Red Museum

I can't get enough of X-files in Hickville. It's the perfect combination: ultra-intelligent aliens with country bumpkins. The writers really cranked up the creepiness in this episode. Teens are found wandering around in the woods with mysterious messages on their backs. Meanwhile, a stranger is spying on a family through a peephole inside their house. That's some twisted stuff.

A cult of vegetarians exists in the middle of beef town. The writers excellently portrayed the bigotry against them, which exemplified the fear of the unknown. The cult could have been better utilized, so much potential for additional weirdness.

Towards the end the story begins tripping over its shoelaces. Various aspects are left unexplained by plot holes rather than authentic mystery. Luckily, the episode's strong feeling and great acting make the few story glitches entirely forgivable.

Rumor has it that Red Museum was just going to be a monster-of-the-week episode. Certain things fell through, though, and some myth/arc elements were added to flesh out the episode. So Red Museum is a unique episode that stands by itself but has a little bit of the mythology in it. It's a really good episode that sees the return of Deep Throat's killer. Red Museum does a good job of misdirection. Unfortunately I can't elaborate on it, because that would spoil the episode. The resolution with the crew-cut man, Deep Throat's killer, is a bit disappointing. I was left wanting for a little bit more. I really like the story and the mysterious "S/he is one" that was written on the backs of the victims. It's funny to see Mulder and Scully hunkering down over a set of dripping barbecue ribs. You don't see them eating a whole lot in the series. It seems like it's humorous when they do show it. You don't need to have seen 'The Erlenmeyer Flask' to enjoy this episode, but viewing it beforehand will help you understand Red Museum more.

Are members of a bizarre cult taking teenagers, drugging them, doing things to them, and putting them into the woods half naked?

I liked this episode very much, it felt very different to any other episode. Yes it's an X File, but it's a case with a little bit of truth behind it, there has been concern for many years over what kind of treatments and drugs cattle are given, and subsequently the effect those have on people.

It's 26 years later, and the debate still goes on..

Only downside, I thought that the cult were a little bit overdone, they could have toned them down a fraction, and made them a little less.....alien.

Good episode for Mulder and Scully as a solid duo, we are back on track. I would have liked to have known more about the cleaner.

A very good episode with lots of interest, 8/10.

In narrative terms X-files has been an astounding failure so far; twenty-something episodes, nearly twenty hours of narrative time, and we basically know that Mulder lost his sister and wants to believe, and Scully lost her father and is sceptical.

It boggles the mind that we're only at around this time beginning to know a third character outside the two with any dimension at all, Skinner.

It boggles the mind that in place of sketching a broader world for the main couple, we've chased around the dumbest monsters for episode after episode. That Scully keeps asserting logical explanations in spite of the many encounters she's had, that we've seen vampires, ghosts, werewolves and alien hybrids and the show hilariously still tries to entertain some ambiguity.

Here, perhaps for the first time we have something of what the show may have been in capable hands. It's all in the prologue—a baffling disappearance and discovery, with someone watching from behind a mirror, responsible for some part of it but we're not sure which. I don't mind that we go on to stitch on that the usual 'secret experiment' and 'government cover-up' plots, because pieces of the larger narrative just fall from the sky as in a film noir.

But we actually seen nothing extraordinary, we are small pawns tossed about in a larger game of control. Hints of broader mystery. Why was the man watching, filming? This is never addressed in its sexual dimension, which only adds. Both leads in the show are so asexual, it is something they'd overlook. It is a powerful causality outside the detective plot, the disappearances linked to secret experiments linked to secret watching each one generating the next level because there is so much pent-up energy in the gears of this world.

I always preferred the stand alone. This one is all over the place but still good.

Wisconsin setting explained by having a cow connection.

To kirkh-26247...the music is Bad Medicine by God's Children.

Would have been cool to see a Picket Fences crossover.