1X11 EVE

"Be fertile and multiply."
God to Eve (and Adam) from Genesis

"What are young women made of? . . . sugar and spice and everything nice."
Southey from What All the World is Made Of

"What are you, I should like to know?"
Alice to Tweedledum and Tweedledee from Alice in Wonderland

"The boys are called Adam, the girls are called Eve."
Deep Throat

SYNOPSIS

GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

Stemming from what Deep Throat described as the "Litchfield Experiment" for cloning the perfect human, one of those Eves escaped and made a career of cloning herself, to try to get it right. Along with another escaped Eve, they kill two fathers on opposite sides of the country at the same time so they could get their manufactured children, two more Eves, back. Teena Simmons and Cindy Reardon are the 8 year old twins, who seem to be sweet and innocent. After they poison Dr. Sally Kendrick, their cloner, they turn their attentions to Mulder and Scully.

SCULLYVISION

In this episode, we find Scully and Mulder working in sync, not quite on the level of the twin Eves, Teena and Cindy, but almost. In the opening scene in the X Files office, Mulder equates the father's death in Connecticut (by exsanguination), with the UFOlogy lore of cattle mutilations. Scully's eyes go wide at the connection, with a surprised, "Hm?", but lets him speak. This rich mystery evolves so fast that Mulder doesn't have time to dwell on his alien theories for long.

Scully and Mulder talk to the orphaned girl, Teena, and it's Scully who is sweet and calm, asks the child the normal questions about who, on Earth, could have reason to hurt her "daddy". When she didn't get any result, Mulder plunges right in with questions about lights in the sky, and gets a reaction. There was 'red lightening' and 'a man from the clouds'.

Was that programmed into her? A ruse the writer's threw in? The little girl, with her heightened intelligence, knew that's what Mulder wanted to hear? From the flow of the episode, it was either the twin girls, or the escaped Eves that killed the fathers. Scully takes the time, and the risk, of criticizing Mulder for asking leading questions of Teena, but she still let his questions be asked without interrupting. They have become excellent partners where trust and honesty are the norm.

Some of Scully's abilities are clearly challenged, when she's cold cocked by Sally Kendrick during Cindy Reardon's kidnaping in California. And at times, not respected, when the fertility clinic physician gives Scully a lecture on the basics of in vitro fertilization. Who did he think he was talking to, a dumb FBI agent? Or us, the audience? The writers should have made the information the audience needed to flow a little more logically.

When Mulder rushes Scully out of his motel room after the signal from Deep Throat, Scully can only guess a mundane reason for the brush off, that he has a girl coming over. She doesn't even suspect that he is covertly meeting with someone about the very case that they are supposedly working on together. One has to question why Mulder doesn't take Scully along to these meetings. Mulder is shutting her out on what he deems is an important aspect of the X Files investigation. Has he even told her about Deep Throat? It's odd.

It's lovely to see the caring, almost nurturing, Scully when she and Mulder find the twins with Sally Kendrick's dead body. You could almost mistake her for the girls' mother as she's ushering them to the bathroom with a protective hand on their shoulders. Girls couldn't be monsters, to her mind at the time, as they completely fool her, and nearly kill her with the spiked soda. Would the Eves even recognize good mothering if they saw it? They certainly don't deserve Scully.

How rare to see both agents so completely fooled by anyone much less a couple of eight year olds. Of course, it was Scully who first suspected the twins, though Mulder quickly let her know she was wrong, or so he thought. That could have been a fatal mistake, so thank goodness Mulder saw the green residue on the table in the diner and made the connection that the girls were trying to kill them.

OH COME ON!

It's almost as if it's a big surprise to Cindy's mother that she had a weird daughter. The 8 year old girl turned off cartoons to watch CSPAN. Ding, ding, ding, warning bell, your child is not normal.

Why would there be a bright, white light coming out of Cindy's closet the night she was kidnaped by Sally? Sally Kendrick was supposed to be smart, but to turn on a beacon when kidnaping a child doesn't sound to be very covert.

Why didn't Mulder shoot out Sally's car tires instead of running after it? We believe in one thing for certain, bullets travel faster than Mulder.

Sally must have gone shopping for the perfect matching all red outfits the girls wore after she had them both. Besides the fact that they looked spooky in them, how would she be able to tell them apart when they dressed exactly alike?

Digitalis comes from the Foxglove plant, not the other way around, as Teena and Cindy told Sally as she died from their poisoning. They were so proud of their handiwork, they should have gotten it right.

At the diner, with Mulder and Scully in the bathrooms, how could Cindy tell which was two were diet and which two were regular sodas to spike? All four sodas were already poured and weren't marked in any way.

THINGS LEARNED
or All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From the X Files

People have 46 chromosomes.

Add more chromosomes to the mix, and you get heightened intelligence, strength and psychosis.

When kidnaping, don't cart the victims around in the open when a manager is raking the leaves and can see them. And never let your victims talk to the guy either. He'll just spill the beans to the cops.

Digitalis has a sweet flavor and is green in color.

If you find out the daughter you raised for 8 years is revealed to be the product of scientific experimentation, by all means, burn all evidence she was ever in your heart.

JACK'S MONSTERVISION

Ah yes, genetically engineered super women. They were created by a government project, cause we all know government projects always work out so well, most likely to be super soldiers. The results seem all well and good at first as the Eves have increased intelligence and super strength. But then comes our old friends, psychosis, homicidal mania, and a whole lot of other stuff that makes the project a failure. The byproducts want to gather together for some reason and doing anything to accomplish this. They use exsanguination (which is an amazingly cool word), poisonings, and general outwitting, but our two FBI agents foil their dastardly plot to meet each other. Or do they??? Despite amazing intelligence, which I always respect, the psychosis and questionable motives force me to give the Eves a 3 out of 5 poisoned soft drinks.

SFX

Joel's exsanguinated corpse was first rate. The kidnaping of the girls were sort of cheesy, although Teena's was more spooky.

RECURRING CHARACTERS

Deep Throat

WRITERS
Kenneth Biller/Chris Brancato

New. They gave good personalization to the twins, who probably weren't strong actors to begin with. They gave riveting words and action for the great actress, Harriet Harris, to sink her teeth into, and boy did she. The meeting of the girls and the tagline, "We just knew" is wonderful. There were lapses in logic though. What did that "red lightening" and "a man from the clouds" have to do with anything? It's called a McGuffin.

DIRECTOR
Fred Garber

Also new. Nice slow reveal of Eve 6 in the sanitarium. The continual views of Mulder and Scully through a round window, a car window, a mirror and Scully through pipes was interesting. There was also a nice segue scene: Scully and the doctor are talking about Sally, and the camera goes to the monitor showing a videotape of her, then Scully is heard in voice over explaining Sally's work to Mulder as he watches that same videotape.

RUNNING TALLIES
Flashlights - at Sanitarium and during Cindy's kidnaping
Guns - Mulder had to lay his down during Cindy's kidnaping, finding Sally's hideout
Sunflower Seeds
Slide Projector
Grammar lesson - Abduction, kidnaping, potato, pahtahto
Raining - during Teena's kidnaping
Cell Phones - Scully at Teena's interrogation and Mulder after Cindy's kidnaping
Scully Drives! - but only as a diversion so Mulder can catch the girls at the truck stop

SIDE NOTE: Teena and Cindy are the names of Morgan and Wong's wives at the time. They were executive producers for the episode.

SCORE CARD FOR SAVING EACH OTHER'S ASS

Scully - 3 - Mulder - 2
Scully would have drank more soda if he hadn't knocked it on the ground

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

Hi Teena,

How are you? Oh never mind, I already know. That Mulder and Scully duo were kind of nice, didn't you think? Me too. Did you see how Mulder let me pay for the drinks? Was that like a Dad thing or what? I was kind of regretting that you put that poison in their drinks. But then again, I guess I would have if you didn't. How about if we watch a video together later? But I get to choose. I'm getting kind of tired of those Olsen twins and one can only take so much Hayley Mills.

Truly yours,

Cindy

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Cindy,

How are you? Oh never mind, I already know. Hey, it was me who Mulder let pay for the drinks and it was you who poisoned them. I hate when they say that all us clones look alike, but you know what, we do! And I'm with you about those kiddie movies. I guess our accelerated genes are rampant. How about we watch Dead Ringers? I hear those Jeremy Ironses make us look like just innocent little girls.

Truly yours,

Teena

QUOTES

SCULLY 95% blood loss. That's over 4 liters of blood.
MULDER I'd say the man was running on empty.

MULDER Are you at all familiar with the phenomena of cattle mutilations?

TEENA There was red lightening.

TEENA They wanted to exsanguinate him.

MULDER It's like looking at a mirror image.

MULDER One girl was just abducted.
SCULLY Kidnaped.
MULDER Potato, potahto.

DOCTOR Dr. Kindrick was nothing but a problem.
SCULLY You got a girl coming over?
MULDER What's a girl?

DEEP THROAT Wondered if I ever told you about the Lichfield Experiments.

DEEP THROAT A group of genetically controlled children. Raised and monitored on a compound in Lichfield. The boys were called Adam and the girls were called Eve. There's a woman you should see and I'll make sure that you can get in.

EVE 6 Are you going to give me an IQ test by any chance? I think I can top 265. We're very bright, we Eves. It runs in the family.

EVE 6 You have 46 chromosomes. The Adams and the Eves... we have 56. We have extra chromosomes. Number 4, 5, 12, 16, and 22. This replication of chromosomes also produces additional genes. Heightened strength. Heightened intelligence.
MULDER Heightened psychosis.
EVE 6 Saved the best for last.

EVE 7 Teena Simmons, meet Cindy Reardon.

MULDER She told him he should use chlorine to irradiate the dinoflagellates in the swimming pool. Does that sound like someone we know?

TEENA AND CINDY We just knew.

MULDER I just wanted to open the car door for you.

MULDER Back off, I'm a Federal Agent.
TRUCKER Yeah, and these are America's Most Wanted. Hands in front. Now let the girls go.
WOMAN Get in the truck girls. Get in. I'm going to call the police.
SCULLY We are the police!

TEENA We didn't do anything wrong.
CINDY We're just little girls.
MULDER That's the last thing you are.