Meanwhile, back in D.C., Mulder is still pulling wiretap duty. Never piss off your superiors. Mulder’s eating his sunflower seeds and drinking his Shasa cola. That’s not a typo. They couldn’t get the rights to use the Shasta brand name? That’s pretty sad. Mulder finally gets liberated from wiretap purgatory to investigate a not-an-X-File case. Mulder and Newark Police Detective Norman head into the lovely, fragrant Jersey sewers to see the dead body. Mulder thinks he’s getting his chain yanked and has the foul-smelling corpse sent to FBI Headquarters, care of Assistant Director Skinner. Speaking of Skinner, I really hope the wardrobe department eventually dulls the reflection on his glasses because you can practically see what the TV show’s crew is wearing in the lenses. Mulder lets Skinner have it and continues down a path of career suicide. Scully agrees to autopsy the stinky sewer corpse because, well, that’s what Scully does. My XF trivia knowledge is improving -- the John Doe number is Chris Carter’s birthday, right, Sestra? So whose birth date is the case number 112148? During the procedure, a slimy tentacle reaches out from inside the corpse. Scully grabs it with tongs and gets into a tug of war with it. For a moment there, you think Scully is going to lose.
Back in beautiful downtown Newark, there’s no Prudential Center in sight. Hell, the thought of it probably doesn’t exist yet. A sewer worker gets bit by the creature, so we should probably just write him off. The doctor treating him thinks a tetanus shot and antibiotics will help. The worker tells Mulder he thinks a snake bit him. Scully calls Mulder to tell him about the parasite she found. How many of you have seen Parasite starring Demi Moore? It really is one of the most awful movies out there and not in a good-awful way. It’s essentially 85 minutes of WTH. ... But I digress. Mulder then takes a cryptic call from Deep Throat 2.0. He says Mulder has a friend at the FBI, then hangs up. Good, because someone’s going to have to start saving Mulder’s career again. But what kind of friend just hangs up without saying goodbye? Rude!Scully introduces Mulder to the Turbellaria, which may finally swear me off rare steaks forever. This type of worm acts like a parasite, feeding off the organs. Mulder shows Scully a picture of bite marks on the sewer worker. They appear to be the same except for one pesky discrepancy -- they're supposed to be really tiny. The one that bit the sewer worker ain’t tiny. Scully says flatworms (or flukeworms) don’t go around attacking people, but since the sound of Scully’s voice changes because of looping technology, I’m not so inclined to believe her. (Yes, I’m manufacturing an excuse. No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.) Meanwhile, things quickly go downhill for the sewer worker who coughs up a flatworm which goes down his shower drain.
At the Newark County Sewage Processing Plant (I don’t think there is such a place), an employee finds a flukeworm in the system but it’s more humanoid – and human-sized. Let’s call it Fluke Skywalker. Back in her office, someone slips a tabloid under Scully’s door. The sensationalistic rag contains an article about the Russian cargo ship incident. I actually took a moment to pause the episode and read the article. Looked like the writers really made an effort with that prop. I’m sure Special Correspondent George Lister is some type of inside joke. This show is just loaded with Easter eggs. So Scully links the stinky sewer corpse to the missing sailor through a tattoo. Wouldn’t it be funny if the anonymous tipster was giving Scully the magazine to relate it to a different case? Scully should use that issue as a reference all season, because there’s a chance more X-Files cases are addressed in there. Mulder calls Scully so she could see Fluke, who has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Middlesex County. Interesting detainer choice, Jersey.The next morning Mulder meets with Skinner to discuss Fluke’s fate. I really wish they scripted the scene of Skinner and federal prosecutors talking about how to prosecute Fluke. Skinner begrudgingly admits this case should have been handled as an X-File. Meanwhile, Fluke is being transported by U.S. Marshals in an ambulance ... at night ... on a deserted road ... by only the driver. Freakin’ morons. It’s like the government wants Fluke to escape. Hmmmmm…
Mulder goes back to the sewage processing plant hoping Fluke will return there. Scully warns Mulder that Fluke could multiply if it finds a new host. Another worker falls in and Fluke attacks him, so Mulder jumps in to help. Hope Mulder retires that suit because dry cleaning won’t save it. Mulder saves the worker, chases Fluke and cuts him in half. Now if this was Leviathan, that would just mean one monster became two. But we see the lower half sink. Hope they recover both parts and dispose of Fluke properly. By the way, what is the proper way to dispose of a human-sized flatworm?
Sculder meet later to discuss the case. Scully tells Mulder the parasite is still capable of spontaneous regeneration just like any flatworm, but she’s doing that weird looping voiceover thing again. Sestra, did you read anything about why they needed to keep dubbing parts of Scully’s dialogue for this ep? In the end, Scully blames science, not nature for the ... fluke. From her description, Fluke should be more like Godzilla. But Fluke Jr. (the coughed up flatworm) is apparently still out there. Or is it the one Mulder cut in half? Or, as usual, is it left open to interpretation?
Sestra Professional:
It really has to be some kind of Fluke that the guy in the costume for this episode -- Darin Morgan -- turned out to be my favorite television writer of all time. There was just no way of knowing that would come to pass, although when you hear the tale of how he sat down next to David Duchovny on an airplane and asked for an autograph, "To my arch nemesis," you could see the penchant for creativity. Much, much more on him to come. For now, he's stuck in what was purported to be spectacularly uncomfortable worm wear.
In the meantime, there are Easter eggs to be deciphered. You're correct about Chris Carter's birthday, 112148 is the birthday of his wife, Dori, and that was used a few times as dates and times during first-season episodes. I don't have anything specific on George Lister, but during the show's run, combinations of names were created, so maybe this was a variation on that theme. Sorry, even less intel on the looping.I wouldn't want to step in anything: The creep factor is high on this episode. It does throw a little bit of fear into a person, although not quite in the same way The Carol Burnett Show once scarred me for life with a toilet shark. I don't remember being particularly more frightened by what was lingering in the waters when I was residing in Newark, although there's always been some kind of uneasiness about porta potties.
Awww, Mulder's first present for Skinner -- a mangled corpse drenched in raw sewage. Fox is pretty rusty if he can't recognize an X-File when he sees one, for he used to see X-Files in his breakfast eggs. Now he also has to be talked into solving a crime, sitting around taking notes of wiretaps has really taken a toll on this guy.With Deep Throat gone, it's time for Mulder to have a new friend in the FBI, because someone's got to point Sculder in a direction when they don't have anything to go on. And that's not the only relationship on the up and up. The agents definitely get a glow about them -- not pregnancy-related -- while discussing fluke worms and how big they can get. Yeah, no subtext there. Mulder says the only reason he can find to stay is his relationship with Scully. She later counters with, "I would consider it more than a professional loss if you decide to leave." What it lacks in warmth, it makes up for with sincerity.
And let's break some new ground with Gillian Anderson's burgeoning belly. We've seen all kinds of ways of hiding pregnancy on the air -- flower pots and big purses and the like. Utilizing a gross corpse in an extended autopsy scene must have been a breakthrough in both science and entertainment at the time.
I'd like to give some props to props, makeup and Matthew Bennett, who played the sanitation worker. When the fluke starts to take control, the poor sucker -- or should that be suckee -- empties the contents of a toothpaste tube in his mouth to get rid of the bad taste. That scene ends with a fluke worm emerging from his mouth and slipping down the drain -- the greatest gross-out on the show since Tooms' liver-eating bile in the first season. And according to The X-Files Episode Guide, credit also goes to Carter, since he not only wrote the ep, but fought with Fox -- the network, not the agent -- to get that scene aired.It looks like I'm going to have to tell Skinner his suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm after all: There's a lot of information stuffed into the epilogue, about how man and not nature created that destructive worm with a "primordial soup of radioactive sewage." Chernobyl gets shoehorned in, although perhaps it's not as clunky as it might have been considering the use of a Russian ship earlier in the plot. And Mulder ponders: "Three species disappear every day, you wonder how many new ones are being created." A lot of information for the end of the show, but it's hard to complain about one that really had very little let-up from ominous start to perhaps-even-more-petrifying conclusion.
Guest star of the week: No, duh. It's Darin Morgan. In addition to getting much-needed paycheck at the time, playing this part on the show also gave the future writer/director insight into what it's like for the actors who get stuck in a costume on a set for hours and hours at a time.
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