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Syzygy
"We’re here to make you feel better tonight. Carpe PM."
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Rob Bowman
Directed by Rob Bowman
Zirinka: Once every eighty-four years Mercury, Mars and Uranus come into conjunction. Only this year, Uranus is in the house of Aquarius.
Mulder: That’s a bad thing?
Mulder: That’s a bad thing?
Strange events occur in a small town during a rare planetary alignment, and the worst of it comes in the form of two teenage girls possessing strange abilities.
Tropes:
- 555: Detective White's number seen on her cat's collar is 555-0114.
- Astrologer: Zirinka. Astrology, readings, numerology, runes.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Scully lights up a cigarette while anxiously pacing her hotel room, seething about Mulder and White.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Scully, normally professionally detached from Mulder's love life, becomes uncharacteristically irritable and spiteful about his connection with White.
- Deadpan Snarker: Zirinka snarks a lot.
- Double Entendre: "Solve the mystery of the horny Beast"
- Enemy Civil War: Terri and Margi, who have a falling out over a boy and end up trying to frame each other for the murders they committed together.
- Facepalm: Mulder rubs his face with a hand when Detective Angela White comes to his motel room and he's not sure exactly what's going on.
- Glove Snap: Mulder accuses Scully of enjoying this.Mulder: Go ahead, I know how much you like snapping on the latex.
- Hate Plague: The town of Comity is affected by this due to Mercury, Mars and Uranus aligning together. This causes the citizens to relentlessly hunt down those responsible for the recent high school murders.
- Hollywood Satanism: The crimes were suspected to be a case of satanic rituals.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Mulder drinks screwdriver (made with a bottle of vodka and some frozen, concentrated orange juice, no less) and Detective White takes a swig from his bottle as well. The planets messed them up pretty bad.
- Like an Old Married Couple: Mulder and Scully's arguments.
- Loves Me Not: Margi and Terri are shown doing this to a dandelion together while one of their victims is discovered.
- Magic Mirror: Invoked by Margi and Terri, who perform the Bloody Mary ritual on front of a mirror before killing a girl with them with a mirror shard.
- Mind over Matter: The planetary-alignment stuff that's affecting the town also gave cheerleaders Margi and Terri powers to do things with the power of their mind, which they mostly use to mess with and kill people.
- Murder by Mistake: Margi and Terri try to kill each other by hurling garage door springs at each other, but end up accidentally killing the guy they were fighting about, which leads to the two going to the law and accusing each other.
- Must Not Die a Virgin: Used to lure one of the victims to his death; Terri and Margi tell a young boy they don't want to be the next Virgin Sacrifice.
- Not Himself: Mulder and Scully bicker a lot abnormally for them. Other people in town are affected as well.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Episode. Literally everyone in the episode is implied to be acting completely out of character to how they normally would due to the effect of the planetary alignment.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Played in-universe; the phenomenon causes not only Mulder and Scully to act in ways they normally wouldn't, but also apparently the entire town it's focused around; the normally calm and rational high school principal turns into a ranting fundamentalist nutcase, for example.
- Pedo Hunt: The town pediatrician becomes a target of this when the townsfolk dig up a bag of his filled with bones in a field. They think he murdered a little boy, but it turns out that the bag was filled with bones of a dog.
- Phrase Catcher: "Sure. Fine. Whatever."
- Satanic Panic: The episode invokes the Satanic Panic as a small town is believed to be under attacked from Devil worshippers, but it turns out to be a pair of best friends invoking it for their own revenge.
- Spooky Séance: At the party, the teens try to communicate with the dead. They ask the table and ghosts who one of them marries, and the answer is Satan. Margi and Terri wanted to mess with her, and she ends up as their victim.
- Take That, Audience!: Some of the snarky comments between Mulder and Scully were taken from comments made online by nitpicking fans.
- Teens Are Monsters: Margi and Terri keep killing their schoolmates just for shits and giggles.
- When the Planets Align: When the planets align and you happen to be in a geological vortex and a high-intensity meridian, the relationships are going to suck. And it's affecting everyone, some more than others though.
- World of Snark: Everybody is sarcastic. It's taken up to eleven thanks to the planet condition.
"Or maybe the answer lies even further from our grasp."
