(It’s only a torturous matter of time until she succumbs.) And not even Scully’s affections can fully counteract the overall aura of sterility and bleakness in this context, a tear rolling down her cheek seems like a hard-won victory. Margaret is tucked away to one side, a body nearly vacated by life and spirit. Much of the first half of the episode takes place at Margaret’s bedside, in a room that Morgan and cinematographer Joel Ransom shoot to emphasize its oppressive vastness. But the narrative’s weak spots are balanced out by the sheer visceral-ness of Morgan’s approach - and not just with the many scenes of carnage.Įmotion is key, and few performers are better than Anderson at conveying a world of hurt with the subtlest shift of her face. However, I don’t think Morgan dovetails the case with the agents’ personal struggles as elegantly as Wong did in “Founder’s Mutation.” The episode includes several flashbacks to past episodes, which force connections that would have been better left implied. “Home Again” is at its best in intimate moments like this one. Pay careful attention to the way Duchovny reaches toward Anderson right before she leaves - an affectionate, tossed-off gesture that’s pregnant with history between both actors and characters. The case suddenly seems trivial, and Mulder is quick to encourage Scully to be by her mother’s side. Then Scully gets a call from “William.” We can tell, for a split second, that she’s thinking of the son she gave up for adoption and who was an integral part of episode two of the mini-series, “ Founder’s Mutation.” But it’s actually her brother, William Scully Jr., who’s calling from overseas with news that their mother, Margaret Scully (Sheila Larken), is in intensive care after a heart attack. It’s business as usual for our agents, despite a pair of unexplained elements: Why didn’t the perpetrator leave behind footprints? And what’s up with that weird, life-size graffiti on the billboard across from the murder scene? And for a few moments, it seems like this will be more or less a standard X-File. “They said you two have experience with these, uh, spooky cases,” a detective says. When the duo arrives the next morning to investigate, they treat Cutler’s death with analytical dispassion - though Mulder, no surprise, can’t help slipping in a quip about the victim’s head being in the wrong recycling bin.
Cutler is stalked by a dead-eyed, barefoot monster known as the Band-Aid Nose Man (John DeSantis), then graphically torn limb from limb.Īs far as FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are concerned, just deserts have nothing to do with it. But surely even he doesn’t deserve the punishment meted out in the episode’s tense and atmospheric teaser sequence.
He’s the kind of unsympathetic pencil pusher who might as well have “Just doin’ my job” tattooed on his forehead. Joseph Cutler (Alessandro Juliani) is a mid-level bureaucrat in the City of Brotherly Love, tasked with rounding up homeless people to make way for gentrification. Written and directed by co –executive producer Glen Morgan - who, along with James Wong, penned many of the original series’s strongest installments - this is a story soaked in blood, sweat, and tears. It’s a perfect note on which to begin “Home Again,” the fourth episode of the X-Files mini-series, which is unapologetically blunt with its themes and emotions. Seconds later, a fire hose blasts the message away. “You are responsible!” blares a sign posted on a side street in West Philadelphia. Gillian Anderson as Scully, David Duchovny as Mulder.
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