Original Air Date: October 14th, 1994
Episode Grade: B-
Nostalgia Index: 10/6. SPEEDO. While the scenes of Duane’s abduction are seriously creepy, this episode suffers from huge logical flaws. However, the final moments are super intense.
Recap:
We start this episode in a rundown house in Virginia, in 1985. The TV blares, and a sweet doggie runs from the empty food bowl to the bedroom, where his master lays in death-like sleep. The TV goes to static as shadowy, spindly figures approach. Bright lights flare, and the man begins to scream. “Not again!”
Cue the credits!
Back in the present day, we see the same man in a correctional institute. He meets with the prison doc, who wants Duane to start taking his meds again. When the doc turns his back to get a sedative, Duane grabs his fountain pen and legs it out of the office. He stabs a guard in the back and then in the neck, pulls the guard’s gun, and then takes the doc hostage.
Krycek find Mulder at a pool, where he is swimming laps. In a tiny red Speedo. Duchovny has a gorgeous body, lean with broad shoulders and nicely defined abs. Krycek is saying something about a mental patient who claims to have been abducted by aliens, but it’s kind of hard to concentrate on what he’s saying.
Mulder, now clothed, arrives at the war room, where CCH Pounder (who seems to be wearing one of Scully’s favorite suits) is deeply skeptical of alien abductions. Mulder wants more info on his experiences, CCH just wants the hostages saved.
Duane has four people, including his whippet-thin doctor, held hostage in a travel agency. Mulder calls him, and Duane says that he’s just waiting for travel arrangements. Mulder’s reading off a script, and it’s not going well. Duane knows script, and after he hangs up, Mulder confronts CCH. Duane was FBI. After Mulder storms off, Krycek offers to help. CCH sends him for coffee.
Mulder calls Scully to get the 411 on Duane. While they’re talking, the power goes out to the whole block. A blinding light flashes, and then a shot rings out. Duane has fired on…something. Mulder calls him; Duane shot one of the hostages. Mulder gets suited up as an EMT, including a vest and earpiece. They want him to get Duane in a position for the snipers to take a shot.
At the travel agency, Duane searches them for weapons and wires. So, why did Mulder bother to get in costume when he’s already talked to Duane on the phone? Wouldn’t he have recognized Mulder’s voice? Mulder asks Duane to let the women go at least. Then he starts chatting about alien abductions, time loss, and other cheerful topics certain to set a paranoid schizophrenic off. Mulder’s insistence to believe, at the cost of everything else, is maybe not always the best the thing in every situation.
He convinces Duane to let the injured man go…in exchange for Mulder. CCH is not pleased. Duane thinks that Mulder is a liar, but Mulder’s detailed description of alien abduction helps bring him around. No, wait, sorry. It helps push him over the edge into total psychosis. What does Mulder think he’s actually going to achieve? We see flashbacks of Duane’s experiences aboard the alien ship. It’s…unpleasant. Lasers, Clockwork Orange-style head restraints, etc.
Meanwhile, the other agents are preparing to drill through the wall. Scully calls and Krycek answers the phone. She says that Mulder has to get out of there—Duane is not what Mulder thinks he is.
Duane tells Mulder that he’s seen little girls in the testing place, that they get hurt really badly. This is not what Mulder wants to hear, not about Samantha. He tries to bargain for the lives of the other hostages, but Duane won’t play ball. He’s determined to show the prison doc that he was right all along.
Scully shows up and yells at everyone until someone will listen. She has Duane’s medical records—he was shot in the head, and it eradicated the moral center of his brain. It’s similar to Phineas Gage, the 19th century railroad worker who survived a spike to the head only to become a pathological liar.
Duane says that’s so tired. That’s a red flag for hostage-takers preparing to kill themselves. Scully gets on the wire, telling Mulder not to believe Duane. Mulder convinces Duane to let the women go; one of them pauses to tell him that she believes. It’s a weird note; has Stockholm Syndrome already set in?
Mulder sees the red dot of a laser sight on Duane’s neck. He tells him to move closer, saving him from the shot. Mulder demands to know if Duane had made any of it up. That’s the wrong choice; he doesn’t deal well with being called a liar. Mulder realizes that Duane isn’t the kindred spirit he hoped, and he tells Duane that he forgot to lock the door. As soon as he approaches the glass, the sniper takes the shot.
Duane is loaded onto a stretcher while Scully and Mulder look on. She tells him he did the right thing. Mulder admits that he believed Duane.
At the hospital, Mulder meets CCH. She thanks him for resolving the situation, despite his unconventional methods. CCH says they found several pieces of metal on the x-rays, as well as inexplicably small drill holes in his teeth.
Scully examines a small piece of metal in a vial. She says it could be shrapnel from Duane’s tour in Vietnam, but Mulder points out that the implants were all where Duane said they’d be. Scully takes the metal piece to ballistics. They find strange markings on it—they look like a barcode. Scully has the same idea; at the grocery store, she swipes the metal object over the scanner. It makes the register go crazy. Scully hurries away—her scarf, coat, and grocery bag hiding her pregnancy, incidentally.
At the hospital, Duane wakes up. Bright lights begin to shine, and all around he sees the spindly forms of the aliens. Duane grabs a fire extinguisher and brains the guard, then legs it.
Scully calls Mulder and leaves a message about the metal implant, saying that it’s almost as if it was used to catalog him. Duane appears at the window. Off-screen, he drags her away while she screams for Mulder’s help.
To be continued!
Nostalgia Vision 