The X-Files: The Lord of the Flies Rewatch

September 1, 2020 8:07 PM - Season 9, Episode 5

After a teenaged amateur stunt performer is killed while performing a daring act for a local cable reality show, Scully, Doggett, and Reyes discover that the boy died not from the crash but from a swarm of flies that attacked his brain so aggressively that his skull collapsed.
posted by orange swan (2 comments total)

Neither the humour nor the plot quite worked in this one. We're supposed to find the relationship between Natalie and Dylan compelling, but it wasn't. Natalie was simply annoying.

Cute moment with the expression on Doggett and Reyes' faces when watching Dumbass: she looks bemused by the sheer stupidity of it; he also thinks it's stupid but is still grinning with enjoyment. It reminds me of what an ex of mine used to say about The Three Stooges being an immutable diving line between the sexes, that you could show it to a man with a Ph.D who is a college professor and a woman with an eighth-grade education who cleans toilets for a living, and he'd love and it and she'd hate it. But it would still have been a funnier moment for Scully and Mulder. Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish aren't the comic actors David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are. I think Patrick's just good at being a straight man.

Dr. Rocky Bronzino is a terrible, terrible name, and I do wish Scully had just cut him down to size instead of putting up with his constant smarmy hitting on her. Her "I'm a mother" was kind of lame.

I can't believe they brought in Jane Lynch only to waste her the way they did here, although it was amusing that her son thought she was trying to sit him down for a talk about the birds and the bees, and she really wanted to talk to him about flies.
posted by orange swan at 1:55 PM on September 2, 2020

I totally mistook a 22yo Aaron Paul ('Breaking Bad') for Josh Hutcherson (he was in the 'Hunger Games' and stuff, but really stood out in a comedic role in 'Future Man.').

Definitely underused Jane Lynch. But Principal Lokensgard's pretty irresponsible for not having the talk when Dylan was younger. The character's mouth parts begs some questions about her physical relationship with Dylan's father.

At least they managed to cast an actor for Dylan who was 22 at the time, not in their mid-30s, and the actor for Natalie was 21.

Erick Avari can always be counted on for a laugh and he delivers as the "are you the expert?" doctor.

Rocky reminds me intensely of someone I encountered once, only they were a former bodybuilder "faking" having a PhD who was peddling snake oil. I wonder if one of the showrunners/ writers had a personal experience with a bug scientist (see also Dr. Bambi)?

Scully performing unnecessary artificial ventilation on Rocky is super lame and plain stupid (you definitely know when someone is resuscitated).
posted by porpoise at 6:35 PM on September 3, 2020