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[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s6 episode 19 "the unnatural" thoughts

well. no need to dwell on the last episode any longer than we have to.

i want something cozy tonight. 

so, arthur dales has a brother? very interesting! and his brother knows about aliens, huh? i look forward to hearing the tale of an alien who plays baseball.

post-episode thoughts: while i have some concerns over the ethics of making a Very Real and Horrifying racist terrorist organization have a little green alien as a member- and i still am unpacking that as a choice- this episode was a gem. it was at once an excellent standalone episode that introduced us to characters we will likely never meet again, made us their friends, and left us with that emotional impact, AND brought us closer to the characters we have known and loved for many seasons now. and i think that is the ultimate goal this kind of episode can aim to accomplish. especially when you compare it with how it felt to watch fellow travelers, an earlier attempt at exploring this sort of thing- to me, that one just fell flat, where as this one was sparkling. the tale of ex and dales will probably haunt me for a very long time. which is an incredibly positive endorsement.

it ALSO introduced us to layers of nuance for our series Big Bad Evil Villains, which is extraordinary, AND gave us the giggliest scully we have ever seen. and there is something SO wonderful about scully giggling as she teases and is teased by mulder.

i will have more to say on this later, in greater detail, down below. but yeah. good episode! very good episode!

we open in roswell, an ancestral homeland to alien nerds. baseball is going on. how did this fellow named moose manage to land a baseball into a cactus? honestly quite impressive. the others are being told to back up- a fellow named exley is up.

oh, he’s cuteeee. and he hits a foul, but it seems the ball just sort of…. bounced back. from the darkness. an outfielder grabs it with a baffled expression. 

again, moose throws a ball into the cactus. i’m getting worried about the cactus population in this town.

LMAO, the guys on the team are trying to tell him how to throw the ball. “leave the cactus alone, son!”

the yankees have been calling ex, according to the catcher, but he says he’s happy out here in the cactus leagues. he doesn’t want to be famous, even if he’d be the first black man in the american leagues.

woohoo, moose FINALLY throws a good ball, and ex hits a homer!!! it’s his 61st home run this year!!

his teammates lift him up on their shoulders to celebrate. but he sees something in the distance….

IS THAT THE KKK? oh my god, it seems to be. and they are fully saying slurs. which is you know, what they do, but it is jarring coming from a TV screen.

the other team tries to get in their way, but they say they only want ex- no one else.

moose starts tossing balls at them, knocking ‘em off of their horses, and then when they fall off, the other guys grab the guns. get them!

OH! the other team’s captain rips one of the klan member’s hoods off… and it’s a baby alien??!!!??!!

i mean, maybe he is fully grown, but he LOOKS like a baby.

aliens in the KKK…….. this has wild implications.

so what are they going to do with this alien?!?! the good baseball guys, i mean??

intro time…. t’was shortened.

AHAHA!! they changed the intro text “in the big inning” <- haha! baseball pun! okay!!! so this will probably also have lore importance. we haven't had a changed intro text in a while!!

mulder has the dodgers game on in the corner of the office (does he like the dodgers and the yankees? are the dodgers playing the yankees?) while scully lugs in a big old box. why does she have a big box!! where did she get more archival material this time?!

it’s not a box, it’s a book! a huge book!!

oh, scully wants to go outside!! she steps up on his shelf to peek out the window that i honestly never noticed they had before. “mulder, it is such a gorgeous day outside. have you ever entertained the idea of trying to find life on this planet?” “i have seen the life on this planet, scully, and that is exactly why i am looking elsewhere” <-BAHAHAHAHA

that is so funny, lmao. he says this as he flips through a massive book. is it full of newspapers??

let’s see what is in the office, beyond scully standing on the counter with a paper bag. i see a basketball, a mug shaped like an alien head, a bunch of books, some photos. still no actual x files! i would have thought they’d find the secret backup stash THAT DEFINITELY exists by now.

LMAO, SHE WHIPS OUT AN ICE CREAM CONE FROM HER PAPER BAG!! and he asks if she has enough to share with the class- lmao- BUT IT’S *NOT* AN ICE CREAM CONE, it’s some no fat rice-based abomination!!! which causes mulder to tell her she knows how to live it up.

bold move, though- he has walked right into her trap as she says, well, YOU are spending this BEAUTIFUL saturday stealing books from the FBI library to look for new mexican obituaries.

“looking for anomalies, scully” <- NERD!!! nerd. nerd. and she’s a nerd for joining him. but i guess that’s what having a friend and also a crush makes you do. you spend your beautiful saturdays with your beautiful partner. in the basement. pining.

and they’re flirting as they throw cliches at each other, but he GETS UP AND STEALS HER FAKE ICE CREAM!!!! SO EVIL!!!!!! but i’m giggling. giggling SO bad.

it smears all over the FBI library book (he’s going to have to PAY for that!! where do you even GET another book of roswell, new mexico newspapers from decades ago?!)

OH! SHE’S LAUGHING!!!! SHE’S LAUGHING AT HIM!!!! “mulder!!! you cheat!! i can’t believe that you’ve been reading about baseball this whole time” <- OH MY GOSH…. HER SMILE??? 

“i’m reading the box scores, scully. you’d like it, it’s like the Pythagorean theorem for jocks.” 

OHHHH, he’s such a nerd, as he talks about how the numbers distill the action, how they bring him peace:

“it’s like the numbers talk to me. they comfort me, they tell me that even though lots of things can change, some things do remain the same. it’s-“ “boring” (she says, with a brilliant smile)

bahaha, oh, he looks so taken aback with her saying that, but it’s all part of a scully scheme, i’m sure. because she follows it up with “can i ask you a personal question?” which is always a wild thing to say. “did your mother ever tell you to go outside and play?” she says, biting back a smile.

WHY IS SHE ASKING ABOUT HIS CHILDHOOD OH MY GOD....... SHE LOVES HIIIIIM!!!

but he does not answer this question!! because he spots arthur dales in the newspaper??? so he fakes a sneeze and RIPS THE PAGE OUT WHILE SHE GASPS, LMAOOOO

“you just defaced property of the US government… you rebel” she says as he walks away, and some guy named vin scully is narrating the baseball scores. 

oh, she is down bad. we’re so used to seeing him down bad, but she’s the one with that honor today.

i’m smiling stupidly right now, bahaha. my cheeks hurt.

mulder takes the paper to arthur dales. he knocks on the door, and when someone answers, he says he is very sorry sir, but he’s looking for arthur dales. but this man says that HE is arthur dales. 

“arthur dales is my brother. my name also happens to be arthur dales” <- OH!!! LMAO, BAHAHA the most confusing explanation possible. right, right, of course. 

WE HAD A SISTER NAMED ARTHUR TOO, BAHAHAAAAA. AND a goldfish. consistency is key.

but he knows his name is “agent mulder” somehow… hmm. i wonder if they talked about him.

so the other arthur that we met before moved down to florida. yes, this i do recall. i guess i thought that maybe he moved back after the hurricane, but must be this didn't happen.

“my brother told me all about you. he said you were the biggest jackass in the bureau since he retired. yeah, we’re big fans. sometimes we’d stay awake hours at night, just talking about you” <- BAHAHAHHAAAAA, oh this guy's trouble

and then he slams the door in mulder's face. so mulder shouts from outside that he has a photo of his brother- or maybe him- in roswell. and this arthur (arthur 2) says it is him; he was a cop there. and in the photo, he is standing next to negro league legend josh exley, who disappeared after hitting 60 home runs. (baseball stats nerd and fanboy mulder is very endearing to me) “61!”, arthur corrects from inside. 

(author's note: after having seen the episode, that little correction is making me emo... 💔)

but mulder wants to know who is standing with them in the old photo- he believes that person to be an alien bounty hunter!

BAHAHA, he says of course mulder doesn’t care about baseball. well, i do, he says! quiz time with arthur 2: how many home runs did mickey mantle hit? he pauses to think.

163, he says, which is the wrong answer, and arthur slams the door again on him. BUT BEFORE HE CAN, mulder clarifies! 163 righty, 373 lefty, 536 total. yeah. he knows his stuff!!!!!

(i'm imagining him as a kid with his baseball card collection... i KNOW his ass was NOT playing around when it came to opening up those packs. bro for SURE had them in a little organized binder)

arthur 2 offers some wisdom: “what you fail to understand in your joyless myopia is that baseball is the key to life- the rosetta stone, if you will. if you just understood baseball better, all your other questions, your-you- the, uh, the aliens, the conspiracies- they would all, in their way, be answered by the baseball gods” <- i see. i’m taking notes here. 

mulder says that yes sir, that may be true, but this alien bounty hunter may connect to a current alien conspiracy going on in our government! arthur 2 thinks this is silly.

“do you believe that love can make a man shape-shift?” “i guess… women change men all the time” “i’m not talking about women” <-LMAOOOO, HE TOLD ON HIMSELF, I’M HOWLINGGGG 

(tell us how loving scully has changed you, mulder. go on, i'm listening!)

“i’m talking about love; passion. like the passion you have for proving extraterrestrial life”

mulder wants to talk aliens. why wouldn’t either arthur tell anyone about colonization, if they'd known it was going to happen for 50 YEARS?!? no one would have believed him, he says. mulder insists he would have, but arthur 2 says he wasn’t… ripe.

BAHAHAHA, he’s RIPE, okay? he’s so ripe he’s ROTTEN! and he will defend his claim to ripeness, damn it!

maybe you ought to spend more time focusing on the mystery of the heart, says dales. which is what i’m ALWAYS saying. and if you give his bank a dime, he will tell you a story about baseball and aliens and bounty hunters. mulder says this makes him feel like a child, which arthur 2 says is perfect, because baseball keeps you forever young. but he obliges, and places a dime in the bank.

OH! let us journey back in time. young arthur 2 is holding a bounty sign, not of the alien variety… but rather, it offers $500 for killing josh exley. “keep baseball white”, it says. that is very jarring to see.

arthur approaches exley, who asks if he has broken any laws. and his friend says yes, he stole- 50 bases this year! hahahaha, baseball jokes

dales explains that he cannot stand to see someone from his town targeted for murder. “and i really don’t have an opinion on negroes, or jews, or communists, or even canadians and vegetarians, for that matter”

<- wow… arthur 2 was most open-minded white man in the 40’s ❤️

ex chooses to have arthur come along with him on the bus instead of staying there with him- there is baseball to be played. and dales is mumbling in french. the teammates are teasing him, and he teases back. it seems like a nice little road trip, if you ignore the reason why their paths crossed in the first place.

they are sleeping during a storm, but some thunder wakes up dales. however, when he looks back at ex, he sees that his reflection in the window is that of an alien?? he wakes him up. “what’s the matter, arthur?", ex asks; "you look like you ain’t never seen a black man before”

back to present times, mulder and arthur 2 share hot dogs. and mulder thinks that his story is funny. “you seriously want me to believe that josh exley, maybe one of the greatest ballplayers of all times, was an alien?” “they’re all aliens, agent mulder- all the great ones” <- oh! that’s a plot twist.

mulder lists off famous baseball players, and arthur 2 confirms that yes, they all are.

a knock at the door. i thought it would be scully, but it’s a child bringing dales “his medicine”, and he makes mulder tip him. 

mulder thinks that maybe he’s speaking in metaphors about the alien thing, but dales says he doesn’t have time for that. metaphors are for the youth. i am learning so much from him.

LMAOOOO, MULDER HANDS THE CHILD A CRISP DOLLAR BILL AS A TIP, AND HE SAYS “you’re a regular rockefeller, ain’t you?” <-BAHAHAAAA

jump back in time to 1947. some kids are watching ex play, arguing over if his record is better than babe's or not since ex is not technically in the major leagues. it's a heated discussion. all the team players grab some chew tobacco, and when ex hands some to dales, he places a big wad in his mouth... and throws up, BAHAHA

but dales is quickly back on his feet, watching as two men in the crowd pull out a gun when ex comes up to bat!!! he tackles him to keep him safe…

but the men are squirting water guns!!! so they did that whole meet cute close proximity thing for nothing. ex still thanks him. 

ex comes up to bat for real now, and he gets beaned right in the head!! his teammates gather around and ask if he knows where he is, and he starts speaking in a very strange language!! will he revert to alien form??

eventually, he can speak in english again, and he answers that he is from a town in georgia. his teammates pull him back up. but dales noticed that when his head landed on the baseball glove, his green blood burnt a hole in the leather!!!!

dales calls the town in georgia that ex says he is from to do a background check. and someone from that town says that he knows who josh exley is- he was a 6 year old boy who vanished 5 years ago!! so he would be 11. and that’s all they have. 

AHHHH!!! when the other policeman from georgia sets down the phone, it’s the alien bounty hunter!!! the one we know from our times!!!! he asks where dales is calling from!! and dales tells him!!

back at the game, one of the little boys tells ex that the yankee scouts are here, and then all of a sudden his performance tanks. he must want to remain undetected. the scouts get fed up and leave. and the minute they do, he lands a beautiful homerun.

after, dales asks why he tanked the game today. and he says he knows he isn’t actually josh exley, because that name belongs to a missing small child. he knows he’s hiding something.

“while you’re out chasing secrets, make sure you’re chasing the right ones”, ex warns him... ominous……

dales wakes up in a motel to a clatter, pulling out his pistol. he sees ex practicing his swing and he sneaks into his room. where he catches him in alien mode!!! and they both scream!!!

dales promptly faints. and comes to to see ex still in alien mode- then faints again. and again. he says that he is ex. and that is what he really looks like. he is trying to not be insulted by the reaction he is getting to his natural face.

he shapeshifts into a white woman and asks if that would be easier for dales to handle. AND THEN CRAWLS INTO HIS LAP???

when one of his teammates opens the door, he only sees dales with a woman in his lap <- LMFAOOO.

back on the bus, they’re talking in code. “so why did you leave your family in, uh… georgia?” “my people guard their privacy zealously. they don’t like for us to intermingle with your people; their philosophy is, we stick to ourselves; you stick to yourselves- everybody’s happy”

“so what happened?” “well, you know what happened” “you fell in love with an earth woman” (ex laughs, and bumps dales on the shoulder) “no. i saw a baseball game”

he says that his race doesn’t laugh. they don't even smile. but when he saw the game being played, the laughter rose out of him. he says it was the first unnecessary thing he’d done in his life, and it meant everything to him. and he couldn’t go home. 

his friends call him up to sing along with him. 

cutscene back to mulder and dales, who have plenty of chinese takeout containers between them. as well as a pizza. mulder’s still finding the whole thing hard to believe. 

back to 1947. we see the alien bounty hunter waiting for the roswell grays bus!!! no!!

dales gets a call from the guy he asked to test out the chemical on the glove- he thinks it must be a joke, because it’s from a life-form that doesn’t seem to be carbon-based! so he called the FBI and washington, which dales says he was not supposed to do!!! 

exley comes down to explain what happened to the glove (and the lab guy recognizes him as the best player this side of the bronx!) 

he tells him he got it from mars- actually, just to the left of mars- and then starts attacking him. he kills the guy!!!

oh!!! but it was the alien bounty hunter!!! and not really ex. okay. i was going to say... that speech dales just gave about him being a man of great character seems incompatible with him being a murderer.

dales rushes to the real ex, saying that a man down at the precinct swears on his life that he saw him kill a man. but he knows he’s no murderer. so he says he has to leave town. 

ex gestures for him to pick up a glove, and they engage in some deep talk while playing catch. he says his relative told him he should come home. dales is surprised he still thinks of them as family. but that’s not how aliens are. 

“you know the big thing that separates us from you? we got rhythm” 

they both laugh, but sirens approach. ex says he had better go. he asks dales to tell his kids how he played the game. and he says dales has a pretty good arm on him. and then he runs away. 

dales is being interrogated by some cowboy cops in hats, who are asking him where ex is. he says ex told him he was going home. which brings us back to the game we began with. 

OHHH, the line about "them all looking alike" is diabolical. the cowboy cop is trying to tell dales he could be an accomplice to murder if he doesn't fess up to knowing where ex is. and if he hands him over, he can be a cop as long as he wants. dales refuses. so the cops say he’s finished. 

back to the game we started the episode with, where the KKK showed up and then the alien fell off the horse. everyone flees from the alien on the ground. it’s the alien bounty hunter!!! approaching ex with his goop needle.

he says it’s the right thing to do. what would he know about the right thing to do, asks the alien bounty hunter. he risked the project for a game!!!

the shapeshifting from alien to human and back is very funny. sorry. 

bounty hunter says to show his true face. and ex says this is his true face!!!

but as dales arrives, he puts the needle into his neck. and the bounty hunter rides off.

he’s dying, and ex tells him to get away, our blood is like acid to your people! but dales says it’s just blood. it’s just blood. and he laughs before dying- look at that. just blood. dales holds him close. 

back in the present day, dales is crying, recalling holding him, and the song he sang with ex and his teammates.

bro. i’m sad. they had a deep connection...

we have a jump in time.

mulder is wearing a gray’s jersey, hitting some balls around, even though it appears to be late at night.

OH! scully is here. “so, uh, i get this message marked 'urgent' on my answering service from one fox mantle, telling me to come down to the park for a very special, very early or very late birthday present. and, mulder… i don’t see any nicely wrapped presents laying around. so, what gives?” 

BAHAHA, does he STILL not remember her birthday?!? or is he simply incredibly committed to the bit at this point!!

LMAOOOOOO, HE PAID THE KID FROM BEFORE TO PUT THE BALLS IN THE MACHINE, I’M CRYING!!!

he asks if she has ever hit a baseball- and she says no; she supposes she's had more important things to do. so he is going to show her.

he puts his arms around her, grabbing the bat. i don't think their faces could be any closer if they tried.

his hands on her hips……………. my brain is short-circuiting. the silly way he's talking to the bat. 

HER PUTTING HER HANDS IN THE MIDDLE?????

“all right, what you may find is: you concentrate on hitting that little ball, the rest of the world just fades away- all your everyday, nagging concerns.” 

OH MY GOD, HER FUCKING GIGGLE. i’m going to SCREAM.

“the ticking of your biological clock. how you probably couldn’t afford that nice new suede coat on a g-woman’s salary. how you threw away a promising career in medicine to hunt aliens with a crack pot- albeit brilliant- partner. getting into the heart of a global conspiracy. your obscenely overdue triple-x bill. (she looks at him after that last one) oh, i-i’m sorry, scully, those last two problems are mine, not yours”

“shut up, mulder. i’m playing baseball”

okay. hold on. i reached the end. but i have to watch that again.

her laughing at him talking on behalf of the bat… he's pressed right up against her, and says “not a bad piece of ash, huh? the bat. i’m talking about the bat” (CRINGING!!!!)…. the hand rearranging…… her SMILE. AND SHE KEEPS SMILING.

and we end with the song ex and his team were singing.

hey….. hi. 

(collapses my head into my hands)

yeah…. yeah <3

wow….

he noticed her new coat...

i’ve seen the baseball scene in gifs before, but it was WAY better than any gifs could have shown. no offense to gif makers. i just couldn't hear the dialogue or her giggling. little did i know.

oh, so they’re in the stage of both knowing they have feelings for each other, and so they’re just gonna be open with it now. that’s fascinating. much to analyze……..

much to ponder…

the story with dales and ex made me so sad. they had such great chemistry. him sitting there in the present day, crying as he recalled holding his body… man. it broke my heart. it was a real love story. and so often those do end in tears. but clearly dales held his memory close throughout all of those years. and he did what he said he would- told others about how he could play ball.

and this episode managed to do a very good thing: make you sympathize with the big bad villain species. clearly, they are not all the colonists. and i think that is very important world building for our overarching plot, especially when we tend to speak of these species in broad strokes and have mostly only seen them commit heinous acts. with very few exceptions. there was the one shape-shifting alien that healed those people, and then the other one who tried his best to protect their human mothers. all the others we have seen have been... less savory.

now, not sure if utilizing the KKK for your fantasy alien plot is… what we would describe as being in good taste. i’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on that decision, but every time i look up an episode on wikipedia and read the reactions section, i manage to get spoiled. without fail. so i must once again rely on asking the people, humbly, what they thought.

man… ex just wanted to play baseball. 

okay, and for the record, i was definitely not imagining the tension between ex and dales. there was no real reason for ex to shapeshift into a woman and crawl into his lap like that. none. 

i rarely find myself caring about the plot exposition episodes- i was very staunchly a hater of the roy cohn turns people into spiders episode that even brought us arthur 1 in the first place- so i am incredibly pleased at how well this episode stood alone. and while it could have been its own thing- just a short film about an alien and a negro league team- we got it interspersed with great character development for our agents. while of course i would have preferred to have even more agent time, what we did receive was splendid. it was saccharine. my tooth is practically aching. i can’t believe that ice cream stealing and baseball instructing didn’t come out of a fanfiction. 

now, the overarching message. is this a turning point of hope- one for a world of unity between all races, human and alien? will any of this well-developed lore actually be continued in future mytharc episodes? or will we go right back to only dealing with the evil shapeshifters and lose all nuance slash hope? or is this perhaps introducing us gently to the idea of the resistance being assisted BY the shape-shifting aliens? will the plan for colonization be thwarted by a ragtag alliance of humans, shapeshifters, and whatever sort of species the ones who blinded themselves are?

we could wonder about it all day. but right now, i want to live in that dreamy land of msr baseball time.

i really do love to see mulder nerd tf out. just see him be a silly little guy. and scully thinks it's funny. and she was HAVING FUN playing with him in the park like kids!! they love each other so much!! they're so close to admitting it!! i can tell!

how it must feel for things to change between them despite knowing each other for so long... and now that sneaking suspicion "of is he just teasing, or does he really like me like that?" is answered... the giddiness and innocence associated with that, even though they have been through so much together in the past; now it's recast in a different light...

man. so much to think about. a very, very good episode.