X-Files S6E21: 'Shroom with a view

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.