S1 E5: Jersey Devil

The premise of this episode is Mulder goes to investigate attacks on the outskirts of Atlantic City, New Jersey that stir up rumblings about the Jersey Devil urban legends. 

As far as positives goes for this episode there is some fun stuff involving Scully going on a date with a man who winds up being more interested in Mulder's work. Poor Scully. While Scully is trying to have a social life, Mulder is hitting the streets of Atlantic City trying to get information about the homeless man who was supposedly attacked by the Jersey Devil. This episode isn't subtle in its messaging about the police/city brass seeing the homeless population as monstrous as the beast preying on them. 

Notorious fun-haver Richard Dawkins once critiqued that X-Files using pseudo-scientific analysis to explain the show's phenomena is "insidious". While I think critiques like that are a bit silly considering X-Files makes it clear from the beginning that this show leans hard into sci-fi, an entire scene in this episode makes some incredible leaps in evolutionary biology. Mulder hypothesizes that the beast or beasts attacking the city could possibly be higher than humans on the food chain. 

Now. That's all well and good but the monster better be something like the Xenomorph out of the Alien universe, or even a Predator, not a couple of Neanderthals. Yep. Cave people are our monsters this week.

I don't have much else to say about this episode. Mulder has a vaguely erotic moment with the cave lady. Oh and it's revealed there's a little cave child who I'm pretty sure is Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle. 

Totally Arbitary Episode Rating: 1/5



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