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Five Thoughts On The X-Files‘s “Gender Bender”

By | August 29th, 2017
Posted in Television | % Comments

With summer quickly approaching, pretty much every show worth watching is coming to an end. That makes the summer the perfect time to binge watch what you missed along with some old classics. That’s where the Multiversity Summer TV Binge comes from. One of my personal favorite shows ever is The X-Files, and it is my mission in life to make everyone ever watch it. This summer, I’ll be looking back at season one. This week we look at “Gender Bender,” one of the season’s worst and messiest episodes.

1. The Premise

“Gender Bender” initially has a very straightforward premise. In the first scene, we see a young woman pick up a young man at a night club. After they have sex, the man dies and the woman transforms into a man and walks away. We then cut to Mulder and Scully on the scene of this crime. Five murders, involving sexually active and attractive young men and women have all been traced back to a faux Amish group called the Kindred. Mulder has put together that these murders all have something in common so when he and Scully are called in, they are ready to really get to the bottom of this.

2. The Worst Optics

“Gender Bender” is supposed to be some kind of statement about gender roles and how they were changing in the 90’s. It’s supposed to reflect that anxiety but watching it again in 2017 it comes off really weird and questionable. The villain of this story is a person who can change genders freely and their goals is to kill people with sex. Seriously. That’s what they do. It’s not only pretty dumb but it’s also really a terrible way to address gender expression and any anxiety that comes with that because it’s told through the lens of straight cis men for the most part. Sex is scary and gender is scary in this episode and then you toss in the fact that the Kindred are suddenly aliens and it gets even more messy. Yes, this was done almost 20 years ago but that doesn’t give it a free pass.

3. Scully Takes Center Stage Again

This isn’t on the scale of last week’s “Beyond The Sea” but Scully becomes a really big part of this episode as she has more of a relationship with members of the Kindred than Mulder. Her relationship with Brother Andrew in particular is a big part of this episode as it helps get her closer to the group. The problem with this though is that she ends up becoming a victim and looks kind of foolish as this goes on. Mulder has answers, Scully doesn’t and she gets taken in very easily by Brother Andrew. I like Scully at the forefront but not like this.

4. Hey, It’s Nicholas Lea!

Nicholas Lea makes his first ever appearance on The X-Files in this episode. Lea is best known to X-Philes as the handsome but very evil Alex Krycek. Like many shows, they tend to recycle actors if another role comes up that they’d be perfect for. Lea plays an almost victim of Brother Martin and even though he’s not Alex Krycek yet, he’s still got that smarmy thing going on. I still want to punch his face. I can’t wait until we eventually get to the place where I can talk about the most interest villain in the entire series.

5. The Dumbest Ending

“Gender Bender” has absolutely no idea where it wants to go and by the end it just decides to drop crop circles into everything and ends the story without actually wrapping anything up. At the end of this episode, Mulder and Scully have basically cornered Brother Martin and they chase him back to where the Kindred live. Mulder and Scully are told that something was found out in the fields and they run out there only to see a crop circle. Yes folks, we ran out of time in this episode and decided to just drop in here that the Kindred are probably aliens. The X-Files has lots of silly eye roll moments but this one easily lands at the top of the garbage heap because what a easy out this was.


//TAGS | 2017 Summer TV Binge

Jess Camacho

Jess is from New Jersey. She loves comic books, pizza, wrestling and the Mets. She can be seen talking comics here and at Geeked Out Nation. Follow her on Twitter @JessCamNJ for the hottest pro wrestling takes.

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