warns her that the F.B.I. put out a warning about an internet killer, and Huggs is all pissed off that her friend would question her ability to judge character. Huggs is annoyingly monotone and her facial reactions don’t change much from one line to the next. Her friend assures her that she’s not trying to freak her out or anything, but Huggs is having none of it because her friend is making her even more nervous. Poor Huggs! Maybe she just needs some “huggs”. Okay, that was bad, I know. But her storyline is so boring that my jokes have to match. Huggs’ friend tells her not to worry, that “Timid” is probably just as great as he sounds, but poses the question to end all questions: “What if he isn’t?”

Cue Mark Snow with the High Synth Notes of Misfortune! Only it’s a false alarm, because while the HSNoM blare in the background, 2Shy/Timid/Seedy/Skinny paces in front of a restaurant with a bouquet of flowers, waiting for Huggs. She doesn’t show, and eventually he throws the flowers down with disgust and does what any man in this situation would do: look for hookers. He picks one of the “chubbier” ones (though seriously, this show’s perception of weight is whack, even by 1995 standards). 2Shy and ChubbyHooker go off into an alley somewhere and he goes in for the kiss, which she denies him. Wait a second, am I watching Pretty Woman? Julia Roberts, is that you? Is there something we don’t know about Richard Gere? I don’t know much about hookers, but I thought if you were getting paid you were pretty much up for anything. I mean, not ANYTHING anything like say…eating regurgitated Hamburger Helper, but yknow, within reason. Anyhow, she starts unbuttoning his pants and he’s all, “Screw this noise!” and decides to force her into kissing him. She scratches his hand, ripping the skin right off with her fingernails while she screams. Next thing you know, a couple is walking home when they discover Timid “chewin’ the fat”, so to speak. Sucking it is more likely, but whatever. Timid takes off, and so does the passerby guy, leaving his date there to check out the dead hooker’s body, face covered in goo.

The next day, Scully looks under the blanket at the body and Cross starts giving the hooker’s stats, like anyone cares. I’m not saying no one cares about hookers, I’m saying no one cares about this scene, or anything that comes out of that sexist pig’s mouth. Anyhoo, Scully tells Mulder that her airways were all blocked with the same viscous hydrochloric acid as Honey’s, and Cross is shocked to find out they even know what it is. Dude, you have no clue. Scully is so smart, she could probably even figure out what’s wrong with you, though to be honest I doubt that would take a medical doctor. And Mulder may look slightly vapid (yet alluringly handsome), but he’s a bit of a brainiac himself. Cross gets all territorial and wants to protect his own case. He thinks the clues they’ve gathered so far don’t line up. Mulder states that Timid/2Shy likes to quote Italian literature that you can only get from academic libraries so Mulder thinks he has something to do with academia. Then Scully finds the skin under the hooker’s nails and Mulder quips that she “took her pound of flesh”. Yawn. But see how smart?

Speaking of flesh, at home, Timid’s trimming his up with scissors, and little pieces of skin that look like old pencil shavings fall onto his coffee table. His door buzzes and though he tries to get out of it, he has to go down and sign for a package. When in the hallway, he runs into Landlady’s daughter, who is blind and looks like a young brunette version of Sarah Polley. She senses him and says hello, and then LandLady comes out and starts yapping about her shitty poetry and wants to know if she can take Timid to dinner when he’s had time to read it. He says he’s busy and signs for his package, and MIniature Sarah Polley gives him a look– er, you know what I mean– that says she knows something’s rotten in the state of Denmark. Landlady lectures her about being nicer to him cos she’s in lurveeee but Sarah Polley just says she doesn’t care cos he smells gross and is creepy.

Down at the station, Scully’s doing some computer research when Mulder shows up in the doorway. “Oh, excuse me,” Scully says. “I gotta go out in the hallway to make sweet love to my partner, or we’ll at least kiss each other’s foreheads and whisper sweet nothings into one another’s ears.” Actually, Mulder’s there to tell her what’s happened with the skin sample from the hooker’s fingernails, which is that there are no fatty acids in it. Scully thinks there are a number of reasons this could happen, and Mulder quips that even though it’s not the “finely detailed insanity [she's] come to expect from [him]“, he thinks maybe the killer is doing this out of a physical hunger because he’s got a chemical deficiency. Scully’s like, “Huh? A fat sucking vampire?” and starts talking about scorpions surfing the internet (which is kind of cool, if you think about it) and blah blah blah. I’m tired and it doesn’t matter. Cross has a list of names– thirty-eight of them to be exact– to be canvassed in the area and he wants to split them up and get a bunch of men on it. Scully wants to brief everyone first, and Cross kinda looks annoyed but keeps his cool and just says “Sure” before walking away.

Back at the ranch, Timid opens his package, which contains a book of Italian poetry, and then his computer dings and tells him all grammatically correct, “You have mail.” I’m glad AOL adopted colloquial speech and said “You’ve GOT mail”, which sounds a little less awkward, but still sucks. Maybe they had to change it on the show for copyright reasons? Maybe it doesn’t matter. When Timid opens his e-mail, we see it’s from Huggs, who feels really bad about setting him up the other day and wants to try again. Bad choice, but whatever. Who am I to stand in the way of true love? Timid kind of smirks to himself, and then we hear a knock at the door.

It’s not Timid’s door, though, it’s some other random dude’s. Scully’s there and wants to ask some questions. Oh, I get it. They’re canvassing. We were supposed to believe for a second that maybe Scully happened to be assigned to canvas Timid and that he was going to suck what fat Gillian Anderson had left from having her daughter ( i.e. none) and leave Scully to turn into Hamburger Helper just like the others. Listen, though. I don’t even like Hamburger Helper, okay. I’m not ruining my favourite foods for the sake of these recaps, so you’ll never hear me say someone looked like a donut, or a bowl of ice cream. Let’s just make that clear. Anyhow, as it turns out, it’s Cross that gets Timid’s apartment, and when he notices Timid’s bandaged hand, well…nothing actually happens then. Mark Snow hits the Note of Foreboding on his synthesizer and then we fade out.

At the police station, Scully’s trying to do some work when guess who interrupts her again? It’s Mulder. He can’t go another second without one of Scully’s forehead kisses. That and he wants an update, which is that Cross hasn’t checked in yet. Another Note of Foreboding before the scene changes yet again. This time, Timid is fighting over who will pay the check at his dinner with Huggs, who managed not to forget her lipstick and her unbearably monotone voice and lack of discernible reaction! Finally, Timid insists and Huggs gets all weirded out by Timid’s messed up hand. He says it’s just eczema and Huggs feels like she needs to apologise again for setting him up the other night, but he won’t hear of it because he’s a perfect gentleman, understanding and sweet. That and all’s well that end’s well cos she’s with him now and he still gets to kill her! He says he’s going to take the bus home, knowing that Ms. “I Experience No Emotion of Any Kind” will insist upon driving him, and that’s exactly what happens.

Once in front of Timid’s building, we see that LandLady has brought her shitty poetry to Timid’s door. Apparently LandLady’s a regular Sylvia Plath– her envelope is so thick it won’t slide under the door. She uses her LandLady perk of having keys to everyone’s apartment and lets herself in. Out in the car, Timid and Huggs have their small talk, and Timid tries to assure her that he likes her and that she doesn’t have to be nervous. He strokes her face and decides to invite her up, but then he sees the light on in his apartment and rushes out of the car without further explanation. Of course, while inside TImid’s apartment, LandLady discovers some flies and a rotten smell and decides it’s the perfect time to go snooping around! In the bathroom, she finds Cross’s dead body in the tub, covered in the goo. Then Timid finds LandLady and the rest, as they say, is history.

Later on, LandLady’s daughter feels her way to Timid’s door, which pushes open easily. She’s looking for her mother, who had a poetry class that she never returned home from. He pops out of the bathroom finally and keeps telling her (in the creepiest voice, might I add), that LandLady would be home soon, that she hadn’t stopped by or any of that. Of course, if LandLady’s daughter could see, she would notice her mother’s dead body just behind him. But she can’t, so there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Or fatty acids. On her way out, LandLady’s daughter bumps into a suitcase, which she reaches down to touch. Timid grabs her by the arm and says he’s going away to New York, and not to worry about LandLady, cos he’s sure she’s fine. The daughter knows something’s up, though.

At the police station, Scully and Mulder and everyone else are making calls, trying to figure out where Cross could be, since he still hasn’t reported back. Then Mulder gets a 911 report for a possible homicide from a young girl (LandLady’s daughter, if you’re that thick-skulled), and the address the call came from just happens to be one that was on Cross’s list.

At Timid’s place, they bust down the door and find the LandLady’s body, as well as Cross’s. Scully goes out into the hallway and has a talk with LandLady’s daughter. Seeing Scully with kids always kinda breaks my heart, cos Gillian Anderson always plays it so earnestly, and it’s really sad and emotional even before all that uterine drama happens in her life. Mariska Hargitay does that on SVU, too, and it’s always kinda touching. Scully’s all calm with the little girl, and tells her that she knows it’s hard, but she needs the girl to tell her what happened. LandLady’s daughter (Ah, forget it, her name is Jesse) says that she smelled her mother’s perfume in Timid’s apartment, and that’s how she knew he was lying. She was scared that he was going to hurt her, she knew that she wanted to and could tell because he grabbed her. Scully’s all, “He grabbed you?” with this look on her face that says something along the lines of “I want to gut this asshole like a fish”, but she listens to Jesse’s story and asks about the suitcase and where Timid said he was going. Jesse’s crying by this point and Scully looks like she’s about to squirt some as well, but she says she’ll be right back and goes to leave. “Agent Scully”, Jesse says. Scully turns around. “Why would someone do this?” Scully doesn’t have an answer for that and says as much. “I don’t know, Jesse.” Don’t ever have kids, Scully. And if you do, give them away. Oh wait, check. Moving on.

Inside the apartment, Mulder’s worked with one of Timid’s neighbours and a composite artist to come up with a sketch of Timid, whose actual name is Virgil Encanto, or at least that’s what it says on the rental lease. Turns out, he doesn’t have any birth certificate, social security number, bank account, or anything else that could possibly track him as a living human being. Also turns out, Virgil is a weird name. He apparently translates Italian literature but gets paid in cashiers checks, and Scully mentions the fact that he told Jesse that he was going to New York. Here’s where Mulder gets to be the brainiac– he knows Timid’s not that stupid. He suggests making contact with all of Timid’s victims– “past, present, and future”– and takes all his files to a computer crimes specialist to be recovered and unlocked. Finally, they retrieve the data.

Cut to Huggs’ house, where the doorbell’s a-ringin’. Something tells me it’s not someone selling Girl Scout cookies, though it’d be nice if it was. Thin Mints are really good, and the shortbread are delicious as well. Oh hell, they’re all good, except those weird lemon ones which I never really understood. I remember being in Girl Scouts when I was in third grade and standing waist high in boxes and boxes of cookies when we picked up our orders. Yum. Okay, I really need to have dinner. But first, Huggs has to open the door cos I really want Timid to kill her so maybe then she’ll show some emotion on her never-changing face. Huggs thinks it might be Joann, but when she realises it’s Timid and that he’s come to apologise for having skidaddled so quickly earlier in the evening, she lets him in.

Back at the station, Scully says she’s going to release Timid’s sketch to the news stations so that it can be put on the morning news, but Mulder says it’s not necessary because he’s found the right people. Scully tries to call Huggs to warn her, but Huggs is too busy trying to tame the quivering in her loins for this stud to even answer, so she doesn’t get the message. She just pours him coffee and says that the answering machine will pick up. Then she tells Virgil (haha, Virgil!) that she needs to go and put on some clothes, when what she’s really doing is going to e-mail her friend with that whole “You won’t believe who’s here!” teaser, and she says she’ll call her in the morning. Or…will she? DUN DUN DUN.

Back at the station, S&M (ahem) are still making calls to people that Segnor Encanto has had contact with, telling them to keep their doors locked and stay on alert until they’re called and told otherwise. When they realise that they couldn’t get a hold of two people on the list– one of them being Huggs– they decide to go check on them just in case. While Huggs is e-mailing Joanne, she gets a new e-mail from the F.B.I. which includes the sketch of Timid, who now happens to be walking into her bedroom, inching closer and closer. He’s all, “I hope you’re not talking to some other guy!” and she starts babbling that she’s just e-mailing her girlfriend to tell her how happy she is that Timid gave her another chance and hasn’t rejected her. That’d play nice if a) she was capable of changing her face / tone of voice whatsoever and b) Timid hadn’t caught a reflection of his own sketch in the mirror. He goes along with what Huggs says though, saying he’s glad she feels that way ‘cos he does too. Huggs gets up and realises she still hasn’t changed her clothes, but Timid wants her to know she’s beautiful as she is and doesn’t need to change a thing. She starts freaking out and is like, “Leave me alone! What do you want?” and he just lunges at her, at her knees or something, I can’t really tell.

Outside, Mulder and Scully pull up to Huggs’s building while Mark Snow’s “Song of the Scattering of Insects” –a million tiny guitar strings all being plucked at once– scores the scene. They rush into the building and knock on her door, only to be told by Joanne that she’s in the condo and just sent an e-mail a few minutes ago. Mulder knocks down the door with his strong, manly feet and when they enter the condo, everything is dark and quiet. The computer screen with Timid’s sketch on it has been knocked over, and Mulder sees a man running down the street who he thinks must be Timid. Scully finds Huggs, who is still breathing (barely), and peels the goo out of her mouth while she sucks in air. Scully says she’ll stay with Huggs while Mulder goes after Timid.

Scully calls an ambulance with “special chemical burn unit” for Huggs and Mulder tracks Timid to an alley, but it turns out it’s not Timid, it’s just some kid with a can of spraypaint. Foiled, you silly federal agent! He drops his gun, disappointed. Back at the apartment, Scully’s pulling medicines and scissors from beneath the bathroom sink when she sees Timid popping out of the shower. The look of terror on her face is pretty palpable, and Timid wastes no time coming up to her and bashing her head through the bathroom mirror and slamming her into walls. A fight ensues in which Scully gets some pretty mean kung fu kicks into Timid’s stomach and knees. Scully may be a tough broad, but she’s also a tiny one, and Timid knocks her to the ground and pins her there, about to share the goo. Scully reaches for the scissors, which are just a few inches from her hands, but she just can’t make it cos her arms are so little. Finally she does though, and she stabs them in his chest but he comes right back at her. That is, until someone shoots him in the chest…and it’s Huggs! And guess what, her face finally registers an emotion! It’s pure….anger? Terror? It’s…something, anyway. And that’s what counts.

A week later, down at the police station (why is it so dark in there?), Mulder shows Timid a list of a ton of women who have disappeared and wants him to tell them which ones he was responsible for. He says all of them. Mulder grabs the paper and starts to walk out, beckoning Scully to come with him. Scully doesn’t move, though, she just stares at Timid, whose face has begun to decompose from the lack of fatty acids, I would imagine. She almost looks close to tears, but those tears you get from being so pissed off you can’t see straight anymore. “Why?” she asks him, and he explains that although Scully may see a monster when she looks at him, he was just feeding the hunger. Scully then stands up for women everywhere– she tells him he’s more than a monster, that he fed on those women’s insecurities. Timid says he just gave them what they wanted and they gave him what he needed. Scully’s like “Not anymore, scumbag”, and he starts saying some Italian poetry that sounds pretty demonic, considering. Scully looks back. “The dead are no longer lonely,” he translates. Scully turns and tells the guard to let her out, and Timid’s left sans fat for all eternity. Hamburger Helper, anyone?

By ejluther

We all know Mulder and Scully chased answers to hard questions for years – but what about the age-old query, “Where’s the beef?” Why, it’s in this episode, RED MUSEUM! Along with some actual continuity and foreshadowing! Let’s get started, shall we? A bit of back-story, first – Mulder’s mysterious and oh-so-vague informant, Chris Carter – um, I mean “Deep Throat”, was seemingly killed in front of Scully in the season one finale when he croaked his final words, “Trust – gasp – no one.” But do they listen? Of course not. In fact, there’s lots of duplicitous women from the past, half-insane UFO abductees and creepy disfigured Mulder-imposters waiting in the wings for our favorite FBI special agents to blindly trust in the future. But, for now, let’s go to the museum…the Red Museum.

Fade in – a large sign announces “J.A.S.D. BEEF” as we enter a beef processing plant. Cattle meander through the maze of fences that inevitably lead to their deaths as the camera pans across their hairy little faces. An abrupt cut shows us the end result – a raw slab of cow-torso. The meat is thrown upon a cutting table to be sliced in half, while other chunks of meat are thrown about and soon the blood-splattered workers are breaking for the day. A guy creepily with what kind of looks like a chain-link purse thrown jauntily over his shoulder winks toward Beth as he makes his exit and, now, we’re following her. If you’ve ever seen an XF pre-episode teaser before you know something creepy is about to happen – but will it happen to Beth or because of her? She sighs, “See you tomorrow”, and we cut to the exterior of a house wherein a standard teenage boy and his little brother are watching some sort of police bust on the tube. The little one is sitting way too close to the screen so I start to suspect that the XF in question will be about “The Boy Who Sat Too Close To The TV And Went Blind!” and the havoc he wreaks about the world! But, no – it’s only Season Two so we won’t hear the scraping of the barrel for years now. Beth walks in (now decked out in high-waisted mom-jeans and a denim shirt) and greets her boys, both of whom seem nice and normal. After some banter about pizza for dinner (Beth doesn’t want pepperoni – get it? She’s sick of meat.), she walks into the bathroom and now I know this has to be it – bathrooms are typically dens of doom on this show and so I’m ready for a man-sized snake to slither from the electrical socket and suck her brain out and replace it with spaghetti or something. Beth starts to unbutton her shirt and show us her bra when we switch to the POV of someone else – is it Snakeman?!? No, just some pervy guy peering at Beth’s chest while breathing heavily – very Psycho. From the shot it appears he’s behind the mirror so perhaps he’s itsy-bitsy and living in the medicine chest – hey, it’s possible. Anyway, he’s wearing glasses so we can identify him later and Beth continues to strip while staring at herself in the mirror, the way we all do. Mirror-perv suddenly steps away and the phone rings. The older teenaged boy answers it and quickly hangs up after agreeing to something – he plays “got your nose” with his brother and calls him “butt-crumb” while saying he’ll be back in five minutes. Yes, he calls him a “butt-crumb”. Cut to worried mom on the phone saying he’s now been gone for four hours and she doesn’t know who called him. Didn’t they have *69 back then? Say, did you ever wonder who picked those particular two digits for the call-back function? Someone named “Beavis” or “Butthead” is my guess. Anyway, worried mom strokes the head of her younger son as we fade to an outdoor scene. Soon, missing nose-snatcher wearing only white briefs that are nasty and dirty comes into frame, desperately grasping a tree before lumbering off. A pair of deputies driving by watch as the boy stumbles into the road in front of them. As they approach we can see scratches and bruises on the boy’s body and they recognize him as Gary Kane, calling him by name. Gary looks as though he’s tripping on some bad acid as the deputy tries to calm him down. Gary remains like a frightened animal as he stumbles away, turning around to reveal his bare back upon which someone (something?) has written, “He is one”. We fade to black and are left to ponder, “One what? One victim? One bad mother- (shut your mouth!)?” I’m sure we’ll find out soon.

Cue opening credits as the familiar theme and title images fill the air and screen – then we fade into another beloved slideshow about the boy and how normal he is. Mulder sexily eases onto this desk while Scully looks on, wearing a white jacket with some of the biggest lapels I’ve ever seen – seriously, they look as though they could fold up any second and envelop her head, like a Venus Flytrap. But they don’t and Mulder continues to debrief her (As if! Scully won’t get any real debriefing from Mulder for at least five more seasons) about the case. Scully joins Mulder as the exposition continues and we learn there have been two other victims nearby with the same writing on their backs. This is the part where Mulder posits a crazy theory while Scully pleads logic and science. Instead, Mulder passes the crazy-buck and says a local Wisconsin sheriff thinks the kids have been possessed. I guess Scully will have to cock her eyebrow at someone else this time.

Next we find the dynamic duo in WI, driving along with said sheriff. He tells them about the Church of the Red Museum, a group of radical vegetarians in the area who bought a ranch and made it a “monument to barbarism”, turning 500 head of cattle into pets. Pets? What, do these cows fetch their slippers and roll over for belly rubs? Anyway, we find out a guy named “Odin” runs the cult and he’s from California so you just know he’s nuts!

As the car approaches the ranch/church we get our first look at the cult members; they’re decked out in white tunics with loose white pants and bright red turbans. It’s raining and Mulder holds an umbrella over himself and Scully while she tells the sheriff they don’t look much like people who would do awful things to those kids. Why she thinks this is anyone’s guess – never trust a cult member in a blood-red turban, I always say. As they enter the building we see a gathered group of cult members in chairs staring at a blank screen up on a stage where another cult member sits. Is it their first day? Will they get a Powerpoint presentation called, “So you’ve decided to join a cult!”? Unfortunately, they don’t and this Odin soon takes the stage and bows to the audience. The actor looks familiar if you’re an X-Phile, and here’s why; he makes an appearance in a Season 7 episode that actually follows through on concepts floated here. But more on that later…now back to RED MUSEUM where Odin sits at a computer and begins to type with his eyes closed as another cult member reads his writing aloud – here’s what she says, “Today is a blessing from our lord and master, who awaits his flock in this time, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Eighteen earth years from the beginning of the new kingdom. The guides speak through me today as messengers of word that we may be free from death and the passage into spirit. As the acceleration continues, we, the enlightened, must bring our teachings of the skills for survival to mankind. Repeat in prayer…”

Now, references to the musical HAIR aside (sing it with me, “When the moon is in the seventh house…and Jupiter aligns with Mars…”), what’s really telling about this “automatic writing” passage is the bit about “Eighteen earth years from the beginning of the new kingdom.” – this episode is set in 1994 and in 18 years it will be 2012, the date of alien colonization. Put that in your continuity pipe and smoke it! Of course, it will be quite hard to pry the pipe out of the hands of the stoned red-eyed 1013 crew but just distract them by exclaiming, “Oh, look! A squirrel!” and you’ll have your chance. But that’s not all! Mulder goes on to explain what’s driving the cult’s actions. Again, I’ll quote “They’re walk-ins…They’re believers in soul transference, enlightened spirits who have taken possession of other peoples bodies.” See, walk-ins aren’t only welcome at nail salons and beauty parlors – they’re also here at the Red Museum and, infamously, are the reason behind the mysterious disappearance of Mulder’s sister, Samantha. That’s right – years from now we’ll find out that these mysterious “walk-ins” saved Samantha from horrible tests and a life of pain by spiriting her away into starlight. And the connection I mentioned earlier? The one concerning the actor playing Odin, Mark Ralston? Well, he plays a different character in SEIN UND ZEIT, the first episode in the Season 7 two-parter that answers the Samantha question. To be brief – Ralston plays the father of the missing girl, Amber LaPierre, whose disappearance leads Mulder to the truth about Samantha. And the same type of “automatic writing” displayed in RED MUSEUM plays a big part in SEIN UND ZEIT/CLOSURE. But enough about future episodes and back to the cow-loving, spirit-transferring and turban-wearing cult; Odin soon calls out the “three who do not believe” in the audience – he must mean the sheriff, Scully and the mouse in her pocket because we know Mulder, as a general rule, believes. Odin warns the three about eating meat and we’re left to wonder if the cult is behind the attacks on the kids. Could the “He is one” mean “He is a meat-eater”?

Cut to poor traumatized Gary as he talks about how he was in the woods and felt a spirit enter him. Mulder pushes the issue and Gary says it might have been an animal spirit but that he can’t explain it or remember much else. Scully starts to explore the house and happens upon the younger boy, Stevie. I love it when Scully interacts with little kids – she’s just so damn good at it. She doesn’t talk down to them at all but still maintains a maternal air – it’s too bad she can’t seem to hang onto her own kids, but that’s another story. She asks about the night Gary disappeared but gets nowhere. While they talk, we switch to a different POV and see that Mirror-perv is back! He ogles Scully for a bit before she leaves with Mulder and the sheriff, who tells the agents that Gary has changed and won’t even suit up for football now. Talk about misplaced priorities – the kid’s been possessed by some sort of graffiti-spouting demon-cow spirit and all he notices is he doesn’t want to toss the pigskin around anymore? Mulder seems to think the “Meat Is Murder” cult may be responsible and asks the sheriff where they can get a hotel room and some grub.

Fade up on Scully’s sauce-splattered bib (a nice callback to the blood-splattered aprons at the meat plant) as she sings the praises of the BBQ she’s devouring. She’s got an adorable smudge of sauce on her mouth and Mulder reaches out to wipe it off – at this moment, a million shippers’ hearts flutter and Scully smiles at his simple gesture. But then it’s back to business as she presses Mulder for more information about these “walk-ins”. Mulder tells her it’s a new age take on an old idea, that if someone has lost all hope and is consumed by despair then they’re open to being inhabited by an enlightened spirit. Again, if anyone had lost hope and was consumed by despair, it was Samantha. Mulder name-checks some famous folks like Lincoln and Gorbachev as potential walk-ins before some trouble outside attracts their attention. A group of kids are harassing a cult member on the street, calling him “Aladdin” and “Diaper-head” before Mulder shows up to intervene. Scully follows and the gang of hooligans call her his “little wife” before they notice wifey’s packing some heat. The sight of Scully’s gun causes the head creep, Rick, to brag that the sheriff’s his father before skulking away to undoubtedly mug a guy in a wheelchair or throw rotten vegetables at your grandma.

Later, Rick drops off his skanky girlfriend after swishing his tongue around her mouth and drives off to cause more trouble, leaving her to walk through a darkened parking lot alone. Soon a whimpering sound attracts her and she spots her dog behind some trashcans. But, of course, it’s a trap and she’s soon nabbed by a shadowy figure and a cloth put over her mouth. The next thing we see she’s wandering through a forest dazed and bruised, she looks up a tree and a giant bird swooping down to peck out her eyes before a swarm of bad CGI cockroaches start to attack. We pan away to see “She is one” written on her back.

Cut to hotel room where Scully tells Mulder that the girl’s been drugged with a strong anesthetic with hallucinogenic qualities, a drug only a doctor or pharmacist could most likely obtain. In turn, Mulder’s found out that Odin, the creepy cult leader, used to be a doctor so they’re off to question him. They arrive to talk with Odin and I can’t help but wonder if those turbans leave red stains on their heads. They look hot – I bet they are and then you sweat and then the red dye leaves a bright red ring around your noggin, like you were buried up to the top of your skull in the sand and got a bad sunburn. Ouch. Anyway, Odin won’t let them in because they eat meat and stuff. Mulder puts up with none of his guff and tells him to come outside because he’s arrested, taking him to the sheriff’s office where they question Odin about the drug found in the girl’s system, scopolamine. The sheriff goes all nutso on him and tries to get him to admit he attacked those kids before Mulder leads him out. Poor Mulder – the sheriff’s stealing all his thunder, what with his nutball theories and going all crazy-cop on Odin’s ass. That’s Mulder’s job, dammit!

Anyway, more trouble calls them away to the street as the sheriff’s son, Rick, drenches a cult member with a bucket of cow blood. Very Carrie. The sheriff begins to berate his son when yet another creepy guy gestures to Scully to come over to his truck. She does and he says there’s something he’d “like to show her”. I bet he does. Creepy old guys always do.

Soon Mulder and Scully are in his truck, all riding in silence. They come upon a pasture and the truck stops. Creepy old guy spins his tale of his past and how things have changed around these parts; how they now use genetically-engineered growth hormone on the cows and how the people in town have all gotten meaner, how high school boys are now raping girls and stuff like that. And how he thinks the kids in the woods and the meanness of the town all come from the same root source – the growth hormone. Scully protests that the hormone’s been cleared by the F.D.A. to which creepy old guy scoffs, “Says who? The government?” Snap! Mulder smirks a bit and they leave the scene. We then cut to the men who’ve been injecting the cattle with the growth hormone in the pasture only to see that one of them is Mirror-perv! It’s the glasses that give him away, of course.

Hours later, we see a plane in the sky and its cockpit scene; the pilot tells his passenger they’re not going to make it to the airport and they’ll have to try and land the plane now. He also helpfully calls his briefcase-clutching passenger “Doc”. The plane slams into the ground erupting into a huge ball of flame. At the crash site investigation, we see two body bags and the sheriff tells our agents that one of the victims was Dr. Larson, the man who delivered his son. They also find the briefcase that was so important to the doctor and find it full of money and vials of some mysterious liquid. Scull snaps on the latex and checks out the fluid – let’s just say at this point she knows it’s probably not monkey pee.

Scully and Mulder do some digging and find out that Dr. Larson was the doctor for every one of the kids who have been abducted and “possessed”. There’s also some stuff about credit cards from the victim’s families and we find out they don’t know what was in the vials yet. This episode is chockfull of questions and they do their best to reiterate each and every one of them for us before we cut to cult members walking through a field near Mirror-perv and his friend as they finish up their cattle-injecting business. Mirror-perv drives away as another car approaches. Eagle-eyed X-Philes will recognize him as “crewcut man”, the assassin of Deep Throat. To me, he also looks a lot like Brian Thompson, the actor who plays the Alien Bounty Hunter but I don’t think that means anything. Anyway, crewcut man gets out and shoots Mirror-perv’s friend in the same direct, no nonsense way he dispatched with Deep Throat. Apparently, he comes to kill people and chew gum. And he’s all out of gum.

Mulder and Scully show up to talk with Gary’s mom and tell her they suspect Dr. Larson of doing something suspicious to her son. They find out that Gary’s never been sick “a day in his life”, a fact that strikes Mulder as odd. She goes on to say Dr. Larson gave Gary “vitamin shots” as he did with a lot of kids as a preventative measure and we know this can’t be good. She mentions her husband, Jay, and how he wanted to take Gary to a different doctor but then Jay was “accidentally” killed at work. And where did Jay work? Why, the meatpacking plant, of course. Mulder notices a pinhole of light coming through the mirror and they discover Mirror-perv’s secret hideaway, replete with video camera and boxes of videotapes.

We find the sheriff’s son, Rick, and a little friend sitting in Rick’s truck, listening to metal music and drinking beer when the little friend announces he has to “drain the lizard” – 1013 does love to write dialogue for adolescent boys, don’t they, butt-wipe? Anyway, while he’s taking care of business we see Mirror-perv take out Rick with the old cloth trick. Rick’s eventually found in the woods with – you guessed it – “He is one” written on his body. Only, this time, the victim’s dead. Nearby, crewcut man walks out of the woods up to his car and puts a gun in his trunk. Again he looks remarkably like Brian Thompson to me and I half-expect him to shape-shift but, of course, he doesn’t. But we are left with the impression that he killed Rick. Not that we feel too bad about that.

Scully is looking at a folder with a photo of Mirror-perv while Mulder drives – she says his name is Gerd Thomas and that he’s owned the building where the Kanes live for 21 years. Turns out Thomas used to run a daycare center out of that building and the police are holding him. Again, I’ll point out that in SEIN UND ZEIT/CLOSURE, the villain, Santa Claus, was secretly taping children, too. Of course, that is standard Perv 101 behavior but is another connection to those future episodes, nonetheless. At that moment, crewcut man drives by and Scully seems to sort of recognize him.

Thomas is led into a room while Mulder sarcastically compliments him on his video library, especially the ones of “the little boys”. Thomas admits he’s sick and admits to kidnapping the recent kids in the woods but denies killing Rick. Thomas says he wrote those words on the kids because of what they’d become – “monsters”. He says they’ve become that way because of Dr. Larson’s tests. Meanwhile, Scully clearly remembers crewcut man as the killer of Deep Throat and excuses herself. Mulder asks Thomas more about the tests and finds out that Dr. Larson was paying him to inject the cattle with an unknown substance. According to Thomas, Larson told him he was trying to inoculate the cattle, and the kids, with it. Scully soon reenters with some answers, taking Mulder out in the hallway for some sexy close-talking. Turns out the substance was “Purity Control”, the same possibly alien DNA they found in the season one finale. Mulder deduces the doctor’s been injecting the kids with this alien DNA to see what would happen and being paid to do so and that Thomas is just the perverted sap who unwittingly blew his cover. Scully tells Mulder about crewcut man and who he is – Mulder thinks he’s now going after all the kids (they always have to destroy all the evidence, you know – it’s Conspiracy 101, after all) and he specifically says he wants this guy taken alive. Of course, we all know what that means.

Mulder and the sheriff round up the affected kids and take them to the Odin’s cult for safekeeping. Mulder then heads to the meatpacking plant and finds gasoline poured around. He walks through row and row of hanging meat, eventually finding crewcut man using the gasoline to prime the place for torching – talk about BBQ! Crewcut man then knocks Mulder over and almost lights the place ablaze, only to be shot by a distraught Sheriff. I really wanted the sheriff to then scream to the heavens, “I did it, Ricky! I avenged your death, my son!” but he doesn’t. But he does say it with his eyes. Then Mulder walks in to see the dead body of crewcut man and we feel his pain, too. Get used to it, Mulder; you’ve got several seasons of such shenanigans to go. Repeat after me, “I’ve never been so close to the truth before, Scully!”

RED MUSEUM is wrapped up with a voiceover from Scully, telling us the identity of the man shot by the sheriff is unknown, as is the material in the vials. She goes on to say that the children given the serum soon developed a severe and undiagnosed flu-like ailment but that none of the Red Museum cult got sick, leading her to think they were being used as a control group. The meat plant and the BBQ restaurant are all shut down as investigation into the tainted beef and milk continues. The case remains open and unsolved.

RED MUSEUM was originally planned to be a crossover episode with the offbeat CBS series “Picket Fences” but that plan went by the wayside. I have to wonder if the episode started as a MOTW and then, when the “Picket Fences” idea went south, they turned it into a mythology episode about halfway in – that’s what it feels like. As a confirmed mytharc-addict, I have to say I do love all the stuff about walk-ins and impending alien colonization dates and purity control. And when it came time to wrap up the Samantha plotline I think 1013 did purposefully go back to many of the concepts and ideas first brought up here (the reuse of the actor who played Odin is a nice shout-out, too). It seems they decided to have the walk-ins take it one step further and literally rescue not just Samantha’s soul, but her body, too. Either that or Samantha’s body is still walking around somewhere with a new “enlightened” soul in it. After all, they had to leave a way to reopen Samantha if they wanted to, right? God forbid something really be over on this show.

To continue the mytharc connections, in addition to the stuff about Samantha, I think we can see the genesis of the virus-delivery system here and that 1013 considered using meat/milk before they settled on using bees as transport. A wise choice – I mean, how the hell is a cow going to crawl out from under Scully’s collar and sting her right before she kisses Mulder?! That’s just silly.