The X-Files
The fourth season of "The X-Files" premiered on October 4, 1996. The season found the show getting even more popular. It shifted from Fridays to Sundays, which was a huge deal. In the '90's, Sunday night was the big night on Fox. It was the night that "The Simpsons" and "Married... With Children" aired. These were some of the networks most popular shows and with the fourth season "The X-Files" officially joined them. It was also chosen as the program to air after Super Bowl XXXI.
The fourth season of "The X-Files" gave the two leads some meatier stuff to tackle. This is the season that introduced the Scully cancer storyline and it ended up winning Gillian Anderson an Emmy. The mythology episodes continued to be tight and the Monster of the Week episodes continued to be a mix of scary, funny and frustrating. Let's start things off with the resolution to the cliffhanger of season three and one of the most disturbing episodes in the shows history.
"Herrenvolk"
Fox Mulder: "I've seen too many things not to believe."
Dana Scully: "I've seen things, too. But there are answers to be found now. We have hope that there's a place to start. That's what I believe."
Fox Mulder: [sighing] "You put such faith in your science, Scully, but... from the things I've seen, science provides no place to start."
Dana Scully: "Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it. And that's a place to start. That's where the hope is."
Notable Guest Star: Laurie Holden as Marita Covarrubias
Mythology or Monster of the Week: Mythology
X-File of the Week: Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully along with Jeremiah Smith are confronted by the Alien Bounty Hunter and barely escape. Mulder is desperate to have Smith heal his mother but Smith convinces Mulder to go to Canada and shows him a strange farm manned by familiar looking human drones and pollinated by special bees. Meanwhile, Scully works to decipher data that has been being stockpiled by the various Smiths from their work at the Social Security Administration offices. And X pays the price for working against the Syndicate.
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| RIP X. |
This episode picks up immediately where the last one left off with the Alien Bounty Hunter ambushing the meeting between Mulder and Scully and Jeremiah Smith. What ensues is a chase that I'm sure in the fall of 1996 seemed very exciting. When you watch it through the modern lens, it is not really exciting at all. It's probably unfair to compare this to modern chase scenes, but it's difficult not to. And I'm not sure that it really has anything to do with the time it was made. The biggest issue is that it's dark. Everything looks the same. The Alien Bounty Hunter is chasing them through these warehouses that all look the same which makes the action difficult to follow. Then Smith and Mulder hop in this old speedboat that just happens to be there and eventually they make it to Canada. He just leaves Scully. This opening is the weakest part of the episode by far and once it's over things definitely pick up.
It feels like in the majority of mythology episodes, Mulder and Scully end up getting split up and this one is no different. While in Canada, Mudler and Smith to a field where a flowering shrub is being tended to. Smith tells Mulder that the shrub isn't known and that its main function is to produce pollen. This episode introduces these mysterious bees that kills the telephone lineman in the cold open. The fields are tended to by cloned children who are basically drones and are unable to speak. The female drones are all clones of Mulder's sister, Samantha, who doesn't look like she's aged a day since her abduction.
Mulder's reaction here has always kind of baffled me. I understand that his sister's abduction has been his sole lifelong motivation and I get how seeing her looking exactly the same as she did when she was abducted would rattle him. But, I'm with Smith when Mulder tries to take that one Samantha with him. I know that Mulder probably wants to take her for proof of conspiracy, but it is also played like Mulder thinks that this is actually Samantha and she just hasn't aged for some reason. I get that Samantha is like this emotional crux for the series, but its only season 4 and I'm already kind of over them leaning on this like a crutch.
The Alien Bounty Hunter is basically the Terminator of "The X-Files." He just keeps coming, no matter what you throw at him. I am too lazy to Google this, but I've always been curious if dousing yourself in gasoline would really stop bees from stinging you? It sounds plausible, but I'm not in a rush to find out. The trap that they lay for the ABH is great and watching him get stung over and over again is extremely satisfying. The Bounty Hunter survives this and the last we see of him is him pursuing Smith. Smith is not seen again this episode and *spoiler alert* doesn't pop up again until 2001. The whole Smith plot line feels like kind of a let down since there is basically no resolution. It's strange considering that he was such a huge part of the last two episodes.
It's not very often that I find the Scully portions of these episodes more satisfying, but I definitely do in "Herrenvolk." We get to see Scully exercise her medical knowhow and use science to actually do what she was initially brought in to do. Except, instead of using science to debunk Agent Mulder's work she's using it to confirm it. Scully finds that the data that Smith was compiling was a directory of people who have received a smallpox vaccine and it seems that everyone who did was tagged with a unique protein enzyme. So, we are all basically being marked and catalogued like cattle, which is terrifying. I loved Scully standing up to Skinner and for Mulder by proxy.
This episode sees the death of X and it was the other portion of the episode that didn't sit well with me. X has been working agains the Syndicate for almost two years and it surprises me that he didn't see the Mulder's mother threat as an obvious ploy. But he doesn't and ends up getting shot by the Gray Haired Man but he's able to leave Mulder a message that leads him to Marita Covarrubias, the assistant to the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations. Covarrubias tells Mulder that the field in Canada has been abandoned and there is no sign of bees or bee husbandry. Though, she does show Mulder a picture of the drones working. Covarrubias is the new X and I'll be interested to see how she differs from X and Deep Throat.
I really thought one of the agents were going to lose a family member but the Cigarette Smoking Man instructs the Alien Bounty Hunter to heal Teena Mulder. He claims that an enemy with nothing to lose is the most dangerous, but I feel like there is more to it than that.
Grade: B
"Home"
Dana Scully: "What about your family?"
Fox Mulder: "Well, aside from the need for corrective lenses and a tendency to be abducted by extraterrestrials involved in an international governmental conspiracy, the Mulder family passes genetic muster!"
Mythology or Monster of the Week: MotW
X-File of the Week: Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully head to the town of Home, PA when the body of a severely deformed infant is found buried near the home of the reclusive and seemingly inbred Peacock family. As the agents dive deeper into this mystery, they find that the Mayberry like town is perhaps not as idyllic as they had once thought.
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| Hate this. |
"Home" was a monumental episode of "The X-Files." It was the first and only episode to contain a viewer discretion warning due to graphic content. It is also the only episode to receive a TV-MA rating. "Home" was divisive at the time of its release due to its graphic nature including the violence that was portrayed in the episode. Even with that, in the years since it was released, it has been praised and you will routinely find it near the top of the best "X-Files" episodes of all-time. I have seen it a number of times and I am still pretty viscerally affected by it. It's disturbing and disgusting and if you ever get used to it, then you should maybe talk to someone.
This episode is messed up. There's really no other way to say it. The reveal towards the end of the episode with Mulder and Scully pulling Mrs. Peacock out from under the bed, missing her arms and legs and you figure out what they've been doing. Its disgusting and disturbing and I think what still shocks me even after all these years is that she talks to them. I don't know why, but I just expected her to be mute. So listening to her tell them her story and just how committed she is to it. How she honestly believes that this is the right thing. It is just obscenely gross and chilling all at the same time.
This episode is obscenely dark, but writers Glen Morgan and James Wong, returning to the show from their season and a half long absence, do inject some levity in to the proceedings. There is humor here. Most of it is dark but its still present. They really lean in to the Mayberry allegory. The sheriff's name is Andy Taylor and the deputy is Barney... Paster. You can tell that he has gotten the Fife jokes before and he's not feeling them. There's a lot of absurdity here. The police station doesn't have morgue so the infant's body is kept in a refrigerator on a cafeteria tray. Scully examines it in a bathroom that she and Mulder can barely fit in. It would be funny but it isn't.
This episode is the first episode that we also hear Scully and motherhood. When she's talking about the baby and its various defects, Mulder comments that he's never thought of Scully as a mother and the idea of Scully as a mother is mentioned a few times after that. This is definitely foreshadowing for things to come. It's interesting that Mulder has never thought about Scully as a mother prior to this moment. Maybe because that isn't their relationship. Maybe because of her analytic and scientific mind. I do like that up to this point, Scully's character arc hasn't been defined by this yearning to have a child but there is a small shift that way that I think begins with this episode that I don't love overall.
This episode is much more violent than your typical "X-Files" episode. I can't think of a more unsettling scene in the show's history than when the Peacocks slaughter the sheriff and his wife. Just the song "Wonderful, Wonderful" playing while the Peacock brothers beat them to death is so... I can't even think of a strong enough word. Speaking of "Wonderful, Wonderful," Johnny Mathis refused to allow his version of the song to be used in the episode due to the graphic nature of the script so a cover version was recorded. And, honestly, props to the guy who sang it, because you couldn't tell me that wasn't Mathis. And just when you think Deputy Barney is going to escape this unscathed, he gets beheaded by the booby traps that the Peacocks have armed their home with.
I think if you solely focus on the violence and the inbreeding and the things that lead to that, its easy to miss the larger themes that the Wong and Morgan are hitting on, particularly when it comes to the glorification of small towns and their place within the American Dream. A lot of people yearn for these "easier days" of sheriff's not carrying guns and not locking your front doors, even Mulder initially, but the episode shows that even in these seemingly bucolic locales there are always dark secrets and perhaps these untouched towns untouched by larger societal issues don't really exist after all.
Grade: A
Next up, the agents discover mysterious deaths that involve African American people's skin turning white and Scully may be the victim of a kidnapper who is leaving strange photographs behind.
What did you all think? Are you sad to see X go? Were you happy that Teena lived? What are your feelings on "Home" overall? Let me know in the comments.
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