Cast:
David Duchovny - Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson - Dana Scully
Carrie Snodgress - Darlene Morris
Michael Cavanaugh - Sheriff Jack Withers
Donald Gibb - Kip (as Don Gibb)
Joel Palmer - Kevin Morris
Charles Cioffi - Section Chief Scott Blevins
Shelley-Lynn Owens - Tessa Seers (as Shelley Owens)
Don Thompson - Holtzman
Akiko Morison - Leza Atsumi
Taunya Dee - Ruby Morris
Getting right down to business, we get a cold open of a camp site. Outside of an R.V., a young boy and girl are fast asleep in sleeping bags. Inside, we see a woman, presumably their mother, also sleeping. Not wasting any time, the R.V. starts shaking violently as a bright light can be seen emanating from outside. After a half a minute of this, it stops just as suddenly as it started. The boy starts yelling from outside for his mother in a way that makes me have horrible flashbacks to Michael from Lost (WALT! WALLLT! WALLLLLLLLLLLLT!). *shudders* She rushes outside to find her daughter, Ruby, gone. After calling out for her several times, she relents to looking straight up into the sky and calls her name one last time.
*cue The X-Files introduction credits and theme song* “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE”
F.B.I. HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scully is in Blevins’ office and he shows her documentation that Mulder filled out requesting transportation and the like to Sioux City, Iowa. Attached is a tabloid story detailing what happened at the camp site. Blevins thinks it has to do with Mulder’s preoccupation with the disappearance of his sister and is prepared to deny the request when Scully asks him to allow her to talk to Mulder first.
In the X-Files office, Scully questions the difference between the headline of Mulder’s interest and the mother who gave birth to a lizard baby. Mulder points out that the lizard baby wasn’t born near Lake Okabogee. OKABOGEE! Say it. It’s fun. He shows Scully a slide of a UFO photograph taken in 1967 by a Girl Scout troupe. He has Scully read the names of the girls that were in the troupe and when she reaches Darlene Morris, Mulder can be seen pointing at the tabloid clipping. Darlene Morris is the name of the woman whose daughter disappeared. Dun dun DUN!
SIOUX CITY, IOWA
Apparently, they got clearance to go. Either that or Mulder, being Mulder, just went anyway. At the Morris residence, Darlene introduces them to her son Kevin, who doesn’t look up from a notebook he’s writing in. They sit down over coffee and Mrs. Morris is convinced she knows what happened – they took her daughter. Mulder attempts to remain professional by not relenting his agreement and instead asks if he can talk to her son.
In the living room, Mulder approaches Kevin, who is sitting in front of a television with his notebook in what can only be an homage to Poltergeist. The image is almost a dead ringer for the DVD cover, actually. Kevin doesn’t want to talk about his nightmares, so Mulder asks what he’s writing. He shows Mulder his tablet, which has a sequence of 1s and 0s. Watching this now that I’m older, I’m not sure what makes me more of a geek – the fact that I recognize a series of 1s and 0s as binary or the fact that I can tell that it’s actually not binary due to the placement and patterns of the numbers. I’m l33t. Anyway, Kevin tells Mulder that what he’s writing is coming from the television.
At the sheriff’s office, Mulder faxes a copy of the code Kevin was writing to F.B.I. Headquarters for analysis. The sheriff seems less than concerned, suggesting that Ruby had just run away, as she’s apparently done in the past. He also calls her an alcoholic ho-bag in the most euphemistic way possible. Douchebag. Needless to say, Mulder’s not convinced.
Outside, Mulder finds a note on their car that says, “I’m across the street. Follow me.” They spot a girl who moves into a library after making eye contact and follow her there. They speak briefly from across a bookshelf, where the girl informs them that Ruby was supposed to meet her boyfriend, Greg, at the lake the night she disappeared. He had gotten her pregnant and they were going to talk about it. As it turns out, Greg is also quite the boozer and likes to hang out at the Pennsylvania Pub. On that note, a librarian behind them drops some books and when they turn around startled, the girl bolts.
At the Pennsylvania Pub, the two agents stand out like sore thumbs – considering it’s a biker bar. The bartender tells them he hasn’t seen Greg but tells them if they see him, to let him know he’s fired. As they’re leaving, Mulder notices a tattoo of a UFO on his arm and inquires about it. When asked if he didn’t believe in them, Mulder plays the “I dun believe in dem der flyin’ saucers” card, to which the bartender suggests he should check out Lake Okobogee sometime and he might get his mind changed. He pulls his hair back to show them his right ear, which is extremely mutilated. He comments that you get a “killer sunburn in the middle of the night.”
Back at the motel, the clock in Scully’s room says 5:30. She wakes up to a noise outside the window and sees figured approach her door. As she gets up to get her gun, the door busts open and a man points a flashlight in her eyes and asks where Mulder is.
In Mulder’s motel room, they ask him where he got the pages of code. He asks what it is and gets threatened with obstruction of justice. After calling them out on not having jurisdiction, they finally relent that it’s a classified defense satellite transmission. They then ask Mulder again where it came from. He tells them he’ll let them know when he figures it out. The one agent’s phone rings and he says they got it, prompting them to leave. Scully walks in and Mulder tells her she shouldn’t have told them. She argues that they’re NSA and think Kevin could be a threat to national security. (Mulder: How could an eight-year-old boy who can barely multiply be a threat to national security? And people call me paranoid.) Heh. Scully asks where he thinks Kevin got the information from. Mulder simply walks out, leaving Scully standing there with a look on her face that clearly states, “Oh shit. I know EXACTLY where he thinks the information came from.”
At the Morris residence, the NSA guys bring Darlene and Kevin out and load them into separate cars. Inside, they trash the boy’s room, going so far as to break his piggy bank. Assholes. They leave and Mulder looks out the bedroom window, noticing something strange with the top of the R.V. Outside, he sets up a ladder and finds the top of the R.V. has been more or less melted down.
F.B.I. REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS
SIOUX CITY, IOWA
Turns out that out of all 77 pages of code, only the satellite transmission could be considered a national security threat, so Kevin is being released. The other stuff was insignificant – you know, things like Da Vinci’s Universal Man, a DNA double helix, a fragment of the Brandenburg concertos, some lines from the Koran and a Shakespearian sonnet. Wait – huh? As Darlene and Kevin are leaving, Mulder attempts to talk to her and explain but she tells him to stay away from her and her son.
In the car, Scully asks where they’re going. Mulder says the boy is the key and states that he thinks that he’s a conduit of some kind. Scully hints that she knows why Mulder is so invested in this case and points out that there’s no evidence of an abduction, to which Mulder tells her is the reason they’re going to Lake Okobogee.
LAKE OKOBOGEE, IOWA
CAMPSITE 53
Mulder points out the tree-line to Scully, which is completely singed at the top. He also finds the sand on the beach had solidified to glass, which requires heat around 2500° Fahrenheit. Suddenly, a white wolf appears from the forest, looks at the agents and takes off back towards where it came from. Mulder follows it and stumbles across a pack of them investigating something in the ground. He fires his gun into the air to scare them off and approaches where they were sniffing. It’s a shallow grave covered in rocks. Mulder starts removing them, much to Scully’s chagrin.
There are now officers on the scene and the wallet removed from the corpse identifies him as Greg Randall. It’s really not a good week for this kid. He finds out his girlfriend’s pregnant, gets fired and turns up dead. Mulder asks to see the wallet and finds a note inside, indicating a doctor’s appointment with a Doctor Jack Fowler. A quick handwriting analysis indicates the note was written by the girl they spoke to at the library.
Officers bring in the girl, whose name we learn is Tessa. In the interrogation room, she claims to not have been anywhere near the lake the night Ruby disappeared. Mulder (humorously) plays bad cop and after a colorful explanation of what could have went down that night at the lake, he gets Tessa to slip up and admit that Ruby wasn’t at the lake at all that night, which proves that Tessa was.
Scully tries to convince Mulder that it’s open and shut now and that Ruby is more than likely dead. He’ll have none of it and tells her he’s going to talk to Kevin. Scully tells him to stop running after his sister, which gets him to pause long enough to tell her to either come with him or don’t, but he’s not giving up on Ruby until they find a body.
At the Morris house, the front door is open and no one seems to be around. The pages of binary are lined up on the floor in a square and Mulder sits down to ponder them. Scully says she’s going to check upstairs but stops when she gets to the top of the steps overlooking the living room. She calls Mulder up and they both look down on the pages to see (in a damn cool visual) that the binary forms a picture of Ruby’s face.
Back at lake Okobogee (at night), they find the Morris’ R.V. but no one in it. They follow a trail in the forest which leads them to Darlene. Scully stays with her while Mulder goes on ahead to find Kevin. He catches up to him to find him walking towards lights coming from the tree-line which turns out to be...about 50 bikers. That was unexpected. After they all pass, Mulder hears Scully yell out for him and takes off with Kevin to find her. He does – on her knees giving an unconscious Ruby(!) a once-over.
At the hospital, they go to Ruby’s room and Mulder asks her where she was. She says they told her not to tell. He asks who “they” are. Darlene walks into the room and tells Ruby she doesn’t have to say anything and asks the agents if she can speak to them outside. In the hallway, she tells them that she wants to put everything behind them because she doesn’t want Ruby to be ridiculed her entire life for talking about crazy things like anal probes. Mulder tries to talk her out of it, arguing there’s nothing wrong with anal probes but she says that as far as she’s concerned, Ruby spent the last month on the back of a Harley-Davidson and goes back into the hospital room, leaving the agents alone.
Scully is in a room, listening to a tape recorder. It turns out being the recorded regression hypnosis sessions Mulder had. Meanwhile, Mulder is sitting in a church, alone, looking at a picture of him and his sister. He starts weeping, as the recorded sessions play as a voiceover in the background. We can hear Dr. Werber ask Mulder if he’s afraid during his paralysis when his sister is abducted. Mulder tells him that he knows he should be, but he’s not. Werber asks him why he isn’t. Mulder tells him because of the voice in his head that tells him not to be afraid and that his sister will return someday.
Werber: Do you believe the voice?
Mulder: I want to believe.
*cue credits*
The 411: Another solid episode that begins the hinting of a higher power going on, with all the "they" references. We get even more backstory still into Mulder's past and a few extremely subtle hints that Scully may be starting to question whether or not there might be at least some fragment of truth to Mulder's theories.
Remember kids, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
