Two people getting high in the Oregon woods, played by Tyler Labine and Nicole Parker Smith were from the eps War of the Coprophages and Quagmire; notice a man's been attacked and find another one who's dead. Mulder (David Duchovny) sits in his office throwing pencils at his 'I Want To Believe' poster as Scully (Gillian Anderson) walks in and asks him why he's throwing pencils at her poster. He reluctantly says that everything he believed all have explanations. Such as the moving stones in Death Valley attributed to ice. Perhaps everything can be proven down to ice. "It's amazing, going through these archives with fresher, if not wiser, eyes how many of these cases, whether it's the Amarillo Armadillo Man...can be explained away as fraternity pranks, practical jokes or people making stuff up simply because they're bored, and or, crazy."
Mulder now being the sceptical one again and she asks if Mulder's still taking his meds. Yeah cos everything boils down to pill popping doesn't it. Things not going well, okay pop a pill! She tells him they have a case of a "monster." It may be a human monster.
Heading out to the town in Oregon; what follows is undeniably classic X-Files. With tongue-in-cheek humour and a return to the good old days, even if it does feel like it's been done already in great eps such as The Great Mutato, carnie creature from Humbug, which was directed by the late Kim Manners. Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, etc. Mulder's willing to keep an open mind and they find there were two other bodies discovered too and one of them was naked. The marks found by the autopsy conducted by Scully shows human teeth marks. Thus the so-called monster could be human after all and a serial killer.
Mulder's surprised no one got a photo, they only have a sketch which gives him three eyes, and he downloads a camera app to his phone, which he doesn't know how to use. So he just ends up taking photos of everything. Even Guy (Rhys Darby) in the portaloo, yes Guy with an Aussie accent! Who we see has horns so is the creature. That scene was a little silly considering Mulder saw the creature enter the loo and he couldn't have gone out the other way. Scully finds anomalies in the blood sample she sent to be analyzed but doesn't get a chance to tell Mulder, who later notices the bite mark in one of the photos he took.
Homage to Kim Manners as Mulder steals flowers from by one gravestone and places them on the headstone with the name 'Kim Manners'. "Let's kick it in the ass." As he talks to Guy Mann, another comedic, sarcastic name. Guy to man or man to guy, ha. Anyway the man tells him he wants to kill Mulder and breaks a green bottle so Mulder will stab him in the appendix. (How the creature could be killed in Humbug.) All based on the rantings of a psychiatrist who tells him about the fairytales from the old country about werepires and lizard men who can only be killed by being stabbed in the appendix, but he doesn't know why. Seems this loony was a loony himself who wrote a prescription for Mulder, as well as taking pills himself. Which Mulder doesn't take. Yeah since when does Mulder need to pop pills anyway?
Guy tells him the entire story about being bitten by a human. Then he ran away and found himself turning into a human and next day he woke up naked and his human thought was to dress himself with the clothes he took from one of the dead bodies. Then he had all sorts of human thoughts like having to get a job cos he needed the money to survive. Even though he wanted to quite the job selling phones, he became manager overnight and it was a perfect job for him since he didn't understand what he was talking about, neither did his customers. But he needed the job cos he needed to get a loan and a mortgage even if he didn't know what they were.
He ended up at the seedy motel and next morning found he had chnaged back into his natural form. Being woken up by the alarm. He was happy and then saw someone watching him from the Jackalope head on the wall, which Mulder interjects was proven to be a hoax. He couldn't live with humans so he got a pet puppy, who ran away. Which explained the call the animal control guy, Pasha (Kumail Namjiani) got of a missing puppy as he told Mulder and Scully. We even get a flashback to Scully walking into the store where he works after she locates Guy and proceeding to undress and have sex with him. Mulder telling him that didn't really happen. Er, neither did the motel manager see Mulder on the bed in a red thong/speedos!! Ha. Well of course he did the dirty peeping tom!
Guy tells him he saw what happened to the others and he saw a being killed by a human, after he saw the man who bit him and only had human thoughts of revenge. He pulls out Mulder's badge and tells him he didn't believe him after all and was going to pin the murders onto him, an innocent man. He runs away shouting Mulder's really the monster and Mulder takes out a green bottle of drink from his pocket and drinks, when Scully calls him after finding the lost puppy. Of course it had to be Pasha, especially since as Mulder said at the beginning it had to be a serial killer. Scully keeps the puppy as he reminds her of Queequeg.
Guy goes into hibernation for at least the next thousand years and was a pleasure meeting Mulder. Of course it's one of those eps which was written by Darin Morgan and had a completely different role reversal, this time it's the creature who's innocent and sees the human committing the murder. Having the misfortune of having human tendencies after being bitten, whereas it's the human who takes on the familiar tendencies of the werewolf and changes with the full moon.
Mulder's red speedos, thongs, whatever, well they weren't tightie whities ha, was a harkback to season 2 episode Duane Barry, when Mulder was seen leaving a pool. Of course Guy's outfit was that worn by Darrin McGavin when he played Kolchak Night Stalker, on which the X-Files was loosely based by Chris Carter. Yep saw that! Not to mention Mulder having the X-Files theme as a ringtone on his phone. The dog, Dagoo is another character from Moby Dick, just like Queequeg. The pencils Mulder throws at the poster are those he threw into the ceiling in Chinga. Mulder's line of wanting to be "mauled by a wolf, lion and a bear" and be naked when he dies is similar to what he was told in Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose by Clyde, that he would die by autoerotic asphyxiation. As for Scully not needing anyone's help, this was also from the same episode where she was believed to be immortal and she repeats that here too. Jack Hardy, the other name on the gravestone was First Assistant Director on The X-Files: I Want to Believe. A line which Mulder also says to Guy at the cemetery.
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