After a run of three stellar episodes, the run up to the finale of season two included four episodes that were good, but not great. The Calusari, F. Emasculata, Soft Light, and Our Town ran the gamut from derivative and too violent for Fox’s standards to cannibalism and infectious diseases. While I’m not going into detail on Soft Light because it is the weakest of the four episodes, I will be discussing the other three.
The Calusari
A little boy is lured away from his mother and killed by a tram and it is believed that his brother was somehow responsible. As Mulder and Scully investigate and another mysterious death occurs, the boy’s grandmother calls in her Romanian family and members of a cult that call themselves The Calusari. The perform what is essentially an exorcism.
When I spoke of an episode being too violent for Fox, this is the one I was talking about. Carter had to edit down one of the scenes in which someone was strangled because Fox thought it was too much for people to handle. The little boy dying at the beginning put the network on edge too. Chris Carter, to his credit, reedited the ending to make it appear scarier. In the end, the changes made for a stronger episode, but not a perfect one.
At the time, films like The Omen and The Exorcism were the most popular versions of this type of story and this episode was thought to be too closely copied from those films. I hadn’t seen The Omen when this originally aired, but The Exorcist was one of my favorites as a teen so this episode was right up my ally. Unfortunately, for me, it hasn’t aged well. Derivative indeed.
F. Emasculata
Scully is pulled into a prison to find the source of an illness killing the inmates while Mulder tries to find two escapees who may be infected. The episode was based on the practice by pharmaceutical companies to send people into remote locations looking for plants that can be used in medicines, so when one such character gets sick and sends a leg of meat to an inmate in the prison, the inmate gets sick as well. It is a race against time to find a cure and to make sure it does not spread to anyone else.
The Smoking Man covers up the illness. Files it away. Burns the evidence. Because of course he does. This episode may not be part of the greater mythology, but that does not mean this man won’t subvert the X-Files at every turn.
This episode contains exploding pustules which is how the disease spreads. Scully spends part of the episode afraid she was infected and Mulder must stop a man who has boarded a bus full of people before his face explodes. I really want to love this episode for the story it tries to tell. It gets gory. The doctor isn’t always on the up and up adding a layer of ugliness to the episode that would have been told better with more time. 42 minutes isn’t enough.
The best part of this episode is Dean Norris guest starring. He went on to play roles in the adaptation of Stephen King’s Under the Dome and Breaking Bad, among countless others. He always adds some intensity to anything he is in so having him here was a highlight.
I also want to mention guest star Charles Martin Smith who played a doctor working with Scully in this episode. His character is a bit squirrelly but inevitably does the right thing. The actor, for me, is most recognizable from the made for TV adaptation of Peter Benchley’s The Beast which also starred William Peterson (CSI). It wasn’t his only foray into sci-fi. He also starred in Fringe, Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital, Tales From the Crypt, and The Twilight Zone. I love that he starred in both Stephen King and Peter Benchley adaptations.
When I was watching this, I was thrown back into the early days of 2020 when we were all watching films like Outbreak and Contagion for fun because we thought the pandemic would be over in a few months. I might watch them again this week now that the stress of that has dulled into a post-traumatic memory. Contagion in particular holds a special place in my heart for how well it is made and for how they made a neighborhood in Chicago where it was filmed look like the Lynlake neighborhood in South Minneapolis. I used to live right there (South Minneapolis) in that neighborhood so I like seeing how accurate it was.
Our Town
In a smalltown Arkansas, a food inspector disappears and Mulder and Scully take on the case to discover what happened to him. After another townsperson goes crazy and is shot, Mulder believes the entire town are cannibals. After Scully performs an autopsy, she discovers that the woman was 47 instead of her 20s as her appearance would suggest. She also has cruetzfeldt-jakob disease which is fatal and causes dementia. Mulder notices that the local river is red. When told that it is from runoff from the chicken plant, he demands that it be dredged. Dozens of bones are found and Scully believes they are from many bodies. In the end, cannibalism is the culprit, but one of the people that were eaten had the rare disease and now everyone who ate his flesh have the disease too.
Gary Grubbs plays the smalltown sheriff. The actor also reappears later in the X-Files movie as a different character. He has a long career playing bit roles, but he is memorable here with his southern twang and subtle smalltown charm.
For me, the catalyst for season two really going all in on the mythology so early on before giving way to more monster of the week episodes was Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy which was utilized for her disappearance. That abduction gave Walter Skinner more to defend and the Smoking Man more to hide. When the season moved past that part of the season, its popularity was really starting to explode and episodes like these four were the gross outs that horror nuts like me loved to see. Added bonuses that made me tune in every single week. Peaks into the lives of weird and disgusting people as Mulder and Scully give each other ironic looks and quippy comments.
I know I kind of glossed over these four episodes, and it is because, like Mulder, I believe these case assignments were to throw him off the scent of the larger conspiracies at play. It is something he comments on in the finale.
Next week, I’ll be discussing the finale. Until then, TRUST NO ONE.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
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Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
After a run of three stellar episodes, the run up to the finale of season two included four episodes that were good, but not great. The Calusari, F. Emasculata, Soft Light, and Our Town ran the gamut from derivative and too violent for Fox’s standards to cannibalism and infectious diseases. While I’m not going into detail on Soft Light because it is the weakest of the four episodes, I will be discussing the other three.
The Calusari
A little boy is lured away from his mother and killed by a tram and it is believed that his brother was somehow responsible. As Mulder and Scully investigate and another mysterious death occurs, the boy’s grandmother calls in her Romanian family and members of a cult that call themselves The Calusari. The perform what is essentially an exorcism.
When I spoke of an episode being too violent for Fox, this is the one I was talking about. Carter had to edit down one of the scenes in which someone was strangled because Fox thought it was too much for people to handle. The little boy dying at the beginning put the network on edge too. Chris Carter, to his credit, reedited the ending to make it appear scarier. In the end, the changes made for a stronger episode, but not a perfect one.
At the time, films like The Omen and The Exorcism were the most popular versions of this type of story and this episode was thought to be too closely copied from those films. I hadn’t seen The Omen when this originally aired, but The Exorcist was one of my favorites as a teen so this episode was right up my ally. Unfortunately, for me, it hasn’t aged well. Derivative indeed.
F. Emasculata
Scully is pulled into a prison to find the source of an illness killing the inmates while Mulder tries to find two escapees who may be infected. The episode was based on the practice by pharmaceutical companies to send people into remote locations looking for plants that can be used in medicines, so when one such character gets sick and sends a leg of meat to an inmate in the prison, the inmate gets sick as well. It is a race against time to find a cure and to make sure it does not spread to anyone else.
The Smoking Man covers up the illness. Files it away. Burns the evidence. Because of course he does. This episode may not be part of the greater mythology, but that does not mean this man won’t subvert the X-Files at every turn.
This episode contains exploding pustules which is how the disease spreads. Scully spends part of the episode afraid she was infected and Mulder must stop a man who has boarded a bus full of people before his face explodes. I really want to love this episode for the story it tries to tell. It gets gory. The doctor isn’t always on the up and up adding a layer of ugliness to the episode that would have been told better with more time. 42 minutes isn’t enough.
The best part of this episode is Dean Norris guest starring. He went on to play roles in the adaptation of Stephen King’s Under the Dome and Breaking Bad, among countless others. He always adds some intensity to anything he is in so having him here was a highlight.
I also want to mention guest star Charles Martin Smith who played a doctor working with Scully in this episode. His character is a bit squirrelly but inevitably does the right thing. The actor, for me, is most recognizable from the made for TV adaptation of Peter Benchley’s The Beast which also starred William Peterson (CSI). It wasn’t his only foray into sci-fi. He also starred in Fringe, Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital, Tales From the Crypt, and The Twilight Zone. I love that he starred in both Stephen King and Peter Benchley adaptations.
When I was watching this, I was thrown back into the early days of 2020 when we were all watching films like Outbreak and Contagion for fun because we thought the pandemic would be over in a few months. I might watch them again this week now that the stress of that has dulled into a post-traumatic memory. Contagion in particular holds a special place in my heart for how well it is made and for how they made a neighborhood in Chicago where it was filmed look like the Lynlake neighborhood in South Minneapolis. I used to live right there (South Minneapolis) in that neighborhood so I like seeing how accurate it was.
Our Town
In a smalltown Arkansas, a food inspector disappears and Mulder and Scully take on the case to discover what happened to him. After another townsperson goes crazy and is shot, Mulder believes the entire town are cannibals. After Scully performs an autopsy, she discovers that the woman was 47 instead of her 20s as her appearance would suggest. She also has cruetzfeldt-jakob disease which is fatal and causes dementia. Mulder notices that the local river is red. When told that it is from runoff from the chicken plant, he demands that it be dredged. Dozens of bones are found and Scully believes they are from many bodies. In the end, cannibalism is the culprit, but one of the people that were eaten had the rare disease and now everyone who ate his flesh have the disease too.
Gary Grubbs plays the smalltown sheriff. The actor also reappears later in the X-Files movie as a different character. He has a long career playing bit roles, but he is memorable here with his southern twang and subtle smalltown charm.
For me, the catalyst for season two really going all in on the mythology so early on before giving way to more monster of the week episodes was Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy which was utilized for her disappearance. That abduction gave Walter Skinner more to defend and the Smoking Man more to hide. When the season moved past that part of the season, its popularity was really starting to explode and episodes like these four were the gross outs that horror nuts like me loved to see. Added bonuses that made me tune in every single week. Peaks into the lives of weird and disgusting people as Mulder and Scully give each other ironic looks and quippy comments.
I know I kind of glossed over these four episodes, and it is because, like Mulder, I believe these case assignments were to throw him off the scent of the larger conspiracies at play. It is something he comments on in the finale.
Next week, I’ll be discussing the finale. Until then, TRUST NO ONE.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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