Rewatch Extra: 2x02 The Host
Mulder's listening to a wiretap! While doodling, eating sunflower seeds, poking holes in his Styrofoam cup and playing seed football. I like that he’s being punished in such a mundane way.
He gets all squinty when they open the door to relieve him of his duty. And he has his tie undone.
Mulder has to put on rubber boots with his suit to go down in the sewer. I dig inappropriate additions to regular work wear.
I love this shot of Mulder and the other investigators down in the sewer.
Skinner! He’s so gruff, denying Mulder access to his office, telling him to make an appointment. Mulder: "It's kind of hard to make an appointment when you're up to your ass in raw sewage, being jerked around from one meaningless assignment to another." First of all, sweet Mulder, you're so damn entitled. And second, yes! Speak his language! Say ass!
And then, of course, as Mulder's bitching about his lame assignment, Skinner reveals that he's having a meeting with a table of FBI bigwigs. Oh, Fox Mulder, will you ever win?
So pretty, so sad, so backlit.
Clandestine meeting! Scully, your hair is terrible. Who on earth thought bangs would complement her pregnancy-round face? She is also wearing what appears to be a tent.
"You know, sometimes, it just gets really hard to smile through it when they ask you to bend down and grab your ankles. You know?" "It's not exactly as if you've ever tried to fit into the program." As much as I love Mulder, man, he thinks he's a really special snowflake. At this point, he's not talking about staying on the X-Files to get to the bottom of the conspiracy, which would at least be a solid reason, for the greater good; he says he'd continue his work in the paranormal if he quit the Bureau. So right now, he seems a little bit of a petulant child: "But I want to investigate THE PARANORMAL, not dumb regular murders!"
When Mulder says he’s thought of leaving the FBI, she suggests a transfer to Quantico. Because she loves him. Oh, could you imagine? They could both work at Quantico, where they could have lunch together every day, and no one would get abducted or infected and then they could have regular babies without magic powers and live happily ever after…
“They don’t want us working together, Scully. And right now that’s the only reason I can think of to stay.” Without Scully as a partner, HE HAS NO REASON TO CONTINUE TRYING TO GET BACK TO HIS LIFE’S WORK AT THE FBI. Stick that in your peace pipe and smoke it.
Oh, Mulder, why are you such a defeatist, gloomy Gus? You should thank your lucky stars every day for sending you Dana Scully. He boo-hoos that the sewer case is a zero; she offers to do the autopsy. He says there’s nothing. “There’s a dead body, isn’t there?”
At this point, I happened to pause on a super foxy moment, where he seems to be saying in response, “Oh, damn you and your sexy science!”
The beginning of the autopsy, which is chock-full of complex autopsy speak, is all one shot, no cuts! Good job, lady!
That body is really grotesque. And it’s shot completely unflinchingly.
Scully tells him to close the door. So they can do it. And now look at how cute they are, having their talk like “old times.” She laughs out loud and then they have to take a moment to think about how awesome they are together.
“Well, that's good. I didn't want to have to tell Skinner that his murder suspect was a giant, blood-sucking worm.” “No.”
Mulder=cute.
He has to work up to asking her if she’s been making a case for him around the FBI. When she tells him she “wouldn’t betray a confidence” (read: I would not tell anyone if we were to, you know, start having all the sex), he has this sad look on his face, like he’s ashamed he even thought she’d share their conversation with someone else.
The sanitation worker squeezing toothpaste directly into his mouth and then SWALLOWING IT is actually grosser to me than when he vomits up a fluke.
I can’t believe they were carrying so many bags back in the day! Mulder carries a bag with him when he goes to the water reclamation plant, with the fluke jar inside.
Scully gets a tabloid. Anything about Batboy in there?
This shot through the round window of the door is great.
I’m surprised Scully didn’t know Cyrillic in the first place, since she seems to know every other language, even though her Greek is “a little rusty.” You know, I’m no slouch when it comes to knowing random things. I can finish the New York Times Crossword, sometimes even on the weekend. I tear it up at Trivial Pursuit. But man, I feel so lazy when I think about all of the things these two know.
“And, Mulder. When you see Skinner to hand in your field report, I know that it's your decision, but I hope that you know that I'd consider it more than a professional loss if you decided to leave.” Then he sort of looks at her, then over at flukey, asking himself, “How could I ever leave these mutants and this woman who, I sense, is going to get super, super hot in a couple of years?”
Mulder looks cute again, when he looks up incredulously in Skinner's office.
Mulder tells Skinner, “You know, you had a pair of agents that could’ve handled a case like this. Agent Scully and I might have been able to save that man's life, but you shut us down.” Skinner says he knows, it should’ve been an X-File. Mulder’s caught off guard and Skinner says: “We all take our orders from someone, Agent Mulder.” I love the old days of Skinman being torn by allegiances, under CSM's thumb!
I’m so interested in the question of something like the Flukeman being a wild creature versus a man (however strange) who possesses motivation. A being like Flukeman is actually ascribed similar "motives" to someone like, say, Tooms--nature is driving it. The fluke must find a host. And Tooms must find livers to satisfy that biological urge, to survive. So then that makes me think of the nature of crime and criminals in general. What drives someone to kill? Should we consider it a similar urge to these strange, animal ones?
X calls Mulder and tells him that success in this assignment is “imperative.” He also says: “Reinstatement of the X-Files must be undeniable.” This might be waaay out in left field, but I started wondering: does X already know that Scully is going to be abducted? And he’s telling Mulder he has to get back on the X-Files to deal with that?
Ew, Mulder’s down in the sewer water. Keep your mouth closed, Mulder! Once, when she was really little, my sister did not follow that advice at a water park, and puked all over a hotel lobby.
I love that they’re talking about Chernobyl at their hot, clandestine meeting.
So they basically conclude that flukey was created by radiation. But how did he get "quasi-vertebrate" traits in the first place? Radiation wouldn’t spontaneously cause a regular flukeworm to develop those traits, right? So did he start out as a man, maybe one who was infected with a regular fluke, and then radiation turned him into this? I don’t know. Anyone? I guess it’s supposed to be an eerie, what-hell-hath-science-wrought? ending, but it mostly confuses me if I think about it too much.