Season 2, Episode 11
Director: Stephen Surjik
Writer: Paul Brown

“Excelsis Dei,” the eleventh episode of The X-Files Season Two, begins well enough. An uptight nurse in a nursing home begins to remake the room of a patient who had recently died when paranormal events begin to take place. The door slams shut, the bed slides across the floor, and the nurse is strapped to the bed, screaming. Later, it is reported to Mulder and Scully – thanks to similarities to other cases within the X-files – that the nurse has all symptoms and physical characteristics of a rape – rape by a ghost.

So, I was on board with the episode until the development of the rape, a nasty and unnecessary plot devise in which the hard-as-nails nurse (originally a lesbian until the creative team chickened out/came to their senses) is punished for her professional demeanor. The unease continues when the elderly patients effectively justify their sexual harassment of her as “harmless.” I fully realize the episode originally aired not long after the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, so it was firmly in the mindset of the era at the time. However, time has not been kind to this line of thinking, so watching it through the prism of a 2015 mindset is difficult. This is but one of the problems that eventually drags the otherwise fairly successful episode down in the end.

Mulder and Scully arrive at Excelsis Dei and find extraordinarily functional Alzheimer’s patients populating the facility. They continue the investigation of the nurse’s claims (her female superior’s complete disregard of the event is particularly disconcerting) and ultimately witness the death of multiple orderlies at the hands of angry ghosts. We know ghosts are behind the events because one of the patients can see them, just as they are beginning to ogle Scully. By the end of the episode, Mulder has discovered a collection of home-grown mushrooms in the basement of the building that are fed by an orderly’s dead body. Later, the ghosts again attack the nurse and lock Mulder in a bathroom with her in an attempt to drown them both. The events are somehow linked to the secret medications the patients are ingesting, and, once they stop taking the meds, the ghosts disappear with the case remaining unsolved while the patients return to their states of dementia.

That was my understanding by just watching “Excelsis Dei,” which is admittedly efficiently directed from strictly the haunted house perspective but muddles the resolution. Wikipedia told me this:

As Mulder and Scully investigate, they discover a Malaysian orderly is illicitly giving the patients an herbal drug made of mushrooms he cultures in the building’s basement. The drug cures their Alzheimer’s, but also allows them to see the spirits of people who have died in the nursing home and channel them into existence. In this state, the spirits assault and murder the orderlies that have looked down on them and treated them poorly while they were patients. When a patient overdoses on the drug, the spirits once again attack Charters, trapping her and Mulder in the bathroom, which begins flooding.

As Scully and the home’s head doctor manage to stop the patient’s seizures, the spirits disappear and the bathroom door gives way, freeing Mulder and Charters.

To determine that resolution based on the events conveyed in “Excelsis Dei” is the textbook definition of a stretch. The direction here at the hands of a one-time X-Files director (Stephen Surjik) is again efficient enough in the traditional haunted house genre, but it doesn’t dig far enough into fully exploring and clearly conveying the connection between the connection between the mushrooms and their apparent invocation of the spirits. I consider myself an intelligent person, and I didn’t follow that logic at all. Plus, the extraneous rape storyline takes the episode from a goofy, Cocoon-influenced affair to something with a seedy, tasteless underbelly.

Still, it did make me want to go back and watch that old “Kick the Can” episode of that Twilight Zone movie.

Season 2, Episode 10
Director: Win Phelps
Writer: Chris Carter

A more apt title for The X-Files‘s “Red Museum” would have been “Red Herring” given everything that happens through the course of the episode. The narrative shifts from that of a Peeping Tom perspective to that of a religious cult to genetic engineered beef before finally settling on a course that redirects us, rather unexpectedly, back to the central mythology of the series. As such, the episode is another entry in the long line of extremely disconnected but ultimately engaging and entertaining episodes… even if the return to the overall mythology of the series felt like an incredibly tacked-on afterthought.

“Red Museum” begins with a woman returning home from her job at the local meat processing plant. The quick scene of beef being sliced and hung in the cooler made me revisit my long-ago three days of vegetarianism and, if the show had been brave enough to link some sort of villainous parasite to the processed beef, that personal mandate would have been re-applied. At home, the woman asks her oldest son to order a pizza while she takes a shower, and, as she undresses, a man watches her strip from behind the wall. Her son then receives a phone call and steps out for five minutes, not to be seen again until the next morning when he’s found wandering in the woods in his underwear with “He is one” scrawled across his back.

Naturally, Mulder and Scully are called to investigate because the local sheriff believes the activity to be linked to a local vegetarian cult called “the Church of the Red Museum” whose followers save cattle from slaughter and parade around town wearing all white with red turbans. The religious sect, in turns out, has little to do with the pattern of child disappearances. Instead, over the course of the epiosde, Mulder and Scully discover that the local pediatrician has been injecting the kids with “special vitamins” since birth. When the doctor dies in an unexpected plane crash, Scully is able to determine that these “special vitamins” are actually injections developed from the “Purity Control” serum allegedly derived from an alien fetus. Thus, the plot shifts back into the overall mythology of the series.

We wrap up when the Crew Cut Man who murdered Deep Throat shows up and kills those who knew about the series of injections as well as the local sheriff’s son. Mulder is anxious to capture the Crew Cut Man, but the sheriff kills him in a fit of grief. The mysterious child kidnappings are also blamed on the Peeping Tom who used to own a day care center and feels remorse over the increased aggressiveness inherent in the genetically altered children. The children raised in the “Red Museum” sect were apparently considered members of a control group for comparison against the alien-influenced kids. The question of why the kidnapped kids are stripped half-naked is never fully addressed.

The problem with “red herring” shows is that, even though they’re designed to throw you off the central trail, they often leave many questions to be answered. For example, why was the Peeping Tom videotaping and spying on that particular family? Was he documenting something with the injected child? Why did he need to kidnap, strip, and drug them? What was the purpose of injecting cattle with hormones? Was that just a USDA advancement? Why did the religious sect AND the government experiments settle on this town? These are but a few of the unanswered questions that plagued me by the end of the episode. Perhaps the confusion is a direct result of the missed crossover with Picket Fences, a popular, Emmy-winning drama of the time that also tendered to dabble in oddities. The turds over at CBS were afraid of publicizing The X-Files over their own struggling series (which still won a boatload of Emmys) and shut down the crossover attempt.

Whatever the cause, “Red Museum” is an episode that contains a lot of interesting ideas but fails to tie any of them together or resolve them in a satisfactory manner. Particularly the too-quick wrap up with the Crew Cut Man’s plot line. But as with most over-stuffed episodes, there’s a lot to engage the audience here, so it’s not a completely uninteresting episode. It’s just one that feels underbaked and not as crisp as some of the best episodes can be.

Season 2, Episode 9
Director: David Nutter
Writer: Howard Gordon

“Firewalker” is an example of the show going back to the same well one too many times. I could practically imagine the writers’ room debating the episode, potentially remarking that it felt a little familiar until someone says, “Not really. This time, it’s in a volcano!” Setting aside, the theme of isolation and the Ten Little Indians-inspired narrative within “Firewalker” have been seen before in “Ice” and “Darkness Falls.” It’s not that “Firewalker” is a particularly bad episode, but it just feels too familiar thanks to the law of diminishing returns to be a fully successful episode.

The title “Firewalker” refers to advanced exploring technology employed by a research team investigating the interior of an active volcano. Lead researcher Daniel Trepkos (Bradley Whitford, sporting a white Rambo-esqe headband) hopes to find hidden clues to explain the origin or continued evolution of life – or something like that. When associated scientists at the California Institute of Technology see one of their researchers dead on Firewalker’s camera covered by a shadowy figure, they call in Mulder and Scully to join a second expedition to determine what went wrong. Upon arrival, Mulder and Scully find the rest of the research team sequestered inside their facility. One of them suffers from a mysterious and persistent cough and later seems to suffer from a massive protrusion within his neck. They attempt to evacuate him to a hospital, but he escapes into the woods and falls down a steep ravine. Watching from a distance, they witness a giant phallus rip through and protrude from his neck. Kind of like Aliens.

Over the course of the episode, Mulder finds Trepkos who confirms that the phallus protruding from his former college is a new type of spore, a parasitic spore that needs a human host to thrive before exploding spore cells into the air. If the cells do not immediately find a human host, then they die, a fact proven by Scully’s advanced research. The remainder of the team was apparently infected once the first researcher died, and Trepkos has been trying to kill them to stop the spread of the infection. The last remaining infected researcher – Jessie O’Neil (Shawnee Smith of the Saw series) – mysteriously handcuffs herself to Scully in an attempt to ensure the spread of the spore. Scully manages to somehow lock O’Neil in a containment chamber and shut the door between them with the handcuffs magically not blocking the closing of the door. O’Neil’s throat explodes into a cloud of spores, but Scully remains unharmed. Mulder calls in the Feds who place them in a month-long quarantine and seal the research facility and tunnels leading to the volcano. Trepkos is never heard from again.

Aside from the familiarity of the episode, the events in “Firestarter” don’t make a great deal of sense. First, Trepkos seems to be some sort of Colonel Kurtz-type character, but he’s never given enough screen time to become a fully fleshed out presence, which is a shame because Bradley Whitford looks hilarious in his white Rambo headband. It’s also not exactly clear how he was able to journey as deep into the volcano as Firewalker was to disable it. And then there’s the problem of the spore itself. It’s described as a parasite, but O’Neil’s actions at the end of the episode make no sense when compared to the first suffering researcher we see. That man ran into the woods to avoid infecting others. O’Neil cuffs herself to Scully to ensure the spore’s spread. Why? Plus, the spore is a complete rip-off of the chest-bursting alien from the Alien franchise. From the phallic shape to the skin-ripping birth, it’s such an exact copy that I half expected it to jump out of the body and start singing “Hello Ma Baby! Hello Ma Honey!”

Aside from that, “Firestarter” is an average, entertaining episode completely devoid of originality. It probably makes a nice bridge from Scully’s disappearance to another deeper or more relevant to the overall mythology episode. I just wish they hadn’t so quickly aped earlier, better episodes.

Season 2, Episode 8
Director: R.W. Goodwin
Writer: Glen Morgan, James Wong

“One Breath” is something of a revelatory episode of The X-Files. There are no little green men. There are no monsters laying eggs in their victims nor serial killers squeezing through ventilation shafts nor bugs trapping their victims in cocoons. There are only humans, wrapped up in fear, anger, sorrow, and love. As such, it’s one of the more engaging episodes of the series thus far, marking a unique experience for fans of the show.

The episode opens with a bit of Dana Scully backstory: her brothers gave little tomboy Dana a BB gun and taught her to shoot by using a garter snake as target practice. When the snake died, Dana was heartbroken and had her first experience with death. Scully’s mother tells Mulder the story as they prepare for the pending declaration of Scully’s death. The declaration proves premature as Scully appears in an hospital outside of Washington, DC, in a coma with little clue as to how she got there. Suspicious of everyone, Mulder takes her vital signs to the Long Gunman (one aspect of the show I wasn’t a huge fan of because it felt like a throwaway excuse to include them as fan service) who determine that her genetic makeup contains leftover proteins indicating research has been conducted on her body. Mulder then embarks on a conspiratorial chase that leads to the Smoking Man, the man whom Mulder considers the root of all problems.

Meanwhile, Scully’s psychic sister makes contact with Scully and claims she’s teetering on the edge of heading into the light. What we see is Scully in some sort of dreamlike state where she is sitting in a boat, tethered to a dock. Those speaking to her are seen on the dock, but Scully herself never speaks. Her father also appears to her, basically telling her that its not her time. Not yet. After Mulder comes to her side and tells her he believes in her, Scully awakens, remembering nothing after her abduction by Duane Barry. Mulder returns the cross necklace given to her by her father, and we close with Scully looking pensively out the window having just learned that a nurse who spoke encouraging words to her in her coma never actually existed.

The immediate star of “One Breath” is the gorgeous, Emmy-nominated cinematography – particularly in the otherworldly scenes of Scully’s positioning in the boat. There is also a fantastic transition at the end of the episode where Scully sees a luscious forest which slowly transitions into her hospital room. These Scully-focused scenes touch on ideas and themes that The X-Files have yet to explore. They elevate the show into something of a metaphysical plane as Scully makes the choice between life or death, a choice interestingly visualized by the image of Scully sitting in the boat. Her condition seems hopeless, and she clings to life with the thinnest of ropes much like the rope tying the boat to the dock. Plus, if you’re wondering why Scully spends the episode in bed, then it’s because she’d given birth only a few days before filming her scenes for the episode. That’s dedication.

Finally, “One Breath” echoes the great “Beyond the Sea” as it not only digs into Scully’s family, but it also gives Mulder a similar emotional journey to Scully’s in that great episode. Duchovny’s journey of faith and belief has always been focused on the supernatural and less so on human beings. We’ve always suspected his depth of feeling for Scully, but Duchovny is even given a moment to cry over potentially losing Scully. The episode’s emotional core is unlike anything else they’ve offered to date, and it’s something I’ve reacted to strongly as a viewer.

Welcome back, Dana Scully, you’ve been missed. Here’s hoping there are fewer convenient, pregnancy-hiding autopsies in your future.