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Previously: Kay tried to send Zombie Charity back to...you know, wherever she came from, but was thwarted by the floating and disembodied hellraiser, who threatened to kill tiny, beautiful, gay little Miguel if Kay actually went through...oh, I'm sorry, that's Passions.
Previously: Mulder was devastated when he thought that Scully had walked out on him and their child, and then was horrified to receive an ominous note, indicating that Scully had been kidnapped! He then took to his shoe box office and started blaring the tune to Rocky, and also...whoops! That's the little story I'm making up using small plastic people because I clearly don't have enough actual flesh and blood playmates.
Previously: I called Kim Manners a woman, misidentified mountains of clips from past episodes of The X-Files, apparently didn't do nearly enough research on the FeeJee mermaid, and spelled Albert OldNativeAmericanMan's last name incorrectly. And those are some of the many past mistakes I've made in the course of these recaps. Isn't it nice to remember the good times, now that our days together are numbered? I think so.
It's raining and dark in Brooklyn, thirteen years ago. A van from "Triburo Cable" pulls up in front of a nice suburban-looking home. Behind the wheel of the car is...oh my God, is that Meat Loaf? Seriously, I think it might be Meat Loaf. I really hope he bursts into a verse from "Paradise By the Dashboard Light." Since, you know, he's in the car and all. But no luck. Instead, Meat Loaf just sits in the van and stares at the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. Speaking of God -- as we have been for the last five episodes -- Happy Easter and Passover, everyone. I'm chewing on a chocolate bunny head right now. Anyway, Meat Loaf sits and looks mopey. "Get going," says a disembodied voice from somewhere behind him. Even though the van is empty. "Please do your damn job," the voice says, as Meat Loaf just looks shifty and sad. He does not respond with a chorus of "I Will Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)." Instead, he picks up his toolbox and steps out of the van and into the rain.
Inside the house, an adolescent girl in a bright Esprit-style pullover chats on the telephone. "You can't think Milli Vanilli is cool!" she squeals. "I would disown you! You are unbelievable! Okay, I may puke, but I have to ask. Who do you intend to marry? Rob? Or Fab?" Okay, that's it! That's the end of the line for me and the good folks at 1013 productions. Because I'll forgive a lot of things -- Mulder's ridiculous absence, "Closure," Moronica -- but now I have "Girl, You Know It's True" in my head. The doorbell rings and there's a lot of eye-rolling and head-wiggling between the Adolescent and Her Mother, but the girl finally puts the receiver on the table and goes to answer the door.
“ I would have liked to have seen a brief little flashback of what the rest of our players were doing while Doggett was making this collar. Scully was probably still at Quantico, taking notes on her notes and dreaming of the day when she would be assigned to the FBI's Most Unwanted. Mulder was, I presume, still a profiler in Violent Crimes, racking up massive charges on his Visa calling 976 numbers. Moronica, as we know, was a roadie for the Indigo Girls. ”
Meat Loaf is standing on the porch looking remarkably shifty. I wouldn't even have opened the door, so shifty does he look. He stutters that he's there to fix the cable. "I don't think so," Adolescent Girl says. Meat Loaf makes a series of really pained faces and turns to go, and AG makes a face like she's sorry she offended this nutball and stops him, saying that maybe her dad called him in. "Dad! Cable guy's here!" she yells, and then stomps back to her phone call. Meat Loaf stands alone in the den and leans heavily on the television. Dad finally comes tripping down the stairs. He looks vaguely like Jack McKay. He's not, but I'm going to call him Jack anyway. It won't be for long. "Help you?" Jack asks. "Problem with your cable?" Meat Loaf grunts. Jack shrugs. He was just watching television upstairs, he says, so he thinks Meat Loaf has the wrong house. "Is that your work order?" asks Jack. "Who called it in?" Meat Loaf stares down at the aforementioned work order. Which is shortly thereafter splashed with blood. He looks up again to see Jack sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor. In the kitchen, Mom and AG have been similarly dispatched, AG's Esprit sweater a calm oasis in this sea of nothingness. ["Hell yeah it is!" -- Wing Chun] Meat Loaf makes a vaguely horrified look right before the cops break down the door. "God Almighty," the first one grouses. He grabs Meat Loaf by the scuff of the neck and tosses him against the wall. "Johnny, check the other room," he yells. Johnny by the way, is our man Doggett, all decked out in an NYPD uniform and cute little hat. "They're all dead," he says slowly. "But we got you," he says to Meat Loaf. "Got you, you bastard!"
Credits. I must say that I would have liked to have seen a brief little flashback of what the rest of our players were doing while Doggett was making this collar. Scully was probably still at Quantico, taking notes on her notes and dreaming of the day when she would be assigned to the FBI's Most Unwanted. Mulder was, I presume, still a profiler in Violent Crimes, racking up massive charges on his Visa calling 976 numbers. Moronica, as we know, was a roadie for the Indigo Girls.
Speaking of Moronica, the elevator discharges her on the basement floor with a cheerful "ding!" Her hair looks horrid. What's with all those layers? She looks like she fell headfirst into a wood chipper. In the LBO, Doggett is yelling into the phone. "I don't care what it shows! It's wrong! I was there, we got the right guy!" he hollers. "An X-File?" Moronica mouths. Doggett shakes his head and hands her a newspaper. The headline reads, "DNA Clears Screwdriver Killer." Doggett hangs up the phone, grousing that the "jackoff" Assistant District Attorney on the other end of the line was "probably in ninth grade when this happened." Moronica's all, "What is up with you?" Doggett runs down his sad tale, telling her that he caught this serial killer many moons ago when he was a beat cop, and now they're letting the guy out of jail. He thinks it's a "lab mistake." Moronica watches as Doggett gets all emotional, saying that he can still remember the sound of blood squishing under his shoes. "And [Meat Loaf's] just standing there!" he says. Moronica non-helpfully points out that Doggett didn't technically catch Meat Loaf in the act. Doggett grouses that they were close enough.
Underneath
Enter Scully. She looks like she slept in her white shirt and then threw one of Mulder's sports coats on. "Tell me you got good news," Doggett says. Scully shrugs and tells him that she's been through the ME's report a million times, and she hates to tell him, but the DNA fingerprinting does exonerate Meat Loaf. Doggett looks weary and perturbed and asks her to run the lab reports herself, again. There's something wrong with Gillian Anderson's eye in this scene. It looks like a healing black eye; a little swollen and slightly bruised. I assume she banged her face on something. I once gave myself a black eye when I accidentally smacked myself with my seatbelt. And that so sounded like a story someone on ER would fabricate right before George Clooney figures out the truth and slams the wife-beating sleezebag of the week up against a brick wall and insults his manhood. ["Clooney, back in the day. Now? Viiiiiiiiiiisnjiiiiiiiiiiic. Mmm." -- Wing Chun] But no. I'm just klutzy. Hey, maybe it's a directorial choice: William can't control his telekinetic powers quite yet, and occasionally the item he's moving with his mind (his bottle, his blankie, the large metal chuck from the spaceship that came to take him back to the planet Zarblon) hits his mother in the eye. Anyway. Scully dully tells Doggett to give her forty-eight hours. He nods, and heads out the door. "Where are you going?" Moronica asks. "New York," he says. Moronica and Scully both stare at him. "Look, I get it," Doggett says from the doorway. "Enough people tell you you're drunk, it's time to lay [sic] down. But I know what I know. And I could really use your help." The girls look at each other like, "What the hell." Don't these people have work to do?
Sing Sing, New York's most melodically-named prison. Meat Loaf sits in his cell and looks shifty. All I know is, this guy sure looks guilty. A guard strolls up to his cell and tells the Meat that it's time to go. Meat Loaf just looks back at him. This is the quietest jail ever. Shouldn't there be people calling each other bitches and stabbing each other with shivs and stuff?
The guard gives Meat Loaf the belongings he brought with him into the pokey. "Congrats, [Meat Loaf], and good luck to you," he says. Meat Loaf just stares miserably at his rosary.
Chung chung over to the outside of the local courthouse, where the actress who played Carly Pope's mother, Jane, on Popular ["Lisa Darr" -- Wing Chun] is telling the press that she's just overjoyed that her client finally got sprung from the Big House and that, as Meat Loaf's lawyer, she fully intends to look very closely at any and all possible motives behind his incarceration. Meat Loaf just stands there and stares at the rapid-action photography business going on across the street. See, there's this guy standing there staring menacingly at him. Then he's not there. Then he is. Then he's not. Then, yes. Then, no. You get it. The Magically Disappearing Dude looks like the evil love child of Charles Manson and BOB from Twin Peaks, with the scary-o-meter taken down a notch or two because I don't run screaming from the room. BOB? Seriously, still the scariest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. My dad and I used to watch Twin Peaks together while my mother would read something erudite upstairs, and when it was over, he'd lock up the house for the night and I was supposed to go upstairs and get ready for bed. But the thought of walking through our totally dark downstairs and then up the totally dark stairs to get to my bathroom was terrifying, so I'd generally just follow him around holding onto the back of his belt and sobbing. And then, last summer, I was reading Helter Skelter (which is about the Manson murders in general, and the Sharon Tate thing in particular) and succeeded in scaring myself so much -- because it was true! And it happened in the city I live in! -- that I almost had to put the book in the freezer, Joey Tribbiani-style. See, somehow I convinced myself that Manson was planning a prison break even as I lolled in my bed and read my book and ate my Popsicle and that his first stop in his reign of terror revisited would be my house. This guy, however -- let's call him BOB II -- isn't nearly that scary. Then he vanishes, and Jane escorts Meat Loaf away from the paparazzi.
Courthouse. Doggett and Scully are chewing the fat with the Jackoff ADA, who tells them that the State of New York isn't just letting Meat Loaf out of jail; they're also giving him a pile of cash. Scully's shirt is unbuttoned to her navel. Well, just about. After much boring yelling back and forth, the ADA finally agrees to let the Feds look through the evidence files. Scully convinces him by mentioning that maybe they'll find the real murderer if they take another look at all the facts. Maybe O.J. can give them a hand with that.
Cut to a table covered with boxes and boxes of files. Scully sighs and wonders where to start. Doggett hands her the original arrest report, and she gives it a quick scan. "Arresting Officer John Doggett," she reads. "Must have been a career-maker." Doggett shrugs that it certainly didn't hurt when he put in for detective. He stares sadly at the paper. Scully grimaces and reminds him that "even good cops make mistakes." Doggett admits that he's made more than he can count, but "this isn't one of them." He's not there to "cover his ass." Scully shuffles her feet and says that she's worried this is "about [him] feeling guilty." She stares into his eyes. Then looks at his mouth. Then his eyes. Then his lips. Someone's missing her FDA required allotment of Special Agent Lovin'. "Like, what? Subconsciously?" Doggett asks. Scully makes a pained face. Doggett makes a more pained one. He tells her that a cop he once knew -- a man he "respected deeply" -- once told him that a good cop doesn't "clock out at the end of his shift." And that's all he's doing. Not clocking out. Scully thinks about this, than finally nods and turns to the piles of paper in front of them.
Lawyer Jane's mansion in Great Neck. She leads Meat Loaf into the foyer, introducing him to "Mrs. Dowdy," her housekeeper. Mrs. Dowdy says that she's got Meat Loaf's room all made up. Because Jane thinks it would be a good idea for her client, the accused serial killer, to sleep right to her all comfy and cozy. "You're rich," Meat Loaf says. He must have skipped his etiquette classes in prison. Jane shrugs that her parents were giant moneybags, but that she tries to use her "resources" to help people when she can. Jane, maybe you should use some of those resources to buy a suit that fits you properly and a nice blowout, because your hair looks god-awful. Just a suggestion. Meat Loaf stands at the bottom of the stairs and looks shifty (per usual) and then tells her that she's "a good person" who "does good things." Also, crazy ones, like letting Meat Loaf live in her house. Whatever happened to giving the guy some money for a studio apartment and maybe a pie? Instead, Jane takes Meat Loaf to his room, telling him that she's got some people who are "sympathetic" to his sitch, and when he's ready, she's going to set up some job interviews for him. Meat Loaf sits on his bed and looks at her. Jane sniffles that she's so very sorry for the hell he went through, what with getting thrown in the pokey and all, and she's so very, very happy for him now. He says nothing. She leaves the room, and he promptly begins praying. After a moment, he looks down to see that his hands are all bloody. The words "Kill Her" are written on the wall in blood. That's no way to act as a guest in someone's house, dude.
“ Moronica goes to Sing Sing to do a little detecting. She's tragically killed in a prison riot. The end. ”
Jane's Home for Unsavory Houseguests. Meat Loaf is sleeping on the carpet of his room, his rosary clenched in his hand. Jane slams open the door. She looks pissed. She tells him to get dressed and come downstairs.
Meat Loaf meets Jane in the kitchen. Jane stiffly informs him that someone rifled through her dresser drawers last night, and that she did not appreciate that invasion of her privacy! Despite the fact that she's opened his bedroom door without knocking twice already. "You weren't home last night?" Meat Loaf stammers. She thinks he knows she wasn't. "With freedom comes responsibility," she smarms, then takes off for work, telling Meat Loaf to make his own breakfast, since Mrs. Dowdy seems to be running late.
Mrs. Dowdy is running dead. Meat Loaf finds her after about one second, shoved into a kitchen cabinet. He gorily disposes of her. There's a tarp and a cleaver involved. Do I need to go into further detail?
Moronica goes to Sing Sing to do a little detecting. She's tragically killed in a prison riot. The end. Actually, she just meets with...some guy. I don't know. I guess he's the McManus of Sing Sing, or something. Anyway, he'll be happy to do whatever he can to get Meat Loaf tossed back in the slammer as soon as possible. "Thank you. That's an extremely helpful attitude," Moronica says. "What's your reason for it?" Well, see, Meat Loaf's cellmate turned up dead. No! People never get killed in the Big House. I can't go on! The thing is, though, this time the killer was caught on their security camera. And it wasn't Meat Loaf. It was Mulder. Nah, it was BOB II. Moronica looks at a screen capture from the security-camera footage. "This isn't him," she says. Pseudo-McManus is all, duh. "This isn't anybody," he tells her. The killer doesn't fit the description of any of their inmates, and he was never seen again. "Don't ask me to explain it," Pseudo-McManus grouses. But he's sure Meat Loaf had something to do with it. Moronica looks thoughtful.
Courthouse. The ADA wants "a word" with Doggett. He's moaning about all the DNA retests Doggett's ordered. Doggett sputters something to the effect that the DNA is all similar and shit. And the ADA is all, "We have a settlement offer on the table." And Doggett is all, "Dude!" And the ADA is all, "You so need to get over this." "We need more time to get to the truth!" Doggett yells. "If we can't get a conviction, then the truth doesn't matter," the ADA finally says, and leaves in a huff. Doggett's standing in the hallway looking miserable when Moronica shows up. She's changed her shirt. She looks awful. Put on some lipstick, Moronica! She spits that she thinks she has a suspect.
Dogget and Moronica scamper into the Room of Files, where Scully sits at the table and plays MASH on a scrap of paper. "Who is he?" Doggett asks. "What is he?" Moronica corrects him. Scully rolls her eyes behind them. Moronica explains that this "entity" materialized, killed someone, and then vanished. "Like Casper the Friendly Ghost," Doggett translates crabbily. Behind them, Scully groans: MASH, that cruel mistress, has destined her to live in a shack. Moronica wonders if BOB II and Meat Loaf are somehow connected. "[Moronica], for God's sake, this is not an X-File. Don't try to turn it into one," Doggett snaps. Moronica chatters on and on that BOB II and Meat Loaf have a "symbiotic relationship," or something. All they need to do is...something with the DNA from the crime scene. (I took bad notes there, sorry.) Scully looks up, and crumples her MASH game -- muttering that she's certainly not planning on living in a shack with Skinner and seven children, driving a Pinto -- and then tells Moronica and Doggett that the 1989 evidence needs to be tossed. It was planted. How she figured that out, I don't know. No, I don't. No, I really don't. I don't. Stop bugging me. "Are you accusing me? Are you accusing me of planting evidence?" Doggett asks, very slowly. Scully retorts that she's just stating facts. There is, quite literally, a "dum dum dum duuuuuum" on the soundtrack. Mark Snow, I love you.