Strange things are afoot in Coats Grove, Michigan where a stepfather is berating his vacant, videogaming teenaged stepson Bobby. OK, that part is pretty standard. The kid decides he’s mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. He threatens stepfather Phil with a shovel before running off into the woods. Phil chases him but trips on a root and falls to the ground. Patti -- Phil’s wife and Bobby’s mama -- comes upon them and sees Bobby on top of Phil, who is being sucked into the muddy ground. Looks pretty incriminating to me. The next day, Scully gets to handle Phil’s autopsy which confirms the dude had an awful lot of mud in his stomach. He was also buried in a standing position, meaning the hole was more than six feet deep. Dana thinks Bobby, whose nickname around school is “Dorkweed,” intentionally murdered Phil. Tell me, why is this a federal case?
Mulder interviews Bobby while Scully talks to Patti, who denies Phil had a history of hitting Bobby. Patti thinks Bobby was struggling to help Phil, not kill him. Bobby tells Fox that Phil shoved him in the past and he didn’t kill Stepdaddy Dearest. Apparently Phil was under stress because of “the blight,” which was killing his hazelnut trees. And apparently Bobby is unable make friends, which rules out the accomplice angle. Sculder wander through the woods where Mulder trips on a root and Dana sees someone watching them.Dorkweed lied, he does have a friend. Can’t believe they expected a suspected murderer to be honest. He tells schoolmate Lisa that he finally stood up to his stepfather. Other boys in school taunt Bobby and call him Psycho Killer (fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa). How come death of an immediate family member doesn’t get you an excused day off from school, even if (especially if) you’re the suspect?
Sculder then talk with Karin Matthews, played by Sarah-Jane Redmond who hit the rare trifecta cast as three different X-Files characters -- she's also the young mom in Season 2 Episode 12 "Aubrey" and a special agent in I Want to Believe. Karin seems to be working on Bobby’s self-defense argument. Bobby meets Lisa at night and tries to convince her to stand up to her own father the way he stood up to Phil. Lisa refuses but goes home and ends up yelling at her father anyway when he tells her not to hang out with Bobby. Then something -- not Lisa -- causes him to fly through the window and die. Problem solved, new problem created since Eugene was a single parent.Karin preps Lisa on avoiding Sculder then explains to Fox how she helps the teens break the cycle of abuse through therapy. Mulder analyzes the broken window and determines Eugene was pulled out of the two-story window – you know, the type without a balcony or trellis or anything else for a would-be murderer outside the second-story window to hang on to.
The coroner determines Eugene died from a broken neck. Fox thinks it was blood loss, but the overly defensive coroner doesn’t agree with Mulder's assessment. Fox then finds something unusual in Eugene’s neck. Dana and the local police pull Bobby out of class. She looks for proof of a struggle on Bobby’s arms, but there’s not a single imperfection to be found. The Fox shows up with the “evidence” removed from Eugene’s neck. Karin gives Lisa a place to stay until her aunt arrives and Lisa later hears a man berating Karin.
Sculder return to Lisa’s house, where Mulder has the urge to go tree climbing. The man who was watching them earlier is standing behind Scully with an axe. He claims to be the one who takes care of the trees. Dana shows him the piece of splintered wood the coroner obtained from Eugene’s neck. Axe Man says it came from the same tree Fox was just climbing. He confirms the trees are dying and a similar situation occurred 20 years ago. Axe Man hits this one with his ax and the tree starts “bleeding.”Lisa snoops in Karin’s basement and the berating voice locks her in. The next morning Sculder show up at Matthews' house to ask about her father, who died 20 years earlier in an orchard. The good news is his death ended that particular blight. Karin claims Lisa was already picked up by her aunt, but the poor girl is still in the basement. Looks like she had a long night too. Why can’t she break that window? There are so many things down there she could have used. Karin tells Lisa she can’t let her out of the basement until it’s “safe.”
Mulder decides to exhume Karin’s father, Charles, without a court order. He opens the coffin, but it’s full of roots instead of a rotting human body. Aunt Linda shows up at Karin’s house, but Matthews claims Lisa went to the bus station. The girl finally breaks a window and gets Linda’s attention. Too bad someone impales the aunt with a root before she can call the police. Fox decides nature – or someone controlling nature – caused the deaths of the three men who worked in the orchards: Phil, Eugene and Charles. Mulder goes to the weak link – Bobby – who reveals Karin influenced his hatred of Phil, who was not abusive. Sculder end up in Matthews' basement where they find what’s left of her father. The agents locate Lisa, but Karin gets away. Fox chases after her, but a tree blocks his path and a branch tries to impale him. Good luck explaining that one to the car rental agency. Hope Mulder signed up for the insurance option.
Karin shows up at Bobby’s house, but Patti tries to keep her away from him. Dorkweed panics and runs through the woods, then decides to take a stand against Karin, who is possessed by … her father? A spirit? The woods? Deadites? The ground starts to swallow Bobby, but Fox shows up. He tries to pull him out, but gets sucked down with him. Axe Man takes care of everything in a very predictable and efficient way. Yes, he chops off Karin’s head. Mulder and Bobby are fine, but their dry cleaning bills must have been astronomical. On the upside, I think the blight is over. Can we have a spinoff show called Tales of the Axe Man? The guy gets things done.Sestra Professional:
The kid's apathy rubbed off on me in this episode. I wanted to sit around playing video games instead of blogging ... and I don't even play video games.
Chalk that up to the one-dimensional nature of the story and the characters within. Even Mulder and Scully have been reduced to stereotypes. Fox is making his usual wild assumptions (rather boringly) and Dana is explaining everything away under the guise of science (ditto ad nauseum). Give credit for that to co-writers Jessica Scott and Mike Wollaeger, who never got a second chance to make an impression as X-Files writers. (They went on to pen kids' fare for Goosebumps and Animorphs, where perfunctory characterization probably went over better. We certainly don't appreciate that in our Sculder.)Is it possible that he took the term "mud pie" literally? I'm not too sure whose side we're supposed to be on. We're watching a stereotypical standoff between a father and his stepson. The kid's an empty-headed probable drug addict who apparently has never heard of John F. Kennedy. He has anger issues but can be easily bullied at school. And the dad is so heavy-handed and belligerent. It's hard to reconcile that with what we later hear about him being a man who could tell a joke and was well-liked around town. Even with a hazelnut blight.
So Karin Matthews enters the picture. And since she's played by Sarah-Jane Redmond, who had just given the second season of Millennium a huge boost as the epitome of evil, it's kind of obvious she'll be doing more than playing the plain Jane trying to help out the troubled kids at school. Karin's philosophy that all you have to do is stand up to the person hurting you seems rather misguided. It's an unrealistic theory that might cause more harm than good.You little piece of garbage: There's not a lot of nurturing going on in this town. Lisa's dad suffers from the same malady as Bobby's stepdad (although he can't be blamed for wanting to keep his daughter away from a suspected murderer, I suppose). Thusly, he suffers from the same fate as Farmer Hazelnut after his daughter yells at him to shut up. Having a quiet girl deliver a verbal outburst doesn't exactly qualify as character development. And then there's the guy walking around with an ax on foggy nights under the guise of watching over trees.
The same goes double for our heroes. Fox and Dana play their believer-doubter roles as we've seen 100 times before. And Mulder can usually do a lot better in the flirting department than climbing a tree and quipping "Is this demonstration of boyish agility turning you on at all?"
Meta mulch: Ridiculousness of plot aside, the effects of those pulled into the mud are striking. According to show's special effects coordinator, David Gauthier, in the official episode guide, the mud was heated for the comfort of the actors. A hydraulic elevator was used in one scene and an air-powered ramp in another to draw the characters deeper into the bog. The tough part was Karin's headless body. Gauthier said a stunt woman was fed oxygen so she could breathe as she slowly went under. ... Also props to Mark Snow for a different kind of score on this episode. The composer used all-too-appropriate woodwinds for the right sound, he said in the guide. ... "Dorkweed" was originally scripted as "Dickweed," according to the guide. ... Katharine Isabelle, who played Lisa, is the daughter of the show's production designer, Graeme Murray.
Guest star of the week: As previously mentioned, Sarah-Jane Redmond had already made an indelible impression in a couple episodes as Frank Black's best and brightest nemesis on Millennium by the time of "Schizogeny." (The Ten Thirteen Productions favorite later starred in the ill-fated Harsh Realm as well.) They can take away all Redmond's makeup here, but they can't subdue her talent. She speaks volumes with her eyes, much more than the written words on the page. If it wasn't for her, this one would be even worse than it is. Hard to fathom, but completely true.
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