Sestra Amateur:
Sestra Pro has been waiting very patiently for this episode. She is quite the Darin Morgan fan. So let’s get to it! In Shawan, Oregon, a couple of paint huffers interrupt a tall Creature of the Black Lagoon-ish type as he/she/it attacks some poor dude. Looks like the victim will be fine, but there’s another guy laying there with his throat slashed open who didn’t fare so well.
What is up with the old-style intro and theme song? Looks like they’re trying to reclaim that past XF vibe. We see they’re not quite successful when Special Agent Dana Scully joins Special Agent Fox Mulder in their recently reacquired basement office space. (Are they still “Special”? Asking for a friend…) Fox has seen the light. Well, actually it's more like the reality of some unexplained phenomena that have reasonable explanations. Luckily, Dana has a new X-file for them to investigate, so off to Oregon they go.
Scully reads the case file to Mulder while they’re in the middle of the woodlands crime scene. Hearing Fox spouting plausible excuses for everything Dana mentions about the killings makes for an interesting, yet quickly tiresome, role-reversal take on their previous Monster of the Week investigations. Mulder’s right about one thing; the killer does only have two eyes. And those eyes are focused on a new victim, who quickly hits him square in the horns with her purse.
Team Sculder heads to the truck stop to get more information about their tighty-whitey-wearing creature. They also locate Pasha (Kumail Nanjiani), the animal control officer who survived the pre-credits attack. Pasha is wise enough to run the other way when it looks like the creature has returned. While searching the area, Scully and Mulder stumble across a fresh victim. Fox, who’s taking way too many pictures with his smart phone, chases after the suspect, the cell phone camera’s flash signaling his location at every point. He gets startled by Pasha, who stereotypically tries to offer tech support to Mulder. While they’re distracted, the creature sneaks up behind them! Dana runs to assist. Fox is fine; Pasha is fed up and quits on the spot. Team Sculder chases the monster into a portable toilet. Or so they think. It’s currently occupied by a not-as-livid-as-he-should-be user, played by Rhys Darby. Fox and Dana give him back his privacy, but don’t see the horns protruding from the back of his head.
Scully is trying to perform an autopsy on the latest victim, but Mulder distracts her with really lame photo and video “evidence” on his phone. Dana manages to give the most accurate assumption of what they’re looking for: a 6-foot-tall horny -- well, horned -- toad.
Mulder is trying to sleep when a disturbance in the motel’s office draws his attention. The clerk, an elderly man swigging rubbing alcohol, plays the Greta Garbo card and demands to be left alone. Fox wanders around behind the walls of the motel after he realizes the animal “trophies” are actually Norman Bates-level peeping stations. After briefly spying on a sleeping Scully, Mulder ends up back in the motel’s office and listens to the old man’s tale: After briefly spying on a sleeping Fox, the motel manager became distracted by the man from the portable toilet, who has his own room. The man started yelling at himself and trashing the two-star accommodations. The old man watched while the guest began to transform into the red-eyed, green-horned monster. I don’t think he’s quite 6 feet tall though, Dana.
Mulder seeks counsel from Dr. Rumanovitch, who shares a fable about monsters within ourselves, blah blah blah. The good doctor does refer to the creature as a were-lizard, which seems more visually accurate than were-monster. (So why wasn’t this episode called "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Lizard" instead?) Meanwhile, Scully has stumbled across the suspect at his place of employment. Unfortunately, she asked him a question and he promptly destroys the cell phone shop where he works and, like Pasha, quits on the spot. Mulder tracks down the suspect in a cemetery. After laying flowers at the grave of Kim Manners (nice touch, Darin), Guy, our were-lizard, breaks a bottle on the headstone of Jack Hardy (a less-nice touch but love the quote, "Nothing says thank you like cash") and tries to goad Mulder into assisted suicide with a green bottle. Fox agrees, but only after he hears Mann’s story.
OK, so the were-lizard was in the woods one night during a full moon, minding his own business when Pasha and the first victim disrupted his peaceful moment by struggling with each other. Pasha then bit him, and Guy ran away past the two paint huffers. He awoke in the woods the next morning as a naked human being, next to three dead bodies. After swiping one dead man’s clothing he got himself a job and was quickly – very quickly – promoted to manager. He instinctively ate fast food and watched porn in a hotel room, then celebrated as he changed back into his original form. Too bad it was only temporary. By the next morning, he was Mann again, a human being craving coffee and desperately needing to work. He found a shrink and a puppy to help with the transition but the adorable doggie disappeared. Guy was out looking for his puppy when he stumbled across his original attacker attacking another attackee. (So much attacking going on…) He transformed back into the were-lizard and made a run for it. That’s when he got smacked in the face with the purse and chased by Mulder into the porta potty. He also tries to convince Fox that a woman – Scully – had sex with him in the phone store. Funny how everything else is believable except that one part. Poor Guy realizes Fox is the fuzz and that he won’t get the assisted suicide for which he longs so the were-lizard leaves Mulder at the gravesite.
Fox gets drunk and passes out on Kim’s grave but wakes up to his X-Files ringtone. He tries to explain Mann’s story to Dana, who is at the Animal Control shelter with Guy’s dog and Pasha when the latter attacks Scully with a control pole! Mulder and the local police rush to the scene to save her, but of course, she saves herself and takes Pasha into custody. He verbally demonstrates his serial killer tendencies but Team Sculder don’t want – or need – to hear it. Fox races back to the woods to tell Guy he believes the were-lizard's saga. Luckily, he catches the creature as he prepares for a multi-millennial hibernation. They say their goodbyes, Guy changes one last time then skips to freedom. Oh, and Scully steals the dog. Hope he has a better fate than Queequeg.
Sestra Professional:
There are faces and names associated with the entirety of The X-Files -- creator Chris Carter, leads Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, scene stealers William B. Davis and Mitch Pileggi, the writing team of Glen Morgan and James Wong, genre-widening efforts from Vince Gilligan and Darin Morgan and Carter's clutch right-hand man, Frank Spotnitz. Add to that mix the Lone Gunmen, the various informants (Jerry Hardin, Steven Williams and Laurie Holden), Nicholas Lea, and then Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish at the end of the regular run and you have a pretty good representation. But the picture's not complete -- because we're missing more directors, particularly a man who had influence on all of the above and more -- the late, great Kim Manners.
Manners wasn't only the most tenured director -- with 51, he was at the helm for a good quarter of the show. But starting with "Die Hand, Die Verletzt" (Season 2, Episode 14), he harnessed a vision of the show that became one of its trademarks. Others took lessons from him, which improved the overall look and quality of the series while he ascended to a supervising producer role by the end of the show. On more than one occasion, a character was inspired by him -- most notably the colorful Detective Manners in S3E20's "Josh Chung's From Outer Space." (That role was almost played by Manners, but in the end, he bowed out.)
So when Manners passed away between the end of the original run and the start of the revival, the question arose of how they could pay tribute to someone who was such an integral part of the franchise. The powers-that-be decided to let Darin Morgan handle it in his episode. That meant we'd get something right on point -- sweet and original yet befitting the moment. In short, the perfect touch.
Darin Morgan's effect on The X-Files outlasted his tenure. He left after the third season, but his out-of-the-box thinking paved the way for Gilligan to pen such gems as "Bad Blood" (S5E12) and Carter's efforts at doing the same (I'm thinking particularly of S5E5's "The Post-Modern Prometheus.") Still, there's nothing like a Darin Morgan joint, because he has the ability to think in ways that others don't. When you view one of his episodes, there are no throwaway moments. I'm forever uncovering subtleties in his work.
Having Darin back in the fold for the revival helped take the run to another level, because he didn't lose a step. "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" is chock full of Darin Morganisms, as well as a story greater than its outline. It's laden with lots of little gems, and it delivers more than the resolution of an FBI case. He's still making us think about the state of our world and our lives.
If that doesn't explain it, well then it was probably just ice: We start off with the return of the stoners (previously seen in S3E12's "War of the Coprophages" and S3E22's "Quagmire") and segue right into references from the days of old -- The "Truth Is Out There" posters and Mulder's penchant for tossing pencils. Darin gives Fox a diatribe to deliver on how much has changed in the interim between the regular run and the revival, while Dana shows off an illustration of the monster that was drawn by Anderson's daughter Piper. On site, Mulder sounds rather Scully-like, explaining away the monster with hypotheses of wolves and nudists.
A transwoman (admittedly on crack) gives her first-person account of the monster to raise Fox's interest level, and it's not too long before the guy who was just belittling the fact that everyone has a cell phone with a camera but no one gets photos of supernatural occurrences finds out how difficult it is to get that done. Scully, as usual, has got the better idea -- if there actually is a murderous monster on the rampage, she's emptying her clip into it.
A bit of privacy, please: Along this path, we run into the animal control officer played by X-Files super fan Kumail Nanjani, and I believe we get some insight into how difficult Darin Morgan finds it to deal with modern technology. (Dana's right again, the internet is not good for Fox.) And Rhys Darby's episode instruction must be what any actor always dreams of, he's pants-down on a porta potty toidi.
After Scully's autopsy devolves into a description of the perpetrator as a man-sized human lizard with with human teeth that shoots blood out his eyes, we find that Dana has gotten a lot more laid-back in the ensuing years. She's definitely not as irritated by Mulder's hypotheses as she used to be.
No, you're bat-crap crazy: Cue another Darin Morgan favorite with Alex Diakun as the dubious motel manager. X-Philes know him as the curator in "Humbug" (S2E20), the tarot dealer in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (S3E4) and Dr. Fingers in "Jose Chung." Dubious might be too weak an adjective, as Sestra Am mentioned, he is definitely displaying shades of Norman Bates. Also cue the return of Mulder's red Speedo ("Duane Barry," S2E5), and thankfully, the return of his wild conjectures, only made complete with such phraseology as "military-agro-big-pharma corporation." Someone must explain to me why that sounds preposterous in a Carter episode but just right in a Darin Morgan episode.
It's up to Guy Mann's borderline-creepy Dr. Rumanovitch (Richard Newman ... What? No previous Morgan/X-Files link?) to explain to us that it's easier to accept monsters out in the wild than the monsters lurking within ourselves. And Smart Phones ...Is Us -- yet another Darin gem, because the world needs more catchy store names/tag lines that are grammatically incorrect despite the fact that the word "smart" is in there.
Let's kick it in the ass: So in the midst of all this humor and insight comes our touching tributes to Manners and Jack Hardy (first assistant director on I Want to Believe as well as many Millennium episodes. Even though it's just Fox's decoy, Duchovny touchingly cleans off the Manners' head stone -- complete with the director's trademark line (fans of Supernatural probably recognize it too).
But moving on to the transformation(s) of Guy Mann. Mulder finds out his monster is not really a monster at all, just a big lizard adversely affected by the bite of the real predator. Yeah, this is how Dana likes her Fox ... and this is how I like my X-Files. Guy had found his new visage gave him the Darwinian ability to BS his way through anything ... such a human trait. The lizard found it very difficult to navigate fast-food drive-thrus (especially without any insect offerings), deal with a blaring alarm clock and work a job he hated. Like many mortals, he only felt better in the company of his puppy. Is it my imagination or does Mulder say Daggoo's name like Scooby Doo?
J'accuse, Monsieur Mulder! I was perfectly willing to believe that saga until he got to the most awkward sex scene in the history of Mann (and the rest of us). He did satisfactorily explain that away with his line about not being able to help lying about his sex life since he became a human. OK, I'm back on board, but Fox still has his uncharacteristic doubts. Maybe that's because he doesn't want to believe in a mortal life that's all about worries, self-doubt, regret and loneliness.
The final act finds Mulder drunk on monsters and alcohol (and somehow whole with The X-Files theme song as his ringtone) and Scully not only emerging as the story's hero but getting some canine payback from the universe in the form of Daggoo. Really appreciate Pasha not getting to tell his story, that flies in the face of every TV program ever. Save it for the trial indeed. Well spoken, Dana!
Guest star of the week: Sorry, Kumail, but Rhys Darby really Manned up on this one. The New Zealand actor quoted from Hamlet (the first folio yet), made an incredibly convoluted story of transformation seem sensible and even spilled some blood for the cause -- he had to go to the hospital after breaking the bottle badly in the cemetery scene.
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