The X-Files, Season 10, Episode 4, “Home Again”

Directed by Glen Morgan

Written by Glen Morgan

Airs Monday, February 8, 2016

“I want to believe…I need to believe…”

In an interview with Indiewire, X-Files creator Chris Carter commented that while David Duchovny’s Special Agent Fox Mulder may seem like the de facto lead character, “It’s Scully’s show. It all starts with science, and the science fiction is built on that.” Gillian Anderson’s Special Agent Dana Scully has always been the lynchpin to making The X-Files succeed — in the series’ first episode so many years ago, it is Scully who is the audience surrogate, bringing us into this strange new world by being forced to spy on Mulder down in the basement. For a while, episodes would always end with Scully hunched over her now laughably dated personal computer, typing up her conclusive notes on that week’s case. Mulder may get top billing, and a large chunk of the show’s mythos may revolve around his Quixotic quests for the truth, but Mulder has always been elusive — “Spooky” Mulder, the outsider that only Scully can connect with.

So it’s no surprise that the latest episode of the X-Files revival, “Home Again”, lives or dies with Gillian Anderson’s performance. This is a very Scully-centric episode, and Anderson delivers one of her finest performances of the character she’s played on and off again for 23 years. Were it not for Anderson’s stellar work, and for Glen Morgan’s emotional script (at least when it comes to dealing with Scully’s scenes), “Home Again” would be another complete bust in a season that’s been more miss than hit.

The central mystery at the heart of “Home Again” is painfully stupid, even for a show that has had its fair share of goofy cases. In the heart of Philadelphia, a city official trying to forcibly relocate a large chunk of the city’s homeless community, is visited by a trash man of the literal sense — the hulking monster appears to be comprised entirely of trash, and he proceeds to tear the official apart. Enter Mulder and Scully. But Scully’s time on the case is instantly cut short when she receives a phone call from one of her brothers, informing her that her mother has had a heart attack. Scully races off to D.C. to be with her comatose mother while Mulder continues digging into the trash man case.

Scully’s tearful, hospital bedside moments with her dying mom are the only elements of “Home Again” that work. Scully is understandably distraught over the prospect of losing her mother, but she’s also befuddled by the fact that her mother requested Scully’s estranged brother Charlie before losing consciousness. The brush with death and the reflection on life, and Scully’s mother’s request for her long-lost-son Charlie, inevitably has Scully thinking of her own long-lost-son, William. I remain entirely uninterested in anything having to do with William, but “Home Again” at least drives home the emotional elements of this plotline better than the mostly confusing “Founders Mutation”.

As for the X-File at hand, it amounts to little more than a big pile of garbage. The trash man monster continues to wreck havoc on less-than-innocent people, soon leading Mulder and Scully towards a ridiculous street artist (played unconvincingly by Tim Armstrong) who speaks in dumb platitudes, and who seems to have conjured the trash man out of his own personal imagination and artwork. It’s never explained adequately enough to become coherent, and just what the hell the street artist’s deal is is never apparent. Worse, none of this ties into the emotional arc of Scully, her dying mother or William, resulting in the two plot-threads coming across as clumsily jammed together. Truth be told, “Home Again” didn’t even need a storyline about some monster of the week — it could’ve entirely focused on Scully’s dying mother, and still been satisfying. “Home Again” may be worth watching simply for Anderson’s performance, but after the wonderful high that was last week’s “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster”, one gets the sense that the bulk of this week’s episode belongs in the rubbish bin.

CASE NOTES

ALIENS or MONSTER OF THE WEEK?

Trash Monster of the Week.

IS THERE A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY?

Negative.

DOES MULDER HAVE A BIG SPEECH?

This is a very Scully-centric episode, so Mulder is mostly on-hand to offer support.



DOES SCULLY PERFORM AN AUTOPSY?

No, but she does examine a dead body and conclude that its limbs were torn off rather than chopped or sliced.



Classified Materials (Warning – SPOILERS):

— Did anyone else, like me, see the title “Home Again” and hope that this was a follow-up to the infamous fourth season episode “Home” — featuring the monstrous Peacock family, cowritten by this episode’s writer Glen Morgan? Not cool, Morgan. Don’t get my hopes up like that.

— Scully calls Mulder “Fox” in this episode, which denotes a Very Serious Moment™.

— There’s something poignant about the fact that both sets of Mulder and Scully’s parents are now deceased. It’s a harsh reminder of the inevitable, crushing march of time.

— I must be rusty on my Scully Family Tree knowledge, as I had no memory of her having a brother named Charlie. I was even convinced this episode was the first time they had mentioned him, to play into the estrangement factor between the character and Mamma Scully. But having searched the trusty internet, I see that Charlie actually appeared in two early X-Files episodes, and was mentioned in at least three.

— “Home Again” is partially set in Philadelphia, and as someone from Philadelphia I can testify that the locations used are very obviously not shot in the City of Brotherly Love. Unless Philadelphia has a secret Toronto section I’m unaware of.

— Anderson’s delivery of this final monologue to Mulder was perfect to the point that it gave me goosebumps: “I believe that you will find all of your answers. You will find the answers to the biggest mysteries, and I will be there when you do. But my mysteries — I’ll never have an answer…” This is something I hadn’t even considered before — the show is so caught-up with Mulder trying to crack open big, paranormal secrets that it’s easy to forget that Scully needs solutions of her own.

— Next week on The X-Files: Mulder and Scully take a trip to “Babylon”.

Final Grade: C +