Morris Fletcher is voice-over de l’episode, providing a pretty solid background of our hero, Fox Mulder. Fun fact No. 1: Young Fox was a Trekkie. Fun fact No. 2: Fletcher as Mulder probably would have salvaged Fox's FBI reputation and career. Too bad for Mulder's future we want him back to normal. An incarcerated Mulder-as-Fletcher gets to have some quality time with Captain McDonough-as-Lana Chee, and loses his grip to the point where he actually tries to grab him … her. 
Luckily, “Morry” gets called into a meeting with General Wegman where he manages to talk his way out of his arrest. Meanwhile, Scully gets reprimanded, suspended and a date with “Fox,” who seems surprised the real Mulder doesn’t have a bedroom since that’s where his endless boxes of research have been stashed. Then where did Fletcher get busy with Kersh’s secretary in Part 1? Fox-as-Morris returns to the Fletcher household where his kids shun him and JoAnne tries to kick him out again. Mulder tells the truth to JoAnne, who thinks he’s speaking figuratively -- not literally -- about being a different man. He tries to appeal to her compassionate side, but fails because it’s too early in the episode for everything to work out OK.
Scully arrives at Mulder’s place and he very quickly gets her on a waterbed, which he moved into his now-cleaned-out bedroom. Dana breaks out the handcuffs, which Fletcher eagerly uses. Once he’s secured to the bedpost (oh, that's why he got a four poster bed) Scully demands the truth at gunpoint. Morris refuses to switch back and claims he doesn’t know how to do it anyway. Fortunately, they get a phone call at that very moment from Fox's source. The next morning, “Morris” and JoAnne find some common ground. Later that night, “Mulder” meets his contact in a dive bar. It’s the general! Luckily, it’s the same place where “Morris” took JoAnne for the evening. Fox-as-Fletcher is about to leave when he finds Dana in the parking lot. Too bad JoAnne sees him in the car with “Special Tramp Dana Scully.”
“Mulder” is trying to leave with the aircraft’s flight data recorder when he sees an upset JoAnne at the bar. Then Morry’s government lackey coworkers enter the watering hole. Fox-as-Fletcher goes back inside and JoAnne throws a drink in his face for his perceived betrayal. Mulder and Fletcher square off in the bathroom. (Or Fletcher and Mulder. Guess that part doesn’t really matter in this scene.) The general also doesn’t want to be spotted by his underlings and hides in the bathroom, where he stumbles across Fletch and Muld. They work together to get Fletcher-as-Fox out with the flight recorder and Fox-as-Fletcher out with … beer.
“Sculder” bounce back home and visit the Lone Gunmen with the flight recorder. “Mulder” is amused by them, so Scully admits he’s not Fox. Surprisingly, they have trouble believing he swapped bodies with Mulder because of a warp in the space-time continuum. So after everything they have seen, they find this hard to believe? Morry taunts them with claims of creating several of their investigated conspiracies. You’d think they would be more livid that Dana allowed such a major security breach into their inner sanctum. Scully gets everyone back on the same page. Meanwhile, new victims are outside Area 51 when the warbling craft appears overhead and splices together one kissing couple in front of their friend, Sam. At least they’re not embedded in rock, right? And why is the government still flying that thing? Dana meets Fox (in Fletcher’s body, but they’re not showing that now) and she has dire news about changing him back into his old self. Even worse, Morry-as-Mulder is Assistant Director Kersh’s new golden boy and Scully is no longer an FBI agent.
Dana, proving looks do matter, refuses to kiss Fox because she doesn’t think Morry is attractive. Sam flags down one of Fletcher’s coworkers and learns the spliced couple somehow unspliced themselves – and are acting as though nothing weird happened to them. The next morning “Sculder” drive past the gas station that burned down last episode, but it looks perfectly fine now. So is the gas station attendant, who is alive, intact and also not remembering what happened. And now it’s time for Captain McDonough and Lana Chee to revert back to form.“Sculder” show up at the Fletcher residence where “Morris” is loading up the U-Haul and JoAnne is yelling, as usual. The real Morry finally steps up and convinces JoAnne it’s really him in Mulder’s body. Too bad Fletcher’s coworkers arrive and again arrest him for treason. They head back to Area 51 … and things reset themselves to the moment the body swap occurred. On the upside, Scully didn’t get suspended and fired and Kersh’s secretary didn’t have sex with “Mulder.” But the spliced-together dime and penny from the gas station that Scully left at FBI Headquarters are still … together. If the incident never happened, then how does she have evidence of it? Begin your time-travel explanations now!
Sestra Professional:
OK, so if things had to be in the path when the continuum swung back around, then that should explain why the dime/penny didn't revert. Since Sculder were where they were, everything they were involved in did reverse itself. Except that the coinage probably should be part of "everything." I wish the warp would regress me so I could forget my point. The two-parter definitely winds up being a hot mess, but at least it's a fun one.
What "Dreamland II" does have going for it is an extension of the themes first offered in Gilligan's script for "Small Potatoes" (Season 4, Episode 20). Someone else has taken over Mulder's life and started getting a lot more use from it than our hero does. So basically he's living the dream.The three-headed writing team of Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz deliver the best voiceover we've had to date. (Now I'm kind of picturing them melded into each other like that unfortunate couple outside Area 51.) Anyway, Fletcher-as-Fox details the biggest kick in the slats Mulder ever had -- the disappearance of his sister. He bemoans the fact that Fox pissed away a brilliant career and now "lives his life shaking his fist at the sky and muttering about conspiracies to anyone that will listen." It's really a dead-on piece of writing that encapsulates why this two-parter should exist, accurately recapping the back story of one of our leads while not ignoring his foibles.
Looks like we're up fudge creek: Last episode, Captain McDonough-as-Lana Chee made an indelible impression by detailing the aircraft's failings to the general. This time around, she steals the scene by dissing her neighboring cellmate with extremely inventive putdowns and a well-aimed flick of a cigarette. All hail Julia Vera for her complete dismissal of the "desk monkey" that "Lana" was incarcerated with. In normal circumstances, she would be an easy call for guest-star kudos. But this is Michael McKean's episode, so "Grandma Top Gun" will have to be content with just returning to her character's normal body.So Mulder did a fairly convincing job as Fletcher, at least at work. Even in someone else's body, he's better at the gig than he is with his personal life. He tap danced out of trouble with his co-workers with quick answers for his behavior pretty deftly, too bad Morry's wife isn't as gullible.
Maybe I like to read The New York Times backwards: Meanwhile Morry's fixed up Fox's cave to a respectable level. By the way, that apartment number, 42? Who else thought of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with that number being the answer to the ultimate question of life, universe and everything? The money shot, of course, is getting to see our boy in his original, hunky form on the waterbed with gorgeous Scully courtesy of the mirror on the ceiling. Frankly, that one shot's sexier than any smooch we have or may see in the future. Glad Dana finally finally saw through all Faux Morry. Her strident response of "'Baby' me and you'll be peeing through a catheter" was worth the long, long wait for her eyes to be opened. It had to be fun for Gillian Anderson to take the upper hand after rolling her eyes for more than one episode.
So all that's left after that is for John Gillnitz -- the writing team, not the dinner theater actor Morry tapped to play Saddam Hussein -- to try to work their way out of the mess. We get some more mirror tricks in the can with Real and Faux Mulder. We can tell the tide is turning because our leads are starting to get more quips than McKean. David Duchovny perfectly utters the game, "So you're the guy who wants my life? I assume that means all the ass kickings." This episode may exist because the trifecta had a lot of great lines they wanted to make use of. Trust me, little man, I ain't him: I shouldn't forget about the little side trip to The Lone Gunmen, for we could not have McKean in two episodes without playing him up against them. Last episode, David Duchovny and McKean went all Marx Brothers in the bedroom mirror. Here, the Man in Black takes The Three Stooges down a few pegs most of the stories the Gunmen have published in their newsletter were thought up by Morris when he was in the can.
Dana sort of voices my concerns about the resolution of this episode. If they tried to recreate the event that caused the body switch but were off by a millisecond, Fox would end up with his end in a rock ... instead of up his bum where it usually is. I guess time springing back is just as good an outcome as can be expected. Except for the coin (and, spoiler alert,) the waterbed.
Meta mixtures: The Little A'Le'Inn, while an unwieldy name, is an actual establishment in Rachel, Nevada. ... On Saturday Night Live, McKean played Cigarette-Smoking Man in a skit when Duchovny hosted the show on May 13 1995. ... There quite a few righteous bloopers from this episode, including McKean bumping into a cameraman while doing the jig in Fox's apartment and Anderson's early line delivery in the Lone Gunmen scene. ... And add Planet of the Apes to the pop-culture references made this season with Scully's quip, "I'd kiss you if you weren't so damn ugly." Although I might take issue with the possibility of Dana actually knowing that line. ... Vera wore elaborate makeup to play the 75-year-old Hopi woman. According to the official episode guide, she thought she won the role because of the speech patterns she learned during her stint in the Army.
Guest star of the week: Gilligan credited McKean for the episodes' successes. "Everything we was, we owe to Michael McKean," he said in The Complete X-Files. "We wrote some funny lines, but that was the extent of our input into it. He really just made the character come alive and was so watchable and so charismatic despite being such a shit." So good, in fact, that we'll see him again someday. Unless time snaps back before then, of course.
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