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 “F. Emasculata,” a stand alone episode that stands out as something very different than the rest of the season’s stand alone cases.
1. The Premise
“F. Emasculata” opens in Costa Rica. A scientist comes across a pig covered in boils and he starts to investigate but all goes very badly when one of the boils bursts and gets all over him, giving him whatever disease that pig had. A leg from that animal gets sent to a prisoner in Virginia named Robert Torrance. He soon gets sick and so do other prisoners, creating an epidemic. Mulder and Scully are called in when two prisoners get loose. They are there to help US Marshalls but all of this doesn’t really add up to them because this isn’t something they’d really get called in on. It’s not really something the F.B.I. handles. They quickly discover that there is a disease spreading and the two prisoners that got out may have been exposed. So not only do they need to catch the escapees but they also need to catch them to prevent this disease from spreading. This is such a stand out from other one off cases because there is no monster. This is about something you can easily imagine happening. This is basically part of why the CDC exists and the twist later on in the episode ends up making this a very X-Files X File.
2. This Is Also Really Gross
When I think about episodes I tend to skip in rewatches, this always ends up as one of them because it’s really, really gross. It’s so gross that it’s really distracting, especially at the end. This episode doesn’t really hold back on showing the visual effects of the disease and so we gets lots of shots of gross, exploding pustules. At the end of the episode, when Paul is the last remaining carrier, you can’t even focus on the action because the pustule on his face is so grotesque. It’s so gross. I’m grossed out just typing it but I guess it works to tell this episode’s story.
3. A Smart Separation
One of the best things I think this episode does is split up Mulder and Scully. Mulder ends up going with the US Marshalls and Scully stays back at the prison because she’s a medical doctor and more equipped for that. Separating the two of them seems counter productive to what this show is but you have to think about them as separate characters and look at where their strengths lie. Mulder is an excellent profiler and agent. He really knows what he’s doing and going on a manhunt like this is something he’s good at. Scully staying at the prison brings in her analytical side and her medical expertise is actually used here and it’s fantastic. This episode uses their personal strengths really well and this is one of the very few times that splitting them up works.
4. All The Way To The Top
This episode plays out as you would expect with all the moving parts going. The manhunt still goes on, Scully is trying to get to the bottom of this disease but then we’re hit with what is actually happening. The X-Files has always dealt with general shady secret government stuff but this episode tackles “big pharma” which is a legitimate issue in the United States. Pharmaceutical companies get away with horrible things all the time. Price gouging and illegal testing being just the tip of it. These are things that you can find out about pretty easily but we all just kind of let it be but in this episode we see just how that can backfire. It turns out that this whole epidemic was orchestrated by a pharmaceutical company that was trying to circumvent the FDA to get a drug out on the market. We’ll talk more in the final point about how Mulder and Scully fit into it but this twist works. This is a different thing for the show to examine and I like it. This episode isn’t going to change the world but it grounds this epidemic into something actually scary because of how plausible it seems. Those are the scariest episodes of this show – the ones that seem almost real.
Continued below5. Watch Your Back
Mulder and Scully eventually figure all this out and after a brief run in with the Cigarette Smoking Man, Mulder is told by Skinner to watch his back. You see, Mulder and Scully were purposely put on this because even if they found out everything, they’d never have the evidence and no one would believe them anyway. It was all a set up and it put them at risk on purpose. Mulder and Scully are being watched closely and that Mulder in particular should be careful about what’s to come because this is just the start. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself but take Skinner’s words very seriously here. The entire thing with Mulder and CSM is going to really ramp up at the very end of this season and we’re going to get into one of the biggest conspiracies at the center of the show. It’s all very exciting and we’re almost there.
