220 HUMBUG

"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol

"More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing nothing, than by believing too much."
P.T. Barnum

"It's a strange world, isn't it?"
Jeffrey Blue Velvet

"The sheriff's report simply read, 'ick.'"
Crow. Devil Fish MST3K

GIBSONTON, FLORIDA

Scully and Mulder visit a town inhabited by side-show performers to solve the murder of an Alligator Man.

SCULLYVISION

PC Scully is caring and giving, but when Mulder asks for her first base reaction to the picture of the victim of their latest case, The Alligator Man, her visceral reaction is to say "Imagine going through your whole life looking like this," a line which will be repeated to marvelous comic effect.

After Mulder is reamed out by Mr. Nutt, the diminutive hotel manager about making assumptions about people when he asked if he had been in the circus, Mulder makes the same assumption of one Lanny, who has a weird appendage, namely, an attached little twin brother. Scully's quick look and cringe as if to say, "You want to go through that again?", was just like her. She was not like her usual self when later she is taken in by the old "intellectual curiosity" scam and went for the even more fantastic (even though it had a medical flavor) than Mulder in actually solving this case-finding out that Lanny's attached twin brother can detach and kills by trying to reattach himself to a better brother than the one he's got.

Scully is somewhat of a humbug herself in this episode. It is she, rather than her partner, who displays the sharp wit, comes up with the off the wall theories of who the killer is, and even eats that bug. Not to mention that she also takes over the investigation at various times. She does the research and discovers the truth about the sheriffs' hairy past. Later, she does indeed solve the murders. She may be a humbug but she is also humbugged. Though she alludes to Mulder being a sucker, she is also suckered, both in the museum and in the fun house.

Scully and Lanny's interactions are wonderful, particularly their early morning encounter after Mr. Nutt was found killed. They each are wearing their robes, and each have... something hanging out, and each stop ogling at the other when they come to their senses and have to cover themselves up. Who would have thought that Scully not only has an amateur magician for an uncle, but that she would actually eat a cricket?

In the wonderful climactic fun house chase scene we get to enjoy Scully from interesting camera angles as well as through the looking glass. She was delightful when Mulder comes sliding down the shoot pretending that he meant to, and she simply steps over him and walks out. Scully in charge.

OH COME ON!

Dr Blockhead (Jim Rose) is pretty cool, but we're supposed to believe that he could tunnel under a coffin?

Mulder hasn't gone to many funerals... wakes are held before interments.

Mulder has to explain what ichthyosis is to Doctor Scully?

Lenny's appendage comes to life and leaves and returns to his host at will? Then again maybe this should be in the Oh Who Cares section because it works so well in the context of the show that we are more than willing to suspend disbelief.

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

Ichthyosis is the genetic disease where people are able to shed skin in the form of scales.

In the Chinese practice of Tiea Bu Shan, you can train your testicles to draw up into your abdomen. Men make up all sorts of activities to make sure no women can, or care to, join in.

If you have a wart, rub it with a potato slice and bury the potato in the ground under a full moon.

Never sneak up on Scully when she is sleeping. She can go from sound sleep to having a gun pointed at your head in about 1.5 seconds.

Never let your twin appendage outside the house when there is a geek in the neighborhood.

SFX

Leonard was pretty unscary; the Curator dude was, however.

RECURRING CHARACTERS

None

WRITER
Darin Morgan

Let it be said that for this first X Files foray into the world of comedy is not as superficial as it seems. That's the point. This is a sharp, intuitive look at first impressions, how appearances can certainly be deceiving, is one of the smartest X Files ever filmed, IMHO. You can tell that Darin watches and probably loves the show also. The dialogue is natural, giving each type of person their own voice. In the midst of all the lightness and strangeness, there is a base human sadness that is at the root of the murders. Things, and future Darin Morgan episodes, can only get better.

It is amazing that Humbug is a Season Two episode. An ep like this might be more safely presented years down the road. To do it in Season Two was taking a tremendous risk. It was humor and horror and a different Mulder and Scully. It just may have been the ep that pushes the X-Files past any series that has come before. It worked so well because it was so brilliantly written. It made profound statements about differences and disabilities without preaching. The opening scene jars us into considering a "monster" as a loving dad. Then we see the "simple" scene with Scully unable to take her eyes off of Lenny's anomaly and Lenny unable to take his eyes off of Scully's décolletage. Simple yet so profound.

Clearly Darin Morgan is no rube. He knows his subject matter like an insider. Magically he presents it all in a way that makes us give serious thought to the themes of the episode. He could have just amused us and made us laugh and left it at that.

One wonders whether writer Vince Gilligan got his idea for Bad Blood while watching Humbug. Humbug forces us to not only look at everything from various perspectives but it also shows a somewhat 'different' Mulder and Scully - and shows us just how much fun it can all be. We eagerly await future Darin Morgan episodes.

DIRECTOR
Kim Manners

This is his first X Files episode and it's a success in every way. There are dark and scary parts when it needs to be. Mulder has never looked more gorgeous. Scully is allowed to reveal a lot of cleavage (for the sake of the story). Marvelous camera angles and the funeral was visually witty. At first glance, all looks normal. As time goes on, Mulder and Scully are the only 'normal' people there.

THE USUAL THINGS
Flashlights
Guns
Scully does an autopsy - Lanny's, off screen
Two Ways to Look at It - Fun house...Tabernacle of Terror
Raining
Mulder's porn fixation - or perversity?

Side note: Gulf Breeze Trailer Park named for the Gulf Breeze Floridian sitings of UFOs that Mulder debunked in OMNI magazine.

Gillian did not really eat that cricket, but she did put it in her mouth and chewed

NOT NAUGHTY MULDER

Shame on all of you Mulder-porn freaks for even thinking that he was referring to something like that.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

In the car on the way home from Florida:
SCULLY: Mulder?
MULDER: What?
SCULLY: I've been thinking about what Dr. Blockhead said. Are you ashamed of the way you look?
MULDER: Excuse me? Didn't you see me strike a pose outside that trailer? Or were you too busy eating bugs at the time?
SCULLY: As unlikely as it may seem, especially to you, Humbug makes it plausible that you, Fox Mulder, are the outsider. Indeed, the freak.
MULDER: I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
SCULLY: I know.

ATHENAEUM

Her uncle taught her three tricks: How to put her palm on the floor and make it look like she could twist her hand around 360 degrees, how to fake putting a bug in her mouth and lastly, how to really put a bug in her mouth and pretend to chew it. So Scully went to the Athenaeum to learn a little more about the magical and dying world of tricksters and side shows.

Descending the stairs of the Athenaeum Scully was not greeted by the familiar smell of old books, but rather by an animal smell, kind of a zoo smell. She was further startled to descend upon a huge circus tent instead of the familiar book stacks. In front of the tent were banners announcing "Mystery Boy" and "Half and Half" and "Seeing is Believing" and "Oh My, But She is Fat."

In front of the banner line was a blower, who ballyhooed Scully. "Step right up. For one thin dime you will witness the greatest freak show on earth, the largest selection of nature's mistakes ever assembled under one tent. Enter this Odditorium for one embarrassingly minuscule donation."

She handed him a thin dime and entered the tent. She did not hear the talker mumble, "once a rube always a rube," behind her. He was right. Scully entered the empty tent. Empty except for an old trunk. Scully approached it and opened it, fully expecting it to be empty. It wasn't. Not quite. Inside was a book titled "Freak Show" by Robert Bogdan. She exited the tent only to find herself back in the library. She sat at a table and read.

Expecting that the book would mostly be photographs of side show performers, Scully was amazed at the wealth of information it contained. It began with an insightful look at the history of side shows and what it was like for the people who were in them. Bogdan pointed out that the people weren't freaks at all. Some had physical anomalies and disabilities and some didn't. Performers often created their "characters' in order to fake, embellish, or exaggerate their differences. Many claimed to have come from exotic lands where they were allegedly Counts and Generals and Princesses. In the early 1900's the word freak didn't have quite the degrading connotation that it has today. In fact, the freak part was usually just hype. The "freaks" were in actuality the insiders and the audience was comprised of lowly rubes.

The book told of Chang and Eng, conjoined twins, who were actually from Siam, now Thailand, who gave rise to the term Siamese Twins, a misnomer unless you are actually from Siam. When not "performing" Chang and Eng were actually plantation owners, respected citizens of North Carolina, and husbands. Together they fathered 23 children. Another famous pair was Violet and Daisy Hilton. These attractive conjoined twins were featured, along with many early twentieth century side show performers, in Tod Browning's 1932 film "Freaks" now a cult classic.

Scully also read about the history of tattooed "exotics." Early tattooed people, or 'living picture galleries' did actually come from the Far East and South Sea Islands. As tattoo art spread throughout the world, later "exotics" were European seamen and citizens of the American West. Scully was amused to read that the 1880's brought on the first appearance of tattooed women who completely upstaged the tattooed men. Later came an entire tattooed family whose dog was even tattooed. Coney Island once even featured a tattooed cow.

Unlike the Enigma, most tattooed people were not geeks. Geeks or "gloaming geeks" were the terms applied to the people who bit the heads off of rats and chickens and ate other disgusting things. Geeks were often town drunks who were paid in booze.

Scully also read about a performer with the same anomaly as Lenny. He called himself "Piramal and his sister Sami."

She couldn't put the book down. She learned about "gaffed freaks" those who were faking, such as armless wonders whose arms were hidden beneath their clothing or Siamese twins who were brother and sister, an impossibility since conjoined twins are always identical and therefore always the same sex.

Side shows often featured strange non-living exhibits such as the Fiji Mermaid. Many displayed jars of fetuses in formaldehyde amazingly referred to as "pickled punks."

One turn of the century exhibit at Luna Park on Coney Island featured live premature infants in little warming ovens. Dr. Martin Couney began this exhibit, the longest running exhibit in Coney Island history, mostly because the medical community at that time believed that putting premature infants in incubators was pure nonsense. Barred from hospitals this side show was actually saving lives.

Scully read on and on about bearded ladies, the human ostrich, the monkey girl, the frog boy, the human torso, the ossified man, the four legged wonder, the pinhead, wild men and serpent girls and even the "what is it?" She read about how human anomalies were regarded as quite mystifying in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. People who had anomalies became "medicalized." Physicians assumed the right to poke, prod and even exhibit them to the medical community. Side shows were the next step in the often public and frequently degrading treatment of people with disabilities. Although sometimes side shows actually glorified the differences rather than degraded them.

Scully finished the book. It wasn't just a history of the side show but a brilliant analysis of the facts, myths and sociological implications of side shows and the people who inhabited them.

When Scully got home she realized that her wallet was missing, a very authentic touch to her side show experience at the Athenaeum. Having your pocket picked was a common occurrence in old amusement parks. In some cases the pickpockets even had to pay park management a fee for these "dip" privileges.

QUOTES

JERALD GLAZEBROOK Quit picking on your brother. Remember he loves you!
SON No, I don't!

SCULLY Imagine going through your whole life looking like this.

PRIEST For although Jerry was a world-renowned escape artist, there is one strongbox from which none of us can escape.
The coffin shakes and men lift it up. A man, Dr. Blockhead, comes out of the hole.
BLOCKHEAD Having not known the deceased personally, I am in no position to perform a proper eulogy. I'm sure he was a nice guy, et cetera, et cetera. But as an admirer of the man's work, I am in a position to perform an impromptu tribute in his honor. Namely, ramming this spike into my chest!

BLOCKHEAD I think I hit my left ventricle!

BLOCKHEAD Get back, fascist!

MULDER I can't wait for the wake.

MULDER Do you think that we could meet Hep... Cat?

HEPCAT HELM Who are the rubes?

HEPCAT HELM It's not a fun house, it's a Tabernacle of Terror.
HAMILTON It's a fun house.

SCULLY What's the Feejee Mermaid?
HEPCAT HELM The Feejee Mermaid. It's... it's THE Feejee Mermaid!

HEPCAT HELM Barnum billed it as a real live mermaid but when people went into see it, all they saw was a real dead monkey sewn on the tail of a fish.
HAMILTON It supposedly looked so bad, he had to exhibit it as a "genuine fake."
HEPCAT HELM Oh, but see? That's why Barnum was a genius. You never know where the truth ends and the humbug begins. He came right out and said, "This Feejee Mermaid thing is just a bunch of BS." That just made people want to go and see it even more. So, I mean... who knows? Maybe for box office reasons, Barnum hocked it as a hoax... when in reality...
SCULLY Do you recall what Barnum said about suckers?

MULDER Tell me, have you done much circus work in your life?
NUTT And what makes you think I've ever spectated a circus, much less been enslaved by one?
MULDER I know that many of the citizens here are former circus hands and I just thought that maybe you would have done...
NUTT You thought that because I am a person of short stature that the only career I could procure for myself would be one confined to the so called big top. You took one quick look at me and decided that you could deduce my entire life. Never would it have occurred to you that a person of my height could have possibly obtained a degree in hotel management.
MULDER I'm sorry, I meant no offense.
NUTT Well, then why should I take offense? Just because it's human nature to make instantaneous judgments of others based solely upon their physical appearances? Why, I've done the same thing to you, for example. I've taken in your all-American features, your dour demeanor, your unimaginative necktie design... and concluded that you work for the government, an FBI agent. But do you see the tragedy here? I have mistakenly reduced you to a stereotype. A caricature. Instead of regarding you as a specific, unique individual.
MULDER But I am an FBI agent.

LANNY Mister Nutt, the kindhearted manager here, convinced me that to make a living by publicly displaying my deformity lacked dignity... so now I carry other people's luggage.

MULDER Every murder investigation begins with a list of possible suspects. You should try not to be so exclusive, Scully.
SCULLY As long as you try not to let the atmosphere of this town distort your list all out of proportion.

MULDER This window. This seems to be the point of entry and there's a... smear of blood on the outside of the window.
SCULLY Why would there be blood before the attack?
HAMILTON Why didn't the attacker just come through the open door? For a person to crawl in and out of these windows, they'd have to be a contortionist... or just plain crazy. Or both.

BLOCKHEAD Doctor Blockhead does not perform tricks. Doctor Blockhead performs astounding acts of body manipulation and pain endurance.
SCULLY You must be one of those rare individuals whose... nerve endings don't register pain.
BLOCKHEAD You just keep telling yourself that.

BLOCKHEAD Did you know that through the protective Chinese practice of Tiea Bu Shan, you can train your testicles to draw up into your abdomen?
MULDER Oh, I'm doing that as we speak.

MULDER I saw him this morning down by the river, he was eating a fish.
BLOCKHEAD He knows between show snacks will ruin his appetite.
MULDER I could be mistaken. Maybe it was another bald headed, jigsaw puzzle tattooed, naked guy I saw.
BLOCKHEAD Only the Conundrum can answer that question. But he doesn't answer questions, he merely... poses them.

MULDER Everybody's uncle is an amateur magician.

CURATOR I've recently come into possession of an authentic P.T. Barnum exhibit. Now, I don't show this display to all my customers... only those with the intellectual curiosity to appreciate it. Barnum billed it as The Great Unknown. I must first ask of you two favors. Tell no soul what you witness in here.
SCULLY And the second favor?
CURATOR An additional donation of five dollars.

MULDER Does Agent Scully know that you're under her crawlspace?

NUTT Just because I am not of so-called average height does not mean I must receive my thrills vicariously. Not all woman are attracted to overly tall, lanky men such as yourself. You'd be surprised how many women find my size intriguingly alluring.
MULDER And you'd be surprised how many men do as well.

MULDER You're talking about Sheriff Hamilton?
SCULLY I'm telling you that before becoming Sheriff Hamilton, James Hamilton was Jim-Jim, the Dog-Faced Boy.

MULDER We're being highly discriminatory here. Just because a man was once inflicted with excessive hairiness, we've no reason to suspect him of aberrant behavior.

HAMILTON May I ask what you're doing?
MULDER We're exhuming... your potato.
SCULLY Sheriff, it, it's, it's been documented that many serial killers possess a fascination with police work, some of them even holding positions on their local force... so surveillance of investigation team members is often utilized as a precautionary...
MULDER We found out you used to be the Dog-Faced Boy.
HAMILTON Boy, look how skinny I was back then.

SCULLY That doesn't quite explain the potato.
HAMILTON I got, uh... some warts on my hand.
MULDER That doesn't quite explain the potato.
HAMILTON To get rid of warts, you rub a sliced potato on your hand and bury it under a full moon. Investigation isn't going too well, is it?

NUTT So, tell me, Commodore... why are the weirdos the only ones that pay their rent checks in advance?

SCULLY For a while there, I was beginning to suspect this case involved something a bit more...
MULDER Freakish? You really shouldn't complain about banality, Scully, when your main suspect is the human blockhead.

BLOCKHEAD This has all the makings of one of those mistaken identity, miscarriage of justice things that prove so popular on 60 Minutes.

HAMILTON If you're trying to tell me his twin brother can crawl out of his body and then go gallivant around town, you're as drunk as he is.

SCULLY Lanny, why does he attack other people?
LANNY I don't think he knows he's harming anyone. He's merely seeking... another brother.

HAMILTON Are you in pain, Lanny?
LANNY It hurts. It hurts not to be wanted. I don't know why he hates me so. I've taken care of him for all of our lives. Maybe that is the reason why.

BLOCKHEAD So your twin can, uh... And then... What an act!

MULDER Now you know how I feel.

BLOCKHEAD So, I guess it's true, you can never go home again.

BLOCKHEAD Oh, there's a moral to the story. Lay off the booze.
SCULLY Well, his body possesses some anatomical discrepancies... some offshoots of the esophagus and trachea that almost seem umbilical in nature and... I've never seen anything like it.
BLOCKHEAD And you never will again. Twenty-first century genetic engineering will not only eradicate the siamese twins and the alligator-skinned people, but you're going to be hard-pressed to find, uh, a slight overbite or a not-so-high cheek bone. You see, I've seen the future and the future looks just like him.
He points to Mulder, looking like he's posing for GQ magazine.
BLOCKHEAD Imagine going through your whole life looking like that. That's why it's left up to the self-made freaks like me and the Conundrum to remind people.
SCULLY Remind people of what?
BLOCKHEAD Nature abhors normality. It can't go very long without creating a mutant. Do you know why?
SCULLY No, why?
BLOCKHEAD I don't either, it's a mystery. Maybe some mysteries are never meant to be solved.

MULDER What's the matter with your friend?
BLOCKHEAD I don't know what his problem is. Maybe it's the Florida heat.
SCULLY Hope it's nothing serious.
CONUNDRUM Probably something I ate.