SEASON 1

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SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

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SEASON 8

SEASON 9

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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.