“The future of the X-Files project is jeopardized after Mulder secretly infiltrates the government cover-up of a UFO crash.“

FINALLY, it’s another mythology episode. After a handful of episodes about ice parasites and weird outer space ghosts, we get more about government cover-ups! I hope the Man Whom Smokes the Cigarette is in this one.

In Townsend, Wisconsin, around 1am on Day 1, the woods are on fire! A deputy with a stilted delivery of “son of a…” tries to radio in the fire, but no one answers. He gets out of his car to investigate.

In Cheyenne Mountain, the Space Surveillance facility tracks an UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT that landed off the coast of Lake Michigan at 800 mph. I’d say it landed in the Townsend area of Wisconsin, possibly in the woods. The Colonel in charge orders his people to write it up as a meteor, the instruments have obviously malfunctioned! Then he tiptoes to a clandestine corner and tells an individual over the phone that he has 10-double-4-oh-9er! That’s a steak and eggs over at the IHOP. Also, a confirmed “Fallen Angel”.

Something invisible in the woods kills the Townsend deputy. No one cares.

At the same instant the UFO crashed in Townsend, Wisconsin, Mulder is already there in a budget motel autoerotically asphyxiating himself thinking about his discussion with Deep Throat about previous government cover-ups! Then he traipses through the woods looking for the crash site the next morning, which his been cordoned off by laser barriers like in Mission: Impossible.

I told you already, I was going to dig a hole and bury the poop.

Lots of miltary personnel are on the premises, so Mulder needs to do a stealth mission while the military NPCs walk back and forth in straight lines. Obviously, because he’s a 75 IQ dumbass, Mulder gets discovered and captured at the crash site after sundown. I don’t know what he expected to lift from the crash site other than a cool piece of metal or a gorey alien spleen. The military was busy cleaning up the area while Mulder snaps photos with his giant, loud camera, so it’s no wonder that he was kidnapped.

Colonel “It’s a Meteorite” Henderson ruins his film and accuses Mulder of endangering his men’s lives by, uh, snapping photos. Also, infiltrating the site of a regular ol’ earthly environmental hazard. Yeah, that’s the stuff. Mulder gets thrown in a chain-link cage adjacent to a hyper guy with a hat, glasses, long hair, and a scruffy beard. You know the type; all wired about conspiracies. His name is Max Fenig, a NICAP member hellbent on exposing the government cover-ups. he was also captured while running recklessly around the woods, and Mulder keeps trying to ignore him. Max asks him if he saw anything, which doesn’t get answered because Mulder plays the skeptic. Looking like the reasonable one. He is unable to play that up forever.

Unkempt and smiling maniacally. The surest sign of conspiracy loonyism.

Later, Scully visits Mulder in the cage for a little “conjugal visit”. And by that I mean, she tells him he’s a fucking idiot and the X-Files — and his job — is now in danger. She gets really mad at him, asking why he keeps doing this sneaking-around loose cannon goes-where-he-pleases chicanery. She reports to him that the crash was a Libyan airship transporting a nuclear weapon. Mulder LAUGHS at the lie! LAUGHS! Like this: ha.

Not convinced that everything is hunky and dory, Mulder has that glint in his eye that tells everyone that he’s going to keep on sneaking around like a loose cannon, just going anywhere he pleases. Meanwhile, the invisible entity that killed the deputy runs right through the laser barrier and down the street.

Sorry, Mulder. This chain link fence is impervious to your bullshit.

Scully busted Mulder out of the joint and they both return to Mulder’s motel room, where they discover Max trying to poorly sneak out the bathroom window. He gets stuck and flails his legs comically while Mulder grabs him by the undercarriage and pulls him out. He was there trying to see if Mulder was the real deal; Max is a huge fan! He knows everything about the guy, and he’s charmed to meet Scully as well! The reputations of these two precedes themselves, as it turns out.

Max leads them to his unmarked sex trailer full of radio and computer equipment. It’s more trashed than Mulder’s FBI office. Scully finds a whole pharmacy worth of medications on a little table. Mulder talks to this guy like he’s his new boyfriend. Scully wants to be 100 miles away.

Max shows them recordings of the radio transmissions from the dead deputy and the crash site fire containment crew, so they now have a lead! Time to bug the widow! It doesn’t go well. She storms off right away and yells at them and tells them go suck off a horse because she doesn’t know anything about nothing. Nothing except the government is holding onto her husband’s body and threatening her to stay silent. Nothing except that, of course.

Meanwhile, the military’s equipment picks up high frequency signals and infrared mapping of a strange entity running around the woods. They can’t find anything… but they can hear it. It sounds like a screechy MIDI file. And then it kills a whole bunch of personnel, lmao.

Mulder and Scully interview the doctor who was in charge of the caring for the injured fire crew, and he’s equally resistant to talk. Then the doctor admits that all these people died of severe burns that wouldn’t have been from a normal burning fire. Mulder asks him if it could have been from ionizing radiation, which the doctor agrees is possible as long as the explosion was Hiroshima/Nagaski levels of intense! Curious curious curious.

The thing about ionizing radiation, Scully, is that it has a tendency to ionize.

As the FBI agents leave the hospital, the severely burned military personnel are getting gurneyed through with Colonel Henderson pulling up the rear. A perfect time to get all up in his face! The Colonel tells Mulder and Scully to get the fuck out of his face, but the doctor insists that Scully, being a medical doctor, stays. The Colonel is like “NO!”, but the doctor is like “my house, my rules, bitch”.

Fine. Take the Mulder and run. Let the lady stay. Now unencumbered by meddlesom skeptics, Mulder visits Max’s sex offender van and discovers the guy having a fatal epileptic fit. It looks like David Duchovny is trying not to smile, and the X-Files crew decided that this was the take to keep. Once Max calms down, he doesn’t believe his seizure happened. It’s impossible. The medication! He hasn’t had a seizure in seven years! That’s like the length of one NASCAR race.

“As a kid I used to wake up in strange places with no memory of how I got there,” Max says of living his life as an epileptic child. After Max falls asleep, Mulder notices a very odd scar behind his ear. A 3mm triangle-shaped scar. The kind that Mulder has a box full of files about already waiting in his motel room, like he checked it onto the plane.

90% of being an FBI agent is the ability to stare wistfully into the distance…

Scully comes into the room; they lost all but two people. They’re still in critical condition, but cannot be interviewed since they’re on their way to Johns Hopkins. They’re also in critical conditon, jerkface. Mulder talks about the scar and how it’s consistent with alien abductions. Scully reminds him that Max is eating his weight in pills, many of them anti-psychotics. Mulder asks, at the very least, to look at Max’s scar in person and give him her medical opinion. Feeling sorry for him, she acquiesces.

In Cheyenne Mountain, the team tracks another large, um, “meteor”. It’s hovering in place above a small Wisconsin town! Like meteors do, certainly. Meanwhile, the invisible entity infiltrate’s Max’s trailer. Max wakes up and gets a good look before a bright white light engulfs him. Later, Mulder and Scully return to the trailer to find him gone. Kaputt. Out of here. Scully spots blood on the pillow. This is where Mulder starts frothing. Max was definitely an alien abductee and this is why he’s so intent on discovering the truth! It’s consistent! And Colonel Henderson might be the same as well! RARARHAGH! Let’s go find some more shit out!

The duo catches Max at the waterfront where the military had taken him. He cries in a warehouse about how much his ear and/or brain hurts. Colonel Henderson’s team arrives to try to take Max, but Mulder rushes to squirrel him away. A guy with an infrared camera sees three individuals in the warehouse: Mulder, Max, and…someone else. Not Scully! Scully is trying to yell at the Colonel! Oh Jesus!

The invisible entity zaps Mulder and sends him flying. Max screams and is then shown hovering in another room as if within a UFO beam! Then Max is UFO-beamed.

NO! NOT 1990’S CGI SPECIAL EFFECTS! ANYTHING BUT THAT!

Now there’s only one figure in the building! Military blows out the warehouse door and find Mulder going “HE’S GONE! THEY GOT TO HIM FIRST!” and then he’s immediately arrested.

And that’s that.

Scully has the fourth or fifth hearing in 10 episodes about Mulder’s conduct, two days after the events of the episode. Mulder, of course, did not play by any rules and she can testify to this. Scully tries to defend him, but no dice. She and and her large shoulder pads are dismissed.

Mulder is waiting outside the room in crutches, ready to accept his fate. Scully waits with a newspaper and sees the Townsend cover-up in the newspaper, looking quite conflicted.

Mulder is very loud and defensive during his hearing, as to be expected. I don’t even have to tell you what kind of yammerings he hollers at the Chief. Even Colonel Henderson’s testimony places Max’s body in a cargo container, discovered two hours after Mulder and Scully left the premises. Mulder scoffs at this. “Then what more to I have to say?” Mulder says, and then says more. He says the government can only hide this shit for so long. Then, BOOM. IT’S MULDER TIME.

Now you’ve gone and done it. Feral Mulder has come out to play. RAWR!

The Chief meets outside with Deep Throat. Deep Throat needs to know why Chief made a decision to dissolve the X-Files program and dismiss Agent Mulder. It’s because Mulder’s insubordination is far less dangerous than being a whistleblower to the “wrong people”.

“Keep your friends closer and your enemies closer,” Deep Throat chuckles as if he invented the phrase.

Next Time on the X-Files

Season 1, Episode 11 — “Eve”
Mulder digs up the bones of Adam and Eve and then tries to make out with both of them.