Well that was…an episode. A pretty poorly executed episode, in my opinion. There simultaneously wasn’t really much of a defined plot, so it was a little boring, and there were several offensive stereotypes, which is automatically going to bring any episode down in my rating in retrospect.
Redeeming parts of this episode include Scully respecting victims while somehow not punching Mulder for being an ass, and the fact that the episode did end up telling a very haunting tale about the state of nursing homes/elder care in America. I don’t think that’s what the writers were going for necessarily, but…unfortunately, they did a very good job accurately depicting nursing home life and the state of health “care” in the US.
Also, content warning for a rape that occurs at the beginning of this episode. And then is downplayed/barely addressed with concern by anyone except Scully. That aspect of the episode felt particularly gross to me…the writers could’ve come up with other ways to “expose” what was happening at the nursing home, without abusing a female character but then essentially dismissing what happened to her. I mean, I suppose that is also unfortunately all too real in our justice system, but that doesn’t mean fiction has to perpetuate real life and abuse women just for a scary storyline.
Anyway. Let’s get into a summary of the case and my (many) criticisms of how the story was told, shall we?
A Haunted (?) Nursing Home: The Case
The episode opens on a very deserted looking nursing home in Massachusetts, and immediately we are given some pretty gross sexist comments toward the one female nurse who actually seems to be doing any work. Two of the male nurses are just sitting in the office watching a boxing match, and they explicitly tell the female nurse (Michelle Charters) that they left the room of a deceased patient for her to change over. Even though…you know…clearly neither of them are doing any work at the moment, and will continue to not do so… 🙃 Also pretty gross that the two male nurses just joke about how the elderly patient died. I mean, I know that if you work in healthcare or other jobs when you’re surrounded by death, you do have to not let it get to you and dark humor can and often is part of that. But it feels gross that they’re just like “haha, she died and fell into her pudding” and “no, we didn’t change her room over, why should we do any work?”
Anyway. This is clearly not unusual behavior for Nurse Charters, and she apparently accepts that no one else is going to do any work, so she heads off to make sure the patients are in bed (and not watching the boxing match like her coworkers). Aaaaand she’s treated to yet more sexist, very gross comments from one of the elderly men (Hal Arden), who also tries to grab her butt. Ah. Being a woman is so much fun… 🙃
Nurse Charters then goes to change out the sheets in the room of the patient who passed away earlier that day. While doing so, she is locked in the room and attacked by an invisible entity, held down on the bed and assaulted. She does cry out for help, but no one hears her…which uh, I will just say also doesn’t seem great for a nursing home, where the staff should always be alert for a patient calling out for help?! And not watching boxing matches so loud that it drowns out any actual danger that could befall the patients they’re supposed to be looking after?!
Now, this case comes to the FBI because after her attack, Nurse Charters decides to sue the federal government because of what happened to her, and you know, her general lack of safety and respect at her job. Presumably because the nursing home likely receives some (?) federal Medicaid/Medicare funding, and uh, should definitely be paying closer attention to how well both the patients and the staff at nursing homes are treated.
And, well, if a nurse believes she was assaulted by a patient, that is definitely something that warrants investigation, right?! Right???? Of course, the problem is that Nurse Charters doesn’t have any evidence that a patient (she believes it was Hal Arden) was the one who attacked her. She admits she didn’t see anyone, but was held down with a lot of force and couldn’t escape. There was no physical evidence to collect, just the evidence of her injuries. Even if there was evidence…unfortunately it doesn’t really seem like the state cares much about their staff, as Nurse Charters has previously reported three accidents/injuries she sustained while working, and the state denied her request for leave to deal with her trauma and distress. So, while initially I thought that suing the federal government seemed like a bit of a stretch, it seems Nurse Charters had already gone to the state several times and ignored her concerns and injuries, so. Yeah, at that point, escalate it and try to get the federal government to investigate how unsafe this nursing home is for both patients and staff.
So, that’s the main case that gets Mulder and Scully on this investigation: Nurse Charter’s unexplained assault by an (invisible?) entity on the job, causing her severe injuries.
While investigating, more suspicious deaths occur. First, Hal Arden, the creepy old man, appears to choke to death—possibly after ingesting a mysterious brown pill that the patients are given by one of the staff members who actually seems to care about the patients, Gung Bituen. Though, our agents don’t actually know that he took that pill; it does appear at first glance that Hal’s death could’ve been “natural”. is pushed out of a window and falls to his death when he is trying to chase Stan—a patient who now no longer wants to go home to live with his family, but wants to stay at the nursing home (and keep getting those good mysterious pills from Gung). But it isn’t Stan who pushes the male nurse out the window—it again appears to be some invisible entity…
And finally, when looking for Gung to ask him questions, Mulder discovers the body of the final male nurse buried in the dirt where mushrooms are being grown in the basement (more on that in a little bit).
So, four mysterious deaths and one unsolved assault of a staff member at the nursing home in a very short period of time. Seriously, all of these deaths appear to happen over a span of only a couple days! Something isn’t quite right at this nursing home.
And it’s not just the deaths…it’s also the patients who are strange…
A Remarkable Alzheimer’s Treatment?
We are told that this nursing home is primarily for the treatment of the elderly suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. And yet, all of the patients appear to be quite aware of their surroundings and mentally sound. Leo, one of the patients we meet, draws beautifully and even paints the entire cafeteria. Stan is apparently able to run up several flights of stairs and out onto the roof (maybe?) despite supposedly suffering from degenerative hip disease. The only patient who appears to possibly still be suffering from the effects of her dementia is Dorothy, who sees invisible people no one else can see, but even she is remarkably coherent and physically strong for someone supposedly suffering from dementia.
Now, we learn that all of the patients at this nursing home are being treated by Dr. Grego with Deprenyl, a drug that the doctor (and Scully) tells us increases the level of acetylcholine—a neurotransmitter—in brain. Deprenyl is a real drug, and while I am not a doctor or psychiatrist, my brief Googling found that in reality, the drug increases the levels of serotonin and dopamine in the brain, and thus is used primarily in treatment of depression and sometimes in Parkinson’s disease. Also from my brief Googling, Alzheimer’s does often involve low levels of acetylcholine (which is involved in memory) and there are some drugs aimed at increasing acetylcholine to help treat some of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. But, not cure the disease. And Deprenyl is no longer one of the drugs that is used
All of that being said, I did find some evidence that researchers in the 90s were looking at the effectiveness of Deprenyl in treating Alzheimer’s. So, possibly this was actually a good scientific choice for the writers of our episode, and also a good choice to have Scully question the effectiveness of the drug since research was still being done.
Given what we do see of the patients’ remarkable cognitive improvement, it makes sense that Dr. Grego believes his drug treatment is what is helping them. As far as anyone knows, Deprenyl is the only drug all of the patients are receiving.
Except…they’re also being given some mysterious brown pill by the Asian orderly, Gung Bituen. And that pill is definitely not approved for even experimental use on patients, seeing as it is composed of ground up mushrooms being grown in the basement!!!
Mushrooms…awaken angry spirits?
OK, so once the mushrooms are discovered, the suspicion immediately shifts toward Gung and his unapproved treatment of the patients. Which, I mean, fair, honestly. Regardless of whether you truly believe that your cultural herbal treatment will help patients, you can’t just go giving it to them without asking…what if it interacts with other drugs they are on?! And not just the Deprenyl, but any other heart or pain or blood pressure or whatever medications these patients are surely on.
We’re never actually told what these mushrooms are, but based on the finding that Hal had ibotenic acid in his system, I think we can assume the mushrooms are one of the Amanita species…most of which are very toxic and can cause hallucinations. And ibotenic acid in particular is a neurotoxin. Sooooooo, uh, I can’t imagine how that was supposed to help people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, though that definitely does seem to be implication of what happened, as all of the patients regressed in their symptoms once they were no longer given that extra “treatment”.
It does seem very likely that both Hal Arden and Stan were poisoned after taking too many pills, though Stan is thankfully able to be saved from dying. Unclear if Dorothy’s hallucinations are due to the mushroom pill/ibotenic acid or due to her dementia…could go either way, really, on that one.
But, the writers definitely wanted us to think that the mushrooms were the cause of all of the mysterious happenings and deaths at the nursing home. And, I’m sorry, but this is where the writers really lost me.
GUNG: The spirit in this place is very angry and the souls that died here continue to suffer. And now they have been awakened.
Mushrooms…awaken the dead???? Were the “ghosts” not already in the building and very angry? We’re supposed to believe that the “ghosts” were only “activated” or whatever once some of the living patients could see them and communicate with them due to the “medicinal” mushrooms?
I guess I feel like I would’ve liked this episode more if the writers went in one of these two different directions:
The nursing home is haunted, full stop. Given how the patients are treated by the staff there, and how run down the home is overall, you definitely couldn’t blame ghosts of those who died there for getting angry and wanting revenge. Killing the male nurses who treated them terribly, and later aiming to destroy the entire nursing home and everyone involved by trying to flood the home and trap everyone inside. A haunted nursing home by itself is maybe a little boring, especially since there were so many “beyond the grave” storylines in season 1, but honestly, just a simple haunting would’ve been enough here. Without the mysterious mushrooms needing to “awaken” the spirits somehow…
Or, keep the mushroom storyline if you must, but then don’t go with the “easy” answer of a haunting. Maybe one of the patients is taking too much of the treatment and the ibotenic acid contained in the pills does cause hallucinations and violent behavior and acting out in anger. One of the (living) patients could’ve theoretically been responsible for all of the deaths?
Now, I still don’t think either of those storylines would be particularly compelling, but they would improve the story just a little bit for me. Though in general I’m not super keen on any use of the mushrooms because it feels a bit…gross? Amanita mushrooms have indeed been widely used by many cultures for spiritual and ritual purposes…
Unfortunate Asian stereotypes…
So, I think something just rubs me a bit wrong about the implication that these mushrooms are the cause of all the violence and death at the nursing home. Especially because the male nurse, Gung, just seems like a very generic “Asian” character that the writers put very little effort into developing. Like, we are told he is from Malaysia but then he uses the word “prefecture” which is not a term used in that country soooooo, as often happens, basically the writers were just lumping together a lot of Asian cultural practices and assuming that all Asian cultures are the same.
I will note here that while Gung is definitely guilty, especially since he didn’t consider how his treatment might interact with others the patients were receiving, I do think his heart was in the right place. He worked there every day as an orderly, and saw how the other staff members treated the patients with disgust and disrespect. And I think he wanted to give them some small “treatment” to improve their mood or make them more comfortable. He never intended for the patients to take the mushroom drug in such high doses to cause hallucinations and certainly not to cause death.
That being said, Gung also definitely should’ve done a better job of keeping track of his pills and ensuring the patients weren’t stealing them or hoarding them for personal use.
The Real Haunting Case: Elder Care in America
The one aspect of this episode the writers did do a really good job with was depicting just how awful the majority of elder care in America is. Sadly, the Excelsis Dei nursing home isn’t really an outlier. A lot of nursing homes are old and falling apart, and there isn’t enough oversight of their quality. Staff at nursing homes are abused and overworked, and often the really good staff leave or get burnt out due to their conditions, leading to at least often the benign neglect of patients due to staff frustration and overwork. It’s never okay to openly disrespect your patients as we see…actually all of the staff do here, but I can understand the frustration of doing the same thing over and over again, and not having support from administration even when you are injured three times on the job because you’re the only one taking care of the patients.
So, Gung isn’t wrong that as a society, the vast majority of America doesn’t respect our elders. I don’t know that I agree that this is entirely a cultural problem or difference, I think this is most often due to the state of the American society/economy and how crappy our healthcare system is. Most Americans can barely afford to keep themselves and their children afloat financially, let alone have their elderly parent move in with them. Especially if that elder parent has health issues that require treatment. Having a home health agency visit is often more expensive than a nursing home, and the care offered by those agencies isn’t necessarily better than one would receive in a nursing home. But…at least your elderly parent is at home, if you can afford it?
There has been some recent movement in the U.S. to move toward providing financial support to caregivers so they can stay home and provide treatment to their family members, which certainly would be ideal, but even then there might be a large learning curve depending on the health issues and treatment an elderly family member might require. Honestly, while I do respect those programs, I get the sense they are more about trying to solve the problem of low numbers of home nurses and overcrowded nursing homes, essentially pushing all the healthcare functions off onto untrained children of the elderly…which may not have desirable results, other than the elderly family member possibly being happier at least to stay at home.
I don’t actually have a solution to any of these problems other than…money, which the U.S. government is loath to give out for healthcare… Nursing homes need more funding and much better staffing ratios so nurses aren’t overworked and burnt out. Grants to help families financially if they choose to keep an elderly parent at home are great. But I don’t know that I really see that happening. The haunting tale of eldercare in America is likely to continue and only worsen going forward.
Scully’s Insight into the case
SCULLY: I’ve been here since 6:00 this morning going through them [the files].
The final two parts of this episode I want to focus on are our favorite agents. First, Scully.
Scully immediately latches on to this case, as soon as she learns that a woman has been attacked, traumatized, and isn’t really sure she can explain what happened to her. Making the situation even worse, this assault happened while the woman was at work.
One would think that Scully would usually dismiss a case of supposed “spirit rape” off hand as impossible, but Scully sees something in this case that touches her, and I think she relates to Nurse Charters even if she doesn’t realize why quite yet.
Only a few weeks ago at this point, Scully was returned after she herself was violently abducted from her home and went missing for several months. What exactly happened during those months, Scully can’t yet remember, but in the back of her mind I do think she knows it definitely wasn’t sunshine and roses. Who was she with? What was done to her? Why was she returned, and how, and by whom?
All questions that I think Scully fervently shoved to the back of her mind upon her return, eager to just get back to work and pretend that she didn’t experience a huge trauma. It’s going to be another couple of episodes before Scully even begins to recognize her trauma, and even longer before she wants to possibly try to explore some of that trauma.
But I really do feel that even with all of that shoved into a little box for now, some part of Scully recognized her trauma in Nurse Charter’s story, and she desperately wants to help this woman figure out what happened to her and why. She was the one pushing for the investigation of the events at the nursing home to continue when there really wasn’t much evidence, because she wasn’t going to give up on trying to find answers for this woman.
Mulder is an Ass
Mulder, on the other hand, is a complete asshole for most of this episode. He is usually very willing and even excited to hear Scully’s theories and ideas, but in this episode he literally tells her that he thinks Nurse Charters made up her story. 🤬
Remarkably, Scully manages to not punch Mulder for that horrific comment, instead pointing out to him that a very real assault happened to that woman!
I just…I really hate that Mulder seems to have zero respect for Scully during this investigation. He doesn’t even consider that she might feel a connection to this case because of her own recent trauma. And he doesn’t even seem to care that there are definitely some real crimes happening at this nursing home, at least in the form of patient neglect.
Mulder only finally gets excited when he learns about the mushrooms and the possible ghosts. He really doesn’t seem to care about any of the deaths or the rape that happened. He’s just excited that there are ghosts.
What an asshole. Please punch him, Scully.
The X-Files is a comedy
Mulder watches porn in the office… 🙃
Mulder was again being an ass and condescending toward Scully here, but this did make me chuckle a bit…though I really do wish Mulder’s first reaction wouldn’t be to laugh whenever Scully is the one with a crazy hunch. She puts up with your weird ideas all the time, Mulder!!!
Our “Completely Platonic Coworkers”
Not a lot, because I spent most of the episode wanting to punch Mulder for being an asshole and was very surprised that Scully held back from punching him.
But we did have the one (creepy) old guy that automatically assumed they were a couple, and that Mulder would be offended by his comments about Scully’s “attractiveness” (Mulder should’ve been more offended on Scully’s behalf, just because Scully is his work partner, and his friend, and those comments were inappropriate…)
Second episode in a row that other people think they’re a couple, and this time that person had (presumably…) already been told that they were FBI agents. Everyone knows that Mulder and Scully are in love…except them.
The 90s™
I don’t have too much here either…especially because unfortunately I don’t think elder care has improved at all in the last 30 years.
But, seriously, what was UP with the all-denim outfits in the 1990s? Denim wasn’t a new thing in the 90s! It had been a thing for over 100 years already!
Goofs/Bloopers/Fun Facts
The nursing home hasn’t had operational elevators for years?!?! I mean, I get that it really doesn’t seem like anyone is inspecting this nursing home, but that definitely should be a huge safety concern when you are dealing with elderly patients, many of whom require wheelchairs or otherwise aren’t very mobile. Very easy for them to fall down the stairs, or for a staff member to injure themselves or a patients on the stairs.
OK, I didn’t note this scene from the end at all because it was very stupid overall, but in the ending scene when the bathroom is flooded with water because the angry spirits blocked the drain and turned on all the water…I’m pretty sure it still should’ve taken several hours for the bathroom to completely fill up?
Amanita mushrooms aren’t easily cultivated…they’re usually found in only certain specific natural ecosystems, and I don’t know that they would really grow that easily in a basement particularly?
Overall Thoughts/Summary
Episode rating: 3/10. I just…it was a very poorly executed episode, I felt. I still hate that they included Nurse Charter’s rape but then barely acknowledged the trauma that caused. The Asian stereotypes in the character of Gung aren’t great either. But even beyond that, the episode just…felt quite boring? And confusing, with the “living people taking Amanita mushrooms causes ghosts to wake up” part of the story. You…could’ve just made it ghosts, without the misuse of very real Asian cultural rituals.
Scully was really the only saving grace of this episode. Thank god she did push for continuing the investigation, because someone definitely needed to look into everything that was happening at that nursing home—the mushrooms, the experimental treatment, the disrespect of both staff and patients…
X-files cases “solved” to date: 7.5/11 (27.5/35 overall). Well, they definitely did solve this case at least, so another saving grace. It was sad at the end to see that all of the patients regressed after they were no longer given the mushroom treatment, but I am glad Scully told us that the state is taking over the administration of that nursing home. Hopefully they will also look at their other nursing homes? Hopefully????
Well. That was an unfortunate episode overall, wasn’t it? Thank goodness we have Scully who believed Michelle Charters and fought for the investigation to continue. Mulder doesn’t appreciate her enough. Nor do most of the writers of the show…
Next week we have “Aubrey” which is not about a person named Aubrey, but rather takes place in a (fictional) town of that name in Missouri. Vague memory that it is a bit more of a “classic” murder mystery episode, but of course with an X-Files twist to the case.