This case features some interesting role reversal for our heroes. Scully is the one who brings the X-File to Mulder’s attention. He, in turn, uses psychological explanations to debunk Michelle’s supernatural-tinged account of battery and rape. They interview Michelle, who accuses 74-year-old Hal Arden, a resident she strapped down into bed shortly before the assault occurred.
Hal’s roommate, Stan Phillips, is concerned about the FBI’s arrival and investigation. Stan, played by character actor Eric Christmas, seems as physically frail as Hal, but just as mentally sharp. While Sculder interview the home’s director, Mrs. Dawson, Hal swallows an unmarked capsule. Stan tries to blackmail Hal into giving him one as well by threatening to tattle, but Hal starts choking. Dr. Scully rushes in to save Hal, then proceeds to perform the world’s slowest round of CPR before giving up altogether. Not going to save him that way, Scully.
Sculder talk with Dr. Grago, who was treating several of the Alzheimer’s patients – including Hal and Stan – with Depranil. Stan continues to take Hal’s pills – not the Depranil – against Gung’s wishes. Other residents, including artist Leo and fear-mongering Dorothy (played by David Lynch favorite Frances Bay), also want more pills but Gung is resistant. Stan’s daughter arrives to take him home. Now that he’s lucid, he doesn’t want to leave, so he bolts. Abusive orderly Jerry runs after Stan and gets knocked out of a fourth-story window. He grabs onto the ledge but an invisible entity makes Jerry lose his grip one creepy finger at a time until he falls to his death. Michelle, who is still working there, complains about having more work now that Jerry is, well, dead, and the other orderly, Upshaw, is missing. Dorothy looks like she’s in full dementia mode as she talks to an empty room full of people. Anyone who has ever watched an Alzheimer’s patient talk to an empty room as though it’s full of people will be really unnerved by seeing what Dorothy sees. But the room is full … of invisible entities who swarm Scully. Luckily, they don’t harm her, but Dana seems to sense something around her.
Hal’s autopsy results show ibotenic acid – ‘shrooms! -- in his blood. Leo’s manic artwork leads Mulder to the basement where Gung has been growing mushrooms. Fox also stumbles across Upshaw’s dead body buried in the soil. Back upstairs, Sculder interrogate Gung. Actually, Grago and Dawson interrogate him too. It’s a weird dynamic. Gung agrees to give up his stash of pills but when he retrieves the jar from his hiding spot, the capsules are gone. Mulder is finally on the supernatural bandwagon when the spirits drag away poor Leo and knock Michelle unconscious. The nurse and Mulder get locked into a flooding bathroom. If she survives, looks like Michelle will win her lawsuit after all. Stan, who took another pill, starts convulsing. Scully sends Grago to give Stan a shot to counter the mushrooms while she tries to free Mulder. The water pressure breaks open the bathroom door so Mulder and Michelle are safe. Dorothy tells them the entities are gone.
The end of Grago’s Depranil and Gung’s herbal treatments cause Leo, Dorothy and Stan to revert back to their original mental states. I think the loss of Leo’s spectacular artistic ability is the saddest of the three. Unlike Stan, Leo used his abilities in a positive way. Sestra Professional:
It's old home week on The X-Files. Actually, I meant we're seeing actors who have joined us before -- Jerry Wassermann (the experimenting physician was a shrink in "Tooms"), facility director Sheila Moore and dead orderly Jerry had tiny roles in "Deep Throat" and Stan's daughter Tasha Simms (one of the young Eve's moms in "Eve"). What did you think I meant by "old home week"?
On the other hand, getting into the subject matter via entity rape proves particularly unsettling. It gets easier to digest when the story sort of segues into The X-Files take on Cocoon, but political correctness demands Mulder forsake his usual glibness in favor of a more straight-laced (and dare I say, Scully-like) approach. He thinks Charters is the nurse who cried wolf.
I've got plumbing older than this building and it don't work much better either: That leaves Scully to question who or what could be causing Michelle's attack. She's got theories about the experimental Alzheimer's drug causing a psychotic state seemingly close to schizophrenia and she's got questions about the ancient building fostering contaminants causing further delusions, dementia and violent behavior despite the age of the patients. What are you, a track star all of a sudden? After Hal is dispatched, the focus turns to Spry Stan. His daughter claims it's like he's a different person -- although just as angry as when he was first brought to the home. Mulder finally gets to do something -- sprinting up to the window to help the orderly knocked out of the window, but even though he gets there in time, splat.
Now Mulder's in the game. Apparently he doesn't like getting to Jerry in time and still not being able to effect a more positive result -- namely keeping the guy alive. The entities are unnerving Dorothy, but the meds are sure doing wonders for Leo and his artwork. Mulder believes shamans have used mushrooms for centuries to speak to the dead, Scully reverts to form by responding that they're just interpreting dreams or hallucinations they have under the influence.
Mushrooms aren't medication. They taste good on hamburgers, but they don't raise the dead: Asian orderly Gung may be dosing the residents with his cultivated mushrooms for medicinal purposes, but he claims the American tendency of sending the elderly into nursing homes is ultimately to blame for the unrest. The souls of those that suffered and died at this particular institution have been awakened. "They've taken revenge for their mistreatment," he says. Chock up another point for the show on the social issue front. The X-Files continues to revert to form when Mulder sees something Scully isn't privy to -- namely Michelle being flung against against the wall and being locked out of the rapidly filling water closet. Well, at least she was able to procure help for Stan. And it proved to be a great set piece when the bathroom couldn't hold its water any longer.
Ultimately, the episode ended up more like Awakenings at the end, as all the residents still alive and no longer taking the experimental drug nor the mushrooms have regressed to their earlier state. Kind of depressing, think Gung is exporting his crop from Malaysia?
Guest star of the week: With apologies to the rest of a very game guest cast, it's Christmas time! Eric Christmas time, that is. A character actor with an extensive filmography, Stan Phillips is best known to the Sestras from Night Court and The John Larroquette Show. (He was the priest in Harold and Maude for the rest of y'all.)
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