The X-Files Recap: Episode 5 - Jersey Devil
Posted by Brian Cramer on 05.06.2008
The beginning of the not-so-subtle hints of a relationship between Mulder and Scully. Let the fan fiction begin!
Cast:
David Duchovny - Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson - Dana Scully
Claire Stansfield - The Jersey Devil
Wayne Tippit - Detective Thompson
Gregory Sierra - Dr. Diamond
Michael MacRae - Ranger Peter Brullet
Jill Teed - Glenna
Tamsin Kelsey - Ellen
Andrew Airlie - Rob
Bill Dow - Dad
Hrothgar Mathews - Jack
Jayme Knox - Mom
NEW JERSEY, 1947
Incidentally, around this time in Roswell, New Mexico, a UFO has crashed and a massive cover-up by the United States government is underway. I digress, though. Our setting this evening is New Jersey, not New Mexico, and it’s dark outside. I’m shocked. You can tell that it’s 1947 because the family driving down the road is in the car singing “Bingo” and not trying to kill each other. “There was a farmer, had a dog and Bingo was his name-o! B-I-N-G-Oh crap, we’ve blown out a tire. And now I’ve dropped my flashlight, which rolled into the woods. And now I’m being dragged away by the Jersey Devil-O!”
We cut to an old school search party, with a mix of cops and citizens. They find the body, sans leg and one of the party members yell that they’ve found “it”. Everyone lines up outside of a cave and in a brilliant display of police work, the whole group opens file into the darkness at the first sign of movement.
*cue The X-Files introduction credits and theme song* THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scully pops into the X-Files office to find Mulder looking at a porno magazine. This will become something of a running theme for him. He covers up by saying that the woman in the centerfold claims to have been abducted by aliens and placed in an antigravity chamber. (Scully, looking at the spread: "Antigravity, indeed.") Ha. She tells him about a man found in New Jersey missing some limbs. Mulder’s interest peaks, as he pulls the X-File on the Jersey Devil from his filing cabinet. Scully points out it’s not their case (which makes me wonder why she bothered telling him in the first place). Mulder requisitions a vehicle and heads out, as Scully gets a look on her face that screams, “You’d really think I’d know better by now.”
ATLANTIC CITY MORGUE
The teeth marks on the body are human and that’s pretty much all they get before the investigating detective shows up and tells them to get the hell out of dodge. Outside, Mulder wants to stick around and do some snooping. Scully says she can’t, which prompts Mulder to ask if she has a date. Scully tells him she has her godson’s birthday party and has to get back to D.C., so he tosses her the car keys and says he’s sticking around. She pouts about it being a three-hour drive back…in Friday night traffic, to boot. Scully = :-(
In the woods, Mulder has a park ranger show him where the body was found. The ranger goes on to tell him that he once saw a huge man, naked, appear out of the trees. It sniffed the air and took off running. He’s also found half-buried scat, a half-eaten rat with a cuspid tooth in it and beer bottles that looked as though they’d been sharpened into tools. Mulder thanks him and, after asking how far it was back to town, takes off walking up a path through the woods.
At the birthday party, birthday party stuff happens. In the kitchen, Scully’s friend asks her about Mulder during a discussion about men. Apparently, Scully said he was cute. Heh. Scully digs for a reason to write Mulder out of the conversation, coming up with “he’s obsessed with his work”.
Cut to Mulder walking through the woods in a scene that could have only been placed there to emphasize Scully’s point.
Back at the party, Scully answers the door to find the one kid’s father there to pick him up. As he greets his son, Scully’s friend catches her glance and quietly says, “Divorced.” Scully looks on awkwardly.
OUTSKIRTS OF
ATLANTIC CITY, 6:47 PM
Mulder grunts it out, walking through the slums and yelling out the victim’s name, in hopes someone knew him. He finally comes across a guy who takes him into an alley and shows him a hand-drawn picture he found in a jacket pocket. It’s of a really creepy human…thing. It’s extremely hard to convey in text. In any case, Mulder asks the guy where he’s sleeping tonight and he tells Mulder that he’s standing in his bedroom. Mulder gives him the key to his hotel room and tells him to enjoy. After the bum asks if they have H.B.O., he’s on his way. Ha.
Late that night, Mulder hears a shuffling at the end of the alley. He watches as a figure goes into the dumpster and starts shuffling around. After a minute of this, it takes off and Mulder gives chase. Back out on the main street, a couple police cars approach, ignore Mulder’s comments about the figure being up on the roof and take him down to the station.
The detective from the beginning of the episode pops into the holding cell Mulder is sitting in. They bicker for a bit back and forth, with Mulder pointing out that they’re covering things up to protect the tourism of Atlantic City. The detective tells Mulder that he’s impeding the investigation and to enjoy the rest of his weekend in New Jersey, shutting him in the holding cell on his way out.
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mulder calls Scully from the drunk-tank and asks if she has any plans for the morning. Back in Jersey, Scully rags on Mulder as they walk out of the station, while Mulder asks if they can get something to eat. At a diner, Mulder describes what happened to Scully, who is skeptical, to say the least. In a nice throwback to earlier, when Scully says she has to get back to D.C., Mulder asks if she has another birthday party. She tells him she doesn’t – she has a date. Mulder’s deadpan reaction to this is hard to read. He asks if she can cancel and she says she’d like to actually have a life. She then asks him to finish up eating because she has someone she wants him to meet on the way back to D.C.
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
The agents are talking to a man who we can likely assume was a professor of Scully’s at some point. After a few minutes of rhetoric, it’s clear that Scully brought Mulder here hoping to make him question his theory by introducing him to a professional in the field. However, all it ends up as is the professor consenting that it’s not completely impossible for the situation Mulder presented to exist. Scully appears disappointed.
At the X-Files office, Mulder is looking through Jersey Devil-related pictures and comes to rest on a drawing of a creature with quite apparent…boobs. This will actually be sort of relevant later, believe it or not.
Cut to Scully on her date, looking bored as ALL hell. The guy makes small talk about his son as Scully sits there, obviously wishing she were somewhere else.
Back at the office, Mulder gets a phone call from the park ranger he spoke to earlier, telling him he found a male body missing the same tooth he pulled from the rat he had found. He says he turned it over to the coroner.
Scully gets a page from Mulder. She excuses herself and calls him back. He apologizes for interrupting her evening, to which she (almost with relief) assures him is quite all right. He tells her that he just had an amazing thought – maybe they’re not looking for a beast man.
At the morgue, it turns out the body the coroner picked up is missing in action. There’s a shock. Mulder is even more convinced now that they’re trying to cover the whole thing up.
The agents, the park ranger and the professor walk into a bar head into the abandoned building where Mulder saw the figure on the roof. A cop car passing by notices the park ranger’s vehicle and calls it in. Back in the building, the professor finds some bloody rags as we cut outside to see S.W.A.T. positioning. Uh, ok. As Mulder and Scully walk around upstairs contemplating life and how human the Jersey Devil might be, downstairs the S.W.A.T. team and cops found the professor, who plays it off like he has no idea who this Mulder guy is that they’re looking for. Good man. Mulder and Scully overhear this exchange and quiet down.
Through a window, Mulder sees the figure pass by quickly and heads off in the direction it went. He takes a rolling dive out the window to follow it and after seeing S.W.A.T. members approaching, Scully follows suit. Mulder heads into the basement and after walking around for a minute gets jumped by the figure, who we’re shown to actually be female. In a scene that came off far more erotic than they may have intended, she mounts Mulder and stares at him. After a moment, she relents and slowly backs off. Mulder begins to sit up and she slashes his side. Scully arrives and the woman takes off.
Outside, Mulder is being tended to at an ambulance while Scully attempts to get jurisdiction on the case. The park ranger rushes up to them and says that they have her cornered in the building. Mulder takes off towards it.
Inside the building, the S.W.A.T. team attempts to take her but we find out via the detective’s radio that she jumped from a second story window and headed into the forest.
We cut to a search party in the woods, reminiscent of the one at the beginning of the episode. The agents, park ranger and professor show up in the ranger’s vehicle. They have the advantage, as the ranger knows the woods and takes them to the top of a rock cliff overlooking the edge of the water. We see her running and we actually get bare-woman ass on network TV. There’s something you don’t see often. The ranger hits her with the tranquilizer dart and as the four take off towards where she was running, they hear gunshots.
Upon arriving at the group of officers, we get what is actually quite the sad scene, as she was trying to bury herself in the leaves to hide and just didn’t make it in time. Mulder is understandably pissed off that they had to kill her when they obviously could’ve easily just taken her into custody. He and Scully leave.
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
ONE WEEK LATER
Scully tells Mulder the medical reports of the two bodies are in and that the female is believed to be about 25 years old and the male about 40 years old. Mulder suggests there had to be offspring and Scully affirms that the exam of the woman’s uterus did indicate that she may have given birth. This incites Mulder even more, pointing out that she was just protecting her young when the male died. Scully stops him and asks him why he doesn’t just go out and have a beer, even offering to cover for him. Mulder thanks her but says he has an appointment with an ethno-biologist. At this point the phone rings, which Mulder gives to Scully after answering. It’s her date from earlier and he asks her if she wants to join him and his son at the Cirque De Soleil that evening.
Mulder is at the receptionist desk requisitioning another vehicle as Scully walks up. He asks who was on the phone and she tells him it was a guy. He asks if it was the same guy she went to dinner with, which she affirms and then says she likely won’t be going to dinner with him again. As Mulder heads out of the building, Scully is right on his tail, which prompts him to ask where she’s going. She tells him she’s accompanying him to the Smithsonian.
Mulder: Don’t you have a life, Scully?
Scully: Keep that up Mulder and I’ll hurt you like that beast-woman.
Ha. Tremendous. Scully holds the door for Mulder and the exit the building.
Back at the park in New Jersey, a boy and his father are walking when the boy points out he thought he saw something. His dad tells him it was probably an animal and proceeds to ask him if he ever heard the story of the Jersey Devil. As they walk down the path, the camera cuts to a hole in the ground below where they walked and we can see a young girl covered in dirt poking her head up.
*cue credits*
The 411: Episode-wise, it was a little slow. Not on it's own, perhaps, but compared to the previous episodes, it seemed to lag a little.
We got quite a few references and teases of Mulder <3 Scully here though, from Scully's friend letting us know that she has commented that she finds Mulder cute to Scully deciding to pass up another date with that guy (who there was admittedly nothing wrong with) to go to the Smithsonian with Mulder.
Overall, certainly not a bad episode, but arguably one of the first "average" episodes we've come across.
