Production Code: #7ABX17 Original Air Date: 04/09/00
Written and Directed by Gillian Anderson
A SERIES OF COINCIDENCES PUTS SCULLY IN CONTACT WITH SOMEONE FROM HER PAST, CAUSING HER TO QUESTION HER ROMANTIC AND PROFESSIONAL CHOICES.
Scully dresses in front of a bathroom mirror and quietly heads in to the bedroom to grab her jacket. She pauses for a brief moment, looking towards the bed, and heads out the door. Sound asleep in the bed is Mulder.
Sixty−three hours earlier: It’s Saturday afternoon when Scully enters Mulder’s office with lunch. He rambles on with a slide presentation of fractal crop circles and notices that she’s only listening half− heartedly. When he says that he’s booked two plane tickets to investigate the crop circles in England, Scully bemoans the fact that she has plenty of work to finish over the weekend. Mulder is annoyed, muttering that he can cancel her ticket. “Why can’t you ever just stay still?” she asks. “I wouldn’t know what I’d be missing,” he answers as he leaves.
Scully waits at the nurse’s station in the Washington National Hospital for autopsy results on a case, but when she’s given a folder, she realizes it’s for the wrong patient. Coincidentally, she recognizes the name on the x−ray – Dr. Daniel Waterston, her former medical school teacher with whom she had a romantic relationship. She is drawn to check up on him in the coronary unit, and is intercepted by his doctor, Dr. Kopeikan, who tells Scully that Waterston mentioned her. She is briefed on his heart condition, but declines the doctor’s offer to speak with Waterston.
She returns home to a phone call from Waterston’s daughter Maggie, who has openly hostile feelings towards Scully’s relationship with her father. Maggie reluctantly invites Scully to visit on her father’s behalf. While Scully mulls over the invitation, Mulder beeps in to ask her to pick up a folder of crop circle information from a research facility near the hospital. She is flustered from Maggie’s call, but agrees to help her partner. Scully goes to the hospital and accidentally walks into the wrong room. She notices a red−headed woman, and apologizes for her mistake. She visits Waterston next door, and he is quick to question her leaving medicine for the FBI. She says that he truly understands why she left. Waterston was married, and Scully refused to be responsible for breaking up his family.
As Scully drives away from the hospital, Mulder calls on her cell phone to inquire about his documents. As they speak, Scully slams on the brakes to avoid hitting a female pedestrian, and she narrowly avoids an even more catastrophic collision with a truck. The woman continues on without pause, but looks back and smiles serenely at a stunned Scully. Scully runs Mulder’s errand and is startled to see the contact for the crop circle information is Colleen, the red−headed woman from the hospital. Scully is a little galled when Colleen tells her that her near−accident may have been a sign to slow down and pay attention to the larger picture of her life. She walks out of Colleen’s house and drops the folder of information. As she picks up the papers, her eyes zero in on a heart chakra formation. Her phone rings; it is the hospital with news on Waterston’s worsening heart condition.
Back at the hospital, Scully helps the doctors decide on a course of treatment, and she and Waterston have a heart−to−heart discussion. He tells her that his marriage broke up after she left him, which resulted in Maggie’s anger toward her. He then admits that he has been in Washington for ten years, following her trail. Scully becomes emotional and reveals that she sometimes wonders if she chose the right course in her life. She rests her head on his chest as he comforts her. Suddenly, his heart monitor rings in alarm. Waterston goes into cardiac arrest, and Scully goes into emergency medical mode to revive him. He lapses into a coma.
With nowhere else to turn, Scully is compelled to visit Colleen again for more answers. She tells Scully, “You may be more open to things than you think.” Colleen says that Waterston’s condition is most likely caused by pain in need of healing. Later, Scully walks through the streets deep in thought. She notices the female pedestrian who prevented her car accident across the street. Scully follows the woman into a Buddhist temple, but inside finds herself alone. She falls to her knees before the Buddha statue, overwhelmed with sadness and confusion. Her life rushes before her eyes, ending abruptly at the dying body of Waterston. Scully snaps awake.
She returns to the hospital to conduct a holistic healing ritual in the hopes of bringing Waterston out of his coma. Although the process works, Waterston scoffs at the notion that anything other than practical medicine might have saved his life. Scully tells him that he should be more open to other possibilities, but when he suggests that the two of them discuss their future together, Scully cuts him off. She says that it’s time he took responsibility for the hurt he caused in his family and that he should stop running from the truth. “I’m not the same person,” she confesses. “I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t seen you again.”
Outside the hospital, Scully sees the female pedestrian a third time. She runs up to the woman,
but realizes the person is really Mulder. He has returned from England unsuccessful and was looking for Scully. Noting with a smile that “everything happens for a reason,” Scully and Mulder return to his apartment. She recounts for him the past two days’ events on his couch. Mulder is surprised and amused at Scully’s epiphany in the Buddhist temple. She wonders aloud if all the choices in a person’s life are simply random, or if there is a greater force at work. Mulder considers this, but before he can reply, he realizes that Scully has fallen asleep. He covers her gently with a blanket gets up from the couch to leave her sleeping. Coincidentally, under Mulder’s fish tank, a small Buddha statue sits, smiling.
Brand X
Production Code: #7ABX19 Original Air Date: 04/16/00
Written by Steven Maeda & Greg Walker Directed by Kim Manners
AN INSIDER HOLDS THE SECRET TO THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY’S LATEST DEADLY DEVELOPMENT.
Smoke emanates from the chimney at the Scobie house in Winston−Salem, North Carolina. Skinner runs the team of FBI agents keeping protective custody of Dr. Jim Scobie, who will testify before a grand jury against his former employer, Morley Tobacco, the next morning. Although no one knows the specifics of his research or what he will say in court, the doctor has received death threats. Dr. Scobie lets out a ragged cough into his fist and takes a sip of water. He doesn’t notice the small amount of blood and the lone beetle squirming inside the glass he drank from. Later that night, Joan Scobie awakens to find that her husband is not in bed. She knocks on the locked bathroom door, calling out to Skinner for help. Skinner breaks down the door to reveal Dr. Scobie’s body on the floor. The flesh from the man’s nose to his throat has been stripped away.
The following morning, Mulder and Scully arrive at the Scobie residence to examine the crime scene. There is no signs of a break−in and no fingerprints. Scully infers that acid may have caused the damage to Scobie’s face, but Mulder is not convinced, asserting that the man’s screams would have alerted the many agents surrounding the house. Skinner has been ordered to quickly solve the case, and asks Scully to perform the autopsy. Mulder notes the lack of ashtrays in the house of a tobacco company executive, finding it odd that Scobie did not smoke. He requests to accompany Skinner in questioning Dr. Peter Voss, Scobie’s supervisor at Morley. On the way out, Mulder notices the beetle in Scobie’s water glass.
Skinner and Mulder are met with a cold reception as they flash their FBI badges at Morley Tobacco headquarters. Daniel Brimley, head of corporate security, amiably escorts them to Dr. Voss. The team of lawyers flanking Voss prohibits him from answering any of Skinner’s questions. Mulder produces a baggie with the beetle and asks Voss if he can identify it. Voss replies that it is a tobacco beetle, common to the area surrounding Morley. Visibly shaken, Voss returns home and is met by Daryl Weaver, a man with a sickly complexion, yellow teeth and nicotine−stained fingertips. Weaver demands that Voss continue Scobie’s arrangement in supplying cigarettes, figuring that his silence is in demand. Unnerved, Voss hands him unmarked packages of cigarettes and a wad of cash, and begs the man to leave.
Concluding her autopsy, Scully explains to Mulder and Skinner that Dr. Scobie choked to death. Mulder asks about any traces of beetles, but Scully has found none. Meanwhile, in a skid row hotel, Weaver puffs away as his neighbor, Thomas Gastall, complains through the air vent about the smoke that has reached the next room. The man coughs violently into his hand, but Weaver ignores his pleas. Suddenly quiet, Gastall sees that his fingers are flecked with blood and he falls to the floor. Several tobacco beetles scamper across the floor near his face, which is eaten away like Dr. Scobie’s.
The agents observe that Gastall died in the same manner as Scobie, but Skinner and Scully can not conceive of a motive for the transient’s death. Finding more beetles, Mulder is convinced that no murders were actually committed. Scully surmises that there may be some sort of insect−borne contagion, and Mulder goes door−to−door to investigate. He finds Weaver, who tells him that Gastall was annoyed at his smoking. As Weaver speaks, he lights up a cigarette and blows smoke on Mulder. Having found nothing, Mulder decides to pay another visit to Dr. Voss. Although he is sorry that another victim has surfaced, Voss is still uncooperative and heads into his house to a ringing phone. It is Brimley, who has been watching Voss from outside the house, wanting to know what Mulder talked about. Voss is shaken and begs to go forward with what he knows. Brimley tells him to sit tight, and he asks where Weaver is. Voss replies that he does not know. Later, he goes to the skid row motel to pay off Weaver to leave town. Knowing that Morley Tobacco won’t kill him, Weaver is adamant about staying put and getting more of his special cigarettes. Voss is unaware that he has led Brimley right to Weaver.
Skinner and Scully consult with an entomologist, who examines the beetles from the dead bodies and explains that the insects are not normal. Scully thinks that perhaps the tobacco plants were genetically altered, which affected the beetles that fed off the plants. Back at the morgue, Scully tells
Mulder that the beetles had nested in the dead men’s lungs. As she explains, Mulder begins coughing uncontrollably. He looks into his hands. They are covered in blood. He is brought to surgery, where doctors attempt to suction the beetle larvae from his lungs. Scully informs Skinner that although the procedure is working, it will only buy time until more beetles are gestated. The two surmise that the beetles may have hatched from eggs that were transported through smoke. Outraged, Skinner obtains a search warrant for the Morley facility and demands answers. Out of guilt, Voss finally gives in, telling Skinner that they had tried to engineer a safer tobacco that killed all but one of its test subjects – Darryl Weaver. Skinner breaks into Weaver’s hotel room, but finds only Brimley, bound and gagged. As the knot is loosened, beetles swarm out of Brimley’s mouth and his face is quickly covered with the insects.
After the operation, Scully informs Mulder there is a hunt for Darryl Weaver so that they can learn something from his immunity to the tobacco. Suddenly, Mulder gasps for air and he goes into arrest. The doctor wants to open up Mulder’s chest, but Scully protests, saying that he is too weak for such a surgery. She is frustrated and helpless, but makes the decision to wait for more answers from the investigation.
Skinner, meanwhile, finds Voss held at bay by Weaver, who wants more of his cigarettes. Skinner draws his gun on Weaver and the two are at a standoff. Yet when Weaver attempts to light up a cigarette, Skinner shoots him in the shoulder. They bring him into the hospital for testing, and Scully notices Weaver’s nicotine−stained fingers. She gets an idea, and immediately orders that Mulder be injected with nicotine.
Two weeks later, Scully welcomes the recovering Mulder back to the office. She explains that the high levels of nicotine in Weaver’s blood acted as an insecticide and kept him alive. The same happened to Mulder when he was given high doses of nicotine. Unfortunately, he has become addicted and pulls out a pack of Morley Red cigarettes. Scully is surprised, and insists that he can’t start smoking. He surrenders, and tosses the pack in the trash can. She exits, and Mulder looks longingly at the red and white pack, fighting off the temptation.
Hollywood A.D.
Production Code: #7ABX18 Original Air Date: 04/30/00
Written and Directed by David Duchovny
AN X−FILE BECOMES THE PLOT OF A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE, BUT MULDER AND SCULLY FIND THEIR CASE – AND THEMSELVES DISTORTED ON THE BIG SCREEN.
A gunfight ensues in a makeshift graveyard, as actor Garry Shandling, dressed in the requisite FBI suit, checks the clip on his gun and clutches at a pottery bowl under his arm. A priest in the flowing robes of a Catholic Cardinal holds red−wigged actress Tea Leoni at gunpoint. This “Cigarette−Smoking Pontiff” (CSP) addresses Shandling as “Mulder,” offering to trade “Scully” for the bowl. Shandling warns the CSP that if the Lazarus Bowl is smashed, then all the sniper zombies that the CSP has ready to attack will revert back to being corpses. A zombie steps forward to plead with Shandling: “C’mon man, don’t break the bowl. We don’t wanna go back to being dead – no food, no women, no dancing.” The zombie offers to make Shandling the king of the dead, but Shandling refuses, stating that he’d “rather serve in heaven than rule in hell.” And with that nod to Milton, he throws the Lazarus Bowl high in the air to allow Leoni to disarm the CSP. As Shandling leaps toward her, a zombie dives for the falling bowl. Shandling and Leoni tumble down the hill and fall into an open casket. Lying on top of “Scully,” “Mulder” professes his love after seven years of waiting and passionately kisses her.
The graveyard scene, it is revealed, is really only a movie. The well−dressed audience watching the film includes Shandling and Leoni, as well as the real Scully, who stares up at the screen with wide− mouthed disbelief. Next to her is the real Mulder, his head held low in abject humiliation. He looks across the aisle to Skinner, who is beaming from ear to ear. Skinner raises his hands and shrugs innocently at Mulder.
Eighteen months earlier: Skinner briefs Mulder and Scully in his office about a bombing in the crypt of a D.C. church. Wayne Federman, a screenwriter and college friend of Skinner’s, listens to the conversation, but his ringing cell phone and commentary into a tape recorder disrupts the meeting. Skinner instructs the agents to allow Federman to tail their investigation for research on his latest script. With Federman on his heels in the crypt of the church, Mulder questions Cardinal O’Fallon about the incident. The crypt contained only relics and documents, but nothing of any monetary value. Suddenly a cell phone rings, and Mulder immediately looks disapprovingly to Federman. The ringing, however, is coming from a phone held by a body beneath the rubble. Mulder identifies the corpse as one of his idols, Micah Hoffman, a counterculture revolutionary from the 1960s.
Federman follows Mulder and Scully to Hoffman’s apartment, where they find not only bomb−making materials, but forging instruments and fake religious documents describing an account of Christ’s life on earth after his resurrection. As they return to the crypt, Federman tells Mulder that he admires the agents’ underhanded way of working. “No warrants, no permission, no research – you’re
like studio executives with guns,” he says. While Mulder discovers remnants of Hoffman’s forgeries, Federman watches in astonishment as human bones animatedly try to reassemble broken pottery. He recounts the scene over breakfast at a diner, and Scully acknowledges that he must have been hallucinating the events. Yet Federman, filled with enough “flavor” for his movie, decides he’s had enough and leaves. Scully admits that his story reminded her of an old Catholic school tale about the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. His incantations were engraved on a bowl being spun on a wheel nearby, like the grooves on a record. Mulder is intrigued by this idea, and sends Scully to consult with their expert friend Chuck Burks. Chuck analyzes the bowl and finds that all the notes vibrate in exactly the same key – a feat unheard of in music.
Meanwhile, the Cardinal despondently tells Mulder that he purchased the forgeries from Hoffman and intended to hide them because he believed they were real. The Cardinal had hoped to protect others from the despair and anger he felt when he read the documents. Mulder phones Scully to ask her to do Hoffman’s autopsy, suspecting that the Cardinal may have murdered Hoffman for blackmail over the forged papers. Federman beeps into Mulder’s phone and invites him to Hollywood to watch the filming of the movie based on their X− File. Mulder is somewhat flattered, but his interest is tempered when he learns that while Tea Leoni and Richard Gere have been cast to play Scully and Skinner, Garry Shandling will play Mulder.
In the autopsy bay, Scully dissects Hoffman’s heart when, suddenly, the corpse sits up. “I’m gonna need that when you’re done with it,” Hoffman says as he hops off the gurney and gives himself a shake. Scully gapes, reaching out to touch him with her scalpel. Hoffman warns her off and she drops the scalpel. She reaches for it and looks up again, but the body is back on the table. She brushes off her