Case 06, File 15: Arcadia

AKA: Domestic AU, Don't Like Don't Read

There are some episodes that are, shall we say, widely beloved by the fanbase, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's because the episodes are just generally really good; Intensely scary, extremely well written, fantastically acted or just unique concepts executed immaculately. But the fanbase is also human, with human tastes and human ships and sometimes widely loved episodes can be widely loved for...more base reasons.


We start in the titular Falls of Arcadia, an extremely rigid closed neighborhood with a lot of rules, and a new couple who are badly chafing under them. So when they get a tacky whirligig in the mail, they decide to put it up to stick it to rules. So a mysterious something enters their neighborhood and kills them both. Seems like a logical escalation. A few months later a new couple moves in: Mulder and Scully, only calling themselves Rob and Laura Petrie.

It's actually just them going undercover, cause the couple from the cold open was not the first couple to disappear from this neighborhood, with the entire neighborhood professing ignorance to what happened, so they need to infiltrate. And they do this by pretending to be a couple since uh...I guess Skinner is just as big a shipper as I am. All they find in the house though, is some weird stuff that looks like congealed blood on the fan.

But all is not well in Arcadia Falls. The rules are extremely rigid, up to and including forbidding Mulder from putting up his basketball hoop, and the long time residents are having discussions about how maybe they should warn Mulder and Scully (I'm not calling them Rob and Laura, I have lines I won't cross) about how bad shit can get if they don't conform. One of the long time residents, named Big Mike (as his name is Mike, and he's Big) who wanted to warn Mulder and Scully of how bad shit can get has one of his lights busted on orders of Mr. Gogolack, the person who runs the neighborhood and, despite his best efforts to replace it immediately, the big mysterious something shows up and attacks him.

I don't know if, in this situation, my love of breaking stupid rules or my hatred for tacky things would win out.

Mulder and Scully investigate his disappearance (he had lent them some china) and find another neighbor, Win, cleaning up his house, and when pressed for reasons, Win stalls by inviting them to dinner. At dinner, after some brief discussions of how "Rob and Laura" met (and Scully internally debating strangling Mulder with her bare hands), Scully takes a walk with Win's wife and the dog gets into the sewer, coming out with what appears to be blood on him and also Big Mike's caduceus.

Scully takes the stuff to the FBI field office in San Diego, while Mulder decides to test out how rigid the neighborhood rules are, first by putting up a pink flamingo lawn ornament, which is immediately taken down, and then by messing with his mailbox, which is immediately fixed. He finally says screw it, puts up his basketball hoop, inciting panic from his neighbor. But, when the big whatchamacallit does show up, it goes after his neighbor, who has a lightbulb out in the same way as before, but disappears before Mulder can corner it.

Scully returns to inform Mulder that the stuff they thought was blood and guts was just garbage, as the neighborhood was built on a former landfill. Mulder realizes that the bodies of the missing people must be buried in the landfill (and that the monster must moving through it) and decides to hide an attempt to find the bodies by saying they're building a fountain in their front yard, which is technically allowed, even though his neighbors think it's suicide. But when Mulder finds the tacky whirligig from the cold open, and realizes it's from Mr. Gogolak's company (they met briefly) he gets his theory.

He explains his theory when he arrests him: That Mr. Gogolak summoned a monster made of garbage to punish rulebreakers, but it got out of control. As if to prove it, Scully is accosted by Big Mike, who's been hiding in the sewer to survive and who locks Scully in the closet to protect her, but the creature shows up and kills him. Mulder handcuffs Mr. Gogolak outside but Mulder and Scully's neighbors refuse to help him and the monster kills him, causing it collapse feet from Mulder. And thus, as Mulder and Scully move out, the episode ends with Scully musing that their neighborhood has maintained their conspiracy of silence.

"You know, I used to have a dog just like that one."
"Oh, what happened to it?"
"It got eaten by a Loch Ness Monster."

Arcadia is an episode that is well loved by the fanbase, not for its relative merits as a piece of science-fiction or horror, or its place in the larger story, its an episode that's beloved because it gives us a brief glimpse of Mulder and Scully acting like a domestic couple. It's not a lot, much of it is simply drawing out humor from the ruse or showing their comically clashing personalities, but if you're a Mulder/Scully shipper (as most of the hardcore fanbase is) it's a pleasant little fantasy.

Of course that pleasant little fantasy is one of the issues that holds the episode back from being truly great, or rather how it works in the context of the larger episode. See, at the core of Arcadia's premise is an incredibly dark exploration of how much suburban living requires conformity, and how much that can destroy you from the inside. But that requires a real exploration of the neighbors and the neighborhood, its ins and outs, the relationships between neighbors, who is chafing under the CC&Rs and why. There's even ways it could tie this into race and class (the fact that the only name we get for the monster is "The Ubermenscher" is...telling, in ways I'm not gonna go into). In order for this theme to land, it needs time to breathe, in other words.

This is time that the episode does not have, because it's too busy stopping ever 10 minutes to do a cute scene where Mulder and Scully bounce off each other in a domestic setting. Which is fine, those scenes are good: The series has long leaned on Duchovny and Anderson's chemistry to fill gaps when they need to, and it's a good thing to lean on, Duchovny and Anderson have great chemistry. The problem here is that it's not filling in gaps, its making them to have room for Duchovny and Anderson to banter.

I could be more pretentious about why, but honestly, I just love this shot.

Thus the neighborhood ends up feeling underserved and kind of flat. Win's wife decides to betray Mr. Gogolak in the finale, but aside from one brief conversation with Scully where she hints at being unhappy in the neighborhood, we have no idea why. Why is Big Mike suddenly concerned with warning Mulder and Scully, when no one else is? Why is Win willing to, in essence, kill to preserve the rules, which is a step beyond just letting people die. How did the neighborhood get to this point? Did it start out as a murder neighborhood or was there a choice made at some point. There's no explanation for any of this, not even of Mr. Gogolak's desire to summon a big ol' trash monster, nor of his inability to control it.

And it's a shame, because what we do get to see is pretty solid. The actor playing Mr. Gogolak strikes a nice balance between kind of lame and sinister, which is where you want to be. It's got a lot of nice shots and good sound design (the mix of crashing and squishing footsteps is great, giving a solid hint of what the things.) And on the same subject, while we don't get to see the Ubermenscher much (I suspect the effect wasn't good enough for them to really put it on screen), the thing is a very visceral concept, thematically coherent (the neighborhood being built on garbage, literally hiding away unpleasant things is excellent) and I like that there's not a lot of finesse to it. It doesn't choke you on garbage or anything fancy, it just straight beats you to death.

Arcadia is an episode serving two masters, one a dark exploration of suburbia's underbelly, the other a Domestic AU fanfic, red meat for the shippers that make up the majority of its hardcore fanbase. It ultimately underserves the former in favor of the latter, but that doesn't make it a bad episode, just one that's never living up to its full potential. What it ultimately is, is a fun episode, an episode that most fans can just sit back and enjoy in comfort. And I suppose it's that feeling that kept us all coming back to the series again and again.

Case Notes:

• This episode takes place in California, but honestly, from the opening shot, a lot of it reminds me of communities here in Connecticut.
• I really sympathize with the dude in the cold open. If someone painted my mailbox without my permission I'd probably beat them in the street.
• I do love how the cold open couple realize how ultra tacky the lumberjack windmill is, but they put it up just to piss off the neighbors.
• There's something kind of darkly amusing about the monster being used to protect the evil, ultra-clean suburbs being literally made of trash. I wish that was something the episode worked with.
• Mulder is clearly enjoying pretending to be a suburban husband, while Scully is more serious minded. I can't tell if Mulder is just enjoying the act or if he's messing with Scully.
• The neighborhood is so openly weird, I'd probably bolt. I'd honestly probably hate having my neighbors help me move in without permission.
• I like the device of Scully tossing exposition at a camera. Usually Mulder explains what they're doing and why.
• The name Petrie (pronounced like the dish) is a very Mulder name to pick.
• I'll give this episode this, it's funny. Mulder demanding Scully make him a sandwich shreds me every time.
• The meeting with the Suburban Conspiracy is weird, because they don't say much, but they basically give the whole game away. I can't tell if that's intentional.
• I do like the scene with Mike changing the lightbulb, freaking out and panicking over something so seemingly minor.
• Scully disguising her insults to Mulder in pet names is very Scully.
• Mulder immediately catches on to Gogolak being behind the monster from his decor. Oh Mulder.
• Pier Nine (what Mr. Gogolak runs) is clearly a Pier One joke.
• I love the dinner scene with Mulder and Scully. Gillian Anderson has murder in her eyes when Mulder says she's into UFOs.
• The discussion about evidence and motive in the bedroom is mostly just a rehash of stuff we know. I suspect it's an excuse to pepper domestic stuff throughout the conversation.
• Mulder's flamingo is trying too hard to be funny, him trashing the mailbox is much funnier and much more him.
• Who hand writes their warning notes? That's how you get caught.
• Mulder using his basketball hoop to get in trouble is also very him.
• Scully is clearly uncomfortable when she thinks someone is in the house, because as a suburban housewife she can't use her usual solution of shooting it.
• Mulder finds out that a trash monster is behind the murders and he's instantly on board.
• Deciding to disguise the excavation as adding a fountain is clever but honestly, Mulder having actually read the bylaws and realizing it's allowed makes it great.
• Mulder finds the lumberjack windmill and immediately figures out exactly what happened, because he's Mulder.
• Mike being still alive is a nice twist, even if mostly just serves for Scully to get some exposition.
• Scully's commentary on the conspiracy of silence that let all this happen is good, but I just wish it was in more of the episode.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Consider checking it out so that I can afford to move to a neighborhood guarded by a Tulpa.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Big Mike is played by one Abraham Benrubi who was just starting to play Jerry Markovic on ER. I've never watched it, but IMDB informs me he was in 137 episodes, which is more episodes than Community ever got, so I assume he was a big character. Aside from that, he's been in a lot of TV from the late 90s on.

Also, I am stretching the definition of celebrity well past the breaking point, but Win is played by Tom Gallop, who played the guy who says mean things he means when breaking up with people in the Seinfeld episode The Andrea Doria. Yes, I recognized him on sight. Yes, I have a problem.

Future Celebrity Watch:

One of our cold open victims is played by Tom Virtue (how's that for a name) who was about to begin a pretty solid run as the dad on Even Stevens.