X-Files S2E3: They're out for Blood

Sestra Amateur: 

This week’s episode takes us to Franklin, Pennsylvania, or at least, Vancouver’s version of Franklin. A postal employee named Ed Funsch is inputting zip codes into a computer when he cuts his finger. A short time later, Ed’s boss has to fire him due to cutbacks. Sucks to be the low man on the totem pole, Ed. He really should have turned that cut into a Worker’s Compensation claim so he could buy himself some time. 

But Ed takes another approach. Since the boss took pity on him and said he could finish out the work week, Ed goes back to inputting zip codes. Shouldn’t bosses do the layoffs at the end of Friday’s work day just to avoid these kinds of conflicts? The digital display on Ed’s computer tells him to “Kill ‘Em All.” Now I’ve got Metallica’s "Seek and Destroy" in my head. Pretty much the same idea that is now in Ed’s head, but for very different reasons. 

Meanwhile, something similar is occurring in a crowded elevator in another part of Franklin. A claustrophobic man is getting violent instructions from the control panel. He follows through and kills four of the passengers. Local law enforcement calls the Feds for help. Guess who arrives. Sheriff Spencer tells Mulder that seven Franklin residents have killed 22 people in the past six months. That’s really going to hurt Franklin’s tourism business unless they decide to advertise it as the murder capital of the United States. Those seven killers are believed to have induced cops to kill them to stop further violence. 

The crime scene is still active when Mulder arrives, even though Franklin is at least 300 miles from Washington, D.C. I hate when they do that. Why not give us a throwaway line like Mulder was in the area for a Penguins game to explain his quick arrival? (This episode originally aired Sept. 30, 1994, so it could have been a preseason game.) 

While Mulder is assisting Sheriff Spencer, poor Ed is getting kill commands from his friendly neighborhood ATM. Seems like blood is a catalyst when Ed sees the digital commands. But Ed continues to resist. Good for you, Ed! 

Scully is studying Mulder’s review of the Franklin homicides. Her facial reaction when Mulder concedes it’s not aliens is priceless. Mulder notes damaged electronics at the crime scenes and starts to put the pieces together – not literally. Meanwhile, a woman goes to pick up her car from a creepy-but-not-criminal mechanic and kills him out of fear that he will rape and kill her. You know, she might have been able to convince a jury to believe her. But Mulder and Spencer interview her and she slashes Mulder with a knife after the microwave tells her they know what she did. Spencer shoots her dead. That makes the count eight killers and 23 victims --  or 31 victims.

Scully conducts the autopsy on the woman and determines the killers experienced an LSD-like state during phobic incidents. That’s an overly simplified description of what’s really going on with these people. You can compare my summary to Jurassic Park, in which the novel uses a good 15 pages of exposition to detail how dinosaurs of the same sex manage to breed, but the movie gives you the line “amphibian DNA” to answer all of your gender swapping questions. But enough of the science stuff. Let’s check in on Ed.

The good news is Ed is out job hunting. The bad news is he’s in a department store when multiple televisions encourage him to kill. And of course, this store has a sporting goods department where Ed can buy a rifle and ammunition. Out for a run, Mulder finds city workers and dead flies. That leads him to the Lone Gunmen who give Mulder some leads regarding governmentally banned pesticides. 

Mulder and Spencer confront the county supervisor, who admits the sprays were used to protect the crops that are part of Franklin’s economy. Mulder later gets hit with pesticides during an illegal spray. He goes to the hospital, and while watching the TV screen, thinks he’s picking up subliminal messages. Hey, Sestra Pro, wouldn’t this have been a good place to revisit Mulder’s pyrophobia? The sheriff convinces the mayor to stop spraying and discreetly get people tested. 

A blood tester ends up at Ed’s house, where he's already broken his computer monitor, calculator, watch and even his doorbell. Was the ding dong starting to sound like “kill kill?” Mulder gets to Ed’s house, but he is gone. Since Mulder realizes Ed’s fear is blood, he thinks he’s heading to the hospital. The agents await Ed at the hospital, and Scully hides behind Mulder -- mainly to cover Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy belly -- because there is absolutely nothing tactical about their positioning. 

But Ed has decided to go to the blood drive at the college instead. He goes up the clock tower with his rifle while Mulder and the sheriff head that way. I don’t know why they didn’t call campus police to let them know a paranoid psychotic with a rifle was heading their way. Based on their lights and sirens, it’s not like the sheriff was striving for discretion. Luckily, Ed is the worst shot ever. He took out some innocent bottles of orange juice, but I don’t think he hit a single human. Let’s give Ed the benefit of the doubt and think he’s still trying to resist the urge to kill. Mulder manages to subdue him without killing him. Mulder calls Scully and his cell phone screen reads, “All done. Bye bye.” My old Nokia never said that to me. Even scarier, Mulder’s phone is in roaming mode. Wonder how much that call cost him.

Sestra Professional:

It's The X-Files twist on going postal. And while this episode hasn't traditionally gotten a lot of notice, it is a fine example of the show really hitting its stride. The script -- by the tried-and-true duo of Glen Morgan and James Wong -- addressed disgruntled postal workers, random shootings and the fear and paranoia caused by insecticide sprayings. Darin Morgan, last week's mutant worm on camera, gets his first writing credit after helping develop the story.

Everything hinges on a committed yet somehow still sympathetic performance by William Sanderson, but a ton of kudos are also due to show's musical genius Mark Snow. First, he creates a genuinely creepy mood, then raises the stakes with music cues that substantially ratchet up the tension in the scariest moments.

Different chemicals, same stunts: Still working apart a great deal of the time, both Mulder and Scully fare very well in this one. Mulder intuits that gadgets have gone wild, while Scully finds the cause. Then they have The Lone Gunmen back to geek it up, comparing the Los Angeles sprayings to DDT testing in the '50s. Of course, back then effects started showing decades later and quite as quickly.

The county supervisor is following political protocol by believing everything he's been told, but miracle of miracles, the sheriff actually believes Mulder. We're finally making some progress. Maybe that's another reason why the show seems to be playing on a higher level, Sculder are not the only ones who believe the results of their investigation.

Of course, there still is room for traditional Mulder-Scully conflict. They can't agree on absolutely everything. So when Mulder claims insecticide heightened the killers' previous phobias and electronic messages made them carry out violence to prevent their worst fears from coming true, Scully kinda thinks it's garden-variety Mulder paranoia.

Fear. It's the oldest tool of power: Another strong point is that it doesn't take until the final 10 minutes to figure everything out. As mentioned, Sculder make their observations, and then all that's left is to find a man who has eluded testing. Is it too soon to say they're firing on all cylinders?

It does get to be a bit too much when Ed ascends a clock tower similarly to the infamous 1966 University of Texas massacre, like they're throwing everything but the kitchen sink into one episode, but it's a minor complaint about a strong episode. The most chilling X-Files have always played upon our own fears. This one delivers upon that premise and then some.

"We know more about what happened to him than he does," the sheriff said when Mulder still wants to question Ed after the denouement. (And in the back of my mind, I wonder if the affable John Cygan tested for my favorite role in the series -- said character makes his debut in the very next episode.)

A bit of meta, the tag -- "ALL DONE ... BYE BYE" -- was used as the final shot for the second season's gag reel. But that scene got me wondering whether Mulder continued his treatment off camera, since he obviously wasn't quite over his dosage of LSD. And yes indeed, Sestra Am, I do believe it would have been an excellent time to harken back to Mulder's fire fear.

Guest star of the week: As previously pointed out, it's definitely Sanderson, perhaps best known as the two Darryls' brother Larry on Newhart. He does standout work as the fired postal worker trying to fight off the forces inducing him to do harm. His screams of pain in the clock tower are harrowing. And since he's the only one of the killers who didn't commit "suicide by cop," we'll say job well done for Ed and particularly well done by William.