Asst. Director Walter S. Skinner ....... Mitch Pileggi
Mr. X. ............Steven Williams
AN ATTACK ON A NEW JERSEY SEWER WORKER LEADS MULDER TO SUSPECT A
MUTANT LIFE FORM HIDING IN THE BOWELS OF A SEWAGE PLANT.
Assistant Director Walter Skinner sends Mulder to investigate a
corpse found in a New Jersey sewer. Still angry about the closing of his X-Files, Mulder
confronts his boss over the meaningless, make-work assignments he is being given. But
Scully's autopsy of the corpse reveals the presence of a mutated parasite capable of
growing to human size. When other workers are attacked by a sewer-dwelling monster, Mulder
must track down a killer spawned in the belly of Chernobyl itself.
Notes
Check those credits again...yup, Darin Morgan plays the flukeman!
Under all that makeup is one of the finest writers the show ever had, Emmy-winning author
of "Humbug", "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", "War of the
Coprophages", and "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' ". His brother, Glen
Morgan, worked on the show "Space: Above and Beyond", and the two shows have
borrowed each other's actors frequently.
The autopsy Scully performs is case number DP112148 (Chris Carter's
wife, Dori Pierson, initials and birthdate) of John Doe number 101356 (Chris Carter's
birthdate).
Quotes
____________________
(sailor tells Dmitri to clear blockage in sewage tank)
Dmitri: "Why is this always my job?"
Sailor: "Because you are young. And because it is terrible and
smelly work."
Reed: "City runs on several different systems. Some new, some
built around the turn of the century. Almost as old as Charlie here. Isn't that right,
Charlie?"
Charlie: "Ah, yes sir."
Mulder: "And all the sewage comes through this plant?"
Reed: "560,000 people a day call my office on the porcelain
telephone."
Scully: "Platyhelminthes are often hermaphroditic. Mulder, this
is amazing. Its vestigial features appear to be parasitic, but it has primate physiology.
Where the hell did it come from?"
Mulder: "I don't know. But it looks like I'm gonna have to tell
Skinner that his suspect is a giant bloodsucking worm after all."
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was
also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
French restaurant. [...]
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her
boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the
bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad
rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished
there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
"Stop the car," the girl said.
There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the
woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an
arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
onto my granola and faced a new day. Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
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