This week’s episode, five of six for anyone counting was another standalone episode that pushes modern televisions limits in both the serious and absurd. If you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert, there is terrorism and line dancing.
We start off on a topic that makes most Americans downright uncomfortable; a Middle Eastern man saying his prayers to Allah. It goes on to show him making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich driving his car. He smiles at two pretty girls walking by, but is shot down with dirty looks. A large, stereotypical truck pulls up beside him with a stereotypical redneck cowboy and his girls in the cab. One of them calls him a brownie. He meets with his friend and they go to a museum. We see them pray one more time and after they enter the building the whole thing explodes. It’s a horrific image as the scene stays on the building and you see people lying there and one gets up and runs but they’re on fire.
Enter the FBI where Scully and Mulder are in their favored basement office. Scully makes a funny joke about, “Nobody but the FBI’s most unwanted!” and enters two, younger doppelgangers. It’s easy to see the resemblance, but the episode is extra careful we all know. Agent Miller played by Robbie Amell is a believer in the occult and supernatural, just like Agent Mulder. Agent Einstein (no really) played by Lauren Ambrose has the hair color to match Scully and perhaps an even more pessimistic attitude. The two grew on me as the episode went on and I was happily surprised that they were not the main plot point of the episode, but just a quirky little add on as the X-Files is want to do.
We find out that one of the suicide bombers, the one we had followed at the beginning, lived through the explosion and is in a vegetative state in a local hospital. Einstein doesn’t think there is anything that can be done, but Miller and Mulder know there are ways to talk to someone in that state. Both Einstein and Scully are dismissive of this and the two newer agents leave to catch a flight.
Our duo is split up then when Scully calls Miller and tells him that she may have an idea to sort of speak with the man. Miller jumps on this chance and at the same time Einstein is called by Mulder and persuaded to ‘jump on the crazy train’ and she goes to see him. I liked that Mulder kept calling her a mugwump. That word can have several meanings, but I believe Mulder was referring to the one where someone with a small amount of power is full of themselves because of it and becomes insufferable. That one seemed to fit Einstein to me anyways.
Mulder convinces Einstein about how ideas and thoughts have measurable weight, how they can change a person and how, if they are in the know, can access those thoughts and speak with the person. It’s all beautifully Mulder mumbo jumbo and Einstein unbelievably goes for it. Mulder explains that he has to be in a higher point of mind and asks for her to prescribe him magic mushrooms. No really.
Meanwhile Miller and Scully almost exclusively stay at the hospital where the bomber is at. They essentially have to sit in his room as everyone around wants him dead. Miller has to take photos of two homeland security agents to get them to go away instead of ‘taking over’ the case. You can tell they are being very shady about this and not even in the usual shady way homeland security is. There is then a supposed bomb threat and they make the agents leave. As nothing is ever mentioned about it again, I’m assuming this was a lie to get them out of the way.
In a chilling scene a nurse, someone who is supposed to help no matter what, turns off the bombers life support. Perhaps some have seen too many medical dramas where every one of them has a criminal in need of medical care and they have a moral decision to make, and so this scene was a bit numb for the familiarity of it. I still found it scary because she really didn’t have a moral quandary about it. She just did it. Agent Mulder and Einstein show up then and she quickly flicks it back on. She doesn’t want to leave the patient and has to be almost strong armed out by Einstein.
The nurse then goes on about many hot topic contentions about Middle Eastern peoples and mixes it with immigration issues and all the fear mongering that we hear so much of nowadays. Einstein lets her go on, but then realizes Mulder is gone.
Where did he go? Well Mulder took the magic mushrooms and went tripping. In a hilarious montage we see him high-fiving medical staff. Then he’s wandering down the middle of the road. He ends up in a country western bar and line dances. He drinks the night away and we see all sorts of people there. Skinner and the lone gunmen are both there partying with him. Don’t know who the lone gunmen are? They are a trio of conspiracy theorists that Mulder was close friends with and who helped Mulder and Scully out when they could. A goofy trio they are supposedly dead, but in X-Files fashion one can never be too sure.
Mulders trip then takes him into a new place where he is tied down to a table a la alien probing time, but instead we have agent Einstein in fetish gear making him say woo-woo. The scene changes again and now Mulder is on a boat with hooded figures manning the oars. The Smoking Man is on it and whips Mulder. It reminded me of greek mythology of the boat that people had to use to cross to get to the land of the dead and the Smoking Man represented the Reaper. I don’t know if that’s right, but there was a lot of heavy symbolism going on and it didn’t end at that.
We then see the bomber, lying in what I assume is his mother’s arms. Mulder goes to him and the man whispers in his ear, but we can’t hear it. Mulder than wakes up in the hospital with a very displeased Skinner and Einstein who give him hell for what he did and people he scared.
Einstein reveals that he wasn’t even high that she gave him a placebo. Mulder can’t accept that as it all felt so real, but she tells him the power of suggestion is powerful in itself. They are leaving the hospital when Mulder says he recognizes a woman outside arguing with federal agents. Einstein asks how, but Mulder quickly gets her inside and up to the bombers room where Scully and Miller are reading his brain waves while speaking to him. Mulder tells everyone it’s the man’s mother. It is the same woman he had seen while tripping. She tells them that her son changed his mind, that he didn’t detonate his vest and begs him to live. The man has a sort of seizure though and dies.
Mulder tells about his ‘trip’ sort of and I have a feeling Scully probably bullied it out of him later. He tells them he can’t tell them what the bomber said because he said it in Arabic. Luckily Miller knows that language and encourages Mulder to repeat it for him. He haltingly gets it out and it actually makes sense much to everyone’s surprise. So did Mulder go to another plane of thought and talk to the bomber? No one knows for sure.
As we had seen bits throughout the episode of other men making bombs, we find out that this is the same place Mulder told them, the Babylon motel. The FBI is able to take down the terrorist operation and no one else is hurt or killed. Instead of Scully and Mulder talking about the case and wrapping it up, its Miller and Einstein back at the airport. They grudgingly give each other credit and a job well done and make some poignant points about the weight of ideas and how they can change people (the point of the episode).
We do get some more Mulder and Scully at the very end. Scully drives to Mulders house and he asks her to take a walk with him. They hold hands and I wasn’t screeching at the television, no I wasn’t. They talk about God and believing and truth. It’s a bit heavy, but still going into the narrative about ideas and changing. At the end Mulder starts to hear the sky trumpets that he was telling Scully about earlier and asks if she hears that. It then plays that “I belong with you, you belong with me, you’re my sweetheart” song and shows the Earth. It was so cheesy. I loved it.
Now because the X-Files makes me paranoid, I can’t help but wonder if something bad is going to happen. Hear my conspiracy theory! I think either Mulder or Scully might die. As in for reals, die. I don’t want it to happen, but I keep seeing signs of it. Scully referring to herself as immortal in the were-monster episode, the overall theme of death and acceptance this season with both William and the loss of Scully’s mother and now the sky trumpets. The sky trumpets are supposed to be a sign of the end of times. Mulder heard them and does that mean it’s almost his end? Or because Scully didn’t hear them is it hers? Or is it just a symbol to mean we’re nearing the end of Mulder and Scully’s story?
It very well could be clues to the end of this series; I wouldn’t put it past Chris Carter to pepper these standalone episodes with clues to the final one. But maybe I am just being paranoid, who knows? Well we all will next Monday when the final episode airs at 8:00PM/ET on FOX. Here is a preview of that episode and look agent Einstein makes a return appearance as well as Tad O’Malley.
TheNerdyGirlExpress 