Sestra Amateur:
I hope this is a one-and-done bottle episode. The monster-of-the-week ones are always so hit-or-miss. This one opens on an old lady named Flakita telling a story to young immigrants about migrant workers in San Joaquin Valley, California. One of the workers, Soledad, is jealous because his girlfriend, Maria, is flirting with another immigrant, Eladio. Her inattention causes Flakita’s goats to escape, so Maria and Eladio run after them. There’s a weird light, then weird yellow rain like a sulfur storm. Some of the goats return, but Maria is dead in the yellow water, her eyes and mouth burned away.
Three days later, Sculder are on the scene for their investigation. Not sure how much time has passed since the events of "Paper Hearts" (S4E10), but Mulder doesn't seem to have been suspended or fired for his actions that resulted in the kidnapping and terrorizing of an innocent little girl. Fox tells Dana about fortean events, apparently they come in several colors, not just yellow. And why has no one burned or buried that goat yet? Good thing they didn’t leave Maria out there too. The migrant workers assume the agents are with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and bolt. Flakita blames Maria’s death on El Chupacabra -- but shouldn't that be "El Chupacabro" or "La Chupacabra?" Soledad thinks Eladio killed Maria. We also learn Eladio and Soledad are brothers. Scully and Flakita share the same theory -- typical love triangle soap-opera drama. Is that why this episode is called "El Mundo Gira," which translates to The World Turns?
Mulder -- who definitely comes off as The Young and the Restless -- goes to the INS office in Fresno for information. He meets with Agent Conrad Lozano, played by character actor Ruben Blades. Fox hits a roadblock when Lozano points out that none of the migrants give their real names to INS agents. Conrad believes Eladio killed Maria and the stories related to El Chupacabra are just stories. Scully -- The Bold and the Beautiful -- goes to the coroner’s office to autopsy Maria’s body, but three days in a body bag really cemented the effects of the “fortean event.” She looks like Stephen King after he was exposed to the meteorite in Creepshow. Cause of death: Massive fungal infection.
Conrad tells Fox that Eladio is in custody under the alias Erik Estrada. "Erik" denies killing Maria and describes the thunder, lightning and hot rain from the incident. It sounds like he’s talking about the Three Storm characters in Big Trouble in Little China. Eladio recalls Maria lying in the puddle of yellow rain with part of her face eaten away. He gives a statement that could win him a Daytime Emmy and is bused to his court hearing. After updating each other on the case, Sculder stumble across the crashed court-bound bus. Migrant workers running everywhere! They’ll be harder to corral than those goats. Turns out the bus driver died from a different fungal infection. Agent Lozano arrives and tells Mulder and Scully that most of the escapees were recovered, but not Eladio. He's trying to get a ride back to Mexico, but settles for day labor work.
Dana seeks assistance from Dr. Larry Steen at California State University in Fresno (General Hospital and Port Charles are based in New York, so that wouldn’t have worked at all). The bus driver’s fungal infection was an accelerated version of athlete’s foot. Dermatophytosis Gone Wild. This also fits Dana's theory about Maria’s exposure to pesticide. Eladio starts to feel ill at the job site. Soledad arrives and thinks Eladio is in the Port-a-Potty. Instead, he finds Eladio’s fungally infected dead boss. Eladio takes off in the boss’ truck to see his cousin, Gabrielle. Scully warns Mulder about the contagion, right about the time he and Lozano find Port-a-Potty Boss.
Fox is still trying to prove his Another World theory about the fortean event, but Dana's a little too busy to entertain his perspective. Mulder and Lozano get a tip that Eladio's at a nearby truck stop. They chase him but Eladio gets away in a truck full of goats, which -- of course -- later turn up dead. Really, Eladio, what did those goats ever do to you?
Flakita is brought to the scene of the dead goats and points Sculder and Lozano in Gabrielle’s direction. Looking very ill, Eladio, goes grazing in the nut aisle of a grocery store but panics and accidentally knocks over the bulk-food dispensers when the stock boy yells at him. Too bad that the stock boy touches some of the now moldy nuts. Eladio calls Gabrielle and learns Soledad is coming after him. Sculder and Lozano follow Soledad into the store and they have a standoff at gunpoint. Soledad justifies his need for vengeance against his brother. He gives himself up, but Dana is distracted by the dead stock boy in the nut aisle. Poor kid had but One Life to Live and now it’s gone.
Eladio goes to Gabrielle’s apartment, but he’s physically changed so much she really thinks he’s El Chupacabra. Gabrielle pays him to leave her alone and tells the agents Eladio is going to Mexico, but Mulder is convinced Eladio is going to see Soledad at the holding facility. Right idea, Mulder, but wrong location. Lozano takes Soledad back to the migrant camp in San Joaquin (which is approximately 220 miles from … Santa Barbara ... and they confront Eladio. There’s a chase and an off-screen gunshot. Afterward, Flakita finds Lozano’s dead fungal body. She sees a Guiding Light in the sky then several forms who look like fake alien extras from "Jose Chung’s From Outer Space" (Season 3, Episode 20).
Flakita thinks they were more Chupacabras who arrived to help Eladio and claims Soledad is being punished for his actions. The people listening to her story call BS because Gabrielle told them a different version of what happened. The story goes back to show Lozano and Soledad were chasing Eladio when Conrad fired a warning shot in the air. Eladio stopped running and Lozano gave the handcuffed Soledad his gun to get vengeance for Maria’s death. Eladio completely transformed into El Chupacabra, so Soledad wussed out and refused to kill Eladio. Conrad and Soledad struggled over the gun which went off again, killing Lozano. According to Gabrielle, Eladio and Soledad ran off together to Mexico, maybe to reunite with their parents. (I’m sure there’s an All My Children reference in there somewhere.)
Back in the Capitol, Sculder give assistant director Skinner a verbal report of their investigation. (Loving the fact that they added Walter for a brief appearance, even if it is only for the epilogue.) The “Chupacabras” Flakita saw were members of the Hazmat team Scully called to assist them. Eladio and Soledad’s last victim was the local barber, the greedy man who got them into the United States from Mexico, the man to whom Eladio turned to for help to return to Mexico, the man who gave up Eladio’s location to Sculder and Lozano. Why are the men are still at large? Dana points out that immigrants can be considered “invisible.” Fox bluntly says nobody cares. Of course, Sculder will also forget all about these guys and start a new case because, “like sands through the hour glass, these are the Days of our Lives.”
Sestra Professional:
One and done sounds good to me. The bottle episodes may be hit-or-miss, but the animal-referenced stand-alones tend to miss. Witness the likes of the zoo gone wild in "Fearful Symmetry" (S2E18), the mother of all X-Files clunkers -- "Teso dos Bichos" (S3E18) -- and others that happen later in the rewatch. We can give special dispensation to "War of the Coprophages (S3E12)" -- the comedy episode about cockroaches -- and "Quagmire" splits into two parts, the shippery goodness of "Conversation on the Rock" and the rest involving an alligator/the U.S. version of the Loch Ness monster.
The aliens in this story are not the villains, they're the victims: Writer John Shiban's teetering over more than the Edge of Night. There's a viable plot in here, it's just buried underneath the layer of "the oldest story in the world" -- two brothers plus one woman equal trouble. Shiban hits the "immigrants are the real aliens" aspect a little hard, but what works far better is Lozano's reaction to Mulder's own take on the case -- "So you got your own stories too."
I also buy the concept that the fungi spreads via this enzyme from pesticide fertilization courtesy of a brother or two who may be immune. So with all the things the script has going for it, why isn't this a better and/or more popular episode? Maybe it's just too much soap opera -- which certainly doesn't hold up well out of context since it's already a ham-fisted parody of romance stories -- for a love story we know and care little about. Then there are the cultural stereotypes being reinforced that weigh down too much of the proceedings.
But Scully is indeed both bold and beautiful in this episode. Yellow rain must become her. Meanwhile, Fox is having a tough time trying to shoehorn in his supernatural theories, particularly when Dana's proving out her assumptions through science. The best we can get is apparently a Prince quip made for an episode that first aired in January 1997 about a movie from 1984. Maybe he just got around to renting it at Blockbuster.
So high marks to the show's makeup and hair people for having Scully come off like some kind of supermodel at the migrant farm and in the autopsy room. Also big ups to Toby Lindala and the art department for the effects caused by the fungi, particularly on the decomposed bodies. I needed a Silkwood shower after just watching for fear of picking up the contagion.
Frankly, I'm confused by this story: The ending seems a bit muddled -- as does the choice to morph El Chupacabra alien graffiti into Skinner's head. I appreciate the multiple versions of the story being told by the migrant community since that's how their tales will ultimately live on and be expounded upon, with precious little of the actual truth contained within. I'm not quite sure I buy Flakita turning all Team Mulder with her tale of more grey Chupacabras coming down in a flash of lightning, even with the subsequent explanation of the Haz-Mat team.
I should have saved 'Meta me mucho' for this week: In the official fourth-season episode guide, Shiban said the seeds for the story were sown when he worked as a computer programmer north of Los Angeles. He'd see long lines of migrant workers in the strawberry fields along the freeway every day, but never really considered their situation. ... Scully mutters "Maria, Maria, I just met a woman named Maria" from West Side Story when leaving the migrant camp. ... Executive producer Chris Carter was a huge fan of Ruben Blades and had been looking to get the musician/actor/politician on the show for a long time, according to the guide. ... The guide added that this show marked the first time Mark Snow's originally submitted score was rejected. He then added a dash of Spanish flavor via flamenco guitar and a tango.
Gillian Anderson's young daughter, Piper, who worked in the art department during the show's revival, was fascinated by the fuzzy corpses on the set that week. "Piper calls them 'yucky guys'," Anderson recounted in the episode guide. "In one of the scenes in that episode the yucky guy was actually a mannequin. ... Piper went up to it and said, 'You OK? You OK?' He didn't answer, so she started singing 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' to him. It was hysterical."
A man can not live with vengeance in his heart: I'm quite certain The X-Files was not planning for the Season 11 capper "My Struggle IV" with the violence-bent line back in the much-maligned "El Mundo Gira," but it certainly seems like a callback -- or is that a callforward? -- considering the heavy casualties stacked up in the latest possible series finale. This offering's greatest gift will ultimately be as a couple throwaway lines in one of next season's best eps.
Guest star of the week: Blades elevates the material as much as it's able to be elevated. He makes Lozano much more interesting than the traditional nay-saying agent who stares in disbelief at Mulder's wilder theories. Too bad he had to go out with the yellow soapy bathwater. This guy is definitely better than Erik Estrada.
Sestra Amateur:
I had some concerns going into this one. There are a handful of X-Files episodes I’ve seen more than once, and of those, there are a few I thought I loved. Part of me worried I would look at "Paper Hearts" through cynical eyes and see the same old forced-plot contrivances -- all the scenes involving lack of cell-phone communication to move along a story or bonehead, out-of-character choices that really, really question the almighty suspension of disbelief needed to enjoy a show like The X-Files in the first place (Looking at you, "3.")
I can say "Paper Hearts" contains my favorite piece of Mark Snow music -- an uplifting, mystical lullaby called "Watergate Hearts." I remember being very disappointed it wasn’t included on the first soundtrack and wasn’t available outside of the episode. Forget calling it "Watergate Hearts," for me, it's "Dot’s Theme," because we only get to hear it and enjoy it during the "red dot" scenes. What are "red dot" scenes? I’m glad you asked.
Mulder seems to be enjoying a restful sleep when he sees a red dot moving along his wall and ceiling. Dot tells him to “Follow” and leads Fox to Bosher’s Run Park in Manassas, then flashes the words “Mad Hat.” Mulder tracks Dot into the woods to the body of a dead little girl, then the light turns into a heart and she sinks into the ground. Fox wakes up, locates the park in the phone book (remember those?) and follows the path he saw in his dream to the site. Mulder calls for an excavation and a body is found. Fox puts the evidence collection at risk to speed up the excavation, but he professes to already know who the killer is: John Lee Roche, a man already incarcerated for killing 13 girls.
Roche, played by character actor Tom Noonan – who I know best as Cain in Robocop 2 and Francis Dollarhyde in Manhunter – admitted to the murders. So why didn’t he admit to No. 14? Scully identifies the corpse as Addie Sparks who went missing in 1975 and our heroes then inform her father of the news. The agents track John Lee's former car, an El Camino, in attempt to find his missing trophies. Mulder keeps seeing “Mad Hat” via Dot and looks for the vehicle’s camper shell. He finds a copy of Alice in Wonderland (Mad Hatter, ahhh.) Inside the book are 16 hearts cut from the material of the girls’ clothing. (Is Cotton Hearts more accurate? Cotton/poly-Blend Hearts?) Now Sculder need to identify and locate the other two girls.
They visit Roche in prison -- Dana properly refers to them as cloth hearts. John Lee is flippant with his responses, but agrees to tell Fox everything if Roche can have his trophies back. Later that night, Mulder is mulling over the evidence when Dot appears again. (Cue "Dot’s Theme.") Dot leads Fox into the past, to his sister and a night of Stratego and Watergate news coverage. Mulder's relives an argument with Samantha about what to watch on television, but instead of an alien abduction, Fox watches John Lee kidnap Samantha. Is one of the unidentified victims his own sister?
The next day, Mulder confronts Roche, who claims he sold William Mulder a vacuum when the family lived in Martha’s Vineyard in 1973. (Bill, no woman wants appliances as a present, I think that killed your marriage more than the secrets.) John Lee pushes Fox's button one time too many times, so Mulder belts him in the face. The guard “didn’t see” it, but Scully did outside the interview room. Fox thinks Roche knows what happened to Samantha, but Dana learns the convict accessed the prison internet the previous day, probably to mess with Mulder’s head. Funny how Scully doesn’t believe Samantha was abducted by aliens, but she doesn’t believe John Lee killed her either, even though that is the more plausible of the two tales.
Mulder goes to his mother’s house to see if she recognizes the material on the cloth hearts from one of Samantha’s night gowns. She can’t say for sure, but she does still have the crappy 23-year-old vacuum cleaner in her basement – the same brand Roche claimed to sell to Fox’s father. Considering how cluttered and disorganized the Mulder family basement is, I’ll allow this teeny bit of plot contrivance. Maybe Teena really left it down there for a couple of decades. Upstairs she probably uses one of those useless carpet sweepers.
Assistant director Skinner revokes Fox's access to Roche. Did Scully rat on him for hitting Roche? Of course not, I can’t believe you even thought that was a possibility. It happened at one of those prisons that uses video surveillance. Dana backs Mulder’s belief that John Lee is a viable suspect in Samantha’s disappearance. Walter does the stern boss thing, then let’s them get back to the investigation. Back at the prison, Fox shows Roche the two unidentified hearts.
John Lee accurately describes the scene of Fox and Samantha watching TV and playing Stratego back in 1973. He offers a deal: Mulder picks a heart and Roche will tell him where that body is buried. There’s a 50/50 chance it will be Samantha. This brings us to another forced-plot contrivance: Wouldn’t Mulder have had the hearts tested to see whether there is the presence of DNA and wouldn't that already have been tested against something of Samantha’s? DNA plots are alive and well in the X-Files mythology and I refuse to believe Teena would save the world’s oldest, ugliest vacuum cleaner but none of her abducted daughter’s possessions.
John Lee directs Sculder to West Virginia where Fox finds a tree with the words "Mad Hat" carved into the base. Mulder starts digging with his hands – seriously, no shovel? Did you think the body would be out there sunbathing for 23 years? Clearly consumed by the obsession, Fox digs until he finds a girl’s body with a heart cut out of her nightgown.
In the morgue, Mulder quickly realizes the girl is not his sister. He brings the last cloth heart back to John Lee, who tries to use the body’s location as leverage for a day pass to the burial site. Scully isn’t buying it. Unfortunately, Fox does and he springs Roche. They board a plane to Boston where John Lee creepily chats up a young female traveler and her mother. At Martha's Vineyard, Roche describes what happened the night of Samantha’s disappearance, but Mulder finally has the upper hand -- it’s the wrong house.
Fox sounds insane as he claims John Lee has somehow gained access to his memories and dreams. Later that night, Mulder is in the hotel room while Roche sleeps peacefully. (He really didn’t think this one through. You’ve got to sleep sometime, Fox.) Mulder hears Samantha calling to him for help. Outside the window he sees his sister in John Lee's El Camino. Adult Fox unlocks the car door and saves Child Samantha. Dot appears, tells Mulder “Bye” and his sister and the car disappear. Fox wakes up to Dana and Walter banging on the hotel door. Roche is long gone and Mulder is handcuffed. Now, that’s just embarrassing. At least John Lee didn’t take Fox's badge, gun and cell phone. Uh oh…
Mulder surmises Roche went after Caitlin Ross -- the girl on the plane -- with the stolen identification. This abduction is on you, Fox. He narrows down their location to an old bus storage yard. Luckily Mulder still has his spare gun. He hears Caitlin scream and finds them in the back of a bus. Fox thinks John Lee is about to shoot the girl, so Mulder takes Roche out first.
Back at FBI headquarters, Scully tells Mulder they’re unable to identify the final victim so the episode ends pretty bleakly. Even my mystical lullaby has been replaced with somber music. Mulder should have been suspended without pay, fired and maybe even charged with manslaughter. (Before you argue he saved Caitlin’s life, it was Fox’s criminal action that put her in danger in the first place.) On a lighter note, did anyone notice Dana's FBI ID badge? It’s a side profile glamour shot that makes Scully seem less like an FBI agent and more like Gillian Anderson playing an FBI agent on TV. So I guess in that respect, it’s pretty accurate. "Paper Hearts" remains a favorite, despite the demerits on my plot-contrivance grievance list. And I'll play myself out on "Dot’s Theme" so I can end on a high note.
Sestra Professional:
"Paper Hearts" was a game-changing episode on The X-Files landscape. It gets underway with the mind-boggling premise that Samantha's abduction was not part of the alien conspiracy. And that's carried out with such steely resolve that you believe it for 40 minutes or so. Not only that, you kind of want to believe.
How is that possible when we've spent more than three seasons investing in the idea of the mythology? Give all due credit to writer Vince Gilligan, who strayed far off the path -- but not in a Darin Morgan-esque alternate universe-type way. Save some kudos for David Duchovny, who delivered his best performance to date (and probably his finest for the entire series) and guest star Tom Noonan (so creepy, and most of all, convincing as Samantha's possible abductor).
Helping him detail: The opening scene is a marvel. As Sestra Am mentioned, Mark Snow's "Watergate Heart" (aka "Dot's Theme") sets an unusually light tone until Fox finds exactly what the Red Dot is leading him to in the woods. There's none of the usual machismo emanating from Mulder, we're on the journey with him as though we put on shoes and followed him into the forest. Usually there's a beat that enables us to approach Fox's theories with a measure of Dana's trepidation, but not so to start here.
"Paper Hearts" gives us an intriguing look back at Mulder's past history as a profiler. It's being filtered through his present patented X-Files' I'll-do-what-I-want-when-I-want bent, but we certainly can go along with his suppositions about Roche's crimes. Even though the methods may leave something to be desired, his heart is in the right place.
The episode advances Fox and Dana's relationship as well. Early on, Scully echoes Mulder's earlier sentiment from "Aubrey" (S2E12) of a dream being "an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask." She's not just paying him lip service. There's a nicely crafted exchange in which Mulder asks Scully whether she really believes his sister was abducted by aliens. That scene more than any weighs the scale in John Lee's direction. And later, there's the poignant moment at the crime site when all of Dana's investigative instincts are laid bare by Fox's request for help, followed by a nice moment in the autopsy room when he realizes the body he found couldn't be Samantha.
I got nothing to gain: The use of "Alice in Wonderland" imagery is blatant, but we're not really hit over the head with a fairy-tale sensibility. Gilligan's truly treading the fine line perfectly while building on a motif he introduced in "Pusher" (S3E17). The Mulder-Roche dynamic isn't too far afield from the one Gilligan penned between Fox and Robert Patrick Modell, the dying murderer who drew Mulder into a game of Russian roulette.
One of my favorite scenes of the entire run -- and one unencumbered by plot contrivances -- shows Fox as an adult reiterating the dialogue we saw delivered by his younger self in "Little Green Men." In David Duchovny's voice, Mulder's words are older, more wary and slightly astounded to be reliving the childhood trauma. And then the bright lights flood the room and the door opens to reveal Roche, not the little grey men he's always accusing of having nabbed his sister. And he's powerless again.
That's geography, man, it's just geography: I've never really thought the episode needed to hang the Mulder-Roche connection on a "nexus" somehow created when Fox profiled John Lee. I suppose that's what the "Red Dot" represented and since it was an X-file, it needed some kind of supernatural bent. It seemed more likely that Scully was right about Mulder being right about dreams and that Roche learned details from Fox's interviews on the subject in the prison library.
Like Modell in "Pusher," Roche has a way with words. The way he details choosing a victim because a customer decided not to buy his vacuum chills us to the core. He's almost as good as Fox at recounting the night Samantha disappeared and he wasn't even actually there. And he's got a point about Mulder being OK as long as he can believe in flying saucers. (The twirly UFO noise Noonan supplements that with is priceless.)
Fox does fly in the face of procedure a lot. I guess that's glossed over because John Lee will never get out based on the crimes he's already been convicted for. Roche's never getting out, right? (Well, except for the little detour to Martha's Vineyard.) It's a little bizarre that Scully seems to suffer more recrimination for Mulder's actions than he does within the confines of the episode.
Meta me mucho: Keen eyes will note the remaining cloth hearts don't match the nightgown worn by Samantha in this episode nor from Mulder's abduction flashback in the second-season opener "Little Green Men." ... Noonan told me at X-Fest 2018 that Duchovny sunk his basketball shot on the first try and the former Princeton player made two of three on subsequent takes. Noonan added that he made all of his own shots, but the show didn't want Roche to look too good at the sport. ... Noonan's character in the 1989 Pat Morita-Jay Leno film Collision Course was named Scully.
Guest star of the week: Let's let Vince Gilligan bestow the honors. In The Complete X-Files, Gilligan credited Noonan for making him rethink the "mustache-twirling" nature of villains: "I learned that people don't think of themselves as bad guys. ... Roche really believed that he took them to a better place." When the guest star expands the horizons of a writer firing all cylinders, you know you've got exactly the right guy for the role. It's a seminal guest performance, one of the ones invariably brought up when X-Philes are asked to name their favorite guest star for the entire run.
Sestra Amateur:
Mulder was last seen on vacation in Russia and getting a facial at a local spa. This week we begin in Vancouver’s version of Boca Raton, Florida. An elderly woman is committing suicide with assistance from a family member and a creepy man. The black oil leaks from her nose and mouth while she’s dying. This must be The X-Files' version of the Kervorkian method. During the opening credits, “the truth is out there” is replaced with “E pur si muove.” Don’t break out the Google translate, I looked it up. It means “and yet it moves.” That reminds me of the Seinfeld episode in which wackiness ensues when George gets a massage from a male masseuse. I’m sure there will be less wackiness here.
Now we’re in St. Petersburg – Russia, not Florida ... good thing they clarified or this would get confusing – watching an old man make tea. Turns out he’s a retired Russian agent who’s about to get back in the game.
Mulder wakes up back in his cell. His neighbor, a former geologist, tells him Fox was exposed to the black cancer from Tunguska rock. Mulder reveals his motivation, he needs to live long enough to kill Krycek (sorry, Sestra). Fox's jail neighbor gives him a knife to further the cause. Scully is still trying to save Dr. Sacks. She finds a cluster of black oil worms nesting inside his body. Meanwhile, the tea drinker, Vassily Peskow, meets with Dr. Bonita Charne-Sayre in her horse stable late at night and strangles her to death.
Assistant director Skinner arrives at Dana's apartment and summarizes the events of previous episode "Tunguska" in about 20 seconds. He also reveals the pouch containing the rock was supposed to be delivered to Dr. Charne-Sayre, who was allegedly accidentally killed after a riding accident. Clearly Peskow is evil if he has no qualms about framing an innocent horse like that. Side note: The cell-phone plot contrivance continues; why would common-sense Scully turn off her phone when they’re in the middle of an investigation especially when her partner is on the other side of the world with the man who killed her sister? Even if she didn’t know Mulder’s exact location, she knew they were together and Krycek could not be trusted.
Fox, exhausted and staggering around in prison grays, watches Alex smoking with the enemy back in Russia. Mulder knocks out Krycek, threatens to stab the others and takes off with an unconscious Alex in tow in a work truck. Krycek regains consciousness and notices the brakes aren't working, so he chooses to jump off the back. Fox crashes and the truck rolls down a hill with a Crash Test Dummy-Mulder behind the wheel. (I guess this week’s budget needed to divert funds elsewhere.)
Well-Manicured Man meets with Cigarette-Smoking Man to complain about Dr. Charne-Sayre’s murder. Clearly she’s not an innocent in all of this, but we can't just root for the Russian assassin. Well-Manicured Man claims he cannot call off the congressional investigation, but says Senator Sorenson is an honorable man. Cancer Man knows about Mulder’s imprisonment and his escape. As usual, he has some pretty efficient sources. Krycek is running through the woods and gets picked up by men willing to help him. Mulder continues to fend for himself by hiding from the prison camp guards.
And now we’re back to the beginning of Episode 8, Dana is trying to read from her prepared statement before the committee. Refusing to give up Fox's location, she is found in contempt of Congress. At least she’s the best-dressed prisoner on the cell block. The owner of the truck Mulder stole to escape the prison camp finds Fox and brings him home. The driver’s wife knows what’s going on with the prisoners and Mulder asks for her help. Meanwhile, the men helping Alex wake him in the middle of the night, hold him down and torture him with a knife. Too bad they didn’t interrogate him at the same time because Krycek would have spilled everything.
Scully is killing time in her cell with some light reading (Variola Virus by Dr. Charne-Sayre) when Skinner stops by. Dana summarizes the events of both episodes in about 20 seconds. Don’t these two ever have small talk about the weather or favorite sports teams? Meanwhile, Peskow gets to Dr. Parks and injects him with something that expels the black-oil leeches from his body. Cancer Man updates Well-Manicured Man with the identity of Dr. Charne-Sayre’s killer.
The next day Dana is brought back before the committee. She really wants to talk about the pouch and its contents, but they still want to know where Fox is. So Mulder shows up right on cue. Now that the men have the answer they’ve been seeking, Scully finally gets to finish reading her statement. Too bad Skinner interrupts to tell her about the death of Dr. Parks.
The committee suspends the inquest. Sculder make plans to head to Boca Raton. Turns out Dr. Charne-Sayre is a board member for the chain of convalescent homes. Too bad Vassily beat them to it, he switches out the medications so residents exposed to the black cancer die. Old Man Peskow hides in plain sight in one of the beds.
The agents head to New York to meet with Terry Mayhew, the would-be bomber working with Krycek in the previous episode. Mayhew claims Alex came to them with claims about the black cancer. Fox elicits information about the second bomb and thinks it will be used to unleash the oil on a larger scale. Sculder make plans to intercept it in Canada. Vassily smoothly crosses the border in Alberta. Fox finds the truck while Dana catches up to the Russian in an old factory.
An oil pump sends up a shower of the black stuff, drenching Mulder. The bomb in the truck goes off, causing a huge explosion and knocking him unconscious. Scully gets distracted by the explosion and Peskow easily takes her gun from her but let’s her live. Dana runs to help Fox. The next scene has her before the committee yet again. Scully identifies Krycek as the person who killed the man on Skinner’s patio. Senator Sorenson scoffs at Dana's assertion of the extraterrestrial aspect of the biotoxin by making the stereotypical “little green men” comment. Mulder jumps in and defends the rock’s origin. He asks outright why they are before the committee. Instead of answering the question, Senator Romine calls for a recess.
Vassily is back at his home in Russia, where Krycek is patiently waiting and making tea with a prosthetic hand. Now we know how the men tortured him. Behind closed doors, Senator Sorenson is reading the reports and sharing information with Cancer Man. Not sure how long we’ll have to wait to get more answers, but in the meantime, Sestra Pro can tell us how the Latin phrase from the opening credits applied to "Terma." And while you’re at it, how did the title apply to the whole episode?
Sestra Professional:
I'm glad you asked, Sestra. According to the trusty official fourth-season guide, the opening quote paid homage to Galileo and the Inquisition that forced him to recant his theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. Of course, "still, it moves" also refers to the ever-mobile black oil. And the name, beyond the obvious North Dakota connotation, refers to hidden text in Tibetan Buddhism, the guide says. It also means prison in Russian and death in Latin, so it covers a lot of the episode's ground in that regard.
The two-parter conclusion takes us in a lot of different directions at once. It doesn't suffer from this course for the first half. We're getting information in drips and drabs, but it flows a lot better than it might have if Mulder and Scully picked up pieces of the puzzle here and there together. It's after they're reunited that the episode actually feels more herky-jerky with the agents jetting off to Florida, New York and the Canada border trying to wrap up the loose ends. Maybe some of the "Tunguska" padding could have been relieved with "Terma" plot points.
It's a little disconcerting at the start here to see Mulder's desire to stay alive fueled only by a desire to get Krycek. What about the truth? (Maybe Fox believed Alex's little diatribe on that in the last episode -- there is no truth and the conspiracy is just making it up as they go along.) But you gotta admire Mulder's pluck for breaking ranks and escaping by truck. A little black-oil dosing hasn't wiped that out of his system.
"Terma" is not a particularly strong showing for the Syndicate. Not only is the gap between Cancer Man and Well-Manicured Man widening, but they're undermining their own cause. The spiffy Englishman seems waylaid by his affair with the doctor and Cigarette-Smoking Man's network just doesn't seem to be able to get the job done as well as the Russian hitman. Peskow methodically handles everything. And he's supposed to be retired.
It is a stronger episode for Scully, despite the fact that Vassily gets the jump on her near the end. Her desire to get to the heart of what happened to Dr. Sacks proves far more interesting than her usual run-of-the-mill autopsy. She's striving to make sense of what's happened the best way she knows how -- through science -- and here it's more than a way to subvert Mulder's theories. Too bad Fox upends her a bit with his soapbox speech to the committee about alien life.
Lawyers ask the wrong question only when they don't want the right answer: I'm not sure remaining silent to the Congressional committee is the right way to go, despite Dana's explanation. She doesn't really know where Fox is, and she can't help anyone as a Prison InStyle cover girl. But she raises an interesting question. With all that has happened over the course of the two eps -- the murder, the intercepted pouch, two subsequent deaths, infected biologist -- getting stuck on the whereabouts of Mulder seems decidedly off book.
Someone used Krycek, then Krycek used us: Alex's subplot is an interesting one. The fate that befalls him with a red-hot knife courtesy of his one-armed rescuers comes off as far more in the spirit of the proceedings than the farcical beatings he tends to suffer at the hands of Mulder and his cohorts. At least Alex can't be tracked by through his smallpox scar any longer. Only later do we find out from the head revolutionary that his story from "Tunguska" about being picked up in the missile silo was bunk ... big surprise there.
It's a perfect moment when Krycek is waiting for Peskow at the end of the episode, but that's diluted rather rapidly when then chairman of the committee hands over Scully's findings to Cancer Man. The conspiracy didn't seem to be particularly threatening this go-around if he needs the Cliff Notes to catch up.
After the exciting first-parter helmed by Kim Manners, director Rob Bowman got to handle a lot of action sequences -- runaway trucks, horse chases, helicopters, oil gushers and explosions and -- and did it all with movie-quality style. David Duchovny described the differences in style between the show's two powerhouse directors in The Complete X-Files: "I think Kim was very attuned to the emotion of the relationship between Mulder and Scully. And Rob, I believe, was very attuned to the action-flick action sense of the show." No small wonder Bowman ended up tasked with the first feature film, production of which started at the break at the end of this season.
The meta never ends: According to the episode guide, three different versions of the show were created for the original airing over concerns about the black-oil worms. Frank Spotnitz, who co-wrote "Terma" with Chris Carter, said the first one went to a couple TV stations in the Midwest that needed an early feed, the second went to Canada and the third to the rest of the United States as editors worked to make those scenes better. ... Among the unusual presences on set were a number of horses, their handlers and a Russian-speaking dialogue coach for Nicholas Lea (Krycek), the guide said. ... The oil explosion at the end was originally penned for an entire refinery, according to the guide. Ultimately 35,000 gallons of oil-colored water and 2,000 gallons of liquid propane were utilized.
Guest star of the week: Veteran actor Jan Rubes (Witness, but known best to me for the little gem Dead of Winter) does a masterful, methodical job as the Russki of death. It's such a neat little performance that we can't get stuck on the fact that this intelligent and spry old man is getting the jump on everyone, from our heroes to the conspiracy. Rubes is as masterful as the guy he was tasked to play.
Sestra Amateur:
I like when X-Files episodes touch on topics I knew before the show existed. Sometimes their version is disappointing, like "Space" (Season 1, Episode 9). Most of us grew up seeing the Weekly World News cover stories of the "Face of Mars," but that script was pretty lame, even by Season 1 monster-of-the-week standards.
"Tunguska" is another example. Approximately three decades ago, I first learned about the Tunguska Blast which occurred in Russia in 1908. (I think Ray Stantz got the date wrong, he said 1909 in Ghostbusters.) A then-unknown object supposedly exploded just prior to impact, decimating 700-plus square miles of the forest. The part that always stuck with me was how it took almost 20 years for researchers to trek to the location to begin their investigation. If people were close enough to describe what they saw and heard (which they did) then couldn’t -- and shouldn’t -- the response and research have occurred faster? This episode put me in research mode, now we know the blast was caused by a meteor which created a lake five miles from the estimate of the original impact site. It only took researchers 100 years to figure out what happened. (Play NBC’s "The More You Know" public service theme here.)
At the beginning of this episode, Scully is testifying before a Senate committee. Assistant Director Skinner and the Cigarette-Smoking Man are sitting quietly in the audience. The men on the panel are hounding Scully for Mulder’s location and threaten to hold her in contempt of Congress. They keep interrupting her while she reads from a prepared statement. Clearly their mothers never taught them manners.
Ten days earlier, a man who looks like a balding Krycek with bad teeth passes through Customs at the Honolulu Airport. He takes umbrage to being detained since he has diplomatic papers. He also dislikes being strip searched. The clueless security guard removes the items from his briefcase even though the man said they contain biohazardous material. Of course the idiot guard drops a tube and black-oil leeches attack him. See, this is why you should always travel with papers.
Elsewhere, Mulder and Scully work on a case that sounds suspiciously like one that would be assigned to a normal FBI agent. There’s a shootout between the feds and the armed revolutionaries. Sculder stop one truck from getting away. The driver is shot to death, the passenger is Alex Krycek, who claims he sent the evidence to Fox to bust the would-be bombers. Krycek claims he wants to work with Sculder to find the man who killed Mulder’s dad, Scully’s sis and tried to off him.
The agents and Alex detour to the airport to meet with a man carrying a diplomatic pouch. He runs from Dana but abandons the pouch, which only contains a piece of rock. I think he could have kept carrying it while he ran, it didn’t look that heavy. Krycek patiently waits for Sculder to return. Guess he’s trying to earn their trust. Fox shows up at Skinner’s place hoping to use it as a safehouse for Alex. Walter "greets" Krycek, and before Alex catches his breath, Skinner handcuffs him to the patio railing of the 17th-floor apartment. I’ll bet the view is lovely, but it seems a little chilly out there.
Upon analysis, Dr. Sacks claims the rock may be a meteorite from Mars. Cancer Man intercepts Walter to let him know about the problems Sculder caused by taking the pouch. Krycek is still sitting on the patio when Running Pouch Man ransacks Skinner’s house. Alex hides over the railing, and when RPM comes outside, Krycek pulls the man down to his death. That’s some impressive upper-body strength there, Alex. Mulder learns about the other diplomat (Non-Running Pouch Man? Standing Pouch Man?), who was carrying Russian soil samples when he was intercepted in Hawaii. Knowing Fox will go to any lengths for this case, Dana tells him she isn’t sure she can see it through with him.
Sacks accidentally releases some of the black-oil leeches when he cuts into the meteorite. We hardly knew ye, Doc, but we appreciate you providing some exposition and moving the story along. Skinner informs Mulder there’s a dead body at the boss' building. The local police detective tells Walter there’s a man hanging from the balcony. So the local police made no effort to save the dangling man and instead only tended to the dead guy? Your tax dollars at work, people. Fox somehow manages to get up to Skinner’s floor, into the apartment and rescue Krycek before the on-scene police do. Sorry, but all of my suspension of disbelief was wasted on the black-oil leeches.
Scully finds Sacks, but despite her medical background, she can’t tell whether he’s dead or alive. Mulder goes to New York to get answers from Marita Covarrubias about the pouches. Fox falls asleep in Marita's apartment while she obtains the information. Boy, he must really trust her. Marita tells him the pouch’s path -- it left from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, but originated in Norilsk, which Fox claims is “just north of Tunguska.” (Since my S.O.D. level is at an all-time low, I looked up the distance from Tunguska to Norilsk. It’s more like 2,944 km.) Marita offers to provide Mulder with cover credentials because people like her believe in his search for the truth. (Clearly, she needs to fact-check him once or twice.) Fox returns to the car, where Alex has been handcuffed, and they’re off again.
Agent Pendrell assists Scully, putting on a protective suit and wondering whether his crush on her is going to get him killed. Sacks shudders, but he’s still not breathing. Kryder go to the airport and Mulder is about to leave Alex behind when Krycek starts cursing at him in Russian. Now isn’t that convenient?? In Virginia, Cancer Man meets with Well-Manicured Man to tell him Fox may be on a flight to Krasnoyarsk, which is 3356 km from Tunguska. (The webpage is still open.) So what identification did Alex use to get on a flight to Russia? Cancer Man makes no mention of knowing Mulder has a travel companion.
Back in D.C., Skinner and his agents get summoned to appear before the Senate committee. Walter is irked that he doesn’t have all the information. Kryder start digging in the dirt under the fence to get onto the Tunguska site and Fox provides the outdated exposition about the blast of 1908. The clearly exhausted workers continue digging while men on horses whip them. The horsemen catch Krycek easily but have to chase down Mulder. Alex is brought to Fox's cell and claims he didn’t sell them out. But he's also had enough of Mulder being so rough with him. Well, stop murdering your former co-workers’ family members and maybe they’ll be less abusive. Skinner and Scully meet with Senator Sorenson, who asks Walter about the dead man who fell from Skinner’s balcony. Dana claims Fox is in the field trying to get answers for the senator but won't give his location.
Back in the Russian prison, Mulder’s cell neighbor warns him Krycek is deceiving him. Men inject something into Mulder’s neck and he loses consciousness. He wakes up trapped on a cot with several other men in the same room and he can hear them being tortured. The black-oil leeches get sprayed into Mulder’s face and now he’s infected. At least now we know that doesn’t mean automatic death since David Duchovny is still under contract.
Sestra Professional:
Pretty stoked to start this two-parter having just gotten back from the first X-Fest in La Salle, Illinois. One of the runaway fan favorites at the event was Nicholas Lea (Krycek), who is probably as far removed from his character as it is possible to get. He always is so present and and genuinely interested in what you're saying. It makes for a top-notch fan experience.
At this point in our rewatch run, I'll put out my hypothesis that Lea gets hotter and hotter as the series goes on -- I'll respectfully disagree with Mulder's derision of Alex's "stupid-ass haircut." I told Lea he was the "the best-looking man in The X-Files universe," and after registering the sort of disbelief we might associate with Scully when Mulder posits one of his theories, he quipped, "Well, when Bill Davis is your competition ... just kidding!"
So "Tunguska" opens with Scully -- Gillian Anderson is also getting better and better looking over the show's run -- trying to deliver a statement in front at the hearing. She's basically being the stand-up woman who inspired a generation of women (and men as well, no doubt).
You're an invertebrate scum sucker whose moral dipstick's about two drops short of bone dry: Krycek explains to Sculder of his liberation from the silo he was locked in back in North Dakota. He berates the revolutionaries' motives as bonehead ideologies. And then the line that launched his fandom nickname "Ratboy" -- "You go underground, you got to learn to live with the rats." But Alex also professes to love his country, and tells us something we already do know, that the men in the conspiracy can't be brought to justice. There is no truth for which Mulder seeks with Scully along for the ride. "These men they make it up as they go along," he says, and it sounds an awful lot like what X-Philes think of those crafting the ongoing storyline.
Fan favoritism aside, the canvas is invariably more interesting with Krycek on it. We never really know what he's going to do next, who he will side with and how long that alliance will hold out -- particularly in situations like these when Fox and company are forced to work with them.
Beyond that, we're subjected to a lot of story padding from Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter. We've become accustomed to that sort of thing in two-part episodes. Mulder and Scully get in trouble for intercepting the rock from the spry older-looking man? Skinner gets taken to task by Cancer Man because of that? We're far more invested in concerns about Dana not up to following Fox however far this investigation will take him. (Good in this case, because I didn't really see a women's gulag.)
The Cigarette-Smoking Man and Well-Manicured Man have a sharp scene, but according to the fourth-season episode guide, William B. Davis and John Neville were disappointed that a couple others were cut out of the episode due to time constraints. That's too bad, it really would have served "Tunguska" well to eliminate some other padding -- maybe with Senator Sorensen -- in favor of their part of the story.
Gotta back Sestra Am on that thing about the police's reaction to the guy hanging from the balcony. They might have wanted to get into that apartment -- or even be sure whose abode it was -- before Mulder drifted in with ease to commandeer Krycek and get away undetected.
Marita Covarrubias' progression isn't working quite as well as Alex's at this point. She definitely doesn't fit the mold as Fox's latest informant. And that's clearly by design, were they mulling over possible romantic inclinations between the two? The fan base at the time certainly thought so and derided her to no end because of it.
The scene in the decontamination tank with the dead-but-not-dead Sacks is appropriately tense, and it's great to have Pendrell on hand to first be a bit concerned about donning the same gear as the departed doc. Luckily, Scully's there and she's got the balls to get the job done.
I always thought the Krycek beatings went a little overboard ... and I still do. We get it. Alex is a bad man involved in deaths of Sculder's family members -- none of which have been actually proved. No wonder Mulder was "deceived" when Krycek was able to get out of the Russian mining camp without offering assistance to the man who held him captive for large parts of the episode. By the way, they have to dig and then be hit by the black oil at night? That's harsh. Fox is going way beyond the scope of his duties in "Tunguska." And he wanted to find out about the black oil. Now he is ... the hard way.
Kim Manners finally gets the reins of a conspiracy episode and brings a lot of style to it. He started by directing bottle eps, but fully immerses himself in the show's life blood here with an arresting visual approach that enables viewers to buy into the more fantastic elements. He delivers movie quality from the early moments of Scully testifying before the committee to Krycek and Mulder being chased on horseback and Fox's subsequent dousing with the contagion.
Meta from Mars: In the official fourth-season episode, Spotnitz recalled that NASA's August 1996 news conference suggesting primitive life existed on Mars over 3.6 billion years ago inspired the heart of the two-parter. ... Mitch Pileggi (another of the X-Fest fan favorites) admitted during his panel he regretted some of his "improvs" seen on outtake reels. Did he mean something like this? ... In The Complete X-Files, Lea said Manners had a platform for him at the balcony, but he told the director it would look better if Krycek's feet were dangling so they removed it. ... This episode sparked some continuing set humor, Anderson recounted in The Complete X-Files. "(Manners) was trying to remind us that what we were dealing with was from outer space, and we were treating it too casually. So right before we would shoot, he'd yell 'Rock from Mars!' and that became our running joke from that point on. Every time we needed to get it up for the scene, Kim would yell 'Rock from Mars!' and that would be his way of kind of sparking us into life again when we were just too exhausted."
I hope this is a one-and-done bottle episode. The monster-of-the-week ones are always so hit-or-miss. This one opens on an old lady named Flakita telling a story to young immigrants about migrant workers in San Joaquin Valley, California. One of the workers, Soledad, is jealous because his girlfriend, Maria, is flirting with another immigrant, Eladio. Her inattention causes Flakita’s goats to escape, so Maria and Eladio run after them. There’s a weird light, then weird yellow rain like a sulfur storm. Some of the goats return, but Maria is dead in the yellow water, her eyes and mouth burned away. 
Mulder -- who definitely comes off as The Young and the Restless -- goes to the INS office in Fresno for information. He meets with Agent Conrad Lozano, played by character actor Ruben Blades. Fox hits a roadblock when Lozano points out that none of the migrants give their real names to INS agents. Conrad believes Eladio killed Maria and the stories related to El Chupacabra are just stories. Scully -- The Bold and the Beautiful -- goes to the coroner’s office to autopsy Maria’s body, but three days in a body bag really cemented the effects of the “fortean event.” She looks like Stephen King after he was exposed to the meteorite in Creepshow. Cause of death: Massive fungal infection.
Dana seeks assistance from Dr. Larry Steen at California State University in Fresno (General Hospital and Port Charles are based in New York, so that wouldn’t have worked at all). The bus driver’s fungal infection was an accelerated version of athlete’s foot. Dermatophytosis Gone Wild. This also fits Dana's theory about Maria’s exposure to pesticide. Eladio starts to feel ill at the job site. Soledad arrives and thinks Eladio is in the Port-a-Potty. Instead, he finds Eladio’s fungally infected dead boss. Eladio takes off in the boss’ truck to see his cousin, Gabrielle. Scully warns Mulder about the contagion, right about the time he and Lozano find Port-a-Potty Boss. 
Flakita is brought to the scene of the dead goats and points Sculder and Lozano in Gabrielle’s direction. Looking very ill, Eladio, goes grazing in the nut aisle of a grocery store but panics and accidentally knocks over the bulk-food dispensers when the stock boy yells at him. Too bad that the stock boy touches some of the now moldy nuts. Eladio calls Gabrielle and learns Soledad is coming after him. Sculder and Lozano follow Soledad into the store and they have a standoff at gunpoint. Soledad justifies his need for vengeance against his brother. He gives himself up, but Dana is distracted by the dead stock boy in the nut aisle. Poor kid had but One Life to Live and now it’s gone. 
Flakita thinks they were more Chupacabras who arrived to help Eladio and claims Soledad is being punished for his actions. The people listening to her story call BS because Gabrielle told them a different version of what happened. The story goes back to show Lozano and Soledad were chasing Eladio when Conrad fired a warning shot in the air. Eladio stopped running and Lozano gave the handcuffed Soledad his gun to get vengeance for Maria’s death. Eladio completely transformed into El Chupacabra, so Soledad wussed out and refused to kill Eladio. Conrad and Soledad struggled over the gun which went off again, killing Lozano. According to Gabrielle, Eladio and Soledad ran off together to Mexico, maybe to reunite with their parents. (I’m sure there’s an All My Children reference in there somewhere.)
The aliens in this story are not the villains, they're the victims: Writer John Shiban's teetering over more than the Edge of Night. There's a viable plot in here, it's just buried underneath the layer of "the oldest story in the world" -- two brothers plus one woman equal trouble. Shiban hits the "immigrants are the real aliens" aspect a little hard, but what works far better is Lozano's reaction to Mulder's own take on the case -- "So you got your own stories too."
But Scully is indeed both bold and beautiful in this episode. Yellow rain must become her. Meanwhile, Fox is having a tough time trying to shoehorn in his supernatural theories, particularly when Dana's proving out her assumptions through science. The best we can get is apparently a Prince quip made for an episode that first aired in January 1997 about a movie from 1984. Maybe he just got around to renting it at Blockbuster.
Frankly, I'm confused by this story: The ending seems a bit muddled -- as does the choice to morph El Chupacabra alien graffiti into Skinner's head. I appreciate the multiple versions of the story being told by the migrant community since that's how their tales will ultimately live on and be expounded upon, with precious little of the actual truth contained within. I'm not quite sure I buy Flakita turning all Team Mulder with her tale of more grey Chupacabras coming down in a flash of lightning, even with the subsequent explanation of the Haz-Mat team. 
Gillian Anderson's young daughter, Piper, who worked in the art department during the show's revival, was fascinated by the fuzzy corpses on the set that week. "Piper calls them 'yucky guys'," Anderson recounted in the episode guide. "In one of the scenes in that episode the yucky guy was actually a mannequin. ... Piper went up to it and said, 'You OK? You OK?' He didn't answer, so she started singing 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' to him. It was hysterical." 
Guest star of the week: Blades elevates the material as much as it's able to be elevated. He makes Lozano much more interesting than the traditional nay-saying agent who stares in disbelief at Mulder's wilder theories. Too bad he had to go out with the yellow soapy bathwater. This guy is definitely better than Erik Estrada.
