'The X-Files' Recap: "Plus One"
Alejandra Zimmermann ‘19 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) see their doubles in the third episode of the season,”Plus One.” The episode opens in a concert and a metal band is covering a David Duchovny song, “Unsaid, Undone.” The camera pans to a riled crowd and the band onstage. Suddenly, a young man in the crowd goes onstage, but things turn spooky when he looks out to the crowd. Arkie Seavers (Jared Ager-Foster) suddenly sees his double a couple of feet away from him. Paranoid, he follows the double, but ends up in a car with him after trying to run away and crashes a tree. There is only one person in the car though, immediately signifying this is going to be a mythology episode.
The scene cuts to Mulder and Scully in their office. This is the first time in the season that their office, which was introduced in season 10, is reintroduced. Mulder immediately starts to explain the Arkie Seavers case to Scully. Classic Mulder goes off into tangents about how Arkie saw someone who looked like him and begins to explain his theories to Scully. Classic Scully is trying to see some sense, but finds no scientific evidence to what Mulder is saying. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Scully, and I know that you will,” Mulder chides. But of course, whether they agree or not, they decided to take the case.
The agents meet with Arkie and his lawyer, Dean (Ben Wilkinson), in jail and that’s where Arkie tells them about seeing his double. Even though the case is clearly something paranormal, Mulder and Scully find out that there are other victims in the area that share the same experiences Arkie had in a psychiatric hospital. The agents meet Little Judy Poundstone, who suffers from dissociative personality disorder. The actress playing Judy, Karin Konoval, played the mother in The X-Files episode “Home“. In Judy’s hospital room, sheets of paper with the game of hangman cover Judy’s wall. Coincidentally, the name Arkie Severs is written in one of the papers. Mulder and Scully question if she knows Arkie, but she just reveals that she plays the hangman game telepathically with her brother, Little Chucky.
The scene cuts to Mulder and Scully asking a hotel receptionist for any available rooms, but the only thing available is one hotel room. Breaking FBI rules, they decide to share a room. Across the world, Mulder and Scully fans are stunned that Chris Carter wrote such a plot line. The audiences see a sleeping Scully, until Mulder comes in to tell her Arkie is dead from suicide in his jail cell. At the crime scene, his lawyer is appalled. Mulder, on the other hand, begins to put together the pieces to this case, connecting Judy’s hangman game with the killing. This leads Mulder to suspect #2, Judy’s brother, Charles Poundstone, who is played by same actress. Scully goes to see Judy again, and this time, she’s exhibiting a more angry personality. Judy gives Scully a hard time, insulting Scully about her age.
Back in the hotel room, a more casual Mulder and Scully chat about the case, but quickly turns more personal when Scully asks, “Mulder, do you think of me as old?” Mulder quickly goes to reassure Scully she’s still in great shape. “You still got some scoot in your boot.” Meanwhile, Little Chucky is creating a hangman game with the picture of Arkie’s lawyer and starts to play the game telepathically with Judy.
Mulder and Scully talk to the Poundstones again, but they are not the same person. The ‘seeing double’ theory does not make sense with Judy or Charles, but still does not explain how they could have killed Arkie. The lawyer Dean is now seeing his double and starts to get paranoid, calling the agents. Mulder and Scully just advise him to stay calm and not to let his double haunt him. At this point, they both come to agreement that something odd is in the air.
Paranoid Dean lives in a casual house full of swords; his paranoia is clearly dangerous. Meanwhile, Chuck and Judy are playing hangman and Dean is the the victim. Mulder and Scully get called to Dean’s home where he is found, decapitated. Leaving the crime scene, Scully sees her double, but the viewer can tell skeptical Scully does not want to believe what she saw.
Back in the hotel room, Scully heads to Mulder’s room and asks for him to hold her. Stepping outside the ‘platonic friends’ label Carter has constantly put on them, Scully begins to question their relationship. They both promise to be right by each other, but the conversation gets deeper. From the sound of conversation, they are not a couple so-far in series, breaking the hopes of hundreds of X-Files fans. “What if we lose our jobs?” Scully asks.“Then what would we do?” replies Mulder, but then Scully turns to face Mulder with the purest look of love on her face and says, “We’ll think of something.” The camera pans out and Scully’s double is overlooking a romantic Mulder and Scully.
The Poundstones are playing hangman and the name on the paper shows five letters, and have ‘U’ and ‘L’ on the lines. The scene shifts back to the hotel room where the agents are sleeping together, giving the viewers a different look of their ‘platonic’ relationship. Mulder gets up to use the restroom, where he smiles timidly at the mirror, making you question what he could be so happy about, cough cough. But it quickly turns weird when he spots his double in the mirror. Running back to the room, Mulder tells Scully to get up and she surprisingly says, “Mhm, come back to bed.” By this point, it is pretty obvious these two agents broke some rules. However, when Scully sits up and she shows off a bare shoulder, millions of Mulder and Scully fans explode with happiness. While all of this is happening, Mulder realizes that seeing their double means that the Poundstones are out to get them. “Scully, put a dimmer on that afterglow.”
They go out to stop Judy and Chucky from killing them; Scully runs into her double in the car and Mulder ends up fighting his in Chucky’s house. The siblings begin to argue with each other about who to kill and end up changing the hangman game to spell out each others names. Little Judy ends up killing herself before Scully could enter her room and Chucky also kills himself as Mulder was fighting his double. With two minutes left, Mulder and Scully are back at the hotel room, packing up, when Mulder suggests to “get a couple of hours before checkout time.” Scully, not quite playing along, continues to casually pack while Mulder heads back to his room. The TV starts playing from the other side and Scully is looking at the door. By this point, every Mulder and Scully fan are sitting at the edge of their seat, waiting to see if Scully caves in and seeks Mulder. Scully, after staring at the door for what it felt like five minutes, suddenly says, “But then again, it’s not out of the realm of extreme possibilities.” She walks to the door, biting her lip I might add, and when she opens the door, a smoldering Mulder leaning on the door greets her. Unfortunately, the episode ends there, leaving the audiences with questions on what happens after Scully opens the door. However, the sudden exploration of Mulder and Scully’s love life is a great plot that hopefully gets to be explore more this season.