In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Assistant Director Walter Skinner is in charge of a protective custody detail. Grand jury witness Dr. Jim Scobie has a mild cough, so he takes a sip of water. What’s left in the glass looks disturbing -- blood and an unidentified insect. What’s left of Jim’s face is even worse. Jeez, Walter, you had one job. Hopefully Skinner knows someone who can investigate this unexplained type of phenomenon.
Sculder arrive the next morning and learn Dr. Scobie was a biochemist for Morley Tobacco who was about to testify against his employers. Scully heads to the morgue to perform the autopsy. Mulder notices the drinking glass containing the now-drowned insect. The agents meet with Daniel Brimley, the head of security at Morley Headquarters. They’re allowed to interview Scobie’s former supervisor, Dr. Peter Voss, but only with a team of lawyers present. The interview ends after multiple invocations of the Morley confidentiality clause, but Dr. Voss looks like he wants to talk. At least Fox learns the bug in the glass is a tobacco beetle. When Voss goes home, he has a late-night visitor played by Tobin Bell, who’s only four years away from Saw franchise notoriety as serial killer Jigsaw. He shakes down Voss for some special smokes then leaves.
Skinner and Mulder (Skulder?) get the autopsy results from Dana. She rules out acids and caustic agents, then determines cause of death to be hypoxemia -- Scobie essentially choked to death. Meanwhile, faux Cigarette Smoking Man is arguing with his coughing neighbor through a wall. The man dies like Jim, but this time we see the victim covered in those tobacco beetles. Luckily, local police know enough to contact the FBI, so our intrepid heroes continue their investigation with this new lead. During his neighborhood canvass, Fox knocks on suspect Darryl Weaver’s door. Since the FBI isn’t offering a reward, Weaver clams up. I doubt he was going to rat out himself anyway. Mulder unsuccessfully reaches out to Dr. Voss again for answers. A surveilling Brimley immediately calls Voss and asks for Weaver’s location, but the doctor denies knowing where he is.
Skinner and Scully get the homicidal tobacco beetle analyzed and learn there are some deviations from normal ones. Dana thinks they’ve been altered at a genetic level. Voss finds his “guinea pig” Weaver and unsuccessfully tries to bribe him to leave town. He flinches in fear when it looks like Darryl is going to light a cigarette. Scully conducts an autopsy on the neighbor and finds larval stage beetles inside his lungs. (I’m really glad I wasn’t eating dinner during this episode.) Walter and Dana’s engrossing Entomology 101 discussion is rudely interrupted by a coughing Fox, who is bleeding internally. Always have to be the center of attention, don’t you, Mulder? They rush him into surgery, where doctors vacuum out dozens of tobacco beetle larvae from his lungs while a concerned Scully watches. She assumes Mulder got infected by inhaling the smoke. Skinner returns to Morley Headquarters with a search warrant and two FBI extras – I mean agents. Dr. Voss overrules the corporate attorney and tells Walter they were trying to genetically engineer a safer cigarette. Three of their test subjects died; Darryl Weaver is the fourth. Skinner returns to Weaver’s apartment where he finds an infected -- and soon-to-be-dead -- Brimley.
This marks the second week in a row that Dana is in a hospital by a lover’s bedside, holding his hand. Fox starts coughing and hacks up a tobacco beetle. New X-rays show his lungs are fully infected with larvae. Skinner sends a protective detail to the Voss residence to keep them safe. I hope it’s not the same guys who did such an exceptional job protecting Dr. Scobie. Peter Voss never returned home, but Walter finds him and Weaver at Morley Headquarters. He holds Darryl at gunpoint but Weaver thinks he’s got the golden ticket and lights up a killer smoke. Skinner wounds Darryl and stamps out his cigarette. The "truth" anti-tobacco campaign missed a great opportunity to use that 10-second clip in its ads. Back at the hospital, Scully determines nicotine will save Mulder’s life. Two weeks later, Fox is back at work, suffering from a sore throat and nicotine cravings. But maybe we should be more interested in Dana's health at this point.
Sestra Professional:
I always equate "Brand X" with "Folie a Deux," the 19th episode of the fifth season. It's probably due to the fact it's about a corporate environment ... and has a Mulder chaser. The latest ep was penned by Steven Maeda and Greg Walker while the former was from show wunderkind Vince Gilligan (pardon the ebullience, I just started a Breaking Bad rewatch.) And both eps do sport the cinematic flair of X-Files legendary director Kim Manners (that's just my normal hearts and flowers for Manners' work behind the lens). At the very least, watching these back-to-back would make an interesting two-fer, fer sure.
Poor Skinner. He had a much better success rate when he was riding herd over Sculder more regularly. It is nice to see you again, Walter. That's of little consolation when your charge has lost most of his face and his life, I suppose.Guests check in but they don't check out: This episode rolls up slowly. It gives Fox a lot of opportunity to quip, which he hasn't had this much of on a regular basis this season. Even Skinner gets the chance to flex his possibly atrophied deadpan humor muscle -- "Killer bugs? This is what I'm supposed to tell director?" Surely he hasn't forgotten what it was like when he was in the swarm -- er, the swim -- of things with Mulder and Scully.
So Fox is on to the cause pretty quickly after finding one bug in a glass of water. He can even declare that it wasn't murder from that insect, which seems like he's spreading his wings a little far. But he's gotta get both his observations and his jokes in before people start dustbustering his lungs.
Darryl Weaver seems to be a cardboard version of one of those unintended catalysts we've met over the years on the show -- someone like Augustus Cole from "Sleepless" (S2E4), Lucy Householder from "Oubliette" (S3E8) or Nathaniel Teager from "Unrequited" (S4E16). But frankly, we got more depth out of Tobin Bell's role as the face of the Saw franchise; the scientific marvel here comes off thinner than cigarette rolling paper. Ditto entomologist Libby Nance -- who's a combination of an older Bambi Berenbaum from "The War of the Cophrophages" (S3E12) and consultant Agent Pendrell from Season 3 and 4, without the charm of either of them. By the way, Mulder's doctor really reminds me of the latter.Smoke 'em if you got 'em: So "Brand X" sort of plays out like our version of Michael Mann's powerful film The Insider -- not surprising considering that movie came out as Oscar bait at the end of the previous year. That's why we're prone to dialogue like "How many people have to die before you do the right thing?" See how much trouble trying to engineer a safer cigarette gets you into? Somewhat prescient about the ills of vaping, if you ask me.
The ante gets upped when Fox falls victim, though. (Nice call, Sestra Am, noting that Dana's spending an inordinate amount of time holding hands at lovers' bedsides.) Luckily, she can still figure out the scientific details and make appropriately paranoid -- albeit correct -- guesses that usually fall to Mulder.
Long before the current pandemic climate, I wondered why masks or other protection wasn't being worn around those known to be infected in this episode. Clearly, Scully at Fox's bedside or Skinner and FBI extras on the suspect's turf should be geared up and guarding against becoming victims themselves. And it takes Walter far too long to lay down his suppressive fire. He did have years of experience in trying to get Cancer Man to not light up in his office for years.Guest star of the week: Dennis Boutsikaris. Dr. Voss gets worn down over the course of the episode, and we see that in the veteran actor's face. Nowadays, he's probably known best for Better Call Saul. But the Sestras will always have a soft spot for him as the beleaguered doctor from The Dream Team. There are probably a lot worse things for an actor than being typecast as a physician.
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