If you read anything about episode three of the new run of The X-Files, you’ll probably read how funny it is. That’s true; with a title like, “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” you know it’s hilarious. However, I was impressed by how much better than the first two episodes it does of acknowledging the fact that Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) are now operating in a new era.
The first we see Mulder, he’s moping around his office at the FBI lamenting to Scully the fact that “since we’ve been away, much of the unexplained has been explained.” He notes that he’s a middle-aged man now and it might be time to put away their investigations. Scully replies, “Mulder, have you been taking your meds?”
When they investigate the murder of several people in the woods, he finds it odd that no one took a picture of the alleged monster, because “everyone has a camera these days.” Then, he proceeds to struggle with the camera on his phone. With it constantly flashing, he exclaims a couple times, “It’s the new camera app; I’m not sure it’s working right.”
Kumail Nanjiani, a real life fan and podcaster of The X-Files, has a supporting role as the survivor of an attack by an alleged “man-sized horned lizard with human teeth.” After a chaotic encounter in a truck stop parking lot, his character, who works for animal control, declares, “That’s it; I quit.” At the same time, Mulder snaps a pic of a British man in a porta-potty, who claims he’s not a man who turns into a lizard, but actually a lizard that turns into a man.
This happens, he explains during a long flashback story told to Mulder in the cemetery, not because he bit any humans, but because a human bit him. There’s the twist. If you’re to believe him, the “real killer” is on the loose. And you know Mulder; he wants to believe. That’s how a silly monster episode ultimately renews his interest in the mysteries that surround him.
That’s also how Scully comes to declare, “I forgot how much fun these cases could be.” This follows Mulder’s discovery that animals can indeed shoot blood out their eyeballs and Scully’s comment, “Mulder, the internet is not good for you.” After a long monologue in which he anticipates all her objections to his theory, he thinks she believes him; however, she quickly brings him back to Earth, “No, you’re bat crap crazy.”
Written by The X-Files veteran, Darin Morgan, episode three cleverly mixes a message into the comedy. As “Guy,” the lizard man, relates his experience of being human, he unknowingly comments on humanity itself. He mentions a primordial instinct to hunt down… “a victim?” asks Mulder. “A job,” he replies. Now that he had a job, though, “all I could think about was how much I hated it.”
Then, he did something insane. “Killed someone?” Mulder hopes. “No, got a puppy.” To Guy, these details of mundane human existence are examples that life’s hopeless, “a few moments of happiness surrounded by grief.” Mulder is desperately looking for internal logic to his story, but Guy asks, “Why? There’s no external logic.”
I guess that sounds a little depressing, but ultimately, Mulder wonders “if Guy’s story was true…” which leads him to deduce the identity of the murderer. This is after Scully has already done so and “for the second time approached a dangerous man without backup.” As Guy transforms in front of Mulder and hops into the woods for a 10,000 year hibernation, Mulder again says, “I want to believe.”
The episode is full of funny lines:
Guy: “I’m not a reptile; that’s racist.”
Mulder: “When one checks into an establishment like this, one expects the manager to be a peeping tom.”
Guy: “Ever since I became a human, I can’t help but lie about my sex life.”
The humor transcends just The X-Files. This could have been a hilarious episode of almost any TV series. It’s so much sweeter, though, knowing the characters and seeing them acknowledge where they’ve been, where they are now and where they’re going. The X-Files was back a week ago, but after “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” I can say with more conviction, “The X-Files is back!”
