#not too much to add. beyond give scully a raise for autopsying that elephant. and she was good at it too!!!!

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 18 thoughts

zoo episode! sad zoo episode.

but. i was giggling. because our very serious agents were forced to say lines like "you think it was an invisible elephant?" and i was laughing!!! sue me!! we can hold space in our hearts for the sentiments that both the sad animal story is sad AND ALSO the thought of them doing investigation work at the zoo is comical. like the tiger is INVISIBLE.

okay. from the top we start.

a janitor is grooving. his partner tells him to stop. i say, keep grooving, man. you deserve it.

dancing has been interrupted!!! stuff is exploding and crashing and we hear elephant noises?? invisible elephant.....? that can BECOME visible?

it seems while in invisible it went a bit sicko mode as the kids say and then came back to visibility mode down the road

(where did renting an elephant for this episode fit into the s2 budget....)

so elephant has been spotted. a family calls the cops. and i understand the sentiment but i'm not sure the cops can do a whole lot about the elephant situation.

NOOO a child is crying as the elephant is dying in the road... this will be a core memory for those poor girls

(elephant actor is really selling it though... emmy nomination deserved)

back to the scene where the janitors saw things explode. mulder jumps out the window and i can't explain why it was really funny lmao

mulder is convinced that the elephant being found dead some miles away is related to this scene of destruction. and yeah, the dead guy DID have an elephant footprint on him. but no one saw an elephant and the janitors were very much there the whole time. so what's the truth?

this is so silly. i'm laughing.

mulder's explaining his theories and scully deadpans "an invisible elephant?" and i'm laughinggggg. can you imagine an elephant making a huge scene but somehow the witnesses just managed to miss the giant creature responsible.

the zookeeper, whose name is ed, arrives at the scene. scully asks about the dead elephant, and ed corrects her use of the elephant's pronouns, which made me think he was an ally.

(later we learn that he was beating all the animals, so this is decidedly un-allied behavior. ally certificate revoked)

the elephant is named ganesha- hey, i understood that.

mulder says he's heard of the "elephant rebellion" phenomenon, and asks if this is an example. yeah of course this man knows about the elephant rebellion. "fucking nerd", i wrote in my notes.

(actually, i am aware that this season aired in 1996, and the infamous Hawaiian elephant incident was 1994. the phrase "elephant rebellion" sounds very niche and nerdy in 2024, but at the time i image this was still very fresh in the world's minds, and part of a wider reckoning on how animals are treated for the sake of entertainment, and this episode is commentary upon that. i was not around for this national discussion, but i did watch askamortician's video on the incident, which is very good by the way. i have mostly grown up in a world free of animals in circuses and with zoos as conservation agents, so interesting to get glimpses into the discussions that led to the shaping of the world i live in)

but then we see the zoo!!! zoo time!!! there are penguins. i saw penguins like that at the zoo once :)

they go to talk to the naturalist who is basically like "idk how the elephant got out" and i'm thinking, girl shouldn't you be... more invested in this?? like an elephant died. ur not even shedding a tear. i would be in mourning.

they see where the elephant was staying when she wasn't on display, and it's frankly awful. scully asks why it was so small, mulder notices chains on the floor, and she says it was leftover from the 1940's, and that ed is treating them poorly, and i understand why this and other elephants have chosen violence

the folks from a radical anti-captivity group are protesting the whole situation. and she refers to them by some acronym that mulder immediately understands, which is further evidence that he must listen to npr or something. my professor that knows everything all the time listens to npr so i'm guessing that is what mulder does too.

meetup time with the dude leading the protest! his name is kyle, and he is saying that no animals should be in captivity, and he often kidnaps animals from zoos to let them go... and i'm not sure if this is a great idea?? because if an elephant has been raised in captivity its whole life, is it gonna know how to be in the jungle?? idk i am not a scientist.

this episode is suuuuper fuzzy and has a very vhs quality to it... i bet y'all were sleeping on this episode, huh? i'm guessing there wasn't as much effort placed into de-fuzzing it because it was about invisible animals and not one of the "hard hitters" of the season. but i think it's camp and i'm seated.

so kyle reveals that ed, the zoo guy, is treating his animals awfully at this point, which is where i formally revoked his ally status. and he says that the naturalist is too busy being sued over her gorilla to really focus on making the zoo more humane.

yeah, you heard that: she "saved" a gorilla and took it home, and now the government of the country she took it from wants it back.

"i thought you said she saved this gorilla?" scully asks, and i dissolve into further fits of laughter, because that is such a funny line out of context and even in context.

well, she "saved" the gorilla by bringing it home and sticking it in a cage, so kyle isn't pleased by the whole ordeal.

so, what to make of these anti-captivity activists? mulder says he thinks they're all talk and not really apart of the whole crime, but scully says she thinks they are behind the elephant's fate, and will release another animal to get the zoo shut down. this is a deep philosophical difference.

he leaves and says he is going to talk to the animals, because i knew that was the type of guy he is

(he's actually lying, though. well, sort of, because he's calling his buddies at the lone gunman, that conspiracy magazine he is involved in somehow. and it's a video call using a camera and a projector, or as i described it in my notes, "a biblically accurate zoom")

his pals thinks its related to the nearby UFO hot spot, and offer this fun fact:

"no animal at the zoo has ever brought a pregnancy term" <- and yeah. i hit pause and yelled "WHAT" so quickly. hey. what's going on. are the aliens getting involved in their reproductive cycles??

frohike, the strange man who is always hitting on scully, hears mulder's phone ring and adds "if that's the lovely agent scully, let her know i've been working out" and i sentence him to a sentence of 10,000 years in the dungeons. (and this is a reduced sentence for his quick thinking in sneaking out her blood work when she was in coma mode)

she's calling to let him know that someone from the anti-captivity organization is breaking into the zoo!!! not a very good look for their cause!!! he climbs a fence to break in, and she looks around cautiously before doing the same. she is normally a ruler follower, after all.

where is this dude going?? to the... lions? he's setting up a camera?

ed the zookeeper has materialized behind scully, who explains she was following someone else, and then they go off into a warehouse area

but the activist dude is setting up his camera- probably just to record their poor conditions rather than anything nefarious, i think- when BAM! flash of light! terrible ruckus!!! tiger is invisible...?

activist man, you are going to be EATEN!!! and the camera is rolling while this happens!!!!

scully's trying to talk to kyle, the head of this whole organization, who is saying he doesn't know why the dude broke into the zoo, and he had nothing to do with it, and she says that if she finds out he was involved in getting that dude eaten by a tiger that she will have him charged

mulder comes to get her, and it's very cute.

she is mad!!!! "you know, that guy really pisses me off" she says, and mulder asks if she's calmed down- bad move, let her be angry- but he tells her that the video showed the attacker was INVISIBLE! even though she examined the body and it was CLEARLY mauled to death!!!! even more frustration ensues.

mulder decides he must question the gorilla... he is so open minded :)

(the gorilla has been taught sign language, so this is a thing you can actually do. but for a guy big into aliens, i don't think talking to a gorilla is really out of the picture, even if there was no known method of communication)

he asks her a few questions and gets very vague answers, learning that the gorilla really wanted a baby, and i'm like, where is this going... he says he is going to need scully's help and i'm thinking... is he going to have her give the gorilla a pregnancy test.....

not quite! it is ELEPHANT AUTOPSY TIME!!!

he is watching all this go on from above and commenting and NOT soiling his pristine suit by getting inside the elephant guts which made me laugh. just watch 'em do the dirty work big guy. i guess he wouldn't know what the hell he was looking at anyway. but with all the other random shit he knows maybe he WOULD know how to identify elephant pregnancy.

and his hunch is correct: scully says the elephant had been pregnant, delivering this news in very fancy medical terms while her face and clothes are covered in elephant gore. oh yeah baby. that's fbi work.

(she is so brave because i would Not have been able to do any work with elephant blood on my face)

okay okay now the tiger that got out has been tracked to a building... and the naturalist really really does NOT want to have to shoot him... but ed the animal beater does, and he kills the tiger!!!!!! what is he hiding....

this poor naturalist, who i am suspicious of, is just taking L after L, and dead tiger is not helping

and GUESS WHAT? tiger was pregnant at one point, too!!! even though there were no efforts to make that happen!!!! how could this be??

"what do you know about alien abduction?" he asks her, entirely serious. she laughs and we see his deadpan face. it never gets old seeing people think he is deeply strange and unusual.

he proposes that perhaps the aliens are taking the pregnant animals and their embryos, and then dropping them back down on earth, which the naturalist describes as "the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard". she has not opened her mind to the idea of the space-time continuum turning them invisible when they come back.

despite the hostile reception to his theories, he watches intently while she asks more questions to the gorilla in sign language. but as this is going down, she is given an order to put the gorilla into custody. another L.

faced with the thought of losing her gorilla, she goes to kyle, who she begs for help, and when he says that she should let the gorilla go back into the wild, she yells "she's MINE, kyle" which is a lot. and he refuses to help. honestly he was kinda rude about it but i understand sticking to your morals.

but he seems to change his mind, because he comes to the zoo at night, calling out for her. and i'm thinking, no, an invisible animal is gonna eat you!!!! but this isn't what happens... something FALLS ON HIM and KILLS HIM!!!! huh???

scully figures out that kyle and the naturalist knew each other, and asks if she went over to his office to ask for help, which she denies. because she is a liar. and she is also deeply mad, and says "why don't you ask agent mulder, he seems to have a novel theory... maybe it was alien abduction" okay queen this is even ruder like he is trying to HELP you

mulder thinks that SHE killed kyle so she could keep the gorilla... which would be tea...

he investigates the cage and he uses a pen to avoid making any fingerprints... will be employing this tactic if i am ever at a crime scene investigation....

he sees ed, the trainer slash animal beater taking off, with guns!!!

back in her office, the naturalist is packing up all the things from her office, including a framed photo of her smooching the gorilla... (sabrina brier voice) oh!

scully is like well ur actually not gonna leave right away. because it looks like kyle was kinda murdered. and she says it was an accident, ed was scared and hit him with a cattle prod. and out of desperation, she gave ed the gorilla. THE ANIMAL BEATER?? you gave HIM your precious baby??? girl.... these decisions.....

back at a warehouse he tracked down ed to, mulder is holding him at gunpoint, which he is remarkably good at doing

the gorilla is going ham because she is in a weird and dark place and mulder says ed, you're gonna have to tranquilize her... but when they open the door, he doesn't shoot and instead leaves mulder in the room with an outraged gorilla!!!! no, mulder, we all shout!! she pummels him, and he doesn't seem to know sign language, so there is a immovable language barrier!!!!

but she backs off from pummeling him, which is good, because gorillas are horrific and CAN kill you.

(and i semi-recently saw a gorilla at the zoo so i'm looking at this one, and i'm trying to figure out if it's a real creature or a dude in a suit... pls someone feel free to share what the truth is. i mean if they got an elephant actor maybe they could hire a gorilla one too... but it looks off. kind of like a guy in a suit. so i'm thinking about that episode of spongebob with the scary guy in a gorilla suit. which was honestly a scary episode!!! but i digress. mulder locked in with gorilla)

OH. LIGHT FLASH! alien time....?

he wakes up on the floor with a bloody head from gorilla pummeling, and scully bursts in, trying to get him to stay still because there is a big bleeding wound on his head, a place you do not want a big wound to be. she is really doing her best to wrangle him and take a look, but he is too wiggly for this.

the naturalist is at the scene, and he does the sign language the gorilla did back to her, which was quite good. if i saw a gorilla do sign language after it beat me i would not remember how she moved its hands. good memory on that mulder guy.

they get a call for an animal in a field, and of course, it is the gorilla, who was hit by a car, and the naturalist sobs into her... fur? hair? as she dies. a tragic end to a gorilla life.

mulder wraps the case up, asking the hard hitting questions: are aliens stealing zoo animals to breed them and steal the embryos, and then preserve them? is it archival or conservationist in nature? he gets very philosophical, as he always does when writing a report. and i can imagine skinner reading this and saying "... okay" and then not saying anything else.

so, what did i think? well, i think they aren't gonna want to recreationally visit a zoo for a while, which kills that one fantasy of mine, but don't worry, i'll make them go to a museum instead. and if there is museum related trauma in a future episode we can work around that.

honestly though, was this episode the best? nah. but was it campy? yeah. the aliens made the tiger invisible, dude. how could you not love that?

i do think this episode was trying to partake in the growing discussion of animal captivity and ethics, especially in the wake of the elephant incident of 1994, and i'm not sure if it really takes a stance beyond "hurting animals is bad". i suppose if anything it comes off looking like it supports the anti-zoo agenda, which is still something that is in the public discourse. i know because i follow a lot of zoos on instagram and there is always someone in the comments saying that the creatures should be free and then someone else countering that they are super endangered and actually he is doing just fine in his cage, eating an appropriately designed cake for his needs. but that discourse hasn't left the public sphere, so it's interesting to see it represented here.

and maybe aliens ARE interested in conservation. i would personally just take the whole animals rather than stealing their embryos and leaving the creatures on the side of the highway, but what do i know? not much in terms of tigers.

i liked seeing scully get pissed off, i thought that was really funny. but overall, this episode was more intersting to me in terms of cultural commentary and outlandish plot than character devlopment. which is fine!!! we need a break from the heaviness of the last two episodes.