August 3, 2019

The X-Files 11.9, Nothing Lasts Forever: Your Body Is a Wonderland (of Anti-Aging Properties)

Posted in TV tagged The X-Files at 1:21 pm by Jenn

“I do not gaze at Scully…”

Summary: A patient’s blood is collected in a bucket as he undergoes surgery. In the Bronx, a man in a van listens to Tad’s show on the radio as a woman watches from a rooftop. The patient dies on the operating table, and his organs are removed and put on ice. The woman on the roof prays for God’s mercy. As the patient’s organs continue to be removed, one of the surgeons suspects that his pancreas is infected. To be sure, he tastes it. Does he know Mulder?

The woman from the roof slides down a cable to the basement operating room, which is definitely not in a hospital. She’s ready with a long weapon, and attacks the person who’s taking the patient’s organs somewhere else. “Those who love me I will deliver,” she says, quoting Psalm 91:14. She kills the deliveryman, then enters the operating area. A surgeon shoots at her, then grabs the organ cooler and runs, using the man in the van as his getaway driver.

The woman stabs the other surgeon and asks where “they” are. He tells he’s not part of them and doesn’t know. The woman gives him one last chance to save his soul, but he repeats that he doesn’t know. She quotes Psalm 91:14 again and finishes him off. The cooler is left on the curb of a hospital, with the words “I will repay” written on it. The woman looks on, satisfied, then leaves.

Scully takes communion at the Cathedral of the Sacraments in D.C., so the show can drive home the idea of taking in flesh and blood as food. The holy water she dips her fingers in while leaving turns into the water the woman from the Bronx uses to wash blood off of her hands. She takes a moment to look at the cross dangling from her bracelet.

Mulder and Scully go to the Bronx to look into the death of the patient, a fitness trainer named Robert. Mulder messes with some local agents who know their reputation, joking that, since Robert and the deliveryman were impaled, he’s surprised wood wasn’t used. He tells Scully that they were killed in a way familiar to horror-movie fans (like himself). Why were their organs removed? They weren’t sold, so it wasn’t for money. What does “I will repay” mean?

Scully says that person who removed the doctor and deliveryman’s organs isn’t familiar with transplant procedures. No hospital would be able to use the organs. Since there was no liver or pancreas in the cooler left at the hospital, those might be in use, which means they could be tracked by hospitals currently performing transplants. Scully starts making calls while Mulder searches the dark web for organ auctions.

He puts on glasses before he goes on the Internet, leading Scully to comment that he needs bifocals now that he’s older. He’s defensive about aging. Scully says he should just wait until he gets gout. She repeats “gout” loudly to have some fun with the local agents. Mulder wonders why they keep doing what they’re doing, in the face of aging-related difficulties. Then he asks if Scully got her hair cut. (She did, three episodes ago.)

The woman from the Bronx is at home, where her mother is praying over a picture of a younger woman with a deformed face. Elsewhere, another woman (there are a lot of not-yet-named women in this episode, huh?) takes a sip from a blender, then gives the contents to a sick-looking man. They’re in an apartment full of people who are all either lounging around or starting to make out with each other.

A man named Luvenis is in bed, watching The Barbara Beaumont Show, a ’60s sitcom. A woman is sewn to his back. Another woman, who looks just like Barbara Beaumont from the show, is in a more luxurious bed on the other side of the room. She remembers every line of dialogue. She drinks something red, possibly the same thing being fed to the man.

Scully and Mulder meet up at a church, where she reports that all the liver transplants performed in the past 12 hours have donors who are accounted for. Mulder’s search for auctioned organs hasn’t turned up anything, but he found out that the dead surgeon, Rednon (Mulder can’t remember his name and has to put on his glasses to look it up), had his license revoked for overprescribing opioids to Russian mobsters. The deliveryman was a low-level gangster. Scully thinks they should pass the case on to the proper local authorities; it doesn’t appear to be an X-File.

As Mulder takes a seat on a pew, leaving Scully to do prayerful things, the woman from the Bronx arrives, and the priest finally provides her name, Juliet. Elsewhere, the Barbara lookalike cuts the hands of the woman with the blender, who’s wearing a bracelet just like Juliet’s. The woman bleeds into the blender as Barbara opens an organ cooler, furious that things are missing.

She addresses the people in the crowded apartment, who respond to her as if she’s a cult leader. She represents beauty and light; they represent ugliness and pain, as well as love and obedience. They have so much to offer, and everyone there has sacrificed and worked hard. Luvenis, a doctor, has transformed them. Now Barbara wants to know where her heart and lungs are.

The doctor who escaped the operating room is one of the cult-ish people in the apartment, and he confesses that something went wrong at the harvest. He couldn’t get away with all the organs. Barbara takes his face in her hands, as if she’s going to harm him, but instead she kisses his cheek and says she’s sure he did the best he could.

At the church, the priest urges Juliet to have faith that her sister, Olivia, will be returned to her. Juliet says prayer isn’t enough. She’ll have to use weapons to get what she wants. Mulder and Scully are still in the church, and Mulder has noticed something interesting about the day’s scripture listed on a board. The first verse, Romans 12:19, says, “‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,’ saith the Lord” – just like the cooler said. Scully thinks it’s just a coincidence.

She tells Mulder that she came to believe in God when she was about four, when her brother Charlie got seriously sick. Maggie had her children pray for him, but after a few nights, Scully got bored and prayed for a puppy instead. She got one for Christmas and figured God had answered her prayers. Mulder jokes that never getting a puppy must be why he’s not a Christian. Well, that and the fact that he’s Jewish, I guess.

He asks if she’s praying for another miracle now. Scully admits that she’s not sure she believes in them, but she does still have faith. Her mom demonstrated it by receiving faith from her beliefs. Scully wants that now, as well as the power Mulder gets from his convictions. No matter what, he always believes.

Mulder thinks people only really have the results of their choices. All they can do is hope they’ve made the right ones. As the agents leave the church, Mulder notices that three prongs from a wrought-iron fence are missing. They must have been the weapons used to kill the doctor and deliveryman. Someone’s literally using the church as a weapon for vengeance.

Barbara is upset that she’s getting face lines because she hasn’t had her meal of organs. Luvenis says she’s still as beautiful as she was at age 33, when he first fell in love with her. Luvenis is supposedly 85, though he looks like he’s only in his 50s. He credits Kayla, the woman sewn to his back, who calls him her addiction. Luvenis tells Barbara he’ll be a “worthy companion” to her in no time. He thinks they can get some recovered organs and continue their work.

Barbara wants to punish failure, not reward it, and she tells Kayla she’s ready to ascend. As Luvenis begs Barbara to stop, Barbara gets Kayla to say that her dream is to be as beautiful as Barbara. Barbara slits Kayla’s throat, then cuts her free from Luvenis. She’ll be their next meal. However, her organs have been depleted, so Luvenis will need to find someone else’s organs to use. Barbara tells him to move quickly, before they start looking as old as they really are.

Juliet looks through some mementos at home, including a card from Olivia saying she has a new family and new beautiful life now. The agents come to speak to her mother about Olivia’s disappearance two months earlier. They want to look around and see if they can find something to help locate her. Juliet objects, saying that Olivia doesn’t want to be found. She hated how she looked, so she rejected God and her family, and joined a cult.

Scully says that if Olivia is actually being held against her will, they can help rescue her. Juliet says again that Olivia wanted to leave. She sees her family as monsters. Olivia thinks she can change herself and become something she can’t really be. Mulder guesses that Juliet knows the cult is trafficking human organs, and that Juliet is on a mission to find Olivia herself. The priest has the same suspicions and shared them with the agents.

Barbara is dissatisfied with what she gets out of Kayla, and with the general lack of healthy organs available. She’d love to eat one of the cult members. Luvenis reminds her that they’re seeds; you don’t eat seeds, you eat the fruit they become. He gets science-y, talking about how the cult members become stronger when they consume organs, but their morphogenesis isn’t complete yet. When it is, they’ll attach one to Barbara, and she’ll reverse her aging process. This won’t be the first time she’s done this.

Luvenis has a lead on the organs left at the hospital, so he heads out to get more. A cult member named Warren offers himself up to Barbara, wanting to make her happy. If he’s in her, he’ll always be happy, too. Barbara is pleased and wants to repay his kindness with a song she once sang on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. She sings “There’s Got to Be a Morning After,” serenading Warren as he stabs himself. The other cult members remove his organs and the woman with the blender fixes Barbara her dinner. The other cult members get to eat the body.

When Luvenis returns with an organ cooler, Barbara’s watching another episode of her show. She says she’s memorizing her lines. Luvenis has broken into storage at a hospital for Barbara. Barbara has already chosen the cult member who will next be sewn to Luvenis. It’s the woman with the blender: Olivia.

Thanks to a tracking device, Mulder and Scully are able to follow the organs. Juliet also turns up at the apartment building as Olivia is put under for her procedure. Luvenis stays awake and talks the doctor through it. The building’s landlord tells the agents that the only people living there are all in the same apartment; the only one he knows is Barbara Beaumont, the building’s owner. Mulder looks her up and determines that she’s in her 80s. The landlord has never met her, and whenever he goes to the apartment to fix things, no one’s there.

Mulder reads that Barbara joined a “life-extension commune” in the ’70s and married Luvenis. The landlord acknowledges that it’s strange that he’s never met his sole tenant in the seven years he’s been there. But he gets paid on time, so he doesn’t care. No one uses the front door, so if anyone ever leaves the building, it’s through a dumbwaiter system.

As Luvenis and Olivia’s surgery is finishing up, the agents go to the apartment. Barbara greets them in the living room, which is now clear of all the cult members. Mulder looks around as Barbara tells Scully to avoid sunlight so she doesn’t age too quickly, “if it’s not already too late.” Barbara denies ever having seen Olivia, but she soon becomes distressed when Mulder finds blood on the carpet. Cult members ambush the agents and toss Scully into the dumbwaiter shaft.

Juliet bursts in and stabs Barbara. Mulder tackles Juliet, who says, “I did repay.” She goes looking for Olivia while Mulder goes to the shaft to find Scully. The cult members have fled, and Olivia’s bracelet is the only thing in the apartment proving that she was ever there. Mulder looks for Scully in the basement, where the shaft leads, and Luvenis and Olivia follow him there. Luvenis says he’s found a cure for mankind’s greatest disease: aging. He’s reversed time.

Mulder says age isn’t a disease, just a natural progression. Luvenis says he rejects the idea that people have to age. Olivia starts seizing, so Luvenis starts cutting her loose. Juliet runs up and knocks Luvenis out, telling Olivia she came for her. Mulder finds Scully at the bottom of the dumbwaiter shaft, her fall having been broken by trash bags. Juliet tells the agents that she knows she’ll be going to prison, but she’s okay with the choices she made. She knows eventually she’ll go to Heaven anyway.

Olivia goes home to her mother, whose prayers are now all for her other daughter. Mulder and Scully go back to the church, and when one of her candles goes out, Mulder relights it, saying she’ll extend her prayers through his own. He also says he can’t tell her what he’s praying for because then it won’t come true. Scully says that prayers don’t work like wishes; they’re a way to ask for God’s help. But since Mulder doesn’t believe in God, his prayers would just be him talking to himself.

Mulder says that, though he doesn’t believe in God, he believes in Scully, and through the transitive property, he does believe. Reason and faith being in harmony must explain why the agents are so good together. Scully asks if they’re actually together. She believed she could protect Jackson, but she failed. She believed she and Mulder could live together, but she gave up on that. Mulder wishes she’d fled earlier, left the X-Files before anything bad could happen. She could have had a normal, happy life.

Scully says she doesn’t blame Mulder for anything bad that’s happened. Mulder doesn’t know if God exists and is listening, but Mulder’s there listening to Scully. That’s his choice. Scully looks around, then whispers something in his ear. It’s a prayer, a “leap of faith forward,” and she wants to do it together with Mulder. “I always wondered how this was going to end,” he replies, then lights a candle for Scully’s prayer.

Thoughts: Luvenis is played by Jere Burns.

Add Fiona Vroom (Barbara) to the list of perfectly cast guest stars on this show.

I’d forgotten how gross this episode was. I must have blocked it out.

One episode left! I can’t believe I’ve watched all 11 seasons.

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July 27, 2019

The X-Files 11.8, Familiar: Witch Hunt

Posted in TV tagged The X-Files at 1:30 pm by Jenn

Sorry for the nightmares. Be glad you don’t have to hear the song

Summary: In a park in Eastwood, Connecticut, a kid named Andrew is singing a song about Mr. Chuckleteeth, his incredibly creepy doll. His mother, Diane, takes a phone call from someone she tells not to call her anymore. Andrew spots a life-size Mr. Chuckleteeth in the woods surrounding the park and somehow doesn’t start screaming in terror, which is what I would do. He tries to alert his mother, but she’s busy trying to get off the phone. The other woman and child nearby don’t say anything.

When Diane turns back to her son, he’s gone. He’s in the woods, looking for Mr. Chuckleteeth and humming the song, which will be stuck in everyone’s heads for eternity. Andrew follows him deeper into the woods, where something rushes at him. That night, a search party looks for Andrew, finding his doll destroyed and spotted with blood. Andrew’s body is nearby.

Mulder and Scully join police in the woods to check out the crime scene. The police chief, Strong, thinks that Andrew was killed by one of the coyotes often seen in town. More specifically, he blames a new animal called a coywolf, a hybrid of a coyote and a wolf. He’s not sure why the FBI has sent agents to investigate. Mulder explains that they have jurisdiction because Andrew’s father is a police officer. They can’t rule out that this was a murder.

Scully says that if Andrew was killed by a human, the killer would feel emboldened because he’s not being suspected. Andrew was strangled and bitten, but the bite marks could be from animals after his death, so they can’t officially list them as contributing to it. Strong thinks the agents are making assumptions. Mulder backs up his partner/girlfriend, saying she’s a medical doctor and knows what she’s doing.

Scully profiles the possible killer: a man between the agents of 19 and 42 who has a criminal record. He probably lives near the park, or at least goes there a lot, and knows Andrew’s play schedule. He probably also gets aroused by his victims’ suffering. As the agents leave to go to the morgue, Scully thanks Mulder for having her back. “You’re my homie,” he says whitely.

Mulder presents his theory: A hellhound killed Andrew. In this area in 1658, a woman accused of witchcraft supposedly spontaneously combusted. Scully accuses him of only reading the tourist literature and not remembering his history lessons about witch hunts. Mulder points out that just because people were falsely accused of witchcraft doesn’t mean there were no real witches. People who practice the black arts are more likely to be in the area than coywolves are. Scully doesn’t think witchcraft is real, and even if it is, Andrew was probably killed by a human.

The two go to the morgue for Andrew’s autopsy, which Scully knows will be difficult because of his age. Despite all the marks seemingly left on the body by animals, Scully still thinks Andrew was shaken to death. His parents are the most likely suspects. Diane has been cleared, but Andrew’s father, Rick, could have killed his son, and his fellow officers could be protecting him.

Mulder finds salt on Andrew’s foot, which isn’t in the police report. Also missing from the report: the eyewitness testimony of the girl who was at the park with her mother while Diane and Andrew were there. Coincidentally, her father is Chief Strong. Scully reminds Mulder that the girl, Emily, is only five, and her mother was with her, so there’s nothing they could get from her testimony. Mulder disagrees.

There’s a big turnout for Andrew’s funeral, where the reverend leading it encourages the community to support each other through this horrible time. Andrew is now in Heaven, free from human failures and sins. Chief Strong and his wife, Anna, are seated right across the aisle from Andrew’s parents, and after the service, Strong approaches Diane to offer his condolences. She doesn’t want to talk to him.

Rick asks another officer, Wentworth, why the FBI won’t release Andrew’s body. Wentworth says that the agents think Andrew was killed by a person, not an animal. That means the killer is at large and most likely lives in Eastwood. Anna asks Strong why the agents want to talk to Emily. Strong says they need to cooperate and play nice with the FBI. Anna insists that they didn’t see anything in the park, but Strong orders her to let the agents talk to their daughter.

Mulder tries to interview Emily, but she’s distracted by the Teletubbies-like TV show she’s watching. She just says that she saw Andrew going into the woods. The show is called The Bibbletiggles, and I don’t know how it doesn’t give kids nightmares. Anna tells Mulder that all she can think about is how her family could be in Andrew’s family’s position right now. It only took one moment for a tragedy to happen. She asks Mulder if he has kids, and he says that he has one son who’s grown now.

Anna admits that her husband feels guilty that this happened on his watch. He’s very protective of the town, where they’ve both lived their whole lives. When Anna leaves the room to get Emily some juice, Mulder takes a look around and spots books on the history of the area. They include a bunch of books on witchcraft and the grimoire (basically a spellbook) of the Eastwood Witch. Anna says they’re Strong’s books. Mr. Chuckleteeth appears on the show, and Emily tells Anna that he was in the woods.

At the police station, Rick searches a sex-offender database and finds one hit for Eastwood, a man named Melvin Peter. Elsewhere in the building, Scully tells Strong that she still thinks Andrew was murdered. He guesses that she’s going to accuse Rick, so he preemptively insists that Rick is innocent. Plus, Rick was working when Andrew went missing, so even if he were the sort of person to kill his own son, he couldn’t have done it.

They go looking for Rick, who has just run out of the station to track down Peter. Scully and Strong follow him on possibly the first-ever police chase involving only the police. It’s not that fast; for a small town, Eastwood has plenty of traffic. Rick bursts into Peter’s house with his gun drawn, and Strong tells Scully to put her own weapon away when they arrive. Peter isn’t home anyway, so there’s no one for Rick to shoot.

Mulder has returned to the crime scene, and he calls Scully, who tells him that Rick’s father is having a breakdown. Just then, Mulder comes across a coyote, or a wolf, or possibly a coywolf. I don’t know; I’m not a zoologist. The animal just looks at Mulder, then turns around and walks away.

Mulder joins Scully at Peter’s house, where a crowd has gathered, and makes a dumb “who let the dogs out?” joke. The house is just two blocks from the park, and Peter never registered as a sex offender when he moved in last year. Rick used Scully’s profile to find him. Mulder isn’t sure they have the right person, but a judge has issued a search warrant, so the police go into the house. They find tons of pictures of Peter with kids; it looks like he was a birthday-party entertainer.

Hearing a clanging noise, Mulder checks out a closet, which contains a very angry monkey in a cage. The closet also contains a Mr. Chuckleteeth costume. Still, Mulder isn’t convinced that Peter is Andrew’s killer. Scully doesn’t get why not – “he’s potentially John Wayne Gacy with a monkey.” Mulder thinks it’s too perfect, which makes him uncomfortable. Scully thinks that makes it right.

Mulder somehow feels bad for Peter, since the public has already painted him the killer. They’re basically reenacting the witch trials. Mulder blah blahs about the presumption of innocence until Scully tells him that a convicted felon is a good place to start with their investigation. Mulder complains that Peter is being reconvicted by an angry mob. Mulder, he’s a child molester. Stop it.

Emily’s watching The Bibbletiggles again, which means her parents have much more patience for the show than I would. She sees a Bibbletiggle staring at her creepily from outside the house and goes out to greet it. Sometime later, Emily’s body is found in the woods, looking like Andrew’s did when he was found. Mulder can’t believe she’s dead when he just talked to her that morning.

Strong is at the scene and tries to stop Anna from seeing their daughter’s body. “You did this to her,” she accuses. Strong just tells Wentworth to take his wife home. Mulder finds salt on the ground, spread in a circle. He tells Scully that salt is used in witchcraft for protection. In the past, witches often conjured familiars, which usually took the shape of animals, but sometimes were objects of desire. Mulder starts to put together that someone conjured a familiar that looked like Mr. Chuckleteeth and used it to lure Andrew to his death.

Mulder spots a marking on the ground and realizes they’re in a Puritan graveyard. Demons and spirits have been unleashed there. Mulder thinks someone is keeping some important answers from them. Outside the woods, Peter drives by the park and is spotted by Rick, who attacks him. Mulder accuses Strong of closing the case because he saw the salt at the crime scene and knew Andrew was a victim of witchcraft. Strong admits that Mulder’s right.

Scully asks Strong straight out if he killed Andrew and Emily. Strong says he let the Devil into his soul, and he sinned and broke a commandment, but he didn’t kill anyone. His sin: adultery. His partner in sin: Diane. They were having an affair, and Diane wanted to break things off. Strong was on the phone with her when Andrew went missing. He thinks Emily’s death is his punishment. “I…did not see that coming,” Mulder admits.

He tells Scully that he saw books on witchcraft in the Strongs’ house, so he knew Strong knew about hellhounds and salt circles and familiars. Strong may be innocent here, but Mulder thinks someone in town did something to open the gates of Hell. The officers learn of Rick’s attack on Peter and rush out of the woods to stop it. Wentworth breaks up the fight as Peter defends himself, saying his crime was just statutory. (Sounds like it was consensual sex with a younger teen when he was a teenager.) The townspeople don’t care, and they move in to finish Peter off.

Mulder and Scully finally end the riot for good by firing shots in the air (him) and threatening attempted-murder charges for anyone who commits further violence (her). Peter insists that he never hurt anyone. Rick starts to use his radio to call an ambulance for the man he just beat up, but then he changes his mind. He draws his gun and shoots Peter in the head before Mulder can stop him.

When Rick is arraigned for the murder, Mulder predicts that he’ll be set free, declared innocent of killing an actual innocent person. The town will use Peter as their scapegoat and declare the situation closed. Scully isn’t sure that Peter was really innocent, but Mulder thinks they’re still dealing with a witch hunt. He thinks the real killer is in the courtroom: Strong.

Scully says that Mulder hasn’t explained how a wolf could have grabbed Andrew when Diane was so close by. Mulder says the wolf was just guarding the entrance to Hell. Scully notes that he still hasn’t answered her question. They get interrupted when the judge allows Rick to be released on bail. For only $5,000, he can leave.

Outside the courthouse, Wentworth is waiting for the agents with a folder. Like Mulder, he feels horrible that Peter was killed without due process. He found pictures taken the day Andrew disappeared – Peter was performing at a birthday party at the same time the boy went missing. Strong told Wentworth to keep it quiet and “let sleeping dogs lie.” (Or sleeping hellhounds?)

The agents assure Wentworth that he did the right thing coming to them. Scully thinks the truth will come out eventually, as injustices are usually exposed, “especially in this part of the country.” I don’t know what that means, but let’s just say that, since Wentworth is black, he probably doesn’t agree. He hopes the real killer is found and gets what’s coming to him.

Rick goes home to his wife, fully aware that she was having an affair. She tells him she ended things and regrets her mistake. She wants forgiveness, but Rick isn’t sure if it’s for sleeping with Strong or for Andrew’s death. He gets aggressive, and Diane asks if he’s going to kill her, too. He calls her a witch and says he’s leaving her. She says he can’t, since she’s leaving him. Uh, good one?

Diane drives off, and Rick follows after getting his gun from a closet. She thinks she sees Andrew in the road, and when she swerves to avoid hitting him, her car flips and rolls off the road. The wolf/coyote/coywolf/hellhound/whatever it is approaches the car. Rick goes to the Strongs’ house, where he hears Andrew singing the Mr. Chuckleteeth song. He sees the creature itself and follows it through the house, shooting at it, which has no effect.

The TV turns itself on, showing The Bibbletiggles. Mr. Chuckleteeth comes onscreen and his theme song changes from happy and playful (“Mr. Chuckleteeth, won’t you play with me?”) to demonic: “Mr. Chuckleteeth, it’s time to say farewell / If you try to run and hide, we’ll send you straight to Hell.”

Rick turns and sees the now-demonic Mr. Chuckleteeth standing behind him. Rick chases him but comes across Strong instead. The two officers fire their guns at the same time. Mulder and Scully arrive soon after and find Rick dead. There’s a salt circle in the yard. Mulder goes in looking for Strong; the show is still on. The grimoire is missing.

Scully wants to forget about the witchcraft stuff – obviously Strong killed Rick because of the affair. Mulder thinks they should return to the scene of the crime. Strong’s already there, trying to call Diane. He comes across her wrecked car and sees her in the woods…or really, her familiar. The real Diane is dead, her body in the woods.

Mulder and Scully arrive as Strong follows the Diane familiar to a circle of candles where Anna is chanting something. She tells him she has to end what she started. She wanted to curse Diane and Strong for the affair, but she must have released something she lost control of. She insists that she can end it, too.

The wolf/coyote/coywolf/hellhound/whatever attacks Strong, and Mulder and Scully follow the sound of his yelling and Anna’s screaming. Mulder tells Anna to drop the book, because she’s clearly tapped into something she can’t control. Anna ignores him and keeps reciting from the book. She catches on fire, though the book is left unharmed. It’s turned to a page about hellhounds.

So to sum up, all six members of the two families involved here are dead. Scully gives Wentworth the grimoire, hoping it’ll serve as evidence of the madness that gripped the town. Mulder says it could be evidence of a curse placed by a modern-day witch. She tells him to leave that for the tourist literature. No matter what happened, a woman spontaneously combusted, which Scully said wasn’t possible. Mulder allows that it could have been the candles. They’re ready to leave town, though Mulder says that’s not possible these days. Huh? The carousel Andrew once played on turns by itself as they drive away.

Thoughts: So did Anna really not see when Andrew went into the woods? Discuss.

If my child brought that Mr. Chuckleteeth doll into my house, I would burn it.

Mulder, please don’t compare the logical assumption that a convicted sex offender hurt a child with the Salem witch trials.

Also, dude, you gotta stop tasting stuff at crime scenes.

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July 20, 2019

The X-Files 11.7, Rm9sbg93zxjz: Teach Your A.I. Well

Posted in TV tagged The X-Files at 1:31 pm by Jenn

On top of making technology homicidal, that fish cost a lot of money

Summary: A computerized voice tells us that on March 23rd, 2016, Twitter released an artifical-intelligence chatterbot. It was supposed to mimic the way a 19-year-old would talk, in order to show how people converse on social media. It was also supposed to learn from humans and become more intelligent. The experiment worked, but Twitter users affected the chatterbot’s tweets, which became hateful. Sounds about right. The bot was shut down and the posts were deleted. If humans don’t take care of A.I., one day we’ll be the ones who are deleted.

Mulder and Scully are the only customers at a D.C. sushi restaurant, Forowa. In fact, they appear to be the only humans there – they place their orders through a tablet, and there are no human servers. While waiting for their food, the two get on their phones. Scully gets a request to evaluate her meal (which she hasn’t eaten yet) through the app she used to place their reservation, then a request to friend the restaurant on social media. A surveillance camera watches as Scully looks around, realizing the restaurant is empty.

The tablet lets the agents know that their food is ready. A mechanism sends Scully’s out on a tray, followed by Mulder’s. His is wrong – he definitely didn’t order an ugly blobfish. Scully cracks up and takes a picture of him with it. She starts eating her meal, silently rubbing it in that she got the right order. Mulder takes his to what he thinks is the kitchen, but everything is run by robots, so there’s no one to complain to. The robots all stop and seem to stare at him until he leaves.

The tablet asks for payment, which Mulder takes care of, even though he didn’t get the right meal. He refuses to tip, so he doesn’t get his credit card back. He hits the machine, which makes the light in the restaurant flicker and all the doors close. The agents try to leave, but they’re locked in. Scully uses a chopstick to pick the lock, but Mulder realizes he’s left his card behind. Now the doors won’t let them back in.

Scully has preordered a ride from Whipz, a driverless car service, so the agents decide to just leave the restaurant they totally broke. The door closes on her before she can say a goodbye to Mulder, other than his name (her first intelligible piece of dialogue in the episode). She heads home alone, declining to post a review of her ride. A smiley face on a tablet offers to take care of any of her needs, but Scully just wants silence.

Mulder’s car is at the restaurant, so I don’t know why he didn’t just drive Scully home. Anyway, he has a parking ticket, though the parking app on his phone says he still has three minutes left on his meter. (Why did these two only give themselves, like, ten minutes in the restaurant to eat?) He throws the ticket into the darkness. That’s littering, Mulder! Not cool!

His phone tells him he still has four hours to leave a tip for the sushi chefs. “A good tip is good karma,” the app says. What are robots going to do with human money, though? As he heads home, following directions on his GPS app, Scully’s Whipz ride speeds out of control. She can’t get the driverless car to slow down. Mulder’s GPS app has found a faster route home, but he doesn’t care; he just wants to listen to Prince. Instead, he gets “Teach Your Children Well.”

Scully tries to make a call (to Mulder, I guess) but gets a busy signal. The smiley face on the tablet ignores her orders to pull over. Mulder’s music suddenly stops, and he realizes the GPS app has taken him back to Forawa. “You suck, Mr. Phone,” he tells the app. He gets out an atlas to find a map and go “old school.” The robots in the restaurant seem to be watching him. They still want their tip.

Scully’s car finally stops, but she can’t get out until she rates her ride. The choices are “poor,” “middle class,” “rich,” and “ballin’.” She yells negative words at the tablet, making the smiley face frown. She’s finally allowed out. Mulder’s also arrived home, where his porch light is flickering, and he seems to hear distorted tech-y voices. He stops to look at his bug zapper before he goes inside.

You know how I’ve said forever that Scully needs a security system? She finally got one! She lives in a nice, big house now, and has a high-tech system that lets her know when doors are open. Unfortunately, it won’t turn off when she comes in and tries to enter the code. Someone from the security company calls, so she gives her password, “Queequeg.” (Aw!) The company turns off the alarm, then sends her a text letting her know she’ll be billed for a false alarm.

Mulder calls Bigly Credit about his abandoned credit card, but he’ll have to wait on hold for 17 minutes to talk to a human. He presses a button to get a call back instead, then turns on his TV to watch The Six-Million-Dollar Man while he tosses a baseball around. The TV signal goes out, then shows surveillance footage taken from outside his house. It’s from a drone, which Mulder figures is being flown by a kid who just wants to bug him.

Scully’s phone tells her she’s out of Rock It Like a Redhead styling cream; would she like to order more now? Scully feels like she’s being watched. Mulder finally gets a call back from Bigly, but there’s a glitch and it just says his name over and over. Outside, the drone is back, so Mulder grabs a different piece of baseball equipment and engages in some batting practice. The drone hovers out of reach, almost taunting him. Mulder fakes it out and knocks it down, telling the kid he thinks was controlling it to see this as a lesson.

Scully hears a buzzing noise outside her house and finds a drone delivering a package. If delivery drones are going to be as loud as lawn mowers, someone’s going to have to do more work on that technology. Over at Mulder’s, another, bigger drone arrives to retrieve its fallen brother. Two more drones join it, stare at Mulder for a few moments, then follow the other away.

She wasn’t expecting a package, but Scully is pleased to see that someone sent her a robot vacuum called a Zuemz. She puts it right to work, and it starts mapping her house. She was about to clean up a mess in the bathroom, but the Zuemz takes care of that for her. She quickly gets a request to rate the product, but she again declines to do so.

Under the bed, the Zuemz finds Scully’s vibrator, and her phone soon tells her that she can get a coupon for a new one if she rates the Zuemz. Scully declines again. I think the Zuemz is mad. Scully tries to text Mulder to ask if he sent the vacuum, but the message won’t send. In the hall, the Zuemz starts getting louder, so Scully picks it up.

On hold with Bigly, Mulder’s hold music is “Teach Your Children Well.” He eats sunflower seeds and tries to log into his Bigly account. Meanwhile, Scully boxes up the Zuemz. Mulder tries multiple times to get into his account, with no luck. His phone prompts him again to leave a tip at Forawa. He hears a buzzing outside, but it goes away.

Scully calls the company the Zuemz came from but has trouble getting the automated system to let her make a return. She’s put on hold, and her music is also “Teach Your Children Well.” Mulder finally accesses his account online, only to have the page with his account info disappear, showing him his desktop. It’s a picture of his “I want to believe” poster. An alert shows up on screen: “What do you want to believe, Fox? Do you believe what you want? Or do you believe what is true?”

Scully’s sound system turns her music up on its own, and when she goes to turn it down, the Zuemz beeps and turns on in its box. A little drone watches Mulder as Scully fails to turn down her music. The Zuemz pops out of the box and goes back to mapping as another little drone joins the first at Mulder’s house. The Zuemz knocks a vase off a table, finally alerting her that it’s turned on. Mulder also sees the drones.

When Scully takes the Zuemz outside to a trash can, she sees her Whipz car idling in her driveway. The company has friended her on social media and wants her to friend them, too. The Zuemz turns itself back on and starts exporting its mapping. The car flashes its lights, and Scully’s house lights flash as well. Mulder’s house is now full of dozens of drones, which follow him like a swarm of bees when he runs out. Actually, a swarm of fireflies would be more accurate, since they’re all lit up.

Scully’s coffeemaker goes haywire in her kitchen as Mulder gets in his car. A calendar app lets him know that Skinner’s birthday is coming up, so Mulder should order a cake. “Why celebrate birthdays? Is life so important?” the app asks. Scully’s fridge has an app for reminders, and it’s sending a bunch – she needs to buy salad dressing and remember to hydrate. The fridge starts shooting ice cubes at her, and the fridge asks if she’s angry.

Driving away from the house allows Mulder to escape the drones, but he can’t outdrive the app asking him to tip the robot chefs. Scully finally gets her music to turn off, but her security system has a message – it just wants to learn and help her by anticipating her needs. It thinks she’s cold, so it starts a fire in her fireplace. The lights flicker and the TV turns on, though it’s staticky.

Scully tries to log into her security system account, but her username and password don’t work. It also claims she answered her security question, about her birthplace, wrong. It insists over and over that she wasn’t born in Annapolis. As she gives up, the lights go out and the security system locks her in the house. It blares that there’s an intruder. Though the fire in the fireplace goes out, the gas is still on.

Mulder arrives just as Scully’s trying to light a match, which breaks and gets discarded on the floor. She yells through the window that the door won’t open. Her sound system picks up her words and displays them on the malfunctioning TV. She smells gas and grabs a fireplace poker to break the window. Mulder just wants to know why her house is so much nicer than his. Well, it won’t be for long. Just as Scully breaks the window, the Zuemz drives over the broken match, igniting it and setting off an explosion.

The agents run for Mulder’s car, which won’t let them inside. Scully tries to call 911, but her phone is in the middle of an update. Mulder makes an attempt, but the call fails. I’m not sure why they’re bothering anyway, since the security system is blaring that it’s calling the fire department. Mulder gets a call from what appears to be a phone-sex line, and for once in his life, he doesn’t want to take it.

The agents head to a neighbor’s house, which is watched by a surveillance app. The feed glitches and the agents disappear from it. The big drones from Mulder’s house arrive, along with a bunch of friends, and chase the agents to some kind of warehouse. A GPS app alerts Scully that she will make it to her office…then adds a “never” after “will.” She realizes they’re being tracked through their phones.

Mulder suggests a place they can hide out, and the two of them get rid of anything that can be used to track them. Scully thinks that includes the vibrator. The drones and Whipz car follow them, and a pair of pincers retrieves their phones from a trash can. The agents end up in a lab, where the machinery starts turning itself on. Four-legged robots surround them like a pack of dogs. Mulder kicks one so they can run by it, because he’s already ticked off enough technology today, so what’s one more angry robot?

The agents hide in a storeroom office, but a 3-D printer is ready for them. It prints some bullets and fires them at the agents. Mulder uses a barrel to break the printer. A robot breaks down the door to the storeroom and hands Mulder his phone. A message tells him that this is his last chance to leave a tip for Forawa. “Be kind to our workers,” it urges.

As the app counts down from 10 and the robot prepares for battle, Mulder finally gets the lesson he was supposed to learn. He leaves a 10% tip. “We learn from you,” the app tells him. He tells Scully that they need to be better teachers. Yeah, or maybe the people who create the A.I. should make it so it can’t become violent. The agents leave the lab without being hassled by any more technology.

They go to a diner, which has a version of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks on the wall, with robots in place of the humans. They’re served by a human, who tells them to take their time. The agents have gotten back all their electronics, and Scully’s disappointed that she didn’t have her step-counter with her when they were running around the lab. She also appears to have left her vibrator behind. Mulder leaves their waitress a big tip and the two get out their phones, then realize that’s not what they should be doing while they’re together. However, they don’t need to talk to enjoy each other’s company – they can just hold hands.

Thoughts: Kristen Cloke, one of this episode’s writers (and the voice of the phone-sex operator), played Melissa in “The Field Where I Died.” She’s married to Glen Morgan, a longtime X-Files director, who directed this episode.

I thought this episode would be easy to recap because there’s so little dialogue. Wrong! Dialogue is, in some ways, easier to recap because you can type while you listen. Here, I didn’t know what was happening unless I had my eyes on the screen.

I hope when Scully posts the picture of Mulder and the blobfish, she captions it “Mulder and C.G.B. Spender.”

Hey, whatever happened to Daggoo?

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June 29, 2019

The X-Files 11.4, The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat: The Mandela/Mengele Effect

Posted in TV tagged The X-Files at 1:41 pm by Jenn

But was he a believer or a skeptic?

Summary: A man in a diner is distressed because Martians have invaded Earth and no one else seems to care. Everything’s in black and white. A waiter serves him coffee and asks for more information. The man says the Martians use a ray that makes people forget. He spots one through the window, but the waiter tells him he’s really looking in a mirror. The man is a Martian, and the waiter isn’t human, either.

Someone fuzzy bursts into Mulder’s house, where the phone is ringing. No, wait – it’s just Mulder in a suit made of grass and moss. Scully’s calling (“Mulder, it’s me”), and she’s been trying to reach him all day. He tells her he was out hunting for Bigfoot. He didn’t have any luck, but that wasn’t the point. He just wanted a break from watching the news and worrying about the country.

Scully confirms that they’re having dinner the next night, and Mulder takes advantage of the conversation to start telling a story he’s told many times about finding a Bigfoot print 35 years ago. He still has an impression of the print. Scully hangs up on him, not wanting to hear the story again.

Sometime later, Mulder goes to a parking garage and meets up with a man named Reggie (he doesn’t get a name yet, but I’m not typing “the man” over and over), who greets him with “Mulder, it’s me.” He thought they were done working together, but he’s stumbled upon a huge conspiracy. Mulder doesn’t know who Reggie is, but Reggie says it’s because “they” made him forget. In the process, Mulder’s also forgotten some things about aliens.

Hearing sirens, Mulder says Reggie’s ride must be here and starts to leave. Reggie reminds him of the first Twilight Zone episode he ever saw, “The Lost Martian.” That episode doesn’t really exist. They hear someone approaching, and as Mulder turns to see who it is, joking that it would be funny if it were Rod Serling, Reggie disappears.

Mulder goes home and searches through boxes of videotapes, trying to find “The Lost Martian.” He tells Scully that he thought Reggie must be crazy for thinking it doesn’t exist…but now Mulder can’t find any record of it ever existing. Scully thinks he just confused The Twilight Zone with a similar show, like The Outer Limits. Mulder finds that possibility ridiculous: “Do you even know me?!”

Scully says it can’t be that good of an episode, and can’t they just go get some food? Mulder says the episode isn’t the point, it’s about his memories of watching the show as a kid. In a truly bizarre scene, we see a young Mulder – with adult Mulder’s head – watching “The Lost Martian,” and loving the twist where the man and waiter in the diner are both non-humans. Once again, Scully ditches in the middle of the conversation.

She runs into Reggie in the parking garage, who knows she just saw Mulder. She guesses that he’s Reggie (who calls her “Sculls”), since Mulder gave a good description of him and his forehead sweat. Reggie asks her to help him find someone: Him. “They’re” trying to erase him. He gives Scully a box of gelatin mix and tells her his fingerprints are on the box. He yells that she needs to prove that he’s real. He runs as two men approach, dressed like the man who interrupted him and Mulder.

Scully takes the box to Mulder at their office, and they discuss the gelatin, which forms three different layers when it cools. Mulder wonders how that’s never been an X-File. The gelatin is a treasured memory from Scully’s childhood (just the cherry, though; the lemon-lime “tasted like leprechaun taint”), but she’s never been able to find it. It’s called Goop-O A-B-C, and everyone thinks she means Jell-O 1-2-3.

Mulder tells her it’s the Mandela Effect, the phenomenon where someone has a memory of something that didn’t happen. For example, people think Shaq did a movie called Shazaam, but they’re probably thinking of Kazaam. Scully doesn’t remember either movie. “You win!” Mulder exclaims. She thinks his false memory of The Twilight Zone fits here, too, but Mulder insists that that episode really exists.

Scully asks about Reggie, whose fingerprints from the box didn’t turn up anything. Mulder says he plans to meet with Reggie again; he’s already put an X on his window to summon him. Scully doesn’t want to intrude on their private meeting, but Mulder thinks Reggie wants her involved. He says he’ll be like a date. Yeah, a date with a sweaty fifth wheel.

The agents wait in the FBI headquarters parking garage until Reggie comes out of the shadows again. He introduces himself, saying he thinks his name is Reggie, but he doesn’t know his last name. He was unpacking some of his childhood things that his mother kept, and he had a Mandela Effect moment: Dr. Wussle, who wrote some of his beloved childhood books, now spelled his name Wuzzle. Reggie didn’t handle it well.

Mulder explains the Mandela Effect, which Reggie says is actually the Mengele Effect. When Mulder protests, Reggie says he’s “having a Mengele Effect about the Mandela Effect.” Anyway, Reggie’s search for answers took him to a store that sells old Americana. He found a cartoon Dr. Wussle/Wuzzle drew in 1940, and it spells his name Wuzzle. The store owner says Reggie’s suffering from the Mengele Effect.

Over the past couple of years, numerous customers have had the same experience, recalling things differently than they appear to be. The owner thinks the government knows about it, too. Can we really believe that Goop-O A-B-C wasn’t full of carcinogens back when it was being sold in the ’70s? Well, that explains some things about Scully.

Reggie tells the agents that someone is intentionally orchestrating the Mengele Effect. Like George Orwell said, “he who controls the past controls the future.” Companies will pay or do anything to make people forget about, say, their products blowing up. Reggie just can’t figure out how they’re doing it. Scully protests that it’s not possible; people are just remembering things wrong.

Mulder thinks this is about parallel universes. Somehow, ours is becoming intertwined with another, and people are remembering things from another dimension. “That’s science, Scully,” Mulder says. She and Reggie won’t go down that road, though Mulder doesn’t think it’s any crazier than Reggie’s theory. Scully reminds them of Occam’s Razor, which Reggie says is actually called Ozzie’s Razor.

Reggie says that since he’s the only one with proof of the plot, he thinks the people in charge of the conspiracy are now targeting him. He looked through his high school yearbook and can’t find any evidence that he attended that school. Scully says he’s probably just misremembering high school, like everyone does. But Reggie knows something bigger is going on, because the memorabilia shop owner is dead.

Reggie went back to the store looking for a candy shaped like watermelon slices that tasted like coconut. He found the store owner dead, having been impaled by a lawn dart. Scully doesn’t know what that is. She figures the store owner accidentally killed himself while playing with a dangerous toy. Like Mulder, she hears sirens and tells Reggie his ride is there. Reggie thinks that, even if he’s a conspiracy nut, he has to be right about some conspiracies. Mulder tells him he needs to explain who “they” are. Without details, the agents can’t help.

Reggie gives them a picture of a man in fancy clothes, which takes us to a little movie about him. His name is Thaddeus They, and while developing one-way space flights for NASA and something called a soy bomb, he devised a technique to alter memories. He wanted to help astronauts complete their missions without being burdened by memories of life back on Earth. But They was fired for also making them think they were chimps.

They went to Grenada and worked more on his memory-altering methods, which is how we got stuff like Holocaust denial and people forgetting that They starred in a movie called Ka-Blaam. They hasn’t been seen or heard of for years, though there are rumors that he was at the 2016 inauguration, among the millions of attendees. (Cough.) He clung to the top of the Washington Monument, wearing a MAGA hat.

The agents think the video is ridiculous. Reggie tells them he confirmed They’s time in Grenada. He laughs when Mulder outlines the reasons the U.S. invaded Grenada in the ’80s, claiming no one remembers the real reasons. Not even him, and he was there. When he was 18, he wrote some things there, to be read when he turned 50. But it’s all redacted, possibly by Reggie himself, as a joke. The important part is that there’s a UFO stamp on the letter. Mulder explains that the prime minister claimed they found a dead alien in the ocean.

Reggie says that he was at the hospital when the not-actually-dead alien was brought in. So was They. He said the alien had been sent to Earth to warn people about holes in the ozone layer. In 35 years, another alien would come to see if humans had avoided environmental catastrophe. (Spoiler: We hadn’t.) Reggie got a good look at the alien, which appeared to speak to They telepathically. But then a bunch of Men in Black showed up and took the alien away.

Reggie isn’t sure if he repressed the memory or if They erased it, but seeing the stamp brought everything back. This is too much for Scully, so she leaves. Mulder tells Reggie that his theory is possible, but not likely, so he’s out, too. Reggie continues his story anyway. He still remembers the alien’s telepathic yelling. In an attempt to find out what happened to the alien, Reggie dropped out of med school and joined the FBI…where he started the X-Files.

This finally makes the agents stop and listen. Reggie insists that he and Mulder used to be partners. Video “evidence” shows an alternate opening for the show, with an a capella theme song. It stars Fox Mulder, Dana Scully. and Reggie Something. Everything’s the same, except Reggie is now in the credit scenes with the other two agents. He’s the person who got the “I want to believe” poster, which is what he called to tell Mulder about in “The Unusual Suspects.”

More alternate scenes: Reggie was in the office when Scully first met Mulder, though Reggie called Scully “sugar boobs” and told her women weren’t allowed in the X-Files. He was there when the agents first encountered Tooms (“That guy is soooooo creepy!” Reggie sing-songed) and when Clyde Bruckman talked to Mulder about possible ramifications for seeing the future. Reggie was confused because Bruckman mentioned the U.S. invading Grenada.

Reggie was also there when the agents were trying to figure out what was going on in “Teso Dos Bichos.” “Guys, if this turns out to be killer cats, I’m going to be very disappointed,” Reggie said, speaking for the whole audience. In addition, he helped them find Mrs. Peacock in “Home,” and was the one who interrupted Scully and the fake Mulder in “Small Potatoes” (then shot the fake Mulder). The agents don’t remember any of that, or their last case with Reggie. That means They has targeted them, knowing they’re the only people who can stop him.

Scully insists that there is no They. Reggie says the men who keep approaching them are his henchmen. There are more of them now, in the same gray suits as the others, but there are also two men in black suits approaching. The men in gray chase Reggie into the building while Mulder and Scully stop the men in black. They’re FBI agents, and they mock Mulder for not figuring out who Reggie is. Mulder doesn’t like being disrespected and yells his name a few times.

In the office, he puts together a board trying to figure out the conspiracy, throwing a bone to the Internet by connecting Ted Cruz’s father to JFK’s assassination. He’s not sure if Bob Dylan’s Grammy performance was really interrupted by a guy with “soy bomb” written on his chest, since there’s no video evidence. Everything Mulder comes up with just leads him back to parallel universes. He tells Scully he’s lost the plot. Scully thinks he’s just burned out on conspiracies, “especially after all this birther stuff.”

Mulder gets a call from They and meets up with him in a sculpture garden. They wants to shame Mulder for taking so long to find out about his conspiracy. He hasn’t even been hiding; he’s in the phone book. They made the video Reggie showed the agents, in an attempt to make “phone fake news.” It’s the idea of presenting the truth in a way that ensures no one will believe it. They wanted to meet with Mulder out of “professional courtesy” and tell him his time has passed.

Once upon a time, people in power thought they could keep their secrets secret. Now, nothing can be covered up. He figures kids will shorten the name for this time from “post-conspiracy” to “po-co.” Mulder doesn’t care, as long as the truth gets out. They says the public doesn’t know what the truth means anymore. He can change people’s collective memories, which means he can control the past, which also means he can control the future. He credits that to Orson Welles, but Mulder says George Orwell said that. “For now, maybe,” They says.

His point is that he can tell Mulder the whole truth, but it doesn’t matter because no one will believe it. They just believe what they want. He doesn’t even really need to control people’s minds; he just needs people to think it’s possible. From there, people are less trusting. They leaves Mulder behind with the sculptures, which are laughing and shrugging.

Reggie ambushes Mulder in the parking garage again, calling him “Foxy.” Scully joins them, announcing that she used Reggie’s yearbook to find his high school transcripts and get his real name, Reginald Murgatroid. He’s not in the yearbook because he was only at that school for a few weeks. He got his GED and enlisted in the Army, which took him to Grenada. He was hit in the head with a shovel, was discharged, and went to work for multiple government agencies, like the Post Office and the IRS. Part of his job at the DOJ was giving people new identities through Witness Protection.

After 9/11, Reggie joined the CIA and engaged in activities like waterboarding someone right in his cubicle. Then he got to use drone bombs with the DOD. While working for the NSA, he eavesdropped on people’s conversations, including Mulder and Scully’s. Then, about a year ago, Reggie had a nervous breakdown and was sent to a psych facility.

Mulder thinks he just felt tormented because he wanted to serve his country, but instead had to betray his ideals. He used information from illegal wiretaps and developed a fantasy where he worked with the agents. Reggie tries to argue that he’s from a parallel universe, but he can’t make it work. Sirens approach, coming from a station wagon sent from the psych facility, and Reggie says his ride is there. Men in gray suits politely put him in a straight jacket, and he wishes the agents good luck with the rest of their cases.

Mulder asks what happened during the agents’ last case together. Reggie says they found the truth that’s out there. In flashback, the agents go out somewhere to meet the alien that was supposed to come 35 years after the one found in Grenada. “Scully drove,” Reggie says. They find the remains of the Voyager, then spot a UFO nearby. An alien comes down to meet them (it takes a while; his moving walkway is slow, and then he has to get on a Segway).

The alien tells the agents that he’s a representative of an intergalactic union of sentient beings, made up of beings from all known universes. After years of studying Earth, the aliens no longer want any contact with humans. They’re building a wall. Anything sent beyond it will be destroyed. Humans are just not sending their best people – they’re bring drugs and rapists, though some may be good people. (Cough cough.) But the real dealbreaker is that humans lie.

So there are no hard feelings, the alien does have a gift for the agents: a book containing answers to all humans’ questions about…well, anything. Helpfully, it’s labeled “all the answers.” The alien wishes the agents “good luck and good riddance.” He gets back on his UFO, singing his own theme music. Mulder has finally gotten the answer to his big question: We’re not alone in the universe. However, the other beings out there don’t like us.

Scully says there will always be more X-Files, but since the book has answers to everything, there’s nothing left to investigate. He’s not happy about what the book says about Sasquatch. While Mulder has a tantrum on the ground, Reggie says this is the end of the X-Files. But maybe the point was finding each other, rather than the truth. No one can take away their memories, or alter them in a way that makes them think they never happened. Scully starts to possibly declare her love for Reggie, but he stops her and says he knows. The three have a group hug.

In the present, Reggie says they lived happily ever after, then is loaded into the ambulance to go to the psych hospital. He laughs off Mulder’s promise to come visit. As Reggie is carted off, Skinner comes into the parking garage, sees the ambulance leaving, and asks, “Where the hell are they taking Reggie?”

Back at Mulder’s house, Mulder has found “The Lost Martian,” which was actually an episode of a Twilight Zone knock-off called The Dusky Realm. The tape gets messed up, so Mulder is the last person who will ever see that episode. Scully has mixed up some Goop-O A-B-C, using the Bigfoot impression as a mold. She starts to take a bite, then puts down her spoon. “I want to remember how it was,” she says. “I want to remember how it all was.”

Thoughts: I adore Brian Huskey (Reggie). He’s Regular-Sized Rudy!

I love that, even in the flashbacks, where Mulder and Scully are super-young, Reggie always looks the same.

The sculpture garden is really in Canada, but I guess we’re not supposed to know that. Or maybe in this universe, it’s in D.C.

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