X-Files S1E17: E.B.E. or not E.B.E., that is the question

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: 

Whether it was intentional or not, this episode had a lot of Steven Spielberg references. I’m not talking about the obvious ones like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T.  We will see how many I can cram into the recap, but first things first; I believe in UFOs. If an object is flying and hasn’t been identified then who am I to say it doesn’t exist?

Back to our regularly scheduled conspiracy theory. An Iraqi pilot sees a UFO. and shoots it down. The UFO crashes near the Iraq/Turkey border and U.S. forces respond to investigate. Later in Tennessee, a truck driver goes through the Roy Neary in Close Encounters experience; his 18-wheeler loses power and he sees a UFO in the sky. But unlike Roy, this guy has a working flashlight and a shotgun, and he does not hesitate to use either of them. Pretty sure the bullets did not have any effect on the UFO.

Sculder arrive to investigate and Mulder checks for radiation. He also uses the less scientific stopwatch test to see whether time has been altered in any way. Mulder sounds dismissive as he humors Scully’s so-called logical theories – "Swamp gas? Really?" Mulder takes a sample from a radioactive patch and his stopwatches show one was affected by exposure to the site. Mulder’s argument holds more water, even when pronouncing the word "data" in a way I’ve never heard before – I know “daytah” and “dahtah” but “dottah”? -- but Scully is equally dismissive of Mulder’s theories. 

That agents interview Roy Neary, I mean Ranheim, who has Roy’s UFO light burn on his face and hands, as well as a nasty cough. Ranheim denies he is suffering from Gulf War syndrome, which has the same symptoms. The police interrupt Sculder’s interview, release Ranheim and kicked Sculder to the curb. While at the car rental office, a woman borrows Scully’s pen – I’m sure that will mean something later.

In D.C., Mulder reaches out to – insert fanfare here – The Lone Gunmen and Scully meets Frohike, Byers and Langly for the first time. Frohike flirts with Scully, Byers destroys her $20 bill to prove his conspiracy theory and Langly apparently answers the phone in a way that “bugs” Scully. Three examples of “meet cute” in one! Scully is convinced they are paranoid and delusional until she realizes her pen is bugged. Conspiracy theories can be contagious, I guess. 

Mulder changes the light bulb in his apartment from a normal one to a blue light. It’s like he has his own personal bat signal. He later meets with Deep Throat who gives Mulder a packet of information about the UFO incident over Iraq. Scully’s investigation reveals Ranheim is actually a Special Ops Black Beret named Frank Druce who may have been transporting something top secret in the 18-wheeler. Mulder assumes it was the crashed UFO. He says he trusts Deep Throat and Scully says she trusts only Mulder. Mulder doesn’t say the same. Give it time, Scully. 

Deep Throat surprises Mulder with a photograph of the UFO and tries to lead them to Georgia. Scully thinks the picture's a fake and believes someone is setting up Mulder to fail, but her partner says Deep Throat's never misled him. Mulder still has the photo analyzed and has to admit it is, indeed, a fake. He meets with Deep Throat at the aquarium in front of the shark tank – Jaws! Deep Throat admits the photo was doctored and warns Mulder “they” are still listening. 

Mulder destroys his apartment looking for the bug and finds it behind an outlet cover. Maybe there’s more than one, Mulder. You should keep looking. He shows Scully and they jump through lots of cross-country hoops to track the truck without being monitored. It’s like Indiana Jones trying to find the Ark in modern times. Sculder meet in Vegas, then fly to Seattle. It has to be annoying when you spend your own money on work expenses because your own government is undermining you. Wonder if they can declare the expenses on their tax returns. 

Sculder catch up to Druce and start following him and the truck – reverse Duel! After tailing him for hours, Sculder end up in the worst hail storm ever. They all stop in the middle of the road. Sculder can’t find Druce, so they go into the back of the truck. They uncover an empty makeshift medical facility. Mulder believes they were transporting an injured alien. He does his stopwatch test and learns it was a hoax; whatever created the light show and hail storm to stop them was not extraterrestrial in origin. 

The agents discover the sightings mirror Druce’s path west from Tennessee, so they crash a UFO party in Mattawa, Washington that is located just outside a secured military facility. Mulder calls Langly to get them identification codes to enter the facility. In return, he promises to send proof of the Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. So E.T. is really shorthand for E.B.E. Mulder becomes Tom Braidwood – the name of one of the show's first assistant directors and the actor playing Frohike. Scully becomes Val Stefoff – I had to look up who that was -- a variation on another first assistant director, Vladimir Stefoff. 

 "Tom" and "Val" get caught on the wrong level and Scully fesses up to being a fed. Mulder makes a break for it and the armed military personnel chase him to the E.B.E's secured room, which looks like a POD with a window and eerie red lighting. Mulder is surrounded and the guards won’t let him look in the room. And then Deep Throat arrives to call off the military and save Mulder. Deep Throat admits to Mulder the conspiracy began after Roswell in 1947 (1941? Eh, close enough.) Several countries made a pact to exterminate E.B.Es and Deep Throat killed one in Vietnam. Providing information to Mulder is Deep Throat’s atonement. Mulder looks through the window, but the room is empty. Deep Throat leaves and Sculder live to investigate another day. Hey, Mulder’s blue light and the E.B.E’s medical room red light make The Color Purple. 

Sestra Professional:

It's kinda fun to get back to the aliens after a few weeks of more earthly bound pursuits. The show's crackerjack writing team of Glen Morgan and James Wong might have felt that way too, this marked their first foray into extraterrestrials on the show. Nice opening teaser and first scene, although it takes a while to get to Mulder and Scully after the protracted beginning. I guess that's all right, though, considering the rest of the show is almost entirely about them, rather than the both of them just having reactions to things happening to other people.

Scully's got pretty rational explanations for the tangible evidence at the truck site -- lightning and swamp gas. Do they explain eyewitness accounts by cops and civilians in three counties? Not to Mulder, who is downright giddy over having more evidence than he's accumulated in any prior case -- anecdotal, exhaust residue and radiation levels five times the norm. He fixates on finding out why the trucker was singled out. 

On the one hand, the cough, fever and rash being explained away by Gulf War syndrome seems to hold some weight. But on the other, it's all too convenient to say soldiers have frequently reported seeing UFOs while on duty. For who is more likely to suffer both mentally and physically under that kind of pressure?

Some of their ideas are downright spooky: Remember Max Fenig from "Fallen Angel"? Now we have three Fenigs with the introduction of The Lone Gunmen. The extreme government watchdog group -- as defined by Mulder -- can occasionally be on target, as when Langly defines Gulf War syndrome as the "Agent Orange of the '90s," but is prone to wilder thoughts of conspiracy. Nevertheless, they do find Mulder's ideas to be weirder than their own. 

Is this first episode in which Scully fully understands that governmental forces seeking to thwart their investigations may not be up on the up and up? She finds Mulder and the Gunmen to be pretty paranoid until she finds the bug in the pen and sees the one in her partner's apartment. Until now, she's been pretty willing to accept that those people have jobs to do and don't really need to answer to or help out the agents.

The truth is out there, but so are lies: That's quite an overriding conspiracy going on, in which the government allegedly seeks to drive Sculder off the track with a very intricate plan involving the truck and driver. Occasionally it makes me wonder who Mulder and Scully are investigating for, if the rest of the government is so bent on stopping them. Say they do find proof of everything they're looking for. Then they take it ... to whom?

The elaborate hoax continues with the light show, the hail storm and the E.B.E. lab on the truck, is that where our tax dollars really go? It's a good Mulder takes those stopwatches wherever he goes to test radiation. Much less obtrusive than a radiation detector.

I'm wondering which lie to believe: It was then and still is now a jolt to have knocked Deep Throat off his pedestal, as well as a great reminder that a source might have motivations that have nothing to do with bringing truth to light. His back story -- although again the Vietnam aspect felt on the nose and thus clunky -- really serves the show on a lot of fronts. We can recite the buzz phrases "The Truth Is Out There" and "I Want to Believe," but the best line of the series for me to date is much more complex and dark -- "A lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."

We find out the conspiracy is more global in this episode. (Although maybe that's just Deep Throat lying again!) He said a coalition of countries have mandated that any nation responsible for shooting down a UFO must exterminate its E.B.Es. Just don't try to regulate such a position, guys, because you might run into more lies -- like some renegade country deciding they were rather study a creature than destroy it, perhaps?

Deep Throat admits he's been haunted by the innocent and blank expression of the alien he killed. "That's why I come to you ... and will continue to come to you ... to atone for what I've done. And maybe sometime, through you, the truth will be known." So that's why he goes to the guy with the innocent and blank expression.

Guest Star of the Week: Roy ... er ... Ranheim ... er Druce is portrayed by Peter LaCroix ... er, Lacroix. He'll reappear in two other episodes of the series. There's a rather non-descript role when the conspiracy really gets rolling in Season 2, but he's even better in a demanding part in Season 4 as ... a military assassin.