SEASON 1

SEASON 2

SEASON 3

SEASON 4

SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

SEASON 7

SEASON 8

SEASON 9

< PREVIOUS

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.