In Green Bay country (I’m assuming so because of the school colors on the high school letterman’s jacket) and some teens are conducting a candlelight memorial for their friend, Bruno. Boom -- played by late bloomer Ryan Reynolds -- and the other kids are worried about “the cult” that has been killing teenagers in their town. Two teenage girls are concerned too. They claim “the cult” is looking for a blonde virgin. One of the girls should be safe; I don’t think she’s a natural blonde. 
The girls (played by Wendy Benson and the late Lisa Robin Kelly) convince Boom to drive them home, then convince him he could solve their problem by making sure they weren’t virgins anymore. What heterosexual high-school male is going to pass that up?!? Alas, it’s a trap and Boom is found hanging the next morning while the girls are playing a whimsically disturbing game of “He loves me, he loves me not” at the murder scene. I guess Boom can’t love anyone anymore. Start preparing for your future as Deadpool, Ryan.The next day, Sculder are bickering like an old married couple as they approach the small town of Comity, which is actually in New Hampshire. Clearly I was wrong about Green Bay country. Hey, Sestra Pro: If Amity means friendship, what does Comity mean? Maybe they just misspelled Community or the town was charged by the letter for the welcome sign.
At Bruno’s funeral, they meet with local detective Angela White, who claims three teen boys have possibly been murdered by a satanic cult. Scully is a wee bit skeptical, while Mulder has some fun at Dana's expense. Scully brings up a stunningly good investigative point though, why did Detective White interview the girls together instead of separately? If their stories didn’t match then Angela could have solved the murders, not wasted the FBI’s time and Sculder could have moved on to a Skinner ep (Next week's "Grotesque"). Dana makes the same crack about the detective's fake blond hair that I made about the girls. Great skeptical minds think alike. White gets distracted by a scared parent who starts creating a scene about the satanic cult. Our blondish murderesses create their own distraction by setting Bruno’s casket on fire. Maybe he was supposed to be cremated.Back at the Caryl County Sheriff’s Office, Sculder do Detective White’s job for her and interview the girls separately. Scully takes Terri while Mulder gets Margi. Their satanic cult stories are so similar that some of the sentences are verbatim, and the detective thinks that means they’re telling the truth. The investigators look at Boom’s burned body. Fox and Angela see a horned (pronounced "horn-ed") beast on his chest, but Dana claims not to see it. Mulder’s annoyance with Scully goes from being playfully entertaining to downright pissy and impatient. Fox and the detective visit an astrologist who denies seeing a horn-ed beast but tells them about the rare alignment of Mercury, Mars and Uranus. (Tee hee, Uranus…)
At the high school, Terri and Margi (Targi? Merri?) are being typical cheerleader bitches until they decide to crush one of the basketball players in the retractable bleachers. And all he did was spill Gatorade on them. Sculder continue to show they need couples’ therapy when Bob, the hysterical parent from the funeral who is also the high school principal, starts digging up another resident’s yard with other panicked parents because that’s supposedly where the cult’s mass grave of victims is located. And just when it seems like Dana might have gotten through to Detective White, one of the diggers finds bones! That’s two episodes in a row that mob mentality has overruled Scully’s common sense. The bones are conveniently located in a bag with the initials R.W.G. Bob screams a child's bones are in the bag and that it belongs to Dick Godfrey, the town pediatrician. The lynch mob goes to Godfrey's house to confront him and the frightened doc is partially in drag. Dick claims he sold the bag a year ago to Terri Roberts. Scully confirms his account and proves they’re animal bones, not child bones. (Rest in peace, Mr. Tippy.) Meanwhile, Mulder’s attracted to someone’s perfume … probably Dr. Godfrey’s.
Later that night, Targi celebrate their birthdays by dancing badly to Live and freaking out rival Brenda by convincing her she’s going to marry Satan. Maybe it’s really Santa and they just spelled it wrong. Brenda runs to the bathroom where Merri are playing the Bloody Mary game, but Brenda's the one who loses.
In their hotel rooms, Mulder and Scully are watching TV separately but every channels is showing Keystone Kops. I cannot tell what nasty stuff Mulder is adding to his bottle of vodka, but he takes a couple of swigs afterward. Scully’s unusual behavior involves smoking in bed and muttering about Detective White. Boy, those aligned planets are just messing with everyone. Angela goes to Fox's room to show him her cat’s collar. Guess the girls did something to her kitty. Mulder puts the moves on Angela, who drinks his vodka, then throws him on the bed and starts kissing him. Dana, of course, barges in to tell him there’s been another death. Before they head to the crime scene, Fox's attitude sinks low enough to make a short joke about Scully, so the agents split up to follow separate leads.
Targi try to “console” Brenda’s boyfriend Scott, but he freaks out and leaves. Margi doesn’t react the way Terri wants her to. I guess there’s trouble in paradise. Mulder goes back to the astrologist. After the credit card company authorizes payment (up to $300 dollars – either he’s near his limit or his credit sucks), Fox learns those three planets are in conjunction for the first time in 84 years. Throw in the house of Aquarius, Comity being a geological vortex and Jan. 12 (of course) being the perfect alignment date as well as Targi’s birthday and birth year (1979). Can you imagine having all of the energy of the cosmos focused on you and only you? Meanwhile, Margi is still making a play for Scott, and Terri doesn’t handle that well. The girls finally try to hurt each other, but Scott gets caught in the crossfire and dies. I guess you could say he got screwed to death.
Margi calls Mulder and claims she knows who the killer is. Scully and Detective White are driving down the road when they get pelted by dead birds. Bob and his mob (The Bob Mob?) are hunting for Satanists when Dana again tries to reason with them. Comity, my ass. Terri shows up claiming she knows who the killer is. Fox meets with Margi and finds poor dead Scott. Terri and Margi naturally blame each other. Mulder calls Scully and they compare suspect notes. They meet at the sheriff’s station where things start to go really wonky with the Keystone Cops theme playing in the background. Fox drags Margi into a cell. Terri goes a little more willingly. And at midnight, everything stops and the girls are normal again. Sucks to be them, but it would have been interesting to see a followup episode with a trial and Targi’s temporary insanity defense. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
Sestra Professional:
It's Chris Carter's first foray into Darin Morgan's trademark territory and we can quickly see that he's not quite as deft at the comic element -- poking fun at your leads is a subtle art because you don't want to dilute their strengths in the process -- but "Syzygy" definitely has its moments.
Sure, fine, whatever: It's true Mulder and Scully aren't acting like themselves, and a lot of that can be explained away by the rare planetary alignment thing causing the two teen girls to go into some kind of supernatural Heathers overdrive. I can't help think Morgan would have done this better, and in fact, just did do so on the previous episode, "War of the Coprophages," which had a lot of the same undertones. (Perhaps the episodes shouldn't have aired back to back.) Cue clunky dialogue: "I was hoping you could help me solve the mystery of the horny beast." Commence eye roll. A lot of Mulder's verbiage gets delivered in some kind of elongated form that makes it more pretentious than usual. For instance: "We are but visitors on this rock, hurtling through time and space at 66,000 miles an hour. Tethered to a burning sphere by an invisible force in an unfathomable universe. This most of us take for granted, while refusing to believe these forces have any more effect on us than a butterfly beating its wings halfway around the world."
I'm not entirely willing to give up on this one, though. There are some inspired bits of business, such as Mulder drinking ( Sestra Am, that's orange juice concentrate) and Scully smoking in their respective hotel rooms while Fox can only charge up to a whopping $300 on his credit card. All that bickering about driving and ditching harkened back to fans' complaints since the beginning of the series.Happy birthday, bitch: The story actually gets some traction as it goes along with Mulder taking Terri's side and Scully firmly in Marji's corner. And the denouement gives director Rob Bowman the opportunity for one whale of a final set piece as furniture relocates itself and guns go off all cocked in the police station to "Flight of the Bumblebees."
While the episode title's textbook definition is the alignment of three celestial objects, Carter was probably leaning toward the Jungian use of "Syzygy" as a union of opposites. Speaking of the dictionary, "Comity" means "mutual courtesy" and "civility." Hardee har har, Car-ter. (By the way, in the official third-season episode guide, the executive producer thought fans didn't understand the sign. Uh, we did, Chris.)
But the clumsy dialogue also gives way to some classic lines. In the episode guide, Gillian Anderson said she loved when Fox reveals why Dana doesn't get to drive, "I was just never sure your little feet could reach the pedals," and David Duchovny really sells the one about Fox knowing that Dana really likes "snapping on the latex." You don't suppose she's a virgin, do you? ... I doubt she's even a blonde: There's some obvious meta to this episode as David Duchovny's third-season flame Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as hot-and-cold Detective White got a juicier role than his second-season steady (Perrey Reeves in the ill-fated "3").
Guest stars of the week: Both Wendy Benson (Wishmaster) and Lisa Robin Kelly (That '70s Show) give their all as the planetarily afflicted duo of doom. They can even sell tired "Hate him, hate him, wouldn't want to date him" and "He loves me, he loves me not" mantras. I would like to see the sequel Sestra Am envisioned of their trial. Should the girls get tried separately, like they were eventually questioned, or together?
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