Line #16 Recap/TheXFilesS02E11ExcelsisDei


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3	'''Season 2, Episode 11:'''
4	!Excelsis Dei
5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thexfilesexcelsisdei.png]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:[[Film/TheSixthSense We see dead people...]]]]
7	->Written by Paul Brown\
8	Directed by Stephen Surjik
9
10	->'''Scully:''' ...to find not just the treatment but a cure for Alzheimer's. Do you realise how important that would be?\
11	'''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.
12
13	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?
14	----
15	!!Tropes
16	* 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. Ironically, by the time they discover the miracle pills, she believes that the mushrooms used are poisoning the elderly, while Mulder believes they're using them to connect to the spirits of the dead.
17	* BleakAbyssRetirementHome: The Excelsis Del Nursing Home is one, with a possible poltergeist.
18	%%* CureForCancer: Or, rather, Alzheimer's.
19	* DrowningPit: Mulder and the VictimOfTheWeek are trapped in a bathroom that is swiftly filled up with water, complete with OpeningTheFloodGates.
20	* ElderAbuse: The Nursing Home's residents are often mentally and sometimes physically abused by the staff. A few get a rather supernatural form of revenge, though.
21	* ForeignLanguageTitle: "Excelsis Dei" is Latin for "The highest".
22	* {{Invisibility}}: The initial focus of Mulder and Scully's investigation is a nurse raped by an invisible attacker (akin to the famous case of ''Film/TheEntity'', as there are apparently many reported cases of women attacked by invisible men). Scully mentions that a common theory to explain this is the victim's subconscious erasing the image of the attacker from her memory. It turns out that the attacker is the ghost of one of the elderly men who the nurse has to care for.
23	* 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.
24	* 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. It's also revealed that his prefecture used them to commune with the dead, unfortunately and unknowingly granting the elderly the same ability through the pills.
25	* OrderliesAreCreeps: Played with; most of the orderlies are fairly callous, but Gung is attempting to be as considerate and respectful as he can, with deadly results.
26	* {{Poltergeist}}: The perpetrators of the episode's weirdness.
27	* PornStash:
28	-->'''Mulder:''' Whatever tape you found in that VCR, it isn't mine.\
29	'''Scully:''' Good, because I put it back in that drawer with all those other videos that aren't yours.
30	* 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.
31	* VengefulGhost: The MonsterOfTheWeek are the ghosts of the elderly who have been mistreated in the Nursing Home.
32	----

Context Recap / TheXFilesS02E11ExcelsisDei