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# Fug the Show: The X-Files recap, episode 2, "Founder's Mutation"
- URL: https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/the-x-files-recap-episode-2/
- Published: 2016-01-26T20:00:59.000Z
- Updated: 2016-01-27T04:35:52.000Z
- Author: Jessica  
- Tags: #wp, #wp-gallery, #slideshow, #Import 2026-10-07 07:46

## The Hangover Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2016/01/img_0302.jpg)

This is Dr Sonny Sanjay. He has a REALLY BAD eye infection (Heather’s big phobia), is seeing Ominous Birds (MY phobia) and hearing voices and high pitched squealing that, after what looks like a frankly very boring work meeting, eventually causes him to SHOVE A LETTER OPENER INTO HIS BRAIN THROUGH HIS EAR HOLE. Well. Who hasn’t wanted to do *that* on a rough Monday?!?? Am I right? Please tip your waitress.

## The Investigation Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0306.jpg)

I very much enjoy seeing these two back out doing their usual — although who is helping the children at Our Lady Of Seriously The Name of This Hospital Is REALLY On The Nose now? I just hope Dear Dana negotiated a nice raise when she scampered back to the FBI. So, Mulder’s like, “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” and Scully’s like, “well, seems like Sanjay had a psychotic break, given Mr Pointy sticking out of his head.” (I paraphrase.) She’s also still whispering, although that improves over the course of the episode. One of you in the comments yesterday noted that it’s possible that Gillian Anderson's accent is all over the place now — given how long she’s been back in London, and how often she has a British accent for roles nowadays — and this is the only way she can sound Standard Issue American, and that definitely seems possible, especially if she was filming *War & Peace*, in which she has a British accent, around the same time (I'm getting to THAT recap tomorrow).

## The Illegal Search and Seizure Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0309.jpg)

Mulder wants to take the hard drive that Sanjay was copying, but they don’t have high enough clearance here at the Department of Defense, and they’re getting really stonewalled by the people in charge. Let’s not ask why this case was immediately determined to be an X-File and not handed over to some rando FBI people, or, in fact, even the cops, or why they can't just get a federal warrant for whatever evidence they want. Given that they ARE the Feds. I just don’t have the energy anymore. I’M SO OLD. Obviously, Mulder steals the corpse’s phone to snoop, and it never really occurred to me before all of this, but, wow, it's good that the criminal in this particular case was killed because literally nothing that Mulder and Scully ever do is admissible in court. It's fascinating to me that a show about paranoia and the fear that the government is screwing with us also literally shows us our Federal Agent Heroes willfully disregarding people's civil rights at all times. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD, MULDER.

## The Jeffster Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0310.jpg)

Instead, Mulder goes and meets with this dude, Gupta (Sanjay AND Gupta? James Wong, who wrote this episode, must watch a lot of CNN), who I know better as Lester from *Chuck*. Gupta/Lester takes Mulder into a tiny room at the back of the cozy bar at which they're meeting, and tries to give him a blow job. Not, like, because he's overcome with Mulder’s hotness, but because he thinks this is a hook-up assignation rather than a fact-finding mission. When Mulder doesn’t want to do it, Gupta/Lester gives him a great impassioned speech about repression and setting one’s self free! “The truth is IN HERE,” he tells Mulder, tapping him on the chest. Mulder is amused when he notes, “I’ve heard something like that.” And then he totally bums everyone out when he tells Gupta/Lester that Sanjay is dead. Gupta/Lester is sad; he said Sanjay had been distant and depressed lately, about the fact that “his kids were dying.” Mulder makes an interested face. Vik Sahay is very good in this part. Very handsome and soulful.

## The Autopsy Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0312.jpg)

Meanwhile, Scully is doing her autopsy, which feels very natural and right, doesn’t it? She discovers that Sanjay has written something in the palm of his hand: Founder’s Mutation. It's nice when the victim writes the name of the episode on his person before kicking it. Anyway, there are no other abnormalities in Sanjay's autopsy, but it’s obvious that he was trying to destroy his hearing. You know. From how he stuck a letter opener through his ear and dug around until he destroyed all his auditory nerves.

## The Flashlight Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0317.jpg)

Mulder and Scully go over to Sanjay’s Secret Gay Hideout -- and on the way, she almost hits a dude, but is stopped by her Ford Explorer’s Front Camera, which is both product placement, and comes into play later. When they get into Sanjay’s apartment, they pull out the flashlights, and it’s just like old times. Even my action figures are delighted, and they're pretending this isn't even happening. After some of the usual illegal search and seizure, they discover Sanjay’s aforementioned kids, pictures of whom are taped up on a classic Wall of Crazy.

## The OW Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0318.jpg)

And that's when Mulder starts to get the Ouchy Ear of Crazy, hearing Voices Telling Him What To Do. Sanjay had heard voices telling him to steal data, but Mulder hears "find her." Before he can find anyone, though, the cops burst in.

## The Skinner Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0320.jpg)

So, obviously, M&S are in trouble for breaking into Sanjay’s apartment without a warrant and whatnot. Poor Skinner. He must go home every night and complain to Doggett about what a mistake it was to re-open the X-Files, while Doggett makes soothing noises and cuts him another piece of pie. In their meeting, Skinner is basically like, "WELL THE CASE IS CLOSED NOW WAY TO GO," while the FBI brass is in the room, but as soon as that dude leaves, he’s all, “you obviously made copies of whatever you stole, right?” Oh, Skinner. YOU ARE AN ENABLER. He also neatly sums up WTF is happening thusly: “So, you suspect the Department of Defense is experimenting with genetic modification on humans?” Yes. Yes, they do.

## The Office Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0323.jpg)

Aw, the basement office is back! And it appears that Scully still doesn't have a desk. She asks Mulder what happened to him at the apartment. “I heard sounds. High pitched frequency, like a steel spike being lodged into my head. And I heard two words: FIND HER," he explains. Scully -- who is SO LOW ENERGY; wake up, Dana -- murmurs that she didn’t hear anything, but she knows Sanjay heard sounds before he killed himself. “This is dangerous,” she tells him. “When has that ever stopped us before?” Mulder and I note at the same time. They decide need to go see this dude, Dr Goldman, who was in charge of the project Sanjay was working on, but who is also (of course) highly reclusive…

## The Nun Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0325.jpg)

…and he's also DOUG SAVANT, AKA *Melrose Place*’s Matt. This whole episode is like a 1996 Fox Crossover event! Don't worry. We’ll get to him. First, there’s a lot of blah blah trying to get to him via a nun (who is played by Christine Wiles, [who was in several episodes back in the day](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0929794/?ref%5F=tt%5Fcl%5Ft14&ref=go-fug-yourself.ghost.io)) at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows, where M&S also CONVENIENTLY meet a young pregnant woman who wants them to help her get out because…brace yourself…the hospital told her her baby “wasn’t right” and they need to take it. For…you know. REASONS. And she doesn’t want to give it up anymore. Mulder slips her his card, and, you guys, OF COURSE Our Lady of Sorrows is evil. Has Scully ever worked anywhere that wasn’t just BUBBLING OVER WITH DEATH? That all squared away, Mulder asks The Nun why all these pregnant women are there, and she explains that they’re all “damaged in someway” — missing fathers, drug users, you know the drill. “Desire is the devil’s pitchfork,” she announces. Ah, yes, but it sure is fun.

## The Heart to Heart Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0327.jpg)

As they leave, Mulder points out to Scully that it seems PRETTY OBVIOUS that Doug Savant (AKA Augustus Goldman) is giving these babies to the DoD for…whatever. Something nefarious. “Is this what you believe happened to me 15 years ago?” she asks. Well. We SAW what happened to you 15 years ago and I ASSUME you told Mulder: You had a baby in a deserted western town while Moronica sang WHALE SONGS and a bunch of alien-human hybrids came out and worshiped the baby as their God. VERY DIFFERENT. "Was I just an incubator?” she asks.

"You were never JUST anything to me, Scully,” Mulder says, and YES I ENJOYED THAT PART. I may have sighed a little, even. I’m not made of stone. “Do you ever think about William?” she asks. Dear reader, DO NOT WONDER if it's more likely that they would have already had this discussion in the last 15 years, given that they allegedly spent part of it living together. It will just ruin your good time! Mulder admits that he does, but he’s had to compartmentalize it. He reassures Scully that sending their MiracleAlienBaby out to Yew Tree Farm was to keep him safe (which is TRUE), but admits that he doesn’t know if William’s very existence was the result of an experiment or what. Well. Who does, Mulder? WHO DOES?

## The Daydream Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0329.jpg)

It turns out Scully -- naturally -- has been having daydreams about what it would have been like if she hadn’t given William up for adoption. She talks far more normally in these dreams, and also she’s very happy in them in a way I fear is unrealistic. Happy, that is, UNTIL A DARK WIND BLOWS INTO TOWN. Literally, but also she imagines all the crazy shit that William would have experienced, or maybe IS experiencing. You know, like looking in the mirror and seeing that his eyes are all Black Oil-y, which…no. I cannot go down the road of figuring out if that makes any plot sense. (1013 doesn’t keep a show Bible, so the safe bet is NO.) Also: I'd like to point out that neither Mulder NOR Scully imagine each other in their daydreams of their life with their child, which...seems like a bad omen for the prospect of their future making out.

## The Melorse Place Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0332.jpg)

In the actual world, they go meet Doug Savant, who obviously insists that his job is to SAVE children, not EXPERIMENT on them, although of course he is totally experimenting on them, because he is evil. And we see a bunch of kids in observation rooms, all of whom have a variety of dramatic and rare things wrong with them. One of them even has…BRACE YOURSELF…the habit of USING A MONOCLE. (Fine, it’s because he only has one eye, but it’s still quite jaunty.) Master Monocle tells Scully he’s been there "forever," and he has no parents, and I totally want to adopt you, Master Monocle! You are extremely cute and smart. Scully, naturally, wants to know why the kids can’t come out and play with each other, and Doug Savant says that it’s so no environmental factors jack up the cures they’re trying to make for them, AKA, because treating them like humans would muck up his habits of experimenting on them. Poor Scully has really come across some mansplainers in the last two episodes, and she comes back at him and asks about the DoD, and Doug is all snarky about it, and then a kid starts melting down at the end of the hallway, and he kicks them out.

## The Hit and Run Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0337.jpg)

Unfortch, it seems that the pregnant girl to whom Mulder gave his card has been found dead, the victim of a hit and run, and she is conspicuously no longer pregnant. Scully determines that the baby had been surgically removed, and hypothesizes that “they” took it because the victim wanted to talk. Mulder starts theorizing about alien-human hybrids again and I swear the instant he says those words, I just ZONE OUT and think about how much better Scully’s wig looks...

## The Scrubs Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0339.jpg)

....and how cute her raspberry scrubs are. Oh, PS: Dr Goldman’s wife got sent to the insane asylum for murdering her baby, whose body was never found, and other than the murder part, getting sent to the asylum against your will actually DID happen on *Melrose Place*, so this crossover is coming quite nicely. Do Dr Kimberly Shaw and Dr Michael Mancini now work at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows? THAT WOULD BE MY GREATEST DREAM.

## The Not So Crazy Lady Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0341.jpg)

So they go see Mrs Goldman at the sanitarium and she is non-responsive, but she does throw an apple at a cat. “You don’t like cats?” Mulder wonders mildly, and I laughed. But then she talks. She tells them that her husband is the one who’s keeping her there, and that she had QUITE a lot going on with her children. One of them could breathe underwater (like, FOREVER), and the other -- in short -- asked her (while still a fetus) to perform a self-Cesarean after she left Dr Goldman and got in a car accident on her way out of town, to help him escape from his Evil, Experiment-y father. “He was talking to me, in the only way that he knew how, and I knew what to do," she tells Mulder and Scully, as we see -- in flashback -- her stabbing her pregnant belly, and a little hand wiggle out of her stomach and, you guys, IT WAS DISTURBING. (This episode is VERY James Wong; that little moment felt very “Home” to me.) She doesn’t know what happened to the baby, because she passed out and never saw him again. “I think about him every day,” she says. “A mother never forgets,” Scully responds. She does not say, "cutting your own child out of your body is hardcore. Let me tell you about the whale songs I had to deal with!"

## The OW AGAIN Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0344.jpg)

Later, Scully tells Mulder that she should NOT believe Mrs Goldman, but...she totally does. They wonder if the baby that told her to let him out also communicated with Mulder, and with Sanjay. Much more easily, probably, given that he's not an infant anymore. And Mulder figures out that the same janitor worked at Sanjay’s office as at the hospital, and they realize that he must be the baby (he's also the kid who Scully almost hit with her car). So, they go looking for him, and his (adoptive) mom REALLY doesn’t want to let them speak to him and as soon as she gets upset, the Ominous Birds arrive, and Mulder starts hearing those high pitched sounds and flings himself down the steps, which was actually fairly funny.

## The Bird Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0346.jpg)

THE HORROR. Anyway, Scully has to run through The Ominous Birds to find The Teen, and of course he’s stashed away in a shed somewhere, and she arrests him and they haul him off. They DO NOT Mirandize him, but Mulder questions him anyway. Kyle -- for that is his name -- swears he’d never try to kill Dr Sanjay, since Sanjay was helping him. “I just want to find my sister,” he says.

## The Carrie Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0349.jpg)

So they take Kyle to Doug Savant. “Where’s Molly?” he asks. “My Mother told me to find her.” Doug Savant is pretty cool throughout this given that he can surely tell the jig is up, and then goes and introduces his kids to each other…except Kyle can tell that this girl isn’t his actual sister and he goes bonkers trying to find the right girl and luckily it’s SUPER EASY and they can communicate telepathically and immediately recognize each other and he breaks her out and they use telekinesis to throw Mulder and Scully around and to MAKE DOUG SAVANT BLEED FROM THE EYES which is a worst fate than poor Gay Matt ever suffered. And he went through a lot.

## The MY EYES!! Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0350.jpg)

I mean, I know he was super evil but this is way harsh. Anyway, once all of this has gone down and Kyle and Molly have escaped (my hope is that she's run off to train for the Olympics as a crackerjack member of USA Swimming), Skinner comes down to clean stuff up — not literally — and both Mulder and Scully claim they have no idea where the kids went after Doug Savant’s eyes popped out of his sockets. "Believe me, you cannot unsee that,” Mulder says. And Skinner like, super! Well, good work, team! So Mulder pockets Kyle’s blood and they all leave. Who knows what will happen to all those poor kids?! THE END!

## The Samantha Files

![The X-Files Recap](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2016/01/IMG_0355.jpg)

Except not totally, because Mulder next has a daydream about William in which they’re watching *Planet of the Apes* and Mulder both pontificates and snuggles, and teaches the kid how to set off rocket ships, and quotes JFK, and it’s actually all rather touching…until YOU GUESSED IT! William, like Samantha, gets kidnapped by the aliens. Yeah, that seems about right for Mulder’s psyche, right? Right.

[Fug the Show: The X-Files recap, episode 2, "Founder's Mutation"In case you missed it, the recap for Sunday's episode is here! (I thought it was kind of a hot mess. Apparently, fourteen years has not diminished my capacity to make fun of Chris Carter's dialogue.) That said: This Monster-of-the-Week episode was SO MUCH BETTER, although also quite Creepy-Gross in that classic X-Files way. I understand why they didn't run this as the premiere...but I also kind of think they could have. (And Darin Morgan wrote next week's, and it's apparently a corker, so let's all just.. hold on.) Previously: Mulder reminds us that aliens are TRIPPY, that he and Scully had a MiracleAlienBaby and then had to ship him off to a farm (Heather recently pointed out to me that I am currently recapping TWO SHOWS where someone has literally farmed out their child), the X-Files were once closed and are now reopened, and Scully's probably an alien, which explains why she's put up with Mulder for so long. (I'm so mean to Mulder now. I'm sorry. I think it's because the Hot Intense Basketcase Type was super appealing when I was 26, but now seems exhausting. As you guys know, I just want a sensible handsome man who pays the bills in his reading glasses and thinks I am entertaining. I have no desire to chase aliens. I barely even like to go downstairs to get the mail.)![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2016/01/img_0302.jpg)](https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/the-x-files-recap-episode-2-01-2016/)