“The consciousness of a dangerous criminal possesses an FBI agent who is Scully’s ex-boyfriend.“

Scandalous! You know how women go for the bad boys. Scully’s gonna be all over this guy like white on rice.

MARYLAND MARINE BANK. 5:55pm, five minutes until closing time, Scully and her EX-BOYFRIEND OOOoooOoOOOooo stake the place out waiting for two criminals ready to come in and rob the place blind of its various monies. The criminals are Bonnie and Clyde-like, kissing on each other in the car disgustingly until one of them decides to put on a mask and finally take over the bank.

Long story short, because why dwell on anything, the robbery is unsuccessful in many ways. 1) because the robbery was unsuccessful, and 2) because the criminal shoots Scully’s ex, Jack, right in the chest or stomach or brain or something. It’s hard to tell when they show a slow motion of the guy stumbling backward with smoke around him, as if that’s how bullets work.

It wouldn’t be an episode of The X-Files without Scully’s itchy trigger finger.

With the robbery thwarted, both Jack and the robber are in the emergency room. Every time they use the defibrillator on Jack, the corpse of the robber bounces up as well (behind all 400 people in the room so nobody notices each and every time). Something about the robber’s tattoo is important too, because they keep doing close-ups on with that spidery sound-effect they usually reserve for creepy crawly bugs!

Two days later, Jack removes his breathing tube and sneaks around the hospital. Memories keep flashing in his brain or chest or stomach or something of his bullet-to-the-body incident. It’s traumatic, to say the least. And the most.

Jack sneaks down to the morgue to get a glimpse of the criminal’s dead body. He smirks, then steals the wedding band off of the corpse’s finger by cutting it off with surgical shears. Gross.

Sexy Mulder makes it to the scene! No one knows where Jack went, and this other dude is missing fingers. His name is Warren Dupre, which is yet another dumb name in a string of dumb names featured on the X-Files. Between he and his partner, Lula Phillips, they’ve killed seven people and stolen $100,000. They seemed cool and good at what they do! I hope she keeps it up without him.

This corpse seems to popping a rather large stiffy, Scully.

Mulder has an inkling that this wasn’t just any “necrophiliac mutilation”. He would know, he does one every night before he goes to bed. No, this was Lula breaking into the morgue to steal Warren’s wedding band. Case closed, bitches.

Oh, no, there’s more. We the audience know that’s not the case! Next, Jack breaks into the Dupre/Phillips home looking for Lula. As he ambles around, he checks his arm and discovers Warren’s tattoo suddenly appearing right before his eyes! Very spooky stuff.

Speaking of spooky stuff, Mulder has another inkling. Two men suffered cardiac arrest in the bank. One man was revived. “The question is… which one?” Mulder says, kicking Scully’s skepticism mode into full gear at minute 11 of the episode.

They visit a real fatass of a quack at the University of Maryland who starts talking about near-death experiences and the transfer of energy, sometimes involving increased psychic abilities! Sometimes while dying, the body is vulnerable and susceptible being infiltrated by its own consciousness… or that of someone else’s. Mulder is listening to this with rapt attention while Scully looks like she wants to strangle herself with a nearby extension cord just to get out of the conversation.

The professor has been right before about flat Earth, QAnon, and the COVID hoax, and I’ll be damned if he’s not right about this!

Later, Scully says “YOU CAN EXPLAIN NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES WITH NORMAL FLUCTUATIONS IN THE TEMPORAL LOBE”, and Mulder says “uh huh”. She gets nostalgic about her relationship with Jack, going out her way to mention that she and him shared a birthday, then finds it very hard to believe that he could possibly be possessed with the consciousness of Warren Dupre. That sounds like something you’d see out of that TV show from the ’90s about the FBI agents and the supernatural cases. You know… uh… I’m blanking on it at the moment.

Warren Dupre Jack, hereby known as “WDJ”, busts into a hovel containing a shirtless man named Tommy, Lula’s brother. WDJ demands to know where his girlfriend is. Tommy is like “who the holy fuck are you?”, then points to the TV he’s watching showing Lula wanted by the FBI. When WDJ starts ranting to Tommy about how he knows they were set up, how he knows that Tommy sold them out to the FBI, Tommy lets his guard down and realizes he’s talking to Dupre.

WDJ kills Tommy, and the FBI investigates the crime scene the next morning. WDJ is outside of the apartment trying to get through and is held back by another agent since WDJ ain’t got no badge. Scully vouches for the twitchy WDJ and starts admonishing him for sneaking out of the hospital. WDJ wants to be involved in the case, and Scully lets him as long as he submits himself for a full psychological evalutation in a day or a month or seven years from now, whenever it’s convenient.

Mulder finds WDJ at the shooting range and pulls out a birthday card for Scully. WDJ agrees to sign it, which he does with his left hand (WARREN DUPRE WAS LEFT-HANDED, THIS WAS AN IMPORTANT THING I SHOULD’VE MENTIONED EIGHT PARAGRAPHS AGO), and doesn’t mention anything about his own birthday.

I see you’re packing heat, sir. What else are you packing?

When Mulder throws the card in front of Scully, she says he’s two months early. Nah, it’s from Jack. He didn’t even know that. Odd, huh? Mulder starts getting touchy and asks his LOVELY PARTNER to consider the idea that her ex-boyfriend has been possessed by Warren Dupre. Scully reciprocates the touchiness and asks her LOVELY PARTNER to shut the fuck up about turning anything and everything into an X-File. He silently objects, because he then shows comparisons of an older Jack signature and the signature from the card. Not the same. Odd, huh? X-File time.

WDJ sits down at Jack’s desk and thumbs through a file, finding Lula’s photo. He gets a call at the desk and gets tipped off on Lula’s location. Scully goes with WDJ to visit the tipper even though he’s being a total hostile weirdo about everything. They find her in the tipper’s apartment building and start chasing her down into the basement. When Scully finds Lula and holds her down after a scuffle, WDJ points Scully’s gun at her and tells her to handcuff her own damn self instead. Scully’s all like “now Jack, dear…” and WDJ is like “SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I BLOW YOUR CUNT RIGHT OFF YOUR BODY”.

WDJ acts like Dupre around Lula and she gets skeeved out. Scully witnesses this and finally starts entertaining the possibility that the University of Maryland fatass was right about everything! While she is chained to radiator Black Snake Moan-style, she overhears WDJ trying to convince Lula that she’s really truly Dupre. He starts talking about things that only Dupre could possibly know about, such as some real psychopathic shit like slicing his own hand open on purpose during a marriage proposal. She can’t believe what she’s hearing. She’s convinced, but he starts kissing her neck and grossing her out.

Why yes, I am interested in minimizing my credit card APR and my refrigerator is running.

WDJ calls Mulder to let Scully talk to him for about a second, indicating to him that Scully is being held captive and that a negotiation is nigh. Scully starts pissing WDJ off by talking to him like he’s Jack, which causes little memories to start flashing in his puny brain. Doesn’t matter. WDJ is really salty that Scully killed him in the bank. That wasn’t nice at all!

WDJ finishes a can of Coke and asks Lula for more. Here’s the lol: Scully warns him that Jack is diabetic, so he’s going to start having some REAL fun soon. Abdominal pain followed by a coma, sir! Get some insulin before it’s too late. So, road trip! Lula and an achy, painy WDJ rob a pharmacy of insulin and needles and returns back. Before Scully can administer the insulin, Lula knocks that shit right off the table and points her gun. Lula then reveals that it wasn’t Tommy who set them up, it was her! HER! “How do you think I got away so clean, huh? The minute you stepped into that bank, I was outta there. I got the money and got rid of you.”

A twist! A backstab! A sad story! He’s heartbroken! Wah!

Lula calls Mulder using Scully’s cellphone. Cough up $1,000,000 or Scully’s gonna get a face full of one bullet. Things are getting dire. Mulder visits a guy who can analyze tape recordings and uses his phone conversation to try to find clues on their whereabouts. This kind of thing seems impossible, but the guy figures out within 25 seconds that he can hear an airplane taking off. Give him a few more minutes and he can figure out the plane’s altitude! Give him a dollar and he’ll suck your dick while he’s at it.

Mulder briefs some men on the possible whereabouts based on the proximity to the airport. 3 square miles to cover, approximately 1000 houses. Start knocking on the doors like you’re the Girl Scouts, team. We’ve got a Scully to find!

TIME TO CATCH THE FBI BANDIT.

While Scully is still cuffed to a radiator, a diabetically-addled WDJ starts talking to Scully as if Jack was coming to the forefront. He’s starting to remember some stuff! They get a little bit of that warm and fuzzy… but then WDJ remembers getting shot by Scully again and reverts back to mean Warren Dupre. Oh well. He lolls back into a diabetic stupor. Lula answers a knock at the door, which is a cop pretending to be a proselytizer. He spots Scully and radios in the team.

WDJ pretends to be dead until Lula drops her wedding ring on top of him. He gets up and grabs his gun. As the FBI circles the house, WDJ kills Lula. Then he dies due to lack-of-insulin syndrome. The FBI rescues Scully and then take turns peeing on the corpses of the two criminals! LOL! As WDJ dies, his tattoo disappears off of his arm…

Later in the office, Scully grapples with the fact that Jack is really gone. Mulder retrieves his possessions that were on his person when he died, including a watch that stopped at the moment he was shot. It’s left ambiguous whether he died fully then or if pieces of him were still floating around in the ether. The end.

Get yourself off that radiator, Scully. Stop fucking fooling around.

Next Time on the X-Files

Season 1, Episode 16 — “Young at Heart”
Mulder goes back in time to visit his 12-year-old self right before he tries jacking off for the first time.