Editors' Note: On the rewatch of The X-Files, Lorrie plays the part of Sestra Amateur and Paige serves as the resident "expert," aka Sestra Professional.
Sestra Amateur: Southwest Idaho … just when you think nothing exciting happens there, the Army Military Police are raiding a house on what looks to be a peaceful street. Inside they find a poor guy wearing only tighty whities and looking like he’s suffering from the worst allergic reaction ever. That can't be good, which is probably why it's in the teaser.
Meanwhile,
back in D.C., Mulder is trying to get Scully drunk and wants to show her
something. Too bad it's just info on Tighty-Whitey Man, also known as Colonel Robert Budahas, who appears to
have been kidnapped by the military.
Apparently, a similar fate has befallen six other military pilots. Mulder
goes to the little boy’s room and gets a friendly warning from Jerry Hardin. I
know his character will be called "Deep Throat," but I prefer to use only one nickname per blog. Besides, he already
has the episode title.
On the phone with Scully, Mulder hears clicking and assumes his phone
line is tapped. He looks out his window and sees a van, so now he thinks he’s
being watched too. The next morning S&M – not a nickname, just an abbreviation – meet with
TW Man’s wife, who tells them about the rash, his personality changes and a newly acquired
taste for fish food. Mrs. TW Man sends them
to another pilot's house. That guy spends his days making fly
fishing lures and pulling out his hair one strand at a time. His wife is
much less forthcoming and Scully articulates to Mulder a perfectly reasonable
medical explanation -- a syndrome produced from extreme stress. From there, they go to interview an Army colonel who blows them off. A
reporter named Paul Mossinger tries to get information from Mulder and Scully,
who blow him off. I’m sensing a theme here.
Sculder go to a restricted area where
they watch lights that first move like the dancing baby in Ally McBeal, which actually aired four years after this episode, then move like squirrels chasing each
other before whooshing away ... very Close Encounters-ish. They meet two teens running out of the restricted area, hide them and then feed them. (One of them is played by another familiar TV redhead, Seth Green! Can't wait to get to the Buffy recaps.) Mulder tells
Scully his theory that the U.S. government is building planes with UFO
technology. When Scully balks, Mulder reminds Scully that UFO means
"unidentified flying object." Score one for Mulder.
TW Man returns home and looks perfectly fine, but his wife claims it’s not him. Looks like we flipped the channel from Close Encounters to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Mulder quizzes him until TW Man chokes on a flight question. Maybe he is a pod person after all. Nah, it’s more likely that the military just removed the knowledge from his head.
Sculder leave and are intimidated by men in suits who clearly don’t care that they’re FBI agents. After that, Mulder finally tells Scully about Hardin and the phone tap. But he leaves Scully and returns to the restricted area with the teens. Mulder walks all the way to the airstrip and stands there while a flying slice of pizza – I mean a triangle-shaped UFO – hovers above him and shines a spotlight on him. I guess we’ve changed back to Close Encounters again. The UFO bolts and Mulder tries to outrun man-made Jeeps, but is unsuccessful. Military guys strap him down and take him away.
The next morning, Scully can't make a long-distance call. Guess her day is going as badly as
Mulder’s night did. Scully figures out that Mossinger actually works for the
government. She forces him at gunpoint to drive her to Mulder, who looks like
hell and appears to be suffering from amnesia not unlike that of TW Man. Sculder drive away in
Mossinger’s car. Overall, Scully’s (alleged) first carjacking went pretty smoothly.
Sculder go see TW Man, but his wife refuses to cooperate with them anymore. Now she's been body snatched! OK, it was probably just the military convincing her not to cooperate anymore.
Back in D.C., Scully is working on her field report. She does use the phrase "unidentified flying object," which is technically what it was since they, you know, never identified it. Mulder asks Hardin if they’re here – are we watching Poltergeist now? He tells Mulder, “They’ve been here for a long, long time.” Is he being honest or just messing with Mulder’s head? Time – and 200-plus episodes – will tell. In the meantime, now I want to go watch Close Encounters or Invasion of the Body Snatchers ... subliminal impulses?
Sestra Professional:
Our basic premise was pretty well set up in the pilot and now we get to expand on the basic principles including our new old friends, "Mulder sees something Scully doesn't" and "When they do see the same thing, they don't agree on what it is."
Of course, the main draw here is meeting Jerry Hardin as someone who knows a lot more than Mulder and Scully do. Is that a "meet cute" in the bathroom? He's willing to share information, but only up to a certain point and then Mulder and Scully will be on their own at their own peril. If he risks losing Mulder, he lobs a softball about why the agent is so obsessed to get a response like, "All the evidence to the contrary is not entirely dissuasive."
"Sucker": I don't know, Mulder. If you call a photo you bought at a UFO nerd hangout "not entirely dissuasive," maybe Scully's right about you being a sucker. But the argument, excuse me, discussion they were having about the pilots sitting around like plates of mashed potatoes (to keep Sis Am's Close Encounters theme going) is a much better example of the two sides going with what they know. Mulder says test pilots are supposed to thrive under stress and must have been security risks, while Scully counters nervous breakdowns and that the science or medical technology to do what he's contending doesn't exist. Mulder comes right back with the fact that the science or medical technology to fly whatever it is that's appearing in the night skies isn't supposed to be around either.
"You think if maybe we ignore him, he'll go away." And we're off on another running theme of the government going to extreme lengths to stop their own people. Mulder and Scully are driven off the road and relieved of their files, film and bullets on grounds of national security. With the return of the kidnapping victim they were originally investigating, Scully believes they're asking questions they have no right to ask, Mulder couldn't disagree more. So while he's getting close enough to her to tell her about Deep Throat and the tapping, he's not at the point where he won't go his own way when need doth arise.
Which segues nicely into the show being able to show Mulder another light show of more substantive means with Scully not around. She wouldn't go, he had to go, so he went. You might say he felt compelled to be there. (Yes, another Close Encounters reference.)
Lest we lose respect for Scully, she does a lot of threatening in this ep. She declares she's going to put all of Mulder's nonsense about searching for UFOs on the taxpayers' dime in her field report when they get back to D.C. But that's mild compared to what she does when Mulder steps his foot in it at the air base. Scully pulls her gun on the reporter-turned-security man and cautions that she will have every newspaper in America writing about the experimental aircraft if she doesn't get her partner back.
After having his car jacked out from under him, security dude says, "Everything you've seen here is equal to the protection we give it. It's you who have acted inappropriately." If he hadn't misrepresented himself as someone else completely prior to that, I might have even agreed with him on that score.
Now might be a good time to start a "Guest Star of the Week" element on the blog. Seth Green! Two redheads in the same shot? Oh yeah, nowadays people call 'em gingers. Much fun to see him pre-Oz as the stoner with quite a large amount of info stored up about the base, although he and his girlfriend probably just go there to see a show better than Pink Floyd's laser light extravaganza.
And last but not least, I think this show provided the first veiled reference to Mulder's dubious sexual proclivities. His informant's name alone is kind of telling. Yeah, it's a reference to All the President's Men and Bob Woodward's Watergate informant of the same name, and Mulder probably considers it cool in that regard. But he's totally getting off on the fact that it's also the title of a notorious adult film, at least that willl become more apparent as we progress in the rewatch.
TW Man returns home and looks perfectly fine, but his wife claims it’s not him. Looks like we flipped the channel from Close Encounters to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Mulder quizzes him until TW Man chokes on a flight question. Maybe he is a pod person after all. Nah, it’s more likely that the military just removed the knowledge from his head.
Sculder leave and are intimidated by men in suits who clearly don’t care that they’re FBI agents. After that, Mulder finally tells Scully about Hardin and the phone tap. But he leaves Scully and returns to the restricted area with the teens. Mulder walks all the way to the airstrip and stands there while a flying slice of pizza – I mean a triangle-shaped UFO – hovers above him and shines a spotlight on him. I guess we’ve changed back to Close Encounters again. The UFO bolts and Mulder tries to outrun man-made Jeeps, but is unsuccessful. Military guys strap him down and take him away.
Sculder go see TW Man, but his wife refuses to cooperate with them anymore. Now she's been body snatched! OK, it was probably just the military convincing her not to cooperate anymore.
Back in D.C., Scully is working on her field report. She does use the phrase "unidentified flying object," which is technically what it was since they, you know, never identified it. Mulder asks Hardin if they’re here – are we watching Poltergeist now? He tells Mulder, “They’ve been here for a long, long time.” Is he being honest or just messing with Mulder’s head? Time – and 200-plus episodes – will tell. In the meantime, now I want to go watch Close Encounters or Invasion of the Body Snatchers ... subliminal impulses?
Sestra Professional:
Our basic premise was pretty well set up in the pilot and now we get to expand on the basic principles including our new old friends, "Mulder sees something Scully doesn't" and "When they do see the same thing, they don't agree on what it is."
"Sucker": I don't know, Mulder. If you call a photo you bought at a UFO nerd hangout "not entirely dissuasive," maybe Scully's right about you being a sucker. But the argument, excuse me, discussion they were having about the pilots sitting around like plates of mashed potatoes (to keep Sis Am's Close Encounters theme going) is a much better example of the two sides going with what they know. Mulder says test pilots are supposed to thrive under stress and must have been security risks, while Scully counters nervous breakdowns and that the science or medical technology to do what he's contending doesn't exist. Mulder comes right back with the fact that the science or medical technology to fly whatever it is that's appearing in the night skies isn't supposed to be around either.
"You think if maybe we ignore him, he'll go away." And we're off on another running theme of the government going to extreme lengths to stop their own people. Mulder and Scully are driven off the road and relieved of their files, film and bullets on grounds of national security. With the return of the kidnapping victim they were originally investigating, Scully believes they're asking questions they have no right to ask, Mulder couldn't disagree more. So while he's getting close enough to her to tell her about Deep Throat and the tapping, he's not at the point where he won't go his own way when need doth arise.
Lest we lose respect for Scully, she does a lot of threatening in this ep. She declares she's going to put all of Mulder's nonsense about searching for UFOs on the taxpayers' dime in her field report when they get back to D.C. But that's mild compared to what she does when Mulder steps his foot in it at the air base. Scully pulls her gun on the reporter-turned-security man and cautions that she will have every newspaper in America writing about the experimental aircraft if she doesn't get her partner back.
After having his car jacked out from under him, security dude says, "Everything you've seen here is equal to the protection we give it. It's you who have acted inappropriately." If he hadn't misrepresented himself as someone else completely prior to that, I might have even agreed with him on that score.
And last but not least, I think this show provided the first veiled reference to Mulder's dubious sexual proclivities. His informant's name alone is kind of telling. Yeah, it's a reference to All the President's Men and Bob Woodward's Watergate informant of the same name, and Mulder probably considers it cool in that regard. But he's totally getting off on the fact that it's also the title of a notorious adult film, at least that willl become more apparent as we progress in the rewatch.
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