Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Wetwired

When I was in English class the year that season three aired, I wrote a report I then had to orally talk about in front of the class about what the affects of violence on television had on people. As a fan of all things horror and sci-fi, I did not, and do not now, believe that television or movies or music or video games make us do anything we haven’t already been programed to do. About a month after that report, this episode aired. I received extra credit for doing a follow up to my report about this episode though I wasn’t expected to orally present that one.

Wetwired follows the Mulder as he is tipped off by “Plain Clothed Man” (sent by Mr. X) about a man who killed his wife and the police who arrived after her killing believing all of them to be someone else. When Mulder and Scully visit him in a psychiatric hospital, the man’s doctor informs them that he saw the same person when he killed those people. The agents disagree that the man was lead to the murders because of violence he had witnessed on television. Scully, always the skeptic, watches tapes in the man’s home to prove they led him to killing five people. Later, she believes she sees Mulder talking with the Smoking Man and thinks he is lying when he denies it.

Another murder happens, this one by a woman who believes she witnessed her husband having an affair with another woman in a hammock. Mulder had seen the same cable repair man tinkering with wires at both murder scenes, so he climbs the electrical pole at the second murder scene and takes a device from it. With the Lone Gunman’s help, they discover that the device is emitting some kind of signal that subliminally controls people’s minds. When he calls Scully to pass on the information, she is increasingly paranoid about why he is investigating without her.

Turns out the device turns people’s worst fears into paranoid delusions when they watch certain things on televisions where the device is active. Mulder is colorblind so it did not affect him the way it affected Scully who became so paranoid that she fired her weapon at Mulder and went to her mother’s house. Her mother is able to calm her down enough for Mulder to get Scully to a hospital.

Mulder tries to find the doctor in the psychiatric hospital but only finds smoking cigarette butts in his home (uh oh). Phone records lead Mulder to another location where he finds the doctor talking to the cable repair man. Mulder tries to apprehend them both, but they are killed by Mr. X before he can get to them. X had used a third party hoping Mulder could get to both men before he had to kill them, but Mulder did not put it all together in time. Later, Mr. X meets with the Smoking Man. The manipulations never stop.

This episode is so steeped in paranoia that you cannot blame Scully for her not trusting Mulder the way she did. The device brings our worst, most irrational fears to the forefront of our minds. What else would Scully fear in regards to Mulder but that he was really in league with the powers they are always up against?

That report I did back in the day was long since covered in nearly thirty years of landfill, but I stand by what I said. I do not believe that what we watch or listen to affects what we do. If violence is not in our nature, then watching a violent movie would not bring us to do the same thing featured in that movie. However, if someone were to engage some mind control device or subliminal messaging that played on our worst fears and amplified them, what then? How do we fight against that? And how do we prove, if the Mulders of the world aren’t on our side, that we are being controlled by something like that? How do we prove after the fact that we were not in control of ourselves if we were manipulated into doing something terrible?

All interesting questions brought up by this episode. An episode that makes me think each time I watch it. It may not be one of my favorite episodes of the series, but it is one of the most thought provoking ones.

I often ask the same questions after watching David Cronenberg’s Videodrome where the CEO of a trashy TV channel desperately tries to engage viewers with violent content only to discover that the show he is about to air might actually be snuff films. He becomes ensnared in a mind control conspiracy as the film unfolds. John Carpenter’s They Live follows a drifter who finds special glasses that allow him to see that aliens walk among us and use subliminal messaging in advertising to keep us docile. Themes of mind control through media aren’t new, and I’m glad that The X-Files explored these tropes for this episode separates itself from the multitude of episodes involving control through cults or witchcraft that seemed to be common throughout the first few seasons.

Until next week, the truth is out there.