Episode Summary
Mulder and Scully encounter a delusional man who believes his boss may be a monster — and is willing to pay any price to prove it.
Episode Details
- Writer: Vince Gilligan
- Director: Kim Manners
- Original Broadcast: AU: 08.07.1998 US: 10.05.1998
Cast
- Scully Gillian Anderson
- Mulder David Duchovny
Guest Cast
- Greg Pincus John Apicella
- SWAT Commander Steve Bacic
- Medical Assistant Tim Bissett
- Supervisor Dmitry Chepovetsky
- Agent Rice Roger R Cross
- SWAT Teamer/Cameraman Grant Gladish
- Gretchen Starns Leslie Jones
- Nurse Nancy Kerr
- Telemarketer Robert Luft
- Mrs Edith Loach Brenda McDonald
- Gary Lambert Brian Markinson
- Assistant Director Walter Skinner Mitch Pileggi
- Nancy Aaronson Cynthia Preston
- Mark Backus Owen Walstrom
- Newscaster Norma Wick
Quotes
Supervisor: Yo, Gary! Dial and Smile, Gary. See, if you're not smiling, they can hear it.
[The supervisor walks away. Nancy Aaronson looks over Gary Lambert's cubicle wall and mimics the supervisor]
Nancy Aaronson: If you're not smiling, they can hear it. Jerk.
[Gary Lambert smiles]
Mulder: Why can't the Chicago field office take care of it?
Skinner: Because I'd prefer you did.
Mulder: Because the manifesto contains bizarre overtones? Claims of a... paranormal nature?
Skinner: It speaks of a monster stalking employees. Your insight into such claims should aid in assessing the threat if any posed by this person.
Mulder: Monsters? I'm your boy...
Mulder: I must have done something to piss him off.
Scully: What do you mean?
Mulder: Get stuck with this jerk-off assignment. Or have I finally reached that
magic
point in my career where every time somebody see Bigfoot or the Virgin Mary on a tortilla, I get called out of my basement ward to offer my special insight on the matter.
Scully: You're saying
I
a lot. I heard we
. Nor do I assume that this case is just a waste of our time.
Mulder: Well, not yours any ways. There's no reason both of us should go to Chicago. I'll take care of it.
[Mulder walks away]
Scully: Mulder?
Mulder: I'm Monster Boy, right?
Scully: [answering mobile phone] Scully.
Mulder: Hi. It's me. I need you to check on something.
Scully: What?
Mulder: It's a phrase,
Hiding in the Light
. It's on this tape that I'm looking into.
Scully: On the case
It's A Total Waste Of Time
?
Mulder: Yes, and I didn't say that it wasn't.
To hide in the light
, hiding in the light
, some form of that. I think it's on an old case file somewhere that I got hidden away.
Scully: Which one? There's hundreds.
Mulder: I'm not sure, but I appreciate it.
[Nancy Aaronson has returned from her chat with Greg Pincus, but to Gary Lambert she looks like a zombie]
Nancy Aaronson: See? Nothing to it.
Mulder: [answering mobile phone] Mulder.
Scully: Hiding in the Light
. That was a phrase spoken by one Gerald Resnick to a Lakeland, Florida police investigator on August 9th 1992.
Mulder: What was he describing?
Scully: Well Mr Resnick was a Deacon of his local church and apparently he was concerned that there was an evil presence amongst his fellow parishioners and that he alone was aware of that fact.
Mulder: Was he trying to warn them?
Scully: Not as such, he showed up for Mass one Sunday with four handguns. He began wounding people saying
the afflicted wouldn't bleed
. He committed suicide a week later in his cell.
Mulder: Scully at the risk of you telling me
I told you so
, I think it's time for you to get down here and help me.
Scully: I told you so.
Gary Lambert: [holding gun to Mulder] What are you doing here?
Mulder: Applying for a job.
Gary Lambert: [laughing] Oh man, did you come to the wrong place.
Mulder: I get that.
Gary Lambert: [answering Mulder's mobile phone] Dial and Smile!
[Before the SWAT team shot Gary Lambert they cut the lights and Mulder saw Greg Pincus' true form]
Gary Lambert: Now you know.
Mulder: There was a reason the phrase
hiding in the light
seemed so familiar to me. I found it, or variations of it, in five other X-Files. Hiding in plain view
, hiding in the open
, lurking in the open
, all to describe some sort of manifestation of evil which goes unnoticed by everyone except the claimant in each case.
Scully: Have you slept?
Mulder: Seven cities in all, dating back ten years. VinylRight has offices within 50 miles of four of those cities. Greg Pincus was worked for VinylRight for — guess for how long? — ten years.
Scully: What exactly is it you think you have here?
Mulder: What if Gary Lambert was right?
Scully: Mulder you're not serious?
Mulder: Just bear with me for a moment. I mean what if such a creature existed that could camouflage itself by clouding the minds of its victims. There are antecedents for it in nature, right, in the insect world — Mantids for instance. They're said to hypnotise their prey.
Scully: No.
Mulder: What if it could induce a visual hallucination, a sort of temporary conversion disorder.
Scully: Well what you're describing would be more like some kind of visual agnausea, an inability to recognise what's before one's eyes.
Mulder: Only Gary Lambert could see through it somehow, as could the others. Maybe because of some heightened adrenalin level or maybe just because he knew where to look somehow.
Scully: Mulder, he was disturbed.
Mulder: Yeah, but did he see it because he was disturbed, or was he disturbed because he saw it?
Scully: He was mentally ill. His monster was a sick fantasy, a product of his dementia.
Mulder: I saw it too. Does that make me disturbed? Demented? Does that make me sick too?
[Gary Lambert has a marked map on his wall]
Agent Rice: What's this about?
Mulder: Lambert was tracking his boss' movements over the years.
Agent Rice: Stalking him.
Mulder: Gathering evidence.
Scully: Let's start with the photos. In fact, let's just do the photos. External exam only.
Medical Assistant: This guy came a long way just to have his picture taken.
Scully: Knock yourself out.
Medical Assistant: Judging from the corpse's resolved rigour and fixed lividity, as well as the decompositional bloating, I'd place the time of death between 48 and 72 hours.
Scully: No. This man died late yesterday afternoon.
Medical Assistant: Are you sure?
Scully: Absolutely.
Medical Assistant: It sure looks to me like he's been dead longer than that.
Skinner: Agent Mulder, think very carefully about the next words that come out your mouth.
[Mulder is strapped to a hospital bed]
Mulder: Five years together Scully. You must have seen this coming.
Mulder: You have to be willing to see.
Scully: I wish it were that simple.
Mulder: Scully, you have to believe me. Nobody else on this whole damn planet does or ever will. You're my one in five billion.
Nurse: Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.
Mulder: What did you tell him?
[Skinner]
Scully: The truth, as well as I understand it.
Mulder: Which is?
Scully: Folie à deux
, a madness shared by two.