The X-Files Recap: Episode 17 - E.B.E.

Posted by Brian Cramer on 08.19.2008

The alien mythology begins in earnest! Plus lots of new features and Twitch's Take!



Man, I really have to get my sleep schedule readjusted to something resembling “normal”. I have to stop waking up at 6:00PM. Damn disc-jockey sleep schedule. Ugh. Let’s get right to it.



--- Summerslam was definitely better than I thought it was going to be. Pretty much everything on the card (with the exception of that Hardy/Henry debacle) was solid, and that’s really all you can ask for. Edge and ‘Taker completely tore the house down in Hell In A Cell, which was a surprise to pretty much no one. It was just an all-around fantastic match with tremendous performances by both men. The Michaels/Jericho segment was also, in my opinion, brilliant. The promo work was awesome and Rebecca took that shot from Jericho like a pro. And she has a real nice fat lip to show for it. Punk finally got the clean win he desperately needed to add an ounce of legitimacy to his reign, so kudos for that. Everything else was just sort of there but I can’t think of anything bad to say, so that’s what matters.

--- Even though we lost, the Pittsburgh/Buffalo game was a pretty fun watch. It was back and forth and just good football. That last Hail Mary play of the game was fantastic and while it should have been caught (considering the only person that got not one, but TWO hands on it was our receiver), it was still a hell of a throw by Dixon.

--- I hate backstabbing, two-faced assholes. I know the DJ business can be cutthroat but a certain son of a bitch has just taken it to a whole new playing field. I just had to vent that.

--- Morpheus will be replacing William Petersen on CSI. I’m fine with this. Frankly, I feel it’s a wash.



Yay for the first appearance of the Lone Gunmen! You’ll get to know Byers, Frohike and Langly pretty well over the run of the show, so get used to them.

Oddly enough, the Gunmen don’t appear in the same number of episodes. Langly has 35 under his belt, Byers has 36 and Frohike has 39.

Writer Glen Morgan allegedly based the Lone Gunmen characters off of real people he’s encountered at conventions.

The alias’ Mulder and Scully use in the episode are Tom Braidwood and Val Stefoff, both Assistant Directors of the show (along with Braidwood being the actor that plays Frohike).



Cast:
David Duchovny - Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson - Dana Scully
Jerry Hardin - Deep Throat
Allan Lysell - Chief Rivers
Peter LaCroix - Ranheim / Frank Druce
Bruce Harwood - John Fitzgerald Byers
Dean Haglund - Richard 'Ringo' Langly
Tom Braidwood - Melvin Frohike

Episode 17 – E.B.E.

THE SKIES OF IRAQ
37th PARALLEL
PRESENT DAY

Crazy pilot guy shoots at UFO. Really. That’s it.

HAKKARI, TURKEY
NATO SURVEILLANCE STATION
TURKEY/IRAQ BORDER

Southern Crescent tells Red Crescent that they have a downed “something” outside the perimeter. They request Medivac to be on stand-by and say they’re going to check it out.

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

12:20 A.M. CENTRAL TIME
ROUTE 100
REAGAN, TENNESSEE

Trucker is...truckin’ along when the radio starts acting up. A bunch of cop cars fly past him and shortly after, his truck completely shuts down. He gets out to investigate and the back hatch flies open by itself. He fires a few shots of his shotgun at…something and we cut to a relatively close shot of a UFO in the sky.

Mulder and Scully are at the scene of the aforementioned incident with the truck. Mulder finds high levels of radiation as Scully attempts to explain everything that happened away scientifically. Oh yea – and the two stopwatches that Mulder started when they arrived are about 9 seconds apart when he stops them.

POLICE STATION
LEXINGTON, TENNESSEE

The agents are interrogating the truck driver, Ranheim. His description of the object changes from the previous night and he’s feverish, has a cough and is developing a rash, all of which he states started since the encounter. The police chief comes in and cuts Ranheim loose, apologizing for the inconvenience and telling Mulder and Scully to go away. Literally – he says “Go away”.

At the rental car agency, they return their car (and a woman asks to use Scully’s pen – remember this) and board a bus. Mulder tells Scully he’s going to talk to some contacts back in D.C. – an extreme government watchdog group: The Lone Gunmen.

After some conspiracy theorizing and Frohike making his obligatory comment about Scully being hot, Mulder asks them about the Gulf War Syndrome. When Mulder makes the connection between UFOs and the Gulf War Syndrome, even the Gunmen laugh and tell him that’s why they like him – “Your ideas are weirder than ours.” Ha.

Back in the X-Files office, Mulder has what might be the line of the episode as Scully talks about how the Gunmen’s ideas aren’t even remotely plausible, to which he replies, “I think it’s remotely plausible that someone might think you’re hot.” Tremendous. She then goes on to rant about their paranoia and self-delusion, as she changes the ink in her pen – only to find the thing she pulls out of her pen is a bug. Ha.

At Mulder’s apartment, he puts a blue light-bulb in a lamp and points it towards the window. He falls asleep and is awakened by a phone call. When he answers, the person calling hangs up. Cut to the Lincoln Memorial. Deep Throat (FTW!) walks up and joins Mulder on a bench. He small talks Mulder for a minute before giving him a folder and leaving.

At the X-Files office, we see the contents of the folder are transcriptions of the transmission the Iraqi pilot made in the intro. Scully barges in and tells him that the truck driver lied about who he was, his condition, who he works for and how much the truck weighed – weight stations put 2000 extra pounds on board. Mulder laughs in spite of himself, knowing they were *that* close to UFO wreckage and possible alien life and they had no idea. He tells Scully they need to intercept the truck and he’ll meet her at her place in an hour.

Back at Mulder’s apartment, Deep Throat (FTW!) has cut the breaker and is chillin’ on Mulder’s sofa chair. Deep Throat (FTW!) is all like, “Look-E! Pikchure!” and Mulder is all like, “I can has pikchure?” and Deep Throat (FTW!) is all like, “Yez!” and Mulder is all like, “I luv joo!”

Mulder and Scully look over the picture, which Scully deems fake by pointing out inconsistencies. Mulder gets defensive and says he wants his blankie.

8:30 A.M. EASTERN TIME
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mulder pops into the office and tells Scully he had the photo analyzed and it is, indeed, a fake. He weeps softly.

Mulder meets Deep Throat (FTW!) at an aquarium and they look at fishies. Oh – and Deep Throat (FTW!) tells Mulder that some secrets need to stay secret. And that he’s not behind the bug in the pen but he does know that “they” can still hear Mulder. This prompts Mulder to tear his apartment apart looking for a bug. He finally finds it in an electrical outlet right as Scully shows up. He tells her that he thinks “they” won this one and that the agents should just move on. As he tells her this, he writes, “We need to find the truck” on a slip of paper. Scully tells him that she thinks he’s right this time, in reference to finding the truck.

The agents split up downtown to lose their tail.

9:16 A.M. EASTERN TIME
DULLES AIRPORT
WASHINGTON, D.C.

Scully buys a couple plane tickets, one with cash and one with her credit card.

Mulder loses his tail back downtown and heads to the Baltimore airport.

11:30 A.M. PACIFIC TIME
McCARRAN AIRPORT
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Scully tells Mulder that she found the truck. It’s heading northwest on I-90. They have to go to Seattle.

6:30 P.M. PACIFIC TIME
JUNCTION OF HIGHWAYS 90 & 283
WASHINGTON STATE

They catch the truck as it’s going by and begin following it.

Sometime later, Scully mentions how they’ve been following it for hours. Just as she says this, the radio goes haywire and a bright light engulfs the screen. When we come back, Scully brakes right before where the truck is stopped on the road. The driver has vanished and in the back of the truck, behind all the boxes, the agents find a clean room set up with an empty gurney. Mulder tells Scully he thinks they were just witness to a rescue mission. Mulder tests out his stopwatch theory again and tells Scully that this *was* a hoax when both watches have the same time. He thinks “they” are just trying to throw them off track again by making Mulder believe that it was all over.

At a motel, Mulder shows Scully a mapping of the reported sightings, all following the path of the truck. After the hoax the night before, the sighting are now turning up in Mattawa, Washington.

After driving around in Mattawa, they see a gathering in the woods on the side of the road. Turns out it’s a UFO party and when Mulder asks if they’ve seen UFOs, a guy tells them that for the past two nights, they’ve been hovering over the “power plant right over there”. The “power plant” is of course not a power plant, as evidenced by the agents seeing Ranheim leaving the facility. Scully comments on the level of security of the place, which prompts Mulder to call the Gunmen.

The Gunmen hack some access codes for the agents which get them on the premises. Inside, they hit a dead-end, which cause them to have to backtrack and get questioned by a security guard. Scully fesses up that they’re FBI and Mulder decides to just make a break for the level 6 security area (which their access didn’t grant them). He finally reaches a large room with a chamber at the far end lit in red light. He is stopped by the armed guard just before getting where he could actually see inside. At this point, Deep Throat (FTW!) enters the room and dismisses the guards. I’m going to just transcribe the following soliloquy by Deep Throat (FTW!) because it’s awesome.

Deep Throat: I know how badly – how very badly – you want to look through that window. But it would be pointless. It’s dead. After the Roswell incident in 1947, even at the brink of the Cold War, there was an ultra-secret conference attended by the United States, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Britain, both Germanys, France; and it was agreed that should any extraterrestrial biological entity survive a crash, the country that held that being would be responsible for its extermination. I, uh, have the distinction of being one of three men to have exterminated such a creature. I was with the C.I.A. in Vietnam. A UFO was sighted for five nights over Hanoi. The marines shot hit down and brought it to us. Maybe (pause) it didn’t know what a gun was or perhaps they don’t show emotion but that (pause) innocent and blank expression as I pulled the trigger has haunted me. Until I found you. That’s why I come to you, Mr. Mulder, and will continue to come to you, to atone for what I’ve done. And maybe sometime, through you, the truth will be known.

Outside, Deep Throat (FTW!) comments on how Mulder hasn’t said anything and Mulder pauses before telling him, “I’m wondering which lie to believe.”

*cue credits*



Twitch here. Seems that most people really love this episode as it starts a whole new kind of X-Files episodes. It's not just "Hey – here's a creature! Where's Mulder? Oh, he got him. Yay!" Now it's the beginning of government conspiracies! Now I’ll admit I’m not a huge conspiracy-theorist. I don't believe the moon-landing was faked and I'm PRETTY sure Elvis, Tupac, and John Denver are all dead. But on the issue of aliens, I'm not fooled. They know something. And are currently reading this wondering how much I know and whether they should zap my brain or not.

Now what's up with this Deep Throat guy? I mean sure, you've been given pretty much the worst nickname there could be, but you were always so helpful before! Now you're lying to Mulder? WHY DEEP THROAT? WHY?! And that's the only time in my life I will ever ask the question "Why Deep Throat?"

So I gotta admit I like the Lone Gunmen. They are dorky hacker guys that remind me of my older brother. And that one guy obviously wants to nail Scully. And who can blame him? He has earned my respect. And I hear they are going to be in more episodes. I'm fine with that so long as he keeps his hands off my woman.

All-in-all a great episode. I believe I will like the conspiracy episodes better then the guy that was half-salamander. And if the government IS in fact reading this, I see nothing and know nothing.

The 411: This was a phenomenal episode. It's largely regarded as the episode that actually begins the mythology that has been loosely hinted at. We get a wealth of information from Deep Throat, insight into Mulder's mind and a look at just how passionate he is about the whole ordeal.

Definitely a must-see episode. Don't miss this one!

Final Score:  9.0   [  Amazing ]