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.
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