Sunday Mornings with Mulder and Scully – Folie a Deux

Sometimes, an episode of The X-Files does not explain why an event happened. It does not happen often, but on the occasion that it does, the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions. Even less often we are just left wondering what the episode is even about if an investigation cannot explain any reason for something bizarre happening. That is the case with episode nineteen of season five.

As season five draws to a close, we ended up getting a series of monster of the week episodes that vary in quality. The couple episodes before this one were watchable with some great guest stars. This episode ended up being more bizarre in nature and the use of a stuntwoman in a giant bug costume almost derailed the episode entirely. It took some reediting of the footage in post production to make the imagery plausible and what we end up with is an absurdly great episode that’s mostly about paranoia.  I also like to believe that the banality of working in an office environment can drive a person mad and that the madness can be contagious so perhaps, in a broader context, this might be the main theme here.

The title of this episode, Folie à Deux, means an insanity shared by two people with one person delusionally believing something and convincing the other person to go along with it. That is essentially what happens to Mulder when he is sent to investigate the case involving a telemarketer believing his boss is an insect monster and only he can see its true form. Mulder is oddly incensed at being sent on this investigation and even tells Scully to not even bother coming with him. He believes the bureau is sending him on a pointless endeavor.

When he arrives in Chicago to investigate a recorded manifesto that claims that the monster in question “hides in the light”, Mulder contacts Scully and asks her look in the X-Files for any mention of the phrase. She finds a similar phrase from a former case that involved monsters only certain people could see. Mulder admits that he needs Scully with him but before she can arrive, Mulder is drawn into a hostage situation with the employee who now believes that his boss has turned his coworker into a living corpse that only he can see.

Mulder eventually finds out that the employee was present for two similar instances at other locations in Kansas City and Florida. Mulder starts to believe that the employee is right and Scully accuses him of succumbing to a shared psychosis because of the hostage situation he endured. Mulder goes to the employee’s home and finds a map of the boss’s whereabouts during the day. He then notices that the employee’s coworker whom he thought was a living corpse is outside with their boss and they speed away when Mulder tries to confront them.

Scully is forced into an autopsy of the employee and finds that the body suggested that he died 24-36 hours before the man was shot dead. Meanwhile, Mulder follows the boss to another employee’s home where Mulder believes he has turned that employee into a living corpse as well. The employees complain to Skinner of Mulder’s behavior and Mulder ends up in a mental institution after seeing the monster behind Skinner.

Mulder somehow convinces Scully that the boss/monster does something to the back of people’s heads and she checks the corpse of the first employee to see the monster. She finds three puncture marks at the top of his spine. In the hospital, Mulder believes the monster is trying to get him and calls for a nurse. She has apparently already been bitten and opens the window to let the monster in. Scully arrives just in time to shoot the monster, so it flees.

Scully convinces Skinner of Mulder’s mental stability by pointing out what she saw in Mulder’s hospital room, that her autopsy found a mysterious chemical in the employee’s corpse, and all the other employees suspected of being a monster have since disappeared without a trace. The case goes unsolved and the episode ends with another employee of a telemarketing firm seeing the same monster.

 As I said, this bug like monster and the shared psychosis are never explained and I believe this is an unintentional metaphor for the mundane existence of an office worker and how it can drive a person mad if they let it. That management is the monster only you can see due to, I don’t know, maybe a bad review or not getting a promotion or raise you feel you deserved. And this management monster is turning your coworkers against you by turning them into zombies. Madness? Yes. But let’s be honest here. How many of us has felt this way at the office? Overlooked. Unappreciated. Bored with an unfulfilling job. Who do we often perceive as an enemy when you begin to feel that way? The man in charge. That’s our monster who give accolades to coworkers but not us. Paranoia sets in. Anger. Mild hostility. And then, we all go a little mad sometimes.

This episode has a lot to say even if that was never the intention of this unexplained monster. This stuntwoman in a bug suit was so laughably unconvincing that it required some special effects in post production to make it watchable. The end result is something that is both a little funny and bizarrely terrifying. Like Mulder and Scully visited the set of The Office and Michael Scott was really a socially awkward bug monster. Seriously though, even though this bug monster is never truly explained and never appears in the series again, this episode ends up being one of the more memorable ones of the season.

Actor Roger Cross plays an FBI agent alongside Mulder and Scully in this episode. He is probably most recognizable to the causal Fox viewer as CTU agent Curtis Manning on the series 24. Cross has a long career in television and film starring in Fringe, Orphan Black, Arrow, Motive, The Strain, Continuum, and Dark Matter. He appeared in The X-Files five times as different characters, but almost always as some form of law enforcement.

Recently, the film Backrooms hit theaters. The idea of this started in 2019 when an single image of an empty, disorientating office covered in eerie yellow wallpaper. After an anonymous user paired the image with the idea that if you noclip – a video game term for glitching through a solid wall into another area – in the wrong place, you end up in the backrooms. The internet did what the internet does and created an entire mythology around the idea and the film itself features a struggling furniture store owner who noclips into the backrooms. What it shares in common with this episode of The X-Files is the idea that the monotony of office life can have a sinister side and that if you share this existential dread, it can spread to others. The store owner in Backrooms brings other people into that other world with disastrous consequences before he realizes that the area creates a copy of you that is distorted and, in this store owner’s case, violently hungry.

While I liked Backrooms, I didn’t love it because it went to a less scary place that I wanted it to. It did remind me of this episode even if these characters didn’t noclip to another dimension. They did, at least at some point, seem to suffer from the same psychosis before Scully’s investigation found a culprit. As someone who has worked in office environments most of my adult life, it’s easy to see how this sort of thing can happen and that is what makes it so terrifying. You can read my full review of Backrooms here.

Until next week, this monster is still out there so if you’re in the office today, take care of yourself.