Case 01, File 18: Teso Dos Bichos

AKA: Faster Kitty Cat, Kill Kill

Despite my nitpicking of some individual episodes, if I'm being 100 percent honest, The X-Files has been batting 1,000. The entirety of season 3 up to this point has had some of the best episodes of the series, most of the others have been exceptional, even the weaker ones have been pretty damned good. I knew, instinctively, that such a run of great episodes had to end, even the first time I watched it. I just didn't expect it to collapse in such spectacular fashion.


Teso Dos Bichos opens in the Ecuadorian mountains, where an archaeological dig has just pulled up a burial urn which contained an Amaru, a female shaman. The local Natives tell the archaeologists that there's a curse on digging it up, because it's the 90s and we have some awkward politics about First Nations people. One of the archaeologists named Bilac tries to warn the other archaeologist, but he's ultra-white so he ignores it and is immediately mauled while Bilac gets high at a native ceremony.

Back in Boston another archaeologist at the museum disappears and Mulder and Scully are called in. Scully is convinced it's an act of terrorism because some Native rights groups have been demanding the urn be returned to where the archaeologists found it, but Mulder is convinced it's an elusive curse. They go and visit Bilac, who resigned in protest over the urn, where he acts evasive and kind of high frankly. Scully still thinks he's responsible, but Mulder is stuck on that curse.

Meanwhile, Bilac is having intrigues with another museum worker named Mona, who hides said intrigue from her boss. Her boss, while leaving the museum, finds his car has stalled due to um...dead rat (gross) and is immediately attacked and dragged off by something. During the search for his body, they discover his intestine in a tree (also gross). This causes Mona to go to Bilac who is still high from something called Yaje (its's Ayahuasca).

"Where were you last night?"
"I'm gonna be honest, I'm super high and I'm not totally sure where I am now."

In the middle of the autopsy on the intestine, Mona calls Mulder and Scully to tell them that shit is getting weird with Bilac, but before Mulder can show up to help her, rats come out of the toilet (best scene in the episode) and she disappears, leaving Bilac suddenly there alone. After he too disappears, despite being held in a room, Mulder and Scully figure out they should head into the sewers, where they find out monster: A horde of house cats. Yep. Anyway, they escape the kitties and the episode ends with the Urn being sent back to Ecuador.

Teso Dos Bichos is a bad episode, one that sticks out in the shining example of season 3 for being bad, but its badness is not particularly interesting. Its a victim of what is clearly a bad production, either an unfocused script or a series of rewrites leading the episode to be meandering and uninteresting, and finally building to an all time bad finale (except maybe Space). The series will regain its feet almost immediately, but Bichos does not work.

The director of this episode once commented that the first 3 acts of this episode were some of the finest he'd ever done, but with respect to Mr. Manners, I don't agree. Yes, the finale is bad, but the episode has lost its way even before that. Put simply, the story meanders too much and never manages to pick up a head of steam. Mulder and Scully are so far removed from the peril, and our episode specific characters so thin that I never feel engaged in the action.

Looks like someone took that Seinfeld line about Jerry's car running on his sweat and blood a little too literally.

Honestly, the episode this most reminds me of is Shapes, which is by no means a classic but makes Bichos' problems stand out all the more. Yeah, Shapes had issues, but it also had solid acting, real stakes, an entertaining central mystery, engaging characters, even themes and a message. Bichos tries to make the Urn important and comment on white people stealing Native artifacts, but it both-sides' the issue too much and honestly, compared to someone getting shot at the beginning of Shapes, it just feels limp.

One other thing Shapes had is a monster worth a damn, and that is the final thing that really sinks this episode. Switching out the jaguar they're hinting at for a horde of cats feels less like a twist and more like a punchline and as hard as the episode tries, it can't make them engaging or frightening for the finale. Maybe they couldn't afford a jaguar, but they seem to be hinting at a horde of rats, which would work a lot better. HP Lovecraft taught us that rats can be scary.

None of this is helped by universally sloppy character work. Most of the characters only get a line or two of dialogue before they're killed. The exceptions are Mona (who gets a fair amount of dialogue, but almost all of it is expository, so it ends up not mattering) and Bilac. Bilac is supposedly our main non-FBI character, and he certainly gets a lot of screen time but it doesn't really add up to anything. It doesn't help that the actor's primary emotion for the character is "Standoffish and kind of high."

"Look Mulder, I know you wanted me to look through his journal, but he just talks about getting high all the time."

If Pusher is an example of The X-Files when it's at its best, Teso Dos Bichos is one of the episodes where everything went wrong. The episode has the stink of a troubled production, full of compromises and rewrites. And since I know that the production was a nightmare for all involved, I'm happy to report my instincts on troubled productions are accurate. When Gillian Anderson announced she was allergic to cat fur, they should have taken it as a sign the episode was doomed, because the result is one of the worst episodes of the series.

Case Notes:

• Bichos is slang for balls in Columbia and Venezuela. I don't know what you're supposed to do with this information, I just thought you should have it
• The episode makes a valiant attempt to not have the cold open look like Canada, but it does, it very very much does.
• The episode opens with the potential of addressing the morality of taking sacred artifacts from where they belong, but it kind of fudges it with the idea that they're rescuing it from a pipeline.
• Good lord, this episode gets bogged down in "Mystical Native" nonsense. Come on X-Files, I know you're better than this.
• I am very amused that the episode's conception of "Drugged up" vision is slightly slowed footage with what looks like a night vision filter put over it.
• You know, I get that the episode is going for a reveal, but from my experience, with that much blood on the floor, you'd smell it before you step in it...look, I'm from Alaska, I used to hunt, okay?
• Scully and the curator are discussing political terrorism and in Mulder walks with a curse. Even when it's bad, I love this show.
• I dunno what direction Bilac was getting, but "Arrogant and stoned" is not a good look for him.
• Scully: "[You believe] he was carried off by a mythological jaguar spirit?" Mulder: "Go with it Scully."
• So much of this episode is devoted to the various ins and outs of the museum and who believes in what with regards to the Urn rather than the actual monster stuff, and I just do not care. Shapes did this too with the ins and outs of the situation on the Native reservation, but the characters and conflicts in Shapes were a lot more interesting, much better acted and actually had stakes. This is just a bunch of museum guys arguing over an jar.
• I had forgotten how much the episode made of one of the victim's car being a Jaguar. Come on X-Files, that's beneath you.
• "Label that." "As what?" "Partial rat body part." Good stuff.
• Okay, credit where it's due, the intestine in the tree is pretty gross.
• Bilac and Mona's storyline is pretty weak, and it mostly just eats up screen time. I didn't mention it above in the actual review, because I don't have anything else to say about it, it's just...there.
• The scene with the rats in the toilets is, by a pretty wide margin, the best scene of the episode. Creepy sound buildup, good visual. More stuff like that would be better.
• The bit with the dog dying is pretty unnecessary. A lot of the finale is just stalling to reach the time limit, since the episode kind of runs out of steam after Mona's death.
• The cinematography and lighting in the sewer segment is solid, but it ends up not mattering.
• I'm just gonna say it, the bait and switch that it's actually a horde of cats as opposed to a single jaguar is pretty pointless and just serves to make the entire finale unbearably lame.
• Also? Literal cat scare. Several of them.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Consider becoming a Patron. I named all the tiers after X-Files stuff, because I'm a nerd.

Current Celebrity Watch:

I was nearly 100 percent certain I recognized our Cold Open Victim, Alan Robertson, from something. Turned out he had a minor role in another X-Files episode, Fire, which is fun.