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FIGHT THE FUTURE

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Mulder and Scully get back to their whitewashed motel room and call a bunch of people on the motel phone. Again -- remember the days before the Internet? When you had to call people? They don't even have cell phones yet in this, I don't think. They are helpless, mewling, technologically unsophisticated babies. Mulder's still got that insane bit of hair. I love to think that there was some continuity person frantically making sure that the same miniscule hair lock was drooping across his forehead in the exact same way in contiguous scenes. They compare notes -- basically, they've both got nothing. Scully says she's made an appointment with a Col. Kissel for several days from now. They don't have several days! Damn you, Kissel! Mulder decides to end-run it around the Man and looks up Kissel in the phone book like the keen mind that he is. When the Colonel pulls into his driveway in his giant hideous sedan, they are on him like white on rice. Unfortunately, he's really pissed off by this and gives them the brushoff, even though Mulder puts his jacket back on, special. We get a somewhat hilarious "I am sad and discouraged!!" thing from David as Scully cracks that at least they still have their appointment.

Just then, an intrepid reporter shows up. He works for the Daily Planet, and he heard there were FBI agents in town and he figured they would probably be lurking in front of Col. Kissel's house and getting the door slammed in their faces right about now, so he thought he'd meet them there! Mulder and Scully are all tight-lipped, until Clark Kent mentions UFOs, and suddenly Mulder's little face lights up like a kid on Christmas morn. (You know -- for Mulder. Meaning it doesn't look that different from the panic face. But you get my drift.) Oh, Muldy. You are so easily played. Bless your heart. He "casually" asks the reporter if he knows anything about this far-out UFO business, and Clark assures him that it is All Hooey. Shaking his head sadly at this closed-minded stiff, Mulder asks whether, IF it just so happened that he wanted to know something about this "UFO" "business," Clark would know anywhere he might go to talk to someone about that sort of thing. Gillian does a nice full-body eyeroll in the background. Hee.

It seems the answer to Mulder's question is The Flying Saucer, a charming local eatery full of UFO freaks. We see some lady in tapered mom jeans and a guy in a denim jacket walking in. I LOVE YOU, CANADA. Seriously. I love you and your realistic extras. Los Angeles WISHES it had enough dumpy people to hash together a single scene of regular townies walking into a diner, let alone five years' worth. Bless you, Vancouver, and your cloudiness and regularness. You don't look much like Idaho -- or Florida, or Oklahoma -- but you look like a real place, and your actors are blessedly not all trying to be the next Jessica Simpson. I find it so refreshing, I really do. The lady at the counter is middle-aged and somewhat heavy and wearing a hideous loud blouse and ugly lipstick, instead of being a 20-year-old model in a tank top who's been given a ponytail and smudgy eye makeup to make her look "plain." Anyway. Pet peeve of mine. Mulder and Scully sit at the counter, Mulder plops a liberal amount of ketchup onto his plate, and he and the counter lady chat about the many UFO photos she has pinned up behind her. Mulder allows himself to be talked into buying one of them, for 20 bucks. Scully leans over, looks up at his chin and calls him a sucker, then says she'll meet him outside. Geez, Mulder hasn't even finished his ketchup!

When he emerges, Scully informs him that Ellens Air Base isn't even on her USGS quadrant map! What the! Mulder tells her that they've got their own map. Sucker! Oh snap, Scully! Sure enough, Mulder has batted his eyelashes at the diner lady sufficiently that she's given them directions on a napkin to where all the action is. At this prospect, Scully looks less than exuberant.

By the time they get there -- a hill beside a barbed-wire fence surrounding the base -- driving past a sign that ominously forbids anyone from taking pictures or doing drawings or making clay sculptures or staging one-act plays or writing critical essays about or of anything anywhere near the base, Scully is pretty pissed, enough to bust out the anger dimples as she berates Mulder for dragging her out here when she could be back in her awesome hotel room looking at the phone book. "Yeah, this is gonna look REAL GOOD on my FIELD REPORT!" she snarks, to Mulder's absolute lack of any ounce of caring. She closes the trunk, which she can barely do since she is five foot two, as Mulder hikes up the hill with his binocs.

Tick tock, tick tock. This would be a great place to have a big superimposed clock with spinning hands. Missed opportunity, amateurs! It's now dark, and Scully is napping in the car when there's a loud rumbling outside. She wakes up and screams when the car's back windshield shatters. Frickin' Oldsmobiles -- one lousy spaceship vibration and they crumple like tissue paper. (In other news: THEY ARE ACTUALLY DRIVING AN OLDSMOBILE! Do you know what this MEANS? It means I can't make fun of the whole Oldsmobile campaign in FTF anymore on the grounds that it's ludicrous product placement because Mulder and Scully only drive Fords! This is...I think I need to sit down.) Mulder comes running down the hill and tells her to wake up (always a master of timing, that one), and drags her back up with him. Please note that they are holding hands. Eee hee! Sorry.