As this week’s episode title of The X-Files suggests–Mulder & Scully Meet The Were-Monster–The two do meet a monster—but things aren’t exactly as they seem! Check out Josh’s recap of the episode below, as well as our thoughts!
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Episode Recap of The X-Files, Season 10 Episode 3: Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster
So this was a very “campy” episode of The X-Files. The episode opens with a very glum Fox Mulder, seemingly now regretting his comeback to the X-Files cases. Scully shows up with an exciting case involving monsters, and Scully hopes this will pep Mulder up. He still seems all doom and gloom though.
We get the usual set up for the case at the beginning of the episode as well. A man and woman appear to be getting high in the forest, and they hear some sounds. They investigate and see what looks to be a lizard-like man fleeing the area. Then we see a man passed out, but appears to be alive. Then we see another person—who is dead.
When Mulder and Scully get on the scene, they speak with the witnesses who provide their description, which is a lizard-like man with three eyes. Mulder is still full of melancholy though, not believing their stories. But, then there is another witness to the lizardman monster, a transgender woman who is able to whack the lizard man pretty hard.
Mulder and Scully continue their investigation, and talk to this woman about her encounter. Mulder, meanwhile, in the past several years has discovered a piece of technology he was not familiar with before—the camera phone. Unfortunately, he is about as handy with it as my parents are, and just constantly shoots photos of whatever. He ends up running into the dog catcher again—he was the living “attacked” victim from the beginning of the episode. Then as they both look around for this mysterious lizard man, he finally pops up, scaring both Mulder and this dog catcher. Mulder chases it down, all the while, trying to get a photo of it.
Unfortunately, they lose the trail though, as they thought they saw it go into a port-a-potty, but when they open the door, a man is in there doing his…business.
Later, at their motel, they have a creep for a hotel manager, who apparently likes to use the animal heads on the wall to spy on people in their rooms. His favorite target tonight? Mulder–in a red thong-looking thing. Wrong on so many levels. But in the course of his peeping-tommery, the hotel manager ends up seeing this lizard man in his hotel room, change from a human. Mulder hears this screaming, so Mulder questions the manager. The manager plays coy at first, not wanting to expose his “windows” he looks through, but Mulder is able to get him to talk and the manager describes the transformation he saw.
After investigating the suspected lizardman’s room, a pill bottle is discovered, so Mulder decides to investigate the doctor who prescribed it. He turns out to be a psychologist—and not a very good one. But I guess at least Mulder has a lead. This psychologist told his patient to take a walk in a cemetery to mull things over.
Meanwhile, Scully has found the suspected lizardman in his human form—working at a smartphone store. She informs Mulder, who tells her to wait for back up, but by the time Mulder has shown up, Scully is already inside and the place is trashed, and explains the man just lost it and trashed the place.
Mulder decides to follow up his lead, heading to the cemetery. He finds the man, and confronts him. This man, named—Guy Mann—tries to egg Mulder into killing him. Mulder refuses, and that leads down a big rabbit hole, with Guy Mann explaining his entire history—which isn’t all that long actually.
His “life” starts the day he woke up, which was the scene at the beginning of the episode—he claims he didn’t kill those people, and he was attacked by this dog-catcher. He was bit on the neck, and he gets turned into a man. This turning into a man caused him to have all the “urges” humans have—he decided to put on clothes, then get a job, find a place to live, watch porn, adopt a dog which he named Dragoo. He also has the other human plights—like wanting to quit your job because you’re miserable, but then think how miserable, and homeless you would be without it.
He also talks about seeing Scully at the smart phone shop, and how they have a risqué encounter. Mulder refuses to believe it, and Guy Mann presses it happens—but eventually admits he was lying.
Mulder seems to be at a loss, and decides just to have a drink after this whole story. Scully gives in a call a while later, and it looks like this lizardman is not a killer—it was the dog catcher. Scully had a run-in with him at the animal shelter, and the dog catcher admitted to the murders.
Meanwhile, Mulder has tracked down Guy, who is about to head to his hibernation. Mulder asks how long that will be, and it turns out to be a very long time-10,000 years. Guy Mann runs off in his lizard-self, and does a heel-kick, ecstatic he is back to his old lizard self.
Josh’s Thoughts: X-Files, Season 10 Episode 3: Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster
This was one of those strange episodes of X-Files, which seem to mock its own premise. I find these episodes pretty funny, and refreshing. Seeing a more comedic version of the show is a lot of fun to watch, every now and again.
I really thought this Guy Mann character stole the show, particularly during his long talk with Mulder about his time as a human. The delivery his character had made the scenes a lot funnier than I think they could have been with a different actor.
One disappointing thing about this episode though, is not much done in this episode furthered the over-arching story. We only get 6 episodes, which is not a lot of time to tell a big story, so I hope we get back to the “big picture” soon.
Still, this was a fun, light-hearted episode of The X-Files that provided a lot of laughs, and certainly makes you question whether animals or humans have it better.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 10 Episode 3 of X-Files: Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster
I LOVED this episode! I had so much fun watching it, I’m pretty sure I had a smile on my face the whole time. It was so tongue-in-cheek, so ironic, and clever. It wasn’t just the twist at the end that it was actually a human who was the attacker, and that the lizard man was turned into a human as a result, it was the overall tone of the episode, which totally poked fun at itself, and was definitely something that longtime fans of the series could enjoy. So many memorable scenes, that I can barely begin to list my favorites. Okay, I’ll point out one. When Mulder is giving his spiel to Scully, and she keeps trying to talk, but he keeps interrupting her because he knows what she’s going to say, and when she finally does get to talk and says, “This is how I like my Mulder.” I’m pretty sure that everyone watching totally agreed with her!
I felt like this episode had a good placement, and was a better transition episode than the last one (which was originally supposed to be the fifth episode). This episode let us see them in the old office, with the old poster, looking at a case file, and felt more like a stepping stone to them getting back out in the field, than the abruptness between the first and second episodes. As I mentioned before, I adore the one-off X-Files episodes, and actually prefer them to the overarching storyline. So I wouldn’t mind if we could get more of these! However, it is a very short season, so I suppose we should get back to the story so that things can wrap up by the end of the sixth episode. That is, if they even plan to have it wrap up. I’m hoping for another, longer season, so that we can get more of these types of episodes!
Scenes from X-Files, Season 10 Episode 4: Home Again
Here are scenes from next week’s X-Files episode titled Home Again:
So when the were-monster is doing his little recap of the days events, he is seen stripping as he runs back through the corn field. How does he have his clothes back on when he morphs into human form in the port-a- potty?