Sestra Amateur:
We’re close to the end of the season, so let’s just dive right into this one. Angela and Wallace Schiff -- played by Robyn Lively (Teen Witch) and David Denman (Skip the Demon from Angel) -- are having a spat about hiking. Angela takes a shower and experiences visions of yellow gelatinous goo dripping down the walls and engulfing her while she screams in terror. Angela also suffers from a nagging headache, so she lets her husband comfort her. The scene changes from their bodies in bed to similarly posed skeletons in a field.
Three days later, Mulder is reviewing the same picture on a projected slide as he explains the known case details to Scully in their office. She offers up the typical scientific explanation of what happened to Angie and Wally. He refutes with his typical unexplained phenomena. Apparently, North Carolina’s Brown Mountain, where the couple was found, is just a hotbed of suspected alien activity. Fox points out how frequently he and Dana have this same discussion, and he’s clearly frustrated he still hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt from his longtime partner.
Supernatural’s Bobby Singer (OK, Jim Beaver) pops up as the coroner du jour in Asheville, North Carolina. Scully claims the bodies look like they’ve been outside for six months, but doc proves the dental records match the Schiffs. Dana removes some “bog sludge” from one body. It appears to be the same substance Angela envisioned. Scully remains with the bodies and Mulder heads out to the scene, where he finds the same goo in the makeshift grave. He also finds Wallace Schiff, alive and well and making a break for it. Fox chases him into a cave where Wally claims he and Angie were abducted by aliens and Angela is still being held captive.
Meanwhile, the coroner (they don’t give him a name so I’m calling him Dr. Idjit, in honor of Bobby Singer) learns the goop is a digestive enzyme which he has seen before, in a case involving hikers left out in the elements for months. Dana borrows his truck to meet Fox and ends up trampling some mushrooms. Mulder, who is starting to see things that aren’t there, tries to convince Wallace to leave with him but the lights scare Wally and he runs deeper inside the cave. Fox runs after him but was the light just caused by Scully as she peered into the cave with a flashlight?
Moot point for now because they’ve stumbled across a living and breathing Angela. She tells a tale of alien abduction and torture. Fox finds the typical implant scar on the back of her neck, just like Dana and the other abductees from previous X-files cases. The “aliens” return and Mulder confronts them. Sort of.
The next scene shows Scully meeting with Mulder back in his apartment, where he’s hiding the Schiffs. He’s borderline giddy with the knowledge that he has finally uncovered “the truth.” Angie repeats her “textbook” story and Fox shows Dana the alien he’s abducted. More commonplace examples pop up: It’s a “gray,” it speaks telepathically. Scully finally admits Mulder was right. (OK, that part’s not textbook at all.) Seems too good to be true, right? Turns out, it is. This Dana denies the science while Fox suffers from a headache and sees yellow goo everywhere. Mulder’s “reality” finally dissolves and he’s back in the cave, which is very possibly digesting him.
Scully and Dr. Idjit find a skeleton near the cave entrance. They take it back to the coroner’s office where Dana receives a copy of Fox's dental records to compare to the corpse. Scully is clearly shaken after realizing it is Mulder's skeleton. She’s also disturbed by Dr. Idjit’s insistence that they focus on the more plausible explanations, which are word for word what she suggested to Fox at the beginning of the episode.
Dana completes her report for Assistant Director Skinner, who is ready to accept her conclusions, even though she is not. She attends Mulder’s wake in his apartment and grieves with the Lone Gunmen (I wonder if she really kicked their butts last episode). Unfortunately they agree with her findings – which are not really hers – and repeat the company line. Scully loses her temper while experiencing a splitting headache. She hears a knocking at the door and Fox comes strolling into his own apartment, which is now vacant. Mulder tells her his story of abduction but has no explanation for the three skeletons. Dana thinks the mushrooms she trampled gave off spores which caused them to hallucinate. She also thinks they never left the cave and are still being digested. She’s right. Fox breaks through the dirt and drags Scully up with him.
Sculder later meet with Skinner to explain the extremely large organism that had them in a hallucinogenic state of mind. Mulder questions how they escaped and now he thinks they’re still trapped. He proves it by shooting Walter, who oozes yellow goop from his bullet wounds. Yep, they are still underground. This time they get found because everyone in the free world is apparently looking for them. And the search party was wise enough to wear masks too. I guess our heroes are lucky the “digestive enzyme” didn’t damage their skin, eyes or even their hair. But I do see another expensive dry cleaning bill in their future.
Sestra Professional:
My ongoing theory: Mulder and Scully are still in there. Everything that happens from here on out is just the next in a series of other hallucinations.
Penned by the stalwart three-headed machine of Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz, "Field Trip" is a fine offering to serve as the last stand-alone of the up-and-down sixth season. It's got an old-school X-Files feel to it. There's something supernatural about it too, and not just because of the presence of ol' Bobby Singer.
Sounds like crap when you say it: It starts off mundanely enough, as Sestra Am pointed out -- with Mulder running his usual extraterrestrial play and Sculder checking off the scientific boxes. But Dana's right, for the novelty of it, it would be nice if Fox went for the obvious play on occasion.
Even though we saw Mulder's tires pop mushrooms and expose the spores when he drives onto the mountain, we're still not sure what to make of it when Fox runs across Wallace, who in turn runs from him. When Mulder catches up to Schiff, he hears exactly what he wants to -- aliens have the technology to be able to fake deaths. So we can kind of go along with it in the vein of everything else we have bought into for six seasons, the 98.9 percent of the time Fox seems to be right, yet something seems off about it.
Director Kim Manners does his usual brilliant job filming this strange concoction. In my favorite sequence of the episode, his camera work and sharp editing heighten the disconnect between Fox thinking he might be seeing an alien ship landing and to what probably just was Dana's flashlight shining in the cave. Also credit due to Mark Snow for a particularly sharp score that neatly enhances all the ups and downs of this trip.
I abducted him: There's got to be great writing freedom in being able to move your characters wherever you want them in the context of an episode. We don't need to know how or why Mulder and the Schiffs got to his apartment and we can just enjoy the giddy look Fox gets on his face at being able to finally show Dana an alien up close and personal.
Yet Scully has indeed had her effect on Mulder after all these years. Because even through his joyful haze, he questions what originally brought the agents on the case -- the skeletons -- and that leads to the disintegration of the illusion that gives him all he ever wanted, well, this side of finding out what happened to sister Samantha anyway.
What if we're being digested right now: The episode kind of puts me into a daze as well. We don't truly believe Dana is discussing cause of death while looking at Fox's skeleton, even though at the time during regular run, rumors were running rampant that David Duchovny might have wanted to exit the show. He can't leave during a bottle episode, right? Thankfully we have Skinner and the Gunmen agreeing with the findings (and lauding Scully's work) to assure us that everything we're seeing on screen is some kind of mirage. The only thing that would prove that to us more would be Assistant Director Kersh doing the same.
We also get to see what effect Fox has had on Dana lo these many years as well. She's not willing to accept the party line of Mulder's murder. This is not the woman who walked into the basement office in 1993. The triumvirate really has done an incredible job of showing us that while navigating the twists and turns of the actual case in our latest alternate sixth-season reality.
Meta mucus: "Field Trip" went through many permutations before arriving in its final form, according to the official episode guide. Executive producer Spotnitz penned the story and co-executive producer Gilligan and producer Shiban combined on the teleplay. "Originally, it was about Mulder trapped in a cave with a monster. Then both Mulder and Scully were trapped underground. Then it turned into Mulder and Scully thinking the other was trapped underground, with only Mulder gradually what was really happening," Spotnitz said in the guide. ... Years later, Gillian Anderson recalled the shoot in The Complete X-Files. "Oh, my God, that was so sick," she said. "I remember being covered in yellow goop and then being pulled through the earth, and then being covered in a layer of dirt on top of that. It was kind of fun and kind of just completely disgusting at the same time."
Guest star of the week: Jim Beaver. "Doctor Idjit" isn't the buffoon Sculder usually runs into on a case. He's loathe to jump into Mulder's theories, but he's also wise enough to provide some insight and savvy enough to help effort the rescue (if, in fact, they were rescued.) It's a great precursor for Beaver ahead of his trademark role as the voice of reason for Sam and Dean Winchester on Supernatural.
Sestra Amateur:
Good news: This week’s episode spotlights the Lone Gunmen, so here's a CliffsNotes version of "The Unusual Suspects" (Season 5, Episode 3) to refresh your memory. (And a link to our blog from that show.) That ep showed the LG’s origin story back in 1989. It ended with a cliffhanger: Scientist/informant Susanne Modeski was forced into a limousine and never heard from again … until now. (Well, this episode aired in 1999 so it’s their “now.”) One would hope Frohike, Langly and (especially) Byers kept searching for her, but there was never a peep mentioned during other LG appearances.
Byers is the narrator this time around. I can’t say he does a better job (or gets better dialogue) than Mulder or Scully, but it’s not completely unnecessary. He describes his dream of living in optimistic times with wife Susanne in a house with a white picket fence, two daughters and a dog. And then it all goes away.
Fast forward to Las Vegas Def-Con 1999. Grant Ellis, played by the late Charles Rocket, is hosting a private poker game in which Byers has gone undercover as a player/government employee, Frohike serves as waiter and Langly feeds Byers whatever information he needs. Too bad it’s not enough of the right info because Byers loses it all to Ellis and gets tossed, along with Frohike. But who is Grant Ellis? Moot point for now. Frohike knows Byers is still looking for Susanne, who is probably dead. Byers thinks he spotted her in the casino but she gets away.
Mulder wakes Scully and tells her to go assist the Lone Gunmen in Vegas. Actually, it’s Fox's computerized voice with Byers making the call. After all, Dana is way more low profile than Mulder, who was involved in that 1989 incident. (Maybe David Duchovny was sick or working on a project that week.) Langly tries to convince Byers it wasn’t Susanne by saying she’s not listed as a guest under her own name! So the government wouldn’t just give her a new name? Or she wouldn’t know not to use her name? Worst argument ever, Langs. Byers goes for ice and spots Ellis, who goes into Modeski's hotel room! The Lone Gunmen now know Ellis is employed for the Department of Defense in Whitestone, New Mexico, where Susanne used to work. Byers is convinced she's been brainwashed.
The Lone Gunmen are banned from one high-security panel. They enlist one of their conspiracy theory friends, Jimmy Belmont, who enters via the air duct and videotapes Modeski and another friend, Timmy, inside. Too bad Jimmy gets caught and becomes the prophetic government patsy when he throws himself in front of a bus. We should be more concerned about this development, but I’m distracted by Langly’s Snoozonica shirt. (After an exhaustive two-minute search on the Internet, I learned it’s a lyric in a song called "Cowboy’s Orbit" by Girls Against Boys. Yep, it's on YouTube.)
Meanwhile, Frohike breaks into Susanne and Grant’s room and finds a video camera in the air vent. Modeski returns and is thisclose to finding Frohike when Byers knocks on her door. Susanne denies being brainwashed and claims Ellis is her fiancé. Does that mean she’s now OK with the government using people as guinea pigs to test her scientific creations?
Scully performs Jimmy’s autopsy while Langly bolts from the room and retches. Just when Dana sees evidence that Belmont may have actually been injected with something, Timmy knocks her unconscious. When she wakes up, she’s clearly been drugged and refers to Langly as “Cutie.” He thinks it’s jet lag. Back in their hotel room, the Lone Gunmen watch the video of Susanne and Grant. She interrupts and asks to talk to Byers alone. Modeski admits she was kidnapped, tortured and rescued by Ellis, who allegedly subverts the government when he can. Timmy tricks Langly into going upstairs while Frohike finds a crocked Scully holding court in the bar. The best moment? When Morris Fletcher ("Dreamland" S6E4-5) offers her a cigarette … and she takes it!
Frohike takes Dana upstairs and not in a creepy, take-advantage-of-the-situation way. Susanne thinks the government has been spying on her and Grant, which affects their plans to expose everything to the public. Modeski realizes Scully has been drugged with anoetic histamine, which impedes higher brain functions and promotes suggestibility. Luckily, Susanne has an antidote. Unluckily, an unusually quiet Langly has returned. He’s been injected too. Timmy has given Langly a gun, access to Modeski and Ellis' panel and instructions to shoot his “target.”
Dana's credentials aren’t enough to get her into the exclusive panel, where Langly (with his hair pulled back into a ponytail -- talk about warning signs) shoots Susanne three times in the chest. The paramedics (Byers and Frohike) arrive and take Modeski away. Timmy realizes Susanne wasn’t really shot. Scully and the Lone Gunmen let Susanne confront Grant, who admits she was no longer needed and he traded his life for hers. (Did Charles Rocket ever play the good guy?)
Timmy arrives and guns Ellis down. He claims to be CIA and is about to shoot the Gunmen when Byers injects him with the formula. (You’d think the CIA would use more subtle surveillance equipment than a hand-held video camera in the air duct.) They frame Timothy Landau -- Landau? Nice homage -- for the murders of Ellis and Modeski. And Scully finally realizes the guys tricked her into going to Vegas. Byers gives Susanne her freedom and a new identity. In return, she gives J.F.B. a wedding ring. Since we never see Susanne again, I hope there’s some fanfic that gave these two the happy ending from Byers’ dream.
Sestra Professional:
We haven't seen a lot of the Lone Gunmen this season -- three episodes to be exact ("Triangle" (E3), "Dreamland II" (E5) and "One Son" (E12)) -- so it's kind of nice to check in with the guys. Byers starts it off by keeping the sixth season's unofficial dream theme going with visions of a happy home and country.
Go brush your hair, Michael Bolton: It's kind of sad that the Gunmen seem to fail more than they succeed these days, mainly appearing to provide comic relief. When they were first introduced, the trio was eccentric but relatively smart about everything they knew or thought they know. Now they're referred to as "The Three Stooges" and have to bring other "experts" in to help them out. But maybe they always were a wee bit lacking in the department and I'm just remembering the earlier appearances as the glory days.
It's still all for one and three for all, though. Byers and Frohike have a heartfelt talk about Susanne Modeski, but it's a wee bit strange that the subject hasn't come up before over the past decade if she's on his mind so much. (It's not like we needed to see any of that, it merely could have been covered with a mere "Her again?" from Frohike.)
I just can't decide who lights my fire: The lack of Mulder here was due to David Duchovny's preproduction on "The Unnatural," which aired before "Three of a Kind," but was filmed after it. That leaves Scully to handle the heavy lifting and she gets to have one of those Mulder-esque moments in which she figures out the cause of Jimmy's death relatively early, only to be subjected to the same inopportune injection that renders her unable to do anything but be hilarious.
It's funny to consider Gillian Anderson stealing scenes when she's one of the leads of the show, but she totally does here. We get another taste of her infectious laughter as she provides the comic relief and the Gunmen largely serve as her straight men (Langly's autopsy reactions aside). The mere sight of her trying to move a locked-down gurney is worth all the rest, not to mention her description of why Jimmy died -- "In my medical opinion, beeeeeep" followed by a sharp hand clap.
Good work, party girl: On top of that we get the reappearance of Michael McKean's Morris Fletcher, the unforgettable sight of Dana pulling a cigarette out of a pack with her teeth and a callback to the butt slap Fletcher gave Scully in "Dreamland." And after all, why wouldn't Agent Scully Golightly (nice Breakfast at Tiffany's reference there) be the center of attention at a bar in Las Vegas?
The denouement is a bit haphazard. Although we're in on the fact that Langly's been injected, we haven't gotten the hint that the rest of the crew also knows that and has administered the antidote. So they're able to set up Susanne's shooting as a mini-shock, but it quickly becomes common knowledge she's alive in the next couple of scenes. That seems to be contrary to the point, but at least it's easily hoovered up with a shooting and another injection.
"Three of a Kind" would have been a nice jumping-off spot for the trio's self-titled series, but that wouldn't happen for another season. According to the cast commentary from the penultimate The Lone Gunmen episode "All About Yves," the dailies from this show actually implanted the idea of the spinoff. It's too bad, they might have had more of a fighting chance around this time.
Meta mainframe: The sci-fi geeks probably got a kick out of the mention of the malfunctioning AE-135 unit during the poker scene. HAL-9000 warns of the impending malfunction of the AE-135 in 2001. ... Haglund enjoyed his dramatic Manchurian Candidate-like moment, but said in The Complete X-Files, he was a bit dismayed that people found it so funny. "And I'm thinking, 'Am I really that crappy a dramatic actor?'" Haglund bemoaned. ... "Three of a Kind" marked one of those rare instances in which the show filmed in the setting of the episode. ... According to the official episode guide, a bidding war broke out between Vegas hotels to provide the filming location and accommodations for the cast and crew. The Monte Carlo won. ... Def-Con is an actual convention in Vegas, but for computer hackers, not defense contractors.
Guest star of the week: By all rights, Michael McKean should have three such honors this season, but for the second time, I'm handing off his kudos to someone else. (After all, he was only on screen for a couple of minutes -- precious, though they are.) Meanwhile, Signy Coleman was picture-perfect again as the Mata Hari who attracted Byers and then remained just out of his reach. And poor Charles Rocket took on another thankless part, but I'll offer up that playing Bruce Willis' ne 'er-do-well brother in Moonlighting wasn't totally a bad-guy role.
Sestra Amateur:
There are certain actors who enjoy writing and/or directing episodes of their TV shows. Harry Anderson comes to mind, mainly because I’m watching old episodes of Dave’s World this week. When he wrote Night Court episodes, you would see or hear something that wasn’t quite there before, probably because Harry was so close to the characters he wrote about and the actors he was writing for. It had the opposite effect on Dave’s World because Harry’s writing gave the character “Dave Barry” some range which just didn’t exist for the run of the series. So those episodes are the better written ones overall, but they feel out of character. Harry Anderson clearly knew the TV incarnation of Dave Barry was lacking.
But let’s veer away from 1990s comedy and return to 1990s sci-fi. This week it’s David Duchovny’s turn in the writer/director chair. Most of Duchovny’s written episodes have related to Mulder’s family or the show’s ongoing mythology, the first exception being the Skinner-centric episode "Avatar" (Season 3, Episode 21). The X-Files have been around for over 25 years, but I don’t recall anyone asking, “Remember the one about the alien baseball player?”
“In the big inning” ... there’s a Minor League Baseball game going on in Roswell, New Mexico on July 2, 1947. There’s a pitcher who can’t throw a strike to save his life and a batter who could become the next Jackie Robinson in the Majors. Josh Exley, played by one of my favorite triple threats, Jesse L. Martin, hits his 61st home run. (This would have occurred 14 years before Roger Maris hit that magic number.) Unfortunately, his team’s celebration is cut short by the rudest of arrivals -- the Ku Klux Klan -- and they want to kill Exley. Fortunately, the pitcher finally throws some strikes and hits the racists with the baseballs. Both teams get the upper hand and unmask some of the KKK members, one of whom looks like he was an alien from the Close Encounters of the Third Kind mothership. Does that mean there are racist aliens out there?
Back in the present, Mulder is perusing 50-year-old New Mexico baseball box scores when he manages to get a genuine laugh out of Scully. He stumbles across a photograph of Josh Exley with Arthur Dales. Remember Arthur from "Travelers" (S5E15) and "Agua Mala" (S613)? Mulder goes to see Arthur and finds his brother ... Arthur Dales. (Maybe George Foreman got his idea of naming all of his kids the same from the Dales siblings’ parents.) This time, Arthur is played by character actor M. Emmet Walsh and he is the Arthur Dales in question. The photograph shows the former Roswell police officer with Exley and one of those alien bounty hunters played by Brian Thompson. Fox pays a dime to hear Arthur’s story.
On June 29, 1947 (three days before the pre-credits scene) Officer Dales, again played by Fredric Lehne, meets Josh Exley at the Roswell Municipal Ballfield. He’s been assigned to protect Josh from the KKK, so he hops on the Roswell Grays' team bus. While the players sleep, Dales sees Exley’s alien reflection in the window and is dumbfounded.
On June 30, the Grays are back at the Roswell Municipal Ballfield (so where was the bus taking them on their overnight drive?) Arthur sees two players pull out pistols, and he protects Exley by tackling him. Turns out, they were water pistols. Too bad Dales can’t save Josh from getting beaned in the head by the pitcher. Exley talks some alien gibberish before remembering who he is. Arthur sees Josh’s green “blood” on the catcher’s mitt and takes it in for testing. Dales looks into Exley’s background and inadvertently tips off the alien bounty hunter to Josh’s location.
Exley sabotages his chance to impress the Yankee scouts at the next game, but he wins it after they leave. Dales later confronts Josh, assuming that Exley is lying about who he is. Later that night, Arthur sees Josh as an alien and faints. After the alien wakes him Dales faints a few more times. Exley shows his shapeshifting capability and manages to make the moment even more awkward. Mulder’s description of Arthur’s story pretty much sums up Josh’s situation.
At the ballfield the next morning, Dales and Exley see the alien bounty hunter. The chemist processing the catcher’s mitt calls Arthur, who thinks he's sending Josh over to the lab to explain the substance. Turns out, it’s our shapeshifting alien bounty hunter disguised as Exley and he kills the chemist. Dales warns Josh that Exley is wanted for murder, but Josh decides it’s time to go home. While investigators interrogate Arthur, Exley hits his 61st home run, the baseball teams defeat the KKK and that unmasked alien morphs into the alien bounty hunter, complete with silver icepick-like weapon. You know, like the ones from "Colony" (S2E16), "Talitha Cumi" (S3E24), "Emily" (S5E7), "The Red and the Black" (S5E14) and "Two Fathers" (S6E11). (I think that covers all of my previous uses of the phrase “silver icepick-like weapon.”) The bounty hunter stabs Josh in the back of the neck and escapes. Arthur arrives too late but tries to comfort Exley, who bleeds red blood, not green acid. He still dies though, so it’s a hollow victory.
Back in the present, Mulder invites Scully to the batting cage and teaches her how to bat. I feel bad for Dana that she went through her childhood without ever playing baseball. Of course, she could be faking because, frankly, Fox’s hands are all over her as he tries to show her the proper stance and swing. At minimum, he got to second base. And Mulder also managed to get another genuine laugh out of Scully. Clearly, this is foreplay for them.
Sestra Professional:
It's only natural that David Duchovny would whip himself up a baseball UFO tale for his first slide into the directorial chair. He's slipped references to Yankees fandom into the show before -- notably his consideration of getting a tattoo to immortalize the 1996 World Series victory in "Never Again" (S4E13). Duchovny eventually commemorated the 20th anniversary of that commemoration with the fictional work, Bucky F*cking Dent, in 2016. So the concept had probably been fermenting in his mind for a while coming into "The Unnatural."
One of the problems David faced while trying to put this one together was the illness of Darren McGavin. He suffered a stroke during production, hence the quick rewrite resulting in the other Arthur Dales. Kind of a weak way to handle it wrapped up in a cutesy package, but we can let that slide. M. Emmet Walsh does a fine job on a moment's notice as the cantankerous coot.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicles: But let's get to the important stuff -- the couple of flirty scenes between Fox and Dana. The first one is loaded with exposition and paraphrased banalities such as "Hey, it's a gorgeous day outside, why are we inside?" But call me crazy, the way they wrestle for that cone makes my insides melt more than that awkward very-early or very-late baseball present.
Now back to our regularly scheduled alien. "The Unnatural" certainly has a Field of Dreams-meets-The X-Files vibe. And I'm not one to send up flares for political correctness, but yeah, the KKK's language in the opening teaser leaves something to be desired. We go from a playful back-home twangy score supporting a host of baseball cliches to a frightening scene that could be straight out of Mississippi Burning before the opening credits. It's too much too soon.
I'm so ripe, I'm rotten: I'll buy Fox's theory that box scores might appeal to Dana as the pythagorean theorum for jocks. Maybe not so much that our new truth -- at least for this week -- is that baseball is at the heart of the mystery. I don't see anything in this episode that encompasses the almost seven years we've been following this show. No one's getting anywhere with me by saying one thing -- be it a 12-year-old chess prodigy (from the fifth-season finale and the sixth-season opener) or a baseball-playing alien -- encapsulates everything we've seen to date.
To add insult to injury, our new Arthur Dales tells Mulder all the great baseball players -- from Babe Ruth to Willie Mays -- have been aliens and don't fit in any world. I'd probably be more irritated by that if the ridiculous Little Rascals castaway, Poorboy, didn't show up as Dales' door on an errand-running pretense to really make me shake my head. Throwing in everything but the kitchen sink doesn't really further the overall cause, but it's certainly preferable to watching another "Alpha" or "Trevor" (S6E16-17).
Speaking metaphorically is for young men like you, Agent MacGyver: But maybe the real point revolves around Exley's advice to Dales -- make sure you're chasing the right secrets. That's certainly something Sculder can take to heart. They shouldn't be dissuaded by the things they see or hear that might seem important but won't get them any closer to the truth ... and they should definitely need to take some time out for personal lives. In short, more tofutti cones, less Saturday overtime.
Meta mashing: In The Complete X-Files, Duchovny revealed his script was inspired by a newspaper account he read about Joe Bauman, who hit 72 homers for the Roswell Rockets the same year Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier and the Roswell UFO incident occurred. "I just remember thinking, 'Oh, Roswell, that's kind of coincidental," Duchovny said. ... Gillian Anderson expressed appreciation for David's efforts in the official episode guide. "I was proud of David for writing the script," she said. "I thought it was wonderful. He was kind and gentle and respectful and humble, and always tried to do his best." ... Duchovny's older brother, Daniel, played Grays' bench rider Piney. ... Vin Scully -- the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers and inspiration for Dana's last name -- is heard broadcasting a game over the radio when the agents are in their office.
Guest star of the week: Jesse L. Martin, of course. Duchovny needed someone of his caliber to make Exley's story work. According to the episode guide, he looked no further after seeing Martin on stage in Rent. We really understand that Josh is not looking for fame, he just wants to be a man. Would have liked to have seen some dance moves, though. Wait, should we be thinking that triple threats are aliens too?
We’re close to the end of the season, so let’s just dive right into this one. Angela and Wallace Schiff -- played by Robyn Lively (Teen Witch) and David Denman (Skip the Demon from Angel) -- are having a spat about hiking. Angela takes a shower and experiences visions of yellow gelatinous goo dripping down the walls and engulfing her while she screams in terror. Angela also suffers from a nagging headache, so she lets her husband comfort her. The scene changes from their bodies in bed to similarly posed skeletons in a field. 
Three days later, Mulder is reviewing the same picture on a projected slide as he explains the known case details to Scully in their office. She offers up the typical scientific explanation of what happened to Angie and Wally. He refutes with his typical unexplained phenomena. Apparently, North Carolina’s Brown Mountain, where the couple was found, is just a hotbed of suspected alien activity. Fox points out how frequently he and Dana have this same discussion, and he’s clearly frustrated he still hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt from his longtime partner.
Meanwhile, the coroner (they don’t give him a name so I’m calling him Dr. Idjit, in honor of Bobby Singer) learns the goop is a digestive enzyme which he has seen before, in a case involving hikers left out in the elements for months. Dana borrows his truck to meet Fox and ends up trampling some mushrooms. Mulder, who is starting to see things that aren’t there, tries to convince Wallace to leave with him but the lights scare Wally and he runs deeper inside the cave. Fox runs after him but was the light just caused by Scully as she peered into the cave with a flashlight? 
The next scene shows Scully meeting with Mulder back in his apartment, where he’s hiding the Schiffs. He’s borderline giddy with the knowledge that he has finally uncovered “the truth.” Angie repeats her “textbook” story and Fox shows Dana the alien he’s abducted. More commonplace examples pop up: It’s a “gray,” it speaks telepathically. Scully finally admits Mulder was right. (OK, that part’s not textbook at all.) Seems too good to be true, right? Turns out, it is. This Dana denies the science while Fox suffers from a headache and sees yellow goo everywhere. Mulder’s “reality” finally dissolves and he’s back in the cave, which is very possibly digesting him.
Dana completes her report for Assistant Director Skinner, who is ready to accept her conclusions, even though she is not. She attends Mulder’s wake in his apartment and grieves with the Lone Gunmen (I wonder if she really kicked their butts last episode). Unfortunately they agree with her findings – which are not really hers – and repeat the company line. Scully loses her temper while experiencing a splitting headache. She hears a knocking at the door and Fox comes strolling into his own apartment, which is now vacant. Mulder tells her his story of abduction but has no explanation for the three skeletons. Dana thinks the mushrooms she trampled gave off spores which caused them to hallucinate. She also thinks they never left the cave and are still being digested. She’s right. Fox breaks through the dirt and drags Scully up with him.
Sculder later meet with Skinner to explain the extremely large organism that had them in a hallucinogenic state of mind. Mulder questions how they escaped and now he thinks they’re still trapped. He proves it by shooting Walter, who oozes yellow goop from his bullet wounds. Yep, they are still underground. This time they get found because everyone in the free world is apparently looking for them. And the search party was wise enough to wear masks too. I guess our heroes are lucky the “digestive enzyme” didn’t damage their skin, eyes or even their hair. But I do see another expensive dry cleaning bill in their future. 
Penned by the stalwart three-headed machine of Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz, "Field Trip" is a fine offering to serve as the last stand-alone of the up-and-down sixth season. It's got an old-school X-Files feel to it. There's something supernatural about it too, and not just because of the presence of ol' Bobby Singer.
Director Kim Manners does his usual brilliant job filming this strange concoction. In my favorite sequence of the episode, his camera work and sharp editing heighten the disconnect between Fox thinking he might be seeing an alien ship landing and to what probably just was Dana's flashlight shining in the cave. Also credit due to Mark Snow for a particularly sharp score that neatly enhances all the ups and downs of this trip.
Yet Scully has indeed had her effect on Mulder after all these years. Because even through his joyful haze, he questions what originally brought the agents on the case -- the skeletons -- and that leads to the disintegration of the illusion that gives him all he ever wanted, well, this side of finding out what happened to sister Samantha anyway.
We also get to see what effect Fox has had on Dana lo these many years as well. She's not willing to accept the party line of Mulder's murder. This is not the woman who walked into the basement office in 1993. The triumvirate really has done an incredible job of showing us that while navigating the twists and turns of the actual case in our latest alternate sixth-season reality. 
Guest star of the week: Jim Beaver. "Doctor Idjit" isn't the buffoon Sculder usually runs into on a case. He's loathe to jump into Mulder's theories, but he's also wise enough to provide some insight and savvy enough to help effort the rescue (if, in fact, they were rescued.) It's a great precursor for Beaver ahead of his trademark role as the voice of reason for Sam and Dean Winchester on Supernatural.
