X-Files S1E11: The that's-no-Lady Eves

Editors' Note: On the rewatch of The X-Files, Lorrie plays the part of Sestra Amateur and Paige serves as the resident "expert," aka Sestra Professional.
 
Sestra Amateur:
 
Today’s word of the day, boys and girls, is ex-san-gui-na-tion. Surprisingly, it was not one of my spelling bee words. In Greenwich, Connecticut, someone has killed the father of 8-year-old Teena Simmons. At first glance, it looks like a vampire bit his neck, but we’re not watching Buffy or Supernatural, so let’s put a pin in that for now. 

Back in D.C., Scully points out that Joel Simmons lost 75 percent of his blood. Mulder starts listing cattle mutilation statistics. He even has slides. Can you imagine Mulder’s conversation topics on a first date? I’ll bet he has no filter. Of course, that leads him to link the cow mutilation to UFO phenomena. And even though I’m watching this at 8 in the morning, I want a burger.
 
Teena later tells "Miss" Scully and "Mr." Mulder about red lightning and men from the clouds who were after her father because they wanted to exsanguinate him. Sounds like she’s telling Mulder exactly what he wants to hear. Scully gets notified that a similar murder occurred in Marin County, California. Wonder why the writers are so vague with their California location, or for that matter, so specific about Greenwich, Connecticut. I understand the Internet wasn’t very widespread in 1993, but atlases certainly existed. 

Either way, roughly three thousand miles separated the two murder locations. Doug Reardon was murdered at the exact same time as Joel. Doug was felled by hypovolemia -- just another fancy term for exsanguination. Don’t think that was a spelling bee word either. Doug also had traces of the plant digitalis, which acts like a paralytic drug, in his system. While Sculder investigate the second murder, Teena gets abducted. The next day the agents meet Doug’s daughter, Cindy, who looks exactly like Teena. 

Sculder rule out adoption and multiple births. They learn both girls resulted from in vitro fertilization at a clinic in San Francisco. Scully goes to the clinic and meets with Dr. Bennett – even though the subtitles read she is meeting with Dr. Katz. Dr. Bennett tells Scully about former employee Dr. Sally Kendrick, a brilliant scientist who experimented on ova with eugenics prior to implantation. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, particularly when you consider what we’ve already seen. Dr. Kendrick disappeared after she was fired and reported for her unethical experiments.

Deep Throat flies all the way across the country to give Mulder some information about the case. Aw, how sweet. DT tells Mulder about the Litchfield Experiments, in which genetically controlled children nicknamed Adams and Eves – get it? – were raised and monitored by the government. Now we know where J.J. Abrams came up with Olivia Dunham’s origin story on Fringe. Sculder go to a mental institution to talk to Eve 6 – hey, isn’t that an alternative rock group? – and 6 looks exactly like Dr. Kendrick with bad teeth. Apparently, Eve 7 and Eve 8 escaped, but the others committed suicide. 

Sculder see a photograph with the young Eves and they all look exactly like Teena and Cindy. Dr. Kendrick was cloning herself with the IVF treatments, so Teena and Cindy’s mothers gave birth to Eve clones. Mulder thinks 7 and 8 committed the murders, while Scully begins to suspect the girls. Guess who’s right this time? Both are plausible at this point in the story. 

Eve 7 or 8 kidnaps Cindy, knocks out Scully and shoots at Mulder. Teena and Cindy then meet in a motel room. Adult Eve talks to the girls about redemption and treatment so they don’t have to be evil, but the girls use the digitalis – also known as foxglove – to poison 7. Or 8. Still not positive on that one but I’m leaning toward 7, since she escaped years before 8 did. Sculder find the girls and they blame 7’s murder on 8. Those devious little bitches. 

Teena and Cindy later put the digitalis in Sculder’s diet sodas. My mom always said diet soda is bad for you. Mulder realizes the drinks are poisoned and saves Scully. The girls try to hide, but Mulder outsmarts them. The government takes custody of Teena and Cindy – now Eve 9 and Eve 10 – and they are put into the mental institution cells next to Eve 6, who just may be the real Sally Kendrick after all. To make matters worse, Eve 8 shows up at the end of the episode and she is not in custody. On a side note, too bad there won’t be a sequel episode titled "Adam 12."

Sestra Professional:

Unfortunately, I can't nab the distinction as this ep's biggest fan -- I think naming your band gets that -- but it's always been one of my early favorites. But now I'm starting to wonder if I ever really knew this episode at all.

See Sestra Am thought Sally Kendrick was Eve 6. And I thought the creator of all this mess was Eve 7, the one the girls do away with in the motel after she expresses disappointment in their advanced development by pontificating on the fact that longterm medication and proper environment could help them.  The X-Files Episode Guide, however, claims Sally is Eve 8 -- the one who comes to see the newly detained Eves at the close of the show. I never realized this was such a brain teaser, now I want to know which Eve every viewer thinks is Sally. 

This sort of falls in line with the spirit of most of this ep anyway, because the adults are always a step behind the demon seeds and the grownups are always so sure they're right about everything. Now Sibling Cinema may be a step behind too. I just took a sip of my soda ... now I'm worried about the digitalis thing. OK, good, no giveaway residue around my cup.

Maybe they weren't looking in the right direction: Love the Macguffin of red lightning and Mulder's quick judgment that the exsanguination meant there was a UFO angle. Teena rides Mulder hard and puts him away wet, which would sound pretty bad considering she's a minor, except for the fact that I just mean she suckered him in.

Funnily enough, Mulder has got great reasoning when it comes to why serial killers working in tandem isn't a possible scenario. But his response to Scully's query about why alien beings would travel light years to Earth to play doctor on cattle is a throwaway line -- "for the same reason we cut up frogs and monkeys."

Perhaps the fact that the adorable cherubs preferred news to cartoons and used words like "exsanguinate" and "dinoflagellates" could possibly have been a stronger clue for Scully as she was considering their possible involvement. She gets near the truth a second time when stating that digitalis can't really be detected in soda. But in the end, it's Mulder who puts 1 +1 together and gets 7. Or  8. 

Deep Throat again? I really prefer him to consult on the mythology-related episodes, but I there wasn't quite a conspiracy game plan at this time. The government was trying to crossbreed top scientists and athletes to come up with a superior soldier. Instead they created kids who cultivated their own digitalis plants. The concept of Adams and Eves reminds Sestra Am of Fringe, but I'm getting a strong Orphan Black vibe. And that's why The X-Files was a seminal series, influencing future shows ... and even alternative music.

She is me and I am her and we are all together: Kudos to the casting department, first and foremost. Harriet Harris is dazzling as mastermind Sally Kendrick and whatever other Eves we saw, and Erika and Sabrina Krievins handle the transformation from victims to brilliant plotters with wisdom well beyond their tender years.

Guest star of the week: Sticking with Harris (often credited as Harriet Sansom Harris), who knocks it out of the park at least three different ways. The other role of hers that has stuck with me is as Stephen Tobolowsky's beleaguered wife in Memento. But here she can say lines about biting into a guard's eyeball as a sign of affection, then turn around and be disappointed in the girls' lack of progress and shift yet again to cause concern for the future of mankind by possibly unleashing all that heightened intelligence and heightened psychosis on the world once again.