THE X-FILES RECAPS: 4x20 - SMALL POTATOES
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4x20: SMALL POTATOES

By Gryffindork

Let's see...

DVD. Check.

Notebook. Check.

Godmother of all hangovers. Check.

Enough chocolate and Dr. Pepper to make my scales wince in anticipation. Check.

Let's do this, then.

Aaand we're opening with the time-honoured ER shot of us in the perspective of the patient, being whisked away under a row of lights along yet another one of those charming hospital corridors. A very serene nurse leans into our field of vision just as we start enjoying that lovely view and tells us to relax, and throws in a "There you go!" just to further vex us. Seriously, Nurse? Outta my face. Btw, our favourite Date/Place stamp informs us that we are actually looking at the ceiling of „Tablers Community Hospital; Martinsburg, West".

As the camera switches back to regular third person perspective, we get to see and hear the patient for the first time. A) she is obviously very much in labour b) oh my God, it's the voice of Babe the pig! Her actual name (the charcter, not the actress) is Amanda Nelligan. But she'd be very wrong in thinking that from now on, I shall call her anything but Babe. Anyhow, Babe gives another Nurse her name, Social Security and insurance company for... something or other, and then proceeds to amaze by telling everybody that the father of the baby cannot be contacted. Because he's from another planet. Huh. Take that for interesting watercooler chit-chat. Insurance nurse and in-your-face nurse exchange bewildered looks. Oh yeah, you are freaked out by this incident with a complete stranger? At least she's not your favourite female lead of the show.... Not that anything like that would ever happen....

Cut to the actual process of childbirth. The doctor, of course, is unbearably calm. Head of the baby seems to be out (and as compared to "Knocked up", we don't get a close-up), and then he veeery calmly and for my taste veeery slowly pulls out the rest of the little ray of sunshine. With no evident pushing on babe's side. Isn't there supposed to be pushing? Heaps of it, actually?

Baby's out, and the Doctor's face falls. So do the scissors out of a nurse's hands, accompanied with a shocked gasp. Babe asks whether anything is wrong, but the doctor assures her that everything is fine. Of course it is! Don't let the dismayed faces fool you! AND, they have every reason to pull the screen between you and your baby as they carry it off for cleaning! Everything is honky-donky! Behind the screen, we see the doctor lift the baby and there's ten toes and ten fingers and... Uh, gasp!!! One tail!... Seems fitting, for the child of Babe... I guess I have to give the CGI department from a decade ago (my gawd, I'm so old...) props here, that is one cute little tail. But seeing as this baby is a girl, I wince at the thought of what thong-wearing is gonna be like. They might want to contact a certain Mr. And Mrs. Dursley of Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, UK (the world, the Universe...) about that. They have some experience with surgical tail-removal. And, as if the entire Alienbaby-with-a-tail-spiel wasn't freaky enough, the kid is also a super soldier! No, wait... that is another season. Instead, the Doctor moans "Oh Lord, not another one!" Hmmmmm.....

Credits. How could anyone NOT love those credits?


An issue of "World Weekly Informer" is slapped on screen, informing the entire world (or, more like, loons and trailer park inhabitants) that "Monkey Babies Invade Small Town" with a nifty photo manipulation of a baby with a monkey's head and tail, which Mulder informs us off-screen "is a little over the top". Yeah, that, and also terribly put together. I can still see the whites of the former background around the monkey head. Somebody did a lazy cutting job. If I were that somebody, I'd have to bake a cake for next week's computer application class AND apologize profusely to my Professor. On my knees. Not jokin. This is how my computer class rolls. Just so you know.

Despite almost 4 years of experience, Mulder is still brave enough to ask Scully what she thinks. "Not seriously?" she answers, and thus channels the spirit of our enitre snark-project. Cue the standardised exposition dialogue. I kinda miss a slide show here. Mulder tries to pass it by Scully as an interesting medical condition, also considering that there where a ripe 5 lil' monkey babies born within the last three months in a town populated by 15.000 people. Scully points out that, yes this definately wants investigation. Only not by them. Which, at the current state of knowledge, is a point well taken. I've had both a girl with an extra toe as well as a guy born with 11 fingers in my graduation year. Wish Moose and Squirrel had dropped by to investigate THAT. I would have been the perfect little sidekick. And finally, Scully cuts to the chase and spares us any more BS by bringing the obvious out in the open: We are only here because some doofus claimed that "Visitors from Space" peppered up the local gene-pool.

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