The X-Files Recap: Episode 6 - Shadows
Posted by Brian Cramer on 05.14.2008
They're heeeeeeerrrrree! Trust me - that's much more amusing in the context of the episode.
Cast:
David Duchovny - Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson - Dana Scully
Barry Primus - Robert Dorlund
Lisa Waltz - Lauren Kyte
Lorena Gale - Ellen Bledsoe
Veena Sood - Ms. Saunders
Deryl Hayes - Webster
Kelli Fox - Pathologist
Tom Pickett - The Cop
Tom Heaton - Groundskeeper
Janie Woods-Morris - Ms. Lange
Nora McLellan - Jane Morris
Anna Ferguson - Ms. Winn
My sincerest apologies to you fine readers and the powers-that-be for the late submission of this. I’ve got bronchitis, strep throat or sinusitis (or some combination thereof) which has kept me bedridden since the weekend. I will do my best to have this recap be up to par with the others that I have done, but if something seems…lacking, I apologize. This is likely going to be more recap and less wit, as I'm not thinking real straight. I’m hopped up on medications and pretty out of it. In any case, we'll be back to business next week. But enough sniveling. Let’s get down to business.
HTG INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGIES
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
A woman, who we’ll come to know as Lauren Kyte) is in an office, packing some things up. A co-worker comes in to deliver her paycheck and from their conversation, we learn that someone that worked there and that Lauren cared about died – an act of suicide. As Lauren is about to leave, a plague reading “One to-day is worth two to-morrows” slides across the desk. She picks it up and takes it with her.
We cut to an ATM, where she is likely depositing her check, when two men grab her from behind and drag her into an alley.
2 HOURS LATER
Two kids looking for somewhere to sleep stumble into the same alley and decide to climb the fire escape to sneak into a building. As the one tries to pull the ladder down, a body falls down next to them and lands on a dumpster. A second later, the fire escape ladder does come down – revealing another body hanging from it, upside-down. It appears to be the two guys that had dragged Lauren into the alley.
*cue The X-Files introduction credits and theme song* THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
Mulder and Scully make their way into a morgue, where some official looking suits request they look at the two bodies we saw dead in the alley. Mulder attempts to ask a few questions, to no avail and when he’s asked if he’s seen anything like this in the X-Files and states that he hasn’t, the agents are thanked for their time and told to keep their mouths shut if any inquiry into the meeting is made.
Out in the hallway, Scully calls Mulder out, saying she knows he lied. He tells her that he has seen these things in X-Files – residual electrostatic charge, internal mutilation without external causality – and it all leads to psychokinetic manipulation. Scully says she’s intrigued but points out they have nothing to go on, which prompts Mulder to take out his glasses and steam them with an exhale of breath – showing a perfect fingerprint on each lens.
HTG INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGIES
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
NEXT MORNING
Lauren arrives at work and asks to speak to the new boss (Dorland), but his secretary is…well, a bitch. During this exchange, the coffee cup on her desk spontaneously falls over, spilling coffee on her. This prompts Dorland to poke his head out and ask if everything is alright, which allows Lauren a chance to ask him to speak.
In his office, Lauren wastes no time giving her two week notice. Dorland is sympathetic at first, giving a speech about how they need her but becomes rough when he grabs her face and tells her he won’t let her leave. This causes the bracelet he’s wearing to tighten around his wrist, thus releasing Lauren. She leaves the office.
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Turns out our dead guys were part of an extremist group working out of Philadelphia. Scully says she’ll contact the Philly police department.
BROAD ST.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Mulder and Scully talk to the cop that found the bodies “just hanging around”. As Mulder looks around, a beeping noise directs him to the ATM from the beginning of the episode, which segues into a scene back at the local FBI office, with the agents looking through the ATM surveillance tapes. They see Lauren getting grabbed by the extremists and Mulder notices a blurring figure in the background for a brief second in the video. It’s not enough to go on, so they opt to talk to Lauren themselves.
At her apartment, she claims to not know the two dead guys until Scully shows her a snapshot from the ATM video. She says she got away from them and ran. She also says she doesn’t know who the blurry silhouette is in the background, although it’s pretty apparent she’s lying. Mulder gives her his card and they leave.
Outside, they get into their car. When they do, the doors lock and the car puts itself into reverse and the accelerator floors. They fly backwards all the way to an intersection, where a car coming the other direction slams into them. Mulder makes sure Scully is all right and looks up in time to see Lauren looking through her window, alarmed. She quickly closes the curtains when he sees her.
At a garage, Mulder is looking their car over when Scully arrives. He points out to her that the headlights are on – but they’re not. Apparently, the filaments are heated due to massive levels of electromagnetic charge. Same deal as the bodies at the morgue. Mulder throws out the idea of poltergeist. (Scully: “They’re heeeeerrrre.”) Ha. Tremendous. Scully then suggests that it’s much more feasible that Lauren is just in cahoots with someone.
While doing surveillance outside of HTG, Mulder notices that Lauren is mighty upset at the guy replacing Howard Graves’ parking space with the new boss’ name. This prompts Mulder to question who Howard Graves is, which takes the scene to a library where Scully is looking through old newspaper articles. She finds the one about Graves’ suicide.
At the cemetery, the agents see Lauren placing flowers on Graves’…grave. They approach it when she leaves and sees a grave for a young girl next to his, which turns out to be his daughter, who died when she was three after drowning in the bathtub.
Mulder is developing some pictures while Scully works on her field report. Back at the FBI office, they get the one picture enhanced. It turns out, in the one picture, Mulder caught a silhouette of Howard Graves in the background.
Now night, and at Lauren’s house, she’s awaken by the sound of footsteps. She gets a baseball bat from the closet and follows the sound to the bathroom, which soon becomes accompanied by Graves’ voice pleading with someone. In the bathroom, she pulls the shower curtain back to find her bathtub filling up with blood. It then drains itself as she stands there crying, somehow coming to the conclusion that “they killed him”.
NATIONAL BUREAU OF MEDICAL EXAMINERS
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Scully is convinced that Graves faked his own death. The medical examiner that did the autopsy is very convinced that he is quite dead. Lauren positively identified the body and he was cremated, which leaves no dental records and such to verify. Scully then notices that his organs were donated, so they’re off to…
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL
TISSUE BANK
The only remaining part of Graves at the tissue bank is his spinal membrane. The doctor says they’ll extract a sample, run a test and in a few hours have confirmation of the identity of the donor.
At Lauren’s going-away party at work, she pops into Graves’ old office for last time. Behind her, the door closes and she turns to see Dorland, who proceeds to tell her that he knows that Graves told her and that if it ever gets out, he’ll come straight to her. She forces past him and leaves the office. She proceeds to call Mulder and tells him to meet her at her house, right as Scully walks into the room where Mulder is on the phone to confirm that Graves is, indeed, very much dead.
At Lauren’s, a car pulls up and a man and a woman get out. They knock on the door and when Lauren tried to open it (thinking it’s Mulder and Scully), the lock keeps relocking itself. When she finally gets it slid back, a chair slides across the floor to block the door. It gets kicked in anyway and as they attempt to assault her, all hell breaks loose. Things start flying around and all the light bulbs blow out. The man is pinned against the wall with an end-table and as the woman tries to flee, we see a transparent figure move across the room. The woman is pinned up against the door and her throat begins to compress. The man then starts getting the shit kicked out of him by the same “force”.
At this point, the agents arrive and hear Lauren’s screams. Mulder rushes into the house first and sees the man suspended in midair for about five or six seconds before dropping to the ground. Scully runs in immediately afterwards, thus keeping the trend of her conveniently never seeing anything intact.
Back at the FBI, as Mulder and Scully attempt to interrogate Lauren, the suits from the beginning of the episode show up. They finally concede that they believe HTG was selling restricted parts to the extremists. They insist on talking to her first. The agents relent and we cut right to a scene of the suits walking out of the interrogation room, stating that it was a waste of time and it’s Mulder and Scully’s turn. Ha.
After Mulder calls her out on Howard Graves watching over her, she finally breaks down and tells them the whole kit ‘n caboodle. She agrees to help the agents put a stop to Dorland.
In a parking garage, the agents and the suits brief an FBI team for a search and seizure operation to find any information linking HTG to the sale of the restricted parts. GO TEAM! 3-2-1-BREAK!
After searching, they turn up…nothing. As they’re about to leave, Lauren and Dorland get into a verbal spar and he makes the mistake of calling her a “stupid bitch”. This prompts a slight physical struggle, but more importantly, bring Graves into things. The office door slams shut, leaving Dorland, Mulder and Lauren inside. Everything starts going batshit crazy – papers are thrown around, the lights blow out, pictures get ripped from the wall, furniture strewn about, etc. Dorland is hoisted up and pinned against the wall, while Lauren is screaming for Graves to not hurt him but to help them find what they need instead. A letter opener that was hovering in midair and pointed directly at Dorland’s face, does a 180° turn and lodges itself into the wallpaper, cutting a slit down it.
Scully finally gets in, as everything has calmed down (thus, yet again preventing her from seeing anything). Mulder walks over to the wall where the letter opener is lodged and pulls out a floppy disc. Turns out what they were looking for was there after all.
Mulder and Scully are back outside of Lauren’s apartment as she packs the remainder of her stuff into a moving truck. She says she’ll come back to testify, thanks them and takes off. Mulder and Scully get in their car as well and drive off as Mulder banters about having never seen the Liberty Bell.
MONROE MUTUAL INSURANCE CO.
OMAHA, NEBRASKA
Lauren is delivering a report to a woman in the office, who chastises her because she had asked for it 25 minutes prior. This causes the coffee cup on her desk to suddenly start shaking, which freaks Lauren out until the woman places her hand over it and says that they really need to find a new office location – every time a truck goes by, the whole building shakes. She then dismisses Lauren, who sits back down at her own desk, sees the plaque from Graves’ office on her desk and smiles.
*cue credits*
The 411: Not a bad episode, nor a great one. There was absolutely no story arc in this, as it was the very definition of a stand-alone episode (or Monster Of The Week, as X-Philes like to call them).
It's worth a view, but if you miss it, you can pick right up on episode 7 without missing a beat.
