#so maybe i start s2 tn as well we will see

[pitchblackkoi]

i am so close to the season one finish line so fuck it. s1e22. i’m sure this will be messy and entirely too much.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 23 thoughts

i am: confused. about everything i just watched. and i can’t tell if the problem is me missing something blatantly obvious, the episode being strange on purpose because it’s building up to something, or it just being an overall peculiar plotline. but i will attempt to elaborate on this later. for now, as always, we start at the top.

the first thing i wrote down was that i was so excited to watch tn’s ep!! i missed the last few days because i was busy and i was really hoping tonight would NOT involve any sort of disease which proved to be the case

“i want these nerds to deal with an art heist someday” <- this i wrote while the opening scene began in some random hotel… like yeah yeah yeah ghosts aliens etc. solve the gardner heist. well maybe if they had been at the scene it never would have happened.

in this hotel, we see a guy who looks scared knocking on the door looking for “Morris” and he says someone is dead!! guy next door is listening (and yeah, so fair, it sounded juicy as hell) but when the poor hotel neighbor stands up to listen he gets… sucked into ectoplasm?? he is no longer there. also, lights are flickering.

agents in the elevator, arriving to the scene. mulder looked really comfortable in there lmaooo that was a very funny visual.

they got information from this case from scully's "contact", and the contact is one of her students!!!!!! ahhh!! she looks so proud. this is funny because she was at the academy for like 3 months lmao but clearly she made a good impression in that brief amount of time!

“heard a lot about you” detective kelly says when scully introduces mulder and HAHAAAA he turns to scully and says “we’ll talk later”. about what. do share. 

(very funny that somehow he came up "a lot" in the 3-ish months she was teaching people how to do autopsies. like girl how did you manage to bring him up consistently whilst opening cadavers. that is talent)

investigation time! (mulder sniffs a drink in the missing guy’s room) "mmm, scotch" he mumbles <- LMAOOOOO THIS MAN IS WEIRD AS HELL 

they notice a big splotch burned into the ground, and as they are investigating the burn marks, scully says it “could be the residue of burnt human flesh” and yes!!!!! I love when she says weird and unsettling things!!!!

mulder seems enthused about this case and also that there is a young detective…… give them an intern i need to see what happens. that man seems to have an instinctive need to Mentor.

detective kelly asks him what he thinks happened. the answer? “spontaneous human combustion” yes ofc!! 

SCULLY IS SO SWEET AWWW “you’re doing just fine :)” she is not going to let her student doubt herself!

scully kinda sounds like she thinks mulder is teasing the detective with such an outlandish claim but i think he’s just being himself honestly

re:human combustion “let’s just forget for the moment that there’s no scientific theory to support it” “okay :)” <- yeah i had to pause and laugh. so what!

WHAT is he doing when they get in the elevator... he is making such a strange face. does anyone have this. it was so funny. he was at once locked in and a million miles away.

okay. so this wasn't the first victim. now they are arriving at the place of an earlier victim. which is a house with all the lights off. peculiar.

“hey scully, can you spare a prophylactic?” (now yes i did have to google this word's definition!) here is my live reaction:

"like a glove? because google is also saying that this can also mean condom. okay she pulls out a glove from her pocket. okay that’s the good ending i think"

makes sense for the doctor to have lots of gloves in the pocket of her jacket. more sense than the other alternative. i was really confused for a few seconds but in the end we got there.

he uses the glove to switch the light bulb on and she says “darkness covers a multitude of sins” which is EXACTLY what i'm here for!!! please keep saying creepy stuff queen <3

enter the home... another splotch from the other victim!! who also worked in tobacco, like the hotel man!!! but he says half of richmond works in tobacco, and the first victim was a scientist, so maybe not…? but regardless this realization made me think of that post that is like “people smoke less and now we don’t get spontaneous human combustion” which is soooo funny to me. if i ever find that post again i Will reblog it. it is true, spontaneous human combustion is a lost art.

mulder is very excited to dig through the trash, which is very raccoon-coded. he finds a ticket to a train station, and suggests that perhaps someone based out of the train station is hunting people.

cut to our deeply scared looking man from earlier who seems to be able to vaporize people. WAIT... earlier it was his shadow that vaporized the other guy. and he’s hiding from light... things are adding up. no light equals no shadow equals no vaporization. sort of adding up, at least. because still, how does a shadow vaporize you?

now he was getting held at gunpoint by cops, both of whom stepped into his shadow and get zapped into splotches. this is a distressing situation, but also a silly one. 

new mulder theory: if we have 3 victims, and they were all near the train station, we could cross reference the security camera footage from those 3 days and see if we can find the guy they've looking for. “that’s assuming that we’re looking for a guy”, says scully, which made me laugh because i had seen that blooper clip and giggled profusely

mystery man is spotted on the camera and jacket identified as working at the magnet place… same as the very first victim!

off to the magnet laboratory to get the scoop on this dr. banton fellow. we get a backstory reveal: he was involved in a terrible accident! he was investigating dark matter. oh man, you can’t be fucking with such things. 

the scientist guy is babbling about particles and dark matter. and while i am trying to keep up, there are bigger thoughts taking up space in my mind. namely: scully you are soooooo pretty idgaf about the particle accelerator <3

we see the scene of the accident, where dr. banton's shadow was burned into the wall……. the energy slid through his body?? girl idk. his coworker said it was almost like he wanted it to happen. maybe you get so involved in dark matter theories that you just want to taste it for yourself. anyway, the shadow left by the zapping looks like the other splotches….. 

train station time. going with the agents to the train station. boy i wish all of the US was supported by a rail system.

he points out that dr. banton was staring at the ground for a loooong time and he's trying to figure out why.

“nonsensical repetitive behavior is a common trait of mental illness” “you trying to tell me something?” YESSSS! i have seen this gif many times and now i understand its context.

(also yes mulder has got Something going on. he has been diagnosed in my headcanon with ocd... i am sure there has been plenty of discourse as to if that is the "correct" label for what is going on in his mind but it's my interpretation and i make the rules <3)

he's taking in the whole environment of the train station, and notices that the light is soft… diffused… no shadows… maybe dr.banton is looking for such an environment... BAM he rounds the corner!

aaaand he’s running but you cannot forget that mulder is a track star! you cannot outrun him! and sure enough, they got him. mulder picks up on what's going down and shoots the lights out so there are no shadows while they talk

now banton is in a facility with soft light smoking a cigarette. very 2013 aesthetic.

he's trying to explain his affliction: “my shadow isn’t mine… it’s like a black hole”

first thought: okay??? um. how and why. second thought: can we harness this for superhero purposes? fight crime by banishing the bad guys to the Void. that's an x-men adjacent power.

dr. banton says the government is after him and they are going to "suck his brain". he begs mulder to free him before this can occur, as if that is a normal predicament to try and escape from and as if mulder has any control over this situation.

the detective’s boss is pissed the FBI is there... like girl calm down does anyone really care? all this nonsense about jurisdiction and people getting frustrated when departments cross. man, if i was in a situation like this, i would be harnessing the power of teamwork, but they never seem to do that. the agents are dismissed, but mulder tells detective kelly that dr. banton needs to be in soft light.

okay, so despite my interjection of "girl who cares", clearly they care. and i'd like to wonder aloud about this exchange:

“I hope you know what you’re doing Scully, putting Detective Ryan’s ambition ahead of all good sense in this case”

“Ambition? She’s a woman trying to survive the boy’s club, Mulder. Believe me, I know how she feels”

because he’s like “we just handed over the a bomb to the Boy Scouts”

and he thinks this new detective is gonna get evaporated but also again they have no jurisdiction so like?? i wrote that i was lost and then i rewatched the scene and was still lost. he seems to be questioning scully's judgement on letting the detective take this case, which she was not in charge of assigning the detective to, and that they only agreed to help out on. so they help and then there is nothing more that can be done because it is Not Their Case. but it also seems to be less about the fact that he is concerned with the detective getting evaporated and more into fending off the alleged brain suckers.

i didn't really get it but i wrote "the girls are fightingggggg"

X AT THE STATION??? 

ohhhh mulder wants info, but X can’t help him because he exposed his identity to skinner and scully last time!!! “and you can trust them as you trust me”, says mulder, trying to get X to believe in the goodness of humanity

X brushes mulder off and says “promise you won’t contact me again unless absolutely necessary” <- damn power imbalance going crazy 

then we se X at the psychiatric facility???? breaking dr. banton out??? is he gonna be part of the brain sucking squad? he's got 2 guys helping him out, but they step in the room and the men grabbing him got zapped out of existence. X lets dr. banton run and looks very confused about the zapping of his colleagues. 

HUH? so is X doing this because he is trying to help mulder or is he really part of the government who wants to experiment on banton? by the end of the episode, it looks like he is, in fact, allied with the brain suckers... but to what extent?

OH! dr. banton got back to his old workplace and his friend the fellow magnet scientist. but the detective catches him there. and she forces him to step against the wall and his shadow gets on her and she. uh. falls screaming into a black hole? and then leaves a burn mark like all of the other cases? man what is going on.

so banton is going back into the chamber where he was previously zapped to try and unzap himself. but he gets in the chamber and his “friend” reveals he’s working for the government that wants to catch him!!!!

BUT SOMEONE SHOOTS THE DUDE WHO HAD LOCKED HIM IN THE ROOM. It was X?! WHAT is the motive here!!!

okay, agents on the scene. accelerator is up and getting ready to zap. ZAP! another shadow shows up. so unzap the zapped equals no more banton? girl where did he go.

mulder is MAD and he is at the place X met him last time. confrontation time! mulder is pissed X used him to get to banton and again X is once again flaunting the power imbalance between them. and because X tricked him, banton is dead and so is the detective!!! boy, that has got to be bad news for mulder who blames himself for everything 

he says to X: “promise me this will be our last meeting. we’re finished” and why do I feel that this is a bad idea!!!

X says he didn’t kill banton, and walks away. and also that this is a dangerous time to go at it alone. WHAT DO YOU MEAN! first skinner's cryptic messages about the darkness that is coming, and now X?

NOOOO Scully at her student the detective's funeral... this is soooo evil. 

mulder is there but he’s late. he’s in sunglasses and they’re funny. she says this feels wrong and it shouldn’t have happened, a student came to her for help and she gave it and now the student is dead. oh scully pls do not blame yourself. it feels like they were led on this track on purpose.

mulder was late because he was tied up with a missing person’s case; the other guy from the magnet lab went missing that same morning. so maybe it was other guy in the room that had been zapped and not banton? 

X AT THE SCENE OF THE MAGNET LAB. watching the other guy run tests on banton??? a tear drops down his face. X is complicit in unethical human experimentation...

so, i’m confused on many levels. it seems like someone got the detective involved because she knew she would go to scully for help and get them roped into this case. but if that WAS what happened, you know that you buy one get one free with these 2, so why would you want to get scully involved if that meant mulder would also get involved, and mulder being the closest (arguably) to X would expose X’s involvement and whatever ulterior motive he is playing to? hasn’t scully suffered enough without being forced to wonder if her helping someone started a domino effect that resulted in death? and all of this is over a guy who zapped himself with black matter and his shadow burns people up. huh?

and how deep is X in with the government doing the evil stuff? is he just distracting mulder with various side quests to keep him from discovering the nefarious deeds they are up to? does X know cigarette guy?

i don’t like when they fight. i actually LOVE when they fight over things that make sense. but i was confused over the fight they had in this episode because he was mad that she was letting the detective… do her job? and he didn’t seem to think she could handle a guy that vaporizes people with his shadow, which i mean, fair enough, tough case for a newbie, but blaming that on scully really pissed me off because?? it’s not her fault??? they also were only involved unofficially so did he think somehow they were supposed to swoop in and rescue the dude to prevent all this from happening? and how do you even rescue a guy whose shadow vaporizes people?

either this makes no sense, i’m wildly misunderstanding something, or a plot is afoot. or all three really. pls feel free to enlighten me with what you thought on this episode and let me know if there is something i am interpreting entirely incorrectly. or not! it could be fun to try and put the pieces together myself. regardless, i am pleased we were reunited