SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

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Stay 'n Save Motor Inn…so says a big ol' sign, right in front. Oh well, they're all the Davy Crockett Motor Court to me. It's 5:30 by the bedside clock, presumably a.m ., as Scully is sacked out in the darkness. Shadowy figures scuttle past the window, though, waking her up. Slowly she sits up, all groggy, and watches in alarm as somebody wiggles the doorknob. Her gun's across the room on the dresser; she kicks off the covers and grabs for it just as a clump of flashlight-brandishing guys kick in the door. "Where's Mulder?" the lead guy barks, shining the light in her eyes. Okay, come on: it's a 50/50 chance of getting the right room, boys; 100% if you bothered to look at the registration sheet in the lobby. I…don't know. Are we supposed to discern, here, that this Crack Investigative Team affiliated with the Shadow Government is obviously doing kind of a shitty job of it? Or are we to assume that THEY just assume, l ike everyone else does, that these two are hooking up already?

Whatever, I'm getting ahead of myself; in the blink of an eye they're interrogating Mulder in the next room. Sleepy, shirtless, stubble-scruffed young Mulder. Holy shit, I have no idea what's happening in this scene, because drooooooool. I guess they are…mad? About the 1110000101010101111 fax? (Goddamn it, Danny—no football tickets for you!) After some bicker blah blah, Mulder sadly puts on a shirt, which allows me to focus on the fact that Kevin's document is apparently some sort of defense satellite transmission, highly classified; Shadowy Guys are demanding to know where it came from. Even as Mulder is being evasive and difficult, a Shadow Guy's phone rings. "We got it," he says, and they stalk out, past Scully shuffling in. Mulder and Scully are both so very bed-headed in this scene; it's freaking adorable. Mulder rolls his eyes at her, exasperated. "You shouldn't have told them," he moans. "They have no jurisdi ction!" Scully is appalled: "Mulder, they're NSA!" They think Kevin is a threat to national security. Mulder treats this notion with the respect it deserves (read: none). Scully presses him—where could Kevin have gotten the information?—but Mulder just stomps past her out the door.

Cut to chez Morris, where the Crap—sorry, the Crack Investigative Team is clumsily tearing little Kevin's room apart, throwing Matchbox cars and picture books around, ripping his crayoned drawings off the walls. Charming. CasualWear!Mulder and Scully pull up outside; Mulder gets off fairly easily in a barn jacket and jeans, but Scully is…weirdly clad, in fairly normal black pants, but an emerald-green…velvet blazer? With a plum-colored t-shirt? And we get a quick glimpse of brown hiking boots or possibly Topsiders? Wait, which one of these two is later revealed to be color-blind? Jesus. Moving on. Suit-wearing National Stupidity Agents hustle Ma and Kevin out of the house and into separate bureaucratic sedans while Mulder and Scully watch. Kevin, frightened, calls out for his mom. Aw, that's cold, you NSA bastards! Mulder mopes after the departing vehicles while Scully look s rueful. God, what time is it? I got dressed in the dark again, she thinks. That jacket is at least two sizes too big for her, too. It's just nuts.

Inside, the head NSA bastard has unearthed a whole sheaf of 00001110111110010111 papers, and looks smugly satisfied. Mulder picks up Kevin's busted piggy bank from the floor. "You guys do really delicate work," he snarks. The team ignores him. "Let's get this to cryptography," NSA guy says. Better give it to somebody besides Danny, I guess; he'll rat you out before you can say Jiminy Christmas. "I think we got what we needed; thank you," he adds pointedly, to Scully, as they exit. Ouch. Mulder glums on over to the window, peering out, and then gets that raised-antennae look of his. "What is it?" Scully asks, moving to join him. "I'm not sure," Mulder says, hurrying out. Scully stares down at the roof of the camper parked outside: it's all scorched and blackened. By aliens! Down below, Mulder climbs a ladder and scritches around on the blistered, burnt roof of the camper with, naturally, his bare hands. He sniffs at the burnt residue, crumbling it in his fingers. Scully gazes down at him from the window. So hot, but so crazy, she frets.

FBI Regional Office, Sioux City. A female analyst explains to Mulder and Scully that they scanned all 77 pages of Kevin's mumbo-jumbo through the mainframe in Washington, and aside from the fragment of satellite transmission, nothing could be construed as a national security risk. Kevin's being released that very afternoon. "So it was just a random set of ones and zeroes?" Scully asks. Wow, so freckly she is! Must have been a good summer in Vancouver. Also, okay, time for another S1 Fashion Crisis Alert here, because…oh, honey. Scully is wearing one of those jackets, a fine-gauge brown-and-beige plaid-patterned thing with what I think is a little black velvet collar. Ay-yi-yi. It's not the worst plaid jacket in her S1 arsenal—that honor belongs to the picnic-ready tartan that crops up in, I think, "The Jersey Devil"—but it is rathe r a wonder unto itself. Anyway. Analyst Lady counters that there was nothing random about all the 11100100111, giving us a very quick explanation of binary code. Kevin's data, it turns out, contained a wealth of fragmentary information: part of DaVinci's "Universal Man" sketch, a DNA double helix, a tootling fragment of the Brandenburg Concertos (a point to Scully, for identifying this). Somebody at 1013 was clearly in love with the Voyager mission, because all of this stuff is on that big golden space record, zooming through the cosmos…and Mulder himself references it later, I think in "Little Green Men", in season 2. He doesn't seem to recognize it all here, though. Catch up, Mulder. Leaving the office, he and Scully run right into the newly released Morrises; Ma Morris is hella pissed, but Mulder trails after her begging for the chance to apologize. Interestingly, it's Scully who says "This has been a terrible mistake," and assures her that "the government" will pay for any dama ges. Except, presumably, those to Kevin's psyche. Also, I hope this part isn't FEMA's responsibility. Ma Morris is not particularly moved. "You stay away from me, and you stay away from my child," she commands, waggling her eyebrows furiously for emphasis. She steers Kevin away; Mulder stares after them despairingly. Kevin is the key to everything! Obviously!

Mulder and Scully drive down the highway, where Mulder blows right by the exit that would take them back to the center of town. "The boy is the key, Scully," he out-and-out says, when she questions him. Yeah, this week, anyway. Together they recap the episode thus far with some quick bicker-bantering. Mulder gives us the episode title, proposing that Kevin is "a conduit of some kind," connected to who or whatever took Ruby. "If there was an abduction, it's likely that Kevin was touched in some way," he continues. Touched by an Alien. Maybe or maybe not on the Swimsuit Area. Sorry, sorry. Scully decides to work the personal angle. "Mulder, I know what you're thinking," she says gently. "I know why this is so important to you. I know!" Gillian loads her voice with more emotion, here, than the line would suggest as written; it's quite sweet. 1013 has uncovered a diamond, whether they know it yet at this point or not. A t any rate, Scully reminds Mulder that there's no evidence of what he's suggesting. "That's why we're going to Lake Okobogee," he says.

Lake Okobogee, Iowa, Campsite 53, reads the timestamp. Shouldn't that be campsite 51? 42? Somebody strolls by on the dock in the distant background. Hey! Probably they are the key to everything! Scully crouches beside the dead fire pit, which is clearly just a circle of stones right on the lawn of some nice British Columbia lakeside park. Geese honk furiously on the soundtrack, unseen. Mulder points out where Kevin and Ruby were sleeping, in an area still staked out with yellow police tape. Oddly enough, this beachfront vista looks incredibly like my own Girl Scout camp circa 1980. Camp River Ranch, represent! Nothing remotely as interesting as this ever happened there, I can assure you. Scully points out the nearby forest, suggesting that anyone could have run out and grabbed Ruby. Mulder goes to pout on the beach. "You notice the treeline?" he asks, pointing. Scully looks up at a row of crispy-fried treetops in th e foreground. "Evidence of extreme heat," Mulder says. "Or an electrical storm," argues Scully. Or that the aliens stopped by to insert some really poor CGI of charred trees, I note. Poking around in the sand, Mulder pulls out a big hunk of heat-fused glass and brandishes it at Scully, noting that it takes a temperature of 2500 degrees Fahrenheit to melt sand thusly. I am terribly distracted by his hugely blown-back newscaster hair, here. So much product! Mulder totes up all the evidence of something extremely hot being out here in the woods, other than our two protagonists I mean. He goes back to the beach while Scully stares skeptically at the trees, until a low growl gets her attention. At the edge of the forest, a white wolf—or, at least, a very nice Husky mix—snuffles around. "Mulder! Look!" Scully stage-whispers. The wolf regards them for a moment before loping back into the woods, and Mulder takes off after it, while Scully pauses to get in a good "oh, for crying out loud" e xpression.

In the sun-dappled forest, Mulder runs, hurdling over a prominent fallen log before coming to a halt in a small clearing: on a jumbled rockpile are several wolves, milling around and growling. Mulder draws his gun and fires into the air, and the wolves scatter. Here comes Scully, at a sprint, more gracefully vaulting that same log; it makes me wonder if log-jumping was some carefully choreographed part of the stage direction for this scene, or if perhaps in previous takes one or both of them fell over it. Anyway, Gillian clears it easily in her still-sensible low heels, and I smile inwardly at the amazing three-inch-heeled platform shoe-fu yet to come. She's still learning. "What is it?" she asks Mulder, who's grimacing over the rockpile. "It's a grave…shallow by the smell of it," he notes, covering his nose a bit. Oh well: recovering quickly, he starts tossing the rocks aside. Scully is understandably horrified. "Mulder, what are you doing? Mulder, you are disturbing a crime scene," she frets. Mulder ignores her, and she finally has to kneel down and grab him roughly. "Stop," she commands, raising her voice. Mulder turns to look her right in the face, inches away. "What if it's her?" he says unhappily. "I need to know." We all know this isn't exactly about Ruby, right? Yeah, yeah…I go on and on in my Paper Hearts recap about this scene, how it plays into a similar but so, so different one several years later…it still makes me a little swoony here, even outside that context. Heavy sigh. Scully sighs, too.