The X-Files Season 10 Episode 4 The abrupt end to “Home Again,” another mystery that vanishes into thin air, is not about agents who can’t close. Writer-director Glenn Morgan’s episode is a brutally honest look at our desire for closure – and the fun and frustration of The X-Files is that we usually never get it. Following up his brother’s already beloved Monster-of-the-Week comedy episode, Morgan sticks to a similar formula that long-time writing partner James Wong used in “Founder’s Mutation.” Take a noble cause, find a bad guy that goes way beyond the job description, and add a pinch of William. Here it’s a murderous sanitation creature, “Trash Man,” who is the Batman of Philadelphia’s homeless population. The foul-smelling vigilante bares no relation to Spoonman, but nonetheless provides looks that are equally as sinister. Trash Man is a genuinely terrifying monster, the best we’ve seen in the revival thus far, but he’s secondary to the William arc that claims its first casualty and what Morgan told EW was the third in a trilogy of episodes that explores Scully’s relationship with motherhood. If you like your X-Files gooey and gory and void of sentimentality, “Home Again” likely split you right down the middle. The idea of an underground artist willing his work into a physical manifestation gone rogue is wonderful, but it comes fairly late in the episode. Juxtaposing the “Thanksgiving Day volunteer,” helping the city’s homeless from afar in the suburbs, while Petula Clark’s “Downtown” plays, is the classic way the X-Files uses a cheery tune to make a moment of terror just a notch creepier. Some good camera work and suspense all builds to a letdown, however, and the episode turns on-the-nose political and self-reflective for Scully within one line of dialogue: “You’re responsible. You put it out of sight so it’s not your problem, but you’re just as bad as the people you hate.” In an episode where I don’t recall David Duchovny doing anything more than holding a flashlight, the show travels back in time on the Scully Feels Machine™. We can go all the way back to season 1’s “Beyond the Sea,” where Scully attempts to reconnect with her recently deceased father through a psychic serial killer, which begins the toxic mixing of her work and personal life. The Trash Man is no Luther Lee Boggs, but his case is an escape route. Scully has to get back to work, just moments after she watches her mother pass away. Even for Scully, or any other rational human, that seems out of place.
