We're three episodes into The X-Files revival already and this week's episode is arguably the most quirky of the bunch. We started with mythology, then dipped into some horror with a splash of mytharc, then took a hard right turn into the weird, wonderful world of Darin Morgan. He's known for some of the most off-the-wall and most beloved episodes like "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" and "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." Does "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" rise to the level of Morgan's other work? Find out what we think after the jump. And as always, from this point on there be spoilers!
“Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” begins like a classic X-Files episode: in the dark, moonlit woods of Oregon. What nefarious creatures hide in the shadows? What spooky beings are just out of sight? Well, remember those two stoners that licked a frog in “Quagmire”? Yeah, it’s just them, and they’re huffing spray paint, too. They’ve come such a long way.
Their faces covered in gold spray paint, they hear a noise in the bushes behind them. They peer through the trees to see a giant lizard-like man attacking an animal control officer (Kumail Nanjiani). Seeing them, the monster is frightened and runs off, leaving the stoners to check on the officer. However, Officer Pasha isn’t the only one hurt. Off to the side is a dead body with its throat gnawed off, the monster’s apparent other victim.
Settling back into the X-Files office, we find Mulder having apparently run out ceiling space for his pencils. Instead, he’s throwing them into his new “I Want to Believe” poster, one which Scully had to buy after Mulder destroyed the one on the office floor in “My Struggle” (even though Doggett and Reyes saved the poster in “The Truth”, and technically it shouldn’t have been there, but it was a nice visual, so it’s fine).
We already know that Mulder has been severely depressed since we last saw him in IWTB. The 2012 date came and went. The Truth he has been searching for has never been truly revealed, and all the spooky stories and crazy theories that used to drive him have been stomped down into the dirt.
Mulder long-windedly complains that the internet has made it so easy for people to debunk many of the mysteries in which he used to so fervently believe. He’s tired of the old search and is very seriously thinking of putting aside the monsters and mutants. So it is with good reason that Scully is a little concerned that he hasn’t been taking his antidepressants. The fact is that the magic is gone for Mulder, well… just a little bit. He’s “a middle-aged man,” - even when he almost has to convince Scully of this - and he claims he probably has to put away childish things. I mean… most men with a middle-age crisis get themselves a red sporty thing with fancy engine… must be a coincidence that Scully’s wig is looking significantly more ginger in this episode. But is this how he wants to spend the rest of his life? Chasing after jackalopes and sasquatch? Nevertheless, Scully brings with her a new case, and whether Mulder likes it or not, this one has a monster in it.
Back in the woods of rural Oregon, Mulder and Scully are at the scene of the crime. As Scully looks over the case file and presents possible theories, Mulder shoots them all down while wandering the area, finding it odd that there isn’t a picture of the creature since everyone has a camera phone these days. In the file, we see both a three-eyed and one-eyed sketch of the lizard monster (drug addicts aren’t the most reliable of witnesses). This is the area where they found Officer Pasha, who claims to not have seen anything matching the description given by the stoners. Scully also reveals that there were three other bodies found near the original attack.
Mulder already has another set of plausible theories that differ from being of any fantastic nature, and Scully continues to humor him, describing the uniqueness of the wounds that points to a human being the perpetrator. It seems that they’ve got a serial killer on their hands - another thing that Mulder has apparently given up chasing. Once you’ve seen one serial killer, you’ve seen them all, he claims.
Scully acknowledges that Mulder is going through some sort of questioning phase (aka the nice term for a mid-life crisis), but urges him to get his head back into the game so that they can potentially save some lives. Mulder finally relents, but still insists that whatever they find, it won’t be a monster.
While Mulder has been moping and Scully’s been dragging him around, there’s been another definitely-not-a-monster attack. After nightfall at a highway truck stop, we catch another glimpse of the monster, and it looks like he’s on the hunt. In the distance is a transgender prostitute, on a hunt of her own—for a customer. The lizard-man runs up to the woman and she smacks him in the head with her oversized purse, warding him off. It appears that it doesn’t take much to scare this monster away.
We immediately cut to Mulder and Scully inspecting the woman’s purse and collecting the details on her attacker. She says that she hit the monster in its horn. Scully condescendingly asks if it was a horn like a unicorn’s, because it’s a little known fact that “Unicorn Debunker” is actually part of her FBI title. The victim corrects that it had multiple horns, two eyes, and was wearing only tighty-whities. Some monster, huh?
Animal Control Officer Pasha is also hanging around the truck stop, searching for a dog. He’s a little jumpy after his attack and isn’t feeling true pride for his profession anymore. He can handle lost puppies, but human-sized lizard men really aren’t his thing. He’s not much help to Mulder and Scully’s investigation, and when they all hear an ominous growl off in the distance, Pasha books it, Scully pulls out her gun, and Mulder whips out his new camera app on his smartphone. If this isn’t the definition of Agents Scully and Mulder, I’m not sure what is.
Mulder’s cell phone app takes a continuous series of photographs with flash. He’s sick and tired of never capturing the proof he needs. Instead of a picture of the monster though, Mulder takes one of a freshly killed body. Suddenly in the distance the lizard-man runs through the bushes. Mulder is off after him, wielding his trusty camera phone. Scully is still checking on the body.
Frightening him, the animal control officer catches up to Mulder in between the two trucks where we earlier saw the monster stalk the prostitute. All the while, Mulder’s phone is still flashing away. So of course the monster comes up behind them, rushes through them, and knocks them down. Hearing the commotion, Scully rushes to Mulder’s side to make sure he’s okay. You can take the woman out of the relationship, but you can’t take the partnership out of the woman.
Mulder has blood on his face, but he assures Scully that it’s not his own. Traumatized by the monster yet again, Officer Pasha throws down his now broken net and pole, quits, and walks off. The lizard might have spooked Spooky Mulder, but he proudly claims that he caught a picture of it.
The lizard man is still afoot though, and Mulder and Scully rush after him when they spot him running on the other side of the truck. With Mulder’s camera flashing away again, they pursue the creature into a port-a-potty only to find a not-so-scary human being (Rhys Darby) trying to go to the bathroom. When the pair leave to continue the hunt, the man in the toilet steps out, and when he adjusts his hat, you see horns disappear into the back of his head. It seems that Mulder has missed catching the monster yet again.
With a fresh body to autopsy, Scully is back in a morgue. As she tries to complete her examination, Mulder keeps shoving his phone in her face to show her his blurry and mostly useless photos. Only one is in focus and it’s so close up, that all you see is a bite on the monster’s hairless skin. Mulder is still insistent that it can’t possibly be a monster though, and Scully jokes that maybe it’s just a mangy Sasquatch.
Rather hilariously, Mulder did manage to secure some video of the attack. However, it was on the front-facing camera and really only captured his screaming face having blood sprayed onto it. Mulder insists that it came from the creature’s eyeballs, but Scully says that’s not possible and probably residual blood from the victim. Low and behold though, Mulder has also learned to Google. He cites the horned lizard, which is an actual lizard that shoots blood from its eyes.
“Mulder the internet is not good for you.” Scully says, and I laugh. Because… hey, at least he’s not making horny toad lizard gifs on tumblr yet. He banters at her joke, as she continues to assure that the wounds on the victim were caused by a human. Mulder once again comes up with a way to justify his lizard theory… a lizard with human teeth. Scully fights the urge to laugh or roll her eyes, even when Mulder realizes how silly he sounds, but he’s caught her, she’s enjoying just how fun these cases can be.
Citing the late hour, and a little concerned for his well-being, Scully sends Mulder back to the hotel to get some rest while she finishes the autopsy.
Sleeping in the world’s most back-woods motel, with taxidermied animal heads covering the walls, Mulder is awakened by screams of “Monster!” and “Help me!” We see Mulder shoot up on the bed, sleeping without a t-shirt, and spring to action. Now fully dressed, Mulder confronts the motel manager (Alex Diakun who played the tarot card reader in “Clyde Bruckman”). Whatever went down, the manager isn’t taking it well. He’s sipping from the bottle of isopropyl alcohol that he’s using to clean his head wound.
The manager says he just had a small disagreement with a guest and tells Mulder to leave. Desperately wanting the situation to end, the manager even says he’ll kill Mulder if he doesn’t leave him alone. At this stage, the manager has yet to learn Mulder is an FBI Agent.
Mulder’s definitely-not-a-monster senses are tingling; he goes to the room where this confrontation took place to do some good, old-fashioned investigating. The room is trashed—the mirror broken, debris on the floor. Mulder finds an anti-psychotic prescription bottle on the floor and pockets it (as evidence of course). There’s also an empty bag laying around from a local cell phone store.
There’s even a taxidermied jackelope head on the floor. Mulder finds that it’s missing its eyes, and it happens to be the perfect size to cover a large, deliberately placed, opening in the wall. This opening leads to a hallway in the back of the motel, and Mulder is able to open a doorway from inside the room to the hallway. It appears that the jackelope head was merely a tool for the manager to spy on his guests.
Mulder continues to investigate the hidden hallway and stumbles upon a fox head in the wall. So of course he takes out the removable eyes and puts his head into the mask. What does the Fox say? Well nothing, but that’s because he spies the exuberant Agent Scully sleeping very peacefully in her motel room. Slightly torn, Mulder pries himself away and goes to confront the manager.
Now understanding how the manager got entangled in the earlier confrontation, Mulder has a discussion with the man. When Mulder flashes his badge, the manager tries to tell him that the hallway is a security feature he put in following 9/11, but Mulder is having none of that. He reassures the man that anyone checking into that kind of motel would expect the manager to be a peeping tom, and that he won’t report him. All Mulder wants to know is what truly happened.
Switching to the manager’s perspective, we see his recollection of events. He’s peering through one of the taxidermy heads and clearly sees something he likes. Of course it’s Fox Mulder laying on his bed in a red speedo. Thank you, Darin Morgan. However, since this episode puts such emphasis on switching perspective, we’ll never really know if it was truly a red speedo, or perhaps just red boxers pushed up from how he was sleeping on them—another mystery for the fandom to debate. (I want to believe.)
Hearing shouts from another room, the manager switches his viewing to the jackelope head. In the room, we see Rhys Darby’s character, “Guy Mann” (according to the prescription bottle). Guy is angrily shouting at his reflection in the mirror and throwing things around the room. When Guy starts to transform into a lizard man, he begs for this to be the last time. This transformation scares the manager and his frightened noises give away his location. The monster finds him, hisses and runs out of the room. Back in the present, Mulder shows the shaken manager a drawing of the monster they’re hunting and the man they saw at the port-a-potty and he confirms that they’re both the same being.
We now move to Scully’s motel room where Mulder is whittling away at a theory on this lizard-man. He’s moving so quickly and is so excited that Scully literally cannot even get a word in. It’s a fantastic scene where old-school Fox Mulder shines through. He may be older now, but goddammit that’s not going to stop him from hunting down the mutants and monsters of this world!
“All I’m saying, Scully, is it’s a monster!” He says...
“Yeah. This is how I like my Mulder.” ...And we all swoon a little.
Mulder is getting his old self back, and Scully is very happy to see her partner return. However, she still tells Mulder he’s crazy. It wouldn’t be The X-Files otherwise. These two Special Agents are back in the swing of things, and it is completely adorable. He shows her the pictures of the scene, confirming that the man they saw at the restroom is wearing the clothes of one of their victims, explaining then that one of them was naked a the scene.
Mulder also tells her about the pills he found and how they can track him by finding who prescribed them. She’s on board, but before they do anything, Mulder urges to check out of that motel because he’s the only one allowed to ogle at Scully.
The next day, Mulder follows up on the prescription bottle he found by interviewing the prescribing psychiatrist, Dr. Rumanovitch (Richard Newman). The doctor tells Mulder the story of a lizard-monster. Back in the day, the man that claimed to have seen it visited a gypsy that advised that the only way the lizard could die is if it was stabbed in the appendix with green glass. Because there is never any easy way to kill a monster, right? He continues the story; the man manages to track the monster and stabs it, only to realize that he’s been looking at himself in the mirror. It is just easier to point at monsters outside of ourselves, he claims.
Mulder thinks that not everything can be pinned to psychology. In any case, the doctor was reminded of this tale because of “Guy Mann” - after his tale of becoming a were-lizard, he’d prescribed him with antipsychotics. The psychiatrist directs Mulder to look for Guy in the local cemetery. Apparently the doctor’s best advice for his patients is to take a stroll among the dead to remind themselves that death is a light at the end of the tunnel. The doctor also tries to write Mulder a prescription; Mulder may not be the one with the delusions, but he’s the one believing the man with them, argues Dr. Rumanovitch. Mulder declines and leaves the office, and seemingly unbothered, the doctor pops a couple of the anti-psychotics and continues about his day.
Meanwhile, Scully has tracked down Guy Mann. It turns out he’s a salesman at the local cell phone store. She calls Mulder to tell him where to meet her and about the lab results on the blood that the lizard supposedly squirted on him, but Mulder hung up in his eagerness to get there.
Not waiting for backup, Scully goes into the store to ask the manager some questions. By the time Mulder arrives, Scully is standing in a torn apart store. She tells Mulder that Guy basically just went off, flipped over the phone displays, and ran out of the store, quitting. With good reason, Mulder wants to know why Scully confronted a dangerous suspect without him. However, before Scully tries again to tell Mulder about the anomalous results on the blood she tested from his face, Mulder runs off to the local cemetery to track down Guy Mann.
Now in the cemetery, Mulder sees Guy standing at a gravestone. To allay suspicion, Mulder steals some flowers off another grave and goes up to the plot next to Guy to place them. In a touching tribute, the gravestone where Mulder places those flowers reads “Kim Manners”.
However, things get right back to the story when Guy and Mulder begin talking. If Mulder is having a midlife crisis, then Guy is in the middle of an existential one. (Though to be fair, Mulder is definitely in the middle of a real struggle, too.) Guy just isn’t cut out for being a person, so he seeks to end it all by killing himself. But how does one kill a lizard monster? Easy. He has to get Mulder to stab him in the appendix with green glass, so he smashes the green alcohol bottle he’s been nursing and “attacks” Mulder. Not really wanting to hurt Mulder and only hoping to finally die, Guy’s attacks are ineffective, and Mulder knows what he’s up to. Mulder refuses to kill anyone until Guy tells him the full story.
For almost the entirety of the remainder of the episode, Guy Mann relays the events of the episode from his perspective. We see that he was just a nice, well-behaving lizard monster (not a reptile! because that’s racist) sitting in the woods one night when one man attacked another. He got caught up in the crossfire and ended up being bit on the neck by the attacker.
The next morning when Guy woke up, he had been transformed into a human. Ever since, he’s been caught up in a reverse werewolf situation that’s rudely thrown him into the harsh world of humanity. That first day, Guy stole clothes off of one of the nearby human victims in the woods and felt compelled to go out and hunt for a job. Once he was somehow hired at the phone store, and faking all knowledge about any kind of technology, he got far ahead as to become the manager of the store. That night, he got so sick of what his life had become that he committed a murder: he ate a hamburger! And he even walked through the Drive-Thru to try to get one. After that was acquired, and he got into a motel to watch porn, he realized that once the moon was out he’d return to his natural state of lizardness. The joy overtook him but it didn’t last long as the next morning he was back to being a human and back to the job which he now hates. Guy is trapped in the mundane existence of the human species and is desperate for a way out. He even seeks out the help of a “witch doctor” (a psychiatrist) whose pills don’t help and whose advice sends Guy to ponder his death at the local cemetery.
The best way he found to cope was to get himself a dog. So that day, Guy brings home “Daggoo”, a cute little mutt puppy that doesn’t care if his owner is human or lizard or switching between the two. Because apparently the best way that humans enjoy themselves isn’t hanging out with other humans.
The ultimately tragedy is the loss of Daggoo, though. One day while Guy was slaving away at work, the maid in his hotel room accidentally let him run out the door. Guy was just trying to find his puppy at the truck stop when he ran into the same man who had bitten him in the woods that first night. The brutality of the killing ultimately leads Guy to want to be rid of humanity; he sheds his clothes and runs off ended up running into the prostitute that whacked him in the head. He complains, because she hit him hard and Mulder explains that she’s transgender. The explanation leads Guy to think that that surgery might be his salvation but the minute that he hears the real details… he of course changes his mind. Guy’s version is too jumbled to keep track of what comes first and what follows. With the switching perspectives in this episode, the truth continues to remain somewhat elusive.
Mulder tries to find the internal logic behind what’s happening but Guy claims there isn’t even external logic. When he recounts the events of the motel, he claims to be baffled by the fact that the Jackelope screamed at him and how scared he was after one of his friends died because of one. Mulder explains that there’s no such thing, that it was just a stuffed animal, but Guy can’t be convinced.
The next day, back into his human self, he returned to work. That’s when Scully goes to interrogate him, but let’s just say that this is probably the foggiest of his memories. As he describes his encounter with the redhead Agent, his insistence that he nailed Scully up against a wall in the back closet of the phone store isn’t even a fanfic Gossamer would publish. And that place has seen some weird fic.
Mulder of course doesn’t buy one word of this part of the story…And I’m going to tell you why: he knows that 1) Agent Scully is already in love. 2) He probably hasn’t been able to get Scully to entertain that fantasy with him at their own office, and 3) Mulder would die the day that he managed to keep Tad away from Scullz to have Confused!Gekko slip in… so to speak... where was I going with this one? Well, you get the idea. No, Scully didn’t just have lizard sex. Apparently, part of being a human is to also lie about your sex life, Guy claims.
Ultimately, Mulder is confused. We’re a little confused. He really wanted to believe him but the story is too fantastic. Guy denies it; for him this story is tragic. It is especially sad for Mulder because he can see himself in Guy, believing in things that aren’t real. Mulder is really deepening his middle-life crisis and Guy is hitting all the right buttons: self-doubt, regret and loneliness.
He begs Mulder again to kill him but as he’s grabbing him by his lapels, he sees his badge and puts two and two together. Mulder suspects him of Murder, he’s just plain insulted. He tells Mulder that he is the real monster of the story as he leaves the cemetery.
Of course, we know that’s not true, but Mulder is still deep into his mein kampf struggle. The best solution he’s got is to pull out a small green alcohol bottle of his own and drink sitting against Kim Manners’ grave. (Didn’t he drink on the job last episode, too?)
In the next scene, a much more disheveled Mulder gets a call from Scully, and in one of the most meta moments of the episode, his ringtone is actually The X-Files theme. She’s at the local animal shelter wondering where he’s been. He claims to have fallen off the wagon, and starts on a self deprecating rant about how he was foolish to believe that this monster could have been real. She begins relaying the latest information about the case, and waxing poetic about her own investigation on the actual case. That’s when we see Daggoo inside a carrier cage on the counter and the little thing bites her, it reminds her of Queequeg, and while this is prompting her to reminisce just how much she misses having a pet it also prompts Mulder to think about the bite he caught in one of his pictures. It’s at this same time that Mulder realizes the only in focus photo he got of the monster was of a human bite wound and that the killer must not be a monster at all. But Scully continues; she’d have someone to hold grudges for her, and someone to love… and that’s when Officer Pasha attacks her. Kumail, you sly bastard. You were the sadistic serial killer all along. Of course, if Darin Morgan calls you to come play something, it really doesn’t matter if it’s a rotting log or a serial killer, you always say yes.
Hearing the struggle over the phone, Mulder finally understands what’s happened. Mulder calls for back up and rushes off to save Scully. Should he be driving though? How much has he had to drink? Do we need to be worried about this? Who cares. He’s a rebel, remember?
Dana Scully doesn’t need assistance though. She’s already got the animal control officer cuffed (we hope you treasure that moment forever, Kumail). The whole shelter is a mess and there are animals running around everywhere; however, the killer is caught. He tries to give his little manifesto speech that he’s had prepared for years, but Mulder and Scully have heard enough. The officers escort him away, leaving Mulder and Scully to wrap up the case together.
A little worried about the risks his strictly platonic partner has taken during this investigation, Mulder asks Scully why she confronted a dangerous suspect alone again. She claims that she was granting him some quality time with his lizard man and coyly reminds him that she’s immortal, flirtatiously pokes at his chest and walks away. There’s one more loose end that’s bothering her though, and that’s how Mulder knew who the killer was. Scully had found blood evidence on the broken net and pole that Officer Pasha left behind, but how had Mulder figured it out?
Mulder explains that he went through his pictures finding that human bite mark and if Guy’s story were true… that’s when inspiration strikes him, having him perform the classic Mulder!Ditch. Scully is now alone in the animal shelter. Seeing the same cute puppy in a cage that she was playing with earlier, she decides she’ll just steal Daggoo. Because why not, right? She’s a rebel, too now. She probably just misses having a warm body to snuggle with at night.
Darin Morgan has been waiting 20 years to give Scully another dog. Hopefully she gets Daggoo a harness this time around because they’re much safer. RIP Queequeg. Also, we never did find out what was so anomalous about those blood results Scully received. After all, if Mulder wanted to prove his monster theory, the blood shot out of the monsters eyes would probably be key…
Anyway, Mulder finally catches up to Guy Mann one last time. Guy is headed back into the woods but Mulder wants him to know that they’ve caught the killer and that it means that he now knows he was telling the truth. It was just difficult to cope with it because it was so absurd, but Guy points out that there are far more absurd things about humans, like neck ties, really. It’s time for his kind to go into hibernation for 10,000 years. He’s hoping the whole were-lizard thing will fix itself in the interim. Still not totally convinced, Mulder is wary of the whole story. He says he just wants to believe, but really, Fox Mulder needs something good to believe in right about now.
As Guy says his final goodbye, he strips down naked, thanks Mulder for his help - he’s glad to have met you in this trying time, and when they go to shake hands…voila… the full moon is out and we’ve got a monster transformation. As Guy skitters away… Mulder is in awe because he has finally seen his monster. It’s about time he got his mojo back.
Review
Please, Darin Morgan. If every time you come out of retirement you write episodes like these, let’s schedule your next hibernation periods so I can plan for awesome viewing experiences.
The third episode of the revival is the one Monster-of-the-Week that many craved when knowing that the show was back, and also that episode we all unknowingly needed. Filled with tons of easter eggs for the hardcore fan and building upon new ones, it’s a humorous story that I enjoyed quite a lot.
I really enjoyed Darin’s directorial choices, where some might have found it stagey and campy, I think that’s what actually made this style great.
I could see where the viewers that didn’t appreciate episodes like “Humbug” in the original run of the series would be annoyed by having an episode like this placed in the middle of this short run. But don’t be fooled, Were-Monster actually brings perspective to some of the shortcomings that Mulder has had to face when coming back to The X-Files.
It’s not all unicorns and roses returning to a game you left so long ago, especially in a world that specializes in debunking theories as a sport. Yes, our heroes are older; this show isn’t coy about acknowledging it and actually brings the benefits of these rites of passage to us as an offering of just how rich are these characters.
We get to see a Mulder that gets to reflect of self-doubt and loneliness, way more than he ever did on “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” or how it is inferred some other times in the show. A Mulder that has lost his mojo a bit, a Mulder that sees himself in the mirror of Guy’s solitude… because even when he’s back on The X-Files… he definitely doesn’t have all the pieces of himself, yet.
While really ridiculous and implausible, the secret hotel hallway almost strikes me as his route to self discovery, one that brings self discovery to other characters. He finds his will to let his theory bunnies run wild, and Scully gets to admit that this is the Mulder that she’s been missing. The pieces start to fit for her as well.
This is the thing about Mulder; for the longest time, the fact that he was empowered by his partnership with Scully, with a goal to pursuit and a drive to take the next step, made insignificant the impact of those self deprecating moments. Yes, people thought he was crazy and wasting away his time, but he found value in his work, so there was validation. He found support and empathy in his relationship with Scully and that held him together. Coming back to debunked X-File that confirm the mockery that they became to others through the years is a big impact to his ego. Is a big impact to his childhood wonder. It’s a open door to doubting everything that his life ever was.
The final reveal makes him a believer again but not only of all things supernatural but of himself.
“Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” is the only non-mythology episode that actually kept its original position on the grid having been produced third and airing in the same order. Does it make a difference? Maybe… perhaps because it gave the opportunity to Anderson and Duchovny to find the sweet spot.
""Were-Monster"" gives us an irreverent Mulder one that I could see maybe slipping into Duchovny’s other characters but still within the realm of Mulder’s cynical humor and disenchantment. Anderson’s performance flows easier in this episode as well; we’re given a Scully that’s cute that’s amused by the familiarity of these situations that she’s missed so much.
While this episode is much heavier in Mulder’s point of view I thoroughly enjoyed Scully’s moments. By now the girl is so used to the Mulder!Ditch™ that she just shakes it away. Maybe Mulder will learn a lesson now that Guy Mann teased him about what Scully could do when he’s not looking… even if it was all a fantasy. And boy was that a fantasy.
When I first saw the episode I knew that this sex scene would be a point of contention between the fandom especially because so many have waited with baited breath for a similar scene between Mulder and Scully. But let’s be real unless Chris Carter decides tomorrow to prove me wrong this is as far as we’re going to get to see Mulder or Scully in the sack. My criticism is that it ran for perhaps a little too long… though I can see the motivation. It is hilarious to see an out-of-character Scully that one that only exists in crack fanfic. Cherish that “Scratchy Beard” and “Just a little something” bits from IWTB because who knows when they’ll happen again.
I know that some may be thrown by it or even disagree but I found that the Transgender character was a plot device that was smart. I don’t mean to say by this that it presented a fine example of the transgender community; it was a cliche joke on what we’re used to see portrayed as a transgender woman. We all know very well that there are way better ways to present this community's’ values and how important they are to our society. But still I found redeeming that Mulder was completely aware of this. It’s normal to him he’s not fazed by this very active change of our society at all. And thank god that there weren’t any Cathryn Jenner jokes.
I laugh about being worried about Scully having a pet again; poor Daggoo at least seems accepting resilient and kind hearted something that probably couldn’t had been said of Queequeg. I’m sorry but writing this review I actually discovered just how annoyed I was by the defunct dog and I’m a dog lover. Still let’s not speak ill of the dead. The important part of this device though is that it was the way that Scully admitted to herself that she is lonely too. That she needs the benefits of someone or something playing protector in her life even when she’s not damsel in distress and likes to take charge.
Rhys Darby was made to play this character. I LOVED his performance; it’s genuine and light it feels as if he’d been playing this character forever and made me revisit his works from previous years. He will join the coveted list of most awesome monsters on The X-Files and rightfully so. Where the Flukeman was a product of human experimentation and mankind’s showmanship of how bad we can do to ourselves it was hard to find the “human” side in him to empathize with his tragic existence. But this is not the case for Guy Mann. I feel for the guy and find the critique on our modern life amazing. We definitely drive ourselves to the ground with some routines and made up needs that don’t make us happy anymore. Past the humor and the shock value this is a great reflection on our own existence.
Lastly Kumail Nanjiani. I wished we’d seen more of him because he has great comedic timing. It’s sad that finally when we’re about to learn his motivations the poor dude gets shut down because well we’ve heard this serial killer story in the past and really who wants to hear it again!? Did he secretly want to be a werewolf himself? Is that why he became an Animal Control officer? Why did he kill adults and not kids? So many questions that at the end of the day may be unnecessary and just my way of trying to extend on a character that I really enjoyed but got so little screen time. Fanfic writers get on that.
Let’s not forget about another very enjoyable aspect of this episode was the score. Mark Snow puts the cherry on top of this Sunday of awesome.
While we wait 10 000 years for the next Darin Morgan episode to come out don’t forget that The X-Files will be back once again next Monday at 8/7 central on FOX. Check your local listings for more information.