1.02 - Deep Throat
In the ‘90s apparently SWAT teams wore sweatshirts? I don’t think that’s what they actually are, but they sure look like sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off. We’re treated to a team of these strangely outfitted fellas hut-hut-ing and storming a suburban house. Later in the first season they show up and just keep on looking like a weird intramural football squad.
This is also the first appearance of Deep Throat and another entry into the overall alien saga, what Wikipedia calls the “alien mythology arc,” and undoubtedly my favorite aspect of the show. That may change, but I sincerely doubt it. After getting Mulder’s backstory in episode one, specifically some tidbits about his sister, we’re treated here to some hints at the magnitude of what Mulder and Scully are about to get tangled up with.
It is strange this is Mulder’s first meeting with Deep Throat (and I’m fairly sure no one actually calls him that), because as he shows up in the later episodes they sure seem a lot chummier and like there are at least years of clandestine meetings and secrets between them. I’m interested to see if the show at all deals with the real Deep Throat being the former Associate Director of the FBI. Probably not, since this dude is supposed to be very obviously operating outside the bureau.
Mulder and Scully get some firsthand experience with UFOs here, watching two of them twirl around each other, making flight maneuvers no Earth-bound ship could. I 100% did not remember Scully actually seeing something “inexplicable” - because it’s not, to her - this early on in the series. She’s pretty calm about it, even when the UFOs shoot straight up and disappear in the clouds.
Seth Green makes an appearance here as a stoner, which in the ‘90s meant you had long hair, ripped jeans, wore at least three shirts at a time, and talked like a “surfer” despite being from Idaho (or anywhere).
“That was extreme,” his character Emil says, summing up the entire decade poetically.
Mulder mentions Roswell and how some of the wreckage from the Roswell crash was shipped to Ellens Air Force Base, the fictional base they’re visiting in this episode, based on Nellis Air Force Base, which Chris Carter talks about on the Blu-ray commentary. Nellis is one of the bases UFO devotees talk about due to its proximity to Groom Lake/Area 51, along with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, another very real base, that one in Dayton, Ohio. I’m reading UFO Secrets: Insight Wright Patterson by Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, which is definitely not what I would suggest for someone who is just learning about Roswell or Wright-Patterson and its alleged involvement. I’m a UFO nerd (as if I needed to say that) and that book is definitely a mid-stream entry point.
“Just because I can’t explain it, doesn’t mean I’m gonna believe they were UFOs,” Scully says. And that’s one of the reasons I love this show, because immediately Mulder says all those letters mean are Unidentified Flying Object, that doesn’t mean aliens (even though yeah, he clearly thinks they’re extraterrestrial in origin). The conflation of the acronym with “definitely aliens” is one of the reasons culture at large is so quick to judge someone who has interest in UFOs. I’m not saying the acronym and aliens aren’t linked, just that there exists a point where aliens are only one of the possibilities, and sometimes a small possibility.
Mulder sees an aircraft hover directly over him, which I’m sure was one of the coolest things that ever happened to him at that point in his life. It’s not definitely aliens though because he later sees the silhouette of a ship in the base he’s carted into. Probably just some hotshot test pilot from Boise zipping around out there.
Chris Carter mentions in his commentary on the Blu-ray about there being no credits sequence yet, which I mention here because the theme song is iconic and thus far Andrea and I have watched every second of the intro 21 times out of a possible 22. One episode left in the first season and it’ll be 22 times. It’s such a short intro, and despite it being funny every time the words “paranormal activity” and “government denies knowledge” come up, I still think it’s a great intro.
Carter also talks about the network wanting episodes to be wrapped up with a bow and the Scully voiceover is one mechanism for that. And despite them using one here the episode still doesn’t offer any answers, not really, which is for sure something they utilize a lot throughout the first season, and I assume in the forthcoming seasons. I know for a fact there are at least five or six episodes after this one where no closure is given, some ending so abruptly it’s pretty shocking there’s no “To be continued…” tagged on.
This episode has one of the best last lines, which I won’t spoil.