Index | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25
Red Museum
"The other victims have had to be sedated and hospitalized since their ordeals. They were reportedly hysterical with fear."
Mulder: Have you ever had any dealings with anyone from the Church of the Red Museum?
Gary: I've seen them around.
Mulder: Do you have any reason to believe that they may be involved with what happened to you?
Gary: I've seen them around.
Mulder: Do you have any reason to believe that they may be involved with what happened to you?
The teenagers of a small cattle-ranching town have been disappearing, only to be found stripped and wandering the nearby woods, marked with the phrase "He Is One." Local authorities suspect the Church of the Red Museum, a vegetarian cult that has recently taken up residence. When one of the teens is found dead, however, the toxicology report reveals an unknown substance—one that Scully recognizes from a certain Erlenmeyer flask. Could the town be the staging ground for a sinister government experiment?
Tropes:
- Boom, Headshot!: The Crew Cut Man kills his victims this way.
- Call-Back: The man behind the town's experiments (The Crew Cut Man) is the same guy who gunned down Deep Throat.
- Cult: The titular Red Museum, who are pro-vegetarian.
- Goofy Print Underwear: The second victim, a teenage girl, is shown wearing white, flower print panties when she wakes up. Like the rest of the victims, this isn't done for laughs.
- Mystery Cult: The Church of the Red Museum.
- Naked Freak-Out: Of the "wearing only underwear" variation. The victims wake up out in the woods in their underwear, disoriented, and traumatized. Definitely not played for titillation or humor.
- No Control Group: Averted. It turns out that the Red Museum cult is the control group, while everyone else in the town are the tested ones.
- The Peeping Tom: There is a man who secretly records everyone living in his building from inside their bathrooms. He's the only person who seems to know what's actually going on.
- Red Herring: A lot of them. The red-turban cultists, the kidnappings, the doctor's plane crash, the men inoculating cattle, the hallucinogenic sequences in the woods, the peeping tom... None of them bear real significance for the resolution of the case. The episode even appears to be a Monster of the Week story, but it turns out to be connected to Myth Arc... with no new significant clues.
- Romance-Inducing Smudge: Mulder and Scully decide to eat at a local rib restaurant. In the middle of talking about the case they're on, Mulder just reaches over with a napkin and wipes a smudge of sauce off of Scully's face. Though taken aback, Scully graces him with a shy, pleased smile.
- Slaughterhouse Fight: A fight occurs between Mulder and the Crew Cut Man inside a beef slaughterhouse. The Crew Cut Man wins the fight. His escape, on the other hand, ends fatally.
"The case remains open and unsolved."
