Today's the day, Samantha. Today's the day Liz has been waiting for her entire life. Yeah, I did a lot of research for this a long time ago and you are welcome. Liz has been working on this since she was... At what age did you first watch The X-Files? If you do not know, mystery solvers, as in my youth, I went through a phase of a few years, a couple years, where you could not talk to me about anything except The X-Files. I had a very singular, laser focus. Oh, they've seen The X-Files scrapbook on Instagram, I'm sure. It's the only thing that I cared about. That was when I was in, like, seventh, maybe end of seventh, eighth grade, beginning of freshman year of high school. Very formative years. Yeah, yeah. I was, uh, I really, yeah, that was all I did, somehow. I was thinking about this last night, how to explain. To me, I feel like obsession is like a fire.
And you've got to keep adding fuel, which is where the scrapbook comes in. Because it was only on once a week, right? So in anticipating the show, I had to keep the obsession going, to keep that good, warm feeling. So you were clipping David Duchovny's face out of magazines. Yeah, I was going to the store. I don't know that I literally did that, but I might as well have. I was going to bookstores to find, and they were in a lot of magazines. It was a very popular show, right? So it was the cusp of it becoming a huge thing. So I'm like...
cutting out my magazine clippings. I'm going to sleep listening to Gillian Anderson's voice as an audiobook in an X-Files t-shirt. I'm, you know, getting things from my collection of, like, merchandise and books, which had its own little bookshelf. Yep, yep. I had my magazine pictures up all over my walls. Some of my friends were into the show, so that's, like, all we would talk about. It was very, like, I don't know. Yeah, it was a very, you know, it was a horrible time. It's a youthful, transitional, awful time. Yeah, and I think this gave, that was, like, what I would rather focus on. That was my outlet. Yeah. So I just really basically only...
sat around and, like, read books about the X-Files and interviews and, yeah, worked on my scrapbook. Did you call yourself an X-File? That was, yeah, supposedly the name of the fans. It only works in print, so it's dumb. Right, right. This was also, you know, like, sort of the beginning, at least the beginning of my access to the internet. Your AOL dial-up internet, so I'd be like...
going trying to find out hot goss about things, using up my parents' own life. Was there a lot of X-Files fan fiction? Did you dabble in that? I read a little bit of fan fiction. The internet at this time, which, you know, was basically just text, was very X-Files focused. Okay. Because nerds like the internet and nerds like the X-Files. So it was a perfect marriage. I believe Gillian Anderson was like the most downloaded woman of some year or something, right? Makes sense. You could sit there for 45 minutes for a photo of her to slowly emerge in pixels, which I did. Absolutely. I had to know everything.
This is a look back in time at Liz's childhood. What's interesting is that I quit it, and I do this. I'll get really into something, and then I'll quit it hard. And at some point, I was just like, you know what? This show's not as good as it used to be. I'm done. It's personally disappointed me, and I'm not even going to watch it anymore, and I'm taking down all my posters, and I don't. So there's a point where I can tell you way too much about individual episodes of The X-Files, and then people will bring up something from season six, and I'll be like, I don't know what that is. Which the show just kept going and going and going, and I'm like, I don't know what that is.
Do you want to talk about this director, like, who did these three episodes? And this is, like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I know all this stupid, useless trivia that's burned in my brain, but... Do y'all have a favorite episode? I don't. This was a not-
i'm very nostalgic for okay i have re-watched a couple episodes as an adult with a friend of mine but it's not something i've really revisited uh which is weird i'm nostalgic for like everything and anything but maybe because i just loved this so much you burned out on it i've never i've never really gone back to it and i got rid of all my stuff a while ago and well thank god you still have the extra i just kept the scrapbook that's the one thing that's lived on and your memories and my sad sad memories of when this was like my whole life I will, give me like a month, Patreon supporters. I'm going to make a little video of the scrapbook so you can see it. In all its glory. In all its glory. That would be amazing. I really put a lot of hours into it and someone should appreciate it. What a fucking loser I was and continue to be. Yeah, you really need to experience that scrapbook in all its glory. Yeah, it's really something. Did I sometimes just rip pages out of magazines I did not buy so I could put them in my scrapbook? Maybe. Prove it. Prove it. Sometimes I was like, I don't have another $6. There's only one tiny blurb about Gillian Anderson in here. I'm supposed to buy the whole thing. Rip.
Sorry, Borders. Who's going to know? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Crown Books. RIP Borders. I know. That was, like, my favorite. I spent so much time there. It was really a haven. Yeah. I mean, lots of things that weren't school were a haven, but definitely Borders, where I feel like I spent, like, 10% of my life. I lived for Trista Borders.
The best. All right, so we are doing the pilot episode of The X-Files, but I'm sure Liz is going to have plenty to talk about. I had not seen this in a while. This was my favorite episode. It's also not the first episode I saw because I had to sort of rely on things being rerun from whenever I started, you know. But I think they released this on VHS. So I had purchased that and had seen it. So I don't know. I probably saw this.
half a dozen times at some point. If you want to either watch or re-watch this with us, we streamed it on Hulu. That's where you can find it. Yeah, it's currently on Hulu. This is my first... I've never watched The X-Files. Really? Not a show I was ever... I mean, I feel like I've probably seen episodes, but none of them that I can remember. So this is my first time sitting down and absorbing an episode of The X-Files. It's just not a show I got into. We're like polar opposites right now. We are. As usual. What was the show you made? Was it Dexter that I really didn't like? Yeah, I liked this.
like this hella better than i expected it to same i was expecting it to be extremely dated and in some ways it is obviously but i was kind of surprised in the ways that was dated because you know it's been so long since i looked at it and so it looks different in a way because it's in it we're in a different time now I definitely noticed that the pictures are a lot brighter on my TV than on my parents' TV back in the day. Sure, sure. A dying picture tube that I kept turning up the brightness on, and then my dad would yell at me because I was killing the picture tube faster. Look, this was a dark show. It was hard to see what was going on, Dad. It seems like it's always raining. It's always raining. It's always nighttime. They're always running around with these industrial flashlights with very precise beams.
They never solve crimes during the day. So, okay. So this originally aired on September 10th, 1993. And we are getting this information from the X-Files Wikia. Thank you. Yes, it's very detailed. I appreciate people who worked on this. Maybe I chatted with some of you back in the 90s on AOL. Hi. So there's a teaser at the very beginning. We're told that dressed in a nightgown, a young woman scrambles through a darkened forest at night.
She stumbles into a small clearing and sees an immense light glowing over a nearby hill. As the surrounding leaves begin to whirl around the woman in a vortex, a figure approaches from the light. The figure stands over her as the light engulfs them both. I think maybe right before we get anything, it tells us this is based on actual events, which is sort of a lie. But the first episode of X-Files involves missing time. First episode of Unsolved Mysteries involves missing time. Not a coincidence. I do not think that is a coincidence at all. I think not. Do you know what this is based off of? Or is it just...
Pieces of alien sightings pulled out of different stories? Yeah, it's not based on one literal thing. They kind of acted like it was. But I think this is definitely inspired by Unsolved Mysteries, where it's like, what if someone just investigated the paranormal Unsolved Mysteries and wore a trench coat all the time, and then you get Mulder? I mean, if this was a real job, it sounds amazing. I know. I definitely went to visit the FBI headquarters in the 90s, and I was not the person that asked in the group, where are the X-Files? But I definitely got the impression that someone on every fucking tour was like, where are the X-Files? Show us the X-Files! And I had to be like, oh my god, that's not real. We actually just care about, like...
I don't know, money laundering or something. Then you realize the FBI is actually very boring and then you go, oh, why did we come to take a tour of this place? Yeah. So we're in the Column National Forest in Northwest Oregon. The special effects in this opening thing aren't great, but considering this is 93 and this is television, not terrible. I've definitely seen worse. But this show doesn't have Game of Thrones money. It's very good. No, this is just Fox. This was on a Friday. Fox did not actually think the show was going to do well. They greenlit it. They thought their big show this year was going to be something called Perisco County Junior.
Something you've never heard of. Starring Bruce Campbell. That's what they put all their promo money into. And then they just shoved this on Friday nights and thought no one would watch it. Turns out what the people really want. It turns out everyone's nerds and they didn't want some weird Western comedy with Bruce Campbell at all. Chris Carter's previous show was like a musical for ABC. Interesting. But this hit off and then he was like, oh, never mind. This really took off. So the next morning, Detective Miles and Connor John Truitt inspect the woman's corpse with a team of coroners.
Okay, Truett shows Detective Miles two small bumps. Yeah, I don't remember anyone's name except for Ascoli. It doesn't really matter, honestly. There's a coroner and there's a cop guy. Yeah, they inspect two small bumps on the woman's lower back. A trail of dried blood runs from the woman's nose to her mouth. Detective Miles recognizes the young woman as Karen Swenson since she used to go to school with his son. As Miles walks away in a hurry, Truett calls after him. The coroner asks whether the woman and the detective's son were in the high school class of 1989 together and implies that other members of her class have died in the same way as Karen Swenson. Something I find interesting about this opening.
is that it opens with, it doesn't open with our main characters, it opens with something paranormal happening. And because you see that scene, you know immediately that it is paranormal. It's not a normal police procedural. Right. It's not something, I didn't remember that exactly. And I would have thought that it opened with them investigating the case and then finding out that it's paranormal and that Mulder was right. But no, the whole time we know, as a viewer, this is actually something paranormal. Honestly, that surprised me too, as well. Because you think that they would spring it on you. Yeah.
All right, so next we go to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. Special Agent Dana Scully enters the FBI building and reports to a receptionist. She then walks through a set of offices until she comes to Division Chief Scott Blevins' office. Inside, Blevins questions her about her past work, while a mysterious man smoking a cigarette silently watches. So this is interesting also how many things are brought up in the pilot episode that become reoccurring things on the show. And one of them is the smoking man, who is this sort of mysterious figure that seems to be pulling some strings. We actually meet him before we meet Mulder. So that's kind of interesting, too, that that has been thought out. This show is not...
conceived in the way a show would be now where it has like a huge story arc it tries to like shove that in later and it doesn't work so but there are little things that that are reoccurring on the show that are even there in the pilot so that's kind of interesting that is interesting so scully is a medical doctor who has been working within the fbi for a little more than two years blevins notifies her that she is being assigned to work with fox molder on the x files a group of cases that involve paranormal or inexplicable phenomena So Scully does not have her iconic hair yet. I think maybe she does by the second episode. You know, usually you film a pilot, you picture it to different networks. There's a period of time before you start filming the rest of the show. Right. I know that Fox didn't like Gillian Anderson. They didn't think she was hot enough to be the lead. Really? She's hot as hell. She's stunning. But these are some very Pamela Anderson years and they were not, she was not really what they were looking for despite, yeah, being truly iconically beautiful. So they were wrong.
I think I were more okay with David Duchovny, who had been on the softcore porn show Red Shoe Diaries, and so everybody had already seen him nude. Sure, sure. So that's gonna... And I sort of, in my recent years, been like, God, what was wrong with me as a teenager? Because you look at David Duchovny now, and he just looks sleazy and gross and terrible. But in this, he did actually look kind of cute. So I was like, okay.
He has those pouty lips that you kind of can't stop looking at. I miss him when he was wearing glasses, which happens very rarely, but those happen the first time you see him. So in the building's basement, Scully meets Mulder in his office. Mulder shows her several slides of Karen Swenson's dead body and reveals that a strange organic substance has been found near the two marks on the woman's back. super aggressively and meanly, which I guess is because he thinks Scully is sent to spy on him. Yeah, he accuses her of being there to spy. But he just talks to her in this really arrogant, condescending way that makes you want to slap him. He's, and I don't remember this, extremely unlikable. Yeah. What a dick. That struck me too. Mulder, shut up. He also shows her two slides of bodies found in Sturgis, South Dakota, and Shamrock, Texas, where both the two spots and the substance in the surrounding tissue were found. Although Mulder seems to believe that the cases are somehow linked to aliens, Scully argues that science will uncover a more logical explanation.
The dynamic goes on for most of the show, even after Scully has like literally seen aliens. Okay, that was my question is how long does she play the skeptical role? Way too long. To the point where it's like, has she forgotten? Did she get amnesia? Did she forget? Because it's them constantly coming like so close to proving something and then, oh no, the evidence is gone. But it's like, but yeah, but you know. Like you've seen this. Even in this episode, she sees like some weird lights and shit. She will remain a skeptic for years. Okay. All right. Well, I admire her conviction. Mulder tells her that three of Karen Swenson's classmates have also died in mysterious circumstances and states that he and Scully will leave to investigate the deaths early the next morning.
Which, I don't know. She was just like, great. Thanks for giving me some notice on that. Let's go. Thanks, Mulder, you arrogant bastard. Who apparently was like some genius profiler who helped catch this fake serial killer. And that's why he gets to do whatever he wants. Which I didn't remember that either. Yeah, he's got some clout. She knows exactly who he is. On an airplane to Oregon, Mulder lies sprawled across a row of seats. Which, David, he's tall. How many seats is that he's taking up? A lot. Practically half the airplane. Yeah.
His eyes are closed and he has headphones in his ears. Wearing glasses. Scully, meanwhile, looks at a knee. Wearing glasses. Very important. This is a very descriptive wiki. Whoever wrote this was very devoted. Hi, person I probably chatted with back in the day. Did you get a rude email from me because you were wrong about some tiny detail? Something I absolutely would do? Write actual letters to people that they got something wrong in their book and perhaps I could help them out because they don't know what they're talking about? Wow. Yep, that was pretty cool. Pretty cool kid.
That's why I have a podcast about Unsolved Mysteries now. It all makes sense. It's all coming together. So Scully's looking at newspaper clippings about the dead teenagers. She focuses on the name Dr. Newman, when the camera slowly zooms in on the name Dr. Newman. What? Yeah, it's clearly significant. Is that going to be important later? No. All right. Upon making its descent, the plane suddenly starts to shake violently, but eventually normalizes. Mulder nonchalantly concludes that the temporary vibrations must mean they are in the right place. So yeah, the plane basically almost crashes, and he's like, ooh, it makes sense. Yeah, also...
Since I remembered enough of the plot of this episode, I was like, what does this plane shaking have to do with anything? And the answer is nothing. They just wanted something vaguely exciting to happen at this point in the show. Yeah, I didn't quite follow that. No, it has nothing to do with anything. Afterwards, Mulder drives a rental car into Blufier, Oregon, as Scully reads the relevant X-File. She is surprised to learn that the case has already been investigated, information that Mulder did not disclose. He seems to not disclose a lot of stuff to her. So he explains that the FBI became involved after the first three deaths, but later one...
but left one week after without explanation. According to Scully, no unidentified marks are noted in the autopsy reports of the first three victims, although those reports were signed by a different medical examiner than the latest victim. Mulder is impressed by Scully's observations, but adds that they won't know whether the original medical examiner is a suspect until they have exhumed one of the first three bodies. And I think she's like, yeah, it's much more likely that this is an error than there's a big conspiracy or aliens. And you know what? She's right. She is right. The agents will likely then have a better idea whether the examiner intentionally missed the strange marks or if Karen Swenson was the first victim with the spots.
Suddenly, the car's radio powers up and the agents hear a high-pitched noise. Mulder stops the car and uses an aerosol spray paint can from the luggage compartment to spray a large red X on the road, directly behind the vehicle. Why did he buy this? Was he flying with spray paint in his luggage? I don't think he can do that. Yeah, he must be. Well, you never know what you need to paint an X on the road, Liz. Maybe I'll start doing this. When weird stuff happens. When he returns to the car, Mulder states that the incident was probably only trivial. But she goes, what the fuck are you doing? She really goes, what the hell was that? And I was like, Scully, I love you. I love you still so much.
All right. Next, the agents arrive at their destination. They meet with John Truitt and an assistant coroner. The group begins to discuss arrangements for the exhumation, but are interrupted when another car arrives and the county medical examiner who autopsied the first three bodies steps out. And he's pissed. Oh, yeah. This examiner, Dr. Jay Newman, struggles to stop his daughter from interfering and protests against the FBI's use of the cemetery. He also reveals that he and his family have just come back from Blufler to Blufler. I think it's Blufler. Blufler. After a recent holiday, which explains why he didn't conduct the autopsy on Karen Swenson.
When Mulder mentions the tissue sample taken from the victim's body, Newman believes that the agents are insinuating that he missed something in the original autopsies, which they are. Eventually, the man leaves at his daughter's insistence. He's like, we're not insinuating anything. But it's like, but you are, though. Clearly you are. Also, you're here to investigate him. Yeah.
And then Mulder's like, Mulder, who keeps cracking jokes, which all land flat at very inappropriate times, is like, seems like that guy should have taken a longer holiday. Because he thinks he's Lenny Briscoe for Law and Order, but he is not. Mulder and Scully return to the gravesite and discuss Ray Soames, the third victim, whose body they are exhuming. A crane lifts Soames' coffin out of the ground, but a harness attached to the vehicle suddenly breaks and the coffin rolls down the hill. I feel like this happens all the time on the show. So many coffins just falling over and things spilling out. Mulder runs towards the coffin to see it has broken and opened by the fall. Against Truett's advice, Mulder opens the coffin to find...
Yeah, it looks disgusting. Yeah, it's pretty gross. So then we cut to Scully working in the lab. Scully, who thinks that the presence of the body was someone's practical joke, reluctantly agrees to comply with Mulder's request. What kind of a joke would this be? She's like, well, this isn't an alien. This is clearly some elaborate prank where someone kills a chimpanzee, digs up a coffin, takes a real body out, puts in a mummified chimp, and reburries him. You know that old gag? You know that old gag where people are like, oh, my son died before his time. And people are like, he's actually a chimp.
It's a classic. It's not an organ thing. Later, Scully finds a small metallic implant in the body's nasal cavity. Mulder knocks at her door and asks if she wants to join him on a run. He's wearing a hat backwards, and it's terrible. Yeah. Scully tiredly declines. When Mulder wonders if she has identified the implant in Soam's nose, she replies negatively and bids Mulder goodnight. She's kind of acting like she's not really that interested, even though she's been up all night typing.
And, like, working on the case. And she's like, no, I'm not going to lose any sleep over this, even though she literally is. She's getting sucked into his madness already, but she doesn't want to admit it. And he's like, I'm so excited that we found this Indian. I gotta go for a run. Wearing my hat backwards. Because, you know, he's casual now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And already eating sunflower seeds, another thing. Interesting, interesting. Mulder and Scully walk the next day with Dr. Glass, who confirms that Ray Soames was a patient at the hospital. Glass claims that under his... By the way, we're in the Raymond County State Psychiatric Hospital. They're talking to the doctor. Soames appeared to suffer from a form of post-traumatic stress.
And couldn't grasp reality. Similar cases that Glass has treated have included several of Soam's classmates, two of whom are currently undergoing treatment at the hospital. The patients, Billy Miles and Peggy O'Dell, have lived in the hospital for four years. When Scully asks if she and Mulder can speak to them, Glass replies that the agents might have difficulty questioning the patients, especially Billy Miles. Inside the hospital, Billy lies in a bed unresponsive. As Glass and the agents enter, the doctor explains that Miles is experiencing a waking coma. Not really sure what that is. As a result of the car accident on a state road. It might not be real. In which Peggy O'Dell was also involved. He's in sort of a vegetative state. His insurance must be incredible.
Because he's been living there for four years. He's just lying in this bed. Yep. Unresponsive. Peggy sits in a wheelchair next to Billy Miles reading to him. The doctor asks her if she will talk with the visitors, but she replies that Billy wants her to read to him at the moment. When Mulder asks the doctor for permission to conduct a detailed medical examination of Peggy O'Dell, she throws her book down and starts wildly wheeling around. She like flops out of the wheelchair and is yelling and thrashing and responds kind of, look, she doesn't want to be examined. Fine. Yeah, I get it. A nurse approaches and tries to calm her, but she starts screaming. And then her nose starts to bleed.
When she falls out of her wheelchair, Mulder takes the opportunity to lift up the back of her shirt, confirming his suspicion that she has the spots. Not cool, Mulder. Yeah, don't touch people without the permission. He helps Glass to lift the girl back into her wheelchair shortly before Scully angrily rushes out of the room. Possibly because Mulder's a creep. Yeah, possibly. Outside, Mulder hurriedly follows her down a flight of steps. He realizes that Scully is upset because she thinks he knows more about the strange marks than she does. Eventually, Mulder admits to his belief that the teenagers were abducted by extraterrestrials, a theory that Scully thinks is not true.
She comments that there must be another explanation which can be proved scientifically, mentioning that all four victims were found in or near the woods. Scully wonders what they were doing there. Now it's suddenly nighttime. Was it clearly early in the day? She goes, huh, I wonder what they were doing in the woods. Cut to pitch black darkness. Yes, now it's night. The agents walk through the forest where the latest victim died. They carry flashlights and are dressed in informal clothing. Wow, this wiki is very detailed. I love it. After they separate, Mulder looks at a compass he is carrying, which is spinning wildly.
In the clearing where Karen Swenson died, Scully notices a patch of strange dirt on the ground. She picks up some of the dirt and puts it in her pocket when a low rumbling begins. Scully removes a gun from her pocket and leaves the clearing. She approaches the source of the noise where a light shines through the trees. A humanoid silhouette from out of the light comes towards her. I like that she hears this rumbling and sees a bright, bright light in the woods. It's the sort of light you would have over a football game. Oh yeah, it's like a spotlight. That sort of intensity. And she's like, Mulder, is that you? Yes, it's him. His flashlight just got really bright. Yeah, that's him all right.
So the silhouette is actually Detective Miles. He doesn't reveal his name, but states only that he is employed by the Raymond County Sheriff Department and warns the agents that they are on private property and they are forced to leave. Driving through a storm in the darkness of night, Scully shows Mulder the dirt that she has gathered earlier. Mulder believes the dirt might be from a campfire. Which is one of the most reasonable theories he's ever had or ever will have. That's dirt from a campfire, sure. While Scully theorizes that the teenagers may have been part of a cult and that the man they just encountered is aware of that. See, unsolved mysteries adjacent. Why does she immediately go, oh, look at this sort of ashy dirt cult?
That is a leap, Scully. There's no scientific basis for that. But this dude in the woods, suspicious. Telling FBI agents that are investigating a case, you've got to get the hell out of here. I'm with the sheriff's department. That's weird. Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light and the car loses power. Mulder, who looked at his watch just before the incident, says that they've lost nine minutes of time. Extremely excited, Mulder exits the car and discovers that they are almost exactly at the red cross he previously marked on the road.
He excitedly explains to Scully that the people who have sighted UFOs often report lost time. Which is something discussed in some mysteries. Absolutely. However, Scully argues that time can't just disappear, as it is constant throughout the universe. Which, is that true? That's not how time works. Anyway, I have no idea. I assume everything Scully says is true. Sure. The car then restarts by itself and the headlights come back on. In her motel room, Scully writes her report, concluding that she cannot validate nor substantiate Mulder's claim that they experienced a loss of time. I like that she's going to put that in her report. It has nothing to do with the case, really. No, yeah, not at all.
Why even include that, Scully? Well, it gives the impression that she is actually spying on him. Yeah, I guess, yeah. So I don't know if that comes into play later. When the power goes out due to the storm, Scully begins to get ready to take a shower, but notices three spots on her back. Which means that we get to see Jillian Anderson in her bra and underwear. What we were all tuning in for anyway. Yeah, it seems like that was on purpose. Oh, really? Yeah, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise. All right, worried that the spots may be the same marks that the teenagers had, Scully visits Mulder in his motel room, where he determines that the spots are only mosquito bites. But he definitely drags it out.
yeah like not cool comes i think it's still raining she's wearing her bathrobe she's like i need to show you something and he's like okay and then it spots on her back but he's just has his head hovering by her tiny waist for quite a while far too long and it's clear that there's like three spots instead of two so obviously it's not the spots but It's the beginning of the will-they-won't-they sexual tension that march this show. Yes. Later, Mulder tells her about his sister's disappearance when he was 12 and that tore his family apart. He continues by recalling that he left America as soon as he could and attended Oxford University before being recruited by the Bureau. Guess what his sister's name is. What? Samantha. It's a great name. Yeah, quality name. Best character of the show, who's not even in the show. She kind of is eventually. Okay, sure, I suppose.
This is the motivating factor. This is his white whale that he's chasing. What happened to his sister? He's got to find out. I suppose. Yeah, she disappeared. Okay. Alright, he then discovered the exiles and became fascinated by them. He tells Scully that he has been trying to access classified government information, but someone at a higher level of power has been blocking him from doing so. Possibly someone who smokes cigarettes. Hmm, interesting. The only reason Mueller has been able to continue his work is that he has made connections in Congress. You know, this kind of makes sense. Now that we know that there are UFOs, and that there were people at the Pentagon just monitoring UFO activity, it makes sense that you could keep...
the funding or flow with connections in Congress. It does make sense. He suspects Scully is part of an agenda to stop him, but she swears that she is not and tries to convince him to trust her. Mulder leans forward and tells Scully that Dr. Heitz-Werber has taken him through regression hypnosis to access his repressed memories of the night his sister disappeared. He reveals to Scully that he can recall from that night. Mulder believes that his sister was abducted by extraterrestrials and that the government is aware of the existence of aliens. He also states that the only thing that matters to him is finding out what the government is protecting.
Mulder then receives a strange phone call from an anonymous female caller who says that Peggy O'Dell is dead. Yikes. Okay, so then we go, we're on Rural Highway 133 in Bellfueler, Oregon. When the agents arrive at the scene of the car accident that killed Peggy O'Dell, a driver tells Mulder that the girl ran in front of his car despite normally being in a wheelchair. Scully takes a look at the girl's body. Her face is bloodied and her watch has stopped at the same time that the agents experienced lost time. Mulder tells Scully that the autopsy...
lab has been trashed and the body that the agents exhumed has been stolen. The gross, possibly chimpanzee. They leave the scene in the car. They arrived. At this point, we gotta wrap up this plot. Things are going fast. Yeah, there's a lot in this episode, which is true of pilots, I guess, but I think
The S-Files often had more complicated plots than it really needed. So sometimes you're like, wait, who's that? I don't know if it's because they had to edit it down. They had a grander idea, but you couldn't quite fit it all in an hour. It seems like this plot is a little bit more complicated than is really necessary for this story. I would agree with that. So Mulder and Scully return to their motel to find that it has burned down along with all of their files and photos. A terrified girl, Teresa Newman, rushes up to the agents and asks for their protection. In a diner, Teresa speaks with Mulder and Scully. She reveals that she often finds herself in the woods with no recollection of how she got there.
She fears that she might die, like most of her classmates. Most of her classmates? I thought it was only a couple. I guess if she had a really small class. I don't know. Yeah, that's confusing. I'm, like, several of her classmates. Let's go with it. Mulder realizes that Teresa is the medical examiner's daughter and that she was the anonymous caller who told them that Peggy O'Dell was dead. Also, I feel like you should have figured that out right away because she has a very distinctive way of talking. Yeah. Which is what I remembered about this episode all of these years later is the way she's, like, has this very wavering...
He thinks he can protect me, but I don't think he can. That's true. Very distinctive. So she admits that her father is covering things up and that she has the same spots as the other teenagers. Suddenly, her nose starts bleeding. Moments before her father enters with the same detective who warned the agents to leave the forest, Mulder and Scully learn that the detective is Billy Miles' father and are unable to stop the men from taking Teresa home.
So Teresa is in some danger. Mm-hmm. Scully thinks the medical examiner and the detective are aware of the murderer's identity and are responsible for the destruction of the autopsy lab and the agent's motel rooms. However, she is unsure of the reason the corpse was stolen, if the men are indeed responsible. At this point, they just suddenly decide to go to the cemetery to check on the other bodies they hadn't exhumed. And of course, by that point, they've been taken. Yeah, I don't really understand. When were they taken? They wouldn't have realized that Mulder and Scully were about to figure that out?
So, I'm not sure exactly when that happened. And then Mulder just happens to figure it out. Yep. Based on really nothing. Yeah, so Mulder and Scully go to the cemetery, but discover that the bodies of the other two victims have been exhumed. Mulder suddenly realizes the killer's true identity, Billy Miles, the boy in the hospital. You thought he was stuck in a bed and couldn't get out and therefore wasn't a suspect. Well, you were a sucker, because it's him. No clue how he- He just always figured that out. I know who it is. It's Billy Miles. And Scully's like, the boy in the hospital? And he's just like, yeah. Yeah, this took me by surprise when I was watching this.
Look, we gotta wrap it up. The hour's almost over. I mean, it's true. We got a lot happening here. So Scully can hardly believe what Mulder is suggesting, but he claims that recent strange events such as Peggy Udall dying at the exact same time that he and Scully lost nine minutes fit the profile of alien abduction.
Muller theorizes that tests were being conducted on the victims that left the marks found on their backs, but the experiments caused a genetic mutation, explaining the disfigured body in Ray Soames' coffin. This seems way too complicated. I don't know how he figured this out. In regards to the loss of nine minutes, the he and Scully witness Muller believes that the conventional time stopped and that an alien impulse, which also caused Billy Miles to take the victims into the forest, actually took control of time itself. I do not think that was even well explained in the episode, so thank you, Wiki. I don't understand how he figured this out. Scully laughs almost hysterically with Muller finding his theory preposterous, but believing it nevertheless. Yeah, she comes around, I guess.
I don't know. In an attempt to confirm or disprove their suspicions, Mulder and Scully returned to the hospital where Billy Miles is undergoing treatment. Although his nurse claims that his mental condition has rendered him incapable of walking, Scully shows Mulder dirt on the soles of the boy's feet. She takes a sample of the dirt shortly before she leaves the room with Mulder. Mulder is like kind of hitting on the nurse to get information, which is slightly amusing. And he was like, oh, are you the one that emptied his bedpan? Did you notice anything unusual? Yeah, that's very flirtatious. That's what I want to talk about. Good job, Mulder. Outside, Scully claims to be certain that Billy Miles was in the same forest as the victims. She explains that the dirt she has just discovered matches the strange earth she found in Column National Forest earlier. Unfortunately, the sample of strange earth...
of the strange dirt was destroyed in the motel fire and therefore cannot be used to make a comparison. Very inconvenient. But it was just dirt in her pocket. None of it's left. Go look in your pocket, Scully. The agents consequently decide to return to the woods in order to retrieve another sample. It is now night again. Yep. And it's raining, I think. When Mulder and Scully arrive at the edge of the forest, they notice Detective Miles' car. A distinct scream draws them into the woods. Scully follows Mulder as they run towards the source of the noise, but is suddenly ambushed by Detective Miles and falls to the ground. The detective stands over Scully and reminds her of his previous warning to stay away.
He then runs towards Mulder and holds him at gunpoint. Mulder accuses Miles of always knowing what was happening and warns that his son is about to kill another girl. Persuaded by Mulder, Detective Miles rushes towards his son who holds Teresa Newman in his arms. The detective urges his son to put her down and raises his gun. When Billy Miles does not comply, Mulder knocks the detective over just as he is about to fire his gun, alerting Scully to their location. I understand almost none of what happens in this last scene. I think that this show kind of takes advantage of paranormal things to not explain shit.
So that it's like, well, but why is the testing causing, like, why does Billy have to bring people to the woods? And why does it kill some people? And you can just go, uh, aliens. Yeah, I don't understand what they're up to. They're aliens. He's killing these girls, but he's like compelled to bring them. Is he sneaking out of the hospital? Is he, no one sees him? I think no one sees him. No one thinks that he can move. So they're not suspecting him. That somehow the aliens are communicating with him with a thing that's like in his nose, like an implant she found and are making him bring his other classmates to the woods. I don't know why the aliens are killing them. I also don't understand the resolution. So this is what happens. Mulder and the detective witness Billy Miles lift Teresa Newman in his arms as leaves roll around him and a bright light shines down from above. The light eventually engulfs them all and Scully watches from a distance. After the light dissipates, Billy has no memory of his actions and is confused.
as to what happened. The spots on his back are gone and he is no longer crippled by the deleterious effects of a waking coma. What a sentence. Unlike the other victims, Teresa Newman is unharmed. Why? This is what I don't understand. Why? Because the episode is over. That's why. Why does Mulder stop the detective from trying to shoot him? Why does she get engulfed in the light but then it's somehow fine? Why is Billy somehow healed? I have no idea. I don't understand. Why is her father complicit? Do we ever learn that? Aliens! Sure, aliens.
Yeah, very confusing. You wish you were watching Briscoe County Junior right now. Well, definitely not, but... Alright, so, let's conclude this thing. So, Billy Miles undergoes hypnosis performed by Heitz-Werber. Mulder is in the room with him while Scully watches from another room with a one-way mirror. Division Chief Blevins, the cigarette-smoking man and the third man from earlier, also in the room, according to Billy Miles, he and his friends were having a party in the woods to celebrate their graduation when he first saw the bright light. It transported him to a location that he calls, quote, the testing place.
where a group told him to gather the others so they could do tests. The group put an implant in his nasal cavity, and he would wait for the light to give their orders to him. They assured him that it would be okay and that no one would know. However, the test didn't work, and they wanted everything destroyed. Except Teresa, apparently, and apparently he gets cured. Although they said they were leaving, Billy is now afraid that they're coming back. Heinz Werber tells him not to be afraid, assuring him that the FBI are only trying to help, and the cigarette-smoking man whispers something to Blevins. When the FBI officials subsequently start to leave, Scully follows close behind. Mulder looks at the mirror directly at her, and she stops briefly, knowing that he cannot see her.
Scully looks at Mulder through the mirror and then exits the room. So they have this moment, basically. In Blevins' office, Scully and the division chief discuss the case. The smoking guy is there. He and Blevins both seem to believe that the suggestion of alien abduction in Scully's field reports and Billy Miles' supposed recollections under hypnosis is completely unscientifically founded. But Scully is determined to have an accurate report. She won't be bullied into throwing Mulder under the bus, given what she's seen already. Yeah. And this very confusing case of alien abduction slash experiment slash murder.
After she is dismissed from Blevins' office, Scully passes the cigarette-smoking man in the corridor outside. She pauses to watch him enter Blevins' office before continuing on her way. Later, Scully lies awake in bed. She answers a phone call from Mulder, who tells her that a case file on Billy Miles has disappeared from the district attorney's office in Raymond County, Oregon. Mulder wants to talk with her, and Scully agrees that they will discuss their situation on the following day.
She's like, yeah, quit calling me in the middle of the night, you asshole. I'm trying to sleep. The clock is at 1121, which I believe is Chris Carter's birthday, which is always the fucking time on the X-Files. It is always 1121. If you've never noticed that before, you will notice it constantly to the point where it really bugs the crap out of you. Interesting. In a storage room in the Pentagon, the cigarette smoking man files away the implant in the box containing many others, surrounded by rows upon rows of shelves, all containing similar boxes. He exits the room and locks the door by running his keycard through its sensor before walking away. This is a little, Samantha wouldn't know, this is a little Indiana Jones moment where he is putting the...
objects that you would think should be studied he's filing it away well no one will know what it is and apparently they already have similar implants yeah scully explained that she had the implant in her pocket so it was not destroyed in the fire also it was literally everything destroyed in that fire what a hell of a fire except the implant i guess well that's because she had it all that dirt yeah yeah but it did destroy the dirt her pocket dirt You think the FBI would be a little more concerned with people burning down hotels that FBI agents were staying in? No. That seems like a pretty serious crime, but it's really treated in like five seconds. They go back, they're like, oh no, the hotel's on fire, the x-rays, the photographs. What I also thought was interesting is like, they seem to have no authority, even though they're from the FBI. Like these local sheriffs can just be like, get the fuck out of here. And they're like, oh, what are we going to do? And they slink away. I mean, in a way, this isn't a federal crime, so maybe they don't have any authority to investigate. I guess maybe.
It's fiction also. I don't understand why they can't just walk in and be like, where are the FBI? Where are the FBI? Shut the fuck up. Isn't that what happens on criminal bodies? Yeah. I mean, they're often investigating things that are not federal crimes. They're just weird, and Mulder wants to look into them. They're just showing up. Well, I guess in that case, what the fuck are they doing there anyway? Yeah, I don't know. Those are taxpayer dollars. Where are the X-Files? So, yeah.
the plot is a little convoluted and clearly just wraps up because the episode's gone. Despite being confused by almost everything that was going on, I enjoyed the show. I enjoyed the episode. I thought it was entertaining. It had the vibe. It had the creepy spooky... Probably because it was dark all the time and raining. It had the eerie vibe. I enjoyed it. They filmed in Vancouver. Really took advantage of that rain. It's pretty much always raining. It's pretty much always dark. I'm sure it was very cold filming days. For sure. You should have an X-Files podcast. You know so much about it. No, I really shouldn't. But maybe we'll do another one for Patreon if people like it. We could do one of my favorite ones. Ooh, that would be fun.
That's a possibility. I'll throw it out there. I appreciate that whoever wrote the X-Files Wikia is so descriptive. They literally wrote like every single thing. Yeah, that was right. Let's see what other notes I took here. Very helpful. Oh, I wrote down that Scully is already wearing her cross necklace. That's important because we're going to get into, as the show continues, Mulder believes in aliens. Scully believes in God. Okay. You know, how could she be a scientist? Blah, blah, blah. Right. That's deep. Mulder's, yeah. Well, it was the 90s. It was 90s deep. I wrote down that Scully gets hit on the head a lot. Michelle, that does happen constantly. It happens in this episode. She gets...
Whacked on the head in the woods. Poor Scully. Just hypnosis with an explanation point. Mulder's hair looked great. Oh, for sure. Even after it's blown back by the spaceship. I think that really was his power. Okay, go look at like Seinfeld. Go look at fucking Jerry Seinfeld's hair. And it's so long in the back. And we didn't even call that a mullet. That was just hair. Then look at Mulder's hair, which is like...
precisely sculpted and like so poofy on top and it's just my brother once went to a hair salon with a trading card of molder and after that haircut by the way shout out to him amazing amazing um yeah i don't know i feel i could talk about this for a long ass time but i feel like we should wrap it up should we rate it on stuff oh sure there wasn't really a mustache no i don't think there was a notable mustache i mean thumbs up on mysteriousness because who knows what the fuck happened that's true you just say it was very mysterious a lot of questions yeah oh but but you always are well okay because there's so much in the universe that cannot be explained How many Robert Stacks would you give it? I'm like, I don't know, three, 3.5? I would say 3.5. I was entertained. It's well-paced because so much shit happens. It keeps you pretty engaged. You packed a lot into that. I liked how they tried to make, and this is something you don't really see on TV anymore, but like every cut to commercial break is almost like a little cliffhanger where she's like, wait, who's there? And then you cut to commercial break and I was like, oh yeah. So many shows we watch now don't have commercials. Right. So you don't have that like, oh, it's got to keep you sitting there. Keeping you from turning the channel. Yeah. They don't want you to get up, get a snack and not come back. Yeah. You got to sit your ass down. Or if you're me.
tape it on a VHS that you've carefully labeled which episode of X-Files is on there so that you can rewatch it a bunch of times. And then you're sad that they won't rewind some of them and you'll never get to see them. Sad. Because that's how the world used to be. You have no idea how lucky you are if you get to watch every episode of your favorite TV show whenever you want. Because it's streaming on Netflix. Yes, that's not how it used to be. It's true. We used to have to buy a DVR system and program it if we weren't going to be home. I was programming a fucking VCR. Yep, yep. Goddamn. Fashion? Thumbs down. Scully's wearing some bad suits in this. Oof. Yeah, the short pads. Real bad. Sure. It gets better. They get a better...
wardrobe person after this pilot clearly fox was like uh no like sex this woman up immediately her suits didn't even fit i mean i think that was sort of stylish at the time but it's not appealing no didn't age well um i said it i think so you can't really rate it on robert stacks he's not in it although yeah you're right very unsell mysteries adjacent so i mean i think it's i would say it's clearly inspired by unsell mysteries and also a little silence of the lambs all the shots that are in the fbi headquarters particularly when she like goes down to see molder's office which is like in this basement feels very silence of the lambs um which i think is intentional yeah so I enjoyed it. I enjoyed you sharing your X-Files knowledge. I have so much more. You have no idea. It's disgusting. Our mystery solvers will eagerly await the video of the X-Files scrapbook. I need my blood, sweat, and tears to be appreciated after all this time. Absolutely. I'm going to share that I once wrote to writer Glenn Morgan, who wrote for the show, because I read this interview where he was like, I don't really like this one episode about vampires. And I thought it was great. So I wrote to him and I was like, you're wrong. I love that episode. And he wrote me back and he sent me an autographed script. Wow. Which I don't think I still have, which I have no idea what happened to it. But it was like.
the best thing that ever happened to me in my entire life he was clearly impressed that you took the time to write to him to tell him that he was like oh i read this in this old sci-fi magazine i found in a used bookstore and let me just tell you that episode that you wrote is actually good wise up old man that's he wrote to me on space above and beyond stationary which was the show he was working on at the time and i was like oh so exciting i know wow remember when you would get a letter in the mail it was the coolest thing ever yeah and then he went on to like make those fucking final destination movies some other crap so There you go. I'm sure my letter really is what kept him going all those years. Yeah, probably. He was like, somewhere there's this fucking know-it-all kid that just won't shut up about the X-Files. That's who I make entertainment for. Amazing. Oh, God. And here you are with a successful Unsolved Mysteries podcast. I mean, yeah. Oh, also, I'm just going to end on this little tidbit of information, which is that thanks to friend of the pod, Stephanie, I got to meet drag queen Katya Zomolachnikova the other day because they were college roommates and besties. We went to go see her show, which was amazing. And then afterwards, we got whisked into the...
Passed all the fans into the green room. Wow. Like the all-stars we are. And so nice. So friendly. So fucking high energy. Goddamn. But yeah, she asked what I did. And I was like, oh yeah, I work at an acupuncture clinic. But I also have an Unsolved Mysteries podcast. And she was just like, what? That sounds amazing. Is she going to listen? I don't know. Probably not. But then I was like, you know what? I was like, yeah, it's kind of amazing. It's amazing. It's kind of cool. And then we talked about how everyone was traumatized by Unsolved Mysteries because we're pretty much the same age. And also that I...
I had to tell her that Robert Stacklans had a threesome with Elizabeth Taylor and JFK. It just came out. I was like, here's an interesting thing I know. Famous person. Amazing. That's how I hold her. I was like, oh, hi. It's so nice to meet you. By the way, Robert Stacklans had a threesome. With JFK and Elizabeth Taylor. Yeah. And they were like, how do you know that? I know everything. No. Because it's in her biography. Yeah, that's how. And I'm an expert on these things. Duh. So, I assume Katya's a paper now. Shout out to Katya. Hi. And I'm impressed that I said Zomalachnikova. I'm impressed as well. Okay. That's the end. That was my last story. Thanks for giving us money. Thank you. We love it so much. Bye.