The X-Files Newbie Recap: “Conduit,” “The Jersey Devil”

In which the UFOs make a welcome return, and we get an almost pleasant episode about an urban myth not unlike something out of Supernatural.

Conduit

Otherwise known as unexpected attack of the feels. Guys, I really didn’t expect to be hit this hard by Mulder’s childhood trauma.

We open in Sioux City, Iowa, where aliens are on the prowl once again. This time, they spirit away a teenage girl named Ruby Morris from her family’s campsite by Lake Okobogee. Word of the incident reaches Mulder and he promptly puts in a request for him and Scully to go investigate. Dismayed at the fact Mulder discovered this in a tabloid headline, their superiors call Scully in and ask her whether, in her opinion, his judgement has been compromised by his background. She is heroic as ever and stands up for him, but it’s to no avail as the request is denied.

There follows a heated debate between the two as to whether the case merits their attention. Naturally, Scully is skeptical (those will likely be the three most over-used words in these recaps), but Mulder produces a string of reports on unusual phenomena in the region. UFO sightings are common around the lake but the authorities have tended to put them down to weather balloons – despite there being no weather ballons within hundreds of miles at the time of the sightings. He also points out that the woman whose daughter was taken, Darlene Morris, was part of a troupe of girl scouts who photographed a suspicious object in the sky in the 1960s. This is evidently enough to pique Scully’s interest (and presumably that of their superiors), because next thing they’re at Darlene’s doorstep.

There’s a photo on the mantelpiece in the Morris house that looks unnervingly like the FBI file photo of Samantha :(

Darlene gets the party started straight away by announcing that UFOs took her daughter. Surprisingly, Mulder seems almost standoffish. Before agreeing outright he goes to talk to Darlene’s son Kevin, who witnessed what happened to his sister firsthand (the parallels with Mulder’s background are strong in this episode). Kevin is drawing something which turns out to be binary code, and when Mulder asks him where he saw it he says it’s coming from the TV. The TV is on but there’s nothing but snow on the screen. They’re here.

After a visit to the typically useless local cops, who more or less claim that Ruby had something bad coming to her as she was something of a wild child, they find a note on their car asking them to follow someone across the street. It turns out to be Ruby’s friend Tessa, who informs them that Ruby had been planning on taking off with her boyfriend because she was pregnant. This leads them to a nearby pub where the boyfriend, Greg, worked. It’s a biker bar and they look magnificently out of place, though Mulder is quick to realise he’s among his people when he spots the bartender’s UFO tattoo. Greg hasn’t been heard of in three weeks, apparently, but the bartender says he and his pals take frequent trips out to the lake to spot UFOs. One such spotting session left him with a badly burned ear – which is interesting, as in the opening scene Darlene’s hand was scalded when her camper van was swallowed up by the light which took Ruby.

It’s about time for our friendly neighbourhood NSA agents to put in an appearance and lo, they arrive, ripping up Scully’s motel room and claiming that the binary code Kevin drew out is a highly classified defence satellite transmission. They also take the time to tear up Kevin’s room and take him and his mother into custody. Mulder and Scully hightail it to the FBI’s regional HQ to have the code investigated, where it transpires that none of it is a security risk – rather, the information in the code spells out a Da Vinci portrait, a DNA sequence, a sonnet, and a piece of music. Mulder becomes convinced that Kevin is a “conduit” – a link to whoever (or whatever) took Ruby. Scully is not convinced, but at the same time admits that the explanation for the code was too meagre to justify the NSA kerfuffle. She’s quick to point out that there’s no evidence to indicate Ruby was abducted but also says she understands why it’s so important to him. They’re so good to each other already. I don’t know if it’s because they seem to work around a disproportionate number of horrible people but their consideration of one another is lovely to behold.

They go out to the lake to investigate the scene of the crime. Scully makes a neat rational assessment of the area, saying that given the lake is so close to the forest anything could have come out of the woods and grabbed her. Mulder points to the top of the trees nearby, which are singed black. He also finds a chunk of sand that’s solidified into glass. Apparently it doesn’t do that unless it’s heated to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. (I’m European and this is roughly equivalent to 1,371 degrees Celsius. In the possibly obsolete words of Paris Hilton, that’s hot.)

What looks like a wolf comes bounding out of the forest and leads them to a shallow grave behind the trees. Mulder starts digging at it immediately despite Scully’s protestations that he’s disturbing a crime scene. He says he “needs to know” if it’s “her”, referring to Ruby but not without some rather heartbreaking resonance given the fruitless search for Samantha. Alas, the body turns out to be Greg’s. There’s a note in his wallet with the same handwriting as the one left on Mulder and Scully’s car earlier, and this is enough for them to take Tessa in for questioning. She confesses that she’s the one who’s pregnant, not Ruby, and admits to murdering Greg. However, she hasn’t seen Ruby in weeks.

Scully is satisfied that this explains most of what happened – Tessa has confessed to killing Greg and there’s evidence of intent to kill Ruby. She gently says to Mulder that in all likelihood, Ruby is dead, but he’s adamant there’s still something unexplained out in the woods. Scully tries to rationalise with him, saying he should stop running after his sister and that none of this will bring her back, but Mulder says he won’t give up on Ruby until they find a body. The parallels. They sadden me.

They go back to the Morris house and find Kevin drawing out more pages of binary. Scully heads upstairs to see if anyone else is home but, on viewing the pages from above, realises the code spells out a perfect image of Ruby. Man, when they fade to black in this show, they mean business.

Later that day, they head back out to the lake. Mulder starts talking about how he had a ritual when he was younger, where he would walk into his room with his eyes closed hoping that someday, when he opened them, Samantha would be back. “I’m still walking into that room,” he says soberly. “Every day of my life.” You guys. I don’t know if it’s because he’s usually so snarky and wisecracking but this little aside is soul-destroying. Not least because he’s opening up about something so painful to a partner he’s only known for a couple of months at best. I get the impression that Mulder (understandably) doesn’t often feel comfortable talking about this, which makes his trust in Scully all the more touching. Did everyone else get this invested back in the day? I kinda feel like I’m overreacting, and yet it’s all so sad.

Anyhoo, back at the lake, they find Darlene’s camper van. She’s wandering around the woods looking for Kevin, saying she “couldn’t keep up” with whatever took him. Mulder takes off after him and finds him walking towards a distinctly ET-like light in the distance, which unfortunately turns out to be the biker gang from the bar, out on one of their UFO sighting sessions. They zoom by and Kevin starts exclaiming that Ruby’s back. Mulder tries to explain otherwise, but hears Scully shriek in the distance and realises he’s telling the truth.

Ruby is taken to hospital and examined. Scully puts on her MD cap and says there’s no sign of trauma or abnormalities other than her white blood cell count being through the roof. Mulder asks about a series of other symptoms, which Scully also confirms, before revealing that these symptoms are associated with astronauts who have experienced prolonged weightlessness. They try to talk to Ruby, who says she’s “not supposed” to tell anyone where she’s been. Darlene interjects before they can ask anything else and says she doesn’t want them around her daughter. She says talking about her own experiences when she was younger essentially made her a pariah, and she doesn’t want that to happen to Ruby. Mulder counters that she was only telling the truth, and asks if she’s going to tell Kevin that Ruby was off on the back of a motorbike for the past month. Hmm. One senses that Mulder’s parents didn’t handle his questions about Samantha very well.

The end of the episode is ridiculously emosh. Scully is listening to tapes of Mulder’s hypnosis sessions – on a cassette player, bless! – and the dialogue plays over a scene of Mulder in a church. Mulder, on the tape, is recalling the night Samantha was taken. He says he can’t see Samantha but he can hear her. She’s calling his name and pleading for help. Present-day Mulder sits in a church pew and looks down at a photo of him and Samantha as children before starting to cry. The screen fades to black as the tape narration continues – he speaks of a voice in his head telling him not to be afraid, that she’ll be alright and will one day return. The doctor asks him if he believes the voice. He replies, tentatively, “I want to believe.”

Oh god. Really?

The Jersey Devil

Compared to the one before it, this is almost disposable. Another episode focusing on the very terrestrial weirdness of our world, but with precious little of real import – unless you count Scully on a date.

We open in 1947 New Jersey, where a man trying to change a tyre is pulled into the undergrowth as his horrifed wife and children look on. A search party the next day finds a body whose legs have been eaten off. The cops corner a creature in a cave and shoot at it, presumably killing it. The incident makes its way into an X-File which hits Mulder’s desk in the present day. When first we see him, he’s looking at a centrefold – but only because the model claims to have been abducted by aliens. I’m not sure I should find that endearing, but here we are.

He and Scully are looking into reports of a murder in Atlantic City. A homeless man’s body was recovered with the right arm and shoulder missing and possibly eaten off. Mulder produces the X-File on the so-called “Jersey Devil,” a beast reputed to come out of the woods and attack cars. The creature killed in the opening scenes was examined and found to have human remains in its intestine, but the original autopsy report disappeared. He manages to talk Scully into going down to take a look at the latest victim’s body.

Down in Atlantic City, the medical examiner says the teeth marks on the body are definitely human and suggests a large adult male is the culprit. Before they can ask any more questions however, they’re interrupted by the detective assigned to the case. His name is Thompson and he is predictably hostile towards them. Are all cops in the States this territorial around the FBI, or is this just something that comes up in movies? I’m curious.

Mulder wants to hang about as he’s certain more killings will occur. Scully has to go back to DC for her godson’s birthday party. He tosses her the car keys and promptly looks up the number for the parks service. Guys, payphones. Payphones and shoulder pads. It’s so ’90s. I expect a Backstreet Boys reference at some stage.

A park ranger named Brullet takes him out to the scene. Brullet tells him most of the local homeless people are scared of the woods and, for his part, says he’s seen a lot of weird things in his 32 years of service. In particular, he once saw a large naked man come out of the trees and start sniffing the air. He didn’t see the man again but says he’s found bones and half-eaten animal corpses with human teeth in them, and never comes out to the woods any more without a gun.

Mulder goes to talk to some of the homeless people in the surrounding area. One of them gives him a drawing of a strange creature, saying he and several of the others have seen it in the vicinity. Mulder decides to hang out on the streets that night – giving the guy who talked to him the key to his hotel room in exchange – and the creature obligingly puts in an appearance. This one is a woman, feral and animalistic, who forages in the bins and sniffs the air before doing a runner when she hears Mulder. He attempts to pursue her but the cops show up and arrest him, presuming him to be a drunk. The homeless guy who spoke to him earlier had said the cops know about the creature and don’t seem to care, so they’re not exactly receptive to his story. Mulder claims it’s all a cover-up to prevent the tourism industry being hit. Detective Thompson tells him, in as many words, to get stuffed.

Meanwhile, back in DC, Scully has been helping out at her godson’s predictably hellish birthday party. It sets the scene for a token, if revealing, discussion as to whether she wants kids (for the record: they’re “not for her”) and whether she’s dating anyone. Apparently she described Mulder as “cute” before, which makes me smile. She also said he was a jerk but backtracks now and says he’s “not a jerk,” but he is obsessed with his work. Mulder is kind of cute in a very damaged, emotionally unreachable kind of way. And I’m fairly certain something will happen between the two of them at some stage (cultural osmosis again). I generally find these kinds of scenes rather irritating as it only ever seems to be female characters who get them, but this one gets a pass for indicating how Scully’s opinion of her partner is changing as she gets to know him. She is quick to defend him no matter who she’s talking to, even against her own earlier words. And when she says she’s obsessed with his work, it’s less bemoaning the fact he doesn’t have a life and more of a concerned observation on the lack of closure over what happened to his sister. That said, she seems quite intent on ensuring she never gets that wrapped up in her work, as she manages to set up a date with Rob, the divorced dad of one of the kids at the party.

The next day she’s called back to Atlantic City, where Mulder needs to be bailed out. They then head to the University of Maryland – her alma mater, it seems! – to chat to an anthropology professor, Dr. Diamond. Mulder asks if the “Jersey Devil”, some kind of carniverous Neanderthal-type creature, could feasibly exist in the wild. The professor says it’s highly unlikely, but agrees with Mulder that it’s “not outside the realm of extreme possibility.” Fairly certain Mulder doesn’t deal in anything other than extreme possibilities.

Scully then goes on her date. She looks delightful in the way only early 90s fashion could allow –

– but they don’t exactly hit it off as Rob is a little too fixated on the kids. She seems relieved when she’s called back out into the field.

Mulder and Brullet are investigating the recovery of a male body in the woods. Unfortunately, the body is mislaid (“mislaid”) between the park and the medical examiner’s office, so the three of them together with Dr. Diamond go to stake out the building where Mulder saw the female creature a few days back. They discover a bloodstained rag and split up to investigate. Unfortunately, what looks like a SWAT team shows up outside (who keeps calling the cops in these scenarios?!), evidently intent on finding the creature before they do. Diamond stalls them while Mulder, spotting the creature in the distance, takes off after it. He tracks it to a dark warehouse where it – she – knocks him over, and there’s a really awkward moment where she sort of leans over him and sniffs while he lies panting on the ground. Unintentional hilarity ensues.

Then Scully shows up, and the creature scarpers.

Mulder is examined in an ambulance outside while Scully gets on the phone and tries to secure federal jurisdiction over the case. Unfortunately, the cops chase the creature back out into the woods and Thompson, who’s still around and being a twerp, takes off without informing them. Brullet drives them out to the park but, despite their efforts to tranquilise her, the cops find her first and shoot her dead. Mulder takes a moment to close her eyes. He really is incredibly sensitive underneath all that passive aggression. Thompson declares that he shot her for the same reason you shoot a rabid animal, and Scully drags her partner away before any further unpleasantness breaks out.

Back in DC, Mulder is moping about his office looking thoroughly defeated when Scully comes in with the results of the medical exam. Diamond was allowed to examine the body but found nothing to suggest prehistoric bone structure or physiology. However, there was evidence of her having given birth. Mulder is appalled, arguing that she was clearly just trying to protect her offspring. Scully tries to convince him to take a day off but he announces he has a meeting with an ethno-biologist at the Smithsonian to discuss the whole affair. She gets a call from Rob, but evidently rejects him as she decides to accompany Mulder. Attagirl.

The last shot of the episode shows a father and son hiking in the park. The son exclaims that he’s seen something in the foliage, but his dad urges him on. Turns out the dead creature lady did have a child, as what appears to be a dishevelled little girl is hiding in the trees. She is now an orphan. The cops in this show suck.

This was a strangely amiable episode, by which I mean there was lots of daylight and something approaching a rational explanation for everything. My next two episodes apparently involve psychokinetic force and a murderous computer though, so next week’s recap ought to be very fun indeed.