Jose Chung's From Outer Space
"You somehow brazenly declare that seeing is believing!"
Yeah, I am going to stand by my recollection from last week that this is not, for me personally, actually one of my favourite or even most memorable episodes of the show. I know it ranks as the top episode for a lot of fans, and the crew loved it as well. It is indeed a very clever episode in how it deconstructs and parodies the various alien abduction/government conspiracy/investigation storylines. And you can’t discount the many hilarious little lines and moments inserted into the episode.
But, as far as comedic episodes go, all of the ones we’ve had so far (“Humbug”, “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”—humorous but also emotional and brilliant—and “War of the Coprophages”) all rank higher than this episode for me. As will several of the comedic episodes still to come. And there are many of the more emotional/mythology episodes that rank clearly higher than this episode. Again, for me personally!
I’ll also note here that for those of you who have seen the whole show through to its end, season 11’s “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat” ranks higher for me in its meta/parody of the entire show. Also a Darin Morgan episode, brilliantly written and acted, and a true highlight of the reboot seasons for me.
But we have years still until we get to that episode, so let’s go ahead and focus on “Jose Chung” for now. As I already said, I acknowledge that the writing here is very clever, and the humor is top-notch, as to be expected from Darin Morgan. I’ll also admit that if I enjoyed some of the more “old-school” classic sci-fi movies and stories, I might enjoy this episode more than I do, and that may be at least part of why some fans enjoy it so much! But, uh, also as I’ve already said many times, the 👽 aliens 👽 aren’t what drew me in to The X-Files. It’s the search for the truth, and the deep connection between Mulder and Scully, and some of the broader government conspiracy storylines. So, well, some of the fun and clever little references to other classic sci-fi stories probably just don’t resonate with me.
Finally, I’ll just note with a content warning: One (thankfully not too central, but still there) part of this whole investigation is a suggestion of date rape and/or “regrettable” consensual sex. Which is then…transformed into a possible alien abduction (or government experiments!) as we do just skate over the…well, much more likely explanation of what did happen with those two teenagers that night. It’s played off as part of the joke, and that does not sit well with me. I have similar feelings about two other (still to come) episodes that are much beloved by fans: “Small Potatoes” and “Post-Modern Prometheus”. Just…for me personally, any time you insert rape, sexual assault, or lack of consent into a story as mostly just…a joke or even don’t treat that part of the story at all seriously or with respect, the episode is automatically going to lose some points with me. That was a big part of why “Excelsis Dei” ranked so low, although that episode had a multitude of other problems as well.
Ultimately, I guess I do just wonder how well this particular episode aged over time, and whether a lot of fans love it because of the humor and classic memes or…really spend the time to think about the story and how weird some if it got. No doubt the episode is clever, and at least in this case I can understand why so many people love it (unlike “Syzygy”…), but I think the episode will overall remain a good, but not favourite episode, for me. It’s just not really my taste, personally.
Well, let’s go ahead and dig into the episode. Fair warning that this definitely is one of the more confusing episodes, as we’re learning about an (old) investigation as Scully explains it to an author writing a book, plus there’s multiple possible “explanations”. We do kind of get there in the end though, which is more than can be said for some episodes. 😉
A Story told through a Story: Author Jose Chung
I’m actually not going to start at the very beginning of the episode this time, because I do again want to make clear: This story is being told to us through Scully, who is telling the story of her (and Mulder’s) official FBI investigation to an author. I am bit curious exactly how this is allowed. I mean, we will learn that Jose Chung has already spoken to everyone else involved in the case and (presumably) gotten their permission to tell their part of the story. So, it might be that the book is going to be written with or without the FBI’s involvement. Perhaps Skinner and other higher ups just gave up and decided it’s better to at least have their agents tell their side of the ridiculous story. Since the characters (well, characters very clearly based on Mulder and Scully at least) are going to be in the story anyway. Another possibility for why this “nonfiction science fiction” book is allowed to be written and published will be touched on toward the end of the episode and review.
But for now, I guess we just assume that Jose Chung reached out to Mulder, and Scully. Mulder refused to meet with the author, believing he would sensationalize and misrepresent the “truth”, but Scully is a big fan of Mr. Chung and his thriller novels, so she’s happy to spend some time with him. And, since Scully is the rule-follower, I do presume she touched base with Skinner and…somehow this has “official” government permission. Or something.
I do actually think that this part of the episode—a story told through a story—works really well. It’s similar to an episode to come in season 5 (“Bad Blood”), and hearing the same story from so many different perspectives really highlights how inherently messy and confusing it is to investigate any of these “alien abduction” cases.
Finally, I want to note here that regardless of his possible actual reasons for writing this book (again, more at the end of the episode/review), I really appreciated Jose Chung so happily and willingly admitting that the reason he’s so interested in writing this book is capitalism (with the biggest smile on his face):
SCULLY: “What made you decide to write a book about an alien abduction if you're not that interested in the subject yourself?”
JOSE CHUNG: “Actually? It was my publisher's idea. At first I was reluctant, until I realized that I had an opportunity here to create an entirely new literary genre... a non-fiction science fiction. Now, see, that gimmick alone will guarantee its landing on the best-seller list. In short, to answer your question? Money. 😀”
The Case: A Classic Abduction Claim
Now to the actual start of the episode, and the bizarre, confusing “case” Mulder chose to investigate here.
The episode opens on a young teenage couple out for a drive on their first date. The young man, Harold, is grossly overenthusiastic, deciding to already tell his date, Chrissy, that he’s in love with her. She, meanwhile, reminds Harold this is their first date, so maybe it’s a little early for that. Maybe they should actually…spend some time together before making such bold statements.
Spend some time together. A sound suggestion. But Chrissy probably wasn’t imaging that “spending some time together” would mean getting abducted by aliens together.
We are shown a very classic abduction scenario. Harold’s car loses all power and comes to a stop as a UFO descends from the sky with a bright light. Two gray aliens walk toward the car and both Chrissy and Harold lose consciousness, allowing the aliens to drag the couple out of their car in the direction of the UFO. It is at that point the scenario becomes a little bit less of a classic abduction story, but I’m going to leave that for the next section for now, so we can focus first on how Mulder and Scully entered the case and how it initially progressed.
The next morning, Chrissy is found alone in Harold’s car, with her clothes on backwards and inside out. She had no memories of the night before, and Harold himself was nowhere to be found. On first glance, it would certainly appear that Harold abandoned her and ran off. And, even with Chrissy not remembering anything, the first theory after Chrissy was physically examined and questioned was that she may have been a victim of date rape. If a drug of some kind had been used by Harold, that would explain her lack of memory as well.
I’m not entirely clear on whether the initial police investigators tell Chrissy of their suspicion she may have been raped. Her subsequent attitude toward Harold when he visits her later seems to suggest that to me, at least. But, as many different people continue to violate Chrissy in different ways throughout the investigation…we never know what she thinks may have happened, or how she feels about the entire situation (with Harold and with the investigation, which, again, wasn’t kind to her either…)
Harold, however, does claim to remember that both he and Chrissy were abducted by aliens. He denies raping her, though acknowledges they had consensual sex (…on their first date? With Chrissy seeming so much more reserved regarding the date, even?) And he does pass a polygraph test to “prove they were abducted by aliens”, though that doesn’t really mean anything. Polygraph tests are meaningless unscientific crap that courts still allow to be presented as evidence in trial.
Anyway, Harold sticks to his story that he and Chrissy were abducted by aliens until Mulder and Scully get there. Unclear here, also, whether the local police requested Mulder’s “expertise” (…I kind of doubt it based on the main detective’s attitude) or whether Mulder just heard about an alien abduction story being used as an “alibi” for a rape accusation and ran off to Washington state. For all we know, this is what poor Scully is being dragged along to every other week when we aren’t following their main cases of the series. 😉
When presented with someone who actually believes his story, Harold changes that story and…well, it’s unclear if he’s now claiming he also doesn’t remember what happened, but he gives in and says “I guess I raped her if that’s what she says”. Mulder is unhappy that suddenly he has no alien abduction to investigate and at this point decides to threaten Harold that he will be raped in prison if he admits that. So. Yeah. What an excellent, serious treatment the topic of date rape, consent, and teenage sex in general is being given in this episode 🙃🫠
Also less than great: Mulder decides that to get the truth, he needs to subject Chrissy to hypnosis to get her “real” story. Essentially violating her all over again by making her revisit that night. I’ll grant at least that Mulder isn’t really saying or implying that he doesn’t believe Chrissy, since she herself doesn’t remember any of the events of that night. But it’s still not a great look to basically force the victim of some very unpleasant experience to relive that just so you can discover the “truth”.
Or…let’s be real, so you can ask the jusssssst the right questions, in the right way, so that Chrissy will tell you what she thinks you want to hear. Whether it’s actually what she remembers or not.
*sigh*
Putting Chrissy under hypnosis does get Mulder the results he wants. Chrissy “remembers” being strapped to a table, with Harold next to her on another table, unresponsive. She is surrounded by several of the gray aliens, speaking a language she doesn’t understand, except for one. Who tells her (telepathically) that what they are doing is “for the good of her planet”. And she then “remembers” feeling as if the alien was inside her mind, stealing her memories.
Mulder is delighted with his results, with Chrissy’s new story perfectly backing up Harold’s claim that the two were abducted. I’m definitely more on Scully’s side here that her story is too perfect. By the mid-90s, alien abduction stories had definitely become mainstream enough that most anyone could invent a story from the tabloids as if they were experiencing it. But the whole story is just a perfect cliche of an abduction experience, and doesn’t actually confirm anything. Chrissy was led to believe by Mulder that she was abducted by aliens, and thus she answered the questions asked of her based on what she was told. And, uh, well, I’ll also touch briefly here on something a bit more sensitive: It may indeed have been easier for Chrissy to believe or “remember” being abducted by aliens, than to be told the boy she liked may have assaulted and drugged her. So, with all those leading questions and information from Mulder…her brain invented the perfect story to cover up a possible reality of what might have happened that night.
At this point, we hear Harold’s story, and it should be noted that actually his memory of the experience is quite a bit different from Chrissy’s very cliched “abduction” memories. Because, as we will now get back to that initial scene of the abduction at night, there may have been a second abduction. An abduction inside an abduction. A Russian nesting doll abduction experience, if you will…
A Second Alien Monster Abduction???
Of all the parts of the episode, it’s this one that really lost me. Granted, I do think at least part of the point is that this plot line is truly absurd, but…what was the point? To show how “imaginative” that one particular witness is? As a sort of throwback to old-school, classic sci-fi monster movies? If it’s the latter, that’s certainly part of why it doesn’t appeal to me because…I have no reference to what this particular monster is an homage to.
Anyway. At the start of the episode, we thought we had a very simple alien abduction: Harold and Chrissy being abducted by little gray aliens in a UFO. Classic, cliched alien abduction story, right?
But wait! There’s more!
As the gray aliens are dragging Harold and Chrissy to their ship, a second unearthly flying object appears, and a very different sort of alien monster drops down.
This alien monster is here to abduct the gray aliens, and Harold and Chrissy. Bringing all 4 of them onto his ship for…experiments, I guess.
And that’s where Harold’s story changes, or if it doesn’t change, he at this point elaborates on his memory of the abduction experience. Which does not match up with Chrissy’s “memory”.
See, Harold remembers being in a cage on the ship with Chrissy. In a second cage next to them is one of the gray aliens. Chrissy is “beamed up” or whatever to a higher floor on the ship to be experimented on, leaving Harold alone with only the gray alien to keep him company. Hilariously, the alien is smoking a cigarette:
Harold next remembers being beamed up himself, and explains that the monster-like alien wasn’t really experimenting on him, but rather seemingly torturing him. For fun. To see what would happen. Next thing Harold remembers is flying through the air and coming to on the ground, not near Chrissy or his car.
This all sounds particularly ridiculous, doesn’t it? 100% sounds like a story someone would make up…although also, who could or would make up such an intricate, weird story, about the aliens also being abducted by some other weird creature?
Somehow, Mulder still believes Harold’s story. Scully is still leaning toward either date rape or possible “regrettable” consensual sex (ugh, I thought you were better than that Scully).
Amazingly, however, there is a man who claims to have witnessed the events Harold described.
Two Witnesses to the “Abductions”
Enter our first witness: Roky Crikenson, the lineman who was working to fix the power line Harold and Chrissy drove past that night. Roky claims that the monster alien spoke to him, and then took him on his ship into the molten core of the earth. The I guess…inner Earth monster…identified himself as Lord Kinbote. We (fortunately) don’t have to hear the majority of what Roky claims to recollect from that…inventive claimed experience…but we do learn he described sex orgies happening in Lord Kinbote’s domain. …Sex orgies among humans? Other inner Earth monsters? Who knows! To me, Roky’s story is pretty obviously a very creative fictional account written by a man prone to suggestion. Mulder seems to agree that Roky is definitely delusional, but decides to believe I guess that Roky’s delusions may have been triggered by events he actually did witness. Maybe we could assume that Roky did see the aliens abducting the aliens abducting Harold and Chrissy and then…went home and wrote some creative fiction.
I’m on Scully’s side here though:
Hearing these two stories now, Mulder is again upset that Chrissy’s story doesn’t match up (probably because she didn’t actually remember anything!!!) so he’s going to put the poor girl under hypnosis again. I’ll get to that shortly, but first we have a second witness:
Blaine Faulkner. Your very stereotypical rather geeky, lonely young man, who is incredibly bored. Less typical that he actively goes out and looks for UFOs because he actually wants to get abducted, but I get it man:
So, as the investigation was happening, Blaine was out at night again looking for UFOs and hoping the aliens would choose him this time. Likely all the wild stories about the abductions had gotten around town, so he knew the general area to look in.
Sadly, no UFO comes for Blaine. But what he does find is what looks at first glance to be clearly a dead alien body. Just out there in the middle of the field, almost as if it was thrown from the sky. Similar to what Harold “remembers” happening to him after being on Lord Kinbote’s ship, though Harold thankfully survived his fall.
Time for Scully to do an autopsy on a “dead alien”, and during that autopsy—plus Chrissy’s latest hypnosis “memories”—our agents will begin to question, once again, what is a truth and what is a hoax.
Uncovering a Military Hoax/Cover-up?
With both Harold and witness Roky apparently experiencing/witnessing a double alien abduction, Chrissy’s story no longer backs up Harold’s and our investigators are basically back to square one. Who is telling the truth?
Because he’s Mulder, our man remains insistent that alien abductions must have been what happened that night, and Chrissy just doesn’t remember the truth still. Because a Russian nesting doll of alien abductions sure is what sounds most “real”, I guess. Sure. Whatever Mulder.
Time to put the poor girl under more hypnosis, to see if she can finally “remember” Harold’s version of events.
It’s unclear again whether Chrissy was fed any leading information, but she does seem to remember some aspects at least of Harold’s story—being beaten by the inner Earth alien monster before flying through the air and landing on the ground. From there, though, her story takes off in a whoooooole new direction.
Chrissy remembers being picked up by men in Air Force uniforms, who took her back to an office for questioning. Based on what we see of Chrissy’s “memories”, the military men are arguing about how to deal with Chrissy. One of them mentions asking her whether one of the aliens had a Russian accent, with I think the insinuation here supposed to be possibly that the whole “abduction” was some experimental military thing by the Russian government. Insinuation further supported by one of the military (CIA?) men then giving orders to basically wipe Chrissy’s memory and give her the “usual alien abduction story” in its place.
Sooooooo now Mulder is clinging to “maybe it wasn’t aliens, but some government conspiracy”! Chrissy, Harold, and Roky all experienced or witnessed strange experiments by a foreign government, and to cover that up, the military fed them memories of an alien abduction. With, uh, maybe some of that getting messed up along the way as their false memories processed, which is why Chrissy doesn’t actually remember anything, and why Harold and Roky’s stories ended up sounding so completely ludicrous.
Maybe that’s the point, right? If the stories sound ludicrous enough, no one is going to believe anything really happened to the teenagers that night. It’s going to sound like a made-up story (…because it is) to perhaps cover up for a regrettable experience (ugh) and/or as an alibi for a sexual assault. At the very least, until this point, any military or government involvement was hidden by what some (like Mulder) want to grasp onto as the truth of alien abduction.
A military hoax comes back into this during the “alien autopsy”, which poor Scully is not only forced to conduct, but she is videotaped doing it at Mulder’s insistence, and then that videotape makes it out to the (fringe) public. Narrated, as a nice Easter Egg and nod back to Darin Morgan’s episodes, by the Stupendous Yappi:
Turns out that’s not a dead alien body, though. That’s a dead Air Force major zipped into a pretty realistic looking alien suit and tossed into a field. To perpetuate the hoax that what happened in that town involved aliens…
Some military men arrive to claim the body of their AWOL (now dead) major, but the body mysteriously disappears from the morgue seemingly before anyone else can take custody of it. Also still “missing” is an Air Force lieutenant, Jack Schaefer.
Who, nice and conveniently, Mulder runs into later that same night walking along the dark road, disoriented. What are the chances?!
Per Mulder’s recollection, Schaefer seems to kind of confirm the “this is all a big military hoax” theory. He claims that he personally flies “UFOs” for the Air Force, and even that these UFOs may be used in battle/wartime to threaten enemies. And that Air Force UFOs do indeed abduct people…taking them back to military bases to mess with their minds, leaving people perfectly convinced they were indeed abducted and experimented on by little gray aliens.
Here, again, the story gets a bit messy, because Schaefer is also convinced that he was abducted by…something the same night Harold and Chrissy were. My personal current theory on what exactly “happened” is this:
Schaefer and his copilot (the major?) did fly down in their Air Force UFO to abduct Harold and Chrissy. Who knows why.
As that was happening, a foreign military (Russia???) also flew down in their own UFO and abducted all four of them
That foreign military has similar abilities to mess with their captors’ memories, and thus Harold and Schaefer at least were given the false memories about alien abductions.
Chrissy also may have initially been given similar false memories, but was intercepted by US government folks to further wipe her memory…???
I recognize here that even my wild theory makes no sense, and I have absolutely no idea if my conclusion is at all the idea that Morgan was trying to get across. But based on all the weird, meandering stories and “memories” we’ve been given, plus being presented with the dead Air Force pilot (in an alien suit…to make the abductions seem more “alien”?), this is the best I can put forward.
No clue why Roky remembers what he remembers, though. Did the Russian (???) UFO take him too and give him weird memories, or is he just that delusional?
The idea that this whole “abduction experience” really is some top-secret government/military thing is further granted some credence by the fact that two of our witnesses, plus Mulder, further recollect being threatened by mysterious men if they come close to revealing anything that might be the truth:
Witnesses Threatened by Mysterious Men
One part of the episode I did actually find particularly amusing was the nod to mysterious Men in Black coming to basically cover up any “alien” events and threaten witnesses.
It was also quite amusing that men in black are supposed to be mysterious unknown men, and here we have them played by wrestler Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek. 🤣
Jesse Ventura MIB threatened Roky, and did a very good job honestly of putting out his threatening, aggressive wrestler persona as he did so. Those threats didn’t really seem to deter Roky, as he did still hand his bizarre Lord Kinbote screenplay over to Mulder and Scully…before leaving town and (we’ll learn at the end) starting his own weird sex cult centered around Kinbote. But maybe Roky didn’t really seem quite as much of a threat, since his story is just that ludicrous.
Both Ventura and Trebek come to take the VHS of the “alien” autopsy from Blaine. Here, it’s unclear exactly what they…allow to happen to the tape at that point. Somehow the tape was edited and manipulated, and the Stupendous Yappi did the voiceover. Did…the MIB deliberately release this tape, to further the idea that all the events were a hoax?
And finally, our MIB threaten Mulder…while already digging through Scully’s hotel room for evidence. Despite being present in the room in Mulder’s recollection, Scully herself has no memory of this encounter. Probably more spooky memory manipulation stuff…right?
Solving (part of) the Mystery 🛸
Well, officially, the case is “solved” as our investigators discover a crashed, top-secret Air Force plane that caused all of the UFO sightings. So…there’s the “official” answer.
But. Even the local cop is confused and unsatisfied with this answer, as he watches the body of the Air Force major being carried away from the “plane” wreckage. The man they all watched Scully unzip from that alien suit. Who mysteriously went missing from the morgue…
Mulder also watches the body of Lieutenant Schaefer carried away from the “plane” wreckage, though in that case he’s the only one particularly curious, since no one else met or saw Schaefer after whatever incident he was involved in.
So, with these findings, I’m again going to stick with my version of the story here. The two Air Force pilots were ordered to fly down in their “UFO” to abduct Harold and Chrissy for…reasons. At the same time, a Russian (probably) military “UFO” flew down and abducted all four individuals. Presumably some sorts of tests were conducted on all of them, and they were given false memories. Even Schaefer, who seemingly “knows” that alien abductions are a hoax used by the military, has perfect memories of being abducted by actual aliens.
MULDER: They don't want assistance. They want witnesses to their alibi.
Truly, all of this is a hoax to cover the full truth. And the “abductees”, similarly, are given false memories of alien abductions so that everyone will think they are crazy, and no one (other than Mulder…) will dig any deeper into the events people claim occurred…
Half-Truths to Cover Full Truths
While this bizarre cover story is a little bit of an extreme (and certainly a parody/satire, what with at least one of the Air Force guys apparently wearing an alien suit), it is also essentially exactly what The Syndicate often does with Mulder and Scully. A partial truth is given to cover up for the full story, in the hopes that a single little nugget of truth will stop anyone from digging any further.
The truth is (seemingly…) that the military is abducting people, though for very unclear reasons. Experiments? On…what, exactly? Their memories are then altered so they don’t remember humans doing anything to them, but instead have perfect false memories of little gray men abducting them and experimenting on them. Although, I say again, if at least one of the military guys is being forced to wear an alien suit (???), that’s certainly going to help that false memory sink in.
Now, we do have kind of a second question here, though, that is revealed toward the very end of the episode: If any part of this case is true (military, or alien), why is Jose Chung being allowed to write about it? Or, more correctly, why did his publisher push him to write the story? Remember, Jose Chung stated he wasn’t all that interested in alien abduction stories and thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. Until, ✨ capitalism ✨, he realizes he can make money by writing such a unique non-fiction science fiction.
Ventura MIB: “Some alien encounters are hoaxes perpetrated by your government to manipulate the public. Some of these hoaxes are intentionally revealed to manipulate the truth-seekers who become discredited if they disclose the deliberately absurd deception.”
Well. Turns out that Mulder did a little bit of digging, and Jose Chung’s publisher is owned by a subsidiary of a defense contractor for the military. So. Is this entire book just another part of the hoax, allowed to be revealed, so that everyone will just think the people involved are wackos? The way the story is being told, no one who reads it (except maybe Mulder) is going to believe the military are who were behind everything! Thus, they are free now to continue…whatever weird experiments and memory modifications they “need” to do…for the good of the country.
Just…something to think about. Not too much of a stretch in my opinion, that the military would want this absurd story distributed widely, so the hoax truly feels like a hoax, and no one but the most dedicated of truth seekers will question what really happened…
Could also explain why the higher-ups at the FBI agreed to let Mulder and Scully participate in the book, and allow the book to be written. The more Mulder is discredited, the fewer people who will listen to any of his wild theories. And the happier The Syndicate is.
Our “Completely Platonic Coworkers”
Sadly, we don’t have anything here, which is also possibly why this episode is much more of a “meh, that was OK” episode. I am an unabashed Mulder-Scully shipper, and I think any episode suffers when our two characters barely interact.
Closest we get here is Scully casually saying to Jose Chung “I was surprised to wake up the next morning with Mulder asleep in my room”. And then we get to wonder whether the author spun that into anything more than it was when writing his book 😏
The X-Files is a Comedy
I mean, the whole point of this episode is that it’s a comedy, a parody or commentary on alien abduction stories and the investigations Mulder and Scully conduct. As well as the question of: Is it a conspiracy? A hoax? Are the hoaxes revealed to cover up a deeper truth?
Just some of the particular classics from the episode:
Detective Manners’ “colorful phraseology”, with the show using “bleeping” and “blank” etc as substitutes for that language. It 100% was funnier than having the actual curse words. A bleeping dead alien body. 😂
(credit) Also particularly amusing to me when Scully says “bleeping UFO”. Possibly also because I know Gillian Anderson curses up a storm
Mulder’s screech! I have to insert a video for this one because how did David Duchovny make that sound?! 😂
I don’t even play Dungeons & Dragons or really understand it all that well, but this line made even me burst out into a chuckle:
I dunno if this one is really so funny “hahahaha” but props to Mulder for eating an entire sweet potato pie while asking questions, and then just getting up and leaving. Zero response from the diner owner either, as if he just expects this weirdness to happen around him. Probably true, in this town.
(credit)
The 90s™
We’ve got the huge camcorder that Blaine carries around, which did make me chuckle. Recording directly to VHS tape!
I also feel like getting Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek to play the men in black had fairly strong 90s vibes?
I was amused that Blaine didn’t recognize Ventura, but seemed to recognize the second MIB (we assume Alex Trebek). I mean, same, I also had to look up who Jesse Ventura was (sorry?), but it was funny. Everyone knows the Jeopardy! guy.
Goofs/Bloopers/Fun Facts
There aren’t really any goofs here. It’s pretty hard to have a goof when the whole point of this episode is that none of the stories are taken seriously, and you are entirely parodying your own show. Only “goof” I’d suggest, again, is that they also included the possibility of date rape as almost a throwaway which is…ugh.
Mostly, though, we just have a lot of fun production facts:
Director Rob Bowman confessed he had to read the script 15 times and then hold an eight-hour meeting with Darin Morgan to fully understand all of its intricacies.
I mean…same. I might appreciate this episode even more if I could pick Darin’s brain about what some of it was supposed to mean 😅
In his Jose Chung’s book, Mulder is named “Renard Muldrake”.
Renard is French for fox.
The opening shot actually was a tribute to Star Wars this time. The bottom of that basket the power lineman is in looks like an Imperial Star Destroyer.
Detective Manners is named for producer Kim Manners.
His "colorful phraseology" is also reminiscent of the real-life Manners' salty behind-the-scenes language.
Darin Morgan, a big wrestling fan at the time, wrote one Man in Black part specifically for Jesse Ventura.
Jimmy Carter really did file a UFO sighting report for a sighting from 1969, with later investigation revealing he probably had just seen the planet Venus.
Alex Trebek’s appearance in this episode was later used as a clue on Jeopardy!
(credit) The iconic "I Want to Believe" poster can be seen in Blaine's apartment.
However, his poster has "Want to" crossed out, leaving only "I Believe."
The alien Lord Kinbote was meant to be an homage to stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. The suited performer was filmed in a way to make the alien's movements look a little like stop-motion.
One of the series stuntmen played the part of Lord Kinbote
Lord Kinbote is named for Charles Kinbote, the unreliable and probably insane narrator of Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire."
The character of Roky Crikenson is a reference to psychedelic rock pioneer Roky Erickson, known for songs about aliens.
When telling his story to Jose Chung, Blaine Faulkner describes Scully as a Man in Black who "was disguised as a woman, but wasn't pulling it off. Like, her hair was red, but it was a little too red, you know."
This is an inside joke and a play on the fact that Gillian Anderson is not a natural redhead and dyed her hair for the role.
Overall Thoughts/Summary
Episode rating: 8.5/10. This is a good episode!!! I think largely there are parts of it that either aren’t quite in my personal taste, or just references I acknowledge I do not understand at all and might appreciate more if I did understand them. Certainly a lot of classic sci-fi Easter eggs Darin Morgan put in the episode for fans.
For being such a convoluted case, it actually does come together quite nicely in the end, though still with enough questions to leave the viewers wanting more and wondering who was right. Somehow, the Air Force was involved in the events of that night…but most likely our officers were intercepted by a foreign government, as well?
But, the episode automatically loses at least a point with me for the casual, almost throwaway treatment of a possible sexual assault. And the subsequent way that Mulder kept putting poor Chrissy under hypnosis to try to get her to remember the “real” truth, when she has already been traumatized enough. I mean, OK, yes, if Harold is indeed innocent, then he shouldn’t be punished for something he didn’t do, though I’ll also point out here that Chrissy doesn’t remember anything, and it was some other initial investigators/doctors that suggested the possibility of assault to her. The whole thing is pretty messed up, how the poor confused young teenagers were treated. Also…unfortunately not all that uncommon on either side, and it was pretty gross too for Scully to suggest maybe they’re just teenagers “too young to deal with consensual sex” because, uh…that’s also a tactic police and prosecutors use to get women to drop sexual assault cases: “You sure you’re not just regretting it now?”
I’ll admit I’m more sensitive to this particular subject than many people may be, but I guess I just don’t see why they had to include it as a plot line at all. Would’ve been easy enough to just have Chrissy not remember anything, but be mad that Harold left her alone at night. Leave it at that!
Anyway. Other than the way Chrissy was treated, the episode is an enjoyable one! The humor works really well, all of the varying stories come together nicely (surprisingly!), and I did really enjoy primarily hearing an investigation from Scully’s point of view for once.
Overall, you really can’t go wrong with Darin Morgan, and he did an excellent job parodying the mythology of the show. I still argue that Season 11’s “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat” was more enjoyable for me personally, but that may also be because in that episode we get to look back at the whole show, rather than 2.5 seasons with a lot still to come here.
X-files cases “solved” to date: Hmm. This one is a bit difficult. I feel like probably they do “officially” close the case at least as far as the police and FBI are concerned, since that experimental plane crash was found. However, there are still no clear answers as to what happened with Harold and Chrissy.
I’ll give them a half-solved case here. As Scully said: “I know it probably doesn't have the sense of closure that you want... but it has more than some of our other cases.”
13/17 cases for the season, 48.5/65 overall.
Next week we have a Skinner-centric episode, which should be interesting! I don’t remember the actual plot of “Avatar”, which could mean the plot isn’t great or memorable. But I do love Skinner, so a story centered around him for a change should at least be nice.