In which the X-Files attempts to fill my heart and then bust it open like a piñata full of candied feelings…

Someone is killing soulless scumsuckers who have put the “dis” in disenfranchised when it comes to dealing with the homeless. We can’t help but feel these douchebags deserve to die, but the mysterious and disgusting way in which they meet their messy ends – ripped apart by a terrifying, smelly figure – makes this case an X File with a capital ‘X’.

It almost seems like there were two separate episodes going on here. The Band Aid Nose Man vigilante, inadvertently created by a Banksy-style activist street artist, who is going around town tearing those who disregard and profit off the homeless limb from limb is one story line. Then we’ve got Dana Scully sitting vigil in the hospital for her mother, who is in a coma after a major heart attack. It brings back so many memories for Scully (and for us!).

Favorite moments:

Mulder’s conversation with the developer guy who wants the homeless tidied away out of his part of town and the school board lady who CARES about the homeless so much she will serve them Thanksgiving dinner, she just doesn’t want them near her kids’ school because ewwwwww.

“I hear you speaking for them, but really speaking for yourself. And I hear you speaking for them, but really speaking for yourself. What I don’t hear is who speaks for them.”

Scully at her mom’s bedside, pleading with her to stay.

”I’m here. I’ve been where you are. I know Ahab is there. And Melissa. And Mom, I’m here. Bill Jr.’s here, and William. William’s here. And Charlie is here. Please, Mom, don’t go home yet. I need you.”

The flashback to “One Breath.”

Mulder showing up at the hospital.

Scully, delivering this line while Mulder holds her:

“I don’t care about the big questions right now, Mulder. I just want one more chance to ask my mom a few little ones.”

(How is this a favorite moment? Well, some of us really enjoy having our souls shishkebabbed by heartbreaking dialogue.)

Also, this: Mulder wished Scully back to life, all those years ago. Yes. I want to believe.

Mulder-Scully-wish-back-to-life
Mulder-I-invented-it
Mulder-Scully-dark-wizard
Mulder-what-else-is-new

Maggie Scully, briefly awakening at the sound of Charlie’s voice (because Scully hasn’t suffered enough this episode and needs more pain), gazing at Mulder in wonder before she passes, saying:

Maggie-Scully-my-son-William

And then our hearts collectively shattered and we all needed a hug:

Scully being a complete badass.

This exchange:

Mulder: “Come on, I wasn’t going to shoot the kid. And I don’t do stairs anymore.”

Scully: “Mulder, back in the day I used to do stairs. And in three inch heels.”

Mulder: “Back in the day…Scully, back in the day is now.”

BACK IN THE DAY IS NOW! Hell, yes.

The discussion of the homeless as trash that we push out of sight and out of mind, the dehumanization of some of the most fragile and vulnerable members of our society, is deeply poignant, as is Scully and Mulder’s final scene of this episode, on a pebbly beach. Scully just needs to know that they didn’t simply put their son out of sight. That they made the right choice and not the convenient one. She wants to believe they didn’t treat him like trash.

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