For the second night in a row, America was gifted with a new X-Files episode. This one was called Founders Mutation, and it brought us back to the heart of the X-Files. Where Mulder and Scully shine best trying to save innocent people who cannot help the situation they’re in. It also shined a light onto Mulder and Scully’s hearts and it was heartbreaking.

We start the episode watching Dr. Sanjay have the worst day imaginable. He is tense, nervous and has a piercing noise infiltrating his brain. What’s worse is that it seems no one but him can hear it. He’s in a meeting with the most oblivious doctors at work and not only does the noise get worse, but his eye starts to fill with blood and everything seems to go in slow motion. Sanjay notices a huge crowd of birds have gathered outside (and I really thought he was going to jump out the window right then), it puts him even more on edge. After screaming at his colleagues, he gets up and leaves and locks himself in the server room.

His fellow doctors seem to finally be tipped off that something is very wrong with Sanjay and are pleading with him to open the doors while a janitor/maintenance worker is drilling through the lock. For a moment Sanjay seems to have clarity and can hear them, but then the noise starts up worse than ever and all he can hear is, ‘find her.’ He can’t find this her though and he can’t take the noise anymore. He writes something on his hand and then takes the worlds largest letter opener and shoves it into his ear and deep into his brain.

I was sad for Dr. Sanjay, but excited for the show. This was a case perfect for Mulder and Scully. Sure enough they are called in and while the U.S. Department of Defense shuts them down hard, Skinner is vague and lets them do what they want because it will take him a few days to shut the case down. Scully performs an autopsy (did anyone else cheer at getting to see her do that again?) while Mulder investigates. He tries to get a hard drive, but is only able to filch Sanjay’s cell phone and see he called a man named Gupta every day. He goes to meet him at a bar.

There is a hilarious misunderstanding where Mulder meant ‘talk’ in private and Gupta thought he meant ‘talk talk’ as people do in the privacy of a backroom of a bar. Gupta is embarrassed and aggravated at Mulder’s mixed signals and tells him his feelings are nothing to be ashamed of and shouldn’t be hidden. He tries to leave, but Mulder reveals that Sanjay has died. They talk and Gupta reveals that Sanjay had been distant and that he had been upset because his children were dying. Mulder’s confused as there is no evidence that Sanjay had children. Gupta reveals that Sanjay didn’t just hide his sexuality, but also led a double life. The apartment Mulder had seen was his ‘show’ one. Scully calls then for Mulder to come see about what she found in the autopsy.

Not only did she find the interesting fact that it looked like Sanjay was trying to hit a particular part of his brain when he stabbed himself with the letter opener (the hearing part), but he had also wrote ‘Founders mutation’ on his hand. They know that Sanjay’s reclusive boss, the man behind Nugenics Technology (yes like eugenics, but new) and is nicknamed ‘The Founder.’ It also makes Mulder and Scully wonder if he is part of/working for the Syndicate. To newer viewers that is what the shadow government in the show was called. They controlled and covered up many things for their own interests. Two big ones being aliens and eugenics. They were the biggest opponents to the X-Files and used any means necessary to do what they wanted.

They go to Sanjay’s real apartment and almost hit a boy who runs out into the road. I was immediately suspicious of him and rightfully so as you will learn. In his apartment they use their flashlights (Aw yes old school Scully and Mulder!) instead of turning on the lights and find a bunch of pictures of children all in a clinical setting. They all have severe physical deformities. They collect the files on them until Mulder also hears a painful screeching in his ears that makes him fall over. He hears the same thing as Sanjay, ‘find her.’ The cops show up as the two had tripped a silent alarm and Scully goes to calm them down. Eventually the noise stops and they head to Skinners office.

The Department of Defense is not happy with them and take all their files. As soon as the agent is gone, Skinner confirms that Mulder made copies. He tells them he can’t approve of anything that he knows they want to do, but then he also welcomes them back and cuts them loose. I hope Skinner has a larger part to play later than the oblivious (but not really) boss that can’t control two of his agents. Scully wants to know what happened to Mulder in the apartment and when he explains she comments that this is really dangerous. Mulder quips back asking, “when has that ever stopped us?”

The two next go right to the source of this mess, Dr. Goldman. They ask for an in through Scully’s connection to the Sisters in the hospital she works for (as Dr. Goldman is a donor to the hospital) and while the nun makes a call they meet a young, pregnant woman. She’s in an entire ward where they’re all the same; young, pregnant, no family or husband in their lives and all their children have been shown to have defects. The young woman tells them she wants out because she wants to keep her baby, because that’s the catch. They’ll take care of them, but you have to give over your child. The nun shoos them away, but Mulder is able to slip her his card. He tells Scully the ward disturbed him. The ward was also playing the movie Planet of the Apes in the background and that disturbed me too.

They meet with Dr. Goldman and tell him that the government is investigating him (one of them mentions ‘Obamacare’ like it’s a conspiracy, which made me laugh). He shows them his ward of children. All with severe physical disabilities and all sealed away. He says it’s to keep ‘outside environmental factors’ from them, but I felt terrible for them and you could tell how much it bothered both Mulder and Scully as well.

Scully speaks to one of them and finds out that he has always been here. Trapped in that sealed room for at least a decade or as he put it, ‘forever.’ It’s obvious the children from the ward earlier are placed here. This seems to anger Scully. Not only the moral and medical questionable ethics being at play, but also Scullys own human decency and the fact we know she had a child of her own and how she had to give him up to keep him safe. She turns around and flat out asks if he’s experimenting on these children. Then asks if he’s doing it with alien DNA and that’s why the U.S. Department of Defense is helping to fund them. Mulder just smiles and sits back and lets Scully do her thing.

Dr. Goldman is taken aback, not only from her sudden outburst but of the truth she is accusing him over. He tries to act nonchalant and asks, “Dr. Scully, I thought you were the rational one?” and makes a quick getaway. Scully watches him go and tells Mulder that Goldman hadn’t answered her question. They have their answer.

They talk more about it and Scully, still fired up, asks Mulder if he thinks that what happened to her. That the government did something to their son and that she was just an incubator. Mulder says he doesn’t know, hopes not, and that she is never ‘just’ anything. Scully admits to missing their son, that she feels guilty she’s missed every year and that she couldn’t protect him. Mulder reminds her that they put him up for adoption and placed him with every document sealed and secreted away to do just that, protect him. Scully asks if he still thinks about it. Mulder seems to hesitate for a moment and says he feels like he had to put that behind him.

I thought that was a crap answer, because we all know Fox Mulder. He can’t leave people behind or the let the truth stay covered up. He has never forgotten the sister that was taken from him and I highly doubt he’s forgotten his only child either. Scully seems to accept this though (and maybe this not being honest about feelings is part of what drove them apart…hey didn’t Gupta say something like that earlier, hmm) and later we see her looking at the only picture of her son she has. She keeps it locked away in a drawer and as she stares at it we see a dream montage of her with him at school, and him running off to play, and then him being hurt. It’s so painful to watch and then it gets worse as he’s begging her to help him and you see his eyes look like that of an aliens and there’s nothing she can do to help.

They get a call about an accident and meet up and find that the pregnant girl they were talking to earlier had died. She had run away and was hit by a car. The baby is gone. Scully can’t tell when it was taken but states there is no way it would stay viable from such an impact. Mulder says not if it was a human baby. Dun dun dun! Mulder also finds a new lead that is Dr. Goldman’s wife.

Jackie is in an insane asylum because she supposedly murdered her baby. She won’t speak to them at first, but instead throws an apple at a random cat. Why is there are cat in there? Mulder asks if she doesn’t like cats and she gives him a look like he’s the crazy one.

She finally says she won’t talk about her husband, but Mulder gets her talking about her daughter and son instead. She says she knew Goldman did something to their daughter when one day she found that her daughter should have been drowned in the pool, but instead was not only fine but breathing underwater. It scared her and she wanted to get away before her other baby was born. She wrecked her car and she heard a high pitched noise and knew it was the only way the baby could speak to her. He told her how to get him out. She passed out from the self done surgery and when she woke up, they said her son was dead but she knows that’s not true.

Scully admits that she should think Jackie is delusional, but that she trusts what she said. It all fits in with the strange pregnancies and high pitched noises. Mulder realizes he’s seen the janitor before as they leave and he stops the man. He asks if he works here and then asks if he’s a contractor. He says yes and Mulder finds out that same company hires out to both the hospital and where Sanjay worked. Mulder looks into the security footage and finds a boy named Kyle that worked at both and was directly above Sanjay when he died. He also happens to be the same age as Jackie’s son would be. They look up his address and Mulder and Scully are off again.

They go to what looks like an old farmhouse where Kyle’s mother really, really does not like them and refuses to let them see her son. Mulder asks if she knew that was really Jackie Goldman’s son she had and that’s when the woman notices the birds. She mutters that “bad things happen when the birds come.” It hit me then that the birds were crows. What do you call a group of crows? A murder. Mulder goes down again with the loud noise being worse than ever. Scully demands to know where Kyle is and the woman points towards the barn.

Scully confronts the boy and makes him stop. He is the same boy who ran out in front of her car earlier. Mulder is alright and they ask him what he’s been doing. He says he just wants to find his sister (I’ve heard that before) and when mentioned he says he never wanted Sanjay to die. Mulder tells him he knows he didn’t realize what he was doing (I’m guessing that may have happened to the children Sanjay mentioned were dying too?).

They take him to Dr. Goldman who takes a sample of his blood. Kyle asks where Molly is and Goldman asks how he knows that name. Kyle says he doesn’t know, but Goldman takes him to her anyways. Kyle knows instantly that this isn’t Molly and freaks out. He rushes through the ward until he comes to a stop to a similar looking girl. He mentions that he can hear her in his head. She smiles at him.

Goldman, Mulder and Scully rush down the hall towards them. She nods and they do some weird alien sibling stuff where they bust all the glass in the ward. Everyone ducks for cover. Goldman tries to stop them, but Molly has some telekinetic powers as she throws him down with a flick of her head. Scully and Mulder get pushed back next. Goldman tries to get up again, but Kyle and Molly stare at him and he starts screaming and his nose, mouth, ears and eyes all start bleeding.

The scene is cut away then to Skinner talking to the same agent from the Department of Defense as the place is swarmed. He shrugs off any wrong doing and it’s mentioned that no one can find the siblings. Skinner asks what happened and Mulder says he doesn’t know, but before he blacked out he saw Goldman’s eye pop out of their sockets. He whispers to Scully that he was able to pocket the blood sample Goldman had taken from Kyle.

The last scenes of the show are of Mulder. We see he too has the same little picture of his and Scully’s son. He looks at it and also has a dream sequence. It shows them bonding as dad and son and it too slowly goes sour. Mulder sees his son being abducted by aliens or the government while pleading with his dad to help him. He can’t and he loses him just like he lost his sister. Mulder puts the picture away.

I really liked this episode. It had a lot of the creepy but almost explainable events happening that the X-Files is known for while also adding pieces to the overall plot with showing both Mulder and Scully’s regrets over their son and getting a sample of Kyle’s blood. I can’t wait for the next episode which will be an actual monster of the week deal again. Here is the preview:

The show is now in it’s normal time slot of 8:00PM every Monday on FOX. It also had solid ratings of 3.2 in the 18-49 demographic. What were your thoughts? Did you like this episode? What do you think will happen? Tell me in the comments below or find me on twitter @quietlikeastorm. Also make sure to subscribe with your email to the Nerdy Girl Express and never miss another article. You can also find us on twitter @thenerdygirlexp and buy one of our awesome shirts here.