The X-Files Recap: Episode 2 - Deep Throat

Posted by Brian Cramer on 04.15.2008

The episode is called "Deep Throat". Isn't that a teaser in and of itself?

Cast:
David Duchovny - Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson - Dana Scully
Jerry Hardin - Deep Throat
Michael Bryan French - Paul Mossinger
Seth Green - Emil
Gabrielle Rose - Anita Budahas
Monica Parker - Ladonna
Sheila Moore - Verla McLennen
Lalainia Lindbjerg - Zoe
Andrew Johnston - Col. Robert Budahas
Jon Cuthbert - Commanding Officer
Vince Metcalfe - Kissell
Michael Puttonen - Motel Manager
Brian Furlong - Lead Officer
Doc Harris - Mr. McLennen

We’re back for week two of The X-Files. As promised last week, I’m going to try to skim the fat off of these recaps while hopefully retaining the substance. My approach will be somewhat different this time around and depending on how it goes and what you fine readers think will determine whether it continues this way or reverts back to the format of the Pilot recap. That means I need feedback! Leave me comments or e-mail me at the address at the bottom of the page and let me know what you think. I write for the readers and likewise, the readers will dictate how I write. It’s a beautiful relationship, isn’t it?

Season 1 – Episode 1
“Deep Throat”
Original Airdate: September 17th, 1993

We open to soldiers running towards a residential home.

NEAR ELLENS AIR BASE,
SOUTHWEST IDAHO

The soldier in charge has a “MP” patch on his shoulder, indicating they’re Military Police. Their target – Colonel Robert Budahas – stole a military vehicle and is considered armed and dangerous, as is explained to his wife, Anita, when she shows up on the scene. They do, indeed, find Budahas in the house – cowering in a corner, sporting tighty-whities and a serious tan. Someone’s been playing in radiation again. They radio in that he’s going to need a doctor…”or something.”

*cue The X-Files introduction credits and theme song*
“THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE”

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Scully is standing at a bar, looking quite uncomfortable and out of place, when Mulder shows up and apologizes for being late. After jokingly offering to buy her a drink, he says he has something to show her and suggests they get a table. As they walk away and the camera pans, we linger for more than a moment on an older gentleman in a suit at the bar looking quite suspicious – and interested in the agents.

At the table, Mulder explains to Scully what we already know about Budahas, indicating it’s been four months since he was found in his house, along with the small tidbit of information that the military will not comment on his condition or whereabouts. Colonel who? *whistles innocently* It got to the point where Budahas’ wife contacted the F.B.I. to file a kidnapping report. Scully is perplexed as to why such a normal case has Mulder interested, to which he replies that it has a distinct smell to it – a sort of “paranormal bouquet” – before excusing himself to use the little boys room.

After finishing his business, we get the WAY too overused plot device where character A will be standing in front of a mirror as such that we can see behind them. After doing something that draws attention away from the mirror (in this case, Mulder bends to dry his face after splashing water on it), character A will be back in front of the mirror only to see *POOF* character B has appeared out of thin air in the background. In this example, by the way, character B is the suspicious-looking gentleman from the bar that I spoke of earlier.

He gets right to the point, telling Mulder to leave the case alone. He refuses to identify himself, only saying that Mulder is putting himself and Scully in unnecessary danger and telling him not to “jeopardize the future of your own efforts.” He then manages to vanish again while Mulder is held up for about a second and a half by some guy trying to get in the bathroom. Spooky.

F.B.I. HEADQUARTERS

Scully is looking through old newspaper archives and finds a headline that proclaims Ellens Air Force base as a “mecca for UFO buffs.” D’oh. Mulder’s busted. She wastes no time in calling him but barely gets out a sentence when Mulder hears a very distinct clicking on his phone. He looks out the window to see an ominous van of doom parked on the street below. He tells Scully they’d talk about things on the plane and hangs up.

MARRIETTE FIELD
SOUTHWEST IDAHO

When they arrive at the Budahas’ home, a deafening aircraft soars overhead as they await an answering of the door. Mrs. Budahas invites them right in and goes on to explain that her husband has gone bat-shit crazy since about a year prior. She emphasizes her point by citing an example of a dinner party they were having one night when Budahas took fish food and sprinkled it on his meal. Abductions, anal probes, implants and fish food. Damn aliens. Mulder asks her if she knew of this happening to anyone else, to which she reluctantly affirms – Verla McLennon’s husband.

We see crazy Mr. Mclennon making fly-fishing lures. How is that indicative of being crazy, you ask? He’s plucking the hairs off of his head to make the lures with. Good enough? Mrs. McLennon seems quite complacent with the entire situation, saying she’s just happy to have him home alive – until she walks past Budahas’ wife and whispers, “Really, Anita. Bringing the F.B.I. to my house?”

At the motel room, the agents attempt to get a meeting with someone in the military to further the investigation. The best they manage is a Colonel Kissell that will meet with them “a week from Friday.” Mulder deadpans a “yeah, right” before picking up the phone book while commenting, “You say Kissell?”

We relocate to Kissell’s residency, where Mulder and Scully are waiting for him to get home. When he does…he tells them to bugger off and slams the door. (Scully: “Good thing we kept that appointment.”) As they’re leaving, a dorky looking guy approaches and introduces himself as Paul Mossinger. He says he works for the newspaper and tries to get some comments from the pair, to no avail. After making a comment about “UFO nuts”, Mulder changes his tune and asks him if he wanted to find the “UFO nuts” Paul spoke of, where he would look.

“The Flying Saucer” is where they end up. It’s a diner with a talkative waitress who can name the models and speeds of the planes as they hear them fly overhead. Mulder notices various pictures of UFOs hanging behind the counter and looks at the one the waitress claims to have taken herself. Mulder buys a “limited edition print” of the photo for $20, to which Scully whispers, “Sucker.” When Mulder asks what the chances of someone like him seeing a UFO were, Scully tells him she’ll meet him outside. There, Scully is perplexed that Ellens Air Base isn’t on her USGS quadrant map, to which Mulder replies, “I know.” As he walks off, she asks where they’re going. Mulder hands her a napkin with a drawing on it. (Mulder: “We got our own map, sucker.”) Heh.

OUTSIDE ELLENS AIR BASE
6:04 PM

Mulder gets some binoculars out of the trunk when they arrive at an obscure location around the base and climbs a hill as Scully expresses her frustration of Mulder dragging her out to Idaho to look for UFOs. We fast-forward to nighttime and see Scully passed out in the car. Suddenly, the sunglasses on the dashboard start vibrating around and the next thing we know, the entire back window of the car is shattered. This awakes Scully rather unceremoniously. Mulder runs down to the car and grabs her hand, telling her she has to see something.

9:13 PM

At the top of the hill, we’re treated to an extravagant light show between two lights in the sky. They dance around with each other at incredible rates of speed, utilizing amazing control. After a minute or so, they veer off into the night. Another light approaches, which turns out to be a helicopter with a searchlight fixed on the ground. At the bottom of the hill, a teenage boy and girl appear from the other side of the fence and run off when Mulder tries to get their attention. The agents give chase. After catching up to them, all four take cover when the helicopter approaches. After it flies off, Mulder takes them both by the arm and tell them they’re going with the agents.

5:02 AM

The four are at a diner and the teens are stuffing their faces with some breakfast. The boy explains to Mulder that they’ve never been chased out before. He says there’s a place called the Yellow Base where they supposedly store all the stuff but it’s surrounded with landmines and junk. Outside, a car pulls up and we can see it’s Paul Mossinger from earlier. He talks into a walkie-talkie, stating he has their location. The voice on the other end tells him to fall back – they’re opening the gate. Back inside, the boy uses a hamburger to demonstrate how the crafts hover. Mulder pulls out the picture he got at the diner and asks if they look anything like it. The boy looks at it for a moment and says, “No… (Mulder has a look on his face that makes you think he died a little inside) …they look exactly like that.”

Mulder and Scully get back in the car and Mulder pulls out a cassette tape. Scully asks what it is, to which Mulder replies, “Evidence,” and proceeds to put it in the tape player. Heavy metal that would make even Dean Winchester cringe fills the car. Scully turns it off and tells Mulder that he could have showed them a picture of a flying hamburger and the kid would have said it looked exactly like that. Mulder takes out a picture of the UFO that supposedly crashed in Roswell in 1947. Ellens Air Base is allegedly one of the six places that wreckage from the crash was taken. Scully isn’t buying any of it and points out that regardless, none of it lends any help in figuring out what happened to Colonel Budahas.

I hate extremely obvious segues. We’re back at the motel. Scully hurries out of the receptionist’s office over to Mulder’s room. She tells him that they got a message from Mrs. Budahas – her husband came home the night before.

Back at the Budahas house, Mrs. Budahas is hysterical, stating that the man they returned is not her husband. Mulder looks over at a picture of Budahas to confirm, physically at least, it’s him. He introduces himself to the colonel and asks him if he minds answering a few questions. Mulder asks his birthday. Check. He asks the names of his kids. Check. Mulder points out Budahas’ Green Bay sweatshirt and asks about the Super Bowl of ’68. Budahas comments on all the key points to try to prove he is, indeed, sane. So far, so good. His wife is still not convinced. Mulder then pulls the trump card. He tells Budahas he has a pilot friend who says he can do (some complicated maneuver) at a sustained 8Gs and asks if it’s possible. Budahas…has nothing. He can’t remember anything about flying.

Outside, Mulder tells Scully he thinks there was some sort of selective memory drain done on Budahas. Scully is, of course, skeptic. She says that the technology to do something like that doesn’t exist. Mulder comments that neither does the technology used to fly the aircraft they saw the night before. As they drive, Mulder goes on to explain that he believes that men like Budahas are physiologically incapable of flying craft like the ones they saw and when he had a breakdown as a result, he became a security risk. Scully still isn’t sure what to make of the entire situation.

All of a sudden, two cars appear on the road ahead, driving head-on towards the agents. Mulder fishtails at the last minute and once all three vehicles are stopped, “Here come the Men In Black. Galaxy defenders.” *bobs head* In an unintentionally hilarious moment, one of them knocks on the driver-side window and deadpans, “Please, get out of the car.” Mulder turns to Scully and asks if she thinks they’ll go away if he ignores them. Again, the man knocks on the window and in the exact same deadpanned fashion states, “Please, get out of the car.” Mulder says, “Guess not,” and gets out. Scully follows suit and shortly thereafter, the agents are restrained while the MiB go through their car and subsequently destroy the film in Mulder’s camera. When he asks what it’s about, his reply is a punch in the gut and “National defense.” They are told to go back to their motel and get the hell out of dodge or assume the consequences.

Back at the motel, Scully turns up nothing when trying to run the plates of the cars that stopped them. Mulder suggests that it was them that the helicopter was chasing off and not the kids and that Budahas was returned as a decoy to try to get rid of the agents. Mulder finally relents his confrontation with the gentleman at the bar and that his phone was tapped and says that he’s convinced there’s a UFO being held at the base and they’ll do anything to keep people from finding out. Scully points out that the government has a right to protect its security and Mulder agrees – but to what cost? (Mulder: “When does the human cost become too high for the building of a better machine?”) Scully says they have no business asking these questions and since the colonel was returned home, their business here if officially done. She suggests they leave while Mulder still has a job. He caves, saying he’s going to shower and pack and they’ll leave. Scully sighs happily at this little victory until she hears a car door shut and a car start right out front. Knowing Mulder, she bolts out the front door to see him peel out of the parking lot.

Mulder is outside the fence around the perimeter of the base with the teenagers. They show him the hole they use to go through and he starts his trek towards Yellow Base. At the end of the tall weeds, he stops and kicks back until it gets dark.

Once night sets in, he finishes his journey, coming out on the edge of a landing strip. On the other side is a building that we can safely assume is Yellow Base. Before Mulder can proceed, a light approaches from the sky. A beautiful, silent, triangular craft stops directly above Mulder and hovers, its lights shining down on him. After a moment, it takes off. In its stead, we get cops and military police. Mulder bolts but is soon caught and tranquilized.

6:30 AM

At the hotel, Scully is having no luck making a call back to Washington, D.C. from the room, so she tried the phone at the reception desk. No luck there either.

Back to Mulder – we see him vaguely come to inside of the base, as he’s pushed down the hall on a gurney. Looking from left to right, he can see huge craft behind curtains and a countless number of people walking around in hazard gear.

Back to Scully – as she walks back to her room, she sees Mossinger walk out of it, claiming he was just looking for her. She reaches back to feel for her gun and realizes she left it in the room. They make small talk until she hears his walkie-talkie in the car – “Base to Redbird. Can you give us your position? Over.” She bolts towards his car, gets in and locks the doors. After not finding a key, she looks in the glove compartment to find a gun and an Airbase Security ID badge. Mossinger breaks the passenger window with a fire extinguisher, which causes Scully to drop the gun. She forces him off of her when he reaches through the window and he moves to the driver side of the car. Scully pulls a slick move where she get out of the car at just the right time so when Mossinger rounds the back corner, he walks into a gun being pointed at his face. Scully tells him to get on his walkie-talkie and find out where Mulder is or she’s going to have every newspaper in America out there writing about their experimental aircraft.

We briefly see Mulder in an operating room of sorts with shady looking doctors doing shady doctor things.

Scully and Mossinger pull up to a gate outside of the base. She holds the gun on him from the back seat as they wait. A relay over the walkie-talkie says, “Intruder arriving,” as a convoy vehicle approaches the gate from the other side. Mulder steps out of it, looking like he should be pushing a shopping cart full of garbage in the slums somewhere. When Scully sees him, she instructs Mossinger to leave the car running and step out of it. The exchange begins and as Mossinger walks past Mulder, he stops and comments, “Everything you’ve seen here is equal to the protection that we give it. It’s you that have acted inappropriately.” Mulder reaches the car and gets inside and Scully burns rubber out of there. As they’re driving, she asks him if he’s all right, to which he replies he’s fine. He then thinks for a minute and says, “Scully, I… (pauses) …how did I get here?”

We’re back at Budahas’, as Mulder (still looking disheveled) and Scully are on the front step. Mrs. Budahas apprehensively says her husband is doing much better but when Mulder asks to see him and she says he’s resting, we can hear him in the background angrily asking who it is at the door. When she closes the door, Mulder starts on his conspiracies, saying that the government got to her, etc. Scully cuts him off and yells for him to stop it. She says they don’t know anything – anything more than when they got there – and that’s exactly what she’s going to write in her field report. She just wants to get out of there, as fast as they can.

F.B.I. HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
ONE WEEK LATER

Scully types up her field report, which states the following:

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Budahas was returned to his home, though his own knowledge of his disappearance and whereabouts is vague and inconclusive. Special Agent Mulder’s insistence that Budahas may have been a test pilot on a top-secret project involving aircraft using recovered UFO technology, and may have suffered severe stress-related trauma by flying these aircraft, is also inconclusive. Though this agent can corroborate Agent Mulder’s account of two unidentified flying objects in the northern sky over Ellens Air Base, their exact nature or design could not be determined. Baring further authorized inquiry, this case – filed #DF101364 – is closed.

Mulder is running around a track, when he sees Deep Throat (that’s the gentleman from the bar, if you’re following along at home) approaching him. DT tells Mulder that their lives are now in danger because they’ve seen things that weren’t meant to be seen and that care and discretion is now imperative. DT goes on to explain that he will only provide Mulder information when it’s in his own best interest to do so – his interest being “the truth.” Mulder says he saw something but they took it from him. He implores DT to tell him what he saw. DT suggests a military UFO, albeit in the form of a question. And now, for the only written exchange of the episode:

Deep Throat: Mr. Mulder, why are those like yourself, who believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life on this earth, not dissuaded by all the evidence to the contrary?

Mulder: Because…all the evidence to the contrary is not entirely dissuasive.

Deep Throat: Precisely.

(Deep Throat stars to walk away)

Mulder: They’re here, aren’t they?

Deep Throat: Mr. Mulder, they’ve been here for a long, long time.

*cue credits*

That wraps things up for episode two. The recap length has been sliced in half and I look forward to hearing what you think of it. Comments and e-mail are below – use them! Thanks for reading and tune in next week!

The 411: More character progress and more storyline developments. We're moving along quite nicely thus-far. This episode is certainly on par with the Pilot from last week. In order to not skew my ratings, I will begin fluctuating them starting this week. The Pilot was par for the course and deserved the 10, but from here on out, the rating will be based strictly on episode content. Definitely a must-watch episode, though, that would fit in the top 10 X-Files episodes of all-time.

Final Score:  9.5   [  Amazing ]