The X-Files 9.1, Nothing Important Happened Today: Water, Water Everywhere, and Who Knows What the Government Put in It?

December 1, 2018

The X-Files 9.1, Nothing Important Happened Today: Water, Water Everywhere, and Who Knows What the Government Put in It?

When Xenas attack

Summary: A man at a Baltimore bar scoops some ice out of his drink with his hand and drops the cubes on the floor, then licks his fingers. Season 9 is starting on a classy note. He approaches a woman and starts talking about how the government added stuff to the water that makes him want to avoid ice. The woman invites him to go out and “get some air.”

The man drives her home in his convertible, and as they approach a drawbridge, she puts her hand on his leg. Instead of…doing the thing he thought she was going to do and starting season 9 on a REALLY classy note, she forces his foot down on the accelerator. They speed through the gates on the bridge and plunge into the water below. The man struggles to get out of his seatbelt, but the woman grabs his ankle to keep him underwater.

New credits! Do not like.

48 hours after the opening scenes, Scully’s tending to a very unhappy William while an unseen Mulder takes a shower. There’s a bunch of luggage in the living room. Doggett wakes up for work as Reyes gets a call from Brad Follmer, an FBI agent who was surprised to hear that she’s in D.C. She reluctantly agrees to stop by his office. Doggett grabs a quick breakfast, ignoring a news report about the death of the man from the bar, Carl Wormus, and employee at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Follmer is watching the same report in his office when Reyes arrives, trying to avoid talking to him by leaving him a note. As soon as they’re in his office, he kisses her. She reminds him that they’re at work, though he points out that when they worked together in New York, she never had a problem with that. Follmer is now the assistant director, and he wants to show Reyes some security tapes. One shows her arriving at the building to meet with Doggett. Since Doggett’s part of the internal investigation into Kersh’s activities, Reyes could be in some trouble.

Doggett and Kersh run into each other in an elevator and sneer at each other for a little while. Kersh figures that if Doggett can’t turn up anything negative about him, no one can. Doggett finds Reyes in the X-Files office and complains that he has a tough job in having to investigate Kersh. Reyes tells him the job might be harder than he thinks. One of the security tapes Follmer gave her, which should show the car chase Doggett and Skinner had with Knowle, shows…nothing. According to the evidence, there was no activity in the parking garage, and no witnesses will be able to argue otherwise.

Doggett goes to Mulder’s apartment, which is completely empty. Meanwhile, the woman who killed Wormus resurfaces (literally) in a water reclamation plant. A worker spots her walking around naked as he starts to make a call to a Naval ship. Doggett next goes to Scully’s, upset that she hasn’t answered his calls. He thought she had fled town liked Mulder clearly has. Scully confirms that he’s gone.

The plant worker follows the woman’s wet footprints, and when he finds her, it’s safe to say he’s probably going to suffer the same fate as Wormus. At the FBI building, Doggett and Reyes meet with Skinner; none of the three of them knows where Mulder went. Reyes tells Doggett that there’s yet another complication. Skinner tells Doggett that he needs to drop the Kersh investigation. Doggett guesses that Skinner is afraid of whoever’s behind this conspiracy. Alternately, he’s afraid of the real tape turning up and showing that Skinner killed Krycek.

Skinner says his real fear is that Doggett will push things too far and bring danger on Scully, Mulder, and William. Doggett interprets this as meaning that if he doesn’t drop the investigation, he’s on his own. Skinner doesn’t respond, so Doggett figures that’s his answer. But just as he’s leaving, Reyes tells him he’s not alone.

Reyes meets Follmer at a bar, where he asks why she’s risking her career to join Doggett’s investigation. She tells him there’s no investigation anymore. Follmer’s surprised that Doggett would give it up so quickly. Reyes says this means she has to go back to New Orleans. The X-Files division is getting dropped along with the investigation. This was Reyes’ dream assignment, and she was happy to be in D.C., so she’s disappointed. I think Follmer wants to give her a memorable goodbye present.

Doggett goes back to Scully’s apartment and asks for her help. She tells him she doesn’t know how to find Mulder (and if she did, she most likely wouldn’t tell Doggett). Doggett asks why Scully all of a sudden thinks she can’t trust him. She begs him to drop it, but Doggett wants to bring the people who tried to kill all of them to justice. He wants to know what she and Mulder are keeping from him. How long can she hide the truth?

Doggett continues that Knowle told him William was the result of a government experiment to create super-soldiers. Scully insists that the baby is totally fine, so there’s no need to go down that road. Doggett hopes she’s right, and doesn’t want to pretend things are fine when they’re not. Scully asks him to leave and never come back. He leaves, but we all know he’ll be back.

He goes home and calls a bunch of his old Marine buddies to ask them for info about Knowle. The last person on the list, Shannon McMahon, is the woman from the bar…and she’s now in the FBI building, passing Reyes as she gets off an elevator. At home, Scully and the baby both nap, the star mobile over William’s bassinet slowly turning in a circle.

In the X-Files office, Reyes breaks a pencil point and goes looking for a new one. There are a bunch stuck in the ceiling, of course. She hears a noise and goes to investigate, seeing the elevator doors as they close behind whoever dropped off an envelope with Wormus’ obituary inside. Scully wakes up to William crying and the mobile turning over his bassinet. Suddenly she’s not so sure about her insistence that the baby is normal.

She calls the X-Files office and tells Doggett that he should probably keep investigating after all. He tells her they never dropped the investigation, and now they have a body to examine. So Scully ends her maternity leave after less than a week and meets Doggett and Reyes at the morgue to discuss Wormus’ death. Skinner somehow gets word and calls Doggett to tell him that the FBI has turned against him, since he’s investigating Kersh. He needs to watch his back. Scully doesn’t see the point in autopsying Wormus’ body, but Doggett disagrees.

He summons the Lone Gunmen to his place; they’re blue because they’re poor and unemployed (I guess this was after their spin-off was canceled?). Langly is literally blue but won’t explain why. The guys hack Wormus’ files but don’t see anything strange, other than Wormus’ obsession with water. At the same time, Scully tells Reyes that water was exactly what killed Wormus – he drowned, that’s all. Reyes is impressed that Scully’s able to do her job in the midst of all the insanity in her life.

Reyes continues that she knows Scully’s afraid that something’s wrong with William. Scully says she can’t let her fears get the better of her, like Wormus’ fears got the better of him. Reyes offers to listen if Scully ever wants to talk. Just then, Scully notices fingerprints on Wormus’ ankle, making her and Reyes think someone may have held him underwater.

Follmer tells Kersh that Doggett has gotten hold of Wormus’ body and is clearly looking into something. He thinks Doggett should be punished for taking things too far. Kersh appreciates Follmer’s disclosure and gives him permission to…well, punish Doggett, I guess. But Follmer says there’s a conflict and can’t do it himself. Kersh doesn’t see why not, since Follmer doesn’t have any personal vendetta against Doggett.

Shannon goes to Scully’s apartment, where Maggie’s looking after William. Shannon lies that she’s one of Scully’s co-workers and would like to leave a note. Maggie would prefer if Shannon just left her name so Maggie can tell Scully to call her. Instead, Shannon just leaves. She goes to the morgue and follows Scully and Reyes as they’re leaving the morgue. Reyes remembers her from the elevator and gets suspicious but warns Scully not to show that they’ve seen Shannon.

The two are intercepted by Follmer, who has Polaroids he wants the women to look at. He takes them back to the morgue, but Wormus’ body isn’t there anymore. Follmer guesses that Doggett moved him somewhere. Reyes says he didn’t and asks Scully to back her up. Instead, Scully just says she needs to get home to William. Follmer tells Reyes that he’s on to her and Doggett, and if he goes down, he’ll take Reyes with him.

Reyes accuses Follmer of sending her Wormus’ obituary to set her and Doggett up. Follmer denies this, but Reyes says she’s on to him and doesn’t appreciate him being territorial. She goes to Doggett’s (Frohike likey), and the Lone Gunmen tell her that Wormus was getting encrypted data from a reclamation plant worker named Roland McFarland (wow, horrible name). The Gunmen don’t know what the data was, but they figure Roland’s probably dead now, too.

Doggett and Skinner, who’s suddenly joined the investigation, go to the plant to search Roland’s office. Doggett finds a bunch of files about something called chloramine. They take the files and run just moments before Follmer arrives with his own search team. We kill, like, an entire minute of the episode watching Skinner and Doggett run around the plant.

They get separated, and when Follmer spots Skinner, he thinks Skinner’s there chasing Doggett. They lose him, since he can hold his breath for a really long time and has decided to hide underwater, in the same tank Shannon came out of. Well, now all the files are wet! Great plan, Doggett! But that’s the least of his problems, since Shannon is also in the water, grabbing his ankle and ready to drown him like she drowned Wormus. To be continued…

Thoughts: Follmer is played by Cary Elwes. Shannon is played by Lucy Lawless.

Imagine going through your life with the last name Wormus.

Scully looks way too put-together for someone with a newborn, especially someone taking care of him alone. Her hairs looks better than mine!

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