The X-Files: “Home Again”

Which is when Mulder points out that the street artist’s reasoning for the monster’s manifestation doesn’t really make any sense—to which the street artist responds that it doesn’t matter what does or doesn’t make sense: It still happened. It’s all still real. So, regardless of whether or not Mulder thinks the street artist’s ability to craft his feelings of injustice into a humanoid agent of murder falls squarely into the realm of the Buddhist beliefs the street artist references, Mulder and Scully still convince the guy to follow them to the potential last victim, who is in the final stages of moving the homeless population into government housing, away from the redeveloping areas. They’re too late, of course: The guy is sorted into a pile of appendages only seconds before they make it—and with that, the investigation is over, the street artist skips town, and Mulder and Scully return to collect her mother’s ashes.

“Home Again” is an emotional triumph for the series, handling even its core, titular metaphor, while obvious, with a light touch: By drawing parallels between her hospital stay with her mother’s, recognizing how Mulder’s strength helped pull her from the brink of death, Scully begins to understand what “home” truly means—for her and Mulder, but also for William. Did she and Mulder leave William without a home, displaced and dispossessed?

But what keeps “Home Again” from being a sincerely great episode is the way in which Morgan loses track of the case itself. I’m quibbling here, of course, but the mechanics of the case, the procedural aspects that bring the agents to the street artist and the case’s “explanation,” are too sloppy to be little more than a series of cool kills and a foundation for the emotional terrain Scully will be navigating with her mother’s death. Much doesn’t add up: How does Mulder find a sticky band-aid (a major clue) at the fucking crime scene after apparently the forensics team has done their job? Why, after two people involved in the redistribution are brutally murdered, does the program carry on seemingly unhindered? Wouldn’t one way to keep people alive while Mulder and Scully get to the bottom of the mystery be to halt the project indefinitely, especially since the agents make it clear that, within five minutes of showing up in Philadelphia, they have the jurisdiction and power to do just that? Especially when they need to tend to personal problems, and maybe by stopping the redistribution from happening could buy themselves some obvious time.

Anyway, the investigation simply ends, the monster having killed everyone he apparently was planning to kill—which is of course nothing new for the series, even within this 10th season—and Scully is encouraged to talk frankly with Mulder about their responsibility as parents. She fears that, in light of the whole Lurch monster thing, she and Mulder may have treated their son like garbage, casting him away when his existence in their lives proved untenable. They convinced themselves, and still do, that it was for William’s safety—but how much of that, she wonders, had to do with their own paranoia and inability to give up their obsessions rather than their selfless concern for their child? Mulder has no answer, and stays mostly silent, though we know he’s thought the same, with equal—if silent—regret.

It becomes clear: This is Scully’s moment, and this is Scully’s grief. This season, in fact, is Scully’s. If Mulder’s quest for the truth kickstarted their lifelong affair, then it’s Scully’s longing for answers that will keep them moving forward, far past the point of Mulder figuring out the difference between wanting to believe and belief itself.

Dom Sinacola is Assistant Movies Editor at Paste and a Portland-based writer. He’s been to at least one X-Files convention, no more than five. You can follow him on Twitter.