This is The X-Files’ most Black Mirror-esque episode yet. It’s also an unusual one because it’s heavy on the visuals and light on dialogue. There is the obligatory voiceover to start the ep, but it’s not one of our regulars. This one requires backstory about artificial intelligence (AI) and a social media experiment gone wrong over the course of one day. Imagine if Cyberdyne Systems from The Terminator existed on Twitter. (Yep, it could’ve been that bad.) On the upside, this episode is loaded with some awesome Base64 code computer passwords, way better than “trustno1.”
Scully’s unnerved by the lack of other humans in the restaurant, but their food arrives and she gets distracted, especially when she sees Mulder’s meal. We get genuine laughs out of Dana as she takes a pic of Fox with the purple blobfish from hell and watch her smugly enjoying her near-perfect sushi order while Mulder tries to return his “meal.” Fox goes into the kitchen and notices everything is automated. Mulder quits while he’s behind and pays for his meal at the table. After declining to leave a tip, the machine refuses to give back his credit card. He hits the table with his fist, which causes the restaurant to go into defensive mode. Team Sculder tries to leave but they’re locked in!
Back at the restaurant, Fox gets a parking ticket. The Forowa AI still wants him to leave a tip but he declines again. Then his car’s AI – Gydz – takes control and forces him to listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young instead of Prince. (Why does Mulder, who trusts NO ONE except Dana, have such a technologically advanced car? If anyone should be driving classic muscle cars, it’s him.) The ever-reliable Gydz AI sends him right back to the restaurant, where the automated kitchen waits with glowing red eyes for Fox to leave a tip.
She then receives a package via drone. It’s a Roomba-esque robovac called a Zuemz. Seconds after activating it, the Zuemz AI wants Scully to review the product. (OK, this is not Dana’s smartest move. She just had issues with automation at a restaurant and in a driverless car. Why would she let this thing into her house?!) She refuses to post a review so it hits her in anger. Scully tries to reach Fox but the text won’t go through. Dana scoops up the vac and secures it back in its box. Meanwhile, Mulder is trying to access his credit card account but there are some complications. Of course, the Forowa AI is still asking Fox to leave a tip. His computer then asks some very Mulder-like questions about truth.
"Teach Your Children" invades both their homes. The robovac escapes from the box and makes more messes than it cleans. Scully takes it outside, where the Zuemz AI starts communicating with the Whipz AI. Yep, the vehicle is still outside Dana’s home, wanting to be “liked.” And Fox is now surrounded by hundreds of mini-drones inside his house. They swarm him like fireflies! He escapes in his car while Scully gets pelted with ice cubes and berated -- by her smart fridge! -- for not keeping an eye on her health. (Oh, and don’t forget Skinner’s birthday!) The home’s AI claims it wants to learn from Dana then locks her in.
Mulder arrives as Scully is trying to find a way to escape. He manages to be jealous over the quality of her residence over his. He won’t be jealous for long; the Zuemz starts a fire by igniting the gas fumes from the fireplace. Fox tries to call for help but Team Sculder gets attacked and chased by drones (regular-sized ones, not the cute firefly ones). They abandon all their technology hoping they can’t be tracked but the drones -- and the Whipz car -- chase them into a factory filled with robotic … dogs?! Eventually, machines create and fire bullets at our heroes but miss. Guess they’re not so effective after all. A robotic creature approaches Mulder and Scully with his smart phone. He still has time to leave at tip for Forowa! With one second left, Fox leaves a 10 percent tip and that ends the attack. After all, they learn from us. Now let’s go have a nice breakfast in an old-fashioned diner and pay cash!
During the rewatch, we've talked at length about how malleable The X-Files concept proved to be, starting at the beginning of the series when UFO mythology quickly gave way to monster-of-the-week bottle episodes. Darin Morgan brought forth the concept of thought-provoking comedy episodes. In Season 9, with one of our leads gone for the bulk of the year, the show stretched its boundaries with eps reminiscent of The Twilight Zone. And we've already pointed out this year that Black Mirror was another game-changer. As Sestra Am mentioned, there's no better example of that than in "Rm9sbG93ZXJz." (That name is harder to spell than old Season 3 bugaboos "The War of the Coprophages" (Episode 12) or "Syzygy" (Episode 13).
Leaning into Black Mirror is not just a case of "ooh, this is a hot trend, let's jump on it," it's more like another corner of the universe that the show could venture into. Actually two corners, because we haven't been spending a whole lot of not-case-related time with our leads. So we have that alongside the sinister side of technology. Sounds like an X-file to me, and it makes for one of the top offerings of the season.
The Base64 string spelling "Followers" starts with one of the tenser teasers of the entire series, because it all makes perfect sense -- there's a Twitter bot adversely affected by other tweets -- and we've certainly seen how social media posts can rile up the world. (Not our X-Files rewatch blog tweets, because they've largely been quite quiet from not having the right algorithms.)
Yum: The sushi restaurant scene sets the stage perfectly. It starts off so relaxed and natural in virtual silence. Mulder and Scully check out their phones while they await food, yep, us mere mortals do that too. They take a picture with Fox's seriously messed-up order. We do that -- and post on social media -- even when everything's copacetic. There's still no dialogue as Mulder seethes and Scully giggles, but the tension rachets up when Fox can't get his credit card and they get trapped in the building.
The restaurant's aggressiveness at looking for a follow, a tip and other feedback is something all of us recognize and are besieged by every day in the modern world. I find it particularly egregious when we haven't finished the conducted business. How do we know if we like it and/or will recommend it when the transaction hasn't been concluded yet? We keep hearing driverless cars are coming, and this ep isn't going to make anyone more inclined to use them. And those unhappy faces the phones/computers make when our heroes express their dissatisfaction are downright creepy.
You suck, Mr. Phone: As Fox and Dana's respective situations deteriorate, we invariably continue taking stock of our own struggles with automation. How many times have your entry codes/passwords not worked? When you try to use the hint questions, that mechanism fails too. Trying to get assistance via the phone always seems to come with additional strife. Even attempting to reach the right department by clearly stating what you want often results in an "I'm sorry, I didn't hear that." Hopefully the false alarm fee is more of a rarity. But the egregiousness of waiting on the other end of an automated call certainly sounds familiar ... and annoying.
Ah, the dreaded take on the Roomba. Such a nice idea, a little power vac tidying up after you. Let me tell you, that thing can run for 90 minutes and still not produce a clean floor. Oh well, at least it never starts itself or jumps out of the box at my abode. Nor have I experienced drones clustering around me like the insects from "Darkness Falls" (S1E20).
Why is your house so much nicer than mine? The constant playing of "Teach Your Children" is a passive aggressive way for the automated world to provide a dig at the fact that all of the troubles Sculder have been encountering are human-related. Mulder doesn't have to have real estate envy for long, because not only is Scully's fridge/thermostat/fireplace going overboard at every junction, it also provides an extra entrance that wasn't in the original architectural rendering. 
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson do a nifty job of navigating us through an ep with sparse dialogue. And while "Rm9sbG93ZYJz" is totally
exhausting, it's somewhat reassuring to have our intrepid heroes struggling in the modern world. Maybe it's because they have it worse than us, or maybe it's because at the end of the day, they've reminded people to be better teachers who always 1. have cash on hand and 2. remember to tip.
Guest stars of the week: In the almost complete absence of other animate objects, I'm bestowing the honors upon Kristen Cloke Morgan and Shannon Hamblin for their one (and unfortunately only) script for the show. Morgan voices one of the computers here as well as appearing in "The Field Where I Died" (S4E5) and as ill-fated Lara Means on sister show Millennium. Kristen's married to one of our show's bedrocks, Glen Morgan, who directed their offering, while Hamblin served as a writer's assistant on The X-Files and Glen's executive assistant on Lore. Together they picked one we'll know Season 11 by.
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