The X-Files - The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat

*** / ****

With favorites like Jose Chung and Quagmire, there is this joy I have with each given engagement, no matter how many times they are on, I’m game for them again. I fell mad for Forehead Sweat from the get-go with Mulder’s “squatchin’” and it just took off from there. Well, quite frankly, the nonsense involving a Twilight Zone-inspired B&W segment prior to the credits of The X-Files (which had the devil from The Howling Man mixed with the diner nervous visitor from something like Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?) was plenty enough, although it was a bit off-the-deep-end (similar to Reggie as he’s being carted away in a strait-jacket while Skinner asks where the loony-bin docs were taking him), leaving behind that feeling of WTF? Forehead Sweat has this “mind altering mad scientist” named Dr. They who supposedly is participant behind a number of conspiracies (and, according to Reggie, spoke with a fallen large-cranium green Martian in Grenada!), or at least when visiting Mulder leaves that business open for consideration (or not).

There is a great deal of emphasis on what is real and isn’t. What do you and I believe when news flashes across the channels of social media or the television screen on any given news network? Mulder offering the theory on parallel universes while Scully dismisses him and Reggie’s ongoing crises involving his own existence “being erased” and “repressed memories resurfacing” continue to keep the episode a riot. Scully always trying to be the voice of reason and good sense when the conversation veers off into the weeds of surreal, trying to steer the guys back into a rationale they seem all too certain to deviate from. I find great entertainment and amusement in her dusting off her hands response and step away when the talk just gets too bonkers and ridiculous for her scientific mind to stomach and tolerate. But if just to see Mulder ransacking his stash of VHS tapes for that Lost Martian episode of TZ that no longer appears to exist (later to be determined as an episode from some “similar knockoff”) while Scully arrives to find him among his mess despondent, I’m satisfied. But the Elvis-robed alien at the end, as told by Reggie when responding to Mulder regarding his last case with them, arriving in the spaceship, telling humanity not to leave Earth for their solar system (a great wall would be built to vaporize any of us that might so bring our lies off this planet into the cosmos!), providing a “book with all the answers” just hit the G-spot for this sci-fi nerd.

 I could mention the nice visual cleverness of Reggie inserted into Mulder and Scully’s past episodes of the show, the Mandela/Mingele effect, whether it was Orson Welles or Orwell who said “He who controls the past, controls the future”, the great misunderstanding regarding that genie movie (was it Sinbad or Shaq who starred as the wish-giver?), Scully’s warm recollections of a certain jello she enjoyed so well (and Mulder’s reaction to her fondness of the memories), Reggie’s running list of government employment opportunities (the waterboarding and bomb drop are particularly eyebrow-raising jabs) thanks to Scully’s research, the Grenada excursion and its ties to extraterrestrials, Mulder defending his “honor” when other agents question what he once was (“I’m Fox Freakin’ Mulder!”), among other bits in the episode which accumulate to provide a personally rich experience, although I do recognize that certain fans of the show are vocally opposed to and polarized by those which parody and satirize the mythology and driving force of its entire purpose. I think not always taking yourself seriously can be a good thing. And at the end of the day we can still go back (not that I always want to as evidenced by how this season concludes) to the serious-faced mythological episodes surrounding colonization and apocalypse (and the hybrid son, William) if that is what is so desired.

Brian Huskey as Reggie provides a lasting guest-starring role I can only imagine will be remembered in time with great fondness and appreciation, that nervous energy and forehead sweat, his anxieties and appeals to the agents for help to keep his identity alive and safe from dissolution, theories and beliefs regarding the past, Dr. They, and what “they” desire to do against him (and the public at large). The Dr. Seuss references, how Mulder and Scully “put their feet up and chat”, Mulder’s idea of a less romantic date (his raised eyebrows hinting at more than what ultimately happens), the use of the X a reminder of the great, old-school X-Files at its very best, and the cheeky tone and approach that exhales from the season’s intense pursuit of William and combating the onslaught of potential global devastation and invasion; I’m just a fan that embraces this kind of episode.