The X-Files S10E02: "Founder's Mutation"

Well break my fingers and liquefy my eyeballs, I was WRONG about this show. Despite enjoying Sunday's premiere for nostalgia reasons, I'd come away from it feeling a little blue. Had Chris Carter and his team lost touch with what made this thing special in the first place? Was he TV's answer to George Lucas—like, yes, he's still the original visionary, but those visions had long since corroded and warped into badness? But then, like some kind of mutated psychic teen, it's like The X-Files KNEW we wouldn't like that episode and decided to become completely wonderful in Episode 2. The X-Files is now officially BACK in every way that matters.

We knew going into "Founder's Mutation" that it would return Scully and Mulder to the world of stand-alone investigations, and the fact that it was written and directed by James Wong (who's spent his time since the series' original run working on tons of great things, including American Horror Story and the Final Destination franchise) only increased my excitement. But I still wasn't prepared for how amazing this episode would be. As a piece of sci-fi horror it worked on its own—and contained some of the most disgusting imagery Fox has aired since, like, Ally McBeal—but there was also a bracingly emotional, borderline devastating subplot that I did not see coming, and it made for an episode that felt ultimately more essential to the overall series than your average monster of the week romp. Yep, "Founder's Mutation" was somehow both extremely disgusting AND important. Let's talk about it!

We opened with a close-up shot an eyeball badly in need of some eyedrops. At first I was like, "This is disgusting, I don't want to see this," but then I remembered the time I went on national TV with a double eye infection and so I decided not to judge. But we were definitely off to a gross start!

The eyeball belonged to an employee at a bioengineering firm, and the instant he sat down at a morning meeting he began hearing high-pitched tones, and also a murder of crows on the lawn outside was yelling at him. So he had no choice but to run out of the meeting, attempt to access the mainframe, and then do this:

We've all had days like this, but in this man's case, he died on one of those days. Who was mind-controlling him and why? It looked like a case for...

The best thing about this episode was that it basically just asserted that Mulder and Scully were full-blown FBI agents again, no big deal. While it might've been cute to get a scene where Scully attempted to remember how to fire a gun, or Mulder puking while trying to run a single lap at Quantico, it was just so nice to see them sharply dressed and flashing badges at crime scenes, no questions asked. Seriously, so good. Finally, the band was back together!

So then Chief Tyrol from Battlestar came in, yelled at everyone for a few minutes, and then disappeared for the rest of the episode. Something about how Mulder wasn't allowed to look at the hard drives that the dead man was trying to access. But Mulder had an "old school" trick up his sleeve: pick-pocketing the dead man's iPhone!

Next thing we knew, Mulder was meeting up in a bar with the most-called person in the dead dude's stolen phone...

And Mulder almost got a blowie out of it! It could have been a real steamy Red Shoe Diaries moment! This was a joke that made me laugh, I won't lie to you. Sometimes there is a fine line between trying to have a secret meeting with a possible informant and possibly getting a blowie next to a keg. That's what makes being in the FBI so exciting.

Meanwhile, Scully was back at the lab running interesting experiments on the corpse:

But after probably hours of taking the man's head apart, Scully found an interesting clue scrawled on the palm of his hand:

He'd written "founder's mutation" on his hand in Sharpie! But what did it mean? (Answer: that refers to the first time a species' genetic code occurs, marking a new step in evolution.) But what did THAT mean? This wall of photos in the man's secret apartment might have been a clue:

Yep, it was a vision board full of malformed children, leading Mulder and Scully to deduce that the man had been tracking several dozen potential victims of genetic modification. But who had been experimenting upon them? And how did the guy's last-minute efforts to expose his bosses' crimes get him killed? And also, what was that strange high-pitched ringing noise in Mulder's ears?

These scenes were really effectively filmed and the sound design was genuinely upsetting! But I think we all knew what was happening... Someone with powers that could only be described as mutant-esque (as in X-Men) was thought-controlling people and now Mulder was the newest target. And it wasn't just high-pitched noises, the power also forced Mulder to hone in on otherwise innocuous words until they sound like a directive. In this case he heard "find her." But who was her??





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