Case 10, File 04: Home Again

 AKA: Jiggity Jig? I Dunno Why It's Called That

The revival season of The X-Files has a weird relationship with its age. It wants to constantly call back to the original series, reference their tone and monsters and just let us have fun with Mulder and Scully again (let's not kid ourselves, these two seasons didn't get made because they had a bold continuation of the story that needed to be told, they got made because people were nostalgic for The X-Files). But it's also clearly aware of how much time has passed, how much the world has changed since 2002 and to its credit, it does feel like the show wants to move the story forward, engage with those changes. It just might find out that those two desires don't go together great.

Our episode opens with some guys from Housing and Urban Development hosing down a homeless camp to move them to a new apartment building. But, when one of the HUD guys heads back to his office, a garbage truck pulls up, a mysterious man walks into the HUD guy's office and uh...lemme check my notes...rips him in half. Oh and then he climbs back into the garbage side of the garbage truck. So that's weird. Weird enough for our heroes to get called in.

They examine the crime scene and come to some fun conclusions, like the fact that the HUD guy was ripped and not cut, and that whoever did it doesn't leave footprints. But before they can find more, Scully gets a call from her brother that her mother has had a heart attack. She rushes off to the hospital while Mulder sticks around to catch the killer.

He notices a new piece of graffiti, who looks like a big tall guy, and goes to talk to the homeless nearby about it. He runs into another heartless HUD guy and also a lawyer who claims to be working on behalf of the homeless, but Mulder points out neither of them are really listening to them. But he listens to them, long enough to hear that the homeless guy calls the graffiti the...sigh...Band-Aid Nose Man. I'm gonna call him the Trashman cause that sounds better, leave me alone.

This is fun first shot of Mulder and Scully for an episode.

Scully meanwhile heads to the hospital to see her mom, who remains in a coma. Her brothers haven't arrived and even though she and her mom once discussed not wanting their plug pulled if they're in a coma, she has an arrangement to have her plug pulled. Meanwhile, two guys have stolen one of the paintings of the trash guy, but he instantly shows up and mulches them. Brutally, I might add. It's kinda rad.

Mulder arrives at the hospital in time to comfort Scully when her mom's plug is pulled, but she hangs on for a bit. Unfortunately while that's happening, the Trashman attacks the lawyer lady at her home. Mulder and Scully are meanwhile saying goodbye to her mother, who briefly mentions William. That scene is actually excellent so I'm not even try to make a joke about it and end the paragraph here.

After her mom's death, Scully is desperate to work, so she and Mulder go and track down the guy who is making the graffiti. He, after a bit of prodding, takes them to meet a guy who has a bunch of clay men, who he said created the Trashman out of clay, but he came alive to protect the homeless people, and they figure out he's going after the other HUD guy. They all rush to go save him, but the Trashman is already there and mulches him. And so the episode ends with Mulder and Scully scattering Scully's mom's ashes and Scully saying that she needs to find out what happened to William.

Home Again is a pretty decent little Monster of the Week, wrapped around a pretty great episode about Scully dealing with her grief of losing her mother. Neither of them are as strong as they would be apart, but even with the compromises required by smashing them together to keep the season movie (six episodes means we gotta keep the plot going) it's still a pretty damn fine little episode, especially coming this late in the series.

Good creepy graffiti, A+

The main working element of the Monster half of the episode is the monster, even if they made the utterly bizarre decision for his in-universe name to be The Band-Aid Nose Man. The actor himself is a great physical presence, the kill scenes are appropriately brutal and the episode works with it, using jittery editing and odd shooting angles to make him seem inhuman. And yeah, I'll also admit it, the graffiti is a great calling card, it's a good ominous visual and you can throw it into the background to up the stakes.

I'm not so enthused about the theme the episode is going for, less because it's a bad theme and more because it feels the need to bludgeon us with it. Both Mulder and the sculptor in the finale feel the need to spell out what the episode is going for, the latter at length. And I like the theme, that government agencies and upper class advocates alike both often ignore the actual homeless people and just assume they know what's best for them, but the episode isn't willing to let us sit with that, so instead it has to hit us over the head with it.

Of course it might be more willing to let that theme breathe if it didn't have to share time with the Scully's mom plot, which is the other major issue with the episode, that these two stories don't mesh well. They make a weak attempt at the last second to try and tie them together (the clay guy is responsible for his creations just as Scully is responsible for William) but that lands with a thud and the episode wisely abandons it more or less immediately.

Oh my god this is worse THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE

But it's okay if the Scully's mom plot doesn't mesh well, because it's a pretty decent plot on its own right. Scully's mom is the last surviving X-Files parent, so her exit was always going to be emotional, but trusting Gillian Anderson to sell it was a great idea, she's incredible in this episode. I was getting actually choked up during the final scene, and that's mostly down to her. They use the callbacks to One Breath to give it even more depth, which is a good choice, even if the flashbacks get to be a little much.

The overarching story of The X-Files has, by this point, gotten so convoluted and twisty that is can get real frustrating to keep track of. This leaves two elements of the show that are worth keeping going for, the fun of seeing Mulder and Scully fight a monster and our investment in the emotional journey of these two characters as they navigate through this plot. And even if it doesn't do it perfectly, this episode does manage to give us both of those things. And that's enough to make a decent episode.

Case Notes:

• Opening with a bunch of homeless people getting driven out of their camp and hosed down by police, while a guy talk dispassionately about how this is "Helping" is just a wee bit too real for 2022.
• Garbage trucks are inherently creepy, glad we agree X-Files.
• The truck stopping and the guy just standing there when it goes is a nice simple effective moment, the kind of thing The X-Files specializes in.
• Dude just rips the HUD guy in half, that's pretty raw.
• I'm overthinking a bit, but I like the shot with Mulder and Scully from below with their badges seen first. It gives an idea what the ground workers think when they see them, I dig it.
• Mulder is being very flippant in the opening scene.
• Scully getting a call from her brother and thinking it's William for a minute is decent.
• I think that the shot with Scully going down the stairs is the first time The X-Files has ever done the "Camera at chest level, aimed at face" thing. It's a decent way of getting across intense emotion, although I find it more often implies altered mental state.
• Mulder noticing the street art, and that the street art is new, is good Mulder stuff, I like it when he's perceptive.
• Scully's mom asking for the son she's estranged from implies some Scully Family Drama we missed in the intervening 15-ish years.
• Mmm, don't really need a cut to footage from One Breath.
• The Band-Aid having no identifiable material on it is kind of neat.
• I feel like Scully's mom having a DNR didn't the kind of go nowhere scene where Scully tells her brother that her mom didn't have a DNR, we could have just counted on Anderson to sell that betrayal.
• The guy stealing the graffiti artist's stuff saying "Never knew you could make so much money off the homeless" is too on the nose by half.
• The painting being gone from the canvas is a great shot.
• The Trashman's attacks are nice and visceral, gory in a way The X-Files normally isn't. That might be a sign of the new era, but it works for selling him as a threat.
• I like Mulder showing up at the hospital.
• The Graffiti is a great calling card.
• The scene between Mulder and Scully as Mrs. Scully gets extubated is great, top tier Mulder and Scully stuff.
• The whole scene with the lawyer getting attacked is great, the jittery editing sells him as otherworldly and it's nice to get another scene set to a diagetic pop song, I feel like we lost those in Seasons 8 and 9.
• The last scene with Mrs. Scully is really heartbreaking, Anderson and Duchovny sell it perfectly.
• Honestly, the whole sequence at the hospital is top tier Mulder and Scully stuff. Anderson sells being tormented at having given William away really well, along with her obvious grief and Mulder is clearly trying to hold it together for her. Hell, even her wanting to go back to work lands really well. I even like her just sitting there messing with the quarter necklace.
• Jeez, Scully just DEMOLISHES that dude. He points his gun and then he's down, top tier.
• Mulder and Scully bantering about how he doesn't do stairs, she did stairs in 3 inch heels, great stuff.
• The basement is pretty solid stuff, creepy and weird, while still being mysterious enough that we wanna see where this is going.
• The artist giving Mulder and Scully a lecture on the theme of the episode is just kinda lame, but the lecture makes sense.
• What is it with The X-Files and tulpas made out of trash.
• So Scully is projecting on the artist, fun.
• The homeless people clearly know what's going on and Landry is way more brave about going to pursue people breaking the rules alone in a building full of people he forcibly relocated than I would be.
• The scene where Landry gets stalked is good, I like that they don't go for the direct jump scare and instead build up to it.
• Mulder and Scully straight up fail, Landry gets killed and they obviously can't arrest the tulpa or the artist.
• The smiley face mask on the clay statue is uh...Not Less Creepy.
• The final scene is good stuff, Scully just basically laying out all her fears vis a vis William and why she wants to find him. Great stuff.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out so I don't end homeless myself.

Current Celebrity Watch:

The sculptor is played by musician and songwriter Tim Armstrong, best known for being the lead in the 90s punk band Rancid. I've never listened to them, but apparently Glen Morgan is a fan.

The first HUD guy to get uh, mulched, is played by Alessandro Juliani who is best known for playing Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica and L on Death Note.

Audio Observations:

Petunia Clark's famous song Downtown plays during the scene where the...sigh Band-Aid Nose Man attacks the woman in her house. It's a good scene.