Case 10, File 02: Founder's Mutation

AKA: New Founder's Mutants, Oh God That Was Awful 

Sorry bout the awful DVD menu pics, Season 10 doesn't have episode menus

Much like seasons 8 and 9, the real test of the revival wasn't going to be the big plot focused episodes, it was going to be seeing how Mulder and Scully handled being back on the Monster of the Week plots, since those were the major draws for a lot of viewers. But the dynamic has changed; With a lot of plot and character work to cover and only 6 episodes (10 in Season 11) the new Monsters of the Week have to share a lot of space, which might throw off the balance.

Our episode opens with a guy named Sanjay showing up to work at a company called Nugenics (no points if you figure out early they're evil). He's barely started his morning meeting before he's hearing a high pitched noise which is causing him immense pain...one which isn't his bosses' voice! Anyway, he turns out to not be a fan of this noise, as he goes off to go steal some information from his bosses and also shove a letter opener into his brain. Gross.

So our leads, on their first mission from the recently reopened X-Files, come to investigate...only to find the Department of Defense is working with Nugenics and is boxing them out. But Mulder has never let rules get him down, so he steals the dead guy's phone and finds a contact whose name is Gupta, which is apparently Hindi for Secret. Guess this guy must have been doing a lot of weird, under the table espionage.

Only it turns out Gupta is just his boyfriend. Whoop. But Gupta does know that Sanjay had a secret apartment and was worried about "His kids" despite being unmarried and having no children. They head to his secret apartment and find that he was talking about some children with genetic abnormalities he was working on, medically. They're not there, just pictures of them. Also Mulder gets hit by the same noise and pain as earlier, which eventually form the words "Find Her."

Mulder and Scully get kicked off the case by the DoD but don't care and keep digging, specifically Scully getting her old hospital to contact the Founder of Nugenics (his name is Goldman, but the company keeps calling him The Founder because uh...I dunno, it's creepy? We never get a solid explanation). But while they're hanging around the hospital, one of the ladies in Nugenic's experiments goes up to them and tells them that Nugenics is gonna buy her baby because there's something wrong with it, but she wants to back out. Mulder gives her his card and they wander off to meet the Founder.

"Hey Scully, it's 2016, I gotta find new ways to violate the law."

After a quick conversation with Mulder and Scully about William and a brief imagine-spot from Scully where she imagines what her life would be like if she'd kept him, they meet The Founder. He shows them his Bunch Of Kids With Genetic Abnormalities and says that he's working to help them, but there's also a girl with telekinesis who is clearly being held against her will, but Mulder and Scully don't seem to react much.

Our heroes decide the next course of action is to question Goldman's wife about their kid, the one she supposedly killed, but she tells them their daughter could breathe underwater and that her husband must have experimented on her, so she tried to run. She also says that she didn't kill their other kid, just um...cut it out of her? Gross. But she only did it because her baby told her to do it telepathically, the same way Mulder got communicated with. Anyway, then the lady they spoke to at the hospital turns up dead with her baby missing, and they realize that Nugenics must have taken it. Also gross.

But now Mulder puts enough minor moments together to realize that some random janitor was around all of the sites, and the missing kid is also the janitor. They go to collect him, and after a brief confrontation with his adopted mother and a conversation where he admits he killed Sanjay but it was an accident, they take him to see Goldman because he thinks Goldman is holding his sister and he wants to see her. Anyway it turns he's right, and they team up, knock Mulder and Scully out, kill Goldman (they don't go full Scanners, which is disappointing) and disappear. And that's it, give or take an imagine spot from Mulder about raising William.

Founder's Mutation is a big step up from the previous episode, although that's not super hard. It's obviously not up to the standards of some classic episodes, but it wouldn't be out of place (with a few season specific rewrites) in Seasons 6 or 7, which is a pretty solid base hit. It's definitely got some issues though, most of which are introduced with the era of the show it's in, but they're light enough that it can be enjoyable.

"Oh god, I'm remembering that time I listened to Alex Jones..."

The big issue is pacing. The episode has a LOT of ground to cover in the plot, in addition to wanting to pause for several lengthy digressions to get us some character building sidebars about William, and the episode ends up piling all of these things on top of each other. Especially in the back half, it feels like its just barreling through plot point after plot point, trying to get to the denouncement and after a while they seem to pile on top of each other. I get that, being in an abbreviated seasons and having to catch us up to speed on how the characters are feeling means they have to spend some time on William (since he's gonna come up later), but that is time the episode just does not have, at least not without excising something else.

The plot element that feels like it can be excised the most cleanly, outside of the beginning, is the Department of Defense stuff. I feel like the fact that the DoD is working with shady companies is gonna come back in later episode (I can't remember) but here it just feels like wasted breathe; Why bother having a scene where Mulder and Scully get told they have to stop investigating if they're just gonna hop right back on the investigation.

But outside of those issues, it's a pretty fun time. It's aware that its just fun to get to see Mulder and Scully back on the case, and it does get to bask in that for a bit. And yeah, despite some (if I'm being honest, kind of lame) jokes about how old Mulder and Scully are, it works pretty well. Duchovny and Anderson still have their chemistry and the writers know how to write their back and forth. And there are some nice updated details, such as Mulder just straight stealing a guy's phone and knowing to use his fingerprint to unlock it.

The mystery itself is not a particularly complex thing (the company called Nugenics with a mysterious leader called The Founder is bad, big shocker) but it's a fun little ride and it handles its scare scenes very well. I particularly like the opening scene, it's a fun grim little moment, and the actor handles it well. The X-Files clearly has a bigger budget now, but I like that they're not leaning on it, not yet at least, and just letting good sound editing and direction handle it instead. Doesn't quite erase the AWFUL bird effects in the third act, but that's like 2 seconds. 2 seconds that really stuck out, but still.

Hey, nice to see the effects guy from Birdemic is still getting work.

If the episode needed one thing to make it great, it's more of a sense of who the two kids are. The boy (Kyle) doesn't properly show up until the last 6 minutes and his sisters a couple minutes after (give or take a few seconds of wordless appearance), and as a result they're both pretty empty characters. Have they been in contact psychically? Why did they disappear? Does he really not have any better way of trying to find her than just jamming painful psychic messages in people's heads? I get that they wanna be mysterious, but a scene or two of getting to know them as people would make the finale land a little harder.

But none of the issues are dealbreakers and the episode, despite all of its pacing issues, moves at a good enough clip to stay engaging. Ultimately, the revival series is going to be leaning a lot on nostalgia and whether or not you think that's a good thing, that's just how it's going to roll. And having a decent, if not great, little Monster-of-the-Week to jump into season 11 sure is a better way to get me on board than what came before.

Case Notes:

• Dude sticking the sharp object down his ear is good classic X-Files stuff.
• Yeah the company is being super secretive to the FBI, they are 100% bad.
• The espionage business with Sanjay's phone turning out to just be Sanjay's boyfriend is solid, and the episode takes their relationship seriously enough.
• I gotta admit, I like getting to see Mulder and Scully going through some old school information gathering, autopsies and searching secret apartments, even if I dunno how much I like Mulder and Scully both pointing out that they're "Old school.
• The noise scenes are well directed and it hitting Mulder is a nice stakes upping.
• I like that Mulder, Scully and Skinner all know that that the Department of Defense is going to screw them and they have to put up a facade to keep investigating.
• That said, while Mulder chiming in "Obamacare" when they announce Goldman is under investigation is cheesy, Duchovny sells it, it got a laugh from me.
• The Nun Nurse is doing some nice subtly creepy work, or maybe my own biases are getting in the way.
• Smashing cutting to a sepia toned dream sequence of Scully getting to be a mother to William is REALLY abrupt. I guess it ends on the note that Scully is worried he's part alien, but still.
• I dunno how I feel about the episode using a bunch of children with genetic abnormalities as our row of horrors, but the makeup effects are impressive and it's unsettling. And I guess if I was gonna get mad at The X-Files for doing stuff like that, I should have started well before that.
• Mulder and Scully are pretty blasé about a girl with telekinesis being dragged screaming into a cell.
• Goldman's wife's story is pretty creepy and well done, especially the finale with her cutting herself open.
• They spend some time finding this kid then immediately just take him to Goldman? Okay sure, whatever.
• Ah hell, Molly was the name of the telekinetic girl, wasn't it?
• The movie turns into a cut rate X-Men horror movie for last 5 minutes and honestly, that's kinda rad.
• Mulder getting his own sepia tones imagine spot about raising William is sweet too, and I like that both of their imagine spots represent differing fears of what would happen to William.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out, so I can afford my own genetic experiments...by which I mean my transition.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Hokay, we got a lot of ground to cover, let's get to it:

Goldman, aka The Founder is played by a guy named Doug Savant, who is best known for playing main characters on both Melrose Place and Desperate Housewives. Never seen either, but I told you The X-Files wanted to get the entire cast of Desperate Housewives.

Lindquist (who I think was one of the DoD guys?) is played by Aaron Douglas, who has done a bunch of stuff (The Killing, Flash, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency), but to me he'll always be Galen Tyrol from Battlestar Galactica.

Ryan Robbins, who plays Murphy, was also in Battlestar Galactica (I don't remember a character named Charlie, sorry) but he's had main roles in a lot of Canadian TV that I've never watched; Sanctuary, The Guard, Continuum. I'm sorry if that means I should know those shows, but I don't.

Vik Sahay, who plays Gupta, had a main role on Chuck, a show I have never watched. He also had a major role in some Nickelodeon tv movies called Roxy Hunter and then a subtitle. I wouldn't mention it, but his Wikipedia entry calls it "The Roxy Hunter saga" which is absolutely the funniest word you could call a series of 4 Nickelodeon tv movies.

Mrs. Goldman (yes this is still happening) is played by Rebecca Wisocky, who had a main role on two shows I've never heard of, Devious Maids and Ghosts. She was also in Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 which is very funny to me, those movies are high comedy.

Are we done? We're done, thank god.