The X-Files Recap: Episode 14 - Genderbender

Posted by Brian Cramer on 07.15.2008

Meet Alex Krycek - who really isn't Alex Krycek...yet. And Scully almost "does the wild thing"! You know you want to know!

Cast:
David Duchovny - Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson - Dana Scully
Brent Hinkley - Brother Andrew
Michele Goodger - Sister Abigail
Peter Stebbings - Marty
Kate Twa - Marty
Nicholas Lea - Michael
Mitchell Kosterman - Detective Horton
Paul Batten - Brother Wilton

This will be the last week for the title contest. If I don’t receive any more entries for consideration for either the “Facts” section (which Twitch holds the title of currently) or for the column itself (which NO ONE has offered suggestions for yet), then the “Facts” portion of the contest will go to Twitch. Again – ONE MORE WEEK FOR THE CONTEST. GET YOUR TITLE ENTRIES IN BEFORE THE 21st OF JULY VIA EITHER E-MAIL OR THE COMMENTS BELOW. I never thought giving money away would be like pulling teeth. Damn.

Let’s get rolling with the X-Phacts because there are a TON of people in this episode that will be back in later episodes (including a rather major character), along with a few other interesting facts.

The X-Phacts *drum-roll*

Nicholas Lea makes his X-Files debut in this episode in only a bit part. Lea would return to the series in Season 2 as the character “Alex Krycek”. He would appear as this character in a total of 23 episodes, placing him at spot #9 in the top 10 most reoccurring characters on the show over the course of all nine of its seasons.

The following cast members will be back at some point to have a part in one or more future episodes of the show. The number in parenthesis is the total number of episodes that person will appear in over the course of the series.

o Michele Goodger (2)

o Kate Twa (2)

o Mitchell Kosterman (4)

o Paul Batten (2)

o Doug Abrahams (5)

o Lesley Ewen (4)

Tony Morelli, who plays a cop in this episode, was also the stunt coordinator for the show from 1994-1998, a total of 56 episodes. He has returned for the new movie and is credited as the stunt coordinator for “I Want To Believe”. He also has a bit part in the episode of Supernatural, “Ghostfacers”.

Speaking of Supernatural, John Taylor, who is credited as “Husband” in this episode, plays the character “Sherwin” on the episode of Supernatural, “Playthings”.

Mark Snow, the composer for the X-Files, is credited as such in the opening credits for the first time in this episode.

Episode 14 – Genderbender

Cold open to a dance club. Wannabe mack-daddy tries picking up a blonde, to no avail. He is approached by a girl after messing with an electronic horoscope machine. He appears uninterested until she caresses his hand and whispers something to him, after which he’s totally down.

Cut to the morning after at a hotel room. She gets out of bed and stands in the bathroom while he sits up proclaiming that was the greatest night of his life. She just stares until he starts grasping at his throat, eventually gurgling up some white foamy shit. Ugh. He kills over. We pan down to her feet, which now look more like “his” feet and after the camera follows her legs as she walks out of the bathroom to get dressed, it pans up to reveal she is now a he. D’oh.

Man, I’d LOVE to know what that horoscope said had he have stuck around to read it. “You will have amazing sex with a woman who somehow turns into a man. You have no lucky numbers because you’ll be dead before you have the chance to get to a lottery machine to play them. Have a nice day.”

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

CRIME SCENE
GERMANTOWN, MARYLAND
OUTSIDE WASHINGTON, D.C.

At the crime scene, Scully wonders aloud why they even got the call after finding out the victim died of a massive coronary arrest. The detective mentions that someone in the Bureau put out a memo requesting any case with that exact cause of death. Mulder interrupts him before he can say anymore by thanking him and excusing them.

In the X-Files office, Mulder shows Scully the other five case files he has, four of them occurring in the prior six weeks. The fifth was a 32-year-old male found dead in the woods outside Massachusetts, right by where the religious isolationists “the Kindred” live. The Kindred are known for their stoneware pottery using clay that is particular to their location. Thing is, Mulder found that same clay in the scratches on the victim at the hotel.

STEVESTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Mulder and Scully arrive shortly before a carriage of the Kindred. Mulder follows a few of them into the feed store in town while Scully stays outside. She attempts to talk to the man tending their horse but when she shakes his hand, the handshake lingers for a few moments and Scully gets all swoony. This is only broken up when the rest of the Kindred come back outside. Scully is dazed momentarily but tells Mulder she’s fine.

The agents run into a group of the Kindred while walking through the woods in an attempt to find their village. They require the surrender their weapons and then lead them back to their homes. Mulder and Scully sit in over a creepy dinner, in which one member of the sect angrily states that they have no right to be there, only to be chastised by the woman at the head of the table and made to “atone” and another older gentleman obviously choking on something and collapsing, whom Scully attempts to help but is forbade.

Cut back to a dance club where a man asks a woman to dance. She tells him she doesn’t feel like it but changes her tune after he takes her hand and does the “rub of luv”.

In the woods, it’s nighttime and the Kindred tell the agents how to get back to their car. After they walk a few hundred feet, Mulder stops and tells Scully he thinks they know something. He also points out how there’s no children and that he swears he recognizes a lot of the people they saw from pictures he saw in town from the 30’s. He turns off his lantern and tells Scully he’s going for a little “look-see”. She follows suit.

After seeing some weird, ritualistic shit in the barn, Mulder sneaks inside to investigate the cellar below it. Outside, Scully it startled by the guy from outside the feed store, who tells her he can give her information. In the cellar, Mulder sees more crazy, ritualistic shit, including a bunch of the Kindred covering the choking guy from earlier (now presumably dead) with some disgusting goop.

Meanwhile, Scully is led back to a small room with a bed. The guy tells her that he knows who did it – his best friend, Brother Martin, or Marty. He suggests to her that he poisons them and then blocks the door with a chair, while telling her that he needs to show her something – something about Marty. Scully keeps her hand near her holster apprehensively as she looks on. Turns out what he wants to show her are magazines that he and Marty found on the side of the road one day. Marty loved everything about them, even the paper they were printed on. The man tells her that Marty was captured by her world – he left them to become “one of you”.

In the cellar, Mulder bails into a small crevice after hearing footsteps. He hears a few Kindred say that “the woman” has returned and that she’s in the main house with Andrew. When they walk away, he notices a body in the crevice with him. Upon further examination, the eyes pop open, startling Mulder.

Back at the main house, Scully tries to get more information out of Andrew but he takes her hand and starts trying to seduce her. She’s totally going for it to until Mulder busts down the door and breaks up the party. On the front porch, they’re blocked by the whole damn Kindred crew until, for whatever reason, they just part and let them go. They get about 50 feet from the house when Mulder asks Scully what the hell she was doing. She slurs out that she doesn’t know before turning around and running back a few feet to throw up. Ha.

In the car, Mulder tells Scully that the guy he saw in the cellar was the choking guy from the dinner table and that he seemed to be changing sexes. Scully is skeptical (as always) until Mulder points out that she was ready “to do the wild thing with a stranger”. Tremendous. That shut her up.

At another night club (or maybe the same one), a woman approaches Krycek some guy when he’s on the phone and…well, you should know the routine by now. We cut outside to them mackin’ it in a car when a cop breaks it up. The woman gets out and when the cop notices the guy start choking, she knocks him out. The guy inside the car looks out in time to see the woman he was banging is now a man and he takes off.

At the hospital, the guy from the car tells them (after Mulder swears it’s off-the-record) that he saw her after she got out of the car and she looked like a man. After they leave the room, the find out that the credit card of the last victim was just used to order take-out at a hotel down the road.

At the hotel, before the arrive, we get a soliloquy from the crazy Kindred – currently in woman form. She talks about the pleasures of “our world” and how s/he’ll be punished because they won’t leave without her/him. About this time, the agents break down the door and find the body on the bed that she was talking to. She cracks Scully in the head with something and takes off. Mulder gives chase after Scully assures him she’s alright. Mulder peeks into an adjoining room and HE gets cracked with something for his trouble. He falls back against the wall and looks up to see the woman transform into a man right in front of him. He get hit again when he goes for his gun and when Scully finds him, he points her after the guy.

Outside, Scully corners the guy until some shadows on a nearby wall turn into a group of Kindred members. They proceed to dog-pile the guy and when Mulder runs out and distracts Scully momentarily, Andrew knocks her on her ass and they all more-or-less vanish.

The agents and back-up head up to the Kindred’s farm and find…nothing. Well almost nothing. Mulder checks the cellar and finds it has been filled to the brim with concrete. An officer comes in and tells them that they found something in the hayfield. As they’re walking through it, Scully wonders aloud how they could just disappear when they have no means of transportation. Mulder comments that they have no earthly means of transportation as the camera pans WAY out to reveal the agents are standing square in the middle of a crop circle.

*cue credits*

The 411: A pretty good episode all in all. The premise was unique and none of it was particularly hard to watch. It went pretty smoothly.

Plus we got to get an early glimpse at the future Alex Krycek and Scully's acting abilities were put to the test with a little feigned pleasure. That's worth the viewing alone.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]