The X Files – Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster

By: Kelly Kearney

Mulder and Scully meet the were-monster

For longtime fans of “The X-Files,” Monday’s episode felt like old times. It had all the elements of a great episode: Funny Mulder, cheesy monsters, quirky characters and more hidden Easter eggs than you could imagine. It’s an episode in the style of previous fan favorites, Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose and Bad Blood. What made those “monster of the week” episodes so popular was that we got to see Mulder and Scully let loose a little. They stand alone stories were a nice break from the heavy drama of the mythology episodes and Mulder and Scully Meets The Were-Monster, certainly delivered.

The show opens with a, let’s call them free spirited, couple moon gazing out in the woods getting high by huffing paint in paper bags. They’re looking up at the full moon and chatting about their dreams of being were-wolf paint huffers when they hear a rustle in the bushes behind them. At first, they think they’re hearing things, but then a man wrestling with what appears to be a lizard man can be seen through the brush. The creature realizes it’s been spotted and releases the man, unharmed, and runs off into the woods. When the coast is clear, the three stunned people see the body of a man beside them with his throat ripped out. A dead body, a two legged lizard man and two hippie paint huffers? This just got weird enough to call in our favorite agents of, “spooky.”

Back at the FBI, Mulder (David Duchovny) sits down in his office having an existential crisis when Scully walks in and asks him why he’s throwing pencils through her,” I Want To Believe,” poster (I guess she got that in the separation). He begins to recant his wild goose chases of the past, highlighting his embarrassing fails, while Scully (Gillian Anderson) tries to not roll her eyes yet being a supportive listener to Mulder’s rant. This Mulder is more mature than we last saw him. He’s coming to terms with the fact he chased a lot of armadillo men and rock creatures to later find out they were scams. He’s rethinking his process and taking a page out of Scully’s book of skepticism. Basically…he’s having a midlife crisis. He tells Scully he’s too old for childish things like monsters. So when Scully says they have a new case, he pauses, looks at her with subdued interest and she drops the bomb. The case has a monster. Mulder turns around and launches a pencil right through her poster. We can’t tell if this pencil bullseye is a metaphor meaning,” let’s do this Scully,” Or a metaphor meaning, ”Weren’t you listening to my rant Scully,” either way, Mulder and Scully set off to Oregon to investigate the killer lizard man.

In the woods someplace in Oregon, Mulder is playing skeptic to Scully’s believer while investigating the crime scene of the possible Lizard man murder. Scully points out the evidence of the case and the one surviving victim, an animal control officer. Mulder takes that as a clue that what they’re searching for is probably a mountain lion or maybe a serial killer. Scully rules out the lion and the two continue their search. Later on that night, a prostitute (played by Trans actress Shangella) working at a local truck stop, fends off an attack from what appears to be this lizard man with her purse. Mulder and Scully question her and the woman tells them that she beat a horny lizard man with her purse and then the creature ran off. Mulder shows her a police sketch drawn from the paint huffing couple’s description and she confirms that’s what she saw, but the lizard man had two eyes and was wearing underwear. Scully asks the only logical question you can ask about a human lizard in underwear, “boxers or briefs?” She confirms briefs, tighty whities like she used to wear. Mulder, looking confused, prompts the woman to tell the agents she transitioned to female last year. She says she told the police she saw which direction he slithered off to, but that they accused her of being a crack head and didn’t take her seriously. Mulder asks if she is a crack head and she admits, “well yeah….”

Going Viral With Were-Monsters

Mulder and Scully search the truck stop in the direction the lady of the night saw the creature flee in and that’s when they run into the animal control officer that was first attacked (Kumail Nanjiani). He seems shaken like he’s seen something that scared him and said he was on a stray dog call. At that moment, all three hear a human like growl. The animal control officer takes off in the opposite direction and Mulder and Scully push forward to investigate the growling. Mulder, who has recently joined the smart phone craze, takes out his phone and opens his new camera app. Scully, the seemingly sensible agent of the two, pulls out her gun and asks Mulder what he’s doing? Apparently, Mulder wants to get a monster selfie (and probably boost his Instagram followers). The phone keeps flashing photos and while he’s trying to figure out how to control the shot burst, Scully sees he accidently took a pic of mutilated body right in front of them. Scully, a medical doctor by day and monster chaser by night, confirms the body was recently killed and Mulder takes off with his camera phone ready. He quietly creeps around two parked tractor trailers, still fiddling with his camera app, when the animal control officer comes up from behind him and asks what he’s doing and why his phone keeps flashing. Distracted by the officer giving Mulder a smart phone tutorial, the lizard man attacks them both from behind. Mulder screams, phone flashing and falls backwards with the creature on top of him. Scully hears her partner’s distress and runs to find him. Mulder, laying on the ground dazed and confused with blood splattered on his face, says he’s fine, but smilingly says he scored the monster pic. He gets up and the two hear something coming from a porta potty behind the truck stop. They cautiously approach, Scully with her gun and Mulder armed with his smart phone, and open the door to find a well dressed man (played by “Flight Of The Conchords” actor Rhys Darby) using the facilities. The two agents apologize, especially considering Mulder took a picture of the man in his indisposed state, and continue to search for the lizard man.

Back at the autopsy room, Mulder is bugging. ”My ex-boyfriend is nuts,” Scully with his monster selfies from the truck stop. Scully, who is listening to Mulder’s theories about eyeball, blood shooting and lizard men reminds him that science proves that no such thing exists. Mulder, always trying to prove Scully wrong, tells her, “Oh no? Tell that to the horned lizard which shoots blood out of its eye balls as a defense mechanism. Scientific fact!” These two might be older and ready to put away childish dreams of jackalopes and crop circles, but they can still banter like the first day they met. Scully, always the one to drop truth bombs on Mulder says to him, “Mulder, the internet is not good for you,” and then asks him if he really believes he was attacked by a 6ft horny toad. Mulder, always the king of snarky come backs, asking his medical doctor partner to, “please keep this in the realm of scientific possibilities.” After a Scully patented eye roll, she tells Mulder that the victim’s bite marks were made by a human. In typical Mulder fashion, he theorizes that maybe they’re searching for a man sized horned lizard with human teeth? At that bizarre conclusion, Scully smiles and confesses that she’s enjoying this and had forgotten how much fun these cases could be. Scully is going to run some further tests on the victim, but tells Mulder to go back to the motel and get some sleep.

Peeping Tom’s and Jackalopes

Back at the creepiest motel since The Bates Motel, Mulder is awakened by the sound of a man screaming. He gets dressed and goes to investigate the disturbance. He finds the motel owner guzzling isopropyl alcohol and looking rather shaken up. When asked about the screaming, the owner said it was a disagreement with a guest and their bill. Mulder looks unconvinced, but leaves the man to finish his drinking in peace and sets off to search the motel himself. During the agent’s search, Mulder finds that one of the rooms has been trashed. He finds a mirror broken and a bottle of anti-psychotics on the night stand. He pockets the pills and as he’s about to leave, when he notices a mounted jackalope head on the floor and a gaping hole in the room’s wall. He looks through the hole and pulls on the wall to discover a hidden passage way between the rooms with a peep show style set up. As he’s searches the secret room, he looks through one of the viewing holes (coincidently covered with a fox head) to see Scully sleeping. Obviously not pleased with the perverted motel owner spying on his Scully, Mulder confronts the owner. After a flimsy excuse about building the peeping tom room for security purposes after 9/11, Mulder convinces the man to tell him the real story about the screaming and the destroyed motel room. The owner confesses that he saw something he can’t explain. The creepy owner tells Mulder about earlier that evening, while he was getting an eye full of Mulder snoring in his famous red speedo, he heard screaming from a nearby room. He peeked in and saw a man in a suit, destroying his room and threatening his own reflection in the mirror. The angry man spots the peeping owner through the jackalope head, growls at him, then transforms into a lizard and runs off. After listening to the description of the man, Mulder searches his phone for the picture of the porta potty suspect and the owner confirms it’s him. He’s the man and he’s the lizard. They are one in the same.

Mulder wakes up Scully to tell her what he’s learned from the motel owner. He’s doing his best to, “Mulderize,” his theories while shutting down what he assumes Scully’s scientific analysis would be. She patiently listens to his ranting and after he’s finished, she smiles and says, “yeah, this is how I like my Mulder.” He thinks that means she believes him, but she shoots that down when she calls him, “batcrap crazy.” Mulder says he’s going to track down the psychiatrist that prescribed the pills he found in the room. She agrees that’s a smart idea, but first they have to check out of that creepy motel.

The psychiatrist admits that he is working with a man named Guy who thinks he can turn into a lizard. He tells Mulder that the meds didn’t help Guy, but that he could find the man at the local cemetery. He goes there to decompress from the stresses of life. After the doctor questions Mulder’s sanity in believing in lizard men, the doctor hands him a script for his own psych meds. Mulder declines and heads to the cemetery.

While Mulder was talking to the psychiatrist, Scully spotted their suspect Guy at the local mobile phone store. She calls Mulder to tell him the news and when he gets to the store, finds a confused Scully and a trashed phone store. Scully tells him that she’s not sure what happened. She began to question Guy and he freaked out, trashed the store and ran off. Mulder, who’s always concerned for his partner, asks her what she was thinking to approach a suspect without backup. She avoids Mulder’s over protective accusations and tells him the man took off out the back door. She gets ready to tell Mulder the test results on the victim came back, but Mulder is already gone looking for Guy the lizard man.

Tributes and Human Follies

Mulder finds Guy where the psychiatrist suggested, the cemetery, and pretends to be mourning a loved one so that he can strike up a conversation with the suspect. He grabs a bouquet of flowers from a neighboring grave and places them on a grave that’s a tribute to the late X-Files director Kim Manners. Mulder asks Guy if he lost someone too and Guy says yes, himself. Confused, Mulder pushes Guy to elaborate and he confesses that he’s had a realization that humans can’t escape death. Then he breaks a bottle he was drinking from and weakly attacks Mulder, in hopes the agent will kill him. The fight ends before it even got started and the concerned Guy asks if Mulder is ok. Mulder says yes and the man pleads with him again to kill him. Mulder agrees, but only if Guy first tells him how he can change into a lizard. The two pull up a tombstone and Guy hands Mulder another bottle of liquor and he begins his story.

Guy isn’t a man changing lizard, but a lizard who was bit by a man in the woods and now changes into human form every morning. He was there in the woods the night the paint huffing couple spotted him, but he didn’t kill anybody. He was bit by a murderous evil human. The morning after he was bit, he woke in human form with all the desires and stresses humans have. He had an urge to cover his naked body and a desire to get a job and assimilate to human life. His employment urges led him to the cell phone shop, which he claims was a perfect job because it doesn’t require any previous knowledge, but having the human version of camouflage, the ability to B.S. your way through work. After his first day he was promoted to manager and happy with his new job. He ended his day, like most humans, with a hamburger and booked a motel room for some porn watching and sleep. Late that night, Guy changed back into a lizard and he hoped the whole human transformation was a dream. It wasn’t. The following morning, Guy woke up in his human form with all of the desires and feelings of inadequacy that Guy claims are strictly human problems. Upset, he went to the psychiatrist to see if he could cure him of this human disease. The doctor gave him a prescription for psych meds, but they didn’t help with the human problem. Guy felt alone and in need of a friend so he did what most do and adopted a dog. Dagoo, the dog, gave Guy unconditional love and made the human problem seem bearable, until the motel maid left the door open and Dagoo escaped. Sad and missing his fur friend, Guy searched for his dog all night, leading him to the local truck stop where he came face first with the night worker and her pummeling purse. After a misunderstanding about the woman’s hitting prowess, Mulder attempts to explain the sensitive subject of Transgenderism to the human lizard man, turning him into an instant ally. It seems the internet isn’t so bad for Mulder after all! Guy tells Mulder that after the woman hit him, he ran off. He remembered two men attacking him by some tractor trailers and a couple interrupting him in the porta potty. Mulder confirms that was him, but is still confused with this Were-Lizard day to night transformation to which Guy states the obvious that neither does he because he’s not a scientist. The two debate monster myths and their validity as well as a back and forth about the reality of jackalopes and it’s pretty obvious to the viewer that Mulder and Guy were meant to meet. Both were going through their own existential crisis and trying to find the meanings of their own paths in life.

Just when their bromance was beginning to bloom, Guy blows it when he tries to convince Mulder that Scully came on to him at the cell phone store – that the reason Mulder found the store in disarray was because Guy and Scully had made mad passionate love all over the store (not that he freaked out when she tried to question him). Mulder knows this is a lie since it took him years to even get a friendly kiss from Scully. He calls Guy on his lie and Guy admits he made it up, which is another side effect of this human disease: lying about your sex life.

Now that Mulder has heard the entire transformation story he tells Guy he’s not going to kill him because the story is too bizarre for words. Not that “Agent Spooky” hasn’t seen the impossible become possible, but this whole thing is kind of hard for him to swallow since he’s decided to become a more mature version of himself. Guy gets desperate and grabs Mulder, revealing his FBI badge. Mulder tells him he’s investigating the murders in the woods and truck stop and that he wasn’t at the cemetery mourning, but trying to catch a suspect. Guy feels betrayed by his new trusted friend and calls Mulder a monster and runs off leaving the agent to ponder over the story with a drink at the cemetery.

Immortal humans, serial killers and a dog named Dagoo…

Hours later, a hungover Mulder wakes up in the cemetery to his X-Files theme song ringtone. Scully’s calling and he tells her he’s been off chasing monsters all his life, but maybe he’s been a fool. A man into a lizard or a lizard into a man, what’s the difference? Scully tells him that she found Dagoo the dog at the local animal shelter. She reminisces about her old dog QueeQueg and how she misses the unconditional love of a dog. While Scully is pondering pet human relationships, the animal control officer from the attack in the woods throws a dog catcher’s pole around her causing the agent to scream. Mulder hears Scully’s distress and takes off for the local shelter. When he arrives he finds Scully cuffing the animal control officer and tells Mulder his monster was a serial killer all along. She figured out their suspect wasn’t a Were-Lizard after the autopsy test results came back proving the cause of death was strangulation. Mulder skips over her findings to ask her why she keeps putting herself in danger and not waiting for back up. She flirtingly looks at him while fingering his tie and states the obvious, that she’s immortal so she can handle it. Mulder leaves to go find Guy and apologize for thinking he was a killer while sticky fingers Scully decides to take Dagoo home as her new fur friend. Mulder finds Guy, naked and ready to go back into the wild to hibernate. The agent says he wasn’t aware lizards hibernated and Guy tells him they do for 10,000 years. Skeptical, Mulder says that’s impossible, nothing hibernates that long. Guy accuses Mulder of not believing him again, but Mulder responds with the famed X-Files tag line, “I want to believe.” Guy sees that Mulder is trying and thanks him for listening. Mulder returns the thanks and they shake hands. Guy, the were-lizard, runs off in search of a very long and hopefully forgetful nap while leaving a smiling agent Mulder behind. Mulder might have helped Guy find his lizard self again, but Guy helped Mulder more by making him realize the man Mulder is today is the same man he always was.