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@fox-mulders-ties
Scully Has A Secret Memory | Season 11 Ep. 4 | THE X-FILES
I swear that’s a season 3/4 tie
HOLY FUCK BATMAN
IS MULDER WEARING HIS TIE FROM GROTESQUE/PAPER HEARTS ETC IN SEASON 11?????????
Sorry i kind of left the tie thing hanging but I found 10000 other projects i had to do first.
The Ties of Special Agent Fox Mulder: Season One
28/34 of Mulder’s Season One ties. My favourite season by far.
I haven’t forgotten about Mulder’s ties, but my post moving house exhaustion and the horror of sorting out what’s in all these boxes is taking up most of my time at present. I’m thinking about a more realistic posting schedule of once a week or so as each post takes me hours to do and I have so much else to get done at the moment. I’m also a bat rescuer, and it’s now baby season which is peak rescue season for the next three months, so I’m kind of spread a little thin at present.
Here’s a pic of my first baby rescue of the season, a preemie newborn grey-headed flying fox I picked up today. These creatures are so adorable and are a vital but threatened keystone species which will always have to come before the ties, I’m afraid.
Fox Mulder. FBI Special Agent. Tie Connoisseur
It’s vital as a special agent investigating conspiracies and paranormal phenomena that you dress the part, that you can feel equally at home at a UFO party or breaking into a military installation, that you command respect from your peers. UFO Party is a tie that will give you all that and more.
With UFO Party knotted at your throat you can walk proudly through the halls of the military base with your hot platonic partner, secure in the anonymity and invisibility this tie affords you. Roadblocks are a breeze, unleashing its aphrodisiac qualities to dazzle your platonic partner, or waving it to and fro to hypnotise the guards. Unfortunately the tie will sometimes get things mixed up and you’ll be fighting off unwanted attention.
After gazing at UFO Party’s refection, the arousal you feel at first is quickly crushed the realisation that you failed to abduct your alien. UFO Party is suddenly a symbol of your defeat, and you will never wear it again.
This tie seemed like a fitting beginning for this blog, which aims to document the ties worn by Mulder and a few others, I hope to record the ties worn in each episode as well as the stories of some ties as they become interwoven with X Files history. It’s a huge project as I’ve discovered that some ties randomly appear years apart, and I’m in the process of taking new screen caps from Blu-ray because some are unidentifiable in the old caps (which is driving me nuts as my BD drive &/or software is not cooperating). I hope you enjoy this look back on the awesome ties worn by Fox Mulder, icon of style. Paislie
@startwreck @baronessblixen @defnotmeyo @kateyes224 @xfile-cabinetx I’ve totally forgotten who in chat expressed interest in this so please forward it on. thanks guys.
Reblogging my favourite tie.
When Mulder found out that this wrinkly old guy was Scully’s former lover, his tie was the least of his concerns. Especially when despite how old and wrinkly Jack Willis appeared, Mulder noticed that he was only 4 years his senior… he was still in with a chance… as long as he could act more mature. He did what any mature guy would do and came up with a ludicrous story to keep her from wanting to go back to him . It was a risk going to Scully’s former university to discuss theories in case she made a habit of bonking her instructors. It would be a long time before he knew that this fear wasn’t entirely irrational, but she was acting kind of flirty in the halls of learning so he made sure he took a quick glimpse at which tie he was wearing. He might need to call upon this tie of flrtiness one day.
OK so Scully needed scientific proof and Mulder would get it. He donned his miraculous sound absorbing tie and headed to the firing range without need for ear protection. In theory his idea to get the old dude to sign the birthday card to prove that he wasn’t really Jack Willis was sound, but he forgot to factor in that he doesn’t remember when Scully’s birthday is, and signing a card for someone you rarely see 3 weeks out from their birthday isn’t exactly proof. Scully cut him down by telling him she hoped he had something more than that to indict him with and that he was making it personal. Fortunately his tie absorbed most of this sound as he was mesmerised by her lips.
She began to get more convinced when Willis abducted her and handcuffed her to a radiator. Mulder thought he should send him a nice birthday card for that move, but first donned the gold tie that had held her gaze in Beyond the Sea in that hope that it would guide her back to him. Despair soon engulfed him as evidenced by his wearing the Diamonds of Dejection tie. Then they made him look at a map and he was sure life was over as he’d never see her again.
But like all good X-Files episodes, and most of the bad ones too, they manage to save one another before the closing credits. Mulder swapped his trench coat for his FBI windbreaker, and it brought enough of a glimmer of hope for him to rush in and save her. He didn’t rush to save Dupre!Willis, and MedicalDoctor!Scully didn’t rush to perform ineffective chest compressions for 20 seconds on him either.
In the end, Mulder was just glad that his competition was out of the way. He came to bring her Willis’ watch with all the maturity he could muster, hoping he didn’t have to wait for the ripe old age of 3 weeks shy of 37 before Scully would realise her desire for him. He could never have guessed that this would be around the time of the bee fiasco. And to think that if only Scully had realised that she’d need to come up with a totally insane and implausible theory with flimsy evidence about Diana for him to believe it, she might have been fairly happy earlier. In the meantime, Mulder decides that it probably isn’t the right time to ask Scully whether he could have Willis’ ties, and leaves.
For a tie that only appeared in 4 episodes, Two Mirrors, One Stove carries quite the legacy. It’s the first tie we see in Deep Throat, when Mulder offered to buy Scully a drink. It appeared in the mirror when Deep Throat accosted Mulder in the men’s room. It was with Mulder during our first ever glimpse of his apartment. It was there the only time he attempted to cook anything in 8 years. It basked in the soft colours of the sunset, gazing from Mulder’s window before they built Padgett’s apartment in front of it.
After realising the pinnacle of its career had been reached, Two Mirrors, One Stove made brief appearances in Ghost in the Machine and Space, and an almost unidentifiable appearance, again in a mirror, in Eve, before retiring to give some up and coming ties a chance to know the glory that it felt.
For their next assignment, Mulder decided to take Scully to a rustic cabin to see how her hair compared to the colour of the wood, then remembered he was colourblind. He couldn’t even appreciate how her hair picked up the colors of the swirls in his Spooky Swirl tie but he wanted to gaze at her a while just to be sure. They go outside to wander in the mud, where Mulder looked like a puppy as he sniffed out clues. He thought Scully might like a skin peel, but she didn’t jump him as he’d hoped. Mulder doesnt say where he got that from, but it’s remarkably clean when everything around is mud.
In fact, they must have gotten so dirty that before they headed to the Cutlass Ciera (with the automatic seatbelts that I’ve always been curious about) they changed outfits. I was so disappointed to realise that in 1994 I hired that same car to drive from LA to Vancouver, but I didn’t get automatic seatbelts. #FirstWorldProblems.
Maybe Mulder decided to go more natural to be accepted at the reservation by choosing the blue tie with the red leaves, or maybe he didn’t want anyone other than Scully to think he was spooky in the Spooky tie. Either way, whenever they do an outfit change with no obvious reason I like to picture them doing a quick change in the car. Scully wouldn’t be so bad at it because she’s little, but Mulder would have his arms and legs and butt in awkward positions. I’m disturbed like that.
Anyway, striding into the bar, laptop case over his shoulder, Mulder couldn’t have looked any more “Fed” if he was waving his badge. The locals are understandably hostile. Then at the Sheriff’s Mulder is disappointed that Scully can’t slice and dice and starts getting a bit hostile. When Mulder won’t take his crazy theories for a hike, the Sheriff gets hostile.
Mulder keeps Scully close while he watches the funeral pyre, hoping that if they need someone to sit on the rubble and guard it, he can make Scully do it. The next day, Mulder goes for a walk and finds a toupee for Skinner. Mulder’s glad to be wearing his golden triangle tie with its crotch deflecting powers when he meets back with the sheriff. After trading campfire stories, Mulder is given the Native American name “Prances With Guns”, which helps him solve the X-file. It’s a rush to get back to Scully and save her from the naked beast man and the taxidermy. There’s a bit of heavy breathing and prancing with guns and some shooting in the dark, until the naked beast man and some taxidermy is shot.
Mulder’s not as distraught about the death of the naked beast man as he was about the naked beast woman, but in a move I didn’t see coming (because i obviously skipped forward too much last time i watched it), he wore the paleolithic insect tie at the end. It was lucky I needed more screen shots or I would have missed this important event. He only ever wore this tie once before - to entice the Jersey Devil - and I had thought he’d gotten rid of it. I found it to be fitting that it returned in honour of the naked beast man.
I have a bit of a soft spot for a scruffy dishevelled Mulder. I’m quite partial to a Mulder in all states of undress actually… But here we have some almost ready for business rebel Mulder wearing his tie as a scarf, with some bonus forearm porn thrown in for free.
It’s probably a coincidence that it’s the same tie in PMP and Chinga. Or maybe this tie is just extra slippery and undoes itself after having been drenched in oil in 4x09 Terma.
While I really need to focus on packing and moving house, I thought I’d reblog some of the earlier posts to keep you going until I’m settled in.
I’ll give you a special bonus with this one:
Mulder’s ID photo tie
If you look closely at Mulder’s ID photos you’ll notice he’s always wearing his Diamonds of Dejection tie. This can be easily explained for all his FBI photos which makes sense to have the same photo, obviously taken after he graduated from the FBI Academy and before he started combing his hair down over his forehead in 1989:
Mulder’s Badge:
Mulder’s ID Tag
Mulder’s FBI Employee Record:
But I’m not sure how Mulder’s Driver’s License issued in 1994 has the same photo and thus the same tie. I’m thinking that maybe the Lone Gunmen made it for him and just used his ID photo because it looks official.
For some reason though, he has a different photo when he visits Springfield, and it’s difficult to tell if it’s the same tie, especially when it’s so hard to look at the picture with the tie.:
*speedo colour changed by me because red speedos go faster
The first few episodes I posted were rather lacking in detail, which is probably a good thing, but in honour of the 24th anniversary of the airing of the pilot episode, I’m going to have another look at the pilot.
Karen Swenson is dead in the forest and it’s happening again. We meet Dana Scully who is under the delusion that she’ll distinguish herself at the X-files. She knows all about Spooky Mulder because his reputation precedes him. When she enters the office and Mulder’s at the lightbox with some slides. He must have been so excited that he’s been preparing them for days. He turns around so we can see he’s wearing sexy glasses and his FBI’s Most Unwanted tie that was stolen by Detective Douchebag in Aubrey. They give each other a good look over and he tells her he likes her senior thesis, and grabs a carousel of slides he’d prepared earlier and turns out the light.
Mulder has plenty of theories and if he’s going to tell them to me in that voice I’ll listen. Mulder’s voice totally hits the cream note. He’s going for the shock factor when he asks her if she believes in the existence of extra-terrestrials and comes off as a bit of a smartarse. He suggests that the fantastic may be plausible but Scully thinks it’s fantastic that science can’t explain everything. So that’s kind of how the show goes for the next 7 years.
In the next scene they’re on a bumpy plane with bad overhead lockers and Mulder’s still being a dick. He’s lying in a row of seats with his headphones on looking very comfortable while all the other passengers are rocking around. We’re less than 10 minutes in and Duchovny has already had a hand in casting as his dad is sitting behind Scully. Mulder looks like he stole the tie from David’s dad, so it’s been named Ami.
Driving along to Bellefleur, the radio goes wild so they stop so Mulder can paint an X on the road with a handy can on road marking spray paint he happened to pack this one time. They get to the graveyard and meet the local cops and Theresa Nemman’s father who’s a bit of a jerk. They get Dodgy Brothers to dig up the grave and the coffin topples over and opens up and it smells and looks like AN ALIEN.
Having taken his tie off, Mulder’s running around with a camera in the morgue with a camera and being annoying, especially when Scully says the body’s not human. It’s so sweet watching them have their first alien/not alien argument. They find an implant in the body and Scully types up lots of little notes. She’s typing in her room when Stephen Spielberg comes to the door asking if she wants to come for run because Mulder totally has ADHD.
Mulder’s wearing a tie called Billy when we go to the hospital and see the abductee patients. This is the first of the ties named William, I’m sure there’ll be many more. The girl, Peggy, has a nose bleed and everyone except Dr Scully goes to help. Scully runs out and Mulder chases her. When she tells him to cut the crap he knows she’s the one. I love Mulder’s uncooperative bits of hair that hang down and distract me from his ties in this episode.
Later that night they put their forest walking gear on and find alien ash in the forest. There’s a really loud noise and Scully thinks it’s Mulder. The sheriff has a bright light and a big gun and makes them go away. While they’re driving it starts raining and the compass goes wild and there’s a bright light the car comes to a stop and THEY’RE MISSING 9 MINUTES! Mulder’s so excited he gets out and they dance in the rain right where the X on the road is. Time is a universal invariant and can’t disappear. But electricity can. And when Scully finds weird moles on her back she rushes to Mulder, who’s wearing their denim shirt, and gets nearly naked. He has to take a really long look and have a bit of a feel before he diagnoses mosquito bites and she jumps on him. They then have sex a deep conversation where Mulder tells her about his abducted sister and she doesn’t run away. They get a call to say Peggy’s dead and go see her.
Someone stole a corpse and trashed the morgue. They go to the motel and it’s ablaze. All their evidence is gone. Theresa Nemmen asks them for protection so they go to a diner. Theresa’s dad takes her home. Scully’s pissed because there’s a conspiracy. They go to the cemetery in the rain to find the other abductee graves have been dug up and the bodies are gone. Mulder blames Billy Miles who’s in a waking coma. Scully has that memorable moment in the cemetery where her words don’t come out right the first 18 times. Scully’s laughing hysterically and it’s beautiful to see.
They go back to see Billy Miles who has dirty feet. They go to get more alien ash and find the sheriff and Billy Miles and Theresa Nemmen and a big wind comes and there’s a bright light and Billy can walk again. Mulder rushes to Scully and they touch each other and Mulder says it was incredible and they gaze adoringly and breathe heavily.
They bring Billy Miles back to DC and some guy interviews him. Mulder wears the Tiny Fake Icecream tie, the only tie he ever wears again from this episode. Blevins doesn’t think her reports are debunky enough but she’s a tough chick. She still has the chip from the exhumed body but can’t explain it. She passes that strange man who smokes like a chimney in the hall and looks at him. Mulder waits until 11:21pm to ring her to tell her all the files and evidence are gone. The Smoking Man goes to the pentagon storage area and files the implant chip with the rest of them. He seems a bit suspicious, I think we’ll have to keep an eye on him.
Oops I just read this back and noticed my brain wasn’t engaged at all times when I wrote it. Many apologies. Moving house is exhausting. My brain is exhausting. Just pretend I delegated it to Krycek and he fucked up.
The first few episodes I posted were rather lacking in detail, which is probably a good thing, but in honour of the 24th anniversary of the airing of the pilot episode, I'm going to have another look at the pilot.
Karen Swenson is dead in the forest and it’s happening again. We meet Dana Scully who is under the delusion that she’ll distinguish herself at the X-files. She knows all about Spooky Mulder because his reputation precedes him. When she enters the office and Mulder’s at the lightbox with some slides. He must have been so excited that he’s been preparing them for days. He turns around so we can see he’s wearing sexy glasses and his FBI’s Most Unwanted tie that was stolen by Detective Douchebag in Aubrey. They give each other a good look over and he tells her he likes her senior thesis, and grabs a carousel of slides he’d prepared earlier and turns out the light.
Mulder has plenty of theories and if he’s going to tell them to me in that voice I’ll listen. Mulder’s voice totally hits the cream note. He’s going for the shock factor when he asks her if she believes in the existence of extra-terrestrials and comes off as a bit of a smartarse. He suggests that the fantastic may be plausible but Scully thinks it’s fantastic that science can’t explain everything. So that’s kind of how the show goes for the next 7 years.
In the next scene they’re on a bumpy plane with bad overhead lockers and Mulder’s still being a dick. He’s lying in a row of seats with his headphones on looking very comfortable while all the other passengers are rocking around. We’re less than 10 minutes in and Duchovny has already had a hand in casting as his dad is sitting behind Scully. Mulder looks like he stole the tie from David’s dad, so it’s been named Ami.
Driving along to Bellefleur, the radio goes wild so they stop so Mulder can paint an X on the road with a handy can on road marking spray paint he happened to pack this one time. They get to the graveyard and meet the local cops and Theresa Nemman’s father who’s a bit of a jerk. They get Dodgy Brothers to dig up the grave and the coffin topples over and opens up and it smells and looks like AN ALIEN.
Having taken his tie off, Mulder’s running around with a camera in the morgue with a camera and being annoying, especially when Scully says the body’s not human. It’s so sweet watching them have their first alien/not alien argument. They find an implant in the body and Scully types up lots of little notes. She’s typing in her room when Stephen Spielberg comes to the door asking if she wants to come for run because Mulder totally has ADHD.
Mulder’s wearing a tie called Billy when we go to the hospital and see the abductee patients. This is the first of the ties named William, I’m sure there’ll be many more. The girl, Peggy, has a nose bleed and everyone except Dr Scully goes to help. Scully runs out and Mulder chases her. When she tells him to cut the crap he knows she’s the one. I love Mulder’s uncooperative bits of hair that hang down and distract me from his ties in this episode.
Later that night they put their forest walking gear on and find alien ash in the forest. There’s a really loud noise and Scully thinks it’s Mulder. The sheriff has a bright light and a big gun and makes them go away. While they’re driving it starts raining and the compass goes wild and there’s a bright light the car comes to a stop and THEY’RE MISSING 9 MINUTES! Mulder’s so excited he gets out and they dance in the rain right where the X on the road is. Time is a universal invariant and can’t disappear. But electricity can. And when Scully finds weird moles on her back she rushes to Mulder, who’s wearing their denim shirt, and gets nearly naked. He has to take a really long look and have a bit of a feel before he diagnoses mosquito bites and she jumps on him. They then have sex a deep conversation where Mulder tells her about his abducted sister and she doesn’t run away. They get a call to say Peggy’s dead and go see her.
Someone stole a corpse and trashed the morgue. They go to the motel and it’s ablaze. All their evidence is gone. Theresa Nemmen asks them for protection so they go to a diner. Theresa’s dad takes her home. Scully’s pissed because there’s a conspiracy. They go to the cemetery in the rain to find the other abductee graves have been dug up and the bodies are gone. Mulder blames Billy Miles who’s in a waking coma. Scully has that memorable moment in the cemetery where her words don’t come out right the first 18 times. Scully’s laughing hysterically and it’s beautiful to see.
They go back to see Billy Miles who has dirty feet. They go to get more alien ash and find the sheriff and Billy Miles and Theresa Nemmen and a big wind comes and there’s a bright light and Billy can walk again. Mulder rushes to Scully and they touch each other and Mulder says it was incredible and they gaze adoringly and breathe heavily.
They bring Billy Miles back to DC and some guy interviews him. Mulder wears the Tiny Fake Icecream tie, the only tie he ever wears again from this episode. Blevins doesn’t think her reports are debunky enough but she’s a tough chick. She still has the chip from the exhumed body but can’t explain it. She passes that strange man who smokes like a chimney in the hall and looks at him. Mulder waits until 11:21pm to ring her to tell her all the files and evidence are gone. The Smoking Man goes to the pentagon storage area and files the implant chip with the rest of them. He seems a bit suspicious, I think we’ll have to keep an eye on him.
Alien people at a leper colony are being rounded up and taken away. Mulder is still dressed in jeans and his leather jacket and still running up and down the top of the train until it finally stops and he can climb down into the carriage. I’m sure I’ve been on a train along there and that excites me. I think Mulder’s hair should be more of a mess after all that train surfing and I would like to volunteer as hair messer upper for the new series for better hair accuracy. He finds the alien operating theatre carriage but it has a keypad to get in.
He finds a conductor and the guy lets him into the suspicious doctor’s cabin. The conductor’s wearing a tie that’s a mirror image of one of Krycek’s. SussDocZama isn’t there but his briefcase and his book of Japanese writing is. Mulder does what a good FBI agent does and gives the conductor his spare gun.
Scully’s back in the lab with Pendrell who has grown a mole on his left cheek in an attempt to look more attractive to Scully. He almost explodes with excitement when she thanks him and touches his arm and he cringes when he hears himself tell her to “keep it up yourself”.
On the way back to his cabin, SussDocZama is attacked by Meandude. Mulder misses them by that much. After walking up and down the carriages he finds SussDocZama dead in the lavatory. Mulder gets into the alien op carriage. We get a close up of his eye so we can argue over what colour they are see the reflection of an alien leper who’s locked away, then Mulder’s attacked by Meandude. Gun toting Conductor comes to the rescue but escapes from the carriage, locking the door. Meandude has a cool tie but Mulder looks hotter pointing a gun at him, even with a cut neck. Meandude says THERE’S A BOMB ON BOARD but fortunately the train doesn’t have to go above 60 because I don’t think it can.
Scully ends up at the leper colony and finds some escapees who tell her that SussDocZama is experimenting on them. Scully’s upset but I’m more concerned about Mulder. He needs to be closely watched when he has a leather jacket on.
Mulder and Meandude are trapped in the carriage because nobody knows the code to get out. Meandude gives him the code he used to get in which sounds suspiciously similar to Mulder’s badge number, but the exit code is different. How will they get out??? Will they get out before the bomb goes off??? Well unless this is Mulder’s final episode you know he’ll be OK. Meandude’s phone rings but it’s for Mulder. It’s Scully who’s with that elder who sounds like that kid from South Park and has proof that the alien leper isn’t alien and that there’s no such thing as alien abduction. She tells him to stay out of the alien op car because THERE’S A BOMB and he says oops too late. The bomb conveniently has a large digital readout to tell him they have approx 1 hr 40 mins left. Mulder has his slightly concerned face on. They argue before Mulder phone-ditches her.
They unhitch the alien op car in the middle of nowhere so it’s just Mulder, Meandude, the alien leper and the bomb. They sit there for nearly an hour and Mulder gets antsy. I’m sure I get a glimpse of a sweaty panic face before we cut to Scully rifling through Mulder’s apartment. She fiercely X-tapes the window before turning on the TV. She’s excited to discover a video in Mulder’s VCR but it’s the alien autopsy video. Clever Scully manages to get the code for the door from the video. Fortunately there’s no time limit on entering the code. The door opens and Meandude attacks Mulder as he escapes, only to be shot by X before he can leave the train. Mulder’s very bloody and there’s less than a minute left on the clock. Poor alien leper is left behind as X, who’s wearing quite a distinctive tie, only wants Mulder.
Mulder’s face is still all beaten up when he’s back in the office. He’s finally wearing a tie and it’s a rather tasteful grey/silver and red striped number called Stares and Stripes because he likes to gaze or stare at people intensely while he wears it. Scully is the object of his gaze in this instance as they discuss how everything’s been covered up. Even the briefcase and the Japanese notebook they gave Scully are faked. They argue over whether the alien leper was an alien or a leper and there are no prizes for guessing which side each of them took. The closing shot is of CSM sitting and smoking while some other guy translates the real Japanese notebook. Proof of the truth has once again eluded them, posing the question: does the vessel with the pestle or the chalice from the palace hold the proof of the truth?
There’s a train carriage with the number 82594 on the top which must be the birth date of Christ Carter’s first grade teacher’s nephew’s cat called Tiddles. There are doctors doing alien operations inside it, until they’re rudely interrupted by an alien stealing SWAT team. They must hate it when that happens and they end up dead.
Meanwhile in the basement office, Mulder’s all chilled watching a video in his new version of S1′s Slideshow tie called 400 Inches of Rain. Scully’s surprised because she’s watched all his regular videos and doesn’t recognise it as his usual brand of entertainment. He thinks the alien operation looks real because of a lack of detail which I’m sure has some logic in it, and because of the Alien SWAT team. They go to Allentown to find out more about the video, where Mulder points before they waving his gun around the mossy house they enter. Scully finds the dead dude in the room full of paisley wallhangings, Mulder has his “I don’t like what’s going on here, Scully” face on, which is sometimes difficult to tell from his panic face. He sees some guy run and takes chase. He’s no match for Running!Mulder in speed, but his kung fu is the best, making Mulder’s gun hit the ground in one direction while Mulder hit the ground in another. We’re titillated with the sight of Mulder’s hairy ankle when he reveals he’s now carrying a second weapon in an ankle holster because he gets tired of losing his gun. His tie is all dirty from rolling in the mud as he takes the guy and his briefcase into custody.
They take him to the police station which is so full of smoke that it must have been the cause of the banning of cigarette smoking in the work place (or that could just be more atmosphere) when Skinner shows up. Mulder purses his lips when he discovers that the guy has diplomatic immunity and has to be released. Sneaky Mulder holds on the the briefcase which has photos and names of abductees in it.
Mulder dresses in his best black turtleneck and jeans to visit the gunmen and look at satellite pictures through a microscope. Scully looks fetching in a red skirt suit as she visits the MUFON women in Allentown, who she thinks are decidedly spooky as they claim to know her. While she’s there, Mulder takes a walk with a Coast Guard man in his Drycleaner’s Delight tie. Mulder ditches Coast Guard man and runs around shipping containers before he breaks into a ship. He’s having a snoop around when the bad SWAT team arrive in black sedans and come after him. They must be pretty stupid because he manages to outsmart them and dives into the chilly water to escape.
Scully talks about belly ballooning procedures and implants with the Allentown women before discovering they’re all dying. It’s late when Mulder emerges from the watery depths, still dressed in his suit and tie but he’s lost his heavy trench coat. He spies on the bad guys and sees some sort of top secret quarantine thing happening. You’d think they’d cover the windows of their top secret activities, but nobody expected Fox Mulder to drop by. Don’t be concerned when he arrives home sans tie. He must have stuck it in his pocket. This tie has a few trips to the drycleaners left in it yet.
Skinner’s sitting in the dark of his apartment. He knows about the briefcase and he’s not happy. He’s done with Mulder and being dragged into Mulder’s crazy antics. Mulder’s on his own. But he looks lovely in that golden light.
Mulder wears the La Folie en Beige tie to see Senator Matheson. His boring season 3 hair is in urgent need of being mussed up. Then back in his office he gazes at Scully with all his stubble as he tells her about evil Nazi experiments. Scully thinks he fantasises about Alien-Human hybrids, but it’s skeptic-human hybrids that are really his fantasy. Scully needs more than him which feeds his feelings of inadequacy.
Scully takes the silicone chip implant she got from the MUFON women to Pendrell to look at. Pendrell flirts with big words before we cut to Mulder who dons his favourite train surfing tshirt and leather jacket to visit the railway yards and run across roofs. It’s true about bad boys. He finds what he’s after; it’s a train car with 82517 on the top which must be the birth date of Chris Carter’s wife’s nail woman’s priest called Father Aloysius. He watches them load a real life bleeping alien on board but the train takes off before he can catch it. It takes him a moment to remember he’s not superman before he tries to catch a train the normal way. He’s not good at doing things the normal way.
Scully lives at Number 5 now and X knows this and is waiting for her. X says to make sure Mulder doesn’t get on the train. Scully rings him and tells him not to get on the train. Mulder gets on the train. And in a more literal way than any normal person would. Mulder should also consider another ankle holster for a spare cell phone. TO BE CONTINUED….
Trees is a tie with a name borne of a lack of imagination, but it’s decorated with a multitude of little fir trees and Mulder wore it to look at a tree. Mulder only ever wore it in the one episode, Fresh Bones, which is criminal. Yes the episode was criminal but he fact that he never wore it again was also a crime. There’s a small possibility that the episode was filmed around Christmas time and this was a special Christmas tree tie, but sources would neither confirm nor deny this. You can’t get good imaginary sources these days.
The pattern really is too subtle for Mulder, but it does have a bit of a whimsical air, which is probably the real reason it disappeared. Scully has enough of a problem getting Mulder taken seriously, the last thing he needs is a whimsical tie, so after that assignment in North Carolina, Scully kindly offered to look after his dry cleaning so she could make sure that the Trees tie got ‘lost’. Somehow his underwear mysteriously got ‘lost’ as well, which he thought was odd because he didn’t usually get that dry cleaned. It does go to explain Mulder’s frequent noticeable lack of underwear. Not that I’d ever notice something like that.
I like this episode but it makes me sad. I’m very like Mulder so I tend to sympathise with him more than he deserves.
After a girl is kidnapped, a girl who was kidnapped before, Lucy, has some sort of psychic link. Mulder shows up on his own, Wearing the Golden Triangle tie and he’s very empathetic but the knife cuts deep when the missing girl’s mother insinuates that he couldn’t know how she feels. Scully turns up later because the plane was late and Mulder had taken off in such a hurry that he forgot his cell phone. She’s all business and science and she just doesn’t get Mulder’s spooky feelings today.
After testing the blood on previously kidnapped Lucy, they find it has the blood type of both girls. She sends off for the usual PCR results. It doesn’t seem to matter that the blood all suddenly appeared in front of a heap of witnesses who clearly didn’t see the kidnapped girl with her. Mulder’s not making friends at the Seattle Field Office. Scully’s not being his friend either. He didn’t need to worry about the Golden Triangle tie which appeared to lose its powers last time he wore it, because he’s not gazing at Scully today and doesn’t have anything to deflect her attention from.
He goes back to see Lucy who he’s certain is connected in a non-criminal way to the new victim. She started feeling stuff again and the EMTs are there when Mulder arrives. He takes her for some dinner but she’s scared and says she can’t help him find the new girl.
The next day they notice that everyone got their school photos except the kidnapped girl and the photographer’s assistant is suss. He really should have just made an extra copy of the photo for himself. Mulder is wearing a new tie which I’m having trouble naming because it just reminds me of honeycomb and bee colonies so i need to get to know it better. He takes the bad guy’s photo to Lucy who confirms he was the one who kidnapped her. She runs away and he runs after her and takes her back to the halfway house where she lives. Mulder’s having some sisterly alone time with her when Scully and the field office flunkies come to arrest her because they have the fastest DNA lab in the world and discovered both girls’ DNA on Lucy’s clothes, but Lucy somehow gets away. Mulder gives the agents the death glare because they’re so stupid. And Scully’s not listening to him.
They’re printing some wanted posters and Mulder’s still sulking. He says Lucy bled the blood and Scully says he’s blown his credibility. Like he had some to start with. She harps on at him for protecting Lucy beyond reason and thinks she has some of emotional dependency with the kidnapper so she’s helping him now. She’s not a big believer in empaths. Then she starts on about him pretending every kidnapped girl is Samantha and this is irritating and insulting even if it’s part of his motivation.
After they talk to a tow truck driver they point at maps which is never a good thing for the victim. Mulder stops and asks for directions which is a really unmanly thing to do but it gets them to the kidnapper’s cabin in the woods. Lucy is in the basement and she gets a nice big cuddle from Mulder but gets arrested by everyone else. Because she’s psychically linked to the new girl Mulder figures that because she’s cold and wet the new girl must be in the river but the other incompetent agents just want to toss her in jail and go home. There’s some beautiful running through the forest shots as they head for the river, and Mulder shoots the bad guy to stop him drowning the girl. He wades in to the river to get her then carries her back to the river bank where he begins CPR.
Then Scully is the worst doctor in the world and tries to stop him from performing CPR because she seems to be hung up on every girl kidnapped being nothing but a sister substitute for Mulder and forgets that she’s a kid who isn’t blue and deserves a chance to live. I’m not a violent person but I want to smack her when she physically restrains him to stop performing CPR after about 20 seconds. Fortunately, the script said she was going to survive and despite premature CPR cessation she suddenly spurts out water and is walked back by the field office flunkies because heroic girl-carrying Mulder already took off to check on Lucy.
Lucy’s outcome wasn’t quite as good and she drowned in the car. But she gets the last laugh when she’s reincarnated in Audrey Pauley, even if that’s a season 9 episode so there’s not much to laugh about. But the other girl doesn’t get another turn.
Both Mulder and I feel disappointed in the end when he looks at photos of Lucy in her empty room. He’s wearing a brand new tie, which he calls CPR is for life, not just 20 seconds as a passive-aggressive reminder to Scully, and he’s trying not to be bitter. Scully comes to tell him that new girl is OK despite her having pronounced the girl dead at the scene. Mulder has a lot to reflect on and he reflects while Scully sits there and the camera backs out. I know she took that head cradling class at medical school while the CPR class was on, but I hope she realises now that CPR is just as important as head cradling and gets some basic instruction in it.
In a bizarre suicide attempt, some guy in a military psych hospital takes advantage of a little tub which boils water faster than a nuclear reaction would (and should never have passed OH&S standards) by channeling his inner lobster. Apparently this isn’t a normal thing to do and Mulder and Scully arrive to investigate. Mulder has his Drycleaner’s Delight tie on and Scully makes sure he’s wearing his Visitor badge because it’s a lot of work getting him released from psychiatric facilities each time he loses it.
Mulder and Scully exchange little notes as they talk to lobster man in another very hazy room before they’re called out to the hallway to talk with a uniformed Captain woman and Mulder demonstrates his variety of you-can’t-be-serious faces. In fact Mulder’s face is unnaturally expressive in this episode. He gets turned on when Scully speaks Military and happily watches her get bossy with the military types.
They go see the General and he accuses them of gross misconduct. Mulder is amused by the General’s idea of what gross misconduct is and he’s soooooooo tempted to show the General just how gross his misconduct can get. They both get a bit tetchy with the General and his lack of information sharing before having a staring match and leaving.
They go to see the lobster bath for themselves. If that thing’s supposed to be a hydrotherapy bath of some sort, it’s the worst designed hydrotherapy bath in existence. To be physically capable of getting in or out of it you’d have to be in good physical condition. Then it would also restrict movement, kind of making hydrotherapy impossible. And you’d think it would have some kind of temperature cut off so as not to accidentally cook people.
The General orders the Captain to go home and relax but instead she goes for a swim and is drowned by a shadow. Scully’s even more pissed at the General. Mulder joins them in his Irresistible tie, which has a weird kink in it, much like Mulder himself, and it makes you forget about the General and the drowning as you wonder how on earth that kink got there. Is the tie so irresistible that Mulder or Scully couldn’t resist sucking on it? Or did it get caught in the door in a session of autoerotic asphyxiation? After the general admits he saw something and he got spooky answering machine messages they go to his house, where a kid already got freaked out about someone in the house. Mulder ironed the kink out of his tie on the way so we could stop obsessing over it. They listen to the answering machine and look at he sandpit. While Mulder’s back playing with the answering machine, Scully fetches him and they bust into someone’s house and arrest him. Somewhere after this the little General’s kid is killed in the sand pit, but my mind’s drifted back to Mulder and his tie so it’s a bit unclear when that happened.
Mulder and Scully interview the arrestee who blames some amputee dude in the hospital, but one look at the quadruple amputee and they assume he couldn’t have done anything. Back at the interview room, the arrestee gets killed. Scully finds him dead, then Mulder pulls out some little dental xray films he happens to carry around to somehow prove that amputee guy is astral travelling. They close talk about it a bit and he presents the backwards answering machine messages as further evidence. They visit amputee man and Mulder gets up close. He’s so irresistible that the guy will confess anything just to keep him on his bed, despite his not getting the porn nurses and Scully-Fu demonstration that his agent told him were mandatory in amputee scenes.
Amputee man leaves bloody footprints on the general’s carpet before killing his wife. He won’t pick up the phone so they rush to his house. General takes a gun and tries to shoot himself but the amputee’s astral body won’t let him. This makes him mad so he goes to the hospital and shoots the wall above the amputee guy instead. M&S go to amputee guy and he’s blinking so Mulder runs. The General gets subjected to over enthusiastic steam and atmosphere until lobster man sneaks in and uses a pillow to suffocate amputee man until it stops.
As Mulder voices-over his report at the end, we get a slightly better glimpse of the Cosmic G-Spot tie and rejoice in the fact that we have Mulder and Scully to get us through episodes like this. Close talking in hallways is an essential ingredient in the X-Files that I really hope is embraced again in Season 11.
My most recent method of compiling the episode roundups is to skim through the episode while I make notes and capture images to illustrate. However due to the temperamental nature of my blu-ray software and my not wanting to waste time rebooting, I’m resorting to using the few screencaps I took when I originally documented all his ties so I can’t illustrate everything I’d like to, which is probably a good thing. However, this episode is very special as we’re introduced to three new ties which will feature in the next couple of seasons.
I remember there being people in a car in the opening, and they start sucking face, but the guy takes this literally and I get the feeling the whole fat sucking thing wasn’t consensual. She ends up dead.
Mulder and Scully arrive on scene, with Mulder wearing new sunglasses and a new tie. This tie combines two of his favourite obsessions: XXX porn and the X Files and is thusly named XXX Files. There’s nothing lewd about it, it just has rows of XXXs in his favourite tie colours – maroon/burgundy (dark brown for him) and gold. They look good in the morning sun before Mulder follows a lead and Scully heads to the autopsy bay, having to deal with a cop who thinks she can’t be objective about the murder of women because she’s a woman. This always endears her to local law enforcement.
By the time Mulder gets to the morgue, the body’s somehow melted into a puddle of disgusting goo (thanks props department) so she just has a finger bone to show Mulder how the body’s been dissolved by a type of stomach acid. She gives him a vial and talks technical and he understands.
Some other chick has a date with 2Shy but she bows out before the face sucking stage and he has to resort to a prostitute, who doesn’t really have enough body fat for his preference. She doesn’t even consent to suck face before 2Shy does his thing. Mulder recognises obscure text at the crime scene which he knows can only be accessed by academics, but how Mulder can recognise something he can’t access is left unexplained. This new tie, again in his favourite tie colours, is called QR Code because the X-Files is so far ahead of its time that they knew these would exist. I’m sure if you scanned it, it would take you to Mulder’s favourite web page:
They’re at the precinct when Mulder tenderly guides her into the hallway because that’s where they talk best. Mulder tries to convince her he’s right while the detective gets a list of academics which he then divvies up with Mulder and Scully. Detective gets the 2Shy dude and doesn’t live to tell the tale.
2Shy gives the lady who ditched him a second chance. While he’s out, his nosy landlady breaks into his apartment and finds the dead detective. Outside his building, he almost gets to have his way with his date when he sees the lights come on in his apartment and then she gets ditched. Landlady ends up as Landlady Soup. He underestimates her blind daughter though, and she calls the cops. He’s not there when they bust down his door but they have a really bad outline drawing of him which the blind daughter probably drew.
They find that the guys chat contacts are all on a 1.44mb floppy and the computer guy restores them so they can find the next victim. 2Shy goes to his ditched date’s apartment to make up for lost make out sessions. Honestly, she doesn’t have more fat than the detective and landlady together had so he must just be really peckish. She’s still a bit frightened and she makes an excuse so she can email a neighbour. She discovers he’s wanted by the FBI but he can see the bad drawing and recognise himself so the he gives her his special kind of liposuction. He’s interrupted by Mulder and Scully at the door, and despite getting a good minute’s head start, Mulder goes after him. While Scully’s looking for makeshift first aid supplies, 2Shy leaps from the shower and Scully fights back until the victim woman shoots him. Nicely done, brave victim woman.
The final scene is where they visit 2Shy in jail a week later. Mulder’s next new tie is called Cosmic G-Spot and in the bad lighting is as easy to see as a regular G-spot so you’ll have to take my word for it. Mulder doesn’t have much time for his shit, but Scully’s happy to tell him that being a mutant is no excuse for his behaviour.
I’m having a hectic week and another fabulous episode of the X-Files is just what the enigmatic Dr Scully ordered, but today’s episode is The List.
The List is ironically an episode that doesn’t make a lot of lists. Maybe somewhere there’s a list of X-Files episodes that contain the largest number of maggots, a list it would probably top. It’s also on the list of episodes where I really can’t give a toss about the plot and just make shit up.
When some dude doesn’t support the commission of the death penalty upon himself, he’s a touch touchy and seeks revenge from beyond the grave. That pretty much sums up the plot, so I can focus on Mulder and his ties and occasionally remind myself that that’s what the blog is supposed to be about.
When we first see Mulder he has a dead man on his face. I really don’t understand how a slide show is more effective than having an 8”x10” photo in the file that could be referenced on the road, but Mulder does love his slide shows and we allow him his little quirks. He obviously doesn’t have to post his film to Kodak and wait two weeks to get an underexposed box of blur and disappointment back. I admit that the bright light does highlight his Bewitchery in Red tie nicely, which has me bewitched in spite of Mulder’s Season 3 hair, my least favourite Mulder hair. Except for Season 10 of course.
They go to the jail where warden was killed, and even behind bars the tie is bewitching. Mulder and Scully are going to have to protect each other in there if they want to come out the same. But next thing you know, Mulder’s sitting in a very steamy room in a new interrogation pose. He’s very trusting to go into the showers with the prisoners without Scully and I hope he has a good grip on his soap. Sorry, it’s not the showers, it’s not even swamp gas. Chris Carter wrote and directed this episode so it's just extraneous atmosphere. The tie he’s wearing in the atmosphere is Please Don't Shoot Me (Again) Scully and I am ashamed to discover that it didn’t make it onto the Season 2 Master List. Sorry, I’ll post the corrected list at some stage. He and Scully smile at each other after his steamy encounter so it can’t have been too bad.
They go to a house where the sun shines on his tie and it really brings out the gold highlights. This may have been the highlight of the episode actually. Sadly, if not for the Tarzanasazi gif it would have been the highlight of my day.
At first Mulder doesn’t look dejected in his Diamonds of Dejection tie. He and Scully have a bit of a superior air in fact. But one look at Maggot Man in the attic has him questioning his role in the universe and how much evil he perpetrated in his past lives. He hasn’t seen The Field Where I Died yet so he’s not to know of the evil contained within it. Yellow shirt man has him confused and seeking protection from Scully. Afterwards he sits next to her as he does the clothed pretzel interview position on the lawyer-who-obviously-doesn’t-have-children’s white couch. By the time they see that other guy with the nice tie they’re both fed up with the influence of Diamonds of Dejection and Mulder vows this is the last time he’ll wear it, as long as he gets to bust into someone’s house and point his gun at them in it one last time. It may be the last time he wears it, but it’s memorialised forever on his FBI ID and his Driver’s License which suspiciously contain the same photo.
The next morning Mulder proves that sometimes he does just want to stop and get out of the damn car. And stretch a bit. And prance. All while wearing the Golden Triangle tie. The gold highlight of the sun in his otherwise uninspiring hair is the new highlight of my day. As he tilts his head back, his hips naturally thrust forward, giving Scully a vision of a destiny she’s not yet prepared for and she gets back into the car as fast as those little legs will carry her. Mulder follows and they drive off, being passed by a car with another fly with an accelerated life cycle just waiting to become a bunch of writhing maggots.
I just noticed I’ve reached the magic milestone of 200 followers. Thanks for reading, despite my rambling about everything but ties.
