Heavily Categorized The X-Files Season 1 Recaps
1x1 Pilot
Type: One-off with plot elements Grade: A
Summary: Dana Scully, a young FBI agent in an ill-fitting suit, is sent to report on (i.e. debunk) the work of the eccentric Agent Mulder, who spends all his time investigating cases which have been classified "X Files" because they involve unexplained phenomena. Mulder brings Scully to Oregon to investigate the mysterious death of a bunch of kids in the same high school class. Mulder does a bunch of weird things (like making a spray-painted "X" at a spot where the radio goes all wonky), and Scully is skeptical. But the case presents a number of weird clues. All of the victims have strange markings on their backs. In the grave of one of the kids, they discover a shriveled, non-human body. Mulder thinks it's an alien, and Scully thinks it's a primate, possibly a chimpanzee, but either way it's weird. She takes X-rays and finds a weird metal implant in the nasal cavity. Mulder and Scully lose nine minutes (there's a flash where they're driving--over the "X", incidentally--and a moment later their watches are nine minutes ahead). Mulder says this totally happens all the time to abductees. Mulder amends his dead-creature theory from alien to alien abductee who's undergone mutation as a result of weird alien tests. Scully's beginning to agree. While they're away, their motel is torched, destroying the evidence.
One boy with the strange markings, Billy, supposedly a catatonic schizophrenic in a complete coma, but Mulder and Scully find evidence that he was in the woods the night of the latest murder. (He's the police chief's son, which explains the resistance of local law enforcement and the arson.) Mulder finds Billy wandering the woods with another potential victim in his arms. He lifts her body, and there's a lot of wind and a flash, and then--surprise happy ending! He's okay and so is she and the markings are gone. Under hypnosis, Billy explains that he was being controlled by the aliens through a chip in his nose, and they told him to bring his friends to the woods from whence the aliens would bring them to the "testing place." In the end, the aliens decided the test had failed and let the last two victims go.
FBI higher-ups are not impressed with Scully's work as skeptic. She's taking Mulder's side now, but she has, they point out, produced no hard evidence of this alien abduction theory. She pulls out the metal implant from the body, all, BOO YAH. In the final scene, we see a mysterious creepy man bringing the implant into a large storehouse full of purposely forgotten evidence.
Approximate Case Resolution: 85%
Recurrences: The pilot sets the tone for the rest of the series with approximately the same ratio of one-off mystery elements and overarching alien/conspiracy elements. Mulder's office displays some of the iconic images, such as a poster of a UFO with the legend "I WANT TO BELIEVE." Mulder already chain-eats sunflower seeds.
Viewer Discretion: A title card before the episode says the story is based on "actual documented accounts." Accounts of what? Hoaxes? TV pilot outlines?
Famous Last Words: Scully: "What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science."
Things People Need to Yell More Often: "It's a universal invariant!"
Fashion Files: Both Mulder and Scully have giant round reading glasses. Oh 90s!
Scully Backstory:
- Been with FBI 2 years
- Medical doctor, recruited to FBI out of med school
- Undergrad degree in Physics, senior thesis "Einstein's Swing Paradox: A New Interpretation"
Mulder Backstory:
- Oxford-educated psychologist
- Wrote a monograph on serial killers and the occult (people write monographs still?) which helped to catch some killer in 1988
- Known at FBI academy as "Spooky Mulder"
- Sister disappeared when she was 8 and Mulder was 12; it was never explained.
- His ability to do whatever he feels like despite the objections of his bosses is explained by his "friends in Congress." What? Does this ever come up?
Character Notes: Although mistrustful of each other in some ways, Mulder and Scully seem to enjoy each other right off the bat; Scully smiles at Mulder's jokes and even after having an argument with him.
For Mulder, we get an immediate backstory/motivation for his mania. After describing his sister's abduction, he tells Scully, "Nothing else matters to me," other than investigating and proving the existence of aliens and figuring out what happened to his family.
As the newcomer not doing anything particularly weird, Scully doesn't require or get a backstory just yet. Actually, she really isn't all that skeptical; she's logical, which (believably and refreshingly) includes being able to integrate new information and consider unusual theories. She seems unwilling to draw definite conclusions, but also disinclined to rule anything out.
Mulder/Scully Ship Moment (Gratuitous Skin): Scully ducks over to Mulder's motel room. It's a power outage and Mulder's holding a candle. Scully removes her robe to reveal only underwear beneath. She wants him... to check out her unexplained possible alien abduction markings! When he grins and tells her they're just mosquito bites she whirls around and buries her face in his shoulder. He appears to slightly inhale her hair.
Actually, There Is A Logical Explanation: Mulder is supposed to be this hotshot psychologist, but he doesn't question it when the crux of this case--not to mention his whole life's mission--hinges on repressed memory recovery, which is notoriously inaccurate. Alien abduction scenarios, in particular, are often "recovered" under hypnosis; people know the alien abduction script, and they are easily able to recount it when constructing false memories. (Although, admittedly, perhaps less so before X-Files aired. Also probably that is part of the conspiracy.)
1x2 Deep Throat
Type: One-off with plot elements Grade: C+
While briefing Scully in a restaurant on the mysterious disappearance of a military test pilot on a small base in Idaho, Mulder is approached in the men's room by an unknown man (Deep Throat) (and no this isn't turning into a gay porn) who warns him not to pursue this case. Of course he does anyway. Wouldn't you?
The test pilot's wife is frantic; the military won't answer her questions about her husband's whereabouts. Nobody will talk to Mulder or Scully, either, except a suspiciously friendly reporter. Mulder discovers that this is a haven for local UFO nuts; he buys a blurry UFO photo from a diner owner ("Sucker," says Scully). At the base, Mulder and Scully both see inexplicable lights. Later they're pulled over by Men in Black and all their evidence is destroyed (do I sense a pattern?). And the test pilot mysteriously reappears! His wife insists it isn't really her husband, he's been replaced somehow! But he knows the answers to biographical questions. He can't, however, answer a technical question Mulder poses about stealth planes.
Mulder and Scully argue; Scully thinks this is a wild goose chase and the case is over since the man has been located. Mulder goes off by himself. Some amusing pot-smoking teens (one played by Seth Green) help him break into the base. Scully gets worried when she can't find him and all the phones are down and she sees the weird reporter using a military walkie-talkie. She goes into Action!Scully mode and forces the "reporter" at gunpoint to help her find Mulder. An exchange is effected and the base personnel return a bedraggled and confused Mulder. He knows he saw something, but the memory has been removed.
Approximate Case Resolution: 75%
Fashion Files: Scully has a new shorter, curlier haircut.
Actually, There Is A Logical Explanation: The feeling that a loved one has been replaced with an identical lookalike is a documented psychological phenomena, Capgras delusion, caused when there's a problem in the brain which prevents the expected emotional response from looking at a familiar face. While I kind of like that X-Files takes cool psych disorders and posits that the delusional, paranoid explanations associated with them are true, you would seriously think Mulder would have heard of some of them. V.S. Ramachandran was around in the 90s.
Character Notes: We see a lot of Mulder's personable side in this episode, as he's friendly and open to everyone--from the reporter of whom he's clearly immediately suspicious, to the UFO nuts that even he doesn't exactly believe, to the belligerent pilot who doesn't want to answer his questions. Meanwhile, Scully seems more exasperated and anti-curious in this episode, and it's unclear why. I know she's supposed to be the skeptical one, but she was more open-minded in the previous episode and nothing has happened since then except Mulder being right.
Mulder/Scully Ship Moment: Nothing substantial, but there are a lot of unnecessary little gestures (which I'll largely stop recording after this, you can just assume they're going on) like the way Mulder puts his hand on the small of Scully's back to guide her into rooms, and the way he ducks his head around her when he's greeting her from behind like he's going to kiss her.
1x3 Squeeze
Type: One-off Grade: C
This is one of the slightly gross episodes. At the request of a friend from the academy, Scully write up a serial killer profile for a mysterious killer who seems to get into totally locked-up places and tear out people's livers. Mulder matches the M.O. to rashes of killings in the 1960s, 30s, and 00s. Mulder tells Scully she's wasting her time when she stakes out a former crime scene--this guy likes new challenges--but they do find a man climbing in the vents there. In a polygraph test, animal control guy Eugene Toombs denies killing anyone or being over 100 years old. The other investigators accept his results and laugh at the questions Mulder put in. Scully's friend offers to help her get away from Mulder.
Mulder matches Toombs's print to an elongated print found at one of the old crime scenes. Toombs can stretch and collapse together to fit into small spaces. They track down his old 1900s apartment, now condemned, where he's keeping this weird nest made of wet newspapers and filled with bile and momentos from the killings. Mulder hypothesizes that Toombs hibernates in the nest using the livers as sustenance. Scully's ex-friend cancels the stake-out they order on the apartment, infuriating Scully; Mulder goes down there anyway and finds Scully's necklace among the momentos. He arrives at her apartment just in the nick of time.
Approximate Case Resolution: 95%. Okay, so we never really find out what Toombs is or how he got that way, but at least he got caught!
Refrigerator Question: Scully predicted that Toombs would return to the scene based on what turned out to be a largely irrelevant profile assuming he was a normal human serial killer; Mulder, working on accurate information, insisted that he wouldn't. So why did he?
Character Notes: We see Scully really defending Mulder in this episode, and Mulder having a sense of humor about his reputation. He tells Scully's friend, very deadpan, about the gray-skinned Reticulans.
Mulder/Scully Ship Moment: Mulder grabbing Scully playfully by the necklace is a weird gesture; I don't care that it turns out to be designed primarily to draw our attention to the fact that Scully wears a necklace. It looks like he tried to cop a feel and missed and had to turn it into something.
1x4 Conduit
Type: One-off with plot elements Grade: A
Scully begins to question Mulder's objectivity when he becomes obsessed with solving the disappearance of a girl who was apparently abducted. The girl's mother was part of a Girl Scout troop who all reported seeing a UFO in the 60s, and her younger brother is turning out odd, too. Since she left, he has begun writing long sequences 1s and 0s, claiming they come to him from the TV snow. (Classic schizo behavior.) NSA agents bust into Mulder's room in the middle of the night and question him about "the document" (one of the boy's crayoned pages). They think the child is a nation security threat. Mulder and Scully get the binary analyzed and it turns out to be stuff like Michelangelo pictures and snatches of the Brandenberg concerto (it's not said, but this is stuff from Carl Sagan's golden record, yes?) Another cool moment comes when they return to the kid's house and Mulder's contemplating a large floor covering of 1s and 0s, and from the top of the stairs Scully realizes it's an ASCII drawing of a young woman's face.
Anyway, the child returns to the abduction sight convinced his sister is going to return and lo and behold she does. She's unconscious but alive, and when she's examined she shows what Mulder describes as "symptoms of prolonged weightlessness." She seems about to tell Mulder about her abduction experience when her mother comes in and convinces her to rest. She tells Mulder she spent her whole life being laughed at for claiming to have had a paranormal experience, and she wants a different life for her daughter. Mulder is anguished.
Approximate Case Resolution: 90%. They didn't really find out anything about the aliens, but they never do. At least they got the girl back. Though it's not explained why she came back and not Samantha.
Nitpick: Girl Scouts don't have den mothers.
Gratuitous Skin: Mulder questioned topless.
Plot Points: Scully sees the X-file on Samantha Mulder's disappearance. (Hey, Mulder hails from Massachusetts!) At the end of the episode, Scully listens to an audiotape of Mulder's regression therapy, where he recovered memories of the event. "What's the voice telling you?" "That no harm will come to her, and someday she will return." "Do you believe the voice?" "I want to believe."
Character Notes: Mulder's still constantly emotionally affected by his sister's disappearance, and it does seem to affect which cases he picks and what he does about them (Scully has to stop him from tampering with a crime scene when he's too impatient to wait for the local authorities). At the end of the episode we see Mulder praying in a church next to a giant stained-glass window of Jesus (Samantha=messiah apparently). Mulder's not Jewish?