X-Files S11E4: It's always Something

Sestra Amateur: 

Good news: We’re spared more "My Struggle" nonsense and get to experience another comedic episode. Added bonus: it’s not only written by Darin Morgan but he’s also the director! In a Twilight Zone-y time and place, a very sweaty man is freaking out over the existence of Martians. He’s trying to tell a diner cook what he saw but it turns out, HE’S the alien! And the cook is an alien too!

Special Agent Dana Scully phones Special Agent Fox Mulder, who has been Sasquatching out in the woods. She confirms their dinner plans then wisely hangs up when he starts babbling like …well, Mulder. After the call, Fox realizes someone is trying to meet with him using the ol’ X-marks-the-spot trick on his window. Mulder meets with a sweaty stranger in a parking garage. The man, played by a very entertaining Brian Huskey, thinks Fox should know who he is but “they” got to Mulder and now he -- Fox -- doesn’t remember. They talk about the first Twilight Zone episode Mulder ever saw, "The Lost Martian," but the man claims that episode doesn’t exist.

Fox returns home to prove the man wrong, but it’s true: "The Lost Martian" doesn’t exist but Mulder still remembers it. Scully shows up while Fox is going through EVERY videotape in his house. While he babbles on about the first time he saw the episode -- complete with creepy CGI flashbacks -- Dana again chooses not to listen. She also finds the sweaty man in the parking garage and he affectionately calls her “Sculls.” Too bad Dana doesn’t recognize him either. 

The man tries to get her to prove he is real and he gives her a box of gelatin with his fingerprints on it. Of course, with the way Scully's holding the “evidence,” the box should have her prints probably overlapping his. She tells Mulder about this particular gelatin dessert which she thought she enjoyed during her childhood but was later told didn’t exist the way she remembered it. Fox starts babbling about the Mandela Effect, and for the first time in this episode, she’s actually listening to him. Scully also learns the sweaty man’s fingerprints were not in the system.

Sculder go on stakeout in the parking garage, waiting for the sweaty man to return. He arrives, calls himself “Reggie Something” and tells a tale of false memories which began while he was caring for his ailing mother. Reggie claims the Mandela Effect is actually known as the Mengele Effect. He learned from a vintage resale store owner about the intentional creation of the Mengele Effect to manipulate people’s memories. Mulder thinks it’s a parallel universe situation, but Scully quickly poo-poos it in favor of Occam’s razor (aka Ozzie’s razor). Reggie presents his high school yearbook which doesn’t contain any evidence he attended the school. He also reveals the store owner died by lawn dart. Too bad Dana doesn’t know what a lawn dart is. Then it gets weird.

Do you want to know who “they” are when it comes to conspiracy theories? Introducing Dr. Thaddeus Q. They, the man who knows how to manipulate collective memory. Dr. They, played by character actor Stuart Margolin, has had his finger in every known mental manipulation pie over the past several decades. Scully isn’t impressed with the Darknet video of Dr. They’s exploits so Reggie mentions Grenada. He was there as a med student when Dr. They tried to save an alien who crash-landed nearby. Unfortunately, the soldiers arrived and took the telepathic alien away. Good thing he spoke and thought English, huh? Reggie claims this was why HE started the X-files! (Dun dun dunn!!!!) 

Now we get to see the “original” series intro featuring Fox, Dana and Reggie Something. I’ll let Sestra Pro have fun with all of the early episodes that have Reggie scenes inserted in them. But the fun has to end somewhere. When Reggie starts talking about Sculder-Something’s last case together, other FBI agents chase him away. Younger agents insult the aging Mulder and he doesn’t take it well.

Back in their office, you-know-who goes old school with his conspiracy theory analysis while Scully sits there quietly. Luckily for a flailing Fox, Dr. They calls him to arrange a meeting in a park with some of the strangest metallic sculptures you’ve ever seen. Doc claims it shouldn’t have been so hard for Mulder to learn of his existence; after all, the good doc is listed in the phone book. But people today cannot tell the differences between the truth or lies, and they choose to believe only what they want to believe. 

Afterward, Reggie waits for “Foxy” in the FBI parking garage. “Sculls” surprises them both by revealing the sweaty man’s identity as Reggie Murgatroid, a U.S. government employee. From which branch, you ask? Well, pretty much all of them. That’s how he ended up bugging Mulder’s home, listening to his babbling conversations with Scully (see paragraph 2) until being recently committed to a mental institution. (If Murgatroid really worked for all of those agencies, then his fingerprints should have been on file several times over.) Reggie admits defeat and stops running. He regales Sculder with the tale of their last case together – aliens really don’t like earthlings and they have good reason – before being carted away to the Spotnitz Sanitarium (yes, really). That’s when Assistant Director Walter Skinner enters with the episode’s best line.

Sestra Professional:   

When Darin Morgan came aboard The X-Files, he became part of its very fabric. It started with his casting as one of the most memorable "Monsters of the Week" -- the title character in "The Host" (Season 2, Episode 2). He was buried in latex as Flukeman, but then helped brother Glen craft the next episode, "Blood." That led him to a staff writing position, and "Humbug" (S2E20) expanded the boundaries of what could be done with a script for the show.

In the third season, he and The X-Files took huge leaps forward -- "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (E4), "War of the Coprophages" (E12) and "Jose Chung's From Outer Space (E20) were fan and critical darlings alike. And I'm guessing a fair amount of the best lines in "Quagmire" (E22) came from his uncredited assistance on that episode. Even though those were his last contributions during the regular run, they opened up the canvas for everyone from Vince Gilligan to show creator Chris Carter to expand upon.

Morgan returned in front of the camera for another memorable character, Eddie Van Blundht, in "Small Potatoes" (S4E20). As a shapeshifter who impregnated unknowing women by assuming the form of someone they would want to sleep with, he deserved nothing but enmity, yet somehow inspired a measure of pathos. Morgan then delivered two thoughtful-yet-fun episodes for sister show Millennium.

Submitted for your approval: When it came time for the X-Files revival, he graced us with another pair of shows that he also directed. Morgan's trademark has always been well-developed ideas stemming from concepts that seem so obvious, but rarely get voiced in the field of entertainment. He has been a touchstone for the series, and his final effort wraps up his work in symmetrical style. We've come to expect nothing less from him.

"The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" starts with that Twilight Zone/Outer Limits-style show and leads Mulder down a rabbit hole that perhaps many of us will admit to being familiar with. I've done that with X-Files episodes alone! Trying to remember what episode Fox gave a particular saucy response in -- and I thought it was in a comedic bottle ep, but it turned out to be from a mythology two-parter. Or there's the other option of looking for something and finding it, but then realizing it's only tangentially like what you thought it was. Morgan reminds us that memory is such a tricky thing, subject to a myriad of influences that can alter it -- not just talking anal probes and memory wipes in a Dusky Realm.

One of the treats Morgan gave the show was the opportunity for its leads, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, to show different shadings as Mulder and Scully. In Morgan's hands, Fox is a little less strident and a lot more ridiculous. Duchovny has always feasted on those opportunities. ("Confuse The Twilight Zone with The Outer Limits? Do you even know me?") Here, he gets to bounce off Brian Huskey too, and that's a treat for them and for us. 

Wait, what? I kind of wish Reggie Something had been around the whole time, but maybe that's just my brain creating a false impression of what that would have been like and it's just perfect to have him merely encapsulated here. Eagle-eyed viewers like Sestra Am may have noticed the reference to him in "This" a couple episodes ago. Just an Easter egg courtesy of the Darin Morgan machine that can impact the show in ways great and small.

The machine gave us some truly wacky bits in "Lost Art," starting with that missing episode and continuing with Mulder recounting watching his first Twilight Zone at age 8. The oversized Foxy head on the kid's body makes you think something here isn't quite right -- and it's not supposed to be, Morgan is visually able to show us the awkwardness of trying to recall something from so many years ago.

You're having a Mengele Effect about the Mandela Effect: It makes sense that Sculls' memory quest doesn't focus on something of a cult nature like Mulder, she's just looking for alternative Jell-O that forms three different layers with three different textures when it cools because it brings up memories of family vacations, fireworks, America, God and love. Foxy is right, that's some Jell-O.

Reggie's memory crisis of faith about Dr. Wuzzle's books takes him to the coolest repository of vintage garbage that has ever been seen on television. How long had Morgan been trying to get that Nixon poster into an episode? Even Darin probably can't tell us because of Mengela Effect. (Yes, I gave it a smush name.)

We were made of sterner stuff back then: Leave it to sci-fi gobbledygook nerd boy to hypothesize that the difference in collective memories should be attributed to parallel universes. Cue more random memories about watermelon slices that tasted like coconut, kids playing with the mini-javelin lawn darts and the invasion of Grenada. It had been a couple of decades, Morgan must had had a lot of random thoughts to tuck into one last X-Files episode -- like Reggie going through social feedback comments about the Dr. They video: "This jerk just says, 'Meh.'"

The subsequent recasting of the show's history -- even Mark Snow's sacred theme! -- is priceless to me. The origins of Mulder's "I Want to Believe" poster, Season 1 repeat baddie Tooms, Clyde Bruckman's Grenada callback, the killer cats of much-reviled "Teso dos Bichos" (S3E18), the in-bred Peacock family of "Home" (S4E2) and even Eddie Van Blundht ... let's just say if the whole series never addressed what happened to Mulder's sister or the end of the Syndicate, I'd be fine with this Reggie reveal montage as end game.

So Dr. They is revealed to bust the post-coverup, post-conspiracy universe in a very atmospheric setting, and he again catches us up on years of ideas that must have been rolling around Morgan's noggin. Everything from people not admitting when they're wrong even when caught on tape to the spread of online disinformation is covered. It no longer matters if the truth is out there and if Foxy can uncover and reveal it, making Mulder more obsolete than any of us (except maybe Sestra Am) are willing to believe.

I want to remember how it all was: Poor Foxy, the details of Reggie's last case with him and Sculls was an even harder burden to bear. He gets all the answers to everything in the universe in one hefty volume, but that same universe wants nothing to do with Earth any longer. Oh well, at least Mulder's free to explore Uranus all he wants. It takes Morgan (through Reggie) to say maybe the point wasn't to uncover the truth, but to find each other. The shippers certainly buy that.

I talked with Mitch Pileggi about his cameo at X-Fest in 2018. Pileggi said he talked Morgan into finally putting him into an episode. "He said, 'You're in it, but it's only one line.' I said, 'OK.' He said, 'But it's big.'" During filming, he recalled Darin saying, "'Do it really big' and I was like, 'Really?' But it worked."

One memory I do have that still holds up -- whew -- is that when "Lost Art" aired in 2018, I read an insightful Entertainment Weekly review. Darren Franich felt a bit overwhelmed by the "Trumpian art" amid the "clip show," but he still deemed the ep to be his personal X-Files series finale. While I have no problem with the dense Morgan narrative, and in hindsight with what I now know is coming up, I'm eager to agree. There's more to enjoy about upcoming episodes, but I could easily slide this to the end of the season, remember it how it all was and more joyfully consider it a wrap.

Guest star of the week: Why Brian Huskey, of course! He gives one of the most indelible comedic performances of the entire series. At X-Fest 2, he told us Morgan wanted him to deliver his lines "in a bunch of weird ways." It wound up being as satisfying for Huskey as for the audience. "This is one of my favorite life experiences I ever had," he said.