X-Files S4E3: More grist for the mill

Sestra Amateur: 

A man on a plane is reading some legal documents when he gets up to use the bathroom. Someone (or something) in white face with red eyes is staring at him from a hidden location. The man enters the unoccupied bathroom because, well, it would be rude to try and enter the occupied one. Unfortunately, he gets attacked. When the plane prepares to land at JFK Airport in New York, a flight attendant goes looking for the missing passenger. She walks by a young man in the aisle who looks completely normal and unassuming. She then finds the missing passenger dead and albino-ed with red eyes.

At FBI Headquarters, Agent Scully meets with assistant director Skinner and Dr. Simon Bruin of the Center for Disease Control to make small talk over weather and sports. Oh, and there’s a joint task force with Philadelphia regarding murdered African-American men who have been depigmented. The man cast as Owen Sanders does not have a credit listed on IMDb, but playing a dead body is not his strong suit, he blinks more than I do when something flies into my eye. Maybe he’s a zombie! Scully begins the autopsy so I hope he isn't a zombie. Mulder and his sunflower seeds quickly join her and he entertains yet another conspiracy theory.

Marcus Duff, played by Carl Lumbly – a comic-con staple for people like me (M.A.N.T.I.S.!, Martian Manhunter! Marcus Dixon of Alias! I’m sensing a theme), meets with Samuel Aboah regarding the latter's naturalization papers. Turns out Samuel is the normal, unassuming man from the plane, but he’s looking a little feverish and his skin is blotchy. Duff gives Aboah a pep talk. We’ll see how that plays out. 

Mulder gets the test results from Agent Pendrell, who is crestfallen because Scully won’t be joining them. He shows Fox a seed indigenous only to parts of West Africa. He learns it’s a cortical depressant and calls Dana. She says Owen’s pituitary gland was necrotized, but she still doesn’t know what caused the condition. Mulder goes to see Maria Covarrubias -- Mr. X’s replacement -- at the United Nations in New York to seek information about the missing men. She denies knowledge of the case but reminds Fox that U.S. borders really are just lines on a map.

A young black man gets stung by one of the seeds while sitting at a bus stop and freezes in place. Samuel is there, all red-eyed and patchy. The next morning, Scully interviews the bus driver while Mulder searches the area for another seed. Fox also has photographs of the first victim – the man from the airplane bathroom – who was returned to West Africa before there could be an autopsy. A Philadelphia police officer knocks on Aboah's door during a neighborhood canvas for the missing young man. Looks like Samuel’s activities are starting to occur too close to home. Very close, in fact, the man is still immobile and inside Aboah's apartment. On the upside, Samuel’s eyes are brown and his skin looks normal again. Aboah does a reverse fire eater and removes a long ceremonial-looking stick from his own throat.

Sculder meet with Duff, who is pretty defensive from the get go. Dana pulls the public health crisis card and earns his cooperation. Samuel shows up at Marcus’ office and panics when Fox asks to talk to him. They chase him to an alley where Mulder finds him crammed into an extremely narrow drainpipe. Maybe he’s Tooms’ distant cousin. Dr. Bruin analyzes Samuel, who is currently healthy, so Doc thinks they have the wrong man. The agents ask Duff to translate for them. Marcus reminds Mulder that Aboah probably ran because he fears police, not because he committed a crime. Fox isn’t buying it. 

He goes to the Burkina Faso Embassy in Washington, D.C. to ask Ambassador Diabria why he quashed the original death investigation. Diabria tells Mulder about the Teliko -- an African folktale -- and how he first encountered it when he was 7 years old. His cousin died the same way as the man on the airplane. So if that convinced Diabria the Teliko was real and had arrived in the States, shouldn’t he be held accountable for what happened to the four missing men? This could have been resolved three months earlier at Patient Zero’s autopsy. 

Meanwhile, Samuel is making a Squeeze-like getaway in a food cart. Seriously, how have Fox or Dana not made a single Tooms reference in this episode? Samuel’s PET scans indicate he does not have a pituitary gland. His X-rays are a little questionable as well. Mulder returns and tells Scully that Aboah hightailed it out of there. Samuel goes to his case worker, intending to make Marcus his next victim. Duff offers Aboah a ride home and doesn’t suspect anything is wrong.

Fox realizes Samuel used the food cart as a getaway vehicle. Dana tells him they found Marcus’ car. Catatonic Marcus can’t move while Samuel shoves that ceremonial stick up Duff's nose. Aboah gets interrupted by a police officer who calls for an ambulance. Mulder tells Scully what he learned about African folklore. They separately search for Samuel in a nearby construction site. If the camera closeups are any indication, Aboah's not looking so good. Fox gets all woozy after being shot with the seed. 

Dana crawls around the ducts and fires her gun at Samuel, who is looking progressively worse. Scully finds Mulder and the missing men. They are dead; Fox is not, but he’s as quiet as we’re ever going to see him. Dana calls 911 while Samuel sneaks up behind her. Mulder warns her with his eyes and Scully shoots Aboah. He lives, but the outlook doesn’t look good for him in the evolutionary chain. Dana closes her final report with Fox's 10-cent words -- deceive, inveigle, obfuscate. And with those spelling-bee flashbacks, we’ll see you next week.

Sestra Professional:

The world's political climate has always had some kind of unseen but clearly palpable effect on The X-Files. Rewatching "Teliko" makes me think about the reverse. This case just gives our president fuel for more foul-mouthed fire.

As Sestra Am mentioned, the episode marks a return to a kind of Season 1 Toomsy vibe. (Yes, I used a liver-eating mutant as an adjective.) But I'm having a flash-forward to Season 9's "Badlaa." Planes are such a convenient way for nefarious supernatural types to get their groove on.

Not everything is a labyrinth of dark conspiracy: But the difference is how far our agents have come in their three-plus years together. Mulder's able to discern that he sees conspiracy in everything, even when it's not there ... although it's usually there. More importantly, Dana Scully -- once the beacon of light for women everywhere but in the currently airing Season 11 a source of controversy for show creator Chris Carter -- doesn't walk behind her partner, like she was forced to do by Fox in the early going. She can play hero ... and not just in the morgue.

It's also a good time to mention how well put together Scully seems to be in a physical sense as well this season. Dana's wearing form-fitting clothes actually made for a woman and her hair style has been more tailored to Gillian Anderson's face. In short, she's become quite the babe, and it's no small wonder that she's leaving a trail of admiring puppy dogs like Agent Pendrell in her wake.

I heard you were down here slicing and dicing: But lest I get too far off the mark, Scully's got her science on. She finds out about this particular X-File before Mulder does. Dana gets to shoot Fox down early and often with statements about how she found the effect and not the cause of death for the young black men. Of course, Scully can state all the science she wants ... and eventually Mulder will probably be proven right.

Until that time, Fox gets to quip and feel out his mysterious new informant Marita Covarrubias, whose agenda seems even more clouded than those of her predecessors. "There's a Michael Jackson joke in here somewhere but I can't quite find it," Mulder says upon seeing the albino body. That's a politically correct way of story writer Howard Gordon getting his MJ joke across, ain't it?

This guy can squeeze into a coffee can. He could be anywhere: It's always a plus when when our heroes nab their suspect during the episode, but when he can easily escape in a food cart while Sculder are otherwise employed, it doesn't count as much of a victory. Nor does case worker Duff's claim that Aboah merely ran away because back in his country he got used to evading authority figures.

We can also appreciate Mulder getting his hackles up. The show really picks and chooses the moments in which he strays from his usual objective in favor of really trying to solve a case. Season 3's "Oubliette" was the perfect example of this. As he stated there, not everything he says and does reflects back upon his sister. Here might there be a bit of an irk factor because Scully's taken the lead?

Historically, this episode is not much of a fan favorite, it's probably on the lower end of most spectrums. But there's a lot of growth for both our leads, probably best exemplified by Fox rationalizing that fear of the unknown causes people to reduce questions to the easiest possible theories. For the ambassador, it was the folk lore, for Scully science and for Mulder conspiracy. See, Fox is on top of his game too. He just profiled three people in the course of one sentence. 

Totally in Sestra Am's corner when it comes to the ambassador and not understanding his rationale for covering up the first death. Was he merely afraid the other ambassadors would refer to him as "Spooky"? It's not like the deaths would just stop after five murders like the Tooms case. Aboah needed constant -- and apparently increasing -- refresher courses.

We keep making references to the currently airing Season 11, and that's a credit to the series being able to reflect upon itself so many years later. There's been a lot of debate about Dana as a victim following the controversial opener, and she's completely the opposite here. Scully saves the day -- and Mulder -- by reading her partner's eyes ... and by being a good shot. Yeah, this was the fictional character we know and love who inspired so many in the real world to get into careers in science, medicine and the FBI. 

Guest star of the week: Apologies to Carl Lumbly, but Willie Amayke made a superbly creepy baddie as Samuel. The former Ghana Olympian was cast on the show soon after the 1996 Games in Atlanta, and although his previous acting work was just a bit part in Congo, he cuts quite the menacing figure. It's actually easy to disregard Tooms comparisons because our pulses quicken when Aboah's got Duff, Mulder and Scully in his sights.