#i love you parallel universe mandela effect episode

[twogravesinsomecemetery]

Cannot believe it took the X-Files quarter of a century to pay homage to The Twilight Zone but I'm so beyond glad that they DID

[enigmaticxbee]

✖️✖️✖️ 11x04 The Lost Art of the Forehead Sweat

The one where... Reggie Something was erased from the X-Files. Maybe.

Best: Scully: I want to remember how it was. I want to remember how it all was. I wish we could just end things here, with Mulder and Scully smiling at each other on the couch of their Unremarkable House over a Sasquatch footprint shaped Goop-O ABC 🥰

Worst: The Trump era-ness of this episode is a LOT. I really enjoyed parts of it, but I had to just tune out other parts to avoid anxiety inducing truthiness flashbacks.

✔️ Flashlights

❌ Woods/Desert

❌ Slideshow

❌ Autopsy

✔️ Evidence Disappears

❌ Scully Misses It

❌ Mulder Ditch

✔️ Sunflower Seeds

✔️ Voiceover (Scully, Reggie narration)

❌ Catch Phrase

❌ Scully is a Medical Doctor

❌ Mulder is Spooky

❌ Scuuullllaaaaayy! Muullllderrrr!

❌ Fox/Dana

✔️ Inappropriate Touching (that I am here for)

✔️ Casual Scully (date night!)

✔️ Casual Mulder (Squatchin suit)

✔️ Trench Coats

❌ Bad Tie Watch

❌ Glasses Watch

✔️ Taking! It! Personally!: Mulder

50 States: DC x108 (44/50)

Investigate: Together & Apart

Solve Rate: 70%

❌ Bechdel Test: Unless you count Mrs Peacock screaming in the flashback there were no other women who spoke in this episode. C’mon Darin Morgan!

MSR: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

Goriness: 👽👽

Creepiness: 👽

Humor: 👽👽👽👽👽

Rewatch Thoughts:

William check-in: No mention

Break-up check-in: I guess they’re officially dating again!

Scully’s been calling him all day - maybe to confirm that dinner date?

Squatchin! Love that for him. And that Scully’s like sure, do your thing Mulder.

That moment when someone starts telling you a story for the millionth time and all your “oh yeah, I remember”s and “yeah, yeah you told me”s won’t stop that story train.

Scully just wants to go on her dinner date! Her casual date night outfit is cute too

Also Mulder in his piles of tapes perfectly captures that feeling when you know you put the thing you’re looking for away in a perfectly logical safe place and you can’t find it anywhere and you tear your home apart in search of it

Mulder’s head and voice on his little boy body in this flashback cracks me up

Scullz 😂

Scully chilling with her feet up on Mulder’s desk 😍

Scully poking fun at Mulder’s super secret rendezvous signal

Mulder waggling his eyes at Scully about a stakeout date. Scully: Well this is romantic. Mulder: Isn’t it! I think he’s sincere, hanging out with her, investigating X-Files, what could be better!

There are some great vintage posters and things in the background in the memorabilia shop.

It’s not parallel universes!

Mulder: Who is “they”?

The a-cappella theme song! The flashbacks inserting Reggie into scenes from the original run - Unusual Suspects! The Pilot! Tooms! Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose! Teso Dos Bichos 😂 Home! Small Potatoes - so fun.

Mulder: I’m Fox freaking Mulder, you punks!

Mulder: The world has become too crazy for even my conspiratorial powers. Scully: Maybe you’ve just lost your taste for it, especially after all this “birther” stuff. Seriously, conspiracy theories used to be fun. Now they’re everywhere, with real world consequences, it’s depressing.

The sculpture park is cool looking but I can’t with gobbledygooky-ness of the monologuing - but who knows that’s probably part of the point!

Foxy 🥰

It’s a Darin Morgan episode so Scully is the voice of reason and figures it all out.

The cubicle farm of government agencies montage 😂

Spotnitz Sanatorium

Their final case together, so silly, so good. Especially Mulder flinging himself to the ground in a hissy fit in disappointment over getting All the Answers.

Reggie: But maybe the point wasn’t to find the truth, but to find each other. And no matter where we go in our lives, we will always have the memories of our time together, and no one can take those away or alter them in such a way to make us doubt that they actually happened.

Mulder finally finds his lost episode! I don’t know that I’ve had a real Mandela Effect experience (although I too would have said it was the Berenstein Bears rather the Berenstain Bears) but there is a movie my sister and I loved when we were little that we can’t remember the name of and no one else has ever heard of and it sounds like a fever dream when I try describe the plot 😅

Scully’s little grin of anticipation at her spoonful of Goop-O ABC.

Let’s just leave them here in this nostalgic moment shall we.

[wack-ashimself]

Mandela effects 5000%.

So watching inside job, entire episode is going off the mandela effect.

Summary: 'The Mandela Effect refers to a situation in which a large mass of people believes that an event occurred when it did not.'

But a lot of people hint/propose this was people jumping realities/timeline/parallel universes. It DID happen from wherever they came from.

<I mean, if you jumped, accidentally of course, entire universes/time lines/whatever, and the changes were VERY subtle (especially if you did this younger), it would be hard to notice unless it was IN YOUR FACE cuz...you've adapted. You're already adjusted to that reality. It's what the human mind AND body are programmed to do.>

I've heard about it a long long time ago. Heard many examples. The most famous I knew of was Bearstein vs bearstain bears. Fairly, on that, I was a kid and didn't pay attention to spelling too much. I am more storyline/main characters persons. Not to mention that it is easy to dismiss, in a way. Could be a misprint or something.

However, this episode pointed out to another famous one I did NOT know about. Our reality: Kazam with Shaq. Fake: Shazam with Sinbad. Now, again, title wise I do not remember. But I swear, I have vivid details of the sinbad movie. Why? Cuz, I dunno why, but as a kid, I LOVED sinbad, so I saw anything he was in. Yes, even that shitty president kid movie. I REMEMBER the sinbad genie magic movie. And yeah, I do remember the shaq movie too as a FUCKING joke (and I thought a copy OF the sinbad movie. If you wanted to see fan wack, it was me going 'you copied my fav guy's movie' as a kid lol).

So I remember BOTH movies as being real. It's weird. Here's where it gets weirder. I had a PERSONAL one that I forgot entirely till the Kazam/Shazam thing. It brought it back. From a place in my mind that I don't know is there. I PROMISED myself to post about it, but FORGOT it at the time. Instantly. Like amnesia forgot.

Avengers: Endgame (yes, it's been a while. I told you, I experienced it once, then I had NO PROOF at all I didn't imagine it).

I watch cam movies if I can't find a good version. Like any self respecting poor ass mother fucker. So that's another reason this was hard to prove: once I saw this version, it was overwritten (streaming so my ass doesn't end up in jail) by a NEW cam version, then later, the HD.

The FIRST cam version I saw (and it was within...days, max, of the movie coming out) I saw a scene entirely different in a major way than ANY other version I have seen (I checked it many times to see if it was a deleted scene since remembering. Fuck, it may be an alternative scene, but I still can't find proof of its' existence.)

In the scene where they track down Thanos (retired, weakened, etc), and find out he destroyed the stones, the scene EVERYONE saw was Thor killing Thanos.

What I originally saw (and I can not ever fully forget cuz I thought it was WAY WAY better written): Nebula, heart broken over her sister's murder, wraps this....metallic tech super whip around his neck, pulling, her leg on his side, tightening, till (they zoom out so you only see the shadow) his head falls off.

AND THAT SCENE ROCKED! I do NOT do fan fic bs. Not 'I could do it better' Cuz a-I probably could b-I probably couldn't cuz I didn't even come up with the original. This was not a dream. Not my imagination. I saw that scene. Till I saw it in HD, THAT IS THE VERSION I KNEW HAPPENED.

Just...I saw that, still vividly remember it, was planning on posting about it when I saw the OTHER version, but like, INSTANTLY forgot. It is weird...like, seeing the new version overwrote what my brain remembered originally. Like a patch update lol With technology, I sure as shit would not put it past them. Cuz let's be real: the version I saw is far more violent, and people wanted thor's redemption. So...why not test it out, it fails, put in the thor version, and just deny any other version exists? I mean, they have the power to...so it may not be themandela effect. Rather market testing, in extreme expedited ways....

[scullydubois]

thoughts on The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat (11x04)

Written & Directed by Darin Morgan

Black and white!

Is this the place from Jose Chung? Is it gonna be a kind of sequel?

This has to be a Darin Morgan thing

Squatching...I hate him

There’s an X on the window…

Whomst is in this parking garage

Mulder really wants to find this Twilight Zone episode

That was so aggressive

OMG this is so funny and also deeply disturbing

Cherry jello...good for her

Mandela effect!!

She’s really sitting like that huh

We love a good romantic parking garage date

Hey Reggie

Mulder really just said the words “Internet meme”...maybe the X-Files shouldn’t have come back

They can’t lick our dick!

Parallel universes! One X-Files thing that I genuinely believe is true

Occam's Razor! 

They’ve been in this parking garage a long ass time

Ooo RIP memorabilia shop owner

Why did they both make the same “sounds like your ride’s here” joke...let me rest

This sounds so much like a commercial that I would think that it was if I was watching this on Fox

Reggie is kind of an icon, can’t lie

He redacted his own letter to himself...why is that so relatable

Okay I love this

FMSOUFOSHVVODVBO REGGIE SOMETHING

OMFG this is so funny

Okay Darin Morgan wins life

Mulder chill

What is he doing

Everyone, let this man have his mental breakdown in peace

Damn this doctor is shading Mulder

A post-cover up, post-conspiracy world...if only

Mulder?? Not believing??

Reggie is so shiny...it makes me slightly uncomfortable

Scully has this guy’s entire life in this file...iconic

Okay I love this sequence of his bureaucratic jobs

Fox Mulder spilling truth as always

Reggie has been straitjacketed  

LMAO

The alien’s voice makes me so uncomfy

This is like...word for word Donald Trump...Darin Morgan said no rights!

Mulder is gonna be me during the last episode

Home Again is playing...please hold while I cry

“I want to remember how it was...I want to remember how it all was” Darin Morgan you may as well stab me to death

Okay...wig!

Consensus: I thoroughly enjoyed this, if you can’t tell.

4.5 out of 5 stars