"The Truth Is Out There" Re-Watch: "Our Town" & "Anasazi"

 The X-Files

We have reached the end of season 2. Truly a fantastic season of "The X-Files" and a fantastic season of television. And season 3 is even better. So let's get right into these final two episodes.

"Our Town"

Dana Scully: "What are you talking about?"

Fox Mulder: "Some cannibalistic rituals are enacted with the belief that they can prolong life."

Dana Scully: "Cannibalism is one thing, but increasing longevity by eating human flesh..."

Fox Mulder: "Think about it. From vampirism to Catholicism, whether literally or symbolically, the reward for eating flesh is eternal life."

Mythology of Monster of the Week: MotW

X-File of the Week: When USDA poultry inspector George Kearns goes missing in Dudley, AR, Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are sent to investigate. Scully believes this is a nonsense assignment but Mulder's not so sure. A witness claims to have seen foxfire near where Kearns disappeared. Things take a turn when the agents visit the Chaco Chicken plant and the last woman who was seen with Kearns goes insane and is shot. 

Good times...

"Our Town" follows the formula of some of the most successful "X-Files" episodes. It begins in one way and then veers in a completely different direction. It's these twists that really make the show something great. The agents initially go to Dudley believing, well Scully believing, that this is a bullshit assignment. Mulder never believes that they are being handed a bullshit assignment so he makes up a bullshit reason why it's actually a worthwhile assignment. The circle of life.

Cannibalism is something that really freaks me out. The idea of eating human flesh just makes me want to wretch, as it should. But, it bothers me to the point that I have a really difficult time dealing with it, even in fiction. I struggle with zombie stuff because of the cannibalism aspect of it. So, I remember being super disgusted by this episode when I first watched it and that disgust remains with me with each subsequent re-watch. 

Like I mentioned before, I love how "The X-Files" will sometimes inundate you with information that ends up being pretty inconsequential to the plot of the overall episode, like the foxfire stuff we learn at the beginning and the insane asylum inmate. Even though we don't really need this information once the episodes, it never feels useless. It's just fun extra stuff that you can dazzle your occult loving friends with in casual conversation.

The episode keeps you guessing right until the reveal. There are a ton of really great moments. Paula Kearns going crazy and threatening the plant foreman. The agents being forced to shoot her and her falling into the chicken parts that they mash together to use as chicken feed. How about them basically feeding chickens to the other chickens. Some very nice foreshadowing there. The net full of bones pulled out when they drag the lake. Chilling. A great image of Scully matching the bones to figure out how may skeletons there are. I enjoyed the visual gag of Scully abandoning the bucket of Chaco Fried Chicken after the cannibalism conversation with Mulder.

It's not a perfect episode. The show continues to have a troubling relationship with other cultures. Of course Chaco learned about cannibalism from this tribe from Guinea. But did a white guy really need to be walking around in this tribal mask? Scully gets relegated to damsel in distress again. She's knocked unconscious by Chaco and then is almost sacrificed by the cannibal cult townspeople. It's lame. Scully is a trained FBI agent. There's no reason she should always be the one being knocked out or kidnapped or whatever. It's only the end of season two and I'm already over it.

"Anasazi"

Albert Hosteen: "In the desert, things find a way to survive. Secrets are like this too. They push their way up through the sands of deception so men can know them."

Mythology or Monster of the Week: Mythology

X-File of the Week: A hacker that goes by the name The Thinker hacks the Department of Defense and gets a hold of their files on alien activity going back 50 years. He gives them to Mulder but it turns out they are encrypted using Navajo code that was used to convey secret messages in World War 2. Mulder is desperate to figure out what they say and he is more paranoid and unhinged than usual. 

Mulder the layabout.

As a redblooded, queer man, I feel like I have to start this recap by acknowledging how hot David Duchovny is in this episode. We are well fed here. There are so many shirtless scenes. Honestly, Mulder should just always be wearing a tank top. And those scenes in those boxer briefs. Hoo boy. We have to find these moments because this is a pretty serious episode that leaves our hero in his most precarious position to date by episodes end. 

Chris Carter and David Duchovny worked closely together on the story for this episode. That is pretty cool and not something that we see a lot when it comes to television today. This is a very Mulder heavy episode and Duchovny makes the most of it. Mulder is his most unhinged and Duchovny plays that up. We are used to seeing Mulder play it cool, suave or be filled with righteous anger. In this episode, we get to see Mulder's simmering paranoia pushed to the forefront. His anger isn't righteous, it's just pure anger. Mulder is lashing out at everyone. He's punching Skinner in the hallway at the FBI. He's even going hard at Scully. She has been his one constant but here he's throwing her reports about him in her face. It's a new Mulder and its super disturbing. We eventually learn that Krycek on orders from the Cigarette Smoking Man has laced the water in Mulder's apartment building with hallucinogenic drugs but this version of Mulder stays with you.

The government conspiracy that has been slowly building throughout the series comes to the forefront here. The Cigarette Smoking Man goes to see Bill Mulder and we learn that maybe the Mulder children never stood a chance when it came to all this UFO nonsense. The elder Mulder's name appears in the files that his son is desperate to decrypt. It's not a huge shock that Mulder's dad is part of all this and it all starts to bring things like his daughter's disappearance into sharp focus.

The murder of Bill Mulder is one of the biggest surprise of the series so far as is the reveal that his killer is none other than the CSM's whipping boy, Alex Krycek. I am pretty sure the first time I saw this episode I gasped. I can't say that I wasn't rooting for Mulder to get his revenge on Krycek but luckily we all had Scully there to see reason. Scully shooting Mulder was another surprise that I didn't see coming. It was certainly a pre commercial break shock, but you have to respect it.

I've talked a lot about how "The X-Files," particularly episodes written by Chris Carter, will toy with other cultures to varying degrees of success. Honestly, usually, they are rather unsuccessful. But, I will say this episode gives us one of the better uses of other cultures with Mulder and Scully meeting with Albert Hosteen and the show teaching us about the Navajo code talkers of World War 2. "The X-Files" likes to intertwine real life American history with it's own internal mythology and when it works, like it does here, it's glorious. I had never heard of code talking until I saw this episode and it encouraged me to look into it more. The show even implies that the lost Anasazi tribe was abducted by aliens, hence their unexplained disappearance and the episode's title. Scully lets her skepticism fall by the wayside as she encourages Mulder to figure out what is going on here since Scully's name and her "adventure" with Duane Barry is in a portion of the files that Hosteen has encrypted.

This brings us to the scenes that bookend the episode. It starts off with an earthquake in New Mexico that unearths a train car and Hosteen's grandson finding what seems to be an alien corpse inside. Hosteen's grandson takes Mulder to that train car at the end of the episode and he finds similar corpses stacked on top of each other, all with a smallpox vaccination scar in their arm. Hosteen's grandson closes the door of the car just as the CSM and his men helicopter in. He tries to protect Mulder but his efforts may be for nothing as the CSM orders his men to set the car on fire, with Mulder inside.

Grade: A

Next up, season three starts with a bang with a two-part mythology heavy premiere.

What do you all think of these episodes? Does cannibalism get to you as much as me? Is "Anasazi" a great season finale? Let me know in the comments.