Hello friends! After a week’s break (during which my nation did something truly wonderful), our The X-Files newbie recaps are back. This week we have one great, properly weird episode and one that played a little like a tamer Criminal Minds. Let’s proceed.
Gender Bender
In which Scully seems oddly judgemental of casual sex. Although, bearing in mind that this was made in the early ’90s and the AIDS crisis dominated headlines for the better part of the ’80s, comments like “it’s hard to imagine someone in this day and age having sex with a perfect stranger” may be understandable. We also get a strict separatist group that rejects technology and a killer that can seemingly switch genders at will.
We open with a man and woman heading home from a nightclub together. Once the deed’s done, he starts choking violently and dies foaming at the mouth. The woman watches the whole scene from the shadows and then morphs into a man. Mulder and Scully come in to investigate. It’s the fifth in a series of similar murders, and given the security camera footage shows a woman entering with the victim but a man leaving, police are bamboozled. Hilariously, they can’t determine the gender of the killer because the victims have been both male and female. Apparently bisexuals didn’t exist in 1993. Mulder takes a sample from the victim and discovers it contains traces of a particular kind of white clay, found only in a certain region of Massachusetts. Another victim was found in that locality so they decide to go and check it out.
The region is home to a mysterious sect called the Kindred. They live in a contained community in the hills and follow an old-fashioned, Amish-like lifestyle with traditional dress and no mod cons. Mulder and Scully notice a number of framed pictures of the group on a shop wall and ask for more info. The photos apparently date from the ’30s, which is remarkable given the images are pristine.
While they’re chatting, a group of the Kindred roll into town on a horse-drawn cart and head to the feed store. Mulder follows them while Scully strikes up a conversation with one of the men at the cart. He is initially reluctant to engage in conversation but eventually takes her hand and starts gazing at her intently. For a minute Scully looks like she’s being hypnotised, but then the rest of the group come out of the shop and they all head off. Scully’s feeling shaken. “There’s something up there,” she says warily as the group disappear down the road. Mulder smiles and replies, “Ooh, I’ve been saying that for years.” Darling, ridiculous loser.
They traipse up into the woods but get lost because Mulder is terrible at reading maps. Genius profiler; rubbish navigator. You can’t win ’em all. The Kindred find them, descending from among the trees like strange ghost creatures. They’re all decked out in old-style Puritan dress and look just a tad intimidating. They take our heroes back for dinner after insisting that they relinquish their weapons. The leader appears to be a woman named Sister Abby, who advises them that “up here, no one kills another.” Good to know, if slightly alarming. As they sit down to eat, Mulder attempts to ask a few questions about the killings while Scully becomes concerned for a member of the group who’s coughing violently. She tries to intervene to help him, but is warned off. Shortly afterward, a man seated at the table loses it over Mulder’s questions and shouts that “their” world does not concern the group. Sister Abby stands up and admonishes him, but it’s clear the agents are not welcome.
They go back to the woods to leave, but after the group disperses Mulder decides to go back. He thinks they’re hiding something (naturally) and says some of the faces from the photos they looked at earlier were at the dinner table. Scully agrees that the place seems a little odd – there’s no children, for one thing, and the group dragged the coughing man away like it was nothing. She decides to go back with Mulder. Along the way, they hear chanting coming from a barn and make their way over to take a look. Evidently, the guy who was sick at the dinner table has died, because the Kindred are gathered inside to bury him. Once the group file out, Mulder creeps inside to take a look. The body was buried in a hidden cellar which looks a little like that place the Queen was using to hatch her eggs in Aliens, only it’s white and waxy instead of dark and greasy. Some Kindred members wash the body in a soapy substance and leave. In his haste to hide from them, Mulder finds himself next to the body. He has just enough time to furrow his brow over the newly long locks on the dead man’s head before his eyes open dramatically, and Mulder somehow manages not to scream the place down.
Meanwhile, Scully’s been discovered by the same guy she was talking to in town earlier. His name is Brother Andrew and he brings her back to one of the houses, saying he knows the killer. Once they get inside, Andrew tells her that the culprit is a guy from the group called Brother Martin, who he calls Marty. Marty was “different”, and wanted to leave the Kindred in order to join the rest of society. Andrew thinks he’s poisoning his victims. Scully asks if the method of killing has anything to do with what was going on in the barn. Andrew ignores her, taking her hand and adopting the same weird hypnotic expression he had earlier. He mulls about how all of the Kindred are different and starts pushing her back over the bed, but just when things look like they’re going to turn deeply unpleasant Mulder breaks in and pushes Andrew away.
They’re summarily dismissed by the Kindred, and as Scully’s a bit out of it Mulder takes her to get some coffee. He seems flabbergasted and demands to know why she was about to do “the wild thing” with a complete stranger. This episode is weirdly conservative. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I hadn’t pegged our heroes as regressive when it came to sexual mores, but as noted previously I guess I should look at it in its historical context. Mulder eventually fills Scully in on what he saw in the barn cellar. He decides they’re looking for a changeling and says this would explain the different figures on the security tape.
Unfortunately, while they were traipsing about the Kindred’s settlement, the killer attacked someone else. This time however, a cop came upon the scene so the victim is still alive. Mulder and Scully go to quiz him in the hospital. He’s reticent at first but opens up a little after Mulder says anything he tells them is “off the record”. Apparently a woman attacked him, but when she hit the police officer and made off, she looked more like a man. Scully decides they’re looking for a transvestite. Before they can discuss the case further, they get word that a credit card stolen from one of the previous victims has been used across town, so they hurry off to the source.
We then find ourselves in a dark room with what appears to be the killer. It is a woman, reflecting aloud on how she couldn’t stay away from the human world and its pleasures, but that the others will find and punish her for what she’s done. It seems the day of their departure is nigh, but they won’t leave without her. As she trails off, the camera pans across the room to reveal another dead man in the bed.
Mulder and Scully break in mid-soliloquy and the woman rushes out, knocking Scully over in the process. Mulder pursues her but she manages to upend him too, right before transforming into a man in front of him. Why does this always happen to Mulder? Scully will never believe anything if she never gets to see it with her own two eyes. I must commend all the strange and unusual creatures in this universe for knowing their audience and isolating him beautifully. Anyway, Scully quickly comes back around and races after the man. They come out into an alleyway and he’s set upon by a crowd of dark figures. Scully realises it’s the Kindred and warns them to step away, but Brother Andrew starts sidling up to her again. She tells him to get back and that she’s armed, but he keeps coming. Mulder appears in time to prevent another hypnotic episode but Andrew manages to knock away her gun, and the group disappear – quite literally, as their shadows evaporate off the wall.
Our heroes call for back-up and everyone high-tails it to the Kindred settlement, only to find it deserted. The dinner table is set but no one’s there, and the barn has been emptied out and a wall built to block the entrance to the cellar. The cops say they’ve found something in a field and LADIES AND GENTS, WE HAVE OUR FIRST CROP CIRCLE OF THE SERIES.
Class.
Scully asks how they could disappear when they have no means of transportation, to which Mulder replies “no earthly means of transportation.” Twilight Zone music. I do love a good crop circle.
Anyhoo, for the most part I liked this quite a lot. It’s quite eerie, tense, has some overt horror overtones and suitably enigmatic villains. There’s a recurring ominous church bell sound on the soundtrack which helps to set the scene, and I like that the Kindred were kind of ambivalent as figures – sure, one of their own has gone rogue and killed people, but for the most part they don’t seem to have interfered in human life in any way. They were literally the quiet aliens living next door, if your neighbourhood includes an expanse of dark woods and open farmland. That said, the episode does seem a bit problematic. It conflates a killer of indeterminate gender with a bunch of beings who are literally from another planet, and everyone’s horrified at the notion people are having casual sex. It never explains why Marty is killing people. Or how, really. They bear all the symptoms of poisoning but we never see him administer one. We know Marty chose to leave the Kindred to partake of more ~earthly desires, but it’s not clear why he wants or has to kill his partners. Maybe it’s necessary in order to enable him to switch genders, but that seems awful in the extreme. Then there’s Mulder’s comments to the one surviving victim, asking if there’s anything he might have been uncomfortable telling the police. A fear of prejudice or judgement is understandable, but the victim’s behaviour suggests he was aghast at the idea of his hook-up partner secretly being a man. It’s not at all subversive either. Hmm. Maybe I’m missing something, or just clutching at straws given these episodes are over 20 years old and attitudes have progressed since then (or so we’d like to think). But the tone does seem a little off. At least it gives us plenty to think about.
Lazarus
This one was weaker, but it offers a little more insight into Scully’s background. Essentially, the consciousness of a serial killer gets transplanted into Scully’s ex (a fellow agent named Jack Willis) when they’re both shot during a botched bank robbery. They go into cardiac arrest at the same time but only one, Willis, is revived, and when he comes to he’s not him. We get lots of Doctor Dana – early on, she insists that the medics keep working on Willis even after he’s flatlined for 12 minutes, and later on reminds him he’s a diabetic who needs insulin – but otherwise the main point of note in this episode is the shameless shipping fodder.
Mulder latches onto this whole body-switching idea like a beast, as you’d expect. The possessed Willis makes out of the hospital after cutting three fingers off Dupre (the bank robber, whose consciousness is now in Willis’ body), and Mulder is quick to note that the prints pulled from the implement suggest the culprit is left-handed. Willis is right-handed, but Dupre wasn’t. Dupre and his wife Lula are both prime suspects in a series of robberies and killings and Mulder reckons the fingers may have been severed to get at Dupre’s wedding band.
Scully, who’s horrified that Willis has disappeared from hospital, is quick to point out that any strange behaviour may be explained by his psychological state. He has, after all, just undergone major trauma. Mulder takes her to a biologist to discuss out-of-body experiences. Imagine what he’d do on a date, lads. He’s so socially peculiar, and he doesn’t care a jot. The biologist says coming back from a near-death experience can change people profoundly but according to Scully, Willis has always been intense and determined. She’s unwilling to say he’s possessed just cos he’s lit out of the hospital (presumably) in search of the other killer. Turns out that Willis was her instructor at the FBI academy and they dated for quite a while. I never pictured Scully as the type who’d date instructors, though on this evidence she may be interested in the single-minded, staunchly professional type. That’d make some sense.
In any case, the possessed Willis has gone and killed Tommy, his brother-in-law. This is after breaking into the latter’s dingy flat and wailing on about how he came back cos he misses Lula. He thinks Tommy sold them out to the FBI and this is why he wants him dead. He disappears until the cops find Tommy and call in Mulder and Scully, then returns to confound everyone. Willis claims he wasn’t himself at the hospital (you don’t say) and that he wants to catch Lula and close the case. Scully is concerned, but says he can come back aboard the investigation if he undergoes full medical and psychological evaluations.
Meanwhile, Mulder is investigating away. He pulls a print off Tommy’s TV, noting it’s not said dearly departed. The print is given to Willis to take back to HQ but SUSPICIOUSLY goes missing. Mulder then gets a birthday card for Scully and asks Willis to sign it, which he does without question. This only adds to his suspicions as, earlier in the episode, Scully revealed that she and Willis had the same birthday – but their birthday’s not for two months. Mulder notices the signature is off and that Willis signed with his left hand. Scully, of course, points to the myriad of psychological reasons as to why this may be so, but Mulder remains convinced that Willis is possessed.
The police get a tip off about Lula and Scully goes with Willis to investigate. They find Lula, but before Scully can apprehend her Willis cuffs her instead. He then sets about convincing Lula that he’s actually Dupre. Scully starts feeding him information to try and remind him who he really is. Willis is complaining of thirst and stomach pains, and Scully worriedly informs him that he’s diabetic and he needs insulin. They rob some insulin from a chemist but before Scully can inject him, Lula stops her. Turns out she was the one who dobbed him in to the FBI, because she wanted to be rid of him and to make off with the money from all their robberies. She smashes the bottle of insulin and calls the FBI to demand a million dollars for Scully’s safe return.
Mulder has been looking for Scully since she went AWOL hours ago. Willis had called them earlier just to say he had her, but they manage to get a trace on when Lula calls. She uses Scully’s phone so the feds can’t get a location, but I’ve got hearts in my eyes over the fact Mulder knows Scully’s phone number off by heart. I mean obviously he does, cos they’re partners, but he also shouts “you lay one hand on Scully and so help me God” down the phone to Lula so pardon me while I take a tissue to my blurring eyes.
But there’s more! After Mulder and an analyst isolate the sound of a plane engine on the call recording, they manage to whittle down the origin of the call to a three-mile radius. (Their method of doing so seems hilariously improbable for 1993 but whatever, I’ll go with it.) He goes to fill in the cops and solemnly notes, “for those of you who don’t know already, this one’s important to me so let’s do it right.” ADORABLE. I don’t even have to be worried for them because I know Scully will be grand for the next eight seasons, and the firmness in his voice is precious. This comes after a bunch of cops were making fun of him for being weird only for a superior officer to tell them to wise up and pay attention cos they might learn something. Professionalism? Integrity? Cast-iron unfailing loyalty? Mulder’s a great human. The partner Scully deserves AND needs right now.
Scully herself is still trying to convince the increasingly ailing Willis that he’s not Dupre. He seems to come round briefly and remembers details of what happened in the bank, but then passes out. For a split second, his face morphs into Dupre’s, and Scully looks stupefied. When Lula comes back in, Scully angrily informs her that he’s dead. Lula drops her wedding ring by his side and essentially says good riddance, but Willis comes to and wrestles her gun away. He then manages to shoot her just as the FBI break in and he passes out again. This time, he does die. But Dana’s alright which is absolutely the main thing.
A few days later, Mulder brings Scully Willis’ watch. She’d had it engraved for his 35th birthday. Mulder tells her that the official line is he died in a shootout with Lula, but Scully wonders aloud what she’s supposed to tell herself. She looks down at the watch and notices it stopped at 6:47pm. This is the exact time Willis went into cardiac arrest at the hospital. The biologist they talked to earlier in the episode said many people who have had out-of-body experiences can’t wear watches because of an extra electronic charge in their bodies, which stops them from working properly. Mulder gently tells her this means whatever she wants it to mean, and then we fade to black.
Oy.
So, of note here? Scully appears to find determination to the point of obsessiveness attractive. Can’t imagine how that might be relevant to anyone else currently in her life. (Tee hee.)Â But the poor woman has had such a hard slog these past few episodes – her dad died, an old flame died, she got kidnapped and held hostage and all experiences came with completely inexplicable horror escapades. If only she’d been able to see the look on Mulder’s face when he was looking for her. I don’t want her being imperilled to become a trend because she is utterly capable, but I do have to squeal a little at how much he adores her. High point of an otherwise pedestrian episode.
Grace Duffy is a pop culture devotée and sometime film critic currently catching up on her classic sci-fi. You can read more on her blog, Tumblr, or catch her frequent TV liveblogs on Twitter.
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Published: May 25, 2015 10:50 am