History Recap / TheXFilesS02E11ExcelsisDei

->'''Scully:''' ...to find not just the treatment but a cure for Alzheimer’s. Do you realise how important that would be?\\
'''Mulder:''' If it would keep anybody out of a place like that it would be important enough. I wouldn’t say those people were exactly cured.

When an orderly at the Excelsis Dei Nursing Home claims to have been raped by an elderly (and, what's more, invisible) in-patient, Scully insists on an investigation. Once there, they find that the patients seem unusually spry and lucid - until the accused rapist unexpectedly drops dead from a rare poison that he could not conceivably have access to. Could a revolutionary new treatment for Alzheimer's be responsible? Or are the spirits of the dead exacting horrible revenge for the abuses they suffered? And what is the role of Gung, the one orderly everyone seems to like?

%%* DrowningPit: Complete with OpeningTheFloodGates.
* ForeignLanguageTitle: "Excelsis Dei" is Latin for "The highest."
* ISeeDeadPeople: Dorothy is routinely seen trying to get away from the ghosts haunting the Nursing Home and she is the only one who ever sees them. Mulder thinks that this is an unintended side-effect of the {{Magic Mushroom}}s Gung uses in his miracle-pills.

* RedHerring: Downplayed. It's revealed that the miracle-drug responsible for the resident's improving conditions have nothing to do with the rapes and murders occurring in the hospital. Instead they are the ghosts of those who die of natural causes in the building, though Mulder seems to think that the mushrooms are related on some esoteric level.

* ArbitrarySkepticism: The first time Scully is fully onboard investigating a paranormal case from the get go, and Mulder is the one who questions whether anything supernatural is going on. As Mulder puts it, though, none of the cases of invisible people he's investigated or researched have ever been substantiated. He does show sympathy for the rape victim, he just believes her traumatic experience is a bit more mundane than the rapist being invisible. It's also not helped that she insists that it was a man in his 70s that's as thin as a twig, can barely stand on his own and has Alzheimer's who was the rapist.

* MagicMushroom: It's revealed that Gung has a mushroom farm in the building's basement, the mushrooms native to his prefecture and is the secret ingredient to a pill that is slowly curing the elderly's degenerative conditions.

* RedHerring: It's revealed that the miracle-drug responsible for the resident's improving conditions have nothing to do with the rapes and murders occurring in the hospital. Instead they are the ghosts of those who die of natural causes in the building, though Mulder seems to think that the mushrooms are related on some esoteric level.

* ForeignLanguageTitle: "ExcelsisDei" is Latin for "The highest."

%%* ForeignLanguageTitle: Latin for "The highest."
%%* ISeeDeadPeople: One (possible) effect of the mushroom-pills.

* ArbitrarySkepticism: The first time Scully is fully onboard investigating a paranormal case from the get go, and Mulder is the one who questions whether anything supernatural is going on. As Mulder puts it, though, none of the cases of invisible people he's investigated or researched have ever been substantiated. He does show sympathy for the rape victim, he just believes her traumatic experience is a bit more mundane than the rapist being invisible. It's also not helped that she insists that it was a man in his 70s that's as thin as twig and can barely stand on his own was the rapist.

* ArbitrarySkepticism: The first time Scully is fully onboard investigating a paranormal case from the get go, and Mulder is the one who questions whether anything supernatural is going on. As Mulder puts it, though, none of the cases of invisible people he's investigated or researched have ever been substantiated. He does show sympathy for the rape victim, he just believes her traumatic experience is a bit more mundane than the rapist being invisible.

* ArbitrarySkepticism: The first time Scully is fully onboard investigating a paranormal case from the get go, and Mulder is the one who questions whether anything supernatural is going on. Even worse, Mulder is skeptical of the testimony of a rape survivor with facial bruising.

* AdultFear: Issues of rape and sexual harassment. A nurse who works in a retirement home is shown at the beginning of the episode being subjected to sexism and sexual harassment by her coworkers and by the patients. One night is raped by an invisible man whom she asserts is one of her patients. The man she accuses laughs it off and attributes her accusation to "this sexual harassment fad." He's flippant to the point where he sexually harasses Scully while she's questioning him. Mulder and Scully resign themselves to the fact that this case will be so hard to substantiate it might not be worth trying. The nurse's employers don't believe her for one second even though this has happened before.
* CureForCancer: Or, rather, Alzheimer's.
* DrowningPit: Complete with OpeningTheFloodGates.
* ForeignLanguageTitle: Latin for "The highest."
* ISeeDeadPeople: One (possible) effect of the mushroom-pills.

* AssholeVictim: Michelle Charters doesn't make it easy to sympathize with her, but the trauma she's been through is legitimate.

* DrowningPit
* ForeignLanguageTitle
* ISeeDeadPeople: one (possible) effect of the mushroom-pills
* OrderliesAreCreeps
* {{Poltergeist}}

->Written by Creator/PaulBrown\\
Directed by Creator/StephenSurjik

->Written by Paul Brown\\
Directed by Stephen Surjik

!!![[AC:Recaps]]: [[Recap/TheXFiles Index]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E01LittleGreenMen 1]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E02TheHost 2]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E03Blood 3]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E04Sleepless 4]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E05DuaneBarry 5]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E06Ascension 6]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E07Three 7]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E08OneBreath 8]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E09Firewalker 9]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E10RedMuseum 10]] | '''11''' | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E12Aubrey 12]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E13Irresistible 13]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E14DieHandDieVerletzt 14]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E15FreshBones 15]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E16Colony 16]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E17EndGame 17]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E18FearfulSymmetry 18]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E19DodKalm 19]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E20Humbug 20]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E21TheCalusari 21]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E22FEmasculata 22]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E23SoftLight 23]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E24OurTown 24]] | [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E25Anasazi 25]]

----

* AdultFear: Issues of rape and sexual harassment. A nurse who works in a retirement home is shown at the beginning of the episode being subjected to sexism and sexual harassment by her coworkers and by the patients. One night is raped by an invisible man whom she asserts is one of her patients. The man she accuses laughs it off and attributes her accusation to "this sexual harassment fad." He's flippant to the point where he sexually harasses Scully while she's questioning him. Mulder and Scully resign themselves to the fact that this case will be so hard to substantiate it might not be worth trying. The nurse's employers don't believe her for one second even though this has happened before. This is made even worse by the fact that when Scully, who clearly believes the nurse's story, voices theories about how the rape could have occurred, her male partner, who is usually very open to even the wackiest possibilities, thinks that Scully is just reaching and that the nurse made it all up to get out of a job she hated. Aside from the rapist being invisible, this is what rape victims go through even when the paranormal is not involved. Imagine being sexually assaulted and no one, including law enforcement, takes your allegations seriously even though your injuries were consistent with rape. The invisible entity could even be read as a symbol of the way rape culture is invisible, but enacts very real and devastating violence.

When an orderly at the Excelcis Dei Nursing Home claims to have been raped by an elderly (and, what's more, invisible) in-patient, Scully insists on an investigation. Once there, they find that the patients seem unusually spry and lucid - until the accused rapist unexpectedly drops dead from a rare poison that he could not conceivably have access to. Could a revolutionary new treatment for Alzheimer's be responsible? Or are the spirits of the dead exacting horrible revenge for the abuses they suffered? And what is the role of Gung, the one orderly everyone seems to like?

-->'''Mulder:''' Whatever tape you found in that VCR, it isn't mine.
-->'''Scully:''' Good, because I put it back in that drawer with all those other videos that aren't yours.

* AdultFear: Issues of rape and sexual harassment.

* HeyItsThatGuy: the female orderly is [[Series/StargateSG1 Dr. Fraiser]]

* HeyItsThatGuy: the female orderly is [[StargateSG1 Dr. Fraiser]]