Case 09, File 05: Lord of the Flies

AKA: No, Like, Actual Flies

With a show as long running as The X-Files, it's very hard for concepts and ideas to not repeat themselves. Coming up with a new monster every week is incredibly difficult, and if you need to sacrifice either having a unique monster or having a solid unique story, you're letting the story slide into cliche to work on the monster, so you'll probably end up copying elements from older episodes. But hey, if those episodes weren't very good, you might end up doing a better version of them,

Our episode kicks off with some kids, Winky and Captain Dare doing footage for a Jackass style tv show (it's called Dumb Ass because subtext is, as Garth Marenghi says, for cowards), much to the consternation of Captain Dare's girlfriend Natalie. And she was right to be concerned given that on one stunt Captain Dare ends up with half his skull crushed. And the coroner doesn't want to get involved in the mountain of lawsuits the parents bring as a response, so he calls in Doggett and Reyes. Who call in Scully.

They discover that his skull is full of um, bugs. Flies specifically, as an entomologist named Rocky promptly informs them, while flirting with Scully and failing to notice her disinterest. They begin looking at the video to try and figure out what caused the flies to go in Dare's skull and eat his brain, and they seize on his buddy Winky, who is at that very moment harassing Natalie for video footage and bullying a kid named Dylan, whose mom, Anne, is the principal.

So Doggett and Reyes go to interview Winky, but 10 seconds into the interview he winds up with a bunch of lice bites that spell out Dumb Ass. Meanwhile, we check in on Dylan, who ignores his mom wanting to talk to him and then his room gets swarmed by flies, in case we were a little slow on the uptake.

Unfortunately for him, Doggett and Reyes aren't slow on the uptake, so after a bit where Dylan's mom begs to talk with him and Dylan talks to Natalie and clearly has a crush on her (and another bit where Scully and Rocky try to track fly pheromones and Rocky continues to obliviously hit on Scully), Doggett and Reyes drag Dylan in for questioning. Yeah I stretched that to get those two events to connect, what of it? Anyway, mid-questioning, Dylan gets absolutely covered in flies, which everyone decides is super weird.

"Just smile Aaron, you'll get to play a meth dealer soon enough."

After a quick bit where they discover that Dylan is absolutely lousy with fly pheromones, Dylan gets a visit from Natalie who admits the crush is reciprocated and they kiss, only for something in Dylan's mouth to hurt her and she bolts. Winky and his buddies grab Dylan off the street, but he reveals some insect...stuff in his mouth and spits webs all over them and escapes.

Okay so, lotta stuff happens very fast here; Reyes and Doggett find the crashed car and Reyes heads to Natalie's house while Scully and Rocky head to Dylan's. Scully heads out to the crashed car to...give Rocky a chance to get webs spit all over him by Dylan's mom, while Reyes tries to save Natalie, only to get grabbed by Dylan. But Dylan's mom shows up, tells him he's different like her (yeah no shit) and they bolt, leaving everyone alive but confused. But hey, the episode ends with Dylan spelling out "I love you" to Natalie via Fireflies. So that's...something?

Lord of the Flies is a weird episode. Not necessarily an entirely bad one but an odd one. It feels like an almost conscious attempt to do a redo of another previous episode, like 4-D was for Beyond the Sea. The episode they're redoing in this case is Schizogeny which is a much better episode to redo, because that episode kinda sucks. But while the broad strokes are the same, the details are very different and while it avoids most of that episodes' issues, it certainly brings in its share of new ones.

The tone is a big one. There are various elements, from the repeated moments of overt physical comedy to the (admittedly funny) runner where Rocky hits on Scully, oblivious to her lack of interest, that make me feel that at some point of production this was intended as a Darrin Morgan style comedy episode. But then, often right in the middle of comedic sequences, the episode will suddenly pitch into moments of extreme darkness and horror, likely because the monster concept they've got is a pretty decent one but one which is difficult to pitch in a comedy concept, so the episode feels like it's emotionally bouncing back and forth between the two emotions without ever really picking one.

Okay this shot is pretty funny.

So the plot instead tries to rest itself on its story to keep the emotional connection alive, and that's kind of a difficult bet, because that relies on the characters and they're not...great. We get a strong sense of Dylan as a character, but no one else (okay I guess we get a really strong sense of Rocky as a creep who says deeply weird shit, but that doesn't count); His mom needs to stay off screen to conceal the twist and Natalie is too thin to be much more than a sexy lamp that Dylan ambiguously yearns after; She goes from being horrified and traumatized by her experiences with Dylan to being touched by his final gesture in between shots, and it doesn't matter because she's a pretty, blank slate.

The connection to Schizogeny is not just me making things up, it feels like it hits a lot of the same beats; Angsty teenager with ambiguous powers, killing or harming people who have wronged him, and it turns out that a female authority figure in his life is aware of his powers and manipulating the whole thing. And that's fine, those elements of Schizogeny weren't what sucked about it, what sucked about it was that it couldn't figure out what it was trying to say about the cycle of the abuse and how to say it. So what does Lord of the Flies have to say?

Well not much. There's a brief attempt at a theme with Scully talking about how even when you're an outside you're desperate to fit in and be with the person you want, but that's pretty badly undercut by the fact that Dylan and his mom bolt (and the fact that Dylan's mom killed his dad, a detail that goes by pretty fast). If they wanted to make the episode about that, it needed to be included more heavily throughout the episode, not just dropped in the final wrap-up. If there's one thing that the classic Darrin Morgan episodes were good at, it's making sure the theme was in the entire episode.

"This is somehow even worse than it looks."

But it doesn't really matter, because while the attempt at that theme is there, it's only there in the final moments. Lord of the Flies doesn't strike out like Schizogeny but only because it didn't swing as hard. And that's fine; The monster is kind of neat, the humor is pretty funny and the mystery is decently engaging. It's a passable episode and that's all it was trying to be. So do we commend it for reaching its goal or condemn it for not reaching farther.

Or do we celebrate they've finally figured out how to use Robert Patrick in a comedy context?

Case Notes:

• Things I did not want on The X-Files: A Jackass knockoff. Or maybe America's Funniest Home Videos?
• The way these two dudes are treating the girl makes me deeeeeeeeeply uncomfortable, and the camera work is putting way too much emphasis on the kid with the long hair.
• Not gonna lie, the effect on the dead guy's crushed head is pretty solid though.
• The Medical Examiner calling in Doggett and Reyes cause he doesn't want to get caught in the legal tangle of the dead kid's parents suing everyone is pretty funny.
• How does the CGI on the flies coming out of the kid's skull look worse than the bugs from Darkness Falls 8 years earlier?
• The bit where the entire trio is striding down the hall with the Medical Examiner begging to know if Scully is the expert is pretty funny.
• Doggett defensively saying that he looks at Spanish Fly ads for amusement is much better comedy deployment of your Robert Patrick than having him try to do Mulder stuff.
• Rando entomologist walking in talking about flies to make everyone uncomfortable is very funny. His flirting just BOUNCING off Scully is also very funny.
• The high school drama in this episode is instantly very very boring to me, way too obvious where it's going, but I feel like the dead kid's girlfriend would be getting more sympathy.
• The X-Files was not as well known for its biting the hand humor aimed at Fox as The Simpsons was, but the bit where Fox is the only one interested in the video of Dare's death is pretty funny.
• The bites spelling out Dumb Ass is pretty gross, but not in a particularly scary way.
• Is that a fucking 10th Muse poster in Dylan's room? What an odd pull.
• The episode is being a little inconsistent about how much control Dylan has over his powers.
• They are putting way too much emphasis on Dylan's family for them to not be relevant.
• The tone in this episode is all over the place, but there's enough moments of obvious comedy that I THINK they're aiming to make it a full on comedy episode.
• I think I've got what the twist is at this point, but I'll check in later. 
• That might be the issue I'm having, the episode swerves on a dime between comedic and horrific and it makes it hard to figure out how I'm supposed to feel about everything.
• Dylan spitting webs is a pretty major swerve, frankly.
• Rocky taking the moment to hit on Scully AGAIN and then completely ignore her reference to Mulder is pretty funny, he is amusing oblivious.
• The reveal that his mother has powers too is the twist I was guessing at.
• Is Rocky in the web saying "Help me" a The Fly reference or am I reading too much into things?
• Hey, an actual Scully voiceover wrapup. It, and the visual of the Fireflies spelling out "I love you" feel like they were intended for a more comedically slanted version of the epsiode.
• As always these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I won't have to go on the run with any half bug ladies.

Future Celebrity Watch:

The biggest one is, obviously, that Winky is played by Aaron Paul, who was about half a decade out from getting the role as the second lead in Breaking Bad. He's been in a bunch of stuff since then (notably Bojack Horseman) but that will always be his biggest role.

In addition, Dylan's mom is played by Jane Lynch, who was about 2 years out from her fast major "Oh who is that?" role in A Mighty Wind, which rules, but who wouldn't achieve mainstream fame until her lead role in Glee, which does not.

This one is a little smaller, but Samaire Armstrong, who would have a recurring role on The OC and a main role on Resurrection. I've not watched either of those so I have no opinion on them.

Audio Observations:

The episode features No Good Trying and Terrapin, both by Syd Barrett, original guitarist from Pink Floyd. They kinda try to tie him into the theme but it's a weak connection and I'm not dwelling on it.