The X-Files - 6.

writer: Vince Gilligan

director: Rob Bowman

STARRING:

David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder

Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully

Guest Cast:

James Pickens, Jr. as Assistant Director Kersh

Junior Brown as the farmer

Bryan Cranston as Patrick Crump

Janine Venable as Vicky Crump

Michael O'Neill as the Patrol Captain

Bob Peters as the Idaho news anchor

Frank Buckley as the Nevada news anchor

Mindy Seeger as the coroner

Harry Danner as the CDC Doctor

Scott A. Smith as the prison doctor

Ken Collins as the gas station attendant

In a nutshell, Mulder and Scully get involved with a strange occurance in Nevada ... people dying in their cars ... their heads exploding!

We begin in Elko, Nevada, where a late-breaking news flash on TV is showing a police chase between a blue Barracuda and the Nevada Highway Patrol. Patrick Crump is driving the Barracuda with his wife, Vicky, lying on the back seat in extreme pain. A vein on her temple is bulging ominously. Ahead of the speeding duo the cops have set up a road block, one of those spiked bars which will damage the car's tires and slow it down considerably. Sure enough, Crump hits the spikes and his car is swiftly pulled over. While one trooper tries to hold Mr. Crump on the ground as he thrashes about yelling, "No! She has to keep going!", another trooper places Mrs. Crump in the back of a police car where she begins to bang her head against the window. One of her eyes goes

bloodshot ... then her head explodes, ewwwww!

Meanwhile, in Buhl, Idaho, we find Mulder and Scully at a farmhouse doing routine checks on fertilizer (suspected terrorism, see "The Beginning" for why they're not on an x-file case). While talking to the farmer, Mulder spots the Crumps' chase on TV and, naturally, both of our heroes are intrigued. They're off to Elko, Nevada, unbeknownst to the FBI, that is, those sneaky devils.

Back in his Elko Precinct cell, Patrick Crump sits all alone, presumably greiving for his dead wife. Suddenly, his nose begins to bleed and he freaks out, yelling to anyone who can hear him, "Somebody?! It's starting! ... Let me out!"

Mulder and Scully arrive on the scene and are told they can't see Mr. Crump as a doctor has been called to check on him. While Mulder waits for a chance at questioning Patrick, Scully does her doctorly duty and heads to the morgue for a peek at Vicky Crump.

At the morgue, the young female coroner shows Scully the corpse. Vicky Crump's head is blown apart but with no signs of gunpowder, carbon stippling or an entry wound, it must be an exit wound, but how? Scully inserts a probe into the head and finds something springy to the touch. A further push creates a hissing ... then bubbles foam out of the wound ... then ... BLAMMO! Scully is hit by an explosion of blood ... ewwwww! The head now looks like a deflating balloon.

Meanwhile, back at the precinct, an unconscious Patrick Crump, the veins in his temple throbbing, is being moved via a gurney into an ambulance as Mulder runs to catch up with him. He's loaded into the back of the ambulance and Mulder tries to join him, but he's stopped, so he follows behind in his car. As the ambulance's speed increases, Crump's heartbeat slows down to a normal rate and he wakes up. He looks over at a cop sitting next to him, then looks at his gun. We switch to Mulder following the vehicle closely. All of a sudden, the ambulance swerves and comes to a stop and Mulder nearly collides with it. The back doors of the ambulance open and Mulder sees Crump holding a gun, the EMTs with their hands in the air. As Mulder reaches for his own gun, Crump points his weapon at him.

Cut to Scully as she tries calling Mulder on her cell phone. Eventually he answers and Scully tells him what happened at the morgue. While she has no idea what happened to Vicky Crump, she tells Mulder to stay away from Patrick Crump, whatever this "virus" may be, it's communicable. She's too late, Crump's lying on the back seat of Mulder's car with his gun pointed at him.

Scully's in the quarantined morgue, her cell phone her only connection to the police captain on the other side of the window. The police are tracking Mulder as it heads west, cruisers close behind him, a helicopter being kept at a distance and the road block still in place. They've contacted Crump through Mulder's phone. He tells them to back off or he shoots Mulder!

The cruisers back off, leaving Mulder and Crump on their own. Being his usual charming self, Mulder makes a snide remark which ticks off Crump and he throws Mulder's cell phone out the window. Smooth move, Mulder! He soon comes to a stop light and as he slows the car down, Crump starts

hyperventilating, so Mulder floors it and runs the light. That nasty vein starts bulging again, Mulder gets the car up to 70MPH and Crump's condition begins to improve. Mulder's detective skills kick in and he asks Patrick if this is what happened to Vicky. If she got worse when the car slowed down, and improved when they were speeding. Patrick confirms that the car has to keep moving. Mulder's worried about the upcoming road block and when Patrick asks him how he knew, Mulder points to the chopper still following them from the air. If the car is stopped, Patrick will die, so Mulder finds a fire road and takes off, away from the road block.

Back at the morgue, Scully is informed of Mulder's new route and assumes he has a good reason (you mean other than the gun pointed at his head, Scully?), then her cell phone rings. It's A.D. Kersh, their new boss, and he's mighty ticked that they're in Nevada, but the field office in Las Vegas will assist them if they're needed. Doesn't take long for our duo to get up Kersh's nose, eh? 'S'okay, buddy, Skinner would have been miffed too, they have a habit of doing this.

Back to the car as Mulder and Crump begin to bond. Well, it's mainly yelling and fighting, but that Mulder's a tough nut to crack at the best of times. For some reason, during all this bonding, Crump calls Mulder a Jew ... which he confirms (finally we can put an end to the religious debates, right? There, it's on the table, Mulder is indeed Jewish). Things seem to calm down and then Crump yells out, "It's the wrong way! Go this way!" and Mulder turns the car west again, nearly colliding with several cars in the process. Crump begins banging his head against the window ... the audience waits for the explosion ... he's yelling out in pain ... we all cover our eyes ... but, he recovers and all is well once more.

Scully, now donning a contamination suit, arrives at the Crump's mobile home in Montello, Nevada, along with 3 other men, including the doctor from the morgue. They wander through the house, but find nothing of interest. In the backyard, however, Scully sees a dog chained to a pole running around in westward circles (don't ask me how we know he's facing west, I haven't a clue, weather-vane perhaps?). She calls for the others to join her, she wants to retrieve a blood sample from the dog, but when the doctor grabs the dog, its chest explodes and the doctor is coated with doggie blood.

As they bag up the dog and take it away, Scully spots a light on in a neighbour's house. She knocks on the door but gets no answer, so she opens the unlocked door and walks in. Inside she finds a bird cage with two dead parakeets, their teeny little heads all blown away, awwww. Searching the rest of the mobile home, Scully finds a woman who seems completely unaffected by this strange "virus". Why didn't she answer the door? She's deaf. Hmmmm ...

Back in the car, Crump tells Mulder that his wife, Vicky, had been cooking breakfast that morning when her nose began to bleed, she was then hit by a massive headache. Patrick put her in the truck and headed for the hospital, noticing that the faster the car went, the better she seemed to get. As we've all begun to suspect by now, Crump is convinced the government is behind all this, running tests on him and his wife. Strangely, Mulder doesn't say a word. He has other things on his mind soon as the car is almost out of gas. Using that sharp Mulder brain, and dandy driving skills, he writes a note for Scully (remember Crump ditched his cell phone) as he drives the car to a gas station. Leaving the note in the car, they reach the station and quickly dump the car while they steal a station wagon. They're off and running, or driving, westward bound. Hi, yo, Mulder, away! Couldn't help myself with the words "wagon" and "west" so close together, I switched into a western mood, sorry, back to the plotline ...

The police captain finds the car and Mulder's note, which he reads to Scully, still at the deaf woman's home, over the phone. "Crump sick---will die if stopped, same as wife. Must head west to keep him alive. NO ROADBLOCKS!" While she listens to the captain, Scully scans the woman's yard and notes an awful lot of dead birds, hundreds of 'em, and a small "access plate" (frankly, I'm not quite sure what that means ... an electrical outlet in the house or something in the yard?). The plate is humming ominously and is marked "U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY--TAMPERING PUNISHABLE BY FINE AND INCARCERATION." Can't fool our Scully, she's pretty sure this is a CLUE with a capital "C"!

Scully goes to Horizon View Naval Research Station in Wendover, Nevada and asks about the electrical equipment the Navy is maintaining in Montello. She's told that they had a power surge which had affected four states and when she asks if this may have any affect on humans, she's told it's classified. Oooooo ...

We mosey on back to the wagon trail, I mean, to the car, where Crump is getting worse no matter how fast Mulder keeps driving. They soon pass into California where they're greeted by two California Highway Patrol cops on motorcycles (Hi, Ponce! Old show called "CHiPs", nevermind, kids) and they hand Mulder a cell phone. It's Scully calling from a justice department jet (bet that ain't cheap!) and she's heading west to meet up with them. If Mulder and Crump can meet her at a coastline parking lot, Scully can attempt to insert a long, large-bore needle into Crump's inner ear, relieving the pressure but possibly leaving him deaf. Crump doesn't care, he's all for it.

Next we see Scully at the scheduled meeting place, she watches the station wagon arrive escorted by a couple of CHP officers. As the car pulls to a stop in front of her, Scully sees that the back window is covered in blood ... it's too late, Crump exploded before they could get there. Understandably, Mulder's pretty upset, but it's all finally over.

In the end, we see Mulder and Scully in A.D. Kersh's office. To put it mildly, the boss is steamed and charges the stolen station wagon and justice department jet's fees to Scully. Just another day in the life ... fade to black ...

Quotes

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Mulder and Scully arrive at the farmer's house, Mulder in dark sunglasses as he leans against the porch obviously bored

Farmer: "Jehovah's Witness?"

Scully: "No, sir. Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Mulder: "But we do have a free copy of 'The Watchtower' for you if you'd like."

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Farmer: "I figure I got better things to do with my fertilizer than going around blowing government

buildings sky high."

Scully: "Yeah. Well, as we said, sir this is just routine."

Mulder: (quietly to Scully) "So routine it numbs the mind."

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Scully: "Mulder, we're not going to Nevada."

Mulder: "Come on, Scully. Just one quick side trip."

Scully: "No. Sorry, Mulder. We have a whole new assignment."

Mulder: "Running down people that buy fertilizer? This is scut work, bozo work-- the FBI equivalent

of being made to wear an orange jumpsuit and pick up trash by the side of the highway--

they mean to humiliate us."

Scully: "Look, Mulder, like it or not, humiliated or not, we're on domestic terrorism now and, yes, this

is... This is a punishment but if we want to get back to where we want to be we have to follow

orders. We can't freelance."

Mulder: "You saw that news report. What did you make of that?"

Scully: "I think that the obvious assumption is that the woman was shot, regardless of what the police

say. Maybe it was a sniper."

Mulder: "In the words of their captain 'she just sort of popped.' And what about this guy who

supposedly tried to take her hostage, her husband? Looked to me like he was trying to warn

the cops before she died. Now, the sun will rise in America tomorrow regardless of whether

or not we're at yet another farm investigating yet another enormous pile of doo-doo. We can

be in and out in a day. Nobody has to know."

(Scully wavers, but Mulder waggles his eyebrows and the next thing you know they're in Nevada. Powerful eyebrows!)

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Mulder: "How about if we just pull over and let me out, too, huh? I must be cramping your style."

Crump: "Just... Shut up. (looks at Mulder's badge) It's you people. Figures."

Mulder: "What figures?"

Crump: "Shut up."

(Mulder's cellphone rings. Crump looks at it in frustration then throws it out the window. It bounces down the highway behind them. Mulder's ticked.)

Mulder: "Hey! No! That is... so stupid, Crump."

Crump: "Shut up."

Mulder: "That is so stupid."

Crump: "You shut up and drive, you understand?"

(Mulder slows the car as they approach a stoplight. They idle behind a U-Haul. Crump begins screaming in pain.)

Crump: "What are you doing?"

Mulder: "What? What am I doing?"

Crump: "What the hell are you doing?"

Mulder: (sarcastically) "I'm composing a sonnet. I'm slowing down for a light."

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Mulder: "Crump? Crump, what else can you tell me about what's happening to you?"

Crump: "Mr. Crump. You call me by my last name, you say "mister" in front of it."

Mulder: " 'Mister.' I got you."

Crump: "Not Crump. Mr. Crump."

Mulder: "I can think of something else I'd like to call you. I could put 'mister' in front of that, too if

you'd like."

Crump: "You know, what kind of name is Mulder, anyway? What is that, like... like, Jewish?"

Mulder: (disbelieving) "Excuse me?"

Crump: "Jewish... It is, right?"

Mulder: "It's Mr. Mulder to you, you peanut-picking bastard. Now, Mr. Crump what can you tell me

about what's happening to you? (Crump screams in agony.) What?"

Crump: "You're going... The wrong way."

Mulder: "What do you mean?"

Crump: "Go this... Go this way!"

Mulder: "I can't... I can't go... I can't go left. There's only trees there. Crump. (Crump is in increasing

pain, banging his head on the window. Mulder turns off onto a side road, barely missing

another car. Crump begins to relax again.) Crump... It's west. Huh, west? You got to head

west. It's just like you did with your wife. You took her and you headed west. It's not just

motion; it has to be in one direction. Is that right? What the hell happened to you?"

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Mulder: "I'm sorry about your wife."

Crump: "Sure, you are... You and the rest of your Jew FBI."

Mulder: "Crump..."

Crump: "Oh, yeah. You think I don't know, huh? You think I'm just some ignorant pudknocker, don't

you? But I get it, man! I see what this is! I am not sick and I do not have the flu. Vicky and

me were just some kind of... government guinea pigs."

Mulder: "You think the government did this to you?"

Crump: "Hell, yeah. Who else? You see it all the time on the TV: they're dropping Agent Orange,

they're putting radiation in little retarded kids' gonads... Oh, yeah. You sons of bitches

sneaking around my woods at night-- I seen you. You think I don't know?"

(Mulder sees the gas gauge is on E.)

Mulder: "Well, on behalf of the international Jewish conspiracy I just need to inform you that we're...

almost out of gas."

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Crump: "Faster."

Mulder: "I'm doing 70."

Crump: "You got to go faster. It's getting worse."

Mulder: "Okay." (Mulder speeds up to 80.)

Crump: "Yeah, yeah. That's good. Okay. Hey, uh... The Jew stuff? No offense. I mean, uh... A man

can't help who he's born to."

Mulder: (sarcastic) "That was an apology, right? Gee, I don't know if I can see to drive my eyes are

tearing up so bad."

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In Kersh's office as he reads their expense report

A.D. Kersh: " 'Justice department jet: 2.6 turbine hours round trip at $1,400 an hour. Car rental--

over-mileage, out-of-state use penalties: $346. Compensation to one Walter R. Duncan

for unauthorized use of his 1968 Caprice station wagon: $500.' "

Mulder: "Why don't you bill me?"

A.D. Kersh: "I'll bill your partner instead. You too obviously relish the role of martyr."

Mulder: "Okay. So are we done here? Back to the bozo work investigating huge piles of manure?"

A.D. Kersh: "You can always quit."

(Mulder looks at Scully, then walks out of the office, slamming the door behind him.)

Scully: "Sir, Agent Mulder has been through a lot."

A.D. Kersh: "And you apologize for him a lot. I've noticed that about you."

Scully: "I'm not apologizing for this. Because of his work, the DOD is shutting down their antenna

array in northeastern Nevada. Our participation in this case has saved lives."

A.D. Kersh: "I don't see you proving that. The Department of Defense admits no culpability

whatsoever. Furthermore, they say the closing of the facility was coincidental."

Scully: (in a "yeah, right" voice) "Right."

A.D. Kersh: "Don't misunderstand me, Agent. I don't care if you and your partner saved a school bus

full of doe-eyed urchins on their way to Sunday bible camp. You no longer investigate

X-Files. You are done and the sooner you and Mulder come to recognize that, the better

for both of you."

(Scully turns to leave the office and says under her breath, but loudly enough to be heard ...)