The X-Files – Babylon

By: Kelly Kearney

Episode 5 of “The X-Files” tackled relationships in many forms. The relationship between Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson), between religion and science, between thoughts and actions, between perceptions and realities, and most importantly, between a mother and her child. “Babylon,” opened in Southwest, Texas with a young Muslim man, named Shiraz, kneeing on his prayer mat, saying is mid-day prayers. After giving thanks, he eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a side of milk and pensively looks out his window. It’s a bright day in Southwest, Texas but Shiraz seems anything but cheery.

The young man gets in his car and begins to drive to where, we’re not sure but the locals he encounters on his trip seem less than pleases to see Shiraz (Artin John). While at a stop light, two attractive young women catch Shiraz’s eye and he smiles in a flirtatious albeit shy way. The women give him a condescending and slightly cold look in return and Shiraz seems to be use to this response. A truck pulls up next to him, country music blasting and the driver, not surprisingly throws some bigoted looks of disgust towards Shiraz and the passenger yells, ”Looks like we got a visitor! A little brownie!” obviously Shiraz is not blind to the country’s growing climate of Islamophobia and he rolls up his window and continues on, ignoring the two as best he can.

Shiraz pulls up to a motel and is greeted by another young man who could be a friend or possibly a lover. Their relationship is unclear, but they are close and affectionate towards one another. Together the both go inside the man’s motel room. We don’t know how long they were at the hotel but later on that day, the two are heading into an art gallery with a sign out front that reads, “ZIGGAURAT.” A Ziggurat is a rectangular shaped tower, with a temple placed on top, that was said to have been inspired by the biblical story of, “The Tower of Babel.” While more than most Muslims are not terrorists and American television tends to only portray them as such, it was disappointing to see that “The X-Files” looked like it wouldn’t be stepping away from that stereotype. I’d hoped I was wrong with the direction this episode was taking, but after Shiraz and his friend stepped into the art gallery and an explosion went off, leaving us to believe the two men were suicide bombers I remained skeptical. This is “The X-Files” after all, not everything you see is the actual truth. People where running out of the building on fire, bodies littering the ground, the devastation was immediately apparent. It was a shocking opener and set the mood for a controversial topic to tackle on a quirky show about aliens and government conspiracies.

Back in D.C. the Agents, or as Scully has been dying to call them since the show’s pilot, “The FBI’s most unwanted,” are talking about a bizarre case around the world. Reports of people hearing loud horns or trumpets in various countries to which some believe is the, “trumpet of God,” which, according to biblical teachings is a warning sign of a glooming apocalypse. Mulder, still questioning everything and seemingly fascinated with finding a bridge between religion and science, is trying to compare the truth about the trumpets with the many misconceptions in some of the most famous biblical stories and most importantly, the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve and that cursed apple. If God promised to kill Adam after he tasted the forbidden fruit then why did Adam live to be 932 years old? How can Mulder, “who wants to believe,” actually have faith and believe? If the very basis of these beliefs is so arbitrary how can he not question it at its very core? All of this debating speaks to Mulder’s growing belief in atheism and his step back from total faith in the paranormal.

Scully, a scientist and a Catholic, suggests the mysterious trumpets are a result of the power of suggestion. She played devil’s advocate and reminded, Mulder of all the,” end times,” predications that have failed to happen, for centuries. As for Adam and his long life, she tells him that didn’t literally happen. Scully questions why Mulder is even debating this, he’s not known for believing in a divine power, as he tends to lean towards the more skeptical side of religion than that of a believer. Mulder questioning his beliefs just adds to the idea the revival is trying to portray, that Mulder and Scully are older and wiser and questioning what all middle aged people do, life, death and everything in between. Mulder is desperately trying to make sense of a God that would allow pain and evil in this world in hopes it would teach humanity some kind of lesson.

While the two agents play debate religious text, there’s a knock at the door. Enter Scully and Mulder 2.0 or as they go by, Agent Miller (Robbie Amell) and Agent Einstein (Lauren Ambrose). Yes, that Einstein. Apparently. Albert is a distant relative or at least that’s what the character played by the ever sarcastic Lauren Ambrose leads us to believe. Agent Einstein, like Scully, is a medical doctor, but that’s not the only similarities between these two red headed agents. Both are natural born skeptics with partners whose beliefs in the paranormal run strong. Miller (who’s obviously heard the rumors about Spooky Mulder searching for aliens from his office in the bowls of the FBI) seems to be quite a fan of the older agent. Miller explains that they’re there to investigate a suicide bombing at a gallery in Texas. They’re searching for possible accomplices and ruling out any plots for further attacks. Since the suicide bomber, Shiraz, is in a coma, Miller was hoping Scully and Mulder had any ideas on how to communicate with coma patients. Mulder looked flattered that Miller would request his expertise, especially considering last week Mulder bragged about willing Scully out of her coma all those years ago, but he tells Miller he can’t help him. Einstein looks ready to say, “I told you so,” and the two leave their card just in case Mulder thinks of anything helpful.

Einstein and Miller head to the airport to catch a flight when Agent Einstein gets a call from Mulder. He tells the young agent that he may have a way to communicate with Shiraz, but he needs her Scully like skills. He can’t ask Scully to help because he’s afraid it will remind her of her recent loss of her mother. At first, Einstein didn’t take Mulder’s request seriously, but after Mulder convinced her that lives were at stake, she halfheartedly agrees. Einstein lets her partner know she may have a lead, although she might have to ride the “crazy train,” to get it. Einstein leaves and Agent Miller gets a phone call from Scully. Scully tells him that she may have a way to communicate with Shiraz but its experimental and would need his assistance. He agrees to meet Scully in Texas and it seems our agents have swapped partners – Scully with the younger version of Mulder and Mulder with the younger version of Scully.

Scully and Miller are at the hospital, discussing her ideas to communicate with Shiraz. She talks about a doctor who used an MRI machine to communicate with a comatose patient and she was hoping they could try something similar with an electro-encephalogram. Miller thinks it’s a great idea and Scully is glad to have the distraction after her recent loss. Their ideas immediately get blocked by government officials who have no interest I getting to the truth, they just want the terrorist dead. Scully, always the open minded doctor, is disgusted by their lack of humanity and obvious bigotry and the two agents leave Shiraz alone to discuss their options. Leaving a suspected suicide bomber alone in a hospital might not have been the wisest choice for the agents because a hateful nurse uses this opportunity to turn off Shiraz’s life support. Luckily, the agents walk in and stop the nurse from killing Shiraz. Apparently she lost the memo about America being a melting pot for all countries because she’s anti-immigration and thought murder was her only option to show her contempt for outsiders.

While Scully and Miller are dealing with Shiraz and his near death experience in a southwest Texas hospital, Mulder and Einstein are coming up with their own “groovy” plan to communicate with the comatose suicide bomber. Mulder proposes that if ideas like love and hate can move people to act then that must mean these ideas have weight. They are living breathing actions. He proposes that if he were to put himself on another plane of consciousness maybe he could get inside the mind of Shiraz and communicate with him. Basically, Mulder wants to trip the light fantastic with some magic mushrooms and try to talk to Shiraz in an altered state. Einstein immediately laughs off his idea as ridiculous and the two argue back and forth like a tennis match. Mulder setting up ideas and Einstein driving home how idiotic they are. Einstein insists that ideas can’t kill people, people kill people. Ideas are an intangible thing not like a bomb. Mulder fires back that the bombing at the Ziggurat exhibit was in retaliation to a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad in a less than flattering light and denouncing radical Islam, proving his theory that thoughts lead to actions. Angry and frustrated, Einstein marches out of Mulder’s office and gets on a plane to Texas to find her partner, what Einstein finds when she gets there enflames her obvious jealousy. Miller and Scully are together and still trying to get through to Shiraz. Einstein is hurt and most likely feeling left out and jealous of Scully impeding on her territory, so she lashes out and then calls Mulder. She agrees to his meet him in Texas and consider is drug fueled inquiry.

Mulder lands in Texas and Einstein is waiting for him with his stash. She gives him pills she claims contain the magic mushrooms, when in reality they are just niacin pills. Mulder is about to realize what a buzzkill she really is when he pops the pills and surprisingly begins to hallucinate. One minute later, Mulder is sitting bedside to Shiraz and the next he’s wandering through traffic heading to a country line dancing bar higher than a Cheech and Chong movie. Mulder ditches his stuffy FBI clothes for a 10-gallon cowboy hat, a Harley Davidson shirt and fist rings that read Mush-rooms. He’s totally out of it and starts dancing the achy-breaky and knocking back shots of fireball with his buddies the Lone Gunmen who interestingly enough have been dead for over a decade. Scantily clad women and dead drinking buddies and Mulder seems to be having the time of his life. Mulder’s trip doesn’t end there. Next, he gets abducted by a UFO and tied to a table in a red room by a dominatrix version of Agent Einstein, proving that Mulder maybe older, but he hasn’t quit his porn addiction. Soon, his “50 Shades” fantasy turns dark when he sees himself on a boat, rowed by men in grim reaper type robes being whipped by The Cigarette Smoking Man to the sounds of Tom Wait’s singing, “Misery is the River of the World.” Also, on this boat is Shiraz who’s laying on what appears to be his mother’s lap, dressed in white robes and looking somewhat angelic or Christ like. The pose is very reminiscent of Mary holding Jesus’ body after the crucifixion which has been depicted in many works of art. Mulder realizes this is Shiraz and remembers what this whole hallucination was for. He leans into talk to Shiraz and the young man whispers something into his ear.

Somewhere during Mulder’s drug fueled haze, he must’ve passed out because he wakes up in the hospital with an angry Skinner leering over him. Skinner tells him that he was found at a local bar, wasted and scarring the crap out of some elderly women with his inebriated antics. As Skinner is trying to get a handle on his wayward agent, Agent Einstein walks in and drops a bomb: Mulder wasn’t intoxicated on any substances but his own power of suggestion. She tells him she gave him niacin and he couldn’t have possibly been high that the only influence he was under was his own. Mulder is released from the hospital and as he’s being wheeled out, he spots someone familiar – the women from his hallucination, Shiraz’s mother. The woman is outside the hospital trying to get past security to see her injured son. Mulder vouches for her and escorts her into see Shiraz. They enter the hospital room and Miler and Scully are still there. Shiraz’s mother explains to them that she has been communicating with her comatose son in her dreams and that he told her he didn’t activate his bomb vest. Once he was inside the building, he had a change of heart and couldn’t go through with it. He saw the faces of the innocent people who would be killed and he just couldn’t do it. The friend he met at the motel was the one who detonated the bomb, not Shiraz. Shiraz’s last minute realizations did nothing to help him since the bomb still went off and regardless of him changing his mind, he’s still paying the price. Watching Shiraz and his desperate mother reminds Mulder of his hallucination. He tries to remember what Shiraz whispered to him on that boat ride to hell, but can’t make sense of it. Mulder, not really able to speak Arabic, muddles through the translation and Agent Miller, who does speak Arabic, translates the whispers as a location The Babylon Hotel. This is the place where Shiraz met his friend before going to the gallery.

The clue whispered to Mulder sparks an FBI raid to the local motel and there they find a terrorist bomb making cell. With the terrorist threat disarmed, Agents Miller and Einstein have solved the case and learned something from their older counterparts. Einstein tells Miller that while she didn’t really do much except allow Mulder to act out his drug fueled experiments, she did learn that words do have weight and can drive people to do crazy and dangerous things. learning about the weight of words was important, so was the other lessons they gathered from Mulder and Scully. After a longing look accompanied by a flirtatious smile, the two might’ve also learned something about chemistry between partners – a lesson they most definitely absorbed through spending so much time with Mulder and Scully.

Episode 5 ends with an “Ho Hey” look into Mulder’s path of understanding the power of suggestion. He’s sitting on his porch, listening to The Lumineers on his IPod when Scully pulls up talk about the case. You get the feeling she doesn’t go out to their once shared home, very often since the breakup, because Mulder seems surprised but happy to see her. He grabs her hand and asks her to take a walk with him while he mulls over his feelings about the case. Mulder tells her that he’s been on this, “God kick,” and trying to come to terms with a god that could punish his people so harshly – the angry God that’s talked about in the Tower of Babel story that violently lashed out at his followers for their hubris and scattered them across the globe. Is God saying, “Worship me in my great anger?” Mulder seems confused as to why a god would reveal himself in such a way that it would incite violence and separate all of his children to turn on each other in his name. After seeing Shiraz and his mother, Mulder hopes that maybe there’s another face to this angry god. A god of “mother love.” A mother’s love can weigh just as heavily as words and their powers of suggestion. Obviously, lovingly looking at Scully, Mulder is also talking about her and her recent loss with her mother as well as her unanswered questions about their child, William.

Scully, ever the rational of the two, poses the question that maybe scattering his followers around the world wasn’t to punish them, but to challenge them to come together. Regardless of their differences and language barriers to build a “society organized around better ideals and loftier purposes than self-glorification,” he’s not punishing them as much as leading them to a better way. Mulder, who needs literal meanings, wishes God would just explain this in words we all could understand so we could speed up this human enlightenment and Scully says maybe his communication is beyond words. If we open our hearts and minds and listen to the words he’s trying to tell us, we will understand. Mulder takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and together they raise their hands trying to be in the moment and listen to the words which aren’t spoken. Scully laughs at his attempts to call the gods and then Mulder hears it, the sound of trumpets. The sound that was reportedly heard in many corners of the earth signaling that the end is near. With one 2-hour episode left in the show’s revival, the end is indeed coming no matter what you believe in.