Case 11, File 04: The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat

AKA: I Dunno If Its Lost Dude, I've Seen Rudy Giuliani

The temptation for me to get misty eyed as I pass by some last milestones of the series is going to be hard to resist. And I feel like I'm entitled; I started this project in July of 2015, Obama was still President. Hell, when it kicked off, I was still pretending to be a boy. It is a massive End of an Era for me. So while I'll try to avoid getting too nostalgic, I hope you'll forgive me if I do it during the last Darin Morgan penned episode of the series.

Our episode kicks off with a brief flash of a Twilight Zone style show where a guy sees Martians everywhere but turns out to be a Martian (which, you know, is basically how The Twilight Zone always worked). After the credits, Mulder is arriving back from spending a few days in the woods looking for Bigfoot, and finds an X on his window. It's been a little while since that happened, so he decides to head down to the parking garage to see what's up. Oh we also find out that Mulder has a footprint mold of a Bigfoot track he saw once. So that's cool.

Turns out there's a dude named Reggie, who claims he knows Mulder, and to prove it tells the story of how Mulder's first episode of The Twilight Zone was the one we saw in the cold open, and that it has been erased from everyone else's memory. Scully, naturally, thinks this is all bunk, but then she runs into Reggie in the parking lot and he gives her a box of some Jell-O knockoff she liked as a kid. Also he calls her Sculls and I never stop wanting to eat his face for that.

Anyway, after some back and forth, and Reggie being chased off by some goons, we get to the main meat of our episode, which is Mulder, Scully and Reggie standing in a parking lot discussing the plot of the episode. See, Reggie claims he was a founding member of the X-Files, before even Scully, and that a mysterious Doctor They has removed this information from Mulder and Scully's brains. He also claims that Dr. They is responsible for the Mandela Effect. But he calls it the Mengele Effect. But hey, at least we get a fun montage of the earlier episodes with him in it.

He also claims he was in Greneda during the US invasion, and that the invasion was about UFOs because the President of Grenada was calling for the UN to investigate UFOs (that one's true) and that he saw a telepathic alien get captured in Grenada, but before they can get deeper into it, the goons show back up again and he bolts. Mulder and Scully have absolutely no idea what to do with any of this information and they basically admit it.

This is a really simple visual gag, but it's very well timed.

But then Mulder gets a call from Dr. They himself! They tells him that he's basically responsible for fake news and people's distrust in the media, but that Mulder can't really do jack shit about it, since no one trusts anyone anymore. Mulder meets with Reggie again, but it turns out that Scully has solved the case off screen; Reggie worked for the government for decades in various (deeply awful) capacities when he snapped and had a mental breakdown from helping America work against its own ideals. And then he concocted a fantasy where he was on the X-Files, from listening to Mulder and Scully's phone conversations.

So as the hospital shows up to take Reggie away, and he recounts the story of what he thinks is their last assignment together; They found a UFO and an alien popped out, returned the Voyager Satellite and told them that they don't want humans out in the wider galaxy. But as a thank you, they do give Mulder a Big Book of All the Answers, which causes him to despair. Still, Reggie gets taken away, despite Skinner seeming to know him. And thus the episode ends with Mulder discovering that the episode wasn't an episode of The Twilight Zone, it was a knockoff, and Scully deciding not to eat the Jell-o knockoff out of Mulder's Bigfoot Foot Mold, because she wants to remember it fondly.

Is The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat a great episode of the show? I have no idea, frankly. I know that I really love it, honestly probably more than I should, but I dunno if that's because it's great in its own right or just because it hit me right where I lived in a moment where I'm vulnerable to it. But, if we're being honest with ourselves, one of the points of art is to facilitate those moments, to touch us in some specific way. And so I guess I can say that this episode did get to me.

Not gonna lie, this got a "GAH! WOAH NELLY!" from me when I first saw it.

I'll tell you one thing that does make me feel a little more comfortable declaring this episode to be great which is that it's really fucking funny. It gets a little try-hard at moments (we'll talk about those in a bit), but for the most part the jokes really land. It even manages to get genuinely inventive with those jokes sometimes; Yes the bit with Adult-Mulder's head on a child body is horrifying, but clearly on purpose (and very funny), and bits like the montage of Reggie working with Mulder and Scully or the edit joke where Reggie's dialogue skips over companies who have done evil shit land in exactly the right way.

Reggie is also a great example of a comedic foil for our (often comedy inclined) leads. He's got a great pathetic energy to him that makes it entirely easy to buy him as a low level government flunky, and absolutely hilarious to imagine him as a core member of the cast (you think this dude could go head to head with man-eating firefly swarms? Nah). I'm not surprised that they named the episode after his forehead sweat, because it's a very vivid expression of who he is as a person.

The theming is a little loser than the classic Darin Morgan episodes, and it's here where we get to some of my actual complaints. I get why The X-Files feels the need to harp on Trump and Fake News, lord knows I did it too, but the problem is that it makes the series feel very rooted in a particular moment, whereas earlier episodes could feel timeless. The Trump parody with the alien at the end actually kind of undercuts the point (if humans actually are kind of bastards, why wouldn't we side with the aliens who don't want them around?) and honestly, it just still feels kind of weird for The X-Files to be trying to be this topical; I think they reference Trump more in these 16 episodes than the original run referenced Clinton in 7 Seasons.

"I asked you out here Agent Mulder because, simply, this is freakiest place in the city."

But the rest of the themes, the fallibility of memory, the role nostalgia plays and even the increasing awfulness of the American government, all work pretty well together. The idea that Reggie snapped because of how vastly the supposed ideals of America differ from the actual reality of America works VERY well with the theme of nostalgia and I like the coda that suggests that, while the past is never actually as good as you remember, there is value in remembering it fondly.

Honestly, for a long time in this project, especially early in the series, was that my memories would turn out to be false, that I wouldn't love The X-Files as much as I remember. That has not been the case, honestly if anything I think I love it more, just having had an opportunity to engage with it on a more thoughtful level. And sometimes that means that an episode about nostalgia for The X-Files' history hits me where I live.

Case Notes:

• You know when an X-Files opens in black and white it's gonna be a Wacky One,
• Mulder going out in the woods bigfoot hunting to unwind makes way too much sense.
• Mulder: "Seems like all I've been doing is watching the news and worrying the country has gone insane." Me: "Me too buddy."
• I also like the fact that Mulder has told the story of how he saw a Bigfoot footprint so many times Scully is sick of it.
• Oh hey, an X on his window, that's a nice callback.
• I like the scene in the parking garage a lot, it's walks the line between ominous and goofy pretty well.
• I like the detail about Mulder's first episode of The Twilight Zone being a formative memory for him, but I also like Scully basically being desperate for him to drop it.
• Never call Scully "Skulls." Also "He mentioned the forehead sweat" top tier line.
• I like the energy of the random guy and the increasing number of dudes following him is a solid bit.
• Fake Jell-O being Scully's memory is kinda sad. At least Mulder gets The Twilight Zone.
• Okay so the episode being about the Mandela Effect is honestly kind of clever. Also it's amusing to me that Mulder says there's no movie called Shazam, but in the time between this episode being released and now, they did make a movie called Shazam.
• Scully complains about how unromantic waiting in the car for the guy to show up is, but this is the man you have chosen to love Scully.
• Mulder and Reginald bickering about whether it's the Mandela Effect or the Mengele Effect is amusing.
• "I remember the logo being racist in a different way" is very funny.
• Hey they've got a "Can't Lick Our Dick" Nixon poster in the background.
• The youtube video of the story of Dr. They is very very silly but I dig it. Honestly it fits in with the vibe of the whole middle of the episode being about the three of them hanging around a parking garage bickering.
• I like Scully just bailing on the whole thing when it gets too silly.
• The montage of Reggie being in The X-Files' history is as goofy as it gets and also makes Reggie look like an absolute dickbag.
• Mulder getting made fun of for getting old is odd, but I guess it kinda works with the last episode. I like Scully explicitly pointing out that maybe conspiracies aren't as fun "After all this birther stuff."
• Where the fuck are they filming this meeting with Dr. They, those statues are deeply weird.
• I'm not gonna lie, I like Scully solving the case off screen while Mulder fucks around.
• The montage of the various government jobs Reggie has had is funny. Him being asleep while working for the SEC, torturing someone while working for the CIA and blowing up a wedding while working for the DoD are all very good and very dark.
• I feel like the "Last Case" bit being a parody of an old sci-fi movie is a joke done better in Jose Chung, but it's still funny. Voyager being there is a good joke though, especially the alien referring to it as a music sampler.
• Hey Skinner actually gets to show up. And say one line.
• Mulder and Scully ending the episode finding out that Mulder's memory was real but of a knockoff show, while Scully decides she doesn't want to be reminded if her jell-o knockoff bad is sweet and endearing.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Check it out or I'll alter your memory to remember you did. Wait, that would work against me, nevermind.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Brian Huskey, who plays Reggie, is a very well travelled comedy actor, probably best known for his role as Regular Sized Rudy on Bob's Burgers. He's also worked in major roles on Children's Hospital and VEEP.

Dr. They is played by Stuart Margolin, who had a major role on a 70s show called The Rockford Files. I've never heard of that show in my life, but thanks to it, he has as many Emmys as Gillian Anderson so...yeah.