SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

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.