With all our favorite shows taking their usual break in the summer months, this opens up an opportunity to watch some of our old favorites. That’s where the Multiversity Summer Binge comes in. Last year, I took a look at the entire first season of my favorite show ever, The X-Files and this summer, I’m back with a vengeance covering season two. The first season of this show was more of a prelude. It teased all the things that were to come and spent a lot of time doing the ground work. In the second season, the show really kicks into gear. Truth be told, of the 11 seasons, this is easily top three for me. I’m really excited to be writing about these episodes, particularly the middle of the season. This week, I’m looking at “Excelsis Dei,” an episode not as messy as last week’s “Red Museum” but a kind of wacky episode that tries to tackle lots of serious issues all at once.
1. The Premise
Mulder and Scully are called to the Excelsis Dei nursing home in Massachusetts because of a sexual assault that doesn’t quite fit what’s considered a conventional sexual assault case. A nurse at the facility, Michelle Charters, was working her normal shift one night and she was suddenly violently attacked by an unseen force. Her injuries are bad and it’s very obvious to anyone that she was attacked. She’s also suing the federal government but the reasons for that aren’t exactly told to us. Scully tells Mulder that Charters claims the person responsible for this ghostly attack was Hal Arden, a 75 year old Alzheimer’s patient at the facility. Mulder has seen cases like this before but has never actually found any evidence for these attacks. When they get to the facility, Scully and Mulder end up uncovering a major situation with the patients and a drug being administered to them. “Excelsis Dei” is a weird episode that starts getting into so many big issues like elder abuse, the sadness of dealing with a disease like Alzheimer’s and rape. It’s a lot but it ends up being really goofy in a lot of places and the tone is everywhere.
2. Ghosts
We have to talk about this now because it’s the most wild thing about this episode. There are ghosts in the facility because this medication the patients are taking allow them to see the ghosts of the people who died there and it’s the most wild thing ever. Scully is in a hallway talking to one of the other patients and the patient is yelling at the ghosts to leave her be and when we see her perspective, Scully is surrounded by ghosts of perverted old men. This whole thing with the spirits visually looks awful and honestly it goes nowhere. This episode tries to do all these different things and then it just throws on ghosts doing weird ghosts things because ghosts are cool???? I don’t know.
3. Scully’s Interest
One of the most interesting things about this case is how much Scully is invested in it. She’s the one who convinces Mulder to take this case and as the episode goes on, she becomes really invested in what happens to these people. Despite the ghostly nonsense that’s going on, this is a science heavy episode, particularly on the medical side. Research into Alzheimer’s has gone on for decades now. It’s one of the most devastating illnesses to watch and millions of dollars have gone towards just understand the disease more. Scully, a doctor, is aware of this and her interest clearly lies in this doctor’s research and drug he’s developing. It’s a major breakthrough if legitimate and so, under the situation, there’s this scientific issue that Scully is drawn to. It’s kind of done in a subtle way but this being my at least 5th rewatch of this episode, I noticed this even more than before and I like it.
4. Cocoon Meets Twilight Zone
I have no idea if that makes sense but these elderly patients suddenly getting revitalized and reckless reminds me of the movie Cocoon (google it younglings) and that one episode of The Twilight Zone where the old people get young again and don’t want to go back. As the episode goes on, we find out that this turn in health for all these patients comes from a mushroom being grown by Gung, an orderly from Malaysia. When all this is found out, he talks about how in his culture, families grow together and the elderly are not simply sent off when they get to be too old and sick. He is motivated by honor and doing what he believes is right. One of the biggest issues looked at in this episode is how we treat the elderly and how tragic that often times can be. It isn’t a condemnation of nursing homes as an idea but it is a condemnation of how these places often operate. They frequently have underpaid, overworked staff and that leads to patients being ignored or worse. It’s hard to care for someone who is getting older and the way our medical system and society works, it can become burdensome to take all that on yourself. I think that’s what this episode is getting at and why it, at times, reads as tragic.
5. Incomplete Ending
There’s really no closure at the end of this episode and it’s really hard to give this episode high praise because of it. It’s weird because it isn’t such a bad episode but the way it’s all wrapped up is kind of weird. The orderly is sent back to Malaysia, Michelle’s case just gets settled by the federal government but it isn’t clear why that’s who she sued in the first place and the home just keeps going while the drug that was being used is buried forever. It all just feels very incomplete and that’s not usually the case with these “monster of the week” cases. Usually there’s enough closure with a couple lingering questions that keeps the series feeling eerie but this just doesn’t feel like it actually had an ending in mind but they ran out of time. This was the case last week too with “Red Museum.” These are the episodes that bum me out.
