Welcome back to the greatest show of the 90s! Will this be great? Or did the Fox Network just have them jump a giant alien shark? The Truth is Out There.
This episode starts off with long exposition about the X Files origins, and I hate recapping exposition. Everyone here already knows what’s going on, right? OKAY FINE, in a nutshell:
“My name is Fox Mulder…”
His little sister was [allegedly] kidnapped by aliens and Mulder has been obsessed ever since. He eventually ended up in the FBI in a special group called… The X Files. The Government (an independent, capitalized entity as far as this show is concerned) was like, Dude, are you wasting our money? Only we can do that. So in 1993 they sent him a new, disbelieving partner: Dana Scully.
Exposition, aliens, Government cover-ups, aliens, the Truth is Out There, evil Government, aliens and monsters, deep sexual tension between Mulder and Scully leading to the cover of Rolling Stone:
And then OriginalCyn became obsessed with Gillian Anderson because you can almost see her boob there… just right there… right below his arm…
Well, some of that wasn’t in the introduction. But you get the gist, right? Also, I dyed my hair Scully-red through most of the 1990s. And I have that Rolling Stone edition right at the bottom of my sweater drawer.
The X Files… The truth is out there!!!
High Desert,
Northwestern New Mexico 1947
A bus rolls through with papered up windows. Contents: One driver, one army dude, and some bald guy in a suit who I thought was Head of FBI Skinner, but it’s 1947 so it couldn’t be. If anyone knows who this guy is, put it in the comments! Anyway, the bus rolls to a stop in front of the site of:
CEo3K, Roswell
Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, Washington
Our own older but still beautiful Dr. Dana Scully is preparing for surgery when she is interrupted by an urgent phone call from the now older and not likely beautiful Skinner.
Next scene, Mulder is watching Obama on the Jimmy Kimmel show laughing about aliens. Mulder is not amused. Scully calls to tell him Skinner’s looking for him. “Why doesn’t he just call me himself?” Mulder mutters petulantly. “Cuz he doesn’t know where the fuck you are,” Scully patiently tells him, avoiding the request that he not be an asshole through the entire six episodes.
Some guy named Tad O’Malley is reaching out to them over the ‘net. Mulder looks him up and YAY, it’s The Soup’s own Joel McHale earning some dough after his show got canceled. He plays a Fear Mongering 9/11 Roswell Alien Conspiracy Theorist. Mulder loves The Soup, so he tells Scully to tell Skinner to set up the meeting. Then he finally turns towards the camera and:
YIKES.
Downtown Washington DC
Scully watches as Mulder steps out of an Uber looking like a better shaved Unibomber. They make goo-goo eyes at each other for old time’s sake, then a limo pulls up and spits out smarmy Tad O’Malley. He requests they speak inside the waiting limo, because of all the low flying aircraft that record conversations these days. Even Scully and the believe-everything Mulder are all, “The what?” But they humor him and get in. The limo has bullet proof glass in the windows that won’t roll down, and Tad offers them champagne which they refuse so we have now established that O’Malley is rich and paranoid, and Mulder & Scully are no longer either. In fact, they are now so not paranoid that Mulder professes to not actually “believe” any more at all. Tad tells them he wants to “blow open the most evil conspiracy the world has ever known,” and wants to show them something… and someone.
Low Moor, Virginia
They pull up to a tiny home in the middle of nowhere. “A man in my position finds himself contacted by interesting strangers,” smarms Tad, and he’s starting to give me a headache.
The door is answered by Sveta, a beautiful Indian/Russian woman who Tad says requested to see them. She says she knows Mulder, but Mulder squints at her and doesn’t remember sleeping with her, although there were a few foggy months right before Tea threw his ass in sex rehab…
No, she says, Mulder interviewed her as a child, right after her first abduction. She invites them in.
I hope she’s not serving them any food.
Those are “classic scoop mark scars” from the last twenty years, says Tad. Sveta has been abducted too many times to count, and also has been implanted with “screen memories” that are supposed to cover her memories of being abducted. I’d be getting pissed that we’re verging into Ryan Murphy nonsense territory right about now, but Mulder and Scully are looking at her with the same expression I have:
But the screen memories can’t keep out everything, and we learn Ms. Sveta has all sorts of problems: harvested organs, multiple alien impregnations, baby stealing through her belly button, and alien DNA. She says she’s never had a doctor confirm the DNA part, so I don’t know how she’d even suppose this was the case, but Mulder volunteers Scully to do the test.
Back to the Roswell site, 1947:
The Doc warily steps forward to see what everyone’s looking at:
The special effects budget was used mostly on explosions
But then some trigger happy soldiers shoot the alien life right out of him.
At the hospital, Scully is taking DNA swabs and blood from Sveta when she announces that in addition to all the other issues she has, she’s also a mind reader. Oh, and she’s also telekinetic, but… you know, not all the time. Not when Scully asks her to demonstrate, of course. Then Sveta announces that Mulder and Scully had a previous relationship, and that Mulder is depressed. All stuff that anyone with their own non-alien-DNA’d eyes can see. And just as any two bit fortune teller could tell by Scully’s reactions, Sveta also correctly guesses that they had a child together. “Do you believe me now?” she asks. LOL. No.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Scully challenges her. Then Sveta starts whining about how it’s so HARD when you’ve been abducted by aliens and no one understands, and Scully can never understand how hard because it never happened to her, LOL, and Scully’s face says “FAKER!” all over it. Which the little faker finally sees, and then tries to prove she’s not faking by announcing that OH, she sees that Scully HAS been abducted.
Back at the house-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, Mulder opens the front door to see Tad stepping out of his private helicopter. He’s come to pick up Mulder to take him to meet some people who he warns Mulder are “very paranoid about the work they do.”
Dude, did you not watch my show back in the 90s?
So they fly away leaving me wondering why Scully is back at the hospital with Sveta and Tad drove off in the limo to grab a helicopter to come back and pick up Mulder. Maybe Mulder just needed some time to take a nap. Not that he looks any better for it.
They end up at a large warehouse. Tad says they have an Alien Replica Vehicle. Mulder has never seen one like this before.
Looks pretty standard to me.
Mulder puts his hand on it and its lights turn on, it raises up about four feet off the grand and its landing gear raise.
[Holy Crap, as I type up this episode I see my DVR is recording another episode??? We aren’t having six episodes in a WEEK, are we???]
The ARV operates on Toroidal Energy, the energy of the universe. There’s a ton of stuff written about this but I don’t get paid for that research, so you should all go to that link, read up, and summarize in the comments. THX!! Tad and a Scientist explain this is “free energy” that’s been around since the 40s (although I saw enough in that link to see it’s been around since the dawn of time) and has no fuel, no flame, no combustion. Simple magnetic field. Blah blah we’ve known all about it but we had to let the oil companies get rich blah blah.
Then the ARV just sort of evaporates into thin air. The Scientist just mentions Element 115, Ununpentium. Here’s more research homework for you all.
And we’re back at Roswell, 1947.
Dead alien. The army doc covers it with a blanket, picks it up and walks off with it while not-Skinner protests lamely.
Back at the hospital, Scully is taking a sample of blood from herself. Tad pops up out of nowhere, as non-medical people always do in the middle of a hospital operating room. He asks if she’s testing for alien DNA, but she claims it’s just for cholesterol. Because the operating room is generally where those basic tests are performed.
Tad sees a bunch of medical photos up on the theater room screens, and Scully explains the boy shown suffers from microtia, a congenital deformity where the ears are severely underdeveloped. Tad’s all:
“Alien! Right?”
But Scully says, “Nope, just a boy with no ears.”
He asks her about her work with the X files, which she says was some of the most intense and challenging work she’s ever done. He mentions Mulder, and she says he was the most intense and challenging relationship she’s ever had. Tad says he could totally read that on their faces. Maybe Tad is also a secret alien psychic just like Sveta. Or maybe anyone with eyeballs can see that.
He says he wanted to check that she was okay after Mulder put her on the spot earlier, but that also he just wanted to see her again. The scene ends as I notice Scully has a random splattering of blood on her neck. I would think she’d wash a little better after surgery before she took a sample of her own blood, but maybe Scully studied medicine in Manitowoc County.
Back at the House-In-the-Middle-of-Nowhere, it’s night and there’s a knock on the door. It’s Mulder, who says he hitchhiked there. Or maybe he flew in the Ununpentium fueled Alien Replica Vehicle.
He wants to know why she kept looking at Tad before answering the questions about her alien babies. She says because she doesn’t believe it was aliens who took her babies (from through her belly button). Mulder’s all, but you said you were abducted. Svetka starts stuttering about difficult answers to dangerous questions. Mulder asks her again who took her babies, and she says it was men! Human men!! They took her aboard their ships and did “stuff” to her! And she had no one to go to because no one would believe her.
“I believe you.”
“But you’re a man! A Government Man!”
“But you’re super hot, so…”
Mulder remembers Tea filed those divorce papers back in 2014 so he can be sex-addicted all he wants now, and he tells Sveta to trust him. Sveta says yeah but you work for the government! Ehhh, Mulder says, Technically, but not for years. She asks him if he ever wondered if they were lying to him too.
Scully is in a limo when Mulder calls. He’s like “Shh Ssshh Shhh, just listen!! We’ve been misled! What if…. Let’s just say what if… What if everything we’ve been told is a LIE???” and Scully regrets ever putting Skinner in contact with him. But no, Mulder wants to know “What if there is no alien conspiracy??”
Scully then turns to… TAD…. And hands him her champagne flute and asks him to pull over. Good Lord, Scully. She gets out of the car yelling at Mulder and asking if they just can’t talk about this later, but Mulder is ranting about “Everything we’ve been led to believe is a lie! I know why Tad came to us! And that girl…. That girl is the KEY!” But now he doesn’t want to talk to her on the phone about it and hangs up on her.
FBI Headquarters.
Skinner lets Mulder into his old office which is now cleared out except for the pencils hanging from the ceiling and the lone “I want to believe” poster on the floor just so we’re sure exactly where we are.
“Throw away EVERYTHING but that poster! It might be worth some cash!”
“Where are all the files??” yells Mulder, but Skinner just says “I dunno.” He claims the place has been untouched for 14 years. Mulder rants that this is about “Controlling the past to control the future. It’s about fiction masquerading as fact. Now you owe me some answers!” Mulder and Skinner just start mumbo-jumboing about Government, and Secrets, and wasting a decade, and we’re all in more danger now than ever!!
Mulder walks out, dialing his cell phone. Skinner’s phone rings. “Now you’ve got my number,”says Mulder, and he walks off.
Now we watch a taping of Tad’s Truth Squad, where he rants about how Obama’s gonna take all our guns and throw us in jail and force us to marry our sisters, etc etc. But then he switches topics to do a lovely piece on Doc Scully, Patron Saint of Childhood Ear Regeneration. Cuz someone’s in lurrrve.
Scully’s viewing of the show is interrupted when her blood test results are handed back to her. She looks at them with concern, cuz high cholesterol kills, yo, and then asks the nurse to have them retested. A surgeon tells Scully to get her ass back into the operating room, and she tells the nurse that she’s also waiting/hoping for a call from someone named Mulder.
National Mall, Washington DC
Mulder meets an old man out in the middle of the mall. I don’t remember this guy, or know if I’m supposed to, but he’s pretty pissed that Mulder’s meeting out in the open. Mulder explained he took all the proper precautions, and then the old guy watches a low flying aircraft pass by…. *snort*.
Mulder says the old guy told him to call if he ever put the pieces together, and now he’s met someone. And seen a disappearing ARV.
Old guy is not impressed.
And then Mulder is spouting gobbledygook, and the old guy just keeps saying Yeah, But! And finally Mulder explains that he knows that alien technology is now being wielded against us, by the Men in Black Against Humanity. Mulder asks what the tests are for, and Old Guys says You tell me.
Like, what is the purpose of this meeting?
Oh, but finally we see some flashy-flashbacks that tell us Old Guy is Roswell Army Doc. So Old Guy definitely knows some stuff. But for some reason won’t tell Mulder any of the stuff he knows, and is going to make Mulder work really hard for information that Old Doc is never really going to give him.
Because this show is turning out to be the worst.
Mulder wants to go public with all this information, but Old Army Doc says not yet. He says Mulder doesn’t have all the answers yet. He walks off and then tells him, “Roswell. That was a smokescreen.”
“So I’ve been told,” mutters Mulder.
Next scene, Scully pulls up to Sveta’s house, and Mulder comes out the front door. They have the same argument they’ve had in every episode since 1993. The Truth is Out There! You’re crazy! I know all the secrets now! You’re nuts! You have to trust me! Etc Etc Etc.
He says Tad is going to broadcast the Truth to the World, and now Mulder has the Key – Sveta!
Scully gets back in her car, wondering if she has the guts to finally call a 5150.
But Tad pulls up behind her in his limo and taps her window. She wants to leave. He asks if she was invited. Mulder says he would have invited her but he didn’t think she would come. That’s why he called her giving her just enough blathering idiocy that he knew she’d have to come. She wants to leave. Tad wants her to stay.
Mulder wins again.
OMG the nonsense exposition in this show. This is next to impossible to recap. Mulder was a lot more believable back in the 90s when I didn’t have to type out all his words and realize what a lunatic he was. Something about far reaching tentacles back to the mid-century. After the Cold War political and economic conditions were perfect for actual execution. A conspiracy bigger and more secret than the Manhattan Project. More odious and far reaching, adds Tad. As soon as we defeated Germany, a new threat appeared, drawn by the H-Bomb. The H-Bombs acted as transducers that drew aliens through worm holes and tried to save our own self annihilation through their own alien self sacrifice and crashes (GOT THAT?). World leaders signed secret memoes. Classified studies, extracting alien tissues, testing on human subjects. Human hybridization. Government hiding and holding alien secrets. Something about enslaving American citizens. Consumed by consumerism.
I think in a nutshell, certain government groups obtained alien secrets and technology, and soon they are going to unleash some great fake Alien Invasion in order to enslave Americans and… rule the world, or some shit.
It will start on a Friday when banks close early, the digital money will disappear, detonation of strategic electromagnetic pulse bombs…
Already read The Handmaid’s Tale back in 1985
“You can’t say these things,” says a defeated and exhausted Scully.
“I’m gonna say them tomorrow,” says Tad.
Scully says this is all a bunch of nonsense bullshit bordering on treason. It would be irresponsible to go public with this! Mulder says it would be irresponsible not to. Sveta says YAH, especially since it’s the Truth!
“Oh yeah, your tests came back. Negative, Bitch.”
Little Miss Faker has no alien DNA. Everyone suddenly shuts their fat stupid mouths.
Commercial
Back at the hospital, Scully is taking a break from surgery, again, to sneak a peek at Tad’s show. Sveta is on camera recanting all her alien stories, saying Tad paid her to say them. Mulder mutters “They got to her,” from his viewing post. And then the nurse arrives with Scully’s new test results.
Now Mulder is running through the field to Sveta’s empty house.
Now a bunch of military jeeps run through the Science Warehouse ARV Parking Garage, rough up the old Scientist a bit, and then blow the entire ARV, people and warehouse all to kingdom come.
Back at hospital, Scully comes out of surgery (with amazingly similar blood splatters on her neck as earlier in the episode) and when she pulls up Tad’s show:
Scully is all cleaned up and walks out to her car where “DON’T GIVE UP” is written in the fog of her back window. Mulder comes out of the shadows yakking his alien philosophical nonsense again, but Scully says they need to find Sveta and protect her no matter what. It turns out that when Scully ran the tests again, she also sequenced her own genome, and now she says Sveta is not the only one with alien DNA and someone needs to stop these sons of bitches.
They both get a text from Skinner:
And then Sveta’s car breaks down on a deserted road at night. A UFO hovers above her and blows the entire thing to bits.
And then Cigarette Man gets a call that they’ve re-opened The X-Files. Cigarette Man is not pleased.
This season: Mulder cleans up nicely, Scully gets hotter.
Want more TrashTalk? Follow us on Twitter for updates of recaps as they publish, like us on Facebook for a daily update, watch our TV parody vids on YouTube, or for funny TV pics, heart us on Instagram, and get the occasional gif on Tumblr!