What person in their right mind eats PB&J any other time than lunchtime?
He gave thanks and gulped it down with a glass of milk.
He looked out the window.
Credit: Ed Araquel/Fox
It was a day like many other days, except it wasnt.
Shiraz got in his car and went for a drive with the windows rolled down.
Stopped at a traffic light, he saw two women wearing cowboy hats crossing the road.
He smiled the smile that young men sometimes give when they see attractive women.
The ladies gave him a cool look in return.
A truck blasting a Western tune pulled up.
The driver flashed him hate eyes.
One of the women traveling with him said, Looks like we got a visitor!
Shiraz rolled up the window and shut them out.
Shiraz pulled into the parking lot of a motor inn and warmly greeted another man about the same age.
They disappeared into a room.
A banner was printed with the word ZIGGURAT.
This was either the name of the gallery or the title of an exhibition.
This word had loaded meaning in an episode called Babylon.
Ziggurats, large stepped structures, were temples and hubs of civic life in ancient cultures.
One of Babylons most notorious ziggurats was the Tower of Babel.
(There are many other views on/stories about the Tower of Babel, too.
Theres even a theory that the Tower of Babel was anuclear-powered spaceship.
Can you imagine Ancient Mulder and Ancient Scully investigating that case?)
The first is a tired and gross stereotype.
The second is an always useful reminder but still a stereotype.
Cant a Muslim guy just be a guy?
A really interesting guy?
Or even a really interesting boring guy.
Like a guy who goes to art galleries with a friend, lover, kissing cousin, or whatever?
The shot was a shocker.
The camera stayed locked in place as we watched them enter the gallery whlie other unsuspecting art patrons arrive.
The explosion that followed after a cruel beat made me jump.
Those on the street that werent immediately killed scrambled about on fire.
Still, I wasnt ignited.
I was bothered by the inevitable choice of a Muslim Suicide Bomber.
I braced for the worst.
Everything Mulder and Scully said about their counterparts said something about them and vise versa.
Observing Miller and Einsteins rapport, Scully recognized a familiar intimacy.
She calls him Miller, she noted with a knowing smirk.
Nothing else would explain it!
It wasnt clear if Miller could take the hint.
NEXT: Scully fulfills a dream: Nobody down here but the FBIs most unwanted!
debating a peculiar phenomenon.
(A real thing!)
Its one of several bits of Biblical business that has been fascinating Mulder of late.
While Scully was a Catholic, she was also a scientist.
Interpretations of apocalyptic prophecies have been failing for centuries, she reminded Mulder.
She also argued that things like Adams reported 932-year life span didnt literally happen.
What puzzled Scully most about Mulders interest was that he was interested at all.
Despite Mulders passion for the exotic and esoteric, hes always been oddly cynical about God.
Why the sudden openness to divine possibilities?
The episode was less about answering the question and more about letting the question frame Mulders actions.
Heres what I considered as the story unfolded.
- The primary theme of the revival has been Mulder and Scully at middle age.
Mulder, it seems, is no exception.
Recalling that Mulder has been marked by inexplicable catastrophe and wrongdoing (Samantha, UFO conspiracy, etc.
Mulder really wants to believe in God, but hes denying him out of spite.
Put another way: 3b) MulderlooooovesScully.
So much that hes willing to convert to her way of seeing things.
There was a knock on the door.
Nobody down here but the FBIs most unwanted!
quipped Scully, using the line Mulder used on her when they first met back in the pilot.
Ive been waiting 23 years just to say that.
Mulder: How did it feel?
Scully: Pretty good.
After a dubious and ponderous beginning, Babylon had suddenly elevated by lightening up.
And it was about to go next level.
Enter Special Agents Miller and Einstein.
The latters name immediately intrigued both Mulder and Scully.
I claim a distant relation, replied Einstein.
They were trying to ascertain if the terrorists had accomplices that might be plotting another attack.
It turned out that Shiraz had survived the explosion, but he was in a persistent vegetative state.
(The visual of his dented head: gruesome.)
Einstein sighed some relief.
Einstein: Moms skepticism; Dads irreverence.
Miller: Dads far-out imagination; Moms soberness.
More specifically: graying spouses cheating on each other with hot young numbers.
While waiting to catch a flight to Texas, Einstein got a call from Mulder.
Miller might have protested more, but then his phone rang.
With that, the mate-swapping adultery was on.
Babylon was basically The X-FilesdoesBob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
NEXT: Mulders Magical Mushroom Mystery Tour
Scullys scheme was inspired bythe real-life work of Dr. Adrian Owen.
Scully wondered if perhaps they could try something similar with Shiraz using an electro-encephalogram.
Mulder had a more far-out proposal for interrogating Shiraz.
His logic rested on a set of crazily connected poetic and pseudoscientific ideas.
(He would later pay for being such an ass.)
(The latter perspective embellished a secondary set of concerns pertaining to the inciting nature of art.
Here, Babylon was drawing upontheJyllands-Postencontroversy of 2005 and theCharlie Hebdoattacks in 2015.)
Einstein stormed out of Mulders office and zipped to Texas.
(How terrible or terrorist of her.)
She called Mulder and arranged a Texas rendezvous.
She gave him drugs that she said were mushrooms and told him to knock himself out.
The pills were niacin.
That damn siren Einstein had wooed Mulder to Texas to crash him on the rocks of her severe POV.
But something strangely ironic happened when Mulder swallowed Einsteins jagged little pill.
High flyin Mulder landed at a country-Western bar.
He tossed his jacket and hit the dance floor.
He boogied, Batusied, thrusted, and flipped.
The ladies most of them older went wild.
All for you, Mulder!
Then the scene shifted to something darker.
The gravelly voice of Tom Waits sang Misery Is the River of the World.
Joining on the trip was Shiraz laying across the lap of his mother aChrist/Mary Pieta pose.
The young man whispered a word into his ear…
NEXT: Mulders trip as Mulder critique.
He was back in the hospital, but this time as a patient.
He had Walter Skinner in his face, rebuking him like a mad prophet.
The twist, though, was that Mulder hadnt been blitzed at all.
Maybe Im projecting power of suggestion!
but I detected subversion correlations here.
Am I saying Mulder = Terrorist?
Well, hedidscare some old ladies.
Of course, Carter couldnt completely blow up Mulder.
Hes a hero, after all.
A flawed, sometimes misguided hero, but a hero.
It was the woman from the boat Shirazs mother.
He couldnt kill all those innocent people.
His mother had taught him better than that.
(Or so mom wanted to believe.)
But Mulder still had a chance to make a difference.
He took the presence of Shirazs mother as a sign that his vision had some meaning to it.
If only he could remember those words Shiraz had whispered is his ear…
It was an Arabic phrase.
Miller who did some time in Iraq could translate: Babylon Hotel.
It was the place where Shiraz met his friend at the start of the episode.
Remarkably, I did nothing, and remarkably, it worked.
How to explain Mulders epiphany?
And to some degree, she now agreed with Mulder.
Heres hoping we see these two again in another revival.
*The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He welcomed the opportunity.
Walk with me, Scully, he said, taking her hand.
He asked: What is this god saying?
Worship me in my great anger?
But he wondered if there was proof of a better god, something he called mother love.
He saw this proof in Shirazs mother, and I suspect he sees that proof in Scully.
But Mulder believed in it.
Scully restated Mulders ideas by offering a different interpretation of the Tower of Babel.
What if God wasnt punishing mankind by scrambling their language and scattering them across the globe?
Maybe thats Gods will, she said.
Scully suggested that maybe he is.
Mulder exhaled deeply and closed his eyes and titled his face toward the sun.
He was joking Scully laughed but then he heard something.
Something only he could hear.
A trumpet echoing from the heavens.
A sign of the apocalypse that could only mean one thing…
The end ofThe X-Filesrevival is near.
