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The Goldberg Variation
"I think it's a balance thing. Something good happens to me and everybody else has to take it in the keister."
Written by Jeffrey Bell
Directed by Thomas J. Wright
Directed by Thomas J. Wright
"Cause and effect: seemingly unrelated and unconnected events and occurrences that appear unrelated and random beforehand but which seem to chain-react in Henry Weems' favor."
— Fox Mulder
Mulder and Scully investigate a man who survived being thrown off the 29th story of a building.
Tropes:
- AB Negative: Richie has a rare blood type, B-negative. And he's CMV negative. Cytomegalovirus, as Scully says.
- Billy Needs an Organ: Richie has hepatitis and he needs liver transplant. (Scully diagnosed him just by looking at him.) Alternatively, he could get in a special experimental treatment program in England. He's got a rare blood type and further complications.
- Bullying the Dragon: What Weems thinks he's able to do against an angry mob boss, since Weems knows he's protected by dumb good luck. It works. When the mob boss scoffs at Weems and tries to kill him, things are set in motion that save Weems, but kill the mob boss and his henchman.
- Call-Back / Continuity Nod: Scully sits with Richie and discusses sports. Richie tells her his favorite sport is baseball. Scully replies that she likes baseball, too.
- Coincidence Magnet: One too many things have to fall into place for all these weird accidents to occur. Which is what Weems' good luck is all about. Even when it looks like Scully accidentally breaks Weems' good luck streak, it turns out that was all part of the setup to get the mob boss killed... the one mob boss who's an organ donor and an exact match for Richie's transplant.
- Humble Hero: Mulder's a nice enough guy to try and fix a stranger's busted water pipe, although he'd have been better off not bothering.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: The ill kid, Richie. He likes baseball and is kinda cute.
- Necro Non Sequitur: The episode had several mobsters trying to kill the luckiest man on Earth; all of them perished themselves in increasingly complicated ways because his luck comes at the cost of anyone who intends him any form of harm. Mulder's summation of how a dead hitman ended up hanging from a ceiling fan by his shoelace is a triumphant example of fatal Contrived Coincidences. As a bonus, they kept trying to kill him because he was using his luck to collect enough money to pay for a new liver for his dying neighbor's kid, and the last mobster to die was an organ donor who just happened to be a tissue match.
- Pungeon Master: Scully can't resist an eye pun, to Mulder's delight.
- Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: Henry Weems was an extremely lucky man. However, super extreme streaks of luck he experienced manipulated other people's luck, resulting in rather bizarre ends for them.
Mulder: Maybe your luck is changing.
Henry: Maybe.
Henry: Maybe.
